“That’s it,” said my friend, following our Monday evening screening of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. “I’m through with Narnia.” I know the feeling; it’s the same one I get after semi-dozing through the latest Harry Potter picture, which evidence to the contrary I’m told are getting better. That I was back at Narnia at all was kind of a surprise, given my thumbs-down response to the whole idea of sitting through a C.S. Lewis sequel in my summer movies preview last month (“a movie no one over, what, age 14, needs to see,” I sniffed). But I’m a sucker for a free preview for something that, if it got good reviews, I’d be obliged to pay eleven Brooklyn dollars to see.

It turned out to be a long sit: 144 minutes. But my posterior wasn’t too chafed as the last digital effects credit slid down the screen. I found I was in the mood for this kind of swords-clanging adventure, if only for the duration. The problem with The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of a likely seven pictures promised, was that it smacked of opportunism, following in the wake of the terrific Lord of the Rings pictures, my favorite film fantasies. As a series of books, it had its own identity, and act as a sort of Christian “answer” to Tolkien’s more heathen-ish tales, which were published in roughly the same period. [The two had a complex friendship.] Filmically, however, Rings captured the flag first, after false starts and a long gestation, and the Narnia pictures feel a little stale and impoverished by comparison. They follow in massive footsteps, which all but swallowed up the shallower homegrown mythmaking of the Star Wars prequels.

But enough time has elapsed since 2003’s stupendous Return of the King to consider the new Narnia on its own terms. The Christian elements, which Lewis himself downplayed, are further soft-pedaled here, but are likely to be a persistent, if gnat-like, bother to anyone troubled by them. [The messier, unlikely-to-be continued Golden Compass may be more your pagan speed.] Andrew Adamson’s direction is more assured this time, if lacking much of the humor of his first two Shrek pictures; there’s no way to simply shrug off or throw away all this mythology without irking the fan base. [My beef with the Harry Potters is this pathological need to cram in as much of everything as possible, to the extent that two films will be made from the seventh and final book. Works by much finer authors should be so lucky to have such craven adaptors.] The story is more of a straight-ahead swashbuckler for the family crowd, and the talking animals (more gracefully CGI-ed in Compass) are part of the fabric, not the whole show. (more…)

All I know about Speed Racer I learned as a kid, when I watched episodes of the proto-anime between spoonfuls of Cocoa Puffs. There wasn’t much to it — there was a car, a monkey, a bad guy, and once I had my sugar rush I was outta there, its theme song lodged in a tiny corner of my mind. Some 40 years later I wouldn’t have imagined it as a potential new franchise for the makers of The Matrix (1999) to put on the road, but then again I was the guy who said today’s savvy, Wii-playing kids would never, ever go for Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The Speed Racer invite for the press screening said that children over seven would be welcome to attend. Given previews that promised candy-colored joyrides on green-screened Hot Wheels tracks, I thought it should be mandatory to bring one. The goofiest thing about this perplexing enterprise is that it’s only sort of for the over-sevens; the boring parts (and there are a lot of boring parts) are for the 40-year-olds lugging their over-sevens into the theater for this week’s cinematic adrenaline rush. There are two movies going on here, neither with crossover appeal.

This was not the film the Wachowski Brothers needed to rebound with after the embarrassment of the Matrix sequels (2003). They needed to go back to something smaller, more intimate, maybe with Gina Gershon again playing a lesbian (it’s just a thought), as in their debut feature, Bound (1996). V for Vendetta (2006), which they pulled the strings on, was a mess of totalitarian clichés and good intentions. So is this one, when it forgets to be a PG movie for the family, which is often enough.

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David Mamet can’t commit. His latest Broadway show, November, is an almost-farce in need of bigger laughs. Despite its definitive title, his film Heist couldn’t quite bring itself to be a fulfilling caper picture; likewise, Spartan is a sort-of spy movie. His best work of late has been in adaptation: his film of The Winslow Boy is a fine look back at the Terence Rattigan chestnut, suitably framed for the Clinton scandal years, and his reconsideration of the near-forgotten play The Voysey Inheritance Off Broadway last season commented subtly on the Enron generation. But his tenth movie since 1987’s diamond-hard House of Games, Redbelt, is another coy shell game, a movie about martial arts that doesn’t want to be a martial arts movie.

Mamet knows how to open a picture. We are introduced to Mike Terry, proprietor of a declining L.A. dojo, who teaches Brazilian jujitsu. The magnetic Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Terry, and I will digress briefly to say that if I am scanning my cable channel line-up and hit upon one of his scenes in Kinky Boots I forget where it was I might have been going and tune in. Teaching a cop how to fight with one hand tied in the first scene, Ejiofor repeats, rhythmically, reassuringly, urgently, “There is no situation from which you cannot escape.” This will be the mantra of the story. I was intrigued. The notion of Ejiofor as the leader of a beleaguered Shaolin Temple on the West Coast was a good one; what was needed was some butts to kick.

But Mamet doesn’t want to sully his hands with that kind of picture. The martial-arts strain is crossbred with the noir-ish strands of Forties pictures like Body and Soul and The Set-Up—Mike is loathe to compete in the soulless commercial arena of the sport, and the other characters are pushing him hard to do so, some indirectly, some more bluntly. The can of worms opens when the hysterical Laura Black (a high-strung Emily Mortimer) barges into the dojo as that initial training session ends and, unhinged, fires the policeman’s gun through a window. A woozy chain of events, designed to throw Mike off his principled high horse, transpires. He saves, or seems to save, hack movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen) from a barroom beating. A film producer (old Mamet hand Joe Mantegna) takes an interest. Business opportunities suddenly open up for his wife Sondra (Alice Braga), a fabrics designer. David Paymer talks tough. Hombres lurk on the sidelines. Ricky Jay sleazes around. (more…)

Like Hillary Clinton, Helen Hunt has always bugged me. I was never crazy about Mad About You, and while I don’t think she deserves the barbs thrown at her for As Good As It Gets (she’s been lambasted as one of the least deserving Best Actress winners) I’m not exactly quick to rise to her defense, either. Again, like HRC, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly that annoys me about her. I think, on film, it may be the way she listens — the camera closes in tight on her exposure-hardened face (all that TV and movie work since she played Murray’s daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore show takes its toll) and she gets all sensitive and concerned on us. Now that in itself is no grounds for petulance, but there’s something awfully mannered about that look, which she has hung on her puss for decades now. It’s a kind of body armor, a wall against getting too close. Under the guise of empathy, of wanting to care and share, I see a big “Keep Away” sign hung around her neck. She gives you this look that suggests she feels your pain, but I know if you dared try to hug her she’d slap the crap out of you.

But, just as Clinton has impressed me by hanging tough in this campaign, going to the mattresses as surely as the characters in The Godfather after Don Corleone is hit, so, too, do I feel a new respect for Hunt with Then She Found Me,which ThinkFilm opens today. This is her debut as a feature film director (she is a co-producer and co-writer as well) and her multi-year struggle to bring Elinor Lipman’s novel to the screen accounts in part for some odd ellipses in her post-Oscar career. (I saw her on Broadway in a gorgeously designed Twelfth Night and the comedy-drama Life x 3, but her thoroughly adequate performances left little trace in my memory bank.) Going to see a Hunt-hyphenate picture, with her doing all those tasks and starring as well, was about as appealing to me as a stretch in Abu Ghraib (see below). Yet Then She Found Me has a kind of toughlove charm I responded to. (more…)

I’ve been tasked with preparing a summer movie guide for Popdose. I haven’t done one of these since I was at the Daily Northwestern, cramming dozens of titles into a few column inches. Entertainment Weekly, your local paper, and — for all I know — Orbitz, Stuff on Your Cat, and anyone with a blog will be running one of those all-bases- covered-but-somehow-lacking guides in the coming weeks. But that won’t do here. The trick is to winnow, to cut the chaff to get at the wheat. And as it’s summer, or summer-ish — the season pretty much starts with the May 2 release of Iron Man, though a case could be made for beginning a weekend earlier with the Harold & Kumar sequel, the one Iraq picture audiences may actually see — there’s a lot of fluff to separate out.

Most of these pictures are machine-stamped to be disposable, to make as much money as quick as can be, then be regurgitated as DVDs by Christmas. I find of lot of them to be dispiriting. Summer is mostly about indulging your inner child, and the kid in me just dies at some of the stuff put before us. Worse, there isn’t a single picture on the slate with a giant animal wreaking havoc. (The Incredible Hulk doesn’t count.) I love that kind of movie, but I’ll have to wait to see if Santa brings one.

But scanning the calendar I can find ten to hype about. It’s all about the sizzle, and I’m putting these on the griddle. I’ll say up front that I have no special knowledge of any of these movies, no crystal ball beyond cast lists, a few preliminary trailers, and the odd gleaning or two. They may all stink, and a rose may pop up somewhere else totally unexpected. In the spirit of trying to simplify your viewing, here are two fistfuls of films you must try to squeeze in between May Day and Labor Day. Anything constructive to add, please comment; any complaints, call management. Hey, I’m one person over here, from my garret in Brooklyn, and I tried.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22). “Hoo-boy,” I can hear you snarking, “this guy’s really going out on a limb. Making the tough calls.” But I need this film to work. You need this to work. There are problems: That Jim Morrison-sounding title isn’t rocking my world. And its star, missing in action (or at least a good action film) since the Clinton years, is so old he needs to be backed up by the felonious whippersnapper whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell. Still, the notion that Steven Spielberg is rolling up his sleeves and getting back to basics, scaling back the CGI and employing the same lighting and editing style he used on the first three adventures, excites me. Those, to me, are true-blue summer movies — you remember, the ones with stories, and smarts, and heart to go along with the thrill ride. (And, in this case, Soviet bad guys and a bad gal, played by the all-purpose Cate Blanchett. Yes, Soviet, not Russian — we’re back in the USSR!) What will kids reared on rock-’em, sock-’em robot crapfests make of this? Taking this sort of picture back to its roots is a truly radical notion.

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Thirty years from now, My Blueberry Nights may be considered a good film. It may even be considered a great film. Let me explain.

Some years ago, I selected for my film-watching group (19 years old and still going strong) Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), his first made-in-America production, shot in youthquake California. It was an utter disaster upon its release: unhip, out-of-touch,pretentious. Harry Medved consigned it to his infamous Fifty Worst Films of All Time book (1978), which I still have on my shelf.

Some years later, I caught up with it on laserdisc (I still have some of those on my shelf, too.) I was entranced. Yes, the sensibility was Martian, as if the great director was visiting student revolutionaries from another galaxy. But it was a genuinely sincere attempt at engagement, and Antonioni’s attempt to get inside their mindset was valiant. As was customary, it was immaculately made, with an impeccable period score. The explosive climax, where our entire consumer culture blows up as Pink Floyd plays, was an unforgettably lunatic vision—terrifying,ridiculous, and beautiful, all at once. I had prepared my group for the worst,underplaying the film’s unique qualities. I had overstated the case: The picture, which had aged into an invaluable cultural artifact, went down fine, flaws and all.

My Blueberry Nights bears some relation. The noted Hong Kong director, Wong Kar Wai, makes his English-language debut with an American-made film that glides from New York to Memphis to Reno. (Coincidentally, he and Antonioni, acclaimed visual stylists both, were bunkmates in the 2004 omnibus film Eros.) The stakes, however, are lower. Antonioni injected himself into our national muddle, and was crucified by the right and left for doing so. Wong has Fed-Exed his muse to the West. His description of the film—“Sometimes the tangible distance between two persons can be quite small but the emotional one can be miles…I wanted to explore these expanses, both figuratively and literally, and the lengths it takes to overcome them”—pretty much applies to any of his acclaimed pictures.

I’m not his biggest acolyte. Certain audiences groove on the languorous pace and slowly-burning emotions of films like 2000’s In the Mood for Love and 2004’s 2046. I’m friends with some of these folks, and they don’t understand why I’m not on board. Or, rather, why I left the boat: I enjoy earlier films, like 2004’squirky Chungking Express and 1997’s fraught gay romance Happy Together, just fine. They had a beating heart and pulse. Gradually, however, he drifted toward being an interior decorator. The human element receded into the background; the period furnishings and wallpaper communicated the stories, off altering relationships that play out in a few airless rooms. Some find this entrancing; I get restless. (more…)

Arthouse meets grindhouse in Funny Games, and the results are no fun at all. Writer-director Michael Haneke, the Austrian provocateur behind The Piano Teacher (2002) and Caché (2005), is a filmmaker of some distinction, but even his admirers split on his original 1997 production, of which this Warner Independent Pictures release is a scene-by-scene duplication. The subtitles and “foreign-ness” of the first film gave American viewers an out; there’s no such escape this time, should cinematic rubberneckers choose to attend.

The setup is simple, as it is in horror pictures of yesteryear like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As Handel plays on the CD player of their car, we are introduced to an upscale couple, Ann (Naomi Watts) and George (Tim Roth), and their affectionate son Georgie (Devon Gearheart). The music abruptly switches to John Zorn as the title of the film slashes across the screen and we know immediately what is to come: These classical music lovers, content in their love for each other and obviously refined values, are toast. We can smell the burn approaching as their neighbors in Southampton, where they have come to vacation, act strangely at their arrival, as if something is amiss in the community.

Georgie is the first to pick up on the scent, when Peter (Mysterious Skin co-star Brady Corbet) comes calling on Ann (pictured), looking for some eggs. The introduction of Peter’s companion, Paul (Michael Pitt), raises the alarm — with their tennis togs, sallow skin, thick lips, and closely aligned personalities, these apostles of ill will look like mimes gone seriously bad. An uneasy face-off between the parties goes Code Red when the two young men hold the family hostage, bent on torture and protracted, painful murder. (more…)

Look. I know. I hear you.

You’d rather be reading about 10,000 B.C., that caveman-and-saber-tooth-tigers thing opening today. Listen: I’d rather be writing about it. Cavemen (cavewomen), saber-tooths, mastodons — I am so there. Granted, prehistoric mammals aren’t a patch on dinosaurs. I know that cavemen (and cavewomen; remember One Million Years B.C. with Raquel Welch? Barbara Bach in Caveman? Hubba hubba) didn’t co-exist, but, boy, they should have, just like they do in the movies.

But: No one sent me a screening invite. Just didn’t happen. These are the breaks. So, here it is instead, the picture someone would let me see in advance: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which Focus Features opens today for audiences with less Neanderthal sensibilities.

And it is not half bad. The film is based on a fairly forgotten novel by one Winifred Watson, who set and wrote the book back in the Pleistocene age, or right before the Second World War. Watson, who died in 2002, put her pen down for good during WWII, which is too bad, as her whole canon might have committed to celluloid by now. Knowing that she went cold turkey on her career to raise her family adds poignancy to one of the film’s best scenes, where Miss Pettigrew (the indomitable Frances McDormand) and her well-born, would-be suitor Joe (Ciaran Hinds, the go-to Brit you get when Tom Wilkinson is unavailable) take a breather from a party to watch planes massing in the night sky. Noting the age of the partygoers, who are unconcerned about what the spectacle portends, Joe observes, sadly and presciently, “These young people didn’t live through the last one.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. (more…)

It’s fitting that Chicago 10, a Roadside Attractions release, is opening February 29. It’s a weird, once-every-four-years day, and Chicago 10 is a weird, out-of-time movie. Here we have a 40th-anniversary commemoration/celebration of a Vietnam-era carnival of civil disobedience targeted at a contemporary audience that has shrugged at every Iraq-themed film put in front of it. How what amounts to a lengthy ‘Nam flashback is supposed to get asses off couches and into a movie theater is a puzzle, man.

The director, Brett Morgen, has an idea or two about that. To bring the story of Hollywood rapscallion and lounge lizard Robert Evans to the screen, Morgen’s prior film The Kid Stays in the Picture used cut-out graphics and clever visuals, and to hell with the talking heads. It worked: If you were too tired to pick up Evans’ tome and actually read it, or had purchased the thing but hadn’t gotten it off the shelf, the doc did all the heavy lifting for you, as Evans’ sonorous voice recounted his adventures over all the retro-chic razzmatazz. The Kid Stays in the Picture took the book-on-tape concept and transferred it to film.

With Chicago 10, Morgen and co-producer Graydon Carter extend the experiment, lopping off every device that stinks of traditional documentary. (Carter, whose not having a Vanity Fair Oscar party got almost as much coverage as his having one, wants to define the cutting edge for the form with these pictures.) Voiceover, out. All that place-setting jazz, “It was a time of change in America,” etc., gone, baby, gone. Yes, it’s history, but it’s living history, relevant to our age, so let’s give the Doors and “Smoke on the Water” and whatever else that smacks of its time a rest and rock on with Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beastie Boys and what the people are listening to today. The actual trial was political theater, so the movie about it must be theater of the real — confrontational, in your face. It must be…animated. (more…)