ATL

Think of it as "Roll Bounce 2," starring T.I.P., or T.I., whatever he calls himself. Then the latter half becomes "Boyz n the Hood" for the Hannah Montana set. Not terrible, but I can't think of a reason to see it, other than looking at the actress who plays a character called New New.

Enemy of the State

Tony Scott is one of the best directors working today, and I wanted to see where he came from. His modern period might start with this film. The surveillance specifics in "Enemy of the State" prefigure his "Deja Vu," and the extensive use of multiple cameras shows signs of "Domino."

The unrated extended cut has more Seth Green, Jamie Kennedy, Jack Black, Jason Lee, Barry Pepper, and the weird-looking guy from "Starship Troopers." And of course Will Smith and Gene Hackman, in a role similar to that of "The Conversation." The bad guy, Jon Voigt, was born on 9/11, which is curious.

The plot revolves around a new law, the Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act, which would allow unlimited government surveillance. Will Smith's wife says, "There goes the Fourth Amendment, what's left of it." She also calls someone who supported the bill a "fascist gas bag." That sounds about right. In my opinion, the movie should be required viewing for the people who recently sold out our country by passing something similar.

Just kidding, I don't really mean it.

Yes, I do.

Revenge

Part of my effort to see all of Tony Scott. From the beginning, we're skeptical since one of the selling points is that it was "filmed on location in Mexico." This, like "Top Gun," starts with jets. But then it goes into new territory, with a love triangle of Mexicans played by Anthony Quinn and an eventually Joker-grinned Madeleine Stowe, with American Kevin Costner caught in the middle. There's a nice performance by Miguel Ferrer, voice of the Heretic Leader in "Halo 2" and co-star of "Robocop." And Quinn plays a convincing Mexican. The last shot is impressive, a hilltop convent with the shadow of a huge mountain in the background. It makes you want to reread "Under the Volcano" for some reason.

Witness for the Prosecution

A classic Billy Wilder-helmed film with a lengthy English court trial at the end, replete with cross-examination galore. The ending has about a dozen plot twists in the last five minutes or so, but that doesn't detract from the rest of the film. Plus, Agatha Christie wrote it. I've only read one of her books ("And Then There Were None," also known as "Ten Little Indians"), but I thought it was great.

Diary of the Dead

July 3, 2008

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry.

It's me, George A. Romero. I made another zombie movie. I've made "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," and "Day of the Dead." After I exhausted time, I made "Land of the Dead." Now I went the Harriet the Spy approach with "Diary of the Dead."

This one uses the film-within-a-film, mockumentary-like "found footage" approach, which, to be perfectly frank, is a tired tack. "Diary" is very "Blair Witch" meets "Scream," with some self-righteous social commentary on how the government lies to the media and the media lies to the people, most likely alluding to recent events. For safe measure, I also throw in some stuff about the perversity of reality TV, making some shallow, fairly obvious observations.

I'll try to do better next time.

The Hunger

A Tony Scott-directed early '80s film about a bisexual vampire, so out there it makes you wonder how he went from this to "Top Gun." It actually shares quite a lot in common with "Blade Runner," filmed the previous year by Scott's brother, Ridley. There are striking similarities in tone, soundtrack, pace, imagery, and themes, but "The Hunger" might be even more broody and shadowy and David Bowie. I've tried to appreciate "Blade Runner" over the years, and I've gotten close, but I've always fallen short, ultimately finding it dull. But "The Hunger" I like after one viewing. Maybe I'm ready to give "Blade Runner" another shot. Or maybe it's just that I much prefer Tony to Ridley.

Venus in Furs

A dreamy, atmospheric, arty, pretentious, boring depiction of the sadistic underbelly of the '70s jazzy Eurotrash jet-set crew. Mildly amusing in a how-did-a-movie-like-this-get-made kind of way, but not worth it. To its credit, the second half seems to go by a lot faster than the first, but that's probably because I was fast-forwarding in order to get through it.

The Matrix, Death Warrant

Back to back. Morpheus is Laurence Fishburne's character in "The Matrix," and also the password to the files in "Death Warrant." So there's a link. Other than that, they're opposites. One is great, one is not.

Persepolis

The history of modern Iran as seen through the eyes of an animated French-speaking girl. A bit inside, I know. Reader(s) of this blog should have picked up on the fact that I'm not a fan of animated films. I don't think there's much to them. This one's actually good. And it looks unique, stretching the medium to use creative ways to convey feeling and theme. If there's another thing like it, I haven't seen it.

In Bruges

Before I settled in to spend a harrowing two hours in a theater watching the overrated catastrophe "Juno," I saw a preview for "In Bruges." A friend next to me leaned over and said she hoped the film we were about to see would be better. At the end of "Juno," she was relieved it had been better. But for me, the preview of "In Bruges" was the best part of watching "Juno." It's funny and sweet and odd, and even though the ending doesn't quite do it for me, I would still recommend it. "In Bruges" also shows that Colin Farrell has found his niche, giving his own spin to every line he delivers, like, "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn't, so it doesn't." He's great.

Inside

French home-invasion horror. A psychotic woman wants to perform an unauthorized C-section on a very pregnant woman, set against the backdrop of the recent riots. Profoundly bloody, numerous stabbings. But for being tightly focused and trying to follow Aristotle's notion of the unity of time for drama, it has an episodic feel, with David Lynch-like droning accompanying the screen fading in and out between brutal death scenes. And it highlights an admirable trend in cinema, confined mainly to horror films (see also "High Tension"), with the stars being women, and the men being the throwaway side characters who never seem to last. Keep it up, French horror directors!

P.S. The ending goes into territory where only foreign films can tread. It's not pretty, and if it doesn't make you say WTF, I don't know what will.

Cyborg

I think movies are too long, so it's admirable when a film is less than 90 minutes. But still, whenever one is, you have to wonder, is it because the movie is completely terrible? In the case of last year's "Vacancy," the answer is no. In the case of "Cyborg," the answer is a firm yes. The title card says this sci-fi film takes place in New York City "in the future." And this is after the narrator has already told you the film takes place in the future. Something that stupid tells you you're entering "Battlefield Earth" territory. The most interesting part of the film was this same opening narration, which inspired some lines from Method Man's "Tical 2000: Judgement Day."

I don't believe everything I read on Wikipedia, but some things I'd like to believe are true. For instance, according to Wikipedia (as of 7:17 a.m. June 23, 2008), the studio had costumes and props left over from the sequel to "Masters of the Universe," which fell through, and they needed to use them to make some money, so someone wrote this movie. I think they also had a leftover synthesizer soundtrack. If you watch this movie -- and there's no reason you should -- you'll believe this Wikipedia story too.

Double Impact

Van Damme is long lost brothers, Chad and Alex, separated at birth, who both grow up to be karate masters. One of them looks like Jimmy Fallon as the undercover Cuban in "Taxi." But of course, if you cast the Muscles from Brussels as both brothers, of course they have to be karate masters. And we know they're identical because they both have the same odd bump on the forehead that he had in "Lionheart," and they both have an inexplicable accent.

The ending takes place in a location that reminds me of the unjustifiably unknown Eddie Griffin action film, "Blast," which has the best pre-fight one-liner in recent memory: "It's George Bush time." To which (to make it the best pre-fight two-liner in recent memory) his Noah Wyle look-alike sidekick (the stoner from "Clueless") says something like, "You mean it's just us?" The ending also has a flexarific fight between Van Damme and the pectoral madness that is Bolo Yueng.

The most notable part of the film is a dark-blue-hued fight scene between Van Damme and a guy with spurs. The fighters dance in and out of the shadows, and it looks like a surreal Grace Jones video. It borders on the artistic. But you know what's not artistic? Ending an early '90s film with the camera freezing on the hero giving the ok sign with his fingers.

Othello

Laurence Olivier takes his turn as the eponymous Moor, although delivering a conflicted performance, at times Shakespearean and proper, and at others Al Jolson-like in his blackface smiling and "Tropic Thunder" makeup. I now know why Iago's wife should be hot (which I didn't get when I saw Orson Welles's version): in the first act Iago mentions how others talk about Othello sleeping with his wife. If Othello is to be any kind of credible wooer, he should not settle for second best.

Semi-Pro

Not even semi-funny. The jokes are tired and stale. Side note: rappers should stop acting. I've been tired of Mos Def appearing in films, and now I'm tired of Andre 3000 trying to act. If I could paraphrase how I remember Philip Seymour Hoffman's line in "M:I III" to Tom Cruise during the interrogation: "Just stop, okay. Don't." So, to all the rappers who want to act who are reading this blog, just stop, okay? Don't.

The Other Boleyn Girl

The story of how one family tried to sleep their way to the top. Might have been good in a "Poison Ivy" kind of a way, but for some reason, the cinematographer had the cameras out of focus during the good stuff. The movie suffers from a huge plot problem, akin to that of the recent seasons of "Lost." I'm thinking of the curious power of Ben to give people a reason to kill him and not be killed, and the ability to have people do what he says when there's no reason for them to do so. Here, the uncle tells everyone in his sister's family -- the Boleyns -- what to do, and they don't want to do it, and yet they do it. Um, may I ask why?

And if I could get on my democracy soapbox for a minute, I think it's odd so many people are concerned about the legitimacy of the heir to the king. It's as if they legitimately worry, if we don't have some random-ass heir (whoever comes out of the queen), then we'll end up with some other random-ass heir, and that would be bad. As if monarchies aren't inherently ridiculous. End of lecture, England's ridiculous, I'm done.

Lionheart

Van Damme plays Lyon, who has a lion's heart. See, it's a play on words. And this is back in the day when he was cu-ute (pronounced with two syllables). He escapes from Djibouti to New York, and has to get to Cali to save his brother who looks like the burnt Hungarian who fingered Keyser Soze. But he has no money, no job, no green card. What's he to do? Street fight.

Near the beginning, it tries to be a message movie, Van Damme's "Driving Miss Daisy," by showing the disparity of rich and poor, but that's quickly sidelined once the sporadic fight sequences begin. Bottom line: a'ight.

And, for those who care, the ending credits reveal the fight choreography was by Van Damme and Frank Dux, whose real-life story was "Bloodsport."

The Conformist

Some Italian film. Not great.

I'm Not There

I have seen pretension, and its name is "I'm Not There," the onanistic, impressionistic, POS biopic of Bob Dylan. The shtick is that Dylan is played by six different actors meant to embody different personas he's adopted over the years -- Richard Gere as Cowboy Dylan, Cate Blanchett as Fellini Dylan, Heath Ledger as Heath Ledger Dylan, and Christian Bale as Born-Again Dylan (who, perhaps deliberately, does a bad GW impression). But the most inspired casting choice is David Cross as Allen Ginsberg. Cross of course brings his baggage as Tobias Funke from "Arrested Development," and we can't take him seriously as an overrated goofball poet who wrote one good thing (Yes, I'm thinking of "Howl."). So when Cross reads a poem as Ginsberg, you imagine Tobias auditioning for "The Prosecution," probably a CBS procedural, reading something he knows, which is of course an Eve Ensler-penned monologue. Other than this unintentionally funny five-second snippet, I can't think of anything nice to say about this movie.

The Trial

Orson Welles takes on Franz Kafka. Welles's directing can be seen more from the creative camera angles than the sometimes stilted acting. It would be fair to say I stopped caring about this film about 20 minutes into it, and I finished it merely to be able to get a new Netflix and write another post. And maybe the movie deserves better treatment than I gave it, but that was my experience of watching this movie, which is what the blog is all about.