The Darjeeling Limited

All aboard for another pretentious outing on the Wes Anderson Express. Three brothers travel India on the Darjeeling Limited, the most colorful train in the world. One of the problems is the casting; maybe it's supposed to be a joke. The three brothers are played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody. I challenge you to imagine three white people who could look less related to each other. If he had stopped after "Rushmore," Anderson would be remembered as "that guy who made one of the best movies ever." But given his current career trajectory, he'll be remembered as a shining star that burned out early. He tries too hard. His movies used to be quirky and sweet and endearing and brilliant and funny. Now they're just quirky.

The Namesake

Definitive proof that releasing a movie before October forecloses you from serious Oscar consideration. That the parents -- Irfan Khan and Tabu -- got no recognition is inexcusable. That I keep mentioning the Oscars is also inexcusable. I'm done. For a year. I promise.

80th Annual Academy Awards

If you accept the premise that these were the five best films of the year, "No Country for Old Men" is probably a good choice for Best Picture. But there's no reason you should believe these were the cream of the crop. To put this matter to bed quickly, only to be resurrected pointlessly next year when the Oscars get it all wrong again, here's a list of a few films better than "No Country for Old Men," in no particular order:
"The Bourne Ultimatum," "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Sicko," and "The Devil Came on Horseback." Maybe "The Namesake." Three of those are documentaries, but they're still better. I was also curiously drawn to "Vacancy" and "Grindhouse," especially the first half, but I would concede "No Country" might be better than these two.

The list of films that are better than "There Will Be Blood" is comparable, the list of films better than "Michael Clayton" is a tad longer, and the list that would accompany both "Atonement" and "Juno" is too long to be readable in a blog post.

Infection

Ghostly goings-on at a Japanese hospital. Typical low-budget horror. Nothing here, move along.

High Noon

A coworker convinced me to watch this by comparing it to "24." And, with the events occurring in real time and the repeated shots of clocks, I see that. It was nice to see, in smaller roles, both Lee Van Cleef, better known as The Bad, and the glorious Grace Kelley. "High Noon" reminds me of a Kurosawa samurai film, like "Seven Samurai" or "Yojimbo" or "Sanjuro." That's a curious chicken-or-the-egg question for another post: which westerns influenced Kurosawa, and which westerns did Kurosawa influence. Also, I like the marshal's final act, tossing the tin star disdainfully on the ground after having saved the town. Very Kurosawa-esque.

Dedication, Margot at the Wedding

These two played in the background as I did some work. "Dedication" is not great. "Margot" is really bad, not even close to "The Squid and the Whale," the writer/director's previous work. There's no reason for anyone to see either of these.

Redacted

A story from Iraq about US soldiers who kill and rape a young girl. Avoiding traditional narrative techniques, it's told primarily through footage taken from one of the US soldiers, a French-language news crew, and video blogs. It sounds like perfect fodder for an anti-war filmmaker to make a strong point, but the film is so incompetently done that it only makes you anti-Brian De Palma. He's made some good films ("Carrie," "Scarface," "Casualties of War," "Mission: Impossible"), but he's made some terrible ones as well ("Snake Eyes," "The Black Dahlia"). "Femme Fatale" is also bad, but worth renting to see Rebecca Romijn perform a striptease in front of Antonio Banderas while they're in the backroom of a Parisian biker bar that rests on the water.

Lust, Caution

Ang Lee helmed this anemic, NC-17 espionage tale set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II. A young actress becomes a neophyte revolutionary when she joins a group that aspires to assassinate a collaborator with the Japanese, played by Tony Leung. Apparently they didn't like Leung's work in "Infernal Affairs 3." The scenes of subterfuge are few and not thrilling and the mien of the characters too rigid to be consistent with spying. But I will say this: for being a patriotic Chinese film, it doesn't have a lot of caterwauling. I appreciated that.

"Lust, Caution" is nearly 160 minutes long. I've said it before ("American Gangster," "The Assassination of Jesse James . . ."), and I'll say it again; very few movies need to be this long. The material might have been good in the hands of Hitchcock. (It's no accident the actress walks in front of a poster for his "Suspicion.") But here it never comes to life, despite its content and "Black Book"-like sleeping-with-the-enemy motif.

American Gangster

Denzel Washington is a gangster, dealing pure Southeast Asian heroin out of Harlem. Russell Crowe is a New Jersey cop and aspiring lawyer who leads a task force assigned to take down the big dogs of the dope game. Ridley Scott's epic take on the American dream lacks the procedural detail of "Zodiac," the thought-provoking parallelism of "The Wire," and the elan for its subject of "Blow." It's also yet another film that's an ennui-inducing hour overlong for no reason.

Denzel was good, but he's always good, so it's almost not worth mentioning. Ruby Dee was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for being in the film for 5 minutes and not doing anything memorable. Unless I missed a scene where she acted her ass off, the nomination is undeserved. Most intriguing was Josh Brolin as an evil cop who demanded perquisites from Frank Lucas. He looked like Pierce Brosnan if he put on a few, and it was a strong performance alongside his other turns this year in "Planet Terror" and "No Country for Old Men." And to think people thought he would be remembered as the older brother in "The Goonies."

Michael Clayton

George Clooney plays a combination between Harvey Keitel's The Wolf in "Pulp Fiction" and Christian Bale's magician in "The Prestige." On the one hand, he's a fixer, he solves problems. On the other, he's not good at his job. (To refresh readers' memories, Bale's character was a bumbling magician who was a hilariously terrible showman, though he repeatedly claimed, "No one can do my trick.") This latter observation is my own; I think the movie would have us believe he's competent. Every character tells him he's great at his job and he's indispensible, but, if you pay attention, he never solves any problems, and indeed screws some things up.

But back to the story. His law firm, one of the most prestigious in the world, is defending the business U/North in a $3 billion class-action lawsuit. Problem is the lead lawyer on the case (Tom Wilkinson) goes crazy; he develops a conscience. And Clooney is developing one too. The point of the film (which is obvious from the beginning, I'm not giving anything away) is that this white-collar law firm defends a company that -- prepare yourself -- did something wrong. And this is news to Clooney, who seriously asks, "What if we're on the wrong side?" Clooney would rather live in a world where lawyers turned against their clients and took on the role of judge and jury. He'd prefer the world of "Idiocracy," where Luke Wilson's defense lawyer tells the judge he's guilty, in part because he destroyed the lawyer's wall while he was "'batin'." Maybe you had to be there.

The movie is decent for what it is, but there's not much here. "The Firm" covered similar terrain and was more engaging. There are some good moments between Clooney and his kid, but the rest of the scenes with his family are fairly worthless. And, as with every other film nominated for Best Picture this year (except "There Will Be Blood"), the ending blows.

Several critics described this as a throwback to '70s cinema, but I don't see it. This film develops characters and has an untidy message and has a paranoid, skeptical view of certain institutions, in this case law firms and corporations. But I don't think that defines films from the '70s more than any other decade. It does define films by Tony Gilroy, the director of this and a screenwriter, who has written paranoid, skeptical films about the US government (the "Bourne" films), doctors ("Extreme Measures"), offshore miners ("Armageddon"), and figure skating ("The Cutting Edge").

The Jane Austen Book Club

A group of women, several of whom are just a few summers shy of the Red Hat Society, and a guy get together to read Jane Austen novels once a month. And, as luck would have it, the problems in their own lives mirror the problems of the characters in the Austen novels. While we're privy to much discourse on the interpretation of Austen, not one character proffers the best explanation of what Austen was trying to accomplish -- that she's making fun of the inane and superficial lives of the landed rich. Until Hollywood recognizes this, it will continue to get Austen wrong. It'd be like making the movie "The Upton Sinclair Book Club" and having nobody suggest, "I think he had a problem with capitalism."

A Snake of June

A suicide hotline operator receives pictures in the mail of her in some, shall we say, compromising positions. A mysterious caller then blackmails her into doing some extreme things to get the negatives back. It's a low-budget noir that plays like a film student's thesis project. Parts are like "Cache," with its theme of privacy invasion, and others like "Jade," with its theme of the duality of woman. It's intriguing, but missable.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Romania, 1987. A young woman in college, Otilia, helps her roommate, Gabriela, procure an abortion. From the first frame, focusing on a table bearing a fishbowl and a lit cigarette smoking in an ashtray, the decision has been made. What follows is their journey through the rest of the day dealing with the mechanics of getting an abortion -- finding a hotel, getting the doctor, payment, disposal -- in a totalitarian society where everyone fears everyone else, and decisions are made more by poverty and lack of options than a conscious choice.

Many people do not share my taste in movies. Over the years, I've noticed that the movies I like best, the ones that stick with me longer than others, tend to be foreign. They're not big budget, they're not necessarily trying to please a large audience, and they're not hampered by American morality or the subtle censorship of commercialism. I think it significant many of these films are at least R-rated. Among those that have stood out this decade are "Amores Perros," "Bad Education," "Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Head-On," and "The Best of Youth." Even among the English language films I've liked, "Children of Men" was British, "United 93" took place in America but was filmed overseas by a British director, and "Lost in Translation" took place in Japan. Another year of movies gone by, and yet again, the film that strikes me most -- "4 Months" -- is foreign, and it's far better than everything else I've seen this last year.

The whole project is infused with striking naturalism and realism. Every frame is full of consciously placed detail, the pacing allows the story to unfold naturally, and the actors are too good to look like they're acting. And with the same cinematographer as "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," another great recent Romanian film, you have the sense everything is on purpose and by design.

The film also has more soul and emotion than any I've seen recently. "No Country for Old Men" left me cold, meaning empty. After it was over, I felt like I had seen a cool movie, but Tommy Lee Jones's ruminations on growing old and the times they are a-changin' didn't mean much. "4 Months," also, left me cold, but meaning terrified, disturbed, chilled. It's an utterly absorbing, exhausting journey with these two scared young women that takes them from one harrowing experience to another.

Many of the scenes involve a stationary camera lingering on actors, where what happens off-screen is as significant as what happens onscreen. Much of this is people talking and not doing much else, but it's absolutely gripping. But what remains after it's over is not the dialogue or what they said, but the images. For instance, after the girls have paid Mr. Bebe for the abortion, Otilia is primping herself in the bathroom mirror while Gabi cries off-screen. Otilia looks askance with sympathy and disgust. It's a searing image of loyalty and betrayal and pain. Later, at her boyfriend's house for dinner with his parents' friends, Otilia is the focus of the camera for a discussion that lasts about 7 minutes. They discuss religion, education, the younger generation, respect for elders, and Otilia sits there quietly. In the middle, the phone rings in the background. No one but Otilia notices. The camera doesn't move, but we see Otilia distracted, worried it's her friend and something's gone wrong. The phone stops ringing, the people are still talking, and the scene continues. It's a subtle moment that the verite-style film doesn't dwell on, but for the attentive viewer, it's heart wrenching. Later, there are two dark, surreal sequences of Otilia returning to the hotel and then leaving again with something, and all we see is very dimly lit streets, barely a light anywhere, and we hear her scared, quick breathing and dogs barking and glass breaking and people shouting. It's as action-packed as the film gets, and it's spendidly done, metaphorical as well as realistic.

Hitchcock had an idea of the MacGuffin, which is a plot device that doesn't mean anything, but is simply to propel the plot forward. For the first half of this film, I thought abortion might be a MacGuffin to expose the inner workings of this society, to show its dehumanizing effects on its citizens. But ultimately the film is about abortion. The body of the film focuses on how people obtain one. To the film's credit, Mr. Bebe comes across more like a complex product of his environment rather than a vampiric evil man (which isn't to say he's not a little of both). The characters don't reflect on the morality of the procedure until the end, and even then it's so subtle you can't divine what they think about it. But to pigeonhole this film as being about abortion would be to look past everything else it does to convey the experience of real life, immersing you in another world that you don't really want to see but are better for having seen, which is a quality of top-notch, perdurable art.

Those who do not want to know the ending should stop reading. I feel compelled to posit on its significance. Both friends are sitting down for a late dinner. Both are in frame and behind them is a wedding party. The waiter brings them a plate of meat, liver, marrow, and brains. They look at it, and we can't help but think of the baby. Neither can they, and they're silent. Gabi looks at the menu too long, consciously avoiding her friend. The tension and the distance between them is palpable. We start to see headlights on them and realize we, the camera, have been behind a window for this whole scene, and we feel even greater distance from the characters. Otilia then turns to look at us, but with a distant, glazed expression, an action that completely destroys the fourth wall and brings us back into their world. Then it cuts to black. And then you breathe a sigh of relief and want to watch it again.

We Own the Night

Imagine "The Departed," but it takes place in New York in the '80s, and it's got worse actors, and a less interesting script, and it focuses mainly on the cops, and you've got "We Own the Night." It does have a promising opening scene with a writhing and partially exposed Eva Mendes frenching Joaquin Phoenix while she enacts a certain song by the Divinyls. And it has a cool but wannabe "French Connection" car chase through blue-hued rain-drenched streets that ends startlilngly and is filmed mostly from inside a car -- a technique "Children of Men" made use of much better. But other than that, it's mediocre.

Gone Baby Gone

Ben Affleck's directorial debut takes on another Dennis Lehane crime novel involving the kidnapping of a child. And much like the overrated "Mysic River," based on another Lehane novel, more has been made out of this film than should have been. Casey Affleck stars as a hometown super-sleuth with a thick Boston accent. His life isn't hard, it's heaid. (You try transcribing Kennedyspeak.) He's scrawny as all get-out, and he talks a lot of smack when he really shouldn't, and it's not believable when he gets away with it. He and his girlfriend look into the disappearance of a little girl. And it's one of those, it's this person, no it's that person, no it's these people, no it's still these people but in a different way kind of films. One where after so many plot twists, you don't care, you just want the answer so you can move on with your life. The supporting cast is okay, I guess; Amy Ryan is notable as the mother of the kidnapped girl. The ending raises moral questions about what's best for a child, and who has the right to say what's best, but in my opinion, to even ask that question is pretentious.

The rest of this post will attempt to describe the ironies of the Ben Affleck backlash -- which I shall dub the bafflash.

Let's start at the beginning. Early Ben isn't that bad. "Good Will Hunting" was great, "Chasing Amy" sucked but not because of Ben (BNBOB), "Shakespeare in Love" was great, "Armageddon" was decent (for what it was), and "Dogma" was inexplicably terrible BNBOB.

Then there's middle-era Ben, which I confess I'm not too up on: "Forces of Nature," "Bounce," "Reindeer Games," "Pearl Harbor," "Jersey Girl." But I have seen "Gigli" and "Daredevil," and let me say, ouch. It might be fair to say these films are bad, possibly because of Ben (BOB).

But Ben's back!! Or so the critics would have us believe. "Hollywoodland" came out and Ben got all this good press for his acting prowess, but the movie's lame, so lame, in part BOB. Then he was in "Smokin' Aces," which was mildly entertaining, BNBOB. And now his new film is getting good reviews BOB, when in reality it's not that great, partly BOB.

The irony is this. The way I see things, critics have been hating on Ben, and now in recent years, because of a few projects, they're warming up to him. But by my estimation, his early work was okay (and the hatred undeserved), and his recent work is not good. To the critics and fans out there, I would say, in the immortal words of LL Cool J, "Don't call it a comeback." Oh, snap! The bafflash continues.

Live-In Maid

An Argentinean drama about a woman and her maid, showing how their lives have been affected by the changes in society and the economy in recent years. It's like "Arrested Development," with Lucille Bluth and Lupe, but it's not funny since it's hard to feel bad for a woman whose eyes have never stung from the sweet sweat of a hard day's work. The rich woman comes across like Blanche from "A Streetcar Named Desire," which is odd because the actress looks like the woman from "All About My Mother" who acted in "A Streetcar Named Desire." If this were an American movie, it would be about how the two come to appreciate the other and everyone would be likeable and it'd be as terrible as "Spanglish." But it's not like an American movie, so it's good.

Mr. Brooks

Kevin Costner is the successful owner of a box company -- that's right, a box company. He is also an aberrant serial killer who lives in Portland, Oregon, and frequently consults with his imaginary friend, William Hurt. Turns out, Dane Cook sees Costner kill a couple and blackmails him into showing him what it's like. Cook wants to feel that rush, that thrill. I was reminded of The Onion article, "Dane Cook Parlays New Burger King Menu Item Into Hour-Long HBO Special." But Cook didn't say anything funny and didn't riff on anything for more than 10 seconds. Instead, Costner, with his tyro accomplice in tow, sets out on another conquest. But not before Demi Moore, a dedicated cop worth over $60 million, gets closer to solving the mystery, which requires her to reenact several scenes from "Manhunter."

I had low expectations for this movie, which might explain why I thought it was actually pretty good. "Pretty good" might be overstating it, but at the very least, it was more than merely -- to coin a word -- sitthroughable. It would have been better if Ashton Kutcher had made a cameo, or if the ending had been interesting, or if Dane Cook had used his comedic talents, but whatevs. A maxim of mine that I often resort to is that low expectations are the key to enjoying movies. And yet, I hate so many movies that I go into most movies not expecting much, and I'm still just as often disappointed. This is another theory of mine I'm still working on.

Triad Election

Jimmy, a Hong Kong gangster and bootleg DVD salesman, wants to expand his business empire into mainland China, but the Chinese government catches on and tells him that can only happen if he becomes Chairman of his Triad organization. The leader of the Triads is the one with the Dragon Head Baton, an item people view with a mythic reverence akin to the rabbit's foot in "MI:3" or the boom stick in "Army of Darkness." What transpires should be of moderate interest to anyone who sat through the original "Election," and no doubt of less interest to anyone else.

Parts of this film verge on the grisly. A public knife execution looks suspiciously like they didn't hire extras and instead performed it in front of whoever happened to be on the street. There's also a harrowing scene of rival gangsters being handcuffed and locked in prison cells, wearing a dog collar and a chain attached to a German shepherd (I think that's the right one; I'm not a dog guy). In "The Departed," Leonardo DiCaprio asks if his boss is going to let the bad guys chop him up and feed him to the poor. In one part -- you can probably guess it involves the dogs -- this film takes that statement to its literal conclusion. And it's gross.

There's probably a good documentary to be made about the lives of Americans who make a living as one-line actors in foreign films. Here, it looks like a certain execution near the water was carried out by three white guys. And a lounge singer performing "House of the Rising Sun" seems white as well. This brings to mind the American soldier in "R-Point," who delivers his lines badly, but if you don't speak English, it probably doesn't matter. Which raises the question, if Chinese actors aren't convincing when they speak, how would we know? Is that why foreign films that are big here may not do well overseas, and vice versa? I'd like to think that's why the latter two "Pirates of the Caribean" made so much money, but everyone stateside saw those as well. My theory is still under development.

In the Realm of the Senses

Dana Stevens, the Slate film critic, acknowledged this as one of the films she revisits consistently, in part for its "formal perfection" and portrayal of the "centripetal logic of obsession." In its treatment of obsession and desire, it bears some similarity to "The Devil in Miss Jones," except that movie gets preachy towards the end. The setting -- a brothel in Japan -- has some similarities to Sword Scabbard Island in "Pirates," a place of isolation, localized and minute, where the external has no place and the internal, the world of fantasy, can roam free. In this sense it is not too unlike the role of the forest in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It." Also, the location in a geisha house allows some scenes of the man and woman to, in a sense, perform in front of other geishas, who in turn are performing for them. This sense of the allegorical displacement of the viewer, the dislocation of "the other," the very nature of art, was addressed more prominently -- and, in my mind, more successfully -- in "Behind the Green Door." The film's formal beauty might be seen in the balancing of each shot, and in the careful placement of the frame when cutting between scenes of the couple and those watching them. It also has some interesting use of imagistic foreshadowing, like when she sees a knife and starts, and then she goes on to use it unforgettably, and unforgivably, towards the end, or where the man drinks tea and kisses her and some goes in her mouth but some spills out, and then later when a similar thing happens with another liquid.

Love Actually

My second time seeing it, and I still think the same thing. Way too many mediocre storylines. The movie should have been nothing but the aging rocker (Bill Nighy) with an unexpected Christmas hit and a Bulworth-like proclivity for telling the truth, and the story of the new Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) in love with the new housekeeper (Martine McCutcheon), and the odd British wish fulfillment plot of a man who gets with Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth, and Denise Richards simply because he has a British accent.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Costumes and history -- yawn. But I learned that King Philip II of Spain looked like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- not wrong to me, so strong to me, like a very hairy Jake Gyllenhaal to me. And I learned what Queen Elizabeth's derriere looked like. And I learned that Walter Raleigh, a pirate of sorts, named Virginia for the Virgin Queen. So it wasn't a complete waste of two hours.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

This movie is about the assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford, who was a coward. This movie is also about as slow and odd and curiously alluring as any I've seen recently.

Brad Pitt can act ("12 Monkeys," "The One with the Rumor"), and here he has his moments as Jesse James, but they are moments. I've seen several movies with Casey Affleck, but this is the first where I've noticed him. He plays Bob Ford, a sniveling, brownnosing, starry-eyed fan of the myth of Jesse James, who insinuates himself into the James gang and his hero's life. He has an almost Mark-Wahlberg-in-"Boogie Nights" ability to convey complex emotion without saying a word. (I say "almost" because no one's as good as Mark Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights.") But when he speaks and his voice cracks with immaturity and pain, he's even better. In a way, he's like Daniel Day-Lewis to Brad Pitt's Paul Dano, in that Affleck is so good that the fact that Pitt doesn't stack up to him detracts from the movie.

At over two and a half hours long, it's 45 minutes too long. One more film where restraint would make it much better. Too much of the film dwelt on the supporting James gang, which in the end didn't matter that much. Not that they weren't worth watching, especially the heretofore unheard of Paul Schneider as a lubricious wordsmith. And then, in one of the bigger WTF moments in last year's crop of films, James Carville shows up, but he's not an actor, which means this is a cameo, which makes one ask, WTF?

The narrator's language is so faux magniloquent and stiff that it's almost like a parody of Wes Anderson narration. In the beginning, the narrator merely fills in the gaps. But by the end, the narrator is telling you things you're seeing. It shows a lack of confidence in the film and an insulting assumption the viewer can't discern what's going on. We see that James has melancholy eyes when he's looking at Ford, which means we don't need someone telling us he's looking at Ford with melancholy eyes.

Amazingly shot, the film cribs much of its look, feel, tone, and -- unfortunately -- pace from Terrence Malick, especially his lackluster "Days of Heaven." The train robbery in the beginning cuts between white sheets set among the trees and looming, foreboding, ominous outlines of Pitt standing in front of the train. The cinematography and the Dirty Three-esque string music bring to my mind how another myth-making film of the South, "The Birth of a Nation," might look today, a comparison that sets the tone and one of the themes for what is to follow. Much of the early part of the film is people looking at each other and watching the weather change, with storms over the plains. As Borat would say, "It's nice."

Jesse James's last words -- "Don't that picture look dusty?" -- begin a transcendent and serene sequence, an improbable but poetic end to his life. But the movie doesn't end. In a carefully crafted coda, the movie explores themes that up until that point lay underneath the surface, exploring the nature of celebrity, the creation of a cultural myth, the pains of betrayal, and the limits of self-aggrandizement. It takes a myth and reduces it to a human face, and that of a weakling. It's a curious comedown from a movie that didn't bother to build suspense or pretend to be anything other than a character study or morality play.

It's a fascinating failure of a movie that I sincerely hope to see again soon. It's literary, beautifully filmed, and well acted, and yet it's a plodding, scattershot mess, but it never becomes dull or unwatchable and is at times transfixing.

Across the Universe

This is a musical. Therefore, it's not good. People sing Beatles songs for no reason, including "Why don't we do it in the road?" But this musical is especially bad because it comes packed with surreal dance sequences that are so contrived and ill-advised it's hard to sit through. It's like amateur hour at the "Moulin Rouge!" Imitation Institute, or open-mike night at the Baz Luhrmann Terrible Movie Club. The bowling scene is particularly reprehensible. The "Come Together" sequence was bad as well. That doesn't mean anything to you if you don't see the movie, which you shouldn't. And the part where Max gets drafted and dances with the inductees and the square-jawed soldiers and carries the Statute of Liberty across the fields of Vietnam in his underwear. It's as ridiculous as it sounds.

It plays like a PC, edited-for-TV guided tour through the '60s. On your left, hippies. On your right, The Man. Straight ahead, drugs. Everywhere, Gap models. Wood's boyfriend dies in 'Nam, but because you don't care about her or her boyfriend, the film splices scenes of her grief and the funeral with scenes of black people being shot by white soldiers in the streets. Are you sad yet? But when Wood's brother gets drafted, she and her English beau become activists. And they live with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, except this movie doesn't have the guts to call them by their real names and pretends like that's not who they are. And then Bono is in it and sings "I am the Walrus" while everyone's on acid, and of course everyone's neon colorful and singing and Bono's got mutton chops. And then Eddie Izzard is a circus ringleader in a Monty Python animation sketch set to "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite!" Man, this movie sucks.

Ultimately, I will remember this movie as a disappointing turn in the careers of two otherwise promising talents. Evan Rachel Wood was in the terrific "Thirteen" and was one of the few reasons to watch "Down in the Valley." And director Julie Taymor made "Frida," a movie with promise that ended up being something that should have been called "Diego Rivera's Wife," and one of the greater Shakespearean adaptations in recent memory, "Titus." It's not as good as Richard Branagh's "Hamlet," but it's pretty good. "Across the Universe," however, is not good.

And then, to make that even more screwed up, they do a movie where everyone sings Beatles songs, and no one sings "Yellow Submarine." No "Submarine." Denied.

Brick

A man gets a mysterious call from a former flame, and, thinking she's in trouble, he investigates. Everyone talks like they're in a hardboiled Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler novel. The schtick is, everyone's in high school. At times, it can be taken for an allegory of the side of life of teenagers that parents don't see, blown up writ large.

Everyone's got a "play." They say things like "quit your yapping" and "keep your specs on" and "that would only biff their play." They're tough lines to deliver, and sometimes it comes out bush-league, but it's gamely played by all. It's one of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's recent successes at low-budget, clever films, along with the respectable "The Lookout" and the criminally underwatched "Mysterious Skin." And co-star Nora Zehetner, of some "Heroes" episodes, was great in her role as the femme fatale whose angle he can't figure out

Seeing this in the theater, I missed what Zehetner whispered into Gordon-Levitt's ear at the end, but on video I could tell: she whispers "mother . . ." He tells Brain, his companion who looked on, that she called him a bad word. That fits. There really is no other swearing in this movie (that I remember), which, while I don't mind bad language, seems a worthy accomplishment and noble goal these days. And that word makes you look at Gordon-Levitt's character in a different light, which, if I watch it again, I'll keep in mind. He's like the main character in the novel "Red Harvest." He may be the hero, but he really is a bad "mother . . ."