Office Space

In the past, I have been told that I look like Woody Harrelson, Joaquin Phoenix, and other white actors. After this movie came out, one friend said I bore a certain resemblance to Ron Livingstone as well. You be the judge:


















Yeah, I don't see it either. Other than that, I've seen this film at least five times before, so I don't have anything new to say.

Multiplicity

I'm surprised this hasn't been remade twice by now, given that the average Hollywood producer has the intelligence of Doug #4. The first would star Ryan Reynolds and Kate Hudson. Then, two years later, it would star some Beverly Hills socialite's son and would be a quasi-reality film. Then it would be spoofed by three of the six people behind "Scary Movie 6" or whatever, and it'd be called "Multiple Movie," and it would make $80 million. All the while, fans of the original would say, "Michael Keaton's a good actor. More people should watch 'Desperate Measures.'"

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Ireland has had an extraordinary literary output for such a tiny island, but not so much with the movies. When it comes to directors, this and "Bloody Sunday," two great movies about Ireland, were made by Brits. With actors, they've got Colin Farrell, Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Kenneth Branagh, and Cillian Murphy. No featherweights, but not quite James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and John Millington Synge. I've read that "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" is the highest grossing independent Irish film ever, beating the mark previously held by "Intermission" and "Man About Dog." Your guess is as good as mine as to what those are about.

In this film, Cillian Murphy is a doctor, brother of a local leader in the IRA-led guerilla warfare against the British during the Irish War of Independence in 1920. Murphy, reluctant at first, gets swept up in the movement as he witnesses the violence against the Irish first-hand. Then we see the ensuing training, ambushes, torture, planned assaults, and executions. There's also talk of Black and Tans, Connolly, Fenians, Dáil Eirann, Auxies, Sinn Fein, 1916, Michael Collins, and Free-Staters.

The theme is summed up by what a character says towards the end: "It's easy to know what you're against, quite another to know what you're for." It's interesting to contrast Murphy's character here with his role as Kitten Braden in "Breakfast on Pluto," where he played a gay Irish cross-dresser who falls in with the IRA and pointedly rejects their violence by throwing their guns into the river. I'm not sure which approach -- violence or pacifism -- is correct, but I do know "Breakfast on Pluto" was a good movie, and so was this.

Bug

Two crazy people think their hotel room is infested with bugs. Do they seek another room? No, because that would make sense. "Bug" is based on a play and proves my theory that plays nowadays have bad dialogue: stilted, pointless, unnaturally conversational, pointless mini-monologues, characters who inexplicably speak in specialized terminology about some field that's supposed to be metaphorical -- here, bugs.

Ever since I saw "Norma Jean & Marilyn," I've thought Ashley Judd was a terrible actress. She's like a female Ryan Phillippe: she ruins films. The only difference between them is that Judd doesn't look like she wears lipstick. Here, she doesn't do anything to change my opinion. Watching her scream "I am the super-mother bug!" is painful.

This Is England

A coming-of-age tale set in early '80s Britain against the backdrop of the aftershocks of the Falklands War. It's like "Harry Potter," but instead of magicians, the boy protagonist falls in with skinheads, and instead of Voldemort as an all-powerful omnipresent evil force, the normal people are worried about skinheads and the skinheads are worried about Pakistanis and other non-whites. It's decent, but in all seriousness, British films without subtitles are a very bad idea.

Last Days

More walking, by Gus Van Sant. This time with some sitting. It makes "Kurt & Courtney" seem like a really smart movie. Parts are reminiscent of "Spinal Tap," where the band leaves while Nigel does his extravagant guitar solos. Nigel is throwing horseshoes at his guitar and strumming it with a violin, while the rest of his band is eating at a restaurant. Here, it's like Van Sant left the camera rolling while the actors did their thing, then he walked around, grabbed a bite to eat, went to the bookstore, returned to the set, and said, "Cut. That's a wrap" In the realm of art films with long takes and half-improv dialogue, Van Sant just doesn't hold a candle to Cristi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu. You heard it here first.

Lake of Fire

A two-and-a-half-hour, black-and-white documentary on abortion by the director of "American History X." In short, not a date movie. This has been hailed as an even-handed look at the so-called hot-button issue, and indeed it spends equal time talking to pro-life and pro-choice people. But I think the film takes a rather strong pro-choice stance, since the only pro-life people we see are complete idiots. One such idiot foresees "truck bombs of abortion conventions" and surface-to-air missiles against abortion clinics. Conventions? (A quick Google search revealed only 286 hits for "abortion convention," virtually all referring to anti-abortion conventions.) There's another preacher who thinks California has "Lift Up Your Dress Week" where people are forced to choose whether they're a homosexual or heterosexual. (A Google search revealed 4 hits for "Lift Up Your Dress Week," all 4 from reviews of this film.) And myriad other acerbic, pestiferous, illiterate idiots.

I know there are intelligent, articulate pro-life people out there, but they're not in this film. (Not that we don't see idiots in the pro-choice camp as well.) I also noticed that most of the people who opine about the right thing to do are men. Whether that's the filmmaker's choice or just who speaks about it publicly the most, I'm not sure; maybe a little of both.

"Lake of Fire" shows an actual abortion procedure and graphic clips from anti-abortion films. And these are the strongest arguments against abortion. They're necessary, though, because, as I mentioned, apparently there were no intelligent people who could speak out against it. I was also struck when one proponent of abortion rights claimed when they were illegal, botched abortions were the highest cause of death of women ages 15-45, higher than heart attacks and car accidents. Not sure if that's true, but if it is, damn. I found the most poignant part to be towards the end with Stacey, a woman who the film follows through the abortion process, the interviews where she talked about being abused, the final interview to make sure it's the right choice, the actual procedure, and her talking about it afterwards when she breaks down crying, saying "I know I made the right decision, but it's still not easy. It's more in my heart than in my stomach now." It puts a human face on the practical decision involved and is more thought-provoking than any of the statements by the talking heads who are interviewed. However, even this sequence was hampered by the heavy-handed string music the director employed way too often. Note to the director: when someone is crying after getting an abortion, we don't need to hear music to understand this is supposed to be sad.

Let me conclude by saying I'm against even-handedness. Especially in this political season, it's common to hear seemingly conciliatory people dodge taking a stand by claiming, "Well, there are extremists on both sides." True, but it's naive to not realize the extremists on one side are usually right. It's the middle-of-the-road people who ruin everything. So let's not praise someone for being even-handed; especially not when the person is in fact making a strong point. I'm out.

30 Days of Night

Like "The Thing," but less interesting and less existential, and it's got vampires, and Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, and it takes place in Alaska, and it doesn't explore the nature of man, and it's a lot bloodier, and the ending is not open-ended. But other than that, it's like "The Thing."

The Rundown, Live Free or Die Hard

As Joey Tribbiani said, "Not my first time."

Terror's Advocate

Query: if I recommend a two-and-a-half-hour documentary in French about a lawyer, how many people will watch it? The advocate in the title means more than being someone's attorney. Rather, the film explores how Jacques Verges not only represented terrorists in court but may have also actually aided terrorists in their cause. Plus, his stances were not always consistent, as he defended leftists, dictators, rebels, and fascists; he defended terrorists of any stripe. Consider it the other side of the coin of "Munich." He's French and has practiced in Algeria, so I'm not sure what his legal ethical responsibilities were, but it's interesting to note the number of American legal ethics rules he violates -- having relations with a client, aiding crime, disrupting judicial proceedings, revealing confidential information he learned while representing clients. But he was effective, in his way: he claims he's had dozens of "clients, friends" sentenced to death, and none was executed.

Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) was his friend. He defended Djamila Bouhired of the FLN, members of the FPLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) who attacked an El Al plane in Greece, Moise Tshombe (said to be the presumed killer of Patrice Lumumba), Magdalena Kopp of Carlos the Jackal's terror group, Klaus "The Butcher of Lyon" Barbie. He's defended the despot of Gabon, and the dictators of Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Togo.

As you might be able to tell, there's a lot of name-dropping, and if you don't pay attention it can be hard to keep up. You look away for a second, and all of a sudden you're knee-deep in connections between Verges, Waddid Haddad, and Francois Genoud, or people are referencing the Setif massacre. There's a lot of history here, but it's worth knowing, or at least being introduced to.

It takes a lot for someone to say, "I was asked, 'Would you defend Hitler?' I said, 'I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty.'" Ne riez pas! C'est grave. By the end of the film, you've seen a glimpse of a fascinating man.

Elephant

There's a right way to make a movie that's nothing but people walking, and a wrong way. This is closer to the right way than "Gerry." The acting isn't great, and the dialogue tries to be allusive, but ends up being forced and stilted. The sound is good, though, when it shows the dialogue of other people getting into the characters' heads.

But, as the film's title suggests, there's an elephant in the room that should be discussed. As Marilyn Manson said after Columbine, "don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue -- it's been happening every day for a long time." For Bill Maher's 2007 list of "Dickheads of the Year," one of his picks was "The Asshole Who Shot Up Virginia Tech." He said, "I've forgotten his name — which is as it should be!" The movie doesn't give an answer for school shootings, but I'm not sure it hints at anything either, other than the obvious -- bad parents, picked on, easy access to guns. But as the movie also shows, other kids have bad parents and deal with bullies, and they don't kill people. Maybe Maher's right; maybe they're just assholes.

Gerry

Say what you want about Gus Van Sant, but he sure knows how to film two guys walking for 100 minutes. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck get lost in the desert and speak in pointless improv dialogue. Then one dies. This is one of those movies that will make you look around and think you're on a hidden-camera show because what you're watching has just got to be a joke. I'm supposed to watch six minutes of a camera circling the actors as they sit quietly and stare into space? I'm supposed to watch eight minutes of two guys walking slowly through the desert without saying anything? Really?

There's lots of long shots of mountains and skies that are seemingly pointless. There is a method to it, though. Since it's open-ended and doesn't tell you what to think, it gives you a chance to imagine what the characters are thinking and drift off in your own direction. You might think, the world is big, people are small, what is the meaning of life? You may ask yourself, what are the lyrics to that Talking Heads song? Or you might think, if I fast-forward, the skies will go by faster and I won't miss any dialogue, and what is the meaning of my life if I spend it watching movies like this?

Zodiac

When I first saw this, I liked it, but was put off by the excessive length, the time spent on a dead end (the film projectionist), and the untidy resolution. Seeing it again I have a much higher opinion of it, and I think these perceived weaknesses are the film's strengths. Dead ends are a natural part of problem solving and thinking through a problem, and it's refreshing to see a procedural film realistically depict that. And the film truly does subvert our expectations: there's no real climax, the minimal violence is at the beginning, and the plot doesn't bother to go unproductive places. It's an absorbing experience for all of its nearly 160 minutes.

Southland Tales

Nuclear attacks in Texas on July 4, 2005 set off WW3. "Southland Tales" chronicles a web of lives in California during the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election as they navigate increased security, terrorist threats, a feeling of despair, and general turmoil throughout the world. It's like "Twin Peaks" meets "Strange Days," set in a world not too unlike that in "Robocop" (except without any robocops). The satire and social commentary don't hit as hard as they should and it's often too derivative and obvious, but there are moments of insight and unexpected serenity and its heart is in the right place. Towards the end, the plot goes places I think few will comprehend (I don't include myself in that category).

If you make it through the movie, you'll see a winning effort by Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. I like him. I do. But I must confess, of his movies, I've only liked "The Rundown." The rest of the casting is way out there: Christopher Lambert as an arms dealer, Jon Lovitz as a bad cop, Wally Shawn as a visionary scientist, Bai Ling as who the hell knows, a political stoolie played by the guy who Kitty, George Bluth's secretary, hooked up with from "Night Court" (not Harry Anderson or Bull), JT as an Iraq war vet/narrator, Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler as Neo-Marxist activists, Mandy Moore as The Rock's wife, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as an airhead porn star whose Britney Spears aspirations lead her to sing "Teen Horniness is Not a Crime."

Enchanted

I'm reminded of what Peter Gibbons said in "Office Space": "So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life." That's what watching this movie is like. It starts off terrible, and every single minute is worse than the one before it, so the entire time you're watching it, it's like watching the worst moment in movies ever. As Samir said about the "Jump to Conclusions" mat, "Yes, this is horrible, this idea."

I Am Legend

I like Will Smith as an actor, and he shows some genuine talent here. I'm thinking of the scene where the camera focuses on his face while he's holding his dog off-screen, and we see him straining and his eyes welling up. And I also liked the scenes where he's talking to the mannequins he set up in the video store and around the city. At first he plays it like he's consciously doing it in an effort to keep himself sane, but as time goes on he plays it like he's not so sure anymore. It's a subtle shift and well done.

The rest of the movie, though, I can take it or leave it. I don't get a lot out of CGI. I always wonder how much better and scarier it would be if, for instance, the hemocytes or Darkseekers were real people. Granted they couldn't leap through the air like in here, but I think it'd look better. And as far as the zombie/vampire/survivalist genre goes, I think there are better films. One reason I like the "28 [time period] Later" series is that the action sequences are better filmed, with rapid close-ups of the zombies, great make-up and costumes, conveying a genuine sense of terror. Also, "Legend" seems to lack a coherent underlying social message that Romero has tried to explore in his series, like anti-Communism hysteria in "Night of the Living Dead," anti-commercialism in "Dawn of the Dead," and anti-fascism of "Land of the Dead." At least in "Legend," unlike in "The Omega Man," the film doesn't end with Robert Neville dead with his arms outspread in the Jesus Christ pose.

Another thought: one of the billboards in an early scene is for a new movie: the batman symbol with the Superman "S" inside. Would that movie be good? If it's like the new Batman series, yes. If it's like the new Superman series, no.

Live Flesh

Madrid, 1970. Habeas corpus, the freedoms of speech and residence have been suspended; a state of emergency. Into this maelstrom, Penolope Cruz gives birth on a bus (with the help of Javier Bardem's mom). A boy is born on Christmas, while the bus is right under a big blue star light on the street. Hmm, an allusion to Jesus? Perhaps? And the film ends with Elena giving birth to someone's baby (I'll spoil it at the end of the review) on Christmas Eve. Parallelism. And in Spain 20 years after the boy is born, someone sees on TV, "Hospitals: State of Emergency." This probably refers to the same hospital strike featured in "The Flower of My Secret" and shows the world has not changed much; there's still turmoil after Franco.

The plot: Javier Bardem, an officer, is hit by a stray bullet during an arrest while his partner is skirmishing with an armed man (the boy who was born in the beginning). This boy, Victor, is played by a Spanish Balthazar Getty and ends up having a relationship with the significant others of both of the cops.

The film ends with Victor telling his as yet unborn son how he was born in the Spain of Franco, but his son shouldn't be too scared to come out now, because "in Spain we stopped being scared a long time ago." So Almodovar means for Victor to be the artist that emerged from Franco's repression -- Victor as Almodovar, and Jesus. The consummate lover and learner, the misunderstood sincere young man, the savior of mankind. I'm not sure how far to take the meaning, but there's something there.

Wedding Daze

Not my choice. Really bad. The ability to say "I told you so" is never worth as much as it should be.

In the Valley of Elah

In the Valley of Blah. It's a Paul Haggis film; therefore, it's not good and there is the unnecessary use of ethnic slurs. America still awaits a decent non-documentary film about the current Iraq war.

Amores Perros

Brutal, honest, bloody, steady, dogfighting, infatuation with a sister-in-law, pride, jealousy, an unhinged model, an ex-guerrilla assassin, kismet, redemption, Garcia Bernal, a world where life gives you two options: "Me lo pagas, o me lo pagas, cabron."

The Omega Man

Charlton Heston in a film based on the same book as "I Am Legend." Smatterings of "Escape from New York" and the Romero "Dead" series. I hope "Legend" is better than this.

For the Bible Tells Me So

A documentary addressing homophobia in the church, its roots and justifications. I don't know where it comes from, the anger, and the movie doesn't explain it that well. Although I'm not sure anything can. Among others, it features interviews with the parents of Anglican bishop Gene Robinson and the Gephardts, whose daughter is out. While the film's effort is laudable, it's execution is not that great. And towards the end it becomes a blatant pro-Soulforce and anti-Focus on the Family screed, which, even if you agree with, is not that interesting. It's okay to portray Gene Robinson's actions as laudable for furthering gay rights. But to have people call him a "holy man" might go too far.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has some nice words at the end, though: "I can't for the life of me imagine that God would say, 'I will punish you because you are black. You should have been white. I will punish you because you are a woman; you should have been a man. I punish you because you are homosexual; you ought to have been heterosexual.' I can't -- I can't for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things."

No Country for Old Men

I'm sorry, friendo, but I think less of this movie now than when I first saw it. It's okay, but there's nothing new or risky about it. And I don't buy the argument that the movie is faithful to the book. If that's the case, then there are failings in the book too. The movie seems to be about how little life is worth, but I found it more enjoyable and enriching to watch "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," a film about how much life is worth. Take the beginning, when Tommy Lee Jones muses on what it would take to understand a killer: "A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, 'Okay, I'll be part of this world.'" But the existential exploration and moral quandary this promises never comes to fruition. We don't see enough of Jones to see how he has put his soul at hazard.

I still don't like the ending. The sheriff talks to some guy named Ellis who we've never seen before; then we see Chigurh go on, same as ever, although with the parallelism of asking for someone's shirt when he's bloody, like Moss on his way to Mexico; and then Sheriff Ed Tom recollects his dreams of his dad, one about him riding through the pass in the mountains with his dad, his dad rides ahead to light a fire, and he knows "whenever I got there, he'd be there. And then I woke up." If we're not even going to see the climax, we should at least see a decent ending, and we don't.

The Bank Job

A pretty good heist film "based on real events" in which the government wants to recover some sexy-time pictures of Princess Margaret, so members of MI5 convince a drug trafficker to convince her amateur friends to rob the bank so there can be no connection to the British government. There's also a Michael X figure, a criminal posing as a black radical, who is imperfectly tied in to the whole thing and doesn't quite develop beyond a caricature. It's efficient and for the most part uncompromising, and it touches on modern themes like surveillance, suppression of the media, and corrupt politicos.

Dan in Real Life

What's an advice columnist widower (Steve Carell) with three daughters to do? He finds a girl and likes her, but she's dating his brother (Dane Cook). It starts off promising, melancholy and sweet. But when Juliette Binoche enters the picture, it sharply derails. It's not her fault; it's just an unfortuante coincidence. Too bad she enters the movie about ten minutes into it. The acting gets forced, the story gets contrived, the script gets formulaic, the Bourne Critic gets bored.

The Flower of My Secret

A melancholic romance novelist moonlighting anonymously at a newspaper is told to review her own book, at the same time she's trying to move away from the romance genre. Refreshingly, it's more subdued than Almodovar's others in the sexuality department. It also has some characteristic flares of melodrama, like the confrontation between Amanda Gris, as she's known, and her husband, who's home on leave from the war in Bosnia. Almodovar also places it in historical context, showing the student protests about no jobs against Felipe, Prince of Asturias, the first son of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. You don't always remember that other countries still have kings and queens, even if they don't really have any authoritah.

The film has value on its own, it might be most notable for its intriguing connections to the rest of Almodovar's oeuvre. Her agent describes her new novel for the series "True Love": "A novel about a mother who discovers her daughter's killed her father who had tried to rape her. And so that no one finds out hides the body in the cold-storage room of a neighbor's restaurant." We learn later it's called "Cold-Storage Room." "Volver" might be seen as the completion of that task, turning that plot into a quasi-romance appropriate for "True Love." But whereas Penelope Cruz's character does not need men, here the author believes she does. Also, the beginning features a filming of an instructional video, how doctors tell mothers their sons are brain dead and they can use the organs. The woman who plays the actress stars in the later film "All About My Mother" as the mother of a son who dies and who then falls in with some acting types. And Gris's mother is a recurrent actress, playing a senile elderly woman in several films, including "Volver." The house they go to in the village near the end looks like "Volver." So those are the connections I saw.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I've seen this a couple of times before, and I liked it, though it never stuck with me. But seeing it within the context of the rest of Almodovar's work, I appreciate it more. It's a significant step for the director and shows a definite maturation of his style.

Law of Desire

An Almodovarian snapshot of late-'80s Spain, the heyday of yayo and neon clothes and amorphous sexuality, at least among people in the acting/directing/theater/film world. This is lower-echelon Almodovar, akin to "Bad Habits," though of minor interest for the concepts and themes that he explores later, better. Also, a scene takes place in a restaurant near a lighthouse that looks an awful lot like the restaurant in "Volver." And some scenes show an early but unadvanced appreciation for Hitchcock that would be expanded on in "Bad Education."

Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo

A look at the little seen world of man-whores, he-pimps, he-bitch man-slaps, mark-ass marks, trick-ass marks, punk bitches, skig-skag skanks and scallywags, ho's, heifers, heehaws, and hoolihoos. It also has an early performance by Amy Poehler as a woman with Tourette's ("Ball hair!" "Yeah, we need a strike here."). Although I still find it a somewhat affecting and sweet film with a message of respecting women for who they are, it unfortunately has the comedic staying power of "Stripes."

Idiocracy

An underseen gem that shows Luke Wilson, defying the odds, can actually be a great leading man. Who knew? The premise: In the future, Wilson is the smartest man in the world, proven by his ability to answer this question on an IQ test: "If you have one bucket that holds two gallons and another bucket that holds five gallons, how many buckets do you have?"

Since stupid people breed more often than intelligent people, the world's IQ scores go down. People call each other scrot and 'tarded and say things like, "Go away, 'batin!" Wilson's court-appointed lawyer, Frito Pendejo, responds to Wilson's claim he's not guilty by credulously saying, "That's not what the other lawyer said."

Advertising is more explicit and direct. "If you don't smoke Tarrlytons... F--- you!" Carl's Jr.'s motto is, "F--- you, I'm eating." Fuddruckers changes to Futtbuckers then Buttruckers then to well, you can probably guess. Everybody drinks Brawndo, "the thirst mutilator," simply because "it's got electrolytes," though no one knows what those are. Water was a threat to Brawndo's profit margin, so it bought the FCC and FDA and could say and do anything. People are paid money if they end sentences by saying, "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." They have companies like Jack Inuh Box, Uhmerican Exxxpress, and Starbucks Exotic Coffee For Men, which serves Gentlemen's Lattes. Costco has a law school and a greeter who stares into space and says in monotone, "Welcome to Costco. I love you. Welcome to Costco. I love you."

The America 500 years from now is a scary prospect (though after seeing glimpses of "The Hills" and "Keeping Up With The Kardashians," I think now is pretty scary). "Ow! My Balls!" is the most popular TV show. It's nothing but a man getting hit and kicked and crushed and bit in the balls. It serves as a kind of metacommentary on our society since we find the show funny as well. "Ass" was the number one movie in America. "And that's all it was for 90 minutes." It won eight Oscars, including best screenplay. Readers of this blog can probably guess that I don't think movies are much better than this now.

Goya's Ghosts

Wigs and accents. "Goya's Ghosts" is like an ersatz "Girl with a Pearl Earring," a film about a painter and his paintings. Except this movie isn't about Goya as much as it is about Father Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), who had a thing for the girl who was the inspiration for some of Goya's paintings. And in Spain in 1792, with the Inquisition and all, you can except things were not pretty, especially if you were suspected of being a Judaizer.

There are signs the filmmaker tried to tie the subject matter into modern times, to make it relevant. For instance, there's talk of confessions obtained by torture -- after someone has been put to "The Question" -- and how reliable they are. Hmm, are we making a statement about US policy during the War on Terror? But I don't think that during the Inquisition, regular people would be ready to grill a Father about the Church practices and criticize it. In another part echoing recent events, when the French Revolution spreads to Spain, the invading army thinks they'll be greeted with flowers and kisses because the people hate their royal family, since it comprises a king who's the cousin of the recently decapitated French king and a queen who is Italian. So the people will greet their liberators with open arms. Not so much.

But for being about Goya, the film never shows what made him such a rara avis. The Church did not like his paintings, but that could have been explored more. The only biographical detail you learn about him was that he was deaf when he aged. If you want to learn about Goya, you have to wait until they make a film based on Robert Hughes's biography.

Chopper

Consider this an Australian "El Mariachi," a decently made (considering the low budget) story of an Australian standover man of some repute. It shows no signs that the director would go on to make the much more impressive "The Assassination of Jesse James," but it does show how good an actor Eric Bana is.

Black Book

When I first saw "Black Book," I thought it was ho-hum. Upon seeing it again, I have a higher opinion of it, placing it closer to director Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" than "Starship Troopers." It's the story of Rachel, a survivor, a Jewish woman in the Netherlands who is forced into myriad ethically complex situations during World War II. With the Germans occupying the country, it's a world of double crosses, where everyone is hedging their bets based on which side will prevail, where the ideological differences that cause the war have little bearing on where one places one's loyalties. It's a glimpse of how the war played out away from the battlefield, not too common in the generally tired genre of combat-laden WWII films. The most memorable scene remains how Rachel, in order to disguise herself, dyes her hair. Um, all of it.

The film has several unique elements that I didn't appreciate the first time. For one, it looks at the role of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands as a rallying cry for the Resistance. And in showing a glimpse of how society is upended in wartime, we see the workings of the underground economy: the German officers show all the things they "inherit" -- the room from "the capitalists we kicked out," chocolate, the diamonds in the safe (presumably confiscated); and the Resistance lives in a world of paying for safe crossing ands working in certain factories. In such a situation, it's hard for anyone to maintain her probity and uprightness. The film also tries to connect to modern events. At a Nazi party, an officer for the invading German army says something to the local sympathizers like, "Your fight against the terrorists is our fight." Fighting for a free Europe sounds like what US soldiers and politicians might say to Iraqis.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the film is the way it subverts what he think of the aftermath of the war. We see how suspected sympathizers were treated after the war, and it's morally repugnant; this is paired with showing how the resistance was not uniformly a group of ethically sound heroes, since some were morally compromised as well. This subversion of expectations is what makes the ending disturbing. Years later in Israel, Rachel goes back to her kibbutz with her family, peacefully, only to have the camera pan out to see it fenced off with Israeli soldiers manning the towers as bombs go off and children run for cover in the background and aircraft fly overhead. After seeing a film where both sympathizers and the resistance had skeletons in the closet, it's unclear what point Verhoeven is making about the modern state of Israel. All we know is that for Rachel and the others in Israel, the war is not over.

Matador

The cast includes a young Antonio Banderas, who is fascinated by death and has major Catholic guilt issues because of his madre, causing him to confess to things he didn't do; a bullfighting teacher who gets off (literally) on violence; and Banderas's abogado, who has Xenia Onatopp's proclivity for climaxing while killing someone. Yes, it's a Pedro Almodovar film.

This 1986, NC-17 effort shows early stages of Almodovar's signature style, such as the strikingly colorful sets and outfits, the character-driven plots, and the almost disturbingly dismissive, comic treatment of violence against women, also seen later in "Tie me up! Tie me down!" And with its link of sex and death, it prefigures such later classics as "Kissed," a grossly underseen indy film with a truly unforgettable ending.

Beowulf

Imagine watching a semi-interesting cut scene from a video game that is usually too long at 2 minutes. Now imagine it's 2 hours long. That's what it's like to slog through this haphazard animated adaptation. Aside from some truly inspired action sequences, the film has a lackluster feel and makes one wonder why everything was animated. Many parts would have been better served by showing the actual actors.

The Danes of 507 AD were saucy brutes, and their English was quite good. They say things like, "Bring me my mead." Because "mead" is an older way of saying "alcohol," you know that this took place awhile ago. Just in case the title card that said "507 AD" didn't fill you in. They also swear by saying, "Odin's swifin balls," not too unlike Ron Burgundy saying, "Great Odin's raven!" My problem is, having them use Shakespeare-era English terms and phrases makes as much sense as them using modern slang, so they may as well just be speaking Old English.

The Danes have by this time heard of the new Roman God, Christ Jesus. But the king says they cannot rely on him, they need a hero. Like Beowulf the Geat, one of the Germanic people who lived in Sweden at this time. The at-times nude warrior announces himself, "I am Beowulf. I am here to kill your monster." There's probably a good drinking game in taking a shot every time he says, "I am Beowulf." You'd probably down a fifth after the first hour.

Beowulf "I am Beowulf" the Geat lives a full life. He fights Grendel, an overgrown demon that looks like a bloody fetus; he sleeps with Grendel's mom (Angelina Jolie), a naked water serpent that wears high heels; and he then fights a dragon, which turns out to be (spoiler alert) his son. Not bad for a Geat, but the movie could have been better.

Rendition

"Extraordinary rendition" refers to the process by which the United States kidnaps innocent people and ships them to foreign countries, where despotic government officials torture them for information they don't have, and then the people are released--if they live--and sue the United States, and courts dismiss the suits because it would reveal "state secrets," even though everybody knows about it and they even make movies about it.

"Rendition" is a movie about this process that takes a long time going nowhere. It's not great. But it does highlight one of the tragedies of 9/11, that now several great actors of Arab or Indian descent are forced to play one of two roles: a terrorist, or someone who fights terrorists. In this film, one such actor is forced to say, "We have a saying. 'Beat your woman every morning. If you don't know why, she does.'" It's hard to imagine a filmmaker allowing that to be said by someone of any other ethnicity in movies today.