REVIEW: BLUE CRUSH - Since CS contributor Eric Baker hasn't shut up about Blue Crush since he saw first saw the trailer a few months ago, I decided to enlist his help in writing this review -- which will actually be a dialogue of sorts. We'll exchange our thoughts about the movie throughout the day, or at least until we run out of ways to say that Kate Bosworth is hot. If you'd like to join the discussion, please post your thoughts in the Feedback Forum. Now, before I (further) offend any female readers, I'll turn it over to Eric.

Eric (10:52 AM): Blue Crush isn't going to find its way onto a Sight and Sound list anytime soon, but it is what it is -- feel-good summer eye candy. The acting is passable, though the script is completely predictable. It's true Kate Bosworth is hot, and director John Stockwell knows what sells movies so he keeps most of the main cast -- Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake, who is a professional surfer -- in skimpy outfits throughout the movie. Still, as I'm sure the learned CS will tell us, the audience last night was mainly female, and this is primarily a women's empowerment film (at least that's how it's being promoted). I don't buy it. First, there's a subplot with an NFL quarterback (Matthew Davis) who happens to be in Hawaii for a week for the Pro Bowl. Of course, he sweeps her off her feet. I'd like to believe we live in an age where you can make a movie about strong women without throwing in the Cinderella fantasy. But unless you've got sturdy writing and acting talent, like Thelma and Louise, I don't think guys are going to go see this kind of movie unless there is action or babes; and I don't think women are going to see it unless there is a romantic subplot -- which is a shame because what they presumably paid all the money for, the incredible surfing shots, were pretty cool, even though it was noticeable when Bosworth's stunt double was surfing the "pipe" rather than her. The movie probably would have appealed to me more in an IMAX setting, but the dinky theater I viewed it in still did it justice. In the final analysis, it made me want to go surf. Maybe that wasn't super-producer Brian Grazer's goal, but it's something, right?

Adam (12:55 PM): The idea of having a "serious" discussion about this movie is almost as laughable as Matt Davis -- who was very good in Tigerland, by the way -- being an NFL quarterback. Nevertheless, I must respectfully disagree with your contention that Blue Crush does not live up to its feminist billing. It's true that the white knight comes to sweep her off her feet. However, the romance between Anne Marie and Matt is left wide open when the movie ends. He doesn't say, "Hey, let's get married," or "Why don't you come back to the mainland with me and live in my QB mansion?" I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect -- and the movie, in fact, suggests -- that Matt and Anne Marie would not end up staying together. You'll recall that during the "big speech" portion of the movie, when Anne Marie confronts Matt about their future, or lack thereof, the conversation moves away from love and ends up being about her own personal goals. Matt asks her what she wants and her answer includes things like, "Being able to pay all my bills in the same month," "See a woman on the cover of Surf magazine," and, of course, "Win the Pipe Masters competition" that she has been training for. Not one of her aspirations involved meeting the perfect guy or, more specifically, becoming his wife. I agree that the movie is entirely predictable and loaded with cliches, but I never felt insulted by Blue Crush -- not in the way, say, XXX offended me. I'd call it a "guilty pleasure" except it may actually be too well-made. I can't see myself flipping channels some Sunday afternoon, seeing Blue Crush on the screen, and becoming glued to it like one does with truly great stupid movies like, oh I dont know, Road House or Diggstown. (Lawdog, I'll be waiting for your post in the Feedback Forum.)

Eric (1:45 PM): Well at least you still respect me. I have to disagree with your characterization of Blue Crush for two reasons -- though I also can't believe we're attempting to have a serious discussion about this movie.
1. The "big speech" is totally contrived. She goes into the hotel wading pool in her dress because the clock struck midnight on her Cinderella fantasy, and we're supposed to believe she is a strong woman? Everything leading up to her declaration about what she really wants in life sounds like a plea for help -- I suppose to make her "turnaround" all the more dramatic, but the dialogue was just to clunky for me. Anne Marie: "What should I do?" Matt: "Why don't you tell me what you want to do?" Anne Marie: "OK. I want to . . ." 2. The movie in no way suggests that they don't end up staying together. Anne Marie's goals are never listed as mutually exclusive of Matt, and in fact the QB and his O Line buddy Leslie end up at the Pipe Masters competition where Anne Marie ends up "laying some pipe." Add to that the closing shot, which has Anne Marie playing tonsil hockey with Matt as photographers snap away, and you've got Hollywood circa 1940. Speaking of dogs, where are my dawgs in the Feedback Forum, yo?

Adam (3:05 PM): I didn't realize anybody was speaking about dogs. Anyway, the actual ending to that exchange was Matt saying: "Just be the girl I met on the beach who would never ask a guy what to do next." So she got confused and needed a man's perspective to get her head screwed back on straight. I see what you are saying about the Hollywood ending, but I still say the movie pretty clearly makes the case that if forced to choose between her man and her surfboard, she wouldn't have to think about it very long. You've come a long way, baby. To close out this little dialogue, I wanted to mention something that did disappoint me about the movie. You say the surfing shots "were pretty cool." But the movie doesn't show a lot of surfing so much as it does people getting "crushed." I understand that the movie is focused on a specific area of Oahu and a competition known for its awesome and dangerous waves, but standing up and falling down isn't exactly surfing. It sort of became like watching figure skating to me -- not that I, um, ever watch figure skating. There's little creative distinction in the skaters' routines; you're basically just waiting for someone to wipe out. Same thing here. You don't even see Anne Marie prove herself on a decent-sized wave until the very end. We're just supposed to believe that she can do it, but chooses not to because she is still trying to get over a near-drowning incident three years before. Speaking of which, I did like how every time she got introduced somebody had to point out that she was a promising surfer before she suffered a "near-drowning incident three years before." It's sort of like being Pete Best and having everyone introduce you as, "Pete Best, the drummer for The Beatles before they replaced him with Ringo Starr."

FULL FRONTAL = NOT-SO-FULL THEATERS - I heard a radio report this morning calling Steven Soderbergh's little digital experiment, Full Frontal, one of the biggest bombs of the summer. I don't know if that's completely fair. Box Office Mojo estimates Harrison Ford's K-19: The Widowmaker cost $100 million to make, with an additional $35 million spent on marketing. It didn't work. To date the film has made just $33.8 million. That's not a bomb. That's a nuclear meltdown...which is fitting, I suppose, considering the movie's subject matter. By comparison, Full Frontal cost about $2 million with another $2 million for promotion. Granted, it's only grossed $1.9 million in three weeks, but Miramax will surely at least break even in the end. There's no doubt the film has been a disappointment, however. After opening the movie in New York and L.A., Miramax hoped to expand to other cities on a wave of critical adulation and positive word-of-mouth. Instead, the critics tore it apart and the movie has been losing momentum. Last week it played on ten fewer screens than the previous week and saw its receipts drop 38%. A slight Soderbergh backlash had to be expected. Already a critical darling after Out of Sight (1998) and The Limey (1999), the overwhelming success in 2000 of Traffic and Erin Brockovich -- which made him the first director since Michael Curtiz to be nominated for Best Director twice in the same year -- propelled him to the top of Hollywood's A-List. Soderbergh's next movie is a remake of Solaris, the 1972 Russian science-fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, based on the book by Stanislaw Lem. It stars Soderbergh favorite and production partner George Clooney, and is scheduled to open wide the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (11/27). In a five-part interview with Film Threat, Soderbergh recently described Solaris as "a combination of 2001 and Last Tango In Paris." It doesn't exactly sound like box office gold, does it? Fortunately, Soderbergh isn't content -- and never was -- with being a Hollywood hit producer. The line for Solaris may be small, but I'll be one of the first people in it.

* Thanks to Full Frontal's poor reception, it has yet to play on a screen anywhere near me. But CS Chicago correspondent Sam Hallgren contributed this astute review:

If the idea of experimentation in film does not, or has not ever interested you, you will likely find Steven Soderbergh's new film Full Frontal unnecessarily... messy: The cinematography is messy; the narrative is messy; even the acting is messy. Inspired in part by the legacy of Dogme 95 filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (click here to learn how to make a Dogme film), the film was shot, for the most part, on digital video and edited on a Mac with DigiPro. Unlike many of the films that have come out of the Dogme 95 school, however, Full Frontal won't make you feel like you've just been molested. It's less an experiement, really, than it is, or appears to be, an opportunity for Soderbergh to blow off some steam - to make a movie without the pressure to make $100 million.

Soderbergh seems to need this play-time. For a relatively young filmmaker, his filmography is already littered with no-budget one-offs that aren't intended for mass consumption (Schizopolis, The Limey). His best films - Out of Sight and, too a lesser degree, Traffic - feature the best of both his pop and his experimental instincts. I think it's a great gift to cinephiles that one of the very best young directors working in Hollywood spends his time between big-budget studio projects, not by taking a 4-year hiatus, but by making a small film that allows him to push the boundaries of his craft. You may not like watching a grainy Julia Roberts mope around for two hours. And you may not understand the movie-within-a movie narrative that Soderbergh plays with. You may, in fact, wonder what the point of the whole thing is at all. But never once did I question Soderbergh's commitment to the piece.

According to the movie's advertising, Full Frontal offers a look at behind-the-scenes Hollywood. While offering some of that, it's really the least interesting part of the film (the exception is a wonderful scene between Julia Roberts - playing an actress - and her assistant. (It's the most honest and funny bit of acting I've ever seen Roberts do). The rest of the film works the periphery of the entertainment industry, offering choice bits to Catherine Keener (doing an occasionally inspired variation on her Being John Malkovich character) as a quickly unraveling HR director, and the movie-stealing Nicky Katt as a pretentious actor starring in an unintentional homage to Springtime for Hitler.

To Soderbergh's credit, the actors don't sabotage the film by having too much fun or by winking at the camera; but Soderbergh is winking - too often he reminds you that you're watching a movie. And this, really, is the film's biggest flaw: It doesn't take itself quite seriously enough to sustain the narrative (what there is of one to begin with).

Full Frontal is flawed, but I expect that this was the point. Experimentation is very often synonymous with self-indulgence, but I have always found Soderbergh a particularly unselfish director. He likes actors; he likes stories; and he respects his audience. If Full Frontal is marketed correctly, the film will get an audience that parallels its (tiny) budget - an audience made up primarily of those self-selective members of the movie-going public that know what they're getting into.

There may not be a need for more films like Full Frontal, but there is a great shortage of filmmakers like Soderbergh.

E-mail CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum

NEW ON DVD - Finally, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown have been released in 2-disc Collector's Edition sets ($15.99 each at Best Buy). Regrettably, neither disc features QT commentary. Other notable new releases: Joe Dante's Gremlins and Gremlins 2, both loaded with extra features; Iris, an uneven biopic about author Iris Murdoch that features great performances from Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, and especially Kate Winslet; also out today is the Mel Gibson Vietnam drama We Were Soldiers. The disc includes audio commentary by writer/director Randall Wallace, ten deleted scenes with director commentary, and a behind-the-scenes documentary entitled "Getting It Right." Here is my original review of We Were Soldiers from March 7th's Daily Iowan:

* The Vietnam War divided the nation so savagely during the late-60s and early '70s that it seems only natural for the films that document this conflict to project a certain schizophrenia.

Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam drama, Full Metal Jacket, is split so cleanly in half that it feels more like two separate stories than one narrative. The first part follows Joker (Matthew Modine) and his fellow Marines as they transform from young men to killing machines in basic training. The second part shows the consequences of this transformation once the fighting starts. (Notably, Joker at one point tries to explain to an officer why he is simultaneously wearing a peace symbol and sporting the words "Born To Kill" on his helmet.) Kubrick's only mistake is that the first half is so thoroughly rendered and unsettling on its own that the second half never quite matches its intensity.

We Were Soldiers, based on an account of a 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley, reveals a similar structural split, only the exact opposite is true. It's the relentless combat sequences during the final two-thirds of the movie that compensate for the heavy-handed first act.

The year is 1965, and the U.S. military is planning its initial attack on the People's Army of Vietnam. The man responsible for training the first batch of fighters is Col. Harold G. Moore (Mel Gibson), a tough-as-nails, Harvard-educated soldier whose task is to prepare his boys for battle against an enemy that is fighting in its own backyard with more troops at its disposal.

Moore immediately takes a liking to an idealistic young lieutenant named Jack Geoghegan (Chris Klein), who has a pretty wife (Keri Russell) and a newborn baby at home. Known for his roles in Election and the American Pie movies, Klein has always struck me as a bit too dopey and naïve. But here, his youthful ignorance seems appropriate. Despite all of his training, he really has no idea what he is in for. None of the men do, except perhaps Moore, who is determined not to repeat the mistakes of a French squadron that was massacred by the Vietnamese 10 years earlier.

Much of the dialogue during these scenes in Fort Benning, Ga., is laughable in its earnestness. The characters never seem to be saying their own words as much as mouthing the inflated ideology of first-time director and writer Randall Wallace, the screenwriter behind Braveheart and Pearl Harbor. Thankfully, once the battle begins, the constant clatter of M-16 fire eliminates the need for such dialogue. Wallace's depiction of war is often shocking in its grisliness, with blood spattering everywhere. Borrowing from Saving Private Ryan, Wallace gets the camera so close to the fight that blood even lands directly on the camera lens.

What ultimately keeps "Soldiers" from being as effective and enjoyable as Black Hawk Down, the recent film about a failed U.S. mission in Somalia, is that it is undeniably preachy. But Wallace's moralizing is perhaps forgivable when you consider the specific setting of the conflict in question. The battle of the Ia Drang Valley was the first major engagement between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies, before the war became a no-win proposition, before the country erupted against it. "Soldiers" tries -- too hard, perhaps -- to reflect this old-fashioned idealism, free of the cynicism toward war that was a byproduct of the Vietnam era. There's no marijuana smoke wafting through the jungle, or Credence and Buffalo Springfield blasting on the soundtrack -- just soldiers fighting for a cause.

We also have to consider who is telling the story. Black Hawk Down is based on a book by Mark Bowden, a reporter who had to complete extensive research to tell his story. His goal was to provide a straightforward, objective account of the battle in Mogadishu.

"Soldiers" is based on Moore's memoir, "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," co-written with Joseph Galloway, a former army journalist portrayed in the movie by Barry Pepper. These men aren't objective observers trying to recreate events. They were there. They saw the horror. They watched thousands of American boys die terrible deaths.

We Were Soldiers' constant sermonizing might be hard for cynics such as myself to swallow, but you can't really blame Moore, Galloway, and Wallace for seeking redemption for all those whose sacrifice was -- and perhaps still is -- overlooked by a bitterly divided country.

E-mail CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum

REVIEW: THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING - After seeing Sunshine State and Tadpole, it's fitting that my arthouse trifecta ended on Sunday with this intelligent, engrossing film from director Jill Sprecher (Clockwatchers). Like Sayles' movie, Thirteen Conversations follows multiple characters who are eventually connected to each other -- although in this case they aren't brought together because they inhabit the same little town. In fact, they live in perhaps the one city where people have a reasonable expectation of anonymity and isolation -- Manhattan. But this isn't the romanticized version of the city that Tadpole presents. John Tuturro's character, a by-the-book physics professor, has his equilibrium tipped when he is mugged and badly beaten. Troy (Matthew McConaughey) is a hot-shot lawyer in the D.A.'s office who learns just how fragile his own moral code is when he accidentally hits a young woman with his car on an empty street, then flees the scene, convinced she is dead. The young woman is named Beatrice (Clea DuVall). We see her before the accident, cleaning rich peoples' houses, explaining to her lazy co-worker that life won't always be bad because she knows someone is looking out for her; understandably, her outlook isn't quite so optimistic after the accident. All three of these characters were content before a traumatic event forced them to re-evaluate their lives. Now they can never be content. They can never go back. They're all searching for happiness -- the "one thing" that all characters, all people, are ultimately searching for. The fourth character in Sprecher's series of vignettes is Gene, a insurance claims manager with a drug-addicted son who gets so fed up with one of his happy-go-lucky employees that he "downsizes" him just to try and wipe the smile off the guy's face. In terms of theme and structure, Thirteen Conversations is undeniably similar to both Altman's Short Cuts and Pulp Fiction. Sprecher effectively utilizes a non-linear construction to unite her characters just as Tarantino did. For example, when we see Gene and Troy meet in a bar at the beginning of the film, we are actually seeing the end of Gene's story, while Troy's fall has yet to take place. I think it's more interesting, however, to juxtapose Sprecher's film with M. Night Shyamalan's current hit, Signs, because both movies explicitly deal with establishing a sense of order within chaos, and finding connections in seemingly unrelated people and events. Both filmmakers purport to show that the world is not as random as we think and that all of our actions have consequences. The difference is that Shyamalan puts his faith in a higher power who is pulling all of the strings, while Sprecher takes a humanist approach. When Beatrice stands on a street corner looking for a sign to tell her that everything will be fine, that there is goodness in the world, it isn't God who answers. It's a man standing on the opposite corner who smiles at her from across the street. Thirteen Conversations is about those little connections -- how a simple gesture, whether it be a smile or a wave at a woman sitting dejectedly on the subway, can make the difference in someone's life and instill hope.

Who got it right: Almost every critic who reviewed it. "The movie is brilliant, really. It is philosophy, illustrated through everyday events," writes Roger Ebert in his 4-star review. The New Republic's Stanley Kauffman says, "The basis of the art in Sprecher's film is that from the start she knew the tone, the scale of acting, the timbre of dialogue -- the key -- that the film needed in order to be itself."

Who got it wrong: EW's Ty Burr, who ridiculously lumps Thirteen Conversations into the same category with another "connection" movie, the sappy Grand Canyon.

E-mail CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum

REVIEW: TADPOLE - The story of a precocious 15-year-old prep student desperately in love with his sexy stepmom (Sigourney Weaver), Tadpole owes a lot to The Graduate. As Oscar Grubman, newcomer Aaron Stanford even looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman, especially when he's being seduced by his stepmom's 40-ish best friend, Diane (Bebe Neuwirth). But part of what makes Tadpole such a charmer is the fact that director Gary Winick and screenwriters Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller are perfectly willing to pay their respects. When Oscar's tryst with Diane is revealed over dinner with his dad and stepmom, Stanley (John Ritter) and Eve, his dad blurts out, "Well, it's all very 'The Graduate.'" During a montage near the end of the movie, where Oscar is shown in various modes of reflection, the soundtrack blares a remake of "The Only Living Boy In New York" -- originally written and performed by the duo responsible for The Graduate's seminal soundtrack, Simon & Garfunkel. Of course, Tadpole's young protagonist exhibits none of Benjamin Braddock's debilitating disillusionment. And why should he? He's smart, passionate, speaks fluent French, and gets to come home on Thanksgiving break to a version of Manhattan that's so idealized it would make Woody Allen blush. Even with the slightly murky digital picture -- Winick shot Tadpole in two weeks for around $500,000 -- the leaves are vibrant with color. Birds chirp sweetly over the quiet din of traffic (in New York City!?). There's no trash on the street, or homeless people begging for change, and the subway always looks clean and safe. It's a romanticized rendition of Manhattan that seems lifted straight out of just about any Allen film, but particularly Hannah and Her Sisters. (Oscar spies the forbidden object of his affection at Thanksgiving dinner just as Michael Caine's character in Hannah pines for his wife's sister (Barbara Hershey) at their Thanksgiving gathering.) This Manhattan may only exist in movies -- or, at the very least, for the extremely affluent -- but I fell for it just as hard as Oscar does for Eve. More than convincing Weaver, Neuwirth, and Ritter to take parts in this low-budget winner, Winick's biggest coup was the casting of Stanford, who, like his character, is mature for his age. He never overplays the comedy, even at its most farcical. And while he's just good-looking enough that an attractive older woman might want to seduce him, his natural teenage awkwardness makes it easy for us to believe he'd spend hours reading Voltaire in search of the secrets to love and life.

Winick won the Best Dramatic Directing prize for Tadpole at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Here are his top five favorite films about teens, according to the Sundance Channel web page:

THE OUTSIDERS, 1983
directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
For Coppola's sentimental, fable like approach to teenagers.

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, 1961
directed by: Elia Kazan
For Elia Kazan's sensitive look at unrequited love and the innocence of Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty.

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, 2001
directed by: Alfonso Cuaron
Alfonso Cuaron's treatment of a universal story.

RUSHMORE, 1998
directed by: Wes Anderson
Max Fisher's sense of humor with Wes Anderson's sensibility.

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, 1982
directed by: Amy Heckerling
A time and place that defines the High School experience.

E-mail CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum

REVIEWS: SUNSHINE STATE, TADPOLE, THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS... - I must be getting old. It seems like only yesterday I was sitting in London's fantastic Everyman theatre for a Kurosawa triple bill with just a quick intermission in-between films to refresh myself. Yesterday I watched three movies back-to-back-to-back and my head was so numb afterwards I felt like I'd just been forced to watch Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with my eyelids pried open like some Clockwork Orange droogie. Fortunately, I picked three pretty interesting films. Sunshine State has just about everything you'd expect from the writer/director of such great films as Passion Fish, City of Hope, and Lone Star: a community in conflict (along racial and historical lines), lost individuals struggling to carve out their identities, and multiple storylines that ultimately converge. Unfortunately, John Sayles' latest also lends itself to all of the usual criticisms of his films: the writing is (at times) didactic and preachy, sloth-like pacing, and uninventive camerawork. I've never had an issue with Sayles' straight-forward cinematography and slow pacing because his visual style has always been secondary to his writing, which features consistently sharp dialogue and fully-developed characters. (There may not be another filmmaker alive who cares about or invests more in his characters -- even the unlikeable ones -- than Sayles.) And if his speechifying sometimes seemed a bit preachy, at least it was always articulate, intelligent, and honest. With Sunshine State, however, all of these quibbles started to gnaw at me. The problem, I think, is rooted in the fact that Sayles tries to weaves together too many storylines without giving us one that is compelling enough to build the others around. The two main stories deal with women. Desiree Perry (Angela Bassett) returns home to Delrono Beach, Florida, to confront her troubled past; Marly Temple (Edie Falco) resignedly runs her father's seaside motel and diner and can't figure out her future. Meanwhile, greedy land developers want to buy Marly's property and turn the seashore into a strip mall; a former college football star returns to the area to cash in; and a banker with a gambling problem unsuccessfully tries to off himself while his shrill wife (Mary Steenburgen) works to stage the town's "Buccaneer Days" festival. Sayles is most successful when he concentrates on Marly and Desiree, played with fire and conviction by Falco and Bassett. But some of the peripheral storylines are never fully integrated into the narrative, which makes the film feel like it is meandering to its conclusion rather than leading us somewhere truly surprising. Lone Star (1996), which I think is one of the best films of the past ten years, had a similar number of storylines, but had the mystery surrounding Sheriff Charlie Wade's murder to hold all the pieces together. With a running time of 2 hours and 21 minutes, and a narrative that never quite feels unified, I can't help but wonder if Sunshine State would have benefitted from the perspective of an outside editor, rather than Sayles himself doing the cutting, as he has done on all of his movies except Matewan and Baby, It's You. That's difficult for me to say as a fan of Sayles' work, but it might be true. It's awfully hard to cut out words and characters that you created, even if it ultimately improves the film.

I'll have some thoughts on Tadpole and Thirteen Conversations posted tonight (or early tomorrow).

E-mail CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum