Reviews

"Impostor" sets up an intriguing premise that suggests McCarthyism taken to the next level, and then spends the next ninety minutes avoiding it by slogging through tunnels. It's the kind of movie where every money shot is seen from a wide angle as a spaceship lands, but the characters exist wander through sets built by the lowest bidder.

The year is 2079, and Earth has been at war with an alien race for the last 29 years. Gary Sinese plays Dr. Spencer Olam, a brilliant engineer who has spent his career developing weapons to fight the aliens. Olam is happily married to a successful doctor (Madeline Stow) and is about to launch a new weapon against the enemy.

The aliens cannot attack the remaining human cities directly due to shield technology that protects them. Now they've hit upon a clever strategy: kill a prominent citizen, replicate him down to the exact detail, and send him into the populace with a immensely powerful bomb hidden in his chest. These replicants are pretty well done. They contain all the subject's memories, knowledge, fingerprints and even DNA. "The only thing lacking is a soul," intones one character in an unusually metaphysical statement for this movie. The replicant is not even aware that he isn't who he appears to be.

Dr. Olam is believed to be one of these replicants. He was on an alien "hit list" of targets to be replaced. But was he? He is arrested, but insists that he is still himself. His accuser, a security chief named Hathaway, is sure he is not. So sure, he'd like to just skip ahead to the vivisectioning without any further investigation. Olam escapes. He wants to get to his wife's hospital so a crucial test can prove conclusively there isn't a bomb in his rib cage.

The movie then sets up a series of scenes in which Olam runs around in a maze of crumbling buildings and tunnels in order to avoid the authorities. There are precious other characters to be concerned with, but he does run into a forgotten community of dwellers who are stuck outside the system, relying on survival tactics. They don't amount to much except for one who guides him through the tunnels, but he isn't given much to do.

The technology in the movie is enough to cause engineers nightmares. Humanity has accomplished space travel and highly advanced weaponry but still uses old-fashioned bullets to shoot their own kind. Small devices planted next to the spinal cord are used to identify citizens as they pass security points, but when Olam has his removed, he is able to carry it around and not set off the sensors in one scene, but later is able to use it as a decoy merely by slipping it into another's pocket. The real kicker is the DNA scanner that he needs to fool to unlock a door at the hospital. Only the right DNA will work, so where does he get it? From a surgical glove in a wastebin right beneath the scanner! The people who thought this up are probably the descendents of the team that developed the copywrited CD technology that can be foiled by a magic marker.

"Imposter" is based on a Philip K. Dick story, and could have been at least mildly interesting if it didn't wander aimlessly so much through it's low-rent production. It does contain a twist at the end that while easily guessed, doesn't cheat. But getting there is like peddling your bicycle to the moon.

Poor Beverly. If only she hadn't gotten pregnant. Things would have turned out a lot differently, if only...

Beverly spends most of "Riding in Cars with Boys", the latest film by Penny Marshall ("A League of Their Own", "Big") lamenting this fact. She is possessed of a keen wit and a strong talent for writing, but lacks the insight to realize how she shaped her own life into its current form. At 22, when her son is six years old, she is still complaining that she's trapped in her world. By this point, she's working two jobs, studying like mad to win a scholarship to college, and dealing with her childlike husband, Ray, who has secretly been harboring a heroin addiction. Not the life she had envisioned for herself as a teenager.

Beverly's life certainly starts with promise. She's already composing love sonnets of surprising poignancy to an insensitive jock at her school at the age of 15. Then she crosses paths with Ray Hasek, who shows her more respect than she has received from almost anyone in her life. Even though she will later blame others for ruining her life, the movie makes it clear that she is the aggressor in their relationship. "You don't want to get involved with a loser like me," warns Ray.

His warning certainly seems well-founded. Beverly ends up pregnant, and misses her last two years of high school while being hurried into a marriage with Ray by her appalled parents. She is forced to watch her friends grow up around her and gradually move on with their lives, while she remains in her small house with Ray on a street that seems like a favorite hangout of the drug dealers in the area.

Ray's character is crucial to the movie, and he is played by Steve Zahn in a remarkable performance. Zahn is known mostly for his comic roles as dimwits ("Saving Silverman", "Happy, Texas") but here he comes across in a more serious character. Ray is charming at first, and genuinely good-hearted, but helpless in the face of his addiction. He wants to do right by his family, but just doesn't have the capacity to fulfill their needs. Beverly puts up with him as long as she can. Listen to the dialogue in the scene where she explains to him why its time for him to leave, and watch Zahn as he reacts. He understands. When he turns up later in the film, it's telling that he is able to take responsibility for his shortcomings. "Staying away was the best thing I ever did in my life," he says, and he's absolutely right.

Beverly, on the other hand, is still stuck on blaming others for her lot in life. Her son, Jason, has picked up his habit as a young man, leading to a painful confrontation that highlights the complicated dynamics of their relationship, now that he is old enough that people mistake her for his girlfriend.

There are quite a few moments of truth in the movie. Beverly's father's toast at her wedding is perhaps honest, but cruelly revels in her shame. There's Beverly's own admission to her best friend, Fay: "I don't know if I love Jason, or if I have to love him." When the six-year-old Jason betrays his mother at a crucial moment, we can understand his anger toward her stems not just from her driving his father away, but also with the fact that Bev blames him for crushing her dreams.

Having read the book of the same name by Beverly Donofrio, I was struck with the honesty with which she paints herself. Yet in the end she doesn't quite come to the point where she understands that her life has taken the path she choose for it. This film has modified Beverly's life a great deal, but in the end, she is still the same person. It's a unusually honest and challenging film about the choices we make in life. The underlying message may be that although it might be small consolation, you're better off accepting responsibility for your decisions than to expend the energy required to resent them.

"Changing Lanes" surprised me. What really got to me was how it doesn't try to dumb down its plot by adding a trite Hollywood version of how things might play out. Instead, it makes observations about what happens when we let our emotions run unchecked.

The movie teams up Afleck and Jackson as two men who are living out one of the most crucial days of their lives. They get into an accident on a New York Expressway one morning. Both are in a rush to get to court. Gavin Banek (Afleck) has to present an important file proving an ailing billionaire turned over control for a lucrative trust foundation to the senior partners at his Wall Street law firm. Doyle Gibson (Jackson) needs to get to his custody proceeding so he can show that he bought a house to convince his long-suffering wife to stay in town and not leave for Oregon with his two young sons. He's a recovering alcoholic who lives by the AA credo and wants "to do this the right way," that is, exchanging insurance information. Banek writes him a blank check instead and refuses him a ride to the courthouse. "Better luck next time," he says as he drives off.

Gibson is twenty minutes late for the hearing, which is over when he arrives. He pleads with the unsympathetic judge, who coolly tells him, "If this were my family, I would have made sure to be here on time." Distraught and raging over his loss, he is cornered by an anxious Banek, who realized after he got to his own proceedings that the file he needed had been left with Gibson by accident. When Gibson realizes the importance of the file, he faxes him one of the pages with "Better luck next time" scrawled across it.

In his desperation, Banek goes to his former mistress for help, and she supplies him with the name of a guy who can fix things. Played by Dylan Baker as a man with a cheerful cynicism for his job, he arranges to turn off Gibson's credit to get his attention. "It's like when you put those electric collars on a dog, so they get a shock when they stray outside the yard," he says gleefully. Banek reluctantly goes along with it, because failing to come up with that file could mean a lawsuit or even jail time.

So begins a daylong battle between these two men, who met only by accident and fail to realize the futility of their situation. The movie skillfully demonstrates their strengths and flaws as basic personality traits that get severely tested as they ascend to each new level of contrition. Gibson believes in Alcoholics Anonymous, believes in the importance of staying sober. But his sponsor (William Hurt) feels that alcohol isn't Gibson's real addiction, but chaos. "There's an unspoken covenant not to go berzerk, and you broke it," he tells him.

Then there's Banek. He begins to believe that the dying billionaire may not have understood what he was signing, that maybe it's better that the file remains lost. His wife (Amanda Peet) is blunt with him: she could have married an honest man, but she married a Wall Street attorney instead, and he should act like one. His father-in-law, the senior partner, is a pragmatist. How did the billionaire make his money, after all? "Do you think that those factories in Malaysia have day care centers in them?" he asks. "Do you want to see the tax incentives he gets from that foundation?"

Beneath all the moral ambiguity is the simple fact that these two men are locked into a contest they have no hope of winning. In a lesser movie, one of them would have been held up as the hero and the other the villain, but in this one there are no such distinctions. By the end of the day both will have committed despicable acts against the other, and if there is suspense it comes from wondering if they will stop before it's too late. The casting is right for these roles. Afleck is known for his serio-comic characters ("Chasing Amy", "Dogma") but here plays it straight, growing more and more disillusioned with each hour. Jackson is at home in the role of a man whose righteous indignation seethes just beneath his carefully constructed surface.

"Changing Lanes" asks when is it time to simply to let the matter drop. How far is too far? One wonders if either of these men will stop long enough to ask themselves that very question.

I was born quite a few years after December 7th, 1941, but had I survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and then watched this movie today, I would probably react with a mixture of disgust and despair. Then again, maybe I would have only been as bored as I was without the benefit of experience. "Pearl Harbor" is a movie that uses World War II as a backdrop for a love story of astonishing banality that contributes to one of the most witless experiences I've had.

The movie is three hours long, but it would have seemed long at two. Hell, it would have seemed long at 45 minutes, which is the length of time at the center of the movie that is focused on the attack itself. "The day that will live in infamy" still evokes strong emotions from those who lived through it, but from the movie's perspective it did little but provide a set piece for an action movie. The special effects by Michael Bay are impressive, indeed; we see Japanese fighter planes divebombing the ships in harbor, flying between them at high speed, while those on the ground flee in fear or shoot from the decks. Most of this is pitched at the level of a video game, especially when the two heroes, Danny and Rafe, climb into their own planes and proceed to start shooting down every enemy plane they can. Unlike Spielberg's earlier "Saving Private Ryan" which had convincing footage of the landing at Normandy but also a moral context, "Pearl Harbor" is completely lacking in insight. Instead, the attack becomes nothing but appalling visions of slaughter for benefit of entertainment.

The dialog in the movie is truly amazing, but not for it's good qualities. Take Evelyn's consolation to Rafe, whom she loves, as she explains her motives: "My heart belongs to Danny, but I'll never look at another sunset without thinking of you." Thanks a whole lot. Of course, that's after Jon Voight has woodenly tried to portray President Roosevelt standing up defiantly from his wheelchair after being told by his cabinet that a military assault on Japan is impractical, and stating, "Gentlemen, do not tell me what cannot be done!" As I understand it, history does record him saying something to this effect, but I doubt it came across as lamely as it does in this movie.

The Japanese are given the "hindsight is 20-20" treatment: Admiral Yamamoto, who orchestrated the attack, muses anxiously that "I fear that all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant." They act as if seeming unlikely to have attacked, had they not been called upon to do so in service of the plot. It's as if the filmmakers were afraid of seeming callous if they depicted the Japanese as actually having Imperialism as a motive. The Japanese continue to make movies about Hiroshima and Nagasaki without sympathy for the American perspective and justifiably so: it was a defining moment for them, just as Pearl Harbor was a defining moment for Americans. I cannot recall a film about the Enola Gay in which Truman is heard to say "I fear all we have done is unleashed an apocalypse on an unsuspecting city."

The movie pays token respect to African-Americans with its depiction of Dorie Miller, the black cook aboard one of the carriers who grabs the controls of an anti-aircraft gun during the attack and shoots down several enemy planes. Curiously, despite the location being Hawaii, I did not notice a single person of Polynesian descent during the entire movie.

Nothing about the movie offers up any historical perspective on the events that take place. I attended the film with a friend who afterward defended it as a "popcorn movie". To describe this movie about the tragic loss of three thousand lives in the same terms as those used by critics in referring to "The Mummy Returns" is no less depressing for its accuracy.

It is said that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. In "The Glass House", the characters pelt the audience's credibility with rocks. The plot moves along, ticking off one necessary point after another until all the pieces are in place. Yes, they all fit together, but it's like building those puzzles with the picture on the box: you already know what you're going to get at the beginning.

The movie stars Leelee Sobieski as Ruby, a sixteen-year old (a bit of a stretch considering she recently played a college student in "Joy Ride") who is a typical rebellious teenager as the story opens. She and her brother are orphaned when their parents are killed in a car accident. Before they died, her parents arranged with their attorney to have their former neighbors, Erin and Terry Glass, to be their legal guardians should anything happen to them. So the kids are taken to the Glass's house in Malibu, which is in fact (ho ho) a glass house.

What follows is a series of scenes designed to demonstrate how the Glasses are not all they appear to be. These involve sequences in which Ruby ends up again and again to be in just the right place to overhear crucial conversations on the phone, in other rooms, etc. The script ensures that she always knows everything she needs to know so she can outwit the villains. The entire deception, when revealed, seems needlessly complicated and depends heavily on outsiders lacking in perception to such a degree they won't notice obvious signs that something is wrong.

I appreciated the movie's craftsmanship and it's performances, especially that of Sobieski and Stellan Skarsgard. Bruce Dern also turns in a nice role as the attorney who may know more than he's letting on. And I like the way Diane Lane suggests subtle motives for her character. There were several clever moments late in the film when Ruby is able to think one step ahead of her antagonists, but that is only because she knows more than she should be able to know in reality. The ending is the kind of Hollywood payoff that is all too familiar, and I think a more original one would have been easy to come up with.

The movie has a lot of technical skill but I can't recommend it on that basis alone. "The Glass House" isn't a bad name for the movie, though. You can see right through the plot to what's inside at a glance.

As a long-time Tolkien fan, I had great reservations about the live-action production of his now legendary trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings". I wondered how good it could really be; it seemed unlikely anyone could truly capture the breadth and scope of Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth and its inhabitants. Peter Jackson, the director, has taken upon himself a massive undertaking made nonetheless risky because of the demanding audience of "Rings" fans.

The film is actually a wonderful surprise. The filmmakers have wisely chosen not to merely migrate the book to the big screen, but transform it. The books are mostly about the journey; going from place to place with adventures and battles along the way but staying rooted in the travels of its characters. Jackson has created an overarching epic here that doesn't lose this quality but delves more deeply into the action. It is telling that the movie stretches scenes such as the flight from the Black Riders or the battle with the Orcs at Khazad-Dum into substantial set pieces, while in the novel these are relegated to a paragraph or two. I especially enjoyed a scene that conveys the traditional "crossing of the threshold": Samwise, Frodo's traveling companion, stops as they move through a field and says apprehensively, "If I take one step more I will be farther from home than I ever have been."

One problem any version of the Lord of the Rings must endure is the way its audience has already formed its own individual ideas of how things look. When I read the books, I pictured Hobbits in my mind as small, furry folk who loved to smoke and eat numerous times a day, living underground in their hobbit-holes. In the movie they look much as I pictured them. Then the orcs appeared, and I can't say they looked as I imagined (they seemed a bit too small and agile). Yet this didn't bother me because this is the filmmakers' vision and not my own. This is imagination brought to life from the minds of others who have read and loved the same stories and see it a bit differently.

It would be pointless to describe the plot of the film since it's target audience is intimately familiar with the books. I will say it is surprisingly faithful to the story (with some notable exceptions). One brief love scene seemed inserted to appeal to a broader audience but does nothing to detract from the story as a whole.

One truly astonishing aspect is the film's scenery, which is stunning. It was shot in New Zealand (along with the other two which were filmed simultaneously). Many sword and sorcery epics seem to take place in the woods on the fringes of suburbia, but here we see expansive mountainous regions and vast forests that seem to stretch for miles. One scene has the heroes floating down a river between two gigantic statues of kings with their hands outstretched as if in warning, and it brings home the dedication to detail and realism used even in this mythic setting.

The casting is largely on target. Elijah Wood hits just the right notes as Frodo by conveying an age beyond his tender years (and size). Viggo Mortensen is convincing as Aragorn, a secretive and tormented ranger. Ian Holm, practically a Hobbit himself, is perfect as the aging Bilbo, and Liv Tyler uses her already elfin appearance to the hilt as Arwen. The only odd casting choice to me was Sean Astin as Samwise, whom I last saw in "Rudy" where he played an undersize football player. He's now grown rather husky, but he uses this to his advantage in a largely thankless role (although he becomes more important in the later books).

"Fellowship of the Rings" could have been what I feared it would be: a silly sword-and-sorcery flick that gets mired in special effects while substituting action for depth. Take the summer film "Dungeons and Dragons" for example. Instead, it takes the time to develop its characters, and places them in a setting that is both epic on scope and mythic in dimension. The film is a bit long at three hours, and it ends abruptly; but it is based on a long book with a lot of ground to cover, and it is the first in a trilogy after all. I hope the remaining films live up to it's grand vision and ambitiousness, and I think that based on what I've seen here, I can be optimistic. This is a wonderful entry into a great epic.

Here is the ultra-simplified American history for the MTV generation. "The Patriot" is a movie that essentially takes the entire American Revolution with all its complex motivations and political nuances, and boils it all down into a revenge plot. It's almost amusing to see how the movie tries to struggle free of this notion, as it offers up some simplified images of glory and honor, while all the while the lead character's motivation is essentially the same: to kill his nemesis.

That's not to say "The Patriot" is all bad. Once you get past all the (literal) flag-waving and glorified American perspectives on the Revolutionary War, its actually pretty involving. I found myself drawn into its story almost against my will. It's a credit to Roland Emmerich, the director, and the screenplay, that the movie succeeded at making me care about Gibson's quest for justice even as I couldn't help rolling my eyes as he grabs an American flag and charges up a hillside to rout the fleeing rebel troops to turn around and press forward.

The process by which Gibson gets there is a long and dark journey. His character, Benjamin Martin, is a farmer and dedicated family man with a South Carolina plantation where he simply wants to harvest his crops and live in peace. He is a highly respected hero of the French-English War years ago but has decided that war should never be used, even as a last resort, and is willing to sacrifice principle to this cause, as he lectures on in a speech he makes before a voting council that must decide on whether or not to join the revolution. The movie opens in 1776 as the Declaration of Independence is about to be announced. Martin's oldest son, Gabriel, signs on with the Continental army against his father's wishes, and goes off to war, where he fights for two years and becomes battle-hardened but loses none of his idealism.

The same cannot be said of the rebels themselves, whose morale begins to falter as they suffer one defeat after another. The decisive battles in the war were not won on the traditional battlefield, and the untrained and ill-equipped militia forces are cannon-fodder for the stalwart British. Eventually, Martin is compelled to join the fight when one of his young sons is killed by a vicious British officer named Tavington, who chooses to use fear and repression to crush the revolt, and employs brutal tactics to accomplish this goal. Martin gathers a ragtag bunch from the surrounding towns and forms a militia of his own, that hides out in the swamp and uses hit-and-run tactics to catch the British off-guard. Ultimately his goal is to search and destroy Tavington.

The British are portrayed as either weak-minded or cruel, with the intent of making us feel a certain satisfaction when we see them being killed by muskets and hacked by tomohawks. The guerilla tactics used by Martin to halt the flow of supplies are far more effective than the marching of the Continental troops into overwhelming fire from the enemy. What's odd is the way the movie seems to be suggesting that Martin was the first one to come up with the idea, when by 1778 I imagine this idea had occurred to and even been used by George Washinton. But the famous figures of the Revolution, including Washington, are never seen, and indeed are but shadowy figures in the movie while Martin leads his men into battle and more or less wins the war singlehandedly. I admit I found it hard to believe at the film's climax when the battle slows to a crawl to allow Martin and Tavington to go at it, mano-e-mano.

This is all a sort of laughable revisionist history to embrace, but I was able to overlook it and just enjoy watching Gibson at work. He has a way of seeming plausible in the face of such silliness, and even though his character exhibits similar traits to that of his portrayal of William Wallace from "Braveheart" (to which this movie will inevitably be compared) I still identified with his losses and his principles. He brings a certain dignity to the role. I also enjoyed seeing Chris Cooper as the weary commander of the Continental regiment he is aiding, and Heath Ledger as his impulsive son who joins them.

One complaint I would register is the way that the African-Americans in this movie are relegated to the position of mute observers. If the movie had not shown blacks at all I might have preferred that to watching them be dismissed out of hand, but due to the prevalence of slavery in the Carolinas in that day that would hardly have been realistic. There is one slave who joins Martin's band but his thoughts and motives aren't really explored. While it is true that slaves who joined up were generally given their freedom at the end of the war, I felt as if this character was being used as a token, and it made me somewhat uncomfortable to watch as the movie tipped the race card. Having watched "Glory" which revealed how black soldiers helped turn the tide of victory to the Union and treated its black characters with more dignity, this sort of pandering seemed superficial.

All this aside, "The Patriot" works on the level of pure entertainment, and I enjoyed it as such. I also would not recommend it be shown in history class.

"The Perfect Storm" is an ambitious movie on more than one level. It is heavily laced with special-effects, and has to maintain our interest in its characters and plot while we wait for these effects to appear. It does actually accomplish this task pretty well. On a smaller scale however, it risks being tagged as exploiting a local tragedy for financial gain. Everyone knows that the movie focuses heavily on the events leading up to the loss of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester swordfishing boat, at sea during the cataclysmic storm caused by Hurricane Grace in 1991. As someone who did not grow up in Gloucester and had friends or family who fished for a living, I cannot say how it would feel to see this movie in that light. I can say that from the perspective of an outsider, I came out of this movie with a greater understanding, if not a respect for the tenacity with which people will fight for their lives in unbearable conditions, and the bravery that can result. If that is not a tribute, than at least it is a compliment.

The movie stars George Clooney, as Billy Tyne, captain of the Andrea Gail. He is disappointed with the slump his catch has been in lately, and enjoys a friendly rivalry with another successful captain played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantoinio, who is probably the closest thing to a love interest he could have in his life. He is dedicated to fishing however, and although the season is all but over, he decides to go out one last time to the far reaches of the ocean to redeem himself.

His crew, put together of the usual ragtag bunch, is not happy to be putting out again so soon but they reluctantly go along with it when he promises them the best catch they've ever had. Bobby Shatford (Wahlberg) is dating a recently divorced woman (Diane Lane) who lives above the local bar and is sorry to leave her behind, but as he puts it, "then again, I love to fish." The other members of the crew all have their own personal issues to leave ashore, including Murph, who suffered a difficult divorce and estrangement from his son. Bugsy attempts to pick up a local woman who resists his charms at first but slowly warms to him, and appears on dock to wave him off.

These issues are all put aside once the men set out to sea. Billy Tyne wants to go all the way past the Grand Banks to the Flemish Cap, where the fish are; their abundance explained mainly, I gathered, because few fishermen will travel that far. This leads to their being on the outskirts of what proves to be the biggest storm on record, due to a collision between three already dangerous storms. It occurs right in the path the Andrea Gail must take to get back, and when the ice machine breaks down and time is of the essence, the crew makes this decision based on their belief that they can handle it.

They are wrong, of course. But no one truly understood ahead of time how bad the storm would be, and when their antenna blows off, communication is lost. The movie intercuts scenes aboard the Andrea Gail with those of a wealthy sailboat owner who takes his family out on a trip to Bermuda and is resistant to advice to turn around when the storm hits. A Coast Guard rescue attempt is made, and another, ill-fated one is attempted for the Andrea Gail as well.

What the movie does is tell the story of what is known about the Andrea Gail and add dramatic developments. Two of Tyne's fishing crew are at odds with each other for reasons I still don't quite understand, and Wahlberg is motivated by a need for cash to support his girlfriend's custody battle for her children. The personalities of the men play off each other, but when the storm hits and situation is grim, all that matters is the weary struggle to stay alive in impossible conditions.

In the midst of the storm we get visuals of remarkable impact; of powerful winds whipping mist across the whitecaps, tremendous swells and the tiny fishing vessel being tossed across them, and it all looked real enough to me. I believed it when Clooney climbed out on a wildly swaying beam to cut the chain tying the anchor that swung dangerously about in the gale, and the now-famous shot of the Gail climbing up the side of a monstrous wave, is very effective as well. The wave was created using computer generated images after researching extensively how ocean water behaves in such conditions, but I wasn't thinking that when I saw it.

Purists may find that the Gloucester in the movie contains only a handful of recognizable locations, and seems to sprawl more than at least I remember it, having spent some time there during college. What is believable is how the locals gather around the TV in the tavern to watch the weather reports; this is pretty much how I would imagine they would react. And I liked the little details the movie offers about how the swordfishing business works, and the remorse the boat's owner (Michael Ironside) displays when it appears to be lost.

The movie will not generate much suspense for New Englanders about the fate of the Andrea Gail, but it does do a convincing job of telling its story with grace and dignity for its crew. I was reminded of another weather-related special-effects movie, "Twister" which consisted of one convincing tornado after another with almost no substance in between. I felt more strongly about the characters in "Perfect Storm" and cared about what happened to them. In a way, that's a tribute in itself.

"My Best Friend's Wedding" is basically your traditional romantic sitcom, but its smarter than most. This is partly because its characters are likeable and realistic, and also because it doesn't hedge its bets on the heroine, played by Julia Roberts as a flawed woman but earnest in her desire to win over the man she recently discovered she loves.

The movie opens by introducing us to Robert's character, named Julianne, a successful food critic who is having a conversation with her editor, George, as she prepares her latest review. She describes to him how she met her best friend, Michael, and how they had a brief fling and remained close afterward. They made the kind of promise you make when you're young and drunk, that if they were both still single when they turned 28, they would marry each other. She hasn't heard from him in months, but just got a phone message from him that he really needs to talk to her, right away. She assumes, naturally, that he's going to propose.

He surprises her by informing her that he has proposed, all right, to someone else (she falls off the bed as she hears this). He wants her to come to the wedding, and she agrees, reluctantly, and hysterically describes to George that she has "four days to ruin this", she says, angrily describing how "he was in love with me for nine years!" Later on, though, she realizes that she really does love the guy, and is desperate to make him realize that he loves her, too (if, in fact, he does).

Most movies like this would make the intended bride to be someone unpleasant, so that we would feel good about the way the heroine breaks things up. But in this case she turns out to be nice; named Kimberly and played by Cameron Diaz, she has an attractive, sunny personality that we like immediately. She gives Julianne a big hug when she meets her, asks her to be her maid-of-honor, and says "I have four days to make you my new best friend." She understands the way Michael feels about her, and confesses that she felt competitive at first but decided that "You win. He's got you on a pedestal and me in his arms."

This defuses any real way that Kimberly could be the villain, and indeed, even Julianne has a hard time scheming against her, admitting that "I could adore her, if I didn't hate her so much." But scheme she does, first making Kimberly sing at a karaoke bar, revealing how terrible her singing voice is, and later creating an argument for them. Both fail to accomplish anything. But she's only getting started, and soon has committed a deed so nasty (I won't say what) that we begin, surprisingly, to turn against her somewhat. If she doesn't succeed, we'll feel that she is only getting what she deserves.

Julianne could save herself, and everyone else, a lot of grief if she simply took George's advice and told Michael how she feels but, of course, then there wouldn't be much of a movie. And it's hard not to appreciate her fear to learn exactly how Michael feels about her. On the other hand, rejection couldn't be nearly as bad as what Julianne does to try to destroy Michael and Kimberly's wedding, and their happiness.

The movie is interesting in the way it sets up its characters and the situation, and makes us really care about what will happen. Because we like Julianne but can't condone her actions, and Kimberly comes off as such a nice person, we're not sure how the plot will work out. That was a welcome surprise for me, since most movies like this are predictable right down to the ending. I also liked the way the movie focuses on Julianne's point of view and didn't try to follow all the characters around on their own. In one scene, when Julianne is pursing someone down a busy highway, we don't get a silly chase seen with external shots of the cars being driven by professionals. Instead, the camera stays with Julianne and we get a better sense of her desperation.

The movie has good actors doing good work. Diaz has the challenge of making us like Kimberly even though she represents an obstacle to Julianne's happiness. Dermot Mulroney creates a interesting character out of Michael, making him intelligent and caring; at a crucial moment he is able to read a situation in two different ways, and chooses the one that is more understanding. Rupert Everett is enjoyable as George; although he's gay, he comes to Julianne's aid by playing the part of her fiance, but understands how insane her plan is and states firmly to her that "there is still a very small window of opportunity left for you to do the right thing."

But Roberts has the toughest role, because she has to play the heroine and the villain all rolled into one. She is convincing in her ability to win us over even while we disagree with her tactics. Funny, how we sometimes don't notice when we love someone until the opportunity to do something about it has passed us by. Why are we wired like that? Wouldn't it be easier to be aware of our feelings when it was still practical? Ah, but then movies like this one wouldn't exist.

"Eye of the Beholder" is one of the most perplexing movies I've ever seen. Sometimes I can appreciate it when a movie doesn't explain everything, but thrillers like this need to be well-oiled machines. This movie's plot positively clunked along, with large gaps in it big enough to drive a truck through, and no real resolution to provide any sort of satisfaction to its audience. It's like some kind of rebellion against logic.

The movie stars Ewen MacGregor as an extremely reclusive operative for the British Secret Service, known in the film only as "Eye", who is assigned to follow and gather evidence against an executive who has possibly embezzeled millions from his company. When we first see him observing his target, we are startled to see that he has brought his young daughter along for the ride. But soon, when Eye is approached by a police officer, we are given a point of view from the officer's perspective, and are even more startled to discover that Eye's daughter is not actually present, except in his own mind.

But I digress. Eye follows the executive to his home, where he has taken an attractive woman with him (Ashley Judd) where they engage in what looks like a kinky sex game, until (read no more if you want to be surprised) to Eye's astonishment, she kills the executive in a particularly violent way, and goes down to the lake to wash the blood off herself in the rain in a scene that sets the tone for Eye's observation of her later on.

From then on, Eye follows this woman, who remains nameless throughout much of the movie, acting in some ways as a father figure, and in others as a guardian angel of sorts. He bails her out of trouble again and again, never seen or heard. She seems to have a sense, somehow, of his presence, but how does she feel about it? The movie doesn't explore this very much, and only very late and with a paltry line or two of dialogue does it even acknowledge it.

We get many scenes in which Eye watches this woman closely, and are never given a distinct reason as to why. There is the sense, perhaps, that he is trying to replace his missing daughter in some way, to fill the void she left behind. We see him protect her from the law as she kills again and again. Is he attracted to the danger she poses? We don't know, and frankly, neither does the movie. What about the fact that Eye keeps seeing his daughter in his mind everywhere he goes? Is he mad, or does he just miss her terribly? No answers there, either.

Movies don't have to provide all the answers, all of the time, but they should throw us a bone once in a while. The character's motives remain a mystery to us, and as they act time and again in ways that are contrary to what we know about them, it is a distraction, because we are left scratching our heads and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I enjoyed the performances themselves from MacGregor and Judd (who is one of the best actresses on the screen today), and I liked Eye's contact at headquarters, played with a sardonic charm by K.D. Lang, who is incredulous as we are as to why Eye doggedly pursues his target for so long. But the movie left me feeling hollow. It has the dubious honor of accomplishing a strange and wondrous thing: it made me feel like I knew less about its characters coming out of the movie than I did going in. It's like eating Chinese food and feeling more hungry afterward than you did before.

"The House on Haunted Hill" is a goofy, extremely cheesy horror movie that is small on real horror and big on the kind of scares caused by things jumping out from the side of the camera. That made it less scary for me than it might for some people; while I found "The Blair Witch Project" surprisingly frightening because of it's realism, this movie got more laughs and knowing smirks from me than fear. That's not always a bad thing. There is warm spot in my heart for movies like these, which know how shallow and silly they are and aren't afraid to show it.

The movie's setup is pretty simple. Geoffrey Rush plays a wealthy amusement park developer who is willing to stoop to any cheap trick for a scare (named Price in a tip-of-the-hat to the late, great Vincent Price, who starred in the 1954 original). I liked the sardonic tone with which Rush plays his character (when asked if a phone call was business or pleasure, he snaps "Neither, it was my wife.") He has a love/hate relationship with his wife, who wants to throw a birthday party for herself in an old asylum that's built into a towering cliff overlooking the ocean. I've never seen an institution built like this, but never mind; it provides a opportunity to show the visitors winding their way up a needlessly twisty driveway as lightning crashes overhead.

We know from the opening shots that the institution was the scene of an inferno that claimed the lives of 55 people, including the inmates and a mad doctor that performed gory experiments on his patients. Now the asylum has been converted into a house by its new owners, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. Price's wife wants to throw her party here for its spooky atmosphere. But her guest list is switched at the last minute, and the four guests that turn up are strangers to her. It should not come as a surprise that none of the guests were selected by accident. They are joined by the son of the deceased owner, a flighty sort of guy who jumps at every creak the house makes. Price has thrown in a twist as well: each of them will receive one million dollars, cash, if they stay the whole night in the house.

This is all just an excuse to get the seven characters locked in the house for the night so they can be picked off one by one. It didn't matter much to me who lived or who died, since they are all more or less interchangeable. I enjoyed the banter between the Prices, and the resignation of the new owner to his impending death. He informs the others ominously that the house is alive, and that it wants to kill them all. I chuckled then, wondering why, if that was the case, he had held onto it for so long. But then he wouldn't have been there to come up with the brilliant plan to go into the basement and turn off the controls for the lockdown mechanism.

The characters behave exactly as horror movie characters always do, which is to say, in the stupidest way imaginable. Although it is suggested repeatedly that they should stick together, we know that they'll wander off into that basement more than once and far more than necessary, so that ghostly figures can lead them astray and ghastly creatures can tear them limb from limb. They follow the horror movie textbook, falling apart in a crisis and getting into petty disputes, and then scheming against each other.

The movie updates the special effects of the original, of course; today's audiences are not likely to be easily impressed by creepy skeletons and things that go bump in the night. The special effects are clearly computer generated, but not very impressive. There is one scene in which the floor seems to explode upward for no apparent reason, except to give the characters something to run away from. The gore level is pretty high, but not terribly realistic.

In the end what carries the movie is its goofy charm. It contains all the elements of a Vincent Price horrorfest, and that is pretty much what it strives to be. On that level, I could appreciate it. Its not very long (96 minutes) but could have been trimmed even more and seemed less tiresome in parts. Watching it was like eating popcorn: no nutritional value whatsoever, kind of light and airy, with a taste that fades within minutes after consuming.

"Return to Paradise" presents the kind of moral dilemma that might be presented in hypothetical form in an ethics class. Would you go to prison in another country for years, in order to save a friend from death, if you weren't being forced to? The problem for the characters in this film, of course, is that the question is not hypothetical, and that makes the answer all the more impossible.

The movie opens in Panang, Malaysia, where 3 friends, Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), Tony (David Conrad) and Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix) are enjoying a lengthy stay overseas, viewing all their activities through a casual, day to day haze of drugs. "We've got it all here," Sheriff says, describing the warm ocean water as "God's own bathtub." Eventually, months later, Tony and Sheriff decide to head back stateside to pick up where they left off. Lewis, however, remains behind, planning to join an effort to free apes from captivity.

Through a series of events, Lewis is arrested for drug possession after police discover him with 100 kilos of hashish that the 3 men had purchased. He is charged with drug trafficking, a capital crime in Malaysia, and is sentenced to death by hanging. After two years in prison his last appeal has just been rejected and he is within a week of his sentence being carried out.

The other two men were unaware of this, but Lewis's attorney, Beth (Anne Heche) approaches the men with the news of Lewis's situation. She has forged a deal with the Malaysian authorities: if at least one of the two others will return with her to Malaysia and accept their share of ownership of the hashish, Lewis will not have to die. The prison term for both men returning would be three years. If only one returns, he will have to serve six.

Both men react with predictable astonishment and some resentment at being forced to make such a choice. It is Sheriff in particular who has the hardest time with it. At first, Tony is willing to go back if Sheriff does, but the question is whether Sheriff can be compelled to return. He feels, not unreasonably, that their crime was a small one and that this degree of punishment is not warranted.

But Lewis's crime is no greater, and he will die for it if neither of them returns. "I feel guilty even asking you to do this," he says in a videotaped statement. Certainly he doesn't deserve to die. But whether or not either or both of the men can rise to the occasion is something the film explores in depth. The movie doesn't break it into simple issues of morality, but looks deeper than that. What about the health and welfare of the one(s) who chose to return? Can they handle themselves in a Third World prison system? What about Tony's fiance and the fact that she'll have to wait for him, essentially putting her on life on hold as well?

Although Vaughn and Conrad play the men with the impossible decision to make, Heche is the one whose performance carries the film. She doggedly appeals to both men's sense of morality, and there is a possibility that she may go too far sometimes in her methods. The film doesn't paint her as a heroine but as a woman willing to do almost anything to save Lewis's life, and perhaps will cross lines even she can't fully appreciate. Eventually, when an attraction develops between her and Sheriff, she is able to stay her course and not back down in the face of love from what she feels very strongly to be right. In the midst of it all, a journalist determined to get the story has it explained to her by Heche why each picture and article extolling the injustices of the Malaysian court system would be "a death warrant", as tilting favor even a little way against the Malaysian standpoint would provoke swift and dangerous action by the government.

Is the Malaysian position in this just? We're left to decide that for ourselves. It would be easy to view their laws against drugs as extreme, but as a Malaysian judge points out, their streets are clean, and their youth protected. He fails to understand, he says, why American drug laws are so lenient as to be virtually ineffective in stemming the influx of narcotics. Looking at the face of addiction and the widespread criminal activity inspired by it in the U.S. today, it is hard to argue with him. The ideal solution might lie somewhere in between, but if so, nobody seems to have found it yet.

The movie is determined to be evenhanded in its position on all of this, and firmly leaves the audience to decide what is right. This leaves us in suspense about exactly what choices the characters will make, and what the end result will be. Movies like this can be a real treat because of how they force you to think about the issues they present, and in the end, if given the decision that Tony and Sheriff had to make, I can honestly say I would not have an answer.

"Resurrection" is the kind of movie that demonstrates Hollywood's inability to grasp the fundamentals that are behind cultural and religious beliefs. It introduces a plot that is supposedly about a religious fanatic killing to send the world a message but uses religion in such a false and pointless way as to make it a lame duck in the movie.

The movie stars Christopher Lambert, whose previous work has not exactly set the world on fire. I sort of enjoyed him in "Highlander" which was a goofy movie but provided him with a role that worked with his acting style. Here he plays a Louisiana cop named John Prudhomme who is on the trail of a serial killer, a role that is well-worn and is far less suited to his approach, which involves quiet, halting speech alternating with sudden outbursts. His son was killed several months ago in a car accident and he is still grieving. His marriage is a mess and when his wife invites their priest over one night he blows up at him, claiming God has abandoned him and storms out of the room. The purpose of this scene is to establish him as having lost his faith. This is as deep into theological issues as the movie is prepared to go.

But onto the serial killer. He has killed several victims, all men, aged 33, who are found with missing appendages. It is apparent that the killer is collecting these body parts, a head here, a leg here, for some purpose. After discovering that each of the men have the names of biblical apostles Prudhomme deduces without needing any further details that the killer is "rebuilding" the body of Christ in order to send a message to the world about repenting for sin. This is a big leap but he can make it because he's read the script. The movie supplies Prudhomme with a partner played by Leland Orser who is a better actor but is given a thankless role as the sidekick. His fate could be accurated predicted early on.

The movie seems to be attempting to ride on the success of "Seven", a much better movie with a similar plot, and "The X-Files". Both of these feature the same kind of cinematography as characters forge their way through dark, creepy corridors and seedy abandoned buildings. The sun hardly ever comes out, either; I think I counted 3 scenes in the entire movie in which it isn't raining.

The script falls back on every tired Hollywood convention that it can dig up, including chase scenes, false leads, grisly autopsies (with lots of nauseating closeups on the corpses) and the old-switcheroo pulled by the killer himself. The way the movie brings the killer onscreen is consistent with the way mainstream thrillers rarely include more characters than are necessary to the plot, so characters who are seemingly unecessary are almost always the killer.

The movie introduces the issue of Prudhomme being confronted with issues of faith in regards to the killer's motives but never actually deals with it, remaining doggedly focused on the hunt for the serial killer. Why bother to include this subtext at all, if it won't address it? The issue of faith figures so little into the plot that the religious overtone plays like something tacked on to try and distinguish the killing from other movies. It's what Hitchcock liked to call the MacGuffin, the thing people appear to be motivated by when it's really something else altogether. I would love to see a movie in which these themes are actually explored but this isn't it. Don't get me wrong, I am not offended by the biblical references in the movie, especially since they are largely inaccurate. I would have respected the filmmakers more if they had dropped the religious aspect and simply presented it as a standard thriller instead of hiding behind Catholic dogma. It wouldn't have saved this mess of a movie, but it would have at least been true to form.

I liked "The Thin Red Line" without really being drawn into it. It contains imagery that will stay with me for a long time, and it is a compelling depiction of the grinding journey of numerous characters through the invasion of Guadacanal. It is clearly a labor of love, and the effort shows. It contains a stellar cast that includes Sean Penn, Stanley Tucci, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, with a walk-on role by George Clooney. These are the strong points.

The movie opens with two soldiers that have found an island paradise and are living amongst its peaceful inhabitants when they are picked up by a passing battleship and arrested for going AWOL. They are dropped into a battalion that is storming Guadacanal in a crucial battle for territory. Leading the troops is a zealous commander played by Nolte as a man driven by what he perceives as fate and leadership, but is hiding deep-seated insecurities beneath the surface. The movie basically follows this invasion from beginning to end, and depicts the randomness in which the characters live or die during it.

I mentioned before that there were numerous characters. I should say that there seem at times to be dozens that the film follows from beginning to end, and I frequently had trouble telling them apart. Although I have little doubt the novel the movie is based on follows the same structure, I think the film could have benefited from some strategic trimming to focus on a smaller group. I could not really identify with the characters since there were so many the movie is forced to jump from one to the next so rapidly I often didn't realize it had changed scenes. We see one guy crawling through the grass and then later another guy, cut to so quickly it seems like the same guy.

The movie will undoubtedly suffer comparison to "Saving Private Ryan", the other WWII movie released that year that won acolades for Steven Spielberg. That movie had a clear direction and a definite message, and it focused on a group of characters you could really identify with. Of the two, I prefer "Ryan" for the reasons I stated above.

But "Thin Red Line" is worth seeing for its quiet moments of truth, and the way it convincingly displays the complete futility of war. As we watch men forced to climb through the tall grass up a long hill and get cut down by hidden enemy soldiers, we can see the senselessness of it all, the waste of life. It must be unimaginably frustrating to be ordered to take an action that you know will end your life and accomplish nothing, and be unable to protest.

The movie, as I said, contains visuals that are striking. We see things from the soldiers perspective as they creep up the hills of Guadacanal to the enemy guns at the top. There are sunsets, and native children swimming in the crystal tides. There are closeups of captured enemy soldiers that express their fear and humiliation through their eyes.

Perhaps the thing that will stay with me most is the music. Parts of it contain the clear voices of a Melanesian choir, and is as haunting and beautiful as any music I have heard in the movies. The film has a standard soundtrack that is worth its salt but you may consider springing for "Chants of the Thin Red Line", which contains exclusively Melanesian chants used in the film, sung by various choirs of the Blessed Islands.

"The Thin Red Line" deserves to be admired for its boldness in not attempting to be a carbon copy of so many other war movies, or a pale imitation of "Saving Private Ryan". It wants to be a dreamy overview of war in its own right, and it accomplishes that goal. Perhaps it is best to view it in the right mood and simply allow it to wash over your mind, and then remember the parts that struck you.

"The Prince of Egypt" is a treat of a film, using animation to tell the story of Moses from the time of his birth to his descent from Mount Sinai with the ten commandments handed down to him by God. It is a triumph not just on a visual level but also in its storytelling.

Three decades ago we had "The Ten Commandments", still hailed today as one of the great films of the century. As a critical film it had its flaws, but it also had the commanding presence of Charlton Heston. Heston has since gone on to a less commanding presence as NRA spokesman, but the memory of his performance lives on. But what that film lacked was convincing special effects for a contemporary audience. People may have been wowed by the effects of the Red Sea parting back in the 60's but today the appearance of Heston standing in the animated water moving aside before him is less profound.

"The Prince of Egypt" takes the same story, and applies the magic of animation to transform it into its full glory. We see the full wrath of God brought down on Egypt in the form of the 10 plagues with a vengeance. The fluidity of water like nothing seen before in the form of the Nile. The majesty of Egyptian architecture, splayed out in a glorious profile as a backdrop to the drama. Even the expressions on the character's faces are wondrous to behold. This is a story that begs to be told in animated form. It is the first animated film from Dreamworks, and the effort they have gone to shows.

It has big names for voices as well. Ralph Fiennes voices the stubborn Rameses, Patrick Stewart is commanding as his father, Seti, Helen Mirren as the Queen, Steve Martin and Martin Short as villianous court magicians, even Danny Glover as a Midan high priest. Val Kilmer has the interesting double role as both Moses and God. I hope it doesn't go to his head.

Most people know the story of Moses, so I won't summarize it here. What sets this version apart from other interpretations of the story is the focus it has on the relationship between Moses and Rameses. I admired the way it emphasizes the conflict between the two, who are first seen as young men creating havoc in the streets with their chariot racing, inseparable. Later on, after Moses flees when he discovers his true origin, and returns to request the release of his people, the Hebrews, Rameses is crushed when he learns of his transformation, and hardens his heart, tragically, against the demands of Moses' strange God. This mission of Moses wasn't just about the commandments of God but his defiance of his assumed parentage, as a prince and brother to Rameses.

So many movies about Biblical events are underwhelming because they have breadth of vision but lack the capacity for conveying convincingly the miraculous sights involved. "Prince of Egypt" is able to use its vision and animation to communicate these things. It is a rare achievement.

Am I missing something here? Are people actually going to movie after movie starring Adam Sandler in droves to see a good movie? Have I missed the boat somehow by skipping "Billy Madison", "Happy Gillmore", and "The Waterboy"?

I can breathe sigh of relief. I now know why I missed those wonderful opportunities to see these and other Sandler movies; I saw them coming a mile away and steered clear to avoid wasting two hours of my life. Ah, yes, its all clear now. "Big Daddy" has shown me what I have been missing, and boy, it ain't much.

Actually, I have witnessed the other movies listed above, belatedly, and that is why I feel qualified to say that Sandler has created his own niche of bad movies, a new genre. Call it Sandlerania, if you will. In any case, they all follow the same basic formula. His character starts out as a loser, an implausible event occurs that gives him a purpose, and he emerges victorious in the face of impossible odds. Usually there is at least one attractive woman lurking nearby, but not nearly as noticeable as the product placements that fill every scene.

"Big Daddy" continues this proud tradition with the story of Sonny Koufax, a loser who spends one day a week working as a tollbooth operator, and the rest of the time living off a large settlement he got from being hit by a car. His girlfriend wants him to move on with his life, maybe go back to law school, but Sonny is far too self-absorbed, and she walks out on him. This is the smartest thing anyone does in this movie.

He shares a luxurious studio with his successful roommate but is dismayed to learn that he will soon be getting married. While his roommate takes off on a business trip, Sonny has a kid literally dropped onto his doorstep one day, with a note explaining that this is his roommate's son.

He goes through the usual period of standoffishness, but quickly decides he sort of likes the kid, and with the hastiness of someone deciding to get a puppy, he arranges to adopt him as a way of proving to his ex that he really can be mature when he wants to be. Too bad she's already hooked up with a guy old enough to be her father (prompting a series of lame insults about getting old from Sonny), and Sonny finds himself stuck with the kid when he is astonished to learn that he can't just return him.

The kid (named Kevin), a 6-year old played by Jon Stewart, isn't bad as kid performances go, but what's interesting is the way it was difficult to tell their personalities apart. Sonny has the mentality of a 6-year old, so they make a good pair. However, if cases like these are any indication, it is small wonder that the DYS has taken a lot of damage to its image lately. Sonny's favorite ways to spend time with Kevin involve tripping skaters in the park and showing off to his friends how he can "hock a loogie". Ho ho. When the kid needs to go to the bathroom, Sonny tries to use one in a stuffy upscale restaurant but is turned away by the maitre'd. He and the kid urinate on the front door instead. Ho ho, again. There is an extended scene when they go out for breakfast which plays like a drawn-out product placement for MacDonald's.

I guess this is supposed to be funny, but I did not laugh once during "Big Daddy". I was too busy thinking about how screwed up this kid would be when he got older. In any case, Sonny meets a love interest, played by Joey Lauren Adams, who figures into the plot so meaninglessly that I wondered why they threw her in at all. It all comes down to that old standby, the courtroom scene, where Sonny argues for his right to adopt the kid. He argues that he has gone through a journey of self-discovery that has made him a better person. It is a waste of film to portray this, since 2 hours is exactly 1 hour and 59 minutes more time than it would take for someone with Sonny's depth of personality to complete this journey.

The problem with Sandler's films is that they are too obviously written to be a vehicle for him. I do not argue that he can be a funny stand-up comic; his work on Saturday Night Live would support this. But he's too hit or miss to carry a whole movie by himself, and the writing is so contrived, with one obligatory scene after another, I just can't be compelled to care. I wouldn't mind seeing Sandler as a supporting character in a movie with some intelligence. And a lot fewer product placements.

Rushmore left me a little disappointed. I was expecting a sort of screwball comedy from the trailers. Instead, it teeters on the edge of melodrama and only touches on truly comic moments. Those moments are little treasures, but for the most part this is a somewhat depressing movie about a kid who falls into infatuation with a woman far too old and completely wrong for him. Jason Schwartzman, who plays the hero, Max Fischer, is able to make Max into a completely original character. He is the kind you guy you might remember from high school who was fanatically involved in extracurricular activities at a great expense to his academic life. Max is such a person. He is a student at Rushmore Academy, a prestigious prep school on the outskirts of his small town. He is there not because of his rich parentage but his grade school performance, on a scholarship. His dad is a barber, although he tells them he's a brain surgeon. In between flunking his various courses, he is busily founding the Rushmore Beekeeper's Association, the Remote Control Airplane Pilot's Club, the Living Arts Group, the fencing team...you get the idea. His pride and joy are the Max Fischer Players, a drama club that puts on his own interpretation of "Scorpio" that inspires a fistfight in the wings. He takes his extracurricular activities very, very seriously. He is, in short, in love with being at Rushmore. But soon after we are introduced to him, he finds something else to love: Ms. Cross, the first grade teacher. She has just started at the Academy, and he wanders into her class by accident, falling head over heels. They talk, he learns that she loves Latin, and he switches his adamant opposition to Latin courses at Rushmore to presenting a signed petition to keep teaching it. Soon, he is tearing down trees on the soccer field to make room for the new aquarium she dreams of. Ms. Cross is no fool. She picks up immediately on Max's infatuation with her, suggesting gently that she is too old for him. He disagrees silently. It is not about age with him; such considerations are irrelevant to teenage love. "She's my Rushmore," he says, and that sums it up for him; there is no higher praise in his mind. Complications: Ms. Cross has begun seeing Herman Blume, the local steel tycoon whose own marriage is on the rocks. Blume is rich but filled with self-loathing. The interesting thing is that while he and Max become rivals, they start as friends, and their friendship is maintained in a odd, standoffish way even at the height of their emnity. Blume is impressed with Max's heart and determination even before Ms. Cross enters the picture. Afterward he is forced to respect his deviousness, so that even as Max is releasing bees into Blume's luxury suite at a hotel or Blume is backing over Max's bike with his car, they have a grudging respect for each other. The problem with the movie is that the situation it creates is ripe with opportunities for comedy, but it frequently ignores them, instead focusing on the pain of Max's crush. I don't argue that it should overlook this factor, but place it in the context of the humor, however dark. It is clear that comic moments are carefully inserted, and I enjoyed them. But there is room for a lot more, and I felt like filler material was used instead. The film meanders from one scene to the next. There are parts that dragged as Max slowly comes to realize the foolishness of his position, but I was less moved by these than by his relationship with Blume and the way they played off each other's personalities. It's too bad, really, since the movie has a lot of potential to be something more. Bill Murray is an actor I have missed seeing over the years, and his few appearances since "Ghostbusters" have mostly been flops. I enjoyed his portrayal of Herman Blume, the quiet way he suggests deeply rooted insecurities in a powerful man. Schwartzman conveys real pain amidst the absurdity of his situation, and Olivia Williams is effective as the exasperated Ms. Cross. All in all, I liked the characters, the plot and the acting. I just wish they were in a more tightly scripted movie.

"Bowfinger" is one of the funniest movies I have seen in years. It works because it allows the laughs to build from the way the characters play off each other's personalities, without becoming puppets of the script. It is for people who love the movies as well, because that's what it's really about; how the movie industry works on such unlikely coincidences, and how the truly desperate are sometimes successful against their own natures.

The movie is basically about a group of folks who want desperately to make a movie, to break into the big time. They are led by Bobby Bowfinger, of "Bowfinger International Productions", a hack film "studio" in a ramshackle office in an L.A. suburb. Bowfinger is the right man to head this team; he's unscrupulous, infinitely resourceful, and isn't daunted by the fact that his budget will come from the dollars he saved up each week since he was a kid, stashed in a box in his attic. He collects his film crew from illegal immigrants trying to cross the border.

His accountant has just written a script about aliens hiding in raindrops. Don't ask, just watch the movie. The movie is called "Chubby Rain". Bowfinger wants Hollywood's leading action star, Kit Ramsey, to play the lead. As Ramsey, Eddie Murphy turns out one of his best performances. Ramsey is wildly egotistical and emotionally unstable to a fault. He is a member of "Mind Head", one of those many Scientologist-like groups, where he goes often to discuss his many insecurities and paranoid fears, like that of, of course, aliens.

Naturally, Ramsey refuses to be in the picture. That doesn't stop Bowfinger. He comes up with a clever, if risky, idea: follow Ramsey around, shoot him surreptitiously from a distance, using his own actors to play their parts with him, without Ramsey's knowledge. This leads to many very funny scenes in which Ramsey comes to believe his paranoid fantasies about aliens are in fact real, while the actors in the movie praise Ramsey's "style".

Eventually, a stunt double is needed for certain scenes, and a Ramsey look alike, named Jiff, is brought on board. Jiff is an entirely unique character, played also by Murphy as a slow-witted innocent with a sheepish grin and a nasal voice. He is lovable and yet annoying at the same time, to Murphy's credit, and a great movie character.

I liked a lot of things about the movie, especially the eye it has for the way Hollywood works. I really enjoyed a scene early on where Bowfinger stages a phony call with a car phone in a restaurant to create an opportunity to pitch his script to a high-powered executive played by Robert Downey, Jr. Downey is surprised to see the cord dangling from Martin's phone; he may not take him seriously, but he's not likely to forget meeting him.

I also liked the way Ramsey complains to his agent about not having a catch phrase the way white action stars have. His agent points out a scene where he pushes a guy named Cliff off a cliff. "That's too cerebral for an audience," shouts Ramsey. "We're making a movie, not a film!" He points out that in the script he is reading, the letter "k" appears a number of times that is exactly divisible by three, so "KKK" appears "486 times!"

What is best about the movie is the way Bowfinger goes for broke, improvising all the way. He proceeds with a determination fueled by the insane notion that this scheme could actually work. You have to respect the chutzpah of someone who wants to succeed that badly, even if he bends a few rules along the way.

"The General's Daughter" belongs to what I call the "Steamy Southern" genre. You know the type. Its the kind that takes place in one of the Southeastern states, like Virginia or Mississippi, where the sultry weather causes blood to boil more readily, grudges to be nursed more effectively, and sexual tension to rise to the surface far more quickly. There, dark, dirty secrets are kept, and violent passions churn just beneath the surface of charming facade of the villians. There, deep mysteries await the iron-stomached to plumb their depths.

You get the idea. The plot in a movie like this is arbitrary; it exists to create atmosphere, to show characters playing each other like well-tuned harps while the sweat glistens on their brows. However, little but the plot can separate one of these movies from another, so here goes.

John Travolta plays a CID investigator named Brenner, who has been undercover in a Southern army base (I forget which state) for several weeks. He just has time to wrap up his case when he gets a call to investigate the brutal rape and murder of a female captain at bomb disposal site. She is found staked to the ground, naked, strangled by her own clothing. It is a gruesome display, made more gruesome by the knowledge that she had helped Brenner change a tire the night before. The situation is not helped by the fact that, as the movie's title suggests, the victim was the daughter of the base's general, a highly decorated and respected man with political ambitions. He may or may not be involved in what happened to her.

Brenner has a sharp mind and a healthy disrespect for authority, and he encounters resistance from Commander Moore, played effectively by James Woods, who heads the Psychological Operatations division at the base, and whom mentored the general's daughter. He may or may not have been sleeping with her. Did he kill her? The best scenes in the movie involve watching Travolta and Woods go head to head, playing subtle word games with threatening undertones, while Woods puffs on his cigar in his dimly lit office. Other players in this melodrama include Lt. Fowler, the general's assistant, who has his own reasons to protect him, if needed. And Brenner's friend, an MP played by Timothy Hutton, who helps when he can and shakes his head, apalled at the lengths Brenner will go to. The seedy sheriff and his son lurk about as well. Brenner is joined in the investigation by a warrant office, Sara Sunhill, a rape investigator with whom he has a history and whom still gets under his skin, even after years of separation.

Movies like this depend on acting and skillful direction, and this one is slickly done. I found myself almost drawn into the story...almost. The movie is a little too formula and falls back on what Roger Ebert calls the Law of Economy of Characters. This law states the there are no characters in the movie who aren't absolutely necessary to the plot. Using this law I deducted who the killer was fairly quickly. I hate it when that happens.

See the movie if you like this genre. It has a decent plot and good acting, and the soundtrack is interesting, fitting well with the story. It's not great, but it is a solid example of how the South seems to pull the really good, seemy mysteries into its fold.

I saw "The Haunting" in the same week that I viewed "The Blair Witch Project." It probably would have been better for me to see this movie first, since "Blair Witch" was so much more effective at being scary, it probably ruined this experience for me. I watched, predicting most of what would happen, when things were about to jump out at people or objects would fly around the room. "Blair Witch" was largely unpredictable, in that the characters behaved realistically, like they were really in the unpleasant situation of being pursued by supernatural forces. The characters in "The Haunting" are bound more or less by the demands of the script to behave in remarkably stupid ways, considering the position they are in.

That's not to say "The Haunting" is a bad movie. It is surprisingly entertaining. It is one of the few movies I have seen where the location upstages the actors. The plot, involving psychiatrist Professor Morrow (Liam Neeson) luring unsuspecting insomnaics to the mansion under the pretense of a sleep study while actually conducting a study of fear, is really just an excuse to get these people together in the house.

The most interesting character is Nell, played by Lili Taylor, and the movie is sort of her story. Her mother just passed away, and she is about to be evicted from her apartment by her uncaring sister and her husband. Her life has more or less led up to this moment, and she harbors a secret about her past that even she doesn't know about. The other characters involve a bisexual named Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and a smarmy guy named Luke (Owen Wilson). Theo spends a good part of the movie making advances on Nell and fending off advances from Luke. Luke is there to investigate the strange noises because the women, true to movie fashion, are too scared to do so on their own.

Trust me, the characters are not the reason to see the movie. The real reason is the house. This is the best horror movie house I have seen. There are several high-angled shots of the exterior (an old mansion in England that now serves as a university campus, I am told) which effectively set the mood. The interior is full of bizarre sculptures of griffins, demons and lions. Cherubic children decorate the fireplace in Nell's room. The walk-in fireplace is almost like another character in the movie. I had a great time just looking at the sets in this movie.

I more or less could not really care about what happened to the characters, which ruined whatever scary moments the film dished out. "Blair Witch" frightened me because it was shot from the perspective of the characters directly through the camera lens they used. "The Haunting" makes its audience observers to the action. This is the standard Hollywood approach, and I don't knock it. Not every movie can be a "Blair Witch." But you have to care about what happens to the characters to be scared by what happens on screen. The special effects are nicely-done and convincing, but failed to really shake me up.

I guess I would recommend the movie to people who like good set design and don't mind looking around a ridiculous plot and passable acting. People familiar with the 1963 movie of the same name, which I found much scarier may not like it so much. Neither will fans of the Shirley Jackson story, "The Haunting of Hill House" that inspired both movies. I would suggest it to people with an eye for good architecture, on a rainy day when they have nothing better to do. Call that an endorsement if you will.

"The Blair Witch Project" is one of the most terrifying and effective horror movies I have ever seen, hands-down. It is not scary because it throws lots of gory, expensive special effects at us, or had characters who do idiotic things like walk into a house occupied by a chainsaw-wielding madman or hide in the closet when a killer is stalking them. It is scary because of what it doesn't show us, because it knows that the things that make the noises in the night are never as frightening as the noises themselves.

I guess the term "horror movie" isn't quite right for this film. That is better reserved for the kind of movie I have described above. This is more like an experiment in fear, in tapping the nameless dread we feel when we hear...something...moving around in the darkness outside our flimsy tent. When you are lost, and just can't find your way back. Those are fears I can relate to. I think almost anyone can. "Horror movies" place characters in implausible situations, so we can distance ourselves from the action. "Blair Witch" draws us further in, so we are fascinated even as we can barely stand to watch.

The movie's setup involves three student filmmakers who gather in the little Maryland town of Burkittsville to shoot a documentary about a witch that used to live in the woods at its borders. They never return, and their footage is found a year later. The "movie" consists of the footage pieced together in chronological order to show what happened.

They interview several people about the witch; some are ambivalent, some disbelieving. The conversations are believable and not contrived; they are like something you would see in a documentary. They are also a warning, although the students do see it as such (one woman is asked if she believes in the Blair Witch, and she grins and replies "I believe it enough not to go up there.")

They head into the woods to shoot footage of famous places in the witch legend, where unspeakable horrors were visited upon children and hunters. Gradually, things begin to get ominous. Strange piles of stone turn up outside their tent. At night, they can hear the noises of something moving around, something that refuses to show itself. At one point, they stumble across a grove filled with bizarre, frightening stick figures, which hang from trees, twisting silently in the breeze.

They plan to spend only a weekend there, but the map disappears, and they appear to be going in circles. They are out of food, and worse, cigarettes. Every night they are harrassed by whatever is stalking them. Heather, the project leader, tries to maintain order but the cameraman, Josh, and sound man, Mike, begin to question her ability to get them out of the woods, leading to gender struggles and a gradual breakdown of nerves. I have been in situations like this, although far less dire, and people generally behave as these students do.

This is not a movie where things jump out at them in from dark corners or where gore and slime drips all over the screen. It is presented as a documentary, in a simple, realistic fashion, but with the growing realization that the characters are being hunted by supernatural forces. At first they react by simply not believing it; they seek rational explanations ("Did you ever see 'Deliverance'?" asks Josh, suggesting they are being preyed upon by unwelcoming locals). Soon scientific postulation gives in to fear, because they simply can't ignore the evidence.

A movie like this is deeply unsettling in its implications, but it is exhilarating in its boldness and message that lots of money and big name actors are not needed to make a scary film. It was shot on a shoestring budget by a little-known film company and directors. The characters are given the names of the actors. Everything is "real" as far as the movie is concerned, and that was real enough for me to decide I won't be camping again for awhile.

"A Perfect Murder" creates a suspenseful situation early on. Then the movie spends the rest of the time building up to the inevitable...and then gives us the inevitable. After watching the final scene, I wondered if the script was written on autopilot, after lots of cigarettes and coffee, at about 3 in the morning.

The movie is a remake, or an inspiration anyway, of "Dial M For Murder". That was only an okay movie, really, and this one doesn't do a whole lot to build off of it. The one thing that it really has going for it are the performances, which are convincing, especially Paltrow and Douglas, who come across as a couple who got tired of each other long ago and are now just going through the motions of a marriage, while Douglas's character harbors deep and secret resentments about the fact that his wife is cheating on him.

I enjoyed the setup, as we learn that Paltrow's character, Emily, has been having an affair with a destitute artist, played intensely by Viggo Mortensen. She believes her husband, a wealthy investor, doesn't know. What she doesn't know is that her husband, Steven, is about to get wiped out on the market because of some unwise overseas investments, and knows as well that she has been unfaithful to him. As someone points out, cheating on your spouse is the second-most common reason to kill, and money is the first. Steven has both motives.

In a startling twist, he arrives at the artist's home one night and tells him that he knows everything about the affair and the artist's past, which involves jail time and swindling widows out of lots of money down in Boca Raton. Steven offers him an out: kill his wife, for a payment of $500,000. The artist, David, is trapped; on the one hand, he faces prison, on the other, killing his lover. He opts for the latter.

David's character is ambiguous, to say the least. At times he appears to truly care for Emily. At others, he seems to care nothing for her. His decision-making is all over the map, and wildly implausible. Steven, on the other hand, is cool even under incredible pressure. He is certain of what to do and how to do it at all times. There are moments in the film where he is confronted with his actions and is able, even in seemingly impossible circumstances, to talk his way out of it. I enjoyed watching his character, even if it was recycled from his performance in "Wall Street".

As I said earlier, I enjoyed the buildup. It plays pretty well and is smoothly handled. The movie is a well-oiled machine right up to the end, which is both abrupt and utterly predictable. Without revealing what happens, I will say that I was surprised that the movie did not try for a bolder resolution, especially from Davis, an accomplished director. This was a standard Hollywood ending that is far below a man of his directorial skills.

As an afterthought, I might as well mention that the DVD "Criterion Collection" release of this film contains as an extra an alternative ending to the movie, which is supplied both with an without commentary by Davis. Watching it, I was unimpressed; it doesn't deviate enough from the final choice to really make a difference. Yes, there is a shift in the moral balance as far as one character is concerned, but the end result is the same, making it as weak as the original.

I shrink from criticizing "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut". The movie is uncategorizable, except perhaps as comedy, I guess. It is appalling, outrageous, incredibly offensive...and in the end, very funny.

That's right, funny. I am probably one of the last people who would expect to find myself laughing at scenes of small, badly animated children uttering unbelievably foul dialogue in rapid succession, but "South Park" left me rolling on the floor sometimes. I am not too proud of all I laughed at, nor am I sure it is a good thing. It is an understatement to say that much of the humor in the movie pushes the boundaries of bad taste. It is certainly not for young children, which is of course the point of the movie, or as close as you will get to a point.

What plot there is follows the misadventures of the children of South Park, mainly Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny, in trying to get into an R-rated movie starring their heroes, off-color Canadian comedians Terrance and Philip, whose comedy centers mainly on shouting curses at each other and making bodily noises you would not likely hear at dinner parties. One thing leads to another, and soon President Clinton is issuing war against Canada, while Satan and recently departed Saddam Hussein carry on a affair fraught with communication issues. It doesn't matter how the movies gets there. In the meantime there are jabs, or better put, groin-kicks, against countless celebrities. I think I can recall Brian Dennehy, Brian Boitano, Wynona Ryder, the Baldwin brothers, and Bill Gates, just to name a few.

What is there to say about this movie, but that I laughed? I am familiar with its characters from the series, which I have watched only on occasion. Most of the laughs on the series were genuinely drawn, but the movie forced laughs out of me, partly from shock; I simply could not believe what I was seeing. The movie goes way, way over the top the way it pulls its punches, but it is certainly ambitious in its undertaking.

Expect to be offended. Many of the jokes are flat-out gross. These are the ones I laughed at. I also laughed at the ones that made fun of popular culture. This is fair game, in my opinion. I did not laugh at several jokes that were simply racially insensitive, to say the least. Those left me feeling unclean, and could have been left out without taking anything away from the movie.

I am told that the creators of South Park, who made this movie, did so largely to send a message to the Motion Picture Association of America, who is notorious for giving tougher ratings to movies with strong language than those that are blood-soaked. They have responded by creating a movie that contains heavy doses of both, with a smattering of gross-out humor. The result? A movie that Cartman would say "warped my fragile little mind!"