“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…)

Last Thursday actor Wesley Snipes (U.S. Marshals, Undisputed) was sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty in February of three misdemeanor counts for willfully failing to file his tax returns from 1999 to 2001. Snipes and his lawyers had hoped he could avoid prison time, even if he ends up doing that time at a minimum-security “Club Fed”-style prison camp, and went so far as to present three checks totaling $5 million to Judge William Terrell Hodges at the sentencing hearing. Judge Hodges said he didn’t have the authority to accept the checks, and the prosecution wouldn’t accept them either. Was anyone in the courtroom bold enough to cash Blade’s checks? Suddenly, a kindly IRS employee stepped up and said he’d give them a good home at the Treasury Department. Crisis averted.

Snipes’s legal team also presented the court with letters from his family and friends, including former costars Woody Harrelson (White Men Can’t Jump) and Denzel Washington (Mo’ Better Blues), in the hopes that their defense of Snipes’s character could influence Judge Hodges’s decision. Thanks to a friend of mine who works for Homeland Security and owes me a favor, I’ve obtained the transcript of the wiretapped conversation between Snipes and Washington that led to the writing of the two-time Oscar winner’s letter.

DENZEL: (picks up phone) Hello?

WESLEY: Denzel? Hey, this is Wesley.

DENZEL: (pause) Clark?

WESLEY: No. Snipes. Wesley Snipes.

DENZEL: Oh! Wes! Sorry, the reception was bad for a second there, so you sounded like a former military hero who made a failed run at the White House four years ago.

WESLEY: Yeah, I get that a lot. Listen, Denzel, the reason I’m calling is because I’d like to ask you for a favor.

DENZEL: Sure, what do you need? Bruckheimer’s home number? I think I’ve got it right here. Yep, here it is. You got a pen? It’s—

WESLEY: Thanks, but I actually need a bigger favor than that.

DENZEL: Alright. Name it.

WESLEY: Well, as you know, that jury in Florida found me guilty of not filing my taxes for a few years.

DENZEL: You call six years “a few”?

WESLEY: I know, okay? Geeez! Seriously, don’t start, alright?

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Mention the words “silent movie” and most people will become glassy-eyed or chuckle some comment like “You know they make movies with sound now, don’t you?” It’s not that these people are elitist or snobs about movies. It’s just that the average moviegoer has only seen the occasional silent-film clip that makes it look like people in the early 20th century moved at a very fast pace (films in the silent era were shot at a different speed than modern films), or they expect to hear clunky piano music playing over slapstick-comedy one-reelers. Most people are unfamiliar with the history of motion pictures and fail to realize that many of the techniques we see in films today were originally incubated during that time; they don’t realize that while there were films made for the masses, there were also grand epics shown in glamorous movie palaces with live orchestras accompanying the wonderful images flickering on the screen.

Thankfully, archivists like film historian Kevin Brownlow and director Martin Scorsese continue to educate and inform people about the glorious art made during the birth of cinema. Additionally, Turner Classic Movies continues to air silent films on Sunday nights, and it’s led the way in film preservation by restoring many of the groundbreaking and influential films that have been lost to years of deteriorating film stock. TCM continues its work tonight by airing two epic movies from innovative French director Abel Gance: the pacifist war film J’accuse (8 PM Eastern) and the railroad tragedy La Roue (11 PM).

Gance is considered by many to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but like his contemporaries D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, his name is unrecognizable to almost everyone. Gance’s crowning achievement as a director is 1927’s Napoleon, which utilized Polyvision, a three-screen method of film projection. Napoleon was restored in the early ’80s just before Gance died, but his reputation as France’s most important filmmaker grew out of the success of his two earlier masterpieces, J’accuse (1919) and La Roue (1923).

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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 didn’t mean to take a three-week vacation from writing Sugar Water, but here I am with my first post for the month of April, which is already on its way out the door. But did you see that interview I did earlier this month? And those record reviews? And that Chart Attack! I wrote while Jason Hare’s in detox (again)? Those things didn’t write themselves, you know. (Or at least that’s what the computer program that actually did write them told me over and over again, but then I reminded the computer program that it doesn’t have emotions and shouldn’t be complaining.) I was also out of town last weekend, and I was in detox myself the weekend before that, but not because I have a drinking problem like Jason does — my problem is that I swallowed some toxic waste (again).

I also did my part for Record Store Day yesterday by going to Laurie’s Planet of Sound in Chicago and buying Office’s A Night at the Ritz and David Cross’s It’s Not Funny on CD. Then I set fire to an Apple Store to kill all the Apple computers that have iTunes on them, because iTunes is killing record stores. You should’ve heard those computers cry out in pain — until I reminded them they can’t feel pain. Anyway, Sugar Water had to be put on hold for a while.

Two weekends ago I went AWOL from detox for a few hours to attend a screening of the documentary Movin’ On Up: The Music and Message of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions at the Chicago Cultural Center. Movin’ On Up will be released on DVD next month by Reelin’ in the Years Productions, which specializes in music documentaries that include full, uninterrupted performances, either from decades-old concerts or TV shows, by the artist or artists who are being profiled. Movin’ On Up is worth seeing if you’re a Mayfield fan, though it would’ve been nice to see more archival interview footage of Mayfield, who died in 1999, talking about his songs.

Before I attended this screening of Movin’ On Up, the last movie I’d seen in a theater was David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, way back in September. I used to have Thursdays off from work, which is when I would usually see movies, but my schedule changed at the end of September, and I’m a little too claustrophobic and agoraphobic to brave the local cinemas on weekends, plus I can hear everything that every single person in the theater is saying. If there’s a pill I can take to turn down the volume of those voices for two hours, let me know.

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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…)

CSI: Miami, now in its sixth season, returns with a new episode Monday night, the first one completed since the writers’ strike ended in February. CBS’s top-rated crime drama is the most popular TV show in the world according to international ratings, just as Baywatch was the world’s most popular show in the ’90s. (Here in the U.S., A&E leans on the syndicated reruns pretty hard, showing nine-hour marathons every Wednesday.) The two shows have their similarities: beachfront locales, lots of sun, pretty girls and muscular guys, and murder-mystery storylines for those who aren’t interested in the eye candy. But while Baywatch had beefcake mannequin David Hasselhoff as its lead actor, CSI: Miami has David Caruso, whose performance makes the show endlessly watchable. (Of course, Bruce Fretts of TV Guide said in January that Caruso is “rapidly turning into the new Hasselhoff.” Please, Bruce, don’t piss all over my thesis just yet, okay?)

I’m not trying to argue that there are hidden depths to the carrot-topped actor’s portrayal of Horatio Caine, the police detective who heads up the Miami-Dade County police department’s forensics team, but I am defending the method in his madness. (According to someone I know whose brother has appeared on the show in a guest-starring role, there may actually be some undiagnosed madness in Caruso’s method. Then again, ain’t we all a little crazy?) Many people think Caruso’s a terrible actor, which just isn’t so. Instead, he’s a good actor who’s gotten lazy, although I do think he’s keeping himself entertained as he goes through the motions week after week. He could still turn in a solid performance if he wanted to, but for now he’s content to deliver his stone-faced one-liners and throw a bunch of quirks into his role as “H,” like positioning his body at a 90-degree angle in relation to another character and only turning his head to address him or her, and adding lots of odd pauses into his dialogue, possibly as an homage to one of his idols, Christopher Walken, or, as a friend of mine has theorized, because he can only memorize five words of dialogue at a time and then has to look off-camera to locate the next cue card. Caruso’s character isn’t like any of the others on CSI: Miami, which helps set him and the show apart, but he’s so different that he almost seems like he’s on another show altogether.

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