Hesher, Saved From Drowning

Go For it, Hesher! (2011)

Starring: Joseph Gordon Levine, Rainmaker, Natalie Portman Directed by: Denny Terrio Rating: R Genre: Drama Other: Inspirational Dancing

Review In pre-war France the great Rene Clair made a series of films about a drunken clown who defiles middle class families, all with the name Boudu Sauve des Eaux. Forty years later a giant bearded genius named Zero Mostel destroyed the lives of his teenager daughters in David Lean's "Fiddler on the Roof." Now, fifty years on, out of nowhere, disco dance sensation Denny Terrio pulls a rabbit out of that same dirty, dirty hat with "Go For It, Hesher!" a quirky, quixotic romp through the sewers of the mind - with bells on! Terrio ("Stayin' Alive 2: Ontario Dreams!") elicits  electric performances from teen dream sensations David Gordon Levine and Natalie Portman as star-crossed lovers on a road paved with the diamonds of the stars trampled beneath their feet by dreams they can only imagine, and nightmares they can only dream do not occur to their imaginations. Levine ("Walking Tall 5: Pusser vs. Billy Jack", "Lightning Bug: The Adam Ant Story") is particularly fine as a pouty-lipped young circus roustabout with a skateboard, a penchant for Virginia Slims hidden in a pack of Djarum Blacks and a one way ticket to Palookaville. Portman, so good as tragic Norwegian skating sensation Sonje Heine ("Quisling On Ice"), takes it down a couple of notches here as Rita a girl who, on the cusp of her "Quincenera" - a latin ritual for girls in which the young initiate learns that only her brothers will be allowed to attend college, must choose between the Talmud and the dark red mesh open-toed dance shoe. What you think you've seen before turns before your eyes into a delicate mix of black blood sausage and jasmine incense - something unexpected yet fragrant, but not unplesantly so.  I won't give away the shock ending, but be sure to bring a friend with plenty of kleenex and a change of socks. Enjoy! p.s. Yes, that is Sting reciting the Kaddish during the shivah montage.

Friday Night Special - Paved With Good Intentions

On The Road (2009)

Starring: Vigor Morgenstern, Ash "Scrappy" Montana, Charlene Thorzine Directed by: John Hillerman Rating: R Genre: Comedy Other: Scenes of Apocalypse

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review As the happy Mork-slaughtering hobblits sang, "The road goes ever on..." And does it ever in this misguided "reboot" of the popular post-war "Road To..." series. Originally penned by the bumbling Cohen brothers, former Magnum P.I. star John Hillerman churns Bob and Bing's idyllic butter into rancid sour cream, turning Dotty L'Amour-flavored Bali into a scarred earth that appears to have been bump-mapped from Abe Vigoda's tragic face. Vigor Mogenstern, so good as the mentally-challenged boxer in Peter Jackson's remake of "Fat City" is here teamed with enormously talented youngster Ash "Scrappy" Montana as a pair of fathers and sons who traipse across country searching for the last twinkie in the universe. Not a huge hook to hang this four-hundred minute sombrero upon, but Hillerman does what he can with the Cohens' global-warming nonsense. I personally was left with a tremendous sense of unease, which can't have pleased Mr. Walt Disney or his marketing minions beavering away in their fur-lined hidey-holes at their carpal-tunneling adding machines. And, while I reserve the right to disagree with Hillerman's wrong-minded conclusions, I'd fight an eighteen stone she-badger to defend his right to spout them. All in all, this may not be fatback, but rather very lean Canadian bacon. Those on a spiritual diet may be amused. The rest of us will have to exert enough self-control not to kill the theater staff and burn the mutliplex to the ground. And in the end, maybe that is the point Hillerman is after - conscience makes bastards of us all.

Woolly Thinking

The Mammoth (2009)

Starring: Gael Maria von Sayers, Michelle Williams, Krull Directed by: Lucas Tannerson Rating: NR Genre: Serial Drama Other

Review Like the temptation just before the last temptation of Jesus, I so wanted that tingly, ants-in-your-pants falling-in-love feeling from Lucas Tannerson's latest. Instead I left the theater feeling like I once felt after a dream where I was wearing my sister's underwear, and she was still in it. Tannerson ("Show Me Yours", "Fingerlings") manages to weave 345 completely separate and totally distinct storylines into a coherent whole that slowly, then suddenly reveals what God meant when he invented the platypus. Gael Maria von Sayers ("Loving Me a Dead Woman", "Los Dos Novias de Los Dos Hermanos Sacerdotes") is excellent as an absent-minded archaeologist who, while in the midst of reconstructing an ancient Giant Cowasaurus, remembers that he's left his daughter with Michelle Williams. The ensuing tragedy seems just a little off, like a bar of cream cheese with a small patch of blue-green fuzz. Not inedable, but not really appetizing. Tannerson is a skeeballer who valiantly tries for the 50 hole, but ends up with a fistful of nothing. That said, it's great to see the fabulous Charles Ruggles again, even if only as a bearskin rug.

Friday Night Special - Nine Is Too Much

The Ninth Song (2004)

Starring: Modesty Blaise, Rod Snow Directed by: Michael Vintnerbottom Rating: Unrated Genre: Explicit Romance Concert Movie Other: Distasteful Sexual Scenes

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review As a sage of my aquaintance once told me after visiting a special "show" in Tijuana "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should." Though I've seen dogs bathe parts of their bodies that make me question how there can be a God, I never quite understood the wisdom of this magus until I watched Michael Vintnerbottom's "The Ninth Song." Young hairless monkeys Modesty Blaise and Rod Snow "star" as a couple who meet at a "Wham" concert and spend the next seventy minutes playing tetris with various body parts, some of which I found myself unable to identify even on my anatomically-correct BatKat-customized Barbie and Ken dolls. Vintnerbottom, whose previous efforts included "The Laurence Sterne Experiment" and "Legend of Boggy Creek: The Road to Guantanamo" has produced something so romantically reductive that it makes the funk band Slave's "Snap Shot" seem like something Elizabeth Barett Browning might have sent Robert by donkey. It might be appropriate if you're studying for a pre-med midterm. Otherwise give this one a pass and download "Romancing the Stones."

All Hands on Deck!

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Starring: Philip Seymour Damon, Parker Posey, Dame May Witty Directed by: I. Charles Kaufman Rating: R Genre: Comedy Other

Review While I usually seal myself off in the Film Pit to watch movies I'm considering reviewing, I caught this one at my periodontist's on a luscious pre-release pair of Mikimoto Bean I-Glasses. It seemed appropriate to have my gums defiled as I watched I. Charles Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, a film so moving that I kissed Dr. Singer straight on the lips and asked him to marry me. Philip Seymour Damon ("I, King Kong") stars as a director so talented that he casts himself as everyone in the world, and so lonely that no one can understand him except the little man he keeps in his shirt pocket. And when he lets the little man out onto the palm of his hand, the little man begins to cry. And what does that lonely little man have in its pocketses? Another lonely, weepy little man!. I was reminded of the great Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin more than once, though even if prodded with something electric and painful I'm not sure I could say why. Strange though it sounds, Kaufman makes me feel sad that I'm not in his pants. To be honest, due to the double dose of gas the good doctor provided me ("I may have to remove most of your jaw", I think he said at one point) I'm not one hundred percent sure I actually saw this movie, or if it even exists. If not, then I'd like to claim these ideas as my own. Please comment and let me know if I should get on Orbitz immediately and prepare my big pitch to the shark suits!

Get Thee Behind Me Bergman

Anti-Christ (2009)

Starring: Wilhelm Dafoe, Carlotta Rampling Directed by: Lar Von Trier Rating: R Genre: Drama Other: Accents

Review Afro-Swedish person Von Trier is a mad genius, whose previous provocations "Motion Sickness", "Dogtown" and the Wilf Errell vehicle "Oldboy" have proven without a doubt that Schopenhauer was right when he complained in his essay on noise that "a wagonful of dung can kill in the bud a thousand minds." His latest, "Anti-Christ", asks the question "is Wilhelm Dafoe a human or is he a muppet formed from the molted remains of some kind of human/insect hybrid"? No easy answers here.  Instead, the chubby Swede with the naturally glossy eyebrows challenges us to watch the screen for five hundred and fify-three straight minutes until we long for the days when human hairs trapped between the celluloid and the projector's lamp jumped and danced for our amusement. Of course Von Trier IS the eponymous anti-Christ of the title. Christ was a gentle, loving man who understood our need for wine at critical times in our gestation. Von Trier wisely offers us no other narcotic than the luminous byproduct of his furious cranium. By the halfway point most of the bussed-in children and their foreign exchange counterparts had already left the theater, and those that remained showered the adults in the first two rows with Jujubees until one elderly gentleman threatened an usher with some kind of wolf-headed cane. And by the time Dafoe's flaking carapace made love to similarly Triscuit-skinned French/English cannibal Carlotta Rampling, one half the crowd was singing Queen's masterpiece "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a round while the other half had pinned the projectionist under the handicapped seating and appeared to be trying to tear him in half with a series of slings made of red whips. It's the kind of thing that won't show up in the box score the next day, but the film-scholar Sabremetricians of the future will surely mark its significance. I had to leave a bit early, but I was definitely curious how it all worked out. Can any filmmaker ask more?

The Law Abides

Law-Abiding Citizen (2009)

Starring: Jock McGregor, James E. Fox Directed by: F. Murray Abraham Rating: R Genre: Action Other

Review About as appealing as being served a communion wafer topped by mole turds by Mickey Rourke in a kilt. Former actor F. Murray Abraham's ("Salieri!", "Avast!: The Charles Nelson Reilly Story") remake of Charles Bronson's ("Chucho's Raiders", "Leave Them No Heads To Bury") "Death Wishes" seems to want it both ways, neither of them good. Haggis-ridden Scotch dunderhead Jock McGregor (so good in Broadway's musical adaptation of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin") looks like he's had his eyebrows permanently tattooed into a scowling 'V' of shame, anger and retribution. But that's not quite enough to be called acting, and here the Hibernian Hulk seems to be mailing it on on a day when the trains aren't running. James E. Fox ("Drell: The Archie Bell Story") gives an odd but solid performance as  the district attorney who must return prematurely from a yodeling competition in the Alps to bring McGregor to justice. While the Swiss subplot just didn't work for me, I admit I was on Amazon moments after returning home in search of the soundtrack. What Abraham, who's searing intelligence has scorched his tragic face into our collective unconscious, thought he was doing staggering around the revenge flick wasteland is beyond me. And I've written to his blog to let him know that I expect much more from the Sexy Beast. That is all.

From The Vault - Skull Candy

From the Vault - Aplocalypse Now (1979)

Starring: Michael Sheen, Orson Wellies Directed by: George Lucas Rating: R Genre: Action Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Just as today's kids are often overheard speaking in bewilderment that Sir Paul McCartney ("Let It Bleed") was in a band before "The Paul McCartney Band" ("Who Is That Who Is Knocking on My Door?"), my own nephews were baffled to hear that George Lucas ("Melvin and Howard the Duck" "Star Wars", "After Star Wars")  produced a masterpiece before "Ameican Hot Wax". Mercurial Michael Sheen ("Corked", "Werewolf Priest", "Nixon And the Man") stars as a dumb, drunk irishman conned by the Ford Administration into traveling "in country" to find and bring back former Nixon spokesman Ronald Ziegler. Ziegler, played by Orson Wellies in a gorilla suit, has been driven mad because in the jungle there is only one flavor of ice cream ("vanilla is not a flavor" he whispers over and over as he rubs salt into the seemingly endless folds of his bald head) Wellies has become something of a god to the local people after he dispatched a huge white ape with nothing more than a hand grenade and some army-issue space sticks. Lucas, who apparently composed the script each night before shooting by assembling three hundred separate Boggle game sets, abandoned the first crew in the mounains of Macchu Picchu (rumors are that the original David Bowie was eaten by army ants, but his skeleton was saved and reconstructed with the carefully preserved skin of British ganglion Gary Glitter before the bond company stepped in). Only when 20th Century Fox exec David Ladd ("The Blue Dahlia") threatened to declare Wellies' immoveable corpse a tax-free independent state did Lucas buckle down and finish the film on a backlot on Culver City. The result is mind-blowing. From mad Franco-cowboy Roberto Bolano-Duval stripped to the waste running an encounter group for ex-surfers ("I smell the morning. It smells like morning") to unjustly-forgotten Frederick Forrester's ("Finding Forrester") hippy gemologist this movie is a runaway train seemingly going from no-here to nowhere. But when a drunken Sheen gets caught in a shootout in a funhouse hall of mirrors, the thing starts to approach the high catholic eeries of the great renaissance master eagles.  I cannot recommend it enough. Note: push the kiddies a little deeper down in their footed nighties - not only are Wellies' jumblies occasionally visible beneath his massive overhang but by slowing the video down frame by frame one can just make out a few sets of Filipino male nipples.

Summer Ends With Pants on Fire

The Inventions Of Lying (2009)

Starring: Ricky Gervils Directed by: Ricky Gervils Rating: PG-13 Genre: Comedy/Romance Other

Review As the summer film season winds down, the concepts seem to wind up higher and higher. Beaver-cheeked British lambchop Ricky Gervils ("The Office: Great Britain", "Heroes") takes a break from ripping off American sitcoms just long enough claim that British people invented the art of lying. If I strain I think can hear Doctor Johnson struggling to roll his corpulent, tic-ridden bulk in a 360 degree arc within whatever tomb he currently happens to reside (just to set the record straight, the Greeks invented lying, but didn't realize it until Jesus came along and made it a sin). Lollipop-long Jennifer Garniston (nothing of consequence) plays Gervil's foil, a woman so trusting and beautiful that she produces her own natural insecticide. I don't hold Gervils personally responsible for this particular mediocrity - he does not yet know the ways of the Hollywood fatcats. But here's a bit of advice "Ricky" - when a man with a "Crackberry" and a Starbucks cup approaches you with a script be sure that his Rolex is genuine andthat mica-black Mercedes convertible was purchased outright. And stop watching American television! (Here's a suggestion. When you return to the mother country how about a "Fowelty Towers" remake that takes place in Wales? The town names alone should get you through the first season!)

Where Are the Rabbits, George?

Blue Velvet (1986)

Starring: Kylie McGlauglin, Dame Isabelle Bergman Directed by: David D. Lynch Rating: R Genre: Drama Other

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review After scrolling through the pink section for a Friday night love treat, I chanced upon an advertisement for some sort of blue vodka. While not a particularly heavy drinker, I was reminded of the particularly potent pleasures of David D. Lynch's ("Duned!", "Inland Umpire") early romantic masterpiece. Noir-pated Seattle-based zombie Kylie McGlauglin plays a man so in love with a woman that he's willing to nibble bad boy General Dean Stockwell's ("The Boy with the Green Hair", "Duned!") hypertrophied eyebrows. Dame Isabelle Bergman plays his love interest as though she were the last drunk on the last barstool at the end of the Universe. Lynch is letting us know that as strange as love can get, in the end everything will work out. And who doesn't want to believe that at the cusp of a Friday evening with the empty weekend stretching out before him like a Dali desertscape? Check it out with the one you love, or with a large colored drink that will, with time and effort, materialize the one you love in a wispy haze that only cinematic magic and brain chemistry can provide!

Burning Briefs

A Burning Pain (2009)

Starring: Charlize Thorzine Directed by: Sergio Aragones Rating: R Genre: Drama Other

Review First-time director Aragones embroiders the edges of the screen with little tales of more-than-ordinary dreariness crescendoing in a curlicued spasm of despair. Anyone who has ever wept into a significant other's sock monkey after a particularly profound sexual experience should be able to relate to actress Thorzine("Monstro: Legend of Suwanee Creek", "The Ugly Miner's Ugly Daughter")'s restaurant manager character as she rides the two-backed luge to hell. I've certainly criticized other directors for the multi-storyline approach to the filmic art, but Aragones has a way of making you feel that the links have absolutely no relationship to one another. It's a bit like watching a Twilight Zone episode in which the bartender not only doesn't have a third eye under his cap, but the cabby nursing his coffee three seats down isn't a rival alien planning to kill him. I found it refreshing, even when I nodded off briefly. I look forward to more doodles from this incipient master. Bring on the dancing girls!

Mo' Money

Capitalismo (2009)

Starring: Michael More, Michael More Directed by: Michael More Rating: PG-13 Genre: Documentary Other

Review Faithful readers will know of my difficulties with Mr. Michael More. More and I have tangled on a number of occasions (again, I apologize to the staff and patrons of the Cincinnati Red Roof Inn), but we've always managed to bring the rage back down to a low simmer. But with "Capitalismo" More has crossed the invisible line that separates filmmaking from not-film-making. Capitalismo purports to be a critique of greed in the financial system. Instead, More ("Psycho", "Ford Frick and Me") proves only that when the taters get hot, he'll hog all the oven mitts. More himself has admitted that he himself has multiple bank accounts, AND USES THEM! Here's the dealio, Mr. More - America is big enough to swallow your criticism and open its throat for more. While I am no apologist for the world banking system, I also know that when my AMC Gremlin finally succumbed to the demon rust, a certain member of this "evil cabal" (Ms. Sonia Perez-Washington) worked her magic to get me in a Kia Rio with almost no paperwork at all! If someone with my credit rating can get a brand new car, then something smells right in the state of Denmark. It seems I've strayed a long way from the world of cinema, but I think that makes my point more eloquently than some number tomatoes or stars could ever do. Mr. More has given up the world of film, that beautiful monster that makes little girls laugh and big bad men sob like little girls. And what is worse - he's traded it for a handful of dark bitter beans. We shall meet again, oh Dark Prince. And when we do, I shall come with loins girded with the delighted shrieks and terrified groans of a thousand generations of filmgoers. You shall wield only a small puddle of curd.

From The Vault - Ayuda!

Revolver (2006)

Starring: The Beetles, Penelope Hayek Directed by: Carlos Mencia Salmodovar Rating: R Genre: Comedy Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Spanish dandy Salmodovar ("Postcards from the Edge of Madness") whips up a delightful confection of English Beetles and manchego cheese and ladles a heapin' helpin' of pure silliness. When you finally separate the curds from the whey what you've got is 121 minutes of the British flopmops  ("Back in the United Soviet Socialist Republics", "Rocky the Raccoon")  being chased by a thousand mothers across the desolate moors of Welsh Scotland to the throbbing rhythms and clicker-clacks of flamenco guitars. Yes, we've seen it before (most recently in Buster Keeton's masterpiece "Seven Changes"), but so what? I giggled so hard I managed to lodge a Junior Mint up my nose Surprisingly, I believe it may have cured a slight sinus infection. I'm not sure you can ask for more from cinema than that! Sargeant Pepper Sez "Check It Out!"

If a Film Shows in a Forest...

BrightStar (2009)

Starring: Ben Whitefish, Abby Cornsmut Directed by: Jane Campening Rating: RATING Genre: GENRE Other

Review In a fit of madness bold and brainy Maori directrix Jane Campening ("The Campening") has decided to bring the short, crappy life of nutty versemeister Lord Bryon to the big screen with spectacular results. Ben Whitefish ("Lispers") plays Bryon as the "The Sting" of his day, an outlandish rockstar with an ego the size of a sunspot and a crotch as aggressive as a wolverine. Love interest Cornsmut ("Pickwick", "How Dull Was My Valley?"), is wonderful, her homing pigeon lips bringing forth such thoughtful gems as "your eyes are like God's dimming corneas" and "wherefore art thy nails? Bitten, they seem, half moons of ragged beauty, the revenge of a mind groin-torn by disease, worried by teeth small as niblets." It goes on and on that way in torrents of gorgeous zany. Thank you Miss Campening for this fabulous lugey straight into the face the slick, vacant Hollywood suits. Though no one will see it, like a forest full of genius trees, just knowing that they are falling in brilliant new ways makes this weary life a bit more bearable.

Bite My Fire!

Jennifer And Her Body (2009)

Starring: Jenny Lopes, Amanda Sigfried, Adrian Brody Directed by: Karen Kwasimoto Rating: R Genre: Horror Other

Review Body-of-the-month Jenny Lopes ("Jenny's Hood", "Side Out", "Backsliders") stars as a wise-cracking vampire cheerleader who finds herself knocked up by hatchet-faced beanpole Adrian Brody ("The Pianoist") and takes it out on a series of middle-class men facing the "change of life."  Kwasimoto ("RollerFighter", "RollerFighter 2: AeroFlux") can't seem to figure out quite what she's got here. At times the film plays like Woody Allen vomiting through the small slats of a hockey mask, while other times I was reminded of the quiet pleasures of Thelma vs. Louise.   Cinnamon-Lifesaver-hot young writer (and sometime hand model!) Ellen de Diabolique wrote the script, purportedly based on a weekend spent with L.A. madman Steve Martin.  Whatever, I think she might be onto something, because I find the whole vampire thing simply impossible to ignore. One bit of advice for Ms. Kwasimoto - what about vampires in the business world?! Call me!

From The Vault - Devil, Don't Touch Me There!

Touched By Evil (1958)

Starring: Charleston Heston, Orson Wellies, Marlin Dietrich Directed by: Orson Wellies Rating: PG Genre: Classic Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review This forgotten masterpiece, apparently meticulously reconstructed by the studios after behemoth Wellies destroyed the first edit in a fit of pique over Heston's ginormous mustache, tells the story of a man of hispanic extraction  (Heston - "Moses: The Early Years", "The Greatest Man On Earth") so enamored of the law that he makes out with Wellies in order to save Mexico. Germanic sometimes-man Dietrich ("Venus In Leather", "The Blue Dahlia") smolders as "Conchita", a health nut who's mission in life is to keep diabetic Wellies away from the Mars bar that's destined to kill him. And what can a critic say about Wellies that hasn't already been said by Wellies himself, and probably with more and bigger words? Rumor is that he packed on fifteen pounds for the role of a man driven by his need to push away those who needed to love him, and to love those who pushed away their own needs in order to be loved by him. Wellies understood the sophisticated use of sound in film so well that almost everything audible is unintelligible, which makes what you can hear all the greater. Lovely Shirley Jones ("Psychos") plays the woman who dared to share a bed with Heston at a time when women did not sleep with men. And nutbucket Dennis Weaving ("Tell Them Willie Boy Did Not Send You") almost steals the show as "Crackler", a hotel clerk with a peeping problem and pants the size of all outdoors. Return to a time when studios knew where to spend their money, and on whom. Return to Evil!

From The Vault - Two Left Feet, Shamrock-Style

MY LEFT FEET (1989)

Starring: Daniel Daylowes, Brenda Frawley Directed by: Jim Sheridan Rating: R Genre: DRAMA Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Typical Irish blarney about a pedally-disabled man whose life is redeemed  when he stumbles and critically injures a drunken leprechaun. Daylowes ("My Beautiful Laundry") has shown glimmers in the past, but here he reminds me a little too much of the  unjustly forgotten Minnesota Lakers center George Mi-kan - all lank, and no speed. Pet Peeve Time: why oh why does Hollywood insist upon the ludicrous notion that a woman clearly years younger than the lead actor can somehow be believable as his mother? Sexy Brenda Frawley ("The Long, Long, Long Trailer") deserves much better.

Gory Glory

INGLORI*** BASTARDS (2009)

Starring: Brad Pit Directed by: Quint Tarentinino Rating: R Genre: Action Other

Review What is it about history that drives directors so mad? Whatever it is, I hope that history keeps it up because Tarentinino's latest is the kind of crazy magic that only someone like Jimmi Hendrickx ("Hey Jobe")  could summon with a Stratocaster and a lighter - and that only on a good night when the wind came from the west! So what exactly have we got here? Imagine Jesus with a pitchfork, or Mohammed with the middle eastern equivalent of a pitchfork. Consider this dynamic duo poking their way through hoards of ravenous nazis who lose body parts like a newt in a cuisinart. Tarentinino's dirty dozen is led by a scenery-engulfing Brad Pit ("The Miniaturization of Benjamin Button"). Those who follow this reviewer know his disdain for dimwitted portrayals of bacon-grease-inflected southern dunderheads gumming straw and fornicating with prone  foreigners in a moonshine-induced hysteria brought on by lack of sanitary conditions. And Pit nails it! Tarentinino,  clearly sensitive to the holocaust theme, keeps the number of severed genitals within reason, but when it's time to pull out the big guns he remains one of our few american directors unafraid to pull them out. Here he brandishes dialogue like the devil's forked tongue, ripping hilarious riposte after hilarious riposte in a dialogue-fest replete with such aphorisms as "Donald Duck can suck my d**ck." Anyone else reminded of e.e. cummings' ("buffalo bill was a clean man")  "Death of a Ball Turrett Gunner?" Okay, that might be a stretch for a man who put Ving Ramses in an afro but I'm enthusiastic about this effort. That Tarentinino has grown as an artist can no longer be in doubt. I think a real love story cannot be far off now. I, for one, am looking forward to it. BTW Don't miss cameos by Michael Myers ("I Am a Hatchet Murderer") as Sir Winston Churchill and Eli Hoste ("The Host") as the great Jewish leader Ben Gurion. The DVD extras should be a hoot!

Now You See Him...

THE ILLUSIONERIST(2006)

Starring: Edward X. Norton, Hume Jackman, David Bowie Directed by: Christopher Nolan Rating: PG-13 Genre: Drama Other

Review In the late 1800's Jack the Ripper is on the loose and Sherlock Holmes' London has got him! Director Christopher Nolan (The Batman) claims to "solve" the mystery of the man known to London prostitutes as The Ripper" by explaining that Dandy Jack was a magician who disappeared into walls whenever London's finest got to close to his trail. It's all nonsense of course. The Ripper was identified last year by writer Clive Barker as none other than Queen Victoria's paramour Prince Albert (why didn't they make THAT story?) But Nolan's got enough going on to distract us from all the plot idiocy. Edward X. Norton (The World According to X) and Hume Jackman (The Boy from Down Under) are a pair of brothers whose hatred consumes the love of the women who love them until only one of them is left to grapple with the evil David Bowie (The Boy From Under the Earth). Bowie sears the screen with an accent so protean that he could be any of a dozen weirdball Bondian villains bent on bending electricity to their nefarious world-dominating purposes. Does it make sense? Who cares? Nolan's balderdash is a gloomy hoot! If you figure out what was supposed to be going on at the end, drop me a line.

Fighting The Good Fight

Cinderella Man (2005)

Starring: Russell Crowe, Andy Kauffman Directed by: Opie Howard Rating: PG-13 Genre: Drama Other

Review When roughneck sailor Russell Crowe (Russell Crowe's Gladiator) is arrested for swearing at some children he breaks away from his two jailor/sailor friends and hides himself in a boxing ring where Andy Kauffman discovers him drunkenly shadow-boxing another fighter's shadow. Kauffman quickly cashes in on the torpid dumbo, raking in thousands of dollars for each smashed face his ward can produce. But what about the big fight against the champ? Can he smash his face in? Opie Howard, now a veteran of more than 1,000 movies, has a sure touch for this kind of material, and he brings it on home with fight scenes so palpably real that you can't even tell what's going on. Loveable kook Renee Zelwegger (Bridget Jones vs. The City) once again makes us believe that if love has wings then even tubby girls can fly! All in all the kind of satisfying smackmouth adventure to lead us into a summer made glorious by this son of Rocky. Enjoy!