PUNCH-DRUNK MUSINGS - Finally, the Feedback Forum erupts...well, a little bit anyway. Margaret Mead rightfully takes me to task for so infrequently updating my blog -- as tempted as I am to explain that I'm really not a slacker, I'm sticking to my pledge to just talk about movies. She suggests that maybe her and other readers "can spur CinemaScoped to write about something if we post about it enough." Why yes, you can! I'm much more likely to find a few minutes to post if I am directly responding to a comment or point by someone else. The reason being that I'm hopelessly unoriginal and do not take well to criticism. So on that note, let's take a look at Margaret's post point by point. First, she's sick of 'Punch-Drunk Love' "because of the incessant marketing campaign, but also this 'revelation' critics seem to be having about Sandler, and how P.T. Anderson saw something in him that no one else did. What was that, a big name for the marquee?" OK, on this point, I think it's safe to say that whatever reason(s) P.T. had for casting Sandler were not related to box office. Sure, some people might waste $7-10 to see Sandler try to "act," but the fact is that none of Sandler's usual audience -- roughly 10-to-22-year old boys -- are going to waste their money on this movie, regardless of Sandler's name. Without having seen the movie yet myself -- going tonight! -- i think P.T. was just set on making a completely different kind of movie. He hints at this on the 'Magnolia' DVD, that after semi-epics like that movie and 'Boogie Nights', where you are directing countless talented, "serious" actors, making a 95-minute romantic comedy/drama with Adam Sandler is about as different as you can get. Margaret writes: "Hey, I believe guys can change their image, but this isn't the first time we've heard Anderson is a genius. And if Sandler ever showed me one shred of acting chops before this, maybe I wouldn't be ranting." The implication here, seems to me anyway, is that we've heard P.T. is a genius before and he hasn't proven worthy of the title. Well, I say he has. I don't have the time or energy to expound on why 'Hard Eight', 'Boogie Nights' and 'Magnolia' are three amazing films, but I will always give a P.T. Anderson movie the benefit of the doubt until he proves otherwise. And who knows, maybe 'Punch-Drunk' won't do it for me. You'll be the first to know. As for Sandler, he's never shown a shred of acting chops before because, well, his films only require him to act like a clown. Then again, acting like a clown is still acting. Hell, maybe Roger Ebert is right: "The film is exhilarating to watch because Sandler, liberated from the constraints of formula, reveals unexpected depths as an actor." 'Sick too' follows up Margaret's post by pointing out that the movie is getting ripped by critics on Rotten Tomatoes...except, it's not. In fact, they're fawning all over it. My guess is that at the time he/she checked, only a handful of reviews were posted with the rest being added today (the day of its release). As it turns out, 74 out of 91 reviews are positive, with the only heavyweight disapproval coming from J. Hoberman of the Village Voice: "As elegantly crafted as it often is, Anderson's movie is essentially a one-trick pony that, hampered by an undeveloped script, ultimately pulls up lame." Anyway, keep the feedback coming...

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FINAL THOUGHTS ON... - ...'All or Nothing' before moving to 'Roger Dodger'. Ultimately, Leigh's film is about dignity and love -- two feelings/qualities that can be felt, as the title suggests, completely or not at all. There is no halfway being in love, just as someone can't really be a little bit dignified; you either respect yourself or you don't. There are two effective sequences in particular where Leigh lays out his theme, the first occurring when we first see the Bassett family sit down to dinner. Phil, a cab driver, tells a story about an old man he gave a ride to that day who only needed to go a short ways, but insisted on paying the full fare anyway. Penny can't believe Phil would charge him, even though he says the man insisted. When Phil tries to explain why he was surprised at the man's request, but nevertheless understood, it takes Rachel to articulate the reason -- the man was trying to maintain his dignity. It's bad enough he's too old and weak to walk such a short distance; he's certainly not going to let a cab driver turn him into a charity case by only charging half the fare. After dinner, Phil gets a first-hand lesson in losing one's dignity when he has to go from person to person in his house to see if they can lone him some money to pay his cab rental the next day. The only person who helps without making Phil feel like a dog is Rachel. Phil is played by Timothy Spall, a frumpy, overweight actor who I recognized only as the road manager from the un-entertaining 'Rock Star'. His character is frustrating for much of the film because you know he has a lot to say, and sometimes tries to say it, but just can't seem to get it out. Sometimes you want to slap him and say, "Spit it out! What's on your mind?" But Phil's passivity ultimately pays off in the movie's penultimate scene, where he confronts Penny about their seemingly dead relationship. It's a methodical scene, made up of long takes that give the actors room to display the emotional ebb and flow. "You don't love me anymore," Phil finally exclaims, and the impact is heightened by the fact that you realize he has wanted to say these words throughout the whole movie and has only now found the courage. Without Penny there to nurture him -- to show all of her love -- Phil has nothing.

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CHICAGO FILM FEST ROUNDUP PART II - With 'All or Nothing' (opens Friday in NY/LA), writer/director Mike Leigh ('Naked', 'Secrets & Lies') has given us another celebration of the working class. But don't take my use of the word "celebration" too literally because this movie is so bleak it makes Ingmar Bergman look like he was popping Prozac. As with much of Leigh's previous work and in accordance with his usual method of filmmaking -- he rehearses extensively before filming with only the characters and some scenes in place and develops the final script through improvisational collaboration with his actors -- 'All or Nothing' is an ensemble piece that feels almost more like a cinema verite documentary than a fictional narrative. The "plot" -- or lack thereof -- centers around a group of desperate, depressed individuals living in a London housing estate (read "project"). The primary characters are Penny and Phil Bassett (Lesley Manville and Timothy Spall) and their two kids, Rory and Rachel. Each member of the family is the antithesis of his/her counterpart. Penny incessantly nags and unknowingly belittles her more quiet, introspective husband Phil. Rachel is also quiet, likes to read, and works at a home for elderly folks, while her loud, obese brother Rory is in his 20s but has the mentality of a 12-year-old. He doesn't have a job and spends his days lying on the couch eating, watching TV, and just generally being one of the most obnoxious people you can imagine. While Rory and various other characters who mingle in and out of the story at first provoke laughs with their pitiful behavior, a subtle transformation takes place as the movie progresses. Leigh manages to evoke genuine empathy for these characters by allowing us to witness their lives, the day-to-day struggle simply to get by. Situations or circumstances that might have been funny early on in the movie become less humorous as we start to respect the characters. We no longer laugh "at" them -- as in, "Boy, aren't I glad I have a such a blissful existence sitting in the theater at the Chicago Film Fest watching other people suffer" -- because we start to respect them. After the movie, my wife said she felt it was "directionless" -- referring to the story, not Leigh's actual direction -- and technically she's right. Characters meander through the story without any sort of conventional plot machinations until the last half-hour when a sudden life or death situation arises. But rather than compound the Bassett family's already troubled life, this situation becomes the catalyst for change, for a new life. And Leigh pulls it off without any Hollywood manipulations. The ending is "happy," but not what we would consider a "happy ending." I was genuinely moved by the movie's final cathartic scenes, and I credit Leigh for being able to end on a note of real hope without it seeming inconsistent with who these characters are. Life is never going to be easy for the Bassett family -- is it for anybody? -- but maybe they can make it a little less dreary.

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OUT OF 'FOCUS' - Thanks to CS (sometime) contributor Eric Baker for sending me the link to this article in Salon about Scotty Crane, who has launched a pretty massive media campaign (including graphic web site) against Sony Pictures Classics and director Paul Schrader for alleged inaccuracies in the movie 'Auto Focus' (opened in NY/LA on Oct. 18). The movie stars Greg Kinnear as Bob Crane, the TV star of Hogan's Heroes, and chronicles Crane's disintegration into sex addiction and his ultimate mysterious death in his Scottsdale, Ariz., apartment in 1978. The article presents a pretty interesting dilemma that almost always arises when movies are based on true events, which is the question of how much responsibility a filmmaker has to be 100% accurate in portraying certain events or individuals (assuming that is even possible, which I would argue it isn't). What complicates Crane's story -- both Scotty's and Bob's -- is the fact that Scotty's version of his father's life conflicts completely with that of his half-brother, Bob Jr., who served as a consultant on the movie and, apparently, loathes Scotty's mother, Patricia, who was Crane's second wife. Enough of the tabloid stuff though, I've been looking forward to this movie for awhile. Schrader is, of course, the legendary screenwriter who collaborated with Scorsese on 'Taxi Driver' and 'Raging Bull', and the director of a handful of movies including 'American Gigolo' and 'Affliction'. The subject matter is obviously fascinating -- or, at least, titillating, -- and I'm curious to see Kinnear, who vacillates between showing some real depth as an actor in certain movies and being totally shallow and smug in others. Once again, Slate's David Edelstein and Salon's Stephanie Zacharek are in complete disagreement. On Kinnear's performance, Zacharek writes: "In "Auto Focus" Kinnear pulls off the feat of making us feel something for Crane...And considering how sensitively calibrated Kinnear's performance is, you don't need him to. Crane knew that his big selling point, as a human being and as a commodity, was his likability. Kinnear riffs on that without milking it." While Edelstein says, "But in the last third, Kinnear has no depths as an actor to plumb; even in the movie's best scenes, with Ron Leibman (in top form) as his brusque but softhearted agent, he looks fatuously dazed." Overall, the reviews have been mostly positive. Edelstein starts his review with an interesting and, I think, mostly accurate assessment of Schrader as a director:

Almost every time I see a film by Paul Schrader, I think about what a sensational subject he has gotten hold of and how I wish that someone else had stepped in to bring it to life. As a screenwriter, he's drawn to volcanically conflicted protagonists, but the movies he builds around them are austere, even clinical. His script of Taxi Driver (1976) was a smashing success because Martin Scorsese, a voluptuous Expressionist, brought it to a boil: It entered your bloodstream like a drug. Scorsese cooks; Schrader freeze-dries. I think his asceticism is meant to seem classical and contemplative (he once dismissed Taxi Driver as juvenilia), but it feels more like a failure of sympathetic imagination. He won't—or can't—go all the way.

Schrader's 'Affliction' (1997), based on the novel by the brilliant Russell Banks, earned James Coburn a best supporting actor Oscar for playing a hellishly abusive father, but I can't think of any better description for the film as a whole than "austere" and "clinical." I felt throughout that Schrader was keeping the audience deliberately at a distance. As Edelstein says, "He won't—or can't—go all the way." With the exception of a few scenes, Schrader only hints at the real emotional explosiveness of the story and never seems to completely commit. I plan to see 'Auto Focus' this week and will have some comments posted soon.

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CHICAGO FILM FEST ROUNDUP PART I (A) - I've spent more time over the past month writing about why I haven't been able to get back to my normal daily blogging schedule than I have writing about movies...so I'm officially putting an end to all such discussions and just getting back to film. Punch-Drunk Love, Bowling for Columbine and a whole host of other promising movies are playing in Chicago and I will get to them all -- OK, most of them -- this week. But first, I need to finish up my take on the various movies I saw at the 38th Annual Chicago International Film Festival, which just wrapped up Friday. (Click here to see all of the winners. Alas, I didn't see any of them.) First, I wanted to finish up some thoughts on the opening night film 'Evelyn', starring Pierce Brosnan, which will play in New York and L.A. on December 13 and probably not make it to too many other cities after that. 1) Aidan Quinn, a usually strong actor, is so stiff and seemingly uncomfortable in this movie he literally ruins every scene he's in. Playing an Irish-born lawyer who moves to America, then returns to Ireland and ends up representing Brosnan's Desmond Doyle, I can entertain the argument that he's supposed to seem a bit out of place. But if that was director Bruce Beresford's intention, well, as with everything else in the movie, he overdid it. 2) I mentioned previously that Brosnan is somewhat hindered as an actor by his good looks. In 'Evelyn', we're supposed to believe that Brosnan is just your average, everyday, broke Irishman who drinks too much but loves his kids...which is fine, except that a perpetual five o'clock shadow and an old suit doesn't exactly make James Bond look "average" -- especially when you consider that his wife runs out on him for another man. Granted, wives/women cheat on good-looking men all the time. However, in the movie world there is only so much suspension of belief an audience can take. (A theory William Goldman convincingly espouses in his Adventures In The Screen Trade. I'd site the page number if I had the book in front of me.) Don't get me wrong, Brosnan delivers a capable performance. But would a less glamorous-looking actor have been better suited to play Desmond Doyle? Probably.

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CHICAGO FILM FEST ROUNDUP PART I - Reading my last post, I noticed that when I wrote, "...all the great movies I've seen so far," and then mentioned 'Evelyn,' one might conclude that I'm including Pierce Brosnan's Irish labor of love in that list of "great movies." I'm not. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Festival kicked off Friday, Oct. 4 with a tribute to Brosnan -- yes, James Bond was in the theater -- followed by a screening of 'Evelyn.' Back on 9/25 I mocked, slightly, the Fest's selection of Brosnan for a career achievement award. I mean, really, name one really good movie Brosnan's ever been in. Hell, other than the Bond movies, name any movie Brosnan's been in. I never saw 'The Thomas Crown Affair' remake and I wasn't as impressed with 'The Tailor of Panama' as most critics were (He's subverting his Bond character by playing an unscrupulous, less-than-charming spy. Brilliant!) But in all fairness, I think Brosnan is a decent actor who is hampered by his looks. There is a reason why his resume is filled with roles as spies and private detectives. You simply can't play "serious," "character" roles with a matinee idol face. And even if you can, most casting agents and directors would balk at the notion. To Brosnan's credit, though, he has used his wealth and fame from the Bond franchise to start his own production company, Irish Dreamtime, and work on projects that only a handful of people will ever even get a chance to see, much less want to see. 'Evelyn' is one such project. The film is based on the true story of Desmond Doyle (Brosnan), an out-of-work decorator whose wife runs away with another man, leaving him to raise his three kids -- a daughter, Evelyn, and two younger boys. The problem is that in 1950s Ireland the Irish Children's Act states that a man cannot raise children without a mother around, especially if he has no means to provide for them. The kids basically become wards of the Catholic church/state and are thrown in with all the other orphans. With the help of his lawyers, a modest "dream team" played by Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, and Alan Bates, Doyle decides to fight the power and try to get his kids back. Surely you can guess where it goes from there. 'Evelyn' is a real crowd-pleaser -- the audience at the fabulous Chicago Theatre actually cheered during some of the courtroom scenes -- and I almost bought into it myself until the last half-hour, when director Bruce 'Driving Miss Daisy' Beresford pulls out all of the manipulative stops to provoke an emotional response from us. Take, for example, Desmond's "big speech" at the end to win his kids back -- Beresford actually starts the sappy, dramatic music before Desmond starts talking, just in case you couldn't deduce the significance of the moment. He couldn't even wait for the speech to begin for some momentum to build. When directors do this, and far too many do, it can only mean one of three things: 1) They don't trust the writing enough. 2) They don't trust the actor(s) enough. 3) They don't trust the audience enough. Either option means the audience gets hit over the head with whatever message the director is peddling. It didn't seem to bother most people watching the movie that night, but I usually prefer when directors don't insult my intelligence. I have a few more closing thoughts on 'Evelyn' that I'll add when I get to my discussion of Mike Leigh's 'All or Nothing'.

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TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT... - I hate to presume that anyone is out there with baited breath in anticipation of my next post, but my Site Meter shows that people are still visiting the site and by golly, it's my job to serve them. I'm not scheduled to see another movie at the Chicago Film Fest until Wednesday night, which means I've got tonight and tomorrow to get you all up to speed on the great movies I've seen so far. The rundown looks like this: 'Evelyn', 'All or Nothing', 'Roger Dodger', and two documentaries, 'Tribute' and 'Only The Strong Survive'. Here's a teaser -- CS contributor Sam Hallgren and I agree 'Roger Dodger' may be the funniest movie of the year, featuring the return of Campbell Scott in devilish, full-charm mode as the title character. Hopefully, Sam will find the time to post a few comments as well.

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STILL HERE - No, I haven't disappeared...just swamped with work and trying to see as many films as I can at the Chicago Film Fest. I don't know how my blogging brethren are able to do it everyday. But here's an update: Saw Evelyn last Friday night. Saw Mike Leigh's All or Nothing last night, and my appreciation for it keeps growing the more I dwell on it. Tonight's film: Roger Dodger, starring Campbell Scott. Here's the synopsis: "Men are doomed. That is, if Roger Dodger’s deft and humorous, film-opening predictions are right. Roger, a cynical copywriter who “makes people feel bad” for money, is a master of the art of conversation, especially when it comes to dealing with women. So when his sixteen-year-old nephew Nick (charming newcomer Jesse Eisenberg) shows up at his office one day for advice on getting laid, Roger doesn’t hesitate to expose the subtleties of female sexuality to him. He takes Nick on the ultimate sexual-courting field trip: a night out in Manhattan. The two run across all walks of nightlife, some witty, intelligent women (Isabella Rossellini, Elizabeth Berkeley and Jennifer Beals), and one not-at-all-together woman. Over the course of their time together Nick picks up a new bravery from Roger, and the caddish Roger begins to see that perhaps there’s validity in Nick’s innocent wisdom." Sounds decent enough, huh? And hey, Elizabeth Berkely AND Jennifer Beals...who can resist that?

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MORE ON RED DRAGON/FILM FEST FINE PRINT - CS contributor Eric Baker stole the final line of my Hannibal review for his review of Red Dragon, which appeared today in The Daily Iowan. I'd criticize him for it except I know it wasn't intentional and the fact is, it's such a cliched, hackneyed conclusion that we should both be ashamed for using it. It's worth noting though that this final line aside, my Hannibal review may actually be my favorite review from my own DI days, except for maybe my dismissal of the abominable Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. So if you're fairly new to CinemaScoped and you read these reviews and think I'm clueless, well, it's safe to say you probably shouldn't be reading my site because that's probably the best I can do. Eric's analysis seems pretty sound and in line with other critics who found the direction a bit overdone and tacky: "The great mystery is how the director, Brett Ratner (the Rush Hour series), could coax such understated performances (except from Hopkins) from his ensemble cast yet shoot it as though it were a Major League Baseball game on Fox." Like David Edelstein, Eric wasn't fond of Ratner's constant use of closeups. But unlike Edelstein, Eric ultimately recommends the movie. The one final point I wanted to make about the film is that I am even more curious to see it after reading a few reviews that comment on its ending. Apparently, there's some kind of psychological twist and, frankly, anything would be better than Manhunter's clumsy, shoot-em-up ending. It's the biggest blight on an otherwise pretty good movie.

I spoke too soon back on 9/25 when I reported how excited I was about my Chicago Film Fest schedule. My 18-movie pass was going to get me into such highly-anticipated movies (by me, anyway) as Auto Focus, Bowling for Columbine, Punch-Drunk Love and Bloody Sunday. I guess I failed to read the part that said my pass wouldn't get me in to movies that are "Critics Choices" and "Special Presentations" -- in other words, all of the movies I really want to see! I suppose I can't blame anyone by myself, but I can still argue it's incredibly lame of the organizers to expect patrons to buy passes for every movie BUT the best ones in the schedule. Don't get me wrong, however, I'm still pretty pumped about all of the movies I plan to see and review over the next week-and-a-half. Below is my schedule (subject to change, of course):

Wed, Oct. 9 - All Or Nothing
Thurs, Oct. 10 - Roger Dodger
Fri, Oct. 11 - Tribute
Sat, Oct. 12 - Only The Strong Survive
Mon, Oct. 15 - The Dancer Upstairs
Wed, Oct. 16 - Rabbit-Proof Fence

Hopefully, I'll be able to squeeze in a few more. I may even break down and pay the $13 to see Auto Focus and Bloody Sunday, though I suspect they are already sold out like Bowling for Columbine and Punch-Drunk Love were. I'll have some comments about Evelyn, the Fest's opening night movie starring Pierce Brosnan up tomorrow, along with a description of each of the movies listed above. If you've seen any of the movies that are playing here in Chicago, or actually plan to see some of the movies at the Festival, I'd love to hear (and post) your thoughts.

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NOT YET ENTERED THE DRAGON - With the Chicago Film Festival kicking off last Friday -- I'll have some thoughts on the opening night tribute to Pierce Brosnan and his new movie, Evelyn, posted tomorrow -- plus assorted family commitments, I wasn't able to see the #1 movie in the country ($37.5), Red Dragon, this past weekend. In fact, since I am currently slated to see a different movie every night this week -- more on that tomorrow as well -- I may not get to see the Manhunter re-make/Silence of the Lambs prequel until next Sunday. On Rotten Tomatoes, 79 out of 117 critics have given it a favorable review, which doesn't surprise me much because the past few months...oh hell, the whole year for movies has been pretty bleak. Roger Ebert gives it 3 1/2 stars without ever really providing any substantial, persuasive reasons why. I suppose the most major disses would come from Elvis Mitchell in the NY Times and Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice. Both critics take a similar tack, denouncing the latest Hannibal Lecter effort as formulaic and overblown."

"Just when you think the picture can't go any farther over the top, it finds a whole new peak to tumble over."
-- Elvis Mitchell

"Red Dragon's formula is so risible and rote by now that the natural reaction to scenes of peril, torture, and suffering is flippant laughter."
-- Michael Atkinson

Online critics Stephanie Zacharek and David Edelstein -- from competing zines Salon and Slate, respectively -- also take a similar approach in their negative reviews, which is to compare it to Manhunter, Michael Mann's 1986 version of the Thomas Harris novel. I know I probably mention Edelstein way too much, but other than The New Republic's Stanley Kauffman, I don't think there's a more intelligent, insightful critic around. His Red Dragon review is actually more a review of Manhunter because he spends so much time praising it. A couple of his points caught my attention.

1) Edelstein suggests, as I did back on 8/7 (He's No William Petersen), that Ed Norton might be a little too young to play Agent Will Graham: "Graham is now Edward Norton, who can be a good, nervy actor, but whose gangly, boy-scout demeanor and reedy tenor don't begin to suggest the profiler's unsavory depths. When Hopkins purrs, "You caught me because we're very much alike," it seems as if Lecter is deranged: He has zero in common with this Gomer Pyle. The same line in Manhunter was palpably true: Cox and Petersen had the same morbid sadness, and so did Tom Noonan as the killer."

2) "Few movies open as disturbingly as Manhunter," Edelstein says. And he is dead-on. "The camera—to the accompaniment of a droning synthesizer—follows the beam of a flashlight through a dark house, up a staircase, to a bedroom where a couple lies asleep. The beam falls on the woman, who tosses briefly, then sits up and stares into the harsh light—whereupon the image, mercifully, goes black. This is, of course, the trek of Dolarhyde, who will slaughter the family in that house; but it could also be the vision of Petersen's Graham as he relives the night of carnage while staring at crime-scene glossies and bloodstained chalk-outlines. They're on the same eerie wavelength."

I have to say, this opening freaked me out, as did many images in Manhunter, when I finally saw it about a year ago. It was terrifying for the same reason Silence was, and the same reason Hannibal wasn't -- the real terror is left to your imagination. Throughout Silence I was just waiting for Lecter to get his chance to rip into somebody's flesh and sure enough, when he finally does bite into a prison guard, director Jonathan Demme was smart enough to cut. Whatever atrocious acts Lecter was committing, I was experiencing in my mind; I didn't need to see him actually do it. Compare this to, say, Ridley Scott's brain buffet in Hannibal. I have a few more thoughts on Red Dragon, but have to cut this short. More tomorrow.


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IGBY GOES DOWN AGAIN - I didn't really get a chance to conclude my review of Igby Goes Down last night, something at least one reader noticed as evidenced by his/her post in the Feedback Forum. Deep Dish Reader demands to know whether Igby is a 'flat,' 'stereotypical' light-weight character drama or a 'vulnerable,' 'endearing' thinkpiece?"

The bottom line is this: I liked all of the performances and thought the best moments were the ones not getting much praise, it seems, from everyone else -- the serious, unironic, legitimately heartbreaking scenes. David Edelstein writes in his Igby review, "I squirmed, I laughed a lot," and describes the opening scene I referred to as a scene of "breathtaking—near mythic—tastelessness." Nothing about Igby made me squirm and none of the "tastelessness" seemed all that novel to me. Everyone seems to be enamored with Steers' "smart" writing, which I think is really just a way of saying they appreciate that Igby cleverly insults people with references that the average person doesn't get but most movie critics do. Hey, I like being part of the in-crowd just as much as the next guy, but the jokes were merely amusing to me and not laugh-out-loud funny -- like, for example, some of the dialogue in another movie with a Catcher in the Rye connection, The Good Girl (reviewed 8/27). Now there's a movie with some seriously hilarious dialogue that is funny because sometimes it's so tasteless you can't believe a character is actually saying it.

I haven't seen Moonlight Mile yet, a movie that also features Susan Sarandon along with The Good Girl's Jake Gyllenhaal and Dustin Hoffman. I loathe director Brad Silberling after he took Wim Wenders' masterpiece Wings of Desire and turned it into the awful City of Angels. But I'm intrigued enough to eventually see it because the critical response has been so mixed. Critics who like it really like it, and critics who hate it really hate it. Edelstein, for example, calls it the worst film of the year, while Ebert gives it 4 stars.

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IGBY GOES DOWN - My tepid reaction to Igby Goes Down, a movie about a disaffected, prep school brat on the lam from his dysfunctional family in New York City, has provoked in me a bit of a personal and professional crisis. OK, “crisis” might be a little strong. But what I can't get over is how I could have an aversion to a movie that has been rightfully compared -- by every single critic who has reviewed it -- to Catcher In The Rye. After all, I'm the guy who recently named his first-born child Holden after said book's troubled main character. I mean, what does it say about me, a 27-year-old who last read Salinger's notorious book at the tender age of 16, that I was mostly bored and annoyed with the antisocial antics of Igby Slocumb (Kieran Culkin), a modern-day Holden Caulfield if there ever was one? As a critic, I'm trying to figure out what everyone else saw in Burr Steers' screenwriting and directorial debut that I didn't. Roger Ebert calls it "an astonishing filmmaking debut, balancing so many different notes and story elements." The NY Times Stephen Holden dubs it "a corrosively sarcastic comedy that lifts the lid off the gleaming casserole of post-yuppie American culture." And Slate's David Edelstein goes so far as to conclude that Igby is "the movie of the year." Was it my after-work-10:20-on-a-Wednesday-night malaise? Or was it the slightly creepy fact that I was actually the only person sitting in the theater? Whatever it was, nothing about the film got much of a rise out of me. Scenes such as the opening sequence, featuring Igby and his young Republican brother Oliver (Ryan Phillipe) trying, unsuccessfully, to poison their prissy, domineering mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon), were designed to be amusing in their vulgarity, but fell flat instead. Steers is trying to do his best Wes Anderson impression without the chops to back it up. At one point we see Mimi in a medium shot yelling about her grapefruit that apparently wasn't prepared to her liking. D.H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum), a family friend and Igby's godfather, walks in and tells her to get off the maid. The camera pulls back and sure enough, Mimi is sitting on top of the maid. I suppose it could have been a funny little jab -- those crazy, heartless rich! -- but there was no context for it. It's a brief, semi-tasteless scene sandwiched between two unrelated scenes, and the whole first half of the film is comprised of episodic little interludes like this one that prevent the story from gaining any momentum. If it wasn't for Sarandon's amazing ability to imbue even cartoonish characters like Mimi with some humanity, my reaction to Igby might have been more negative. In all fairness, Steers does hit some right notes. There are genuine moments of grief, where characters finally drop their ironic facades and expose their vulnerabilities, and each actor is pitch-perfect. Culkin deserves praise for bringing depth to a character who so easily could have been simply a sarcastic know-it-all. Igby gets by on his quick wit and somewhat overbearing sense of entitlement, but Culkin isn't afraid to reveal that his character really doesn't have a clue what the hell he's doing. Along with Sarandon and Phillipe, the rest of the supporting cast is also first-rate. Most notably, I was impressed with the performances of Claire Danes and Bill Pullman, two frequently disrespected actors who haven't done much recently, at least that I can recall. Danes plays Sookie Sapperstein, a fellow disenchanted teen Igby meets at a party in the Hamptons and develops a relationship with; Pullman plays Igby's schizophrenic father, Jason, who we see mainly in flashbacks to Igby's childhood. Both characters, like Mimi, are essentially parodies -- Sookie's your stereotypical upper-class, diet-pill popping, intellectually vacant college girl; Jason, at first anyway, just seems like a slightly off-kilter rich snob who is taking some time off from work because he isn't quite "well." But there's more to both characters and Danes and Pullman play all of the layers. In one flashback scene, the young Igby is brushing teeth when his dad comes in, gets in the shower in his pajamas and, basically, freaks out. It's a truly disturbing scene, not because Pullman plays Jason as some crazed lunatic who might hurt his son, but because he plays him exactly the opposite -- as a gentle man trying desperately to figure out what's wrong.

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OUT TO LUNCH - I've spent the past two days doing the most tedious, unpleasant activity imaginable -- packing up my old apartment. Fortunately, I'm in Chicago now and, as I've mentioned before, maybe the best thing about movie here from Iowa City is the movie selection. The much lauded Igby Goes Down is playing at a theater just around the corner from my temporary apartment downtown. If I can pry myself away from Ed and The West Wing tonight I'll go see it and have a review up Thursday. Secretary, the S&M-in-the-workplace comedy with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, is also playing there. Have to check that one out as well. Of course, Red Dragon opens this weekend and the Chicago International Film Festival kicks off Friday night. So I have a lot to cover in the next two days and following week...keep clicking on CinemaScoped.

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REVIEW: BARBERSHOP - In my preview a couple weeks ago, I ridiculously compared the new Ice Cube movie Barbershop to Smoke (dir. Wayne Wang), only with more jokes. Granted, they both center around a group of people, almost exclusively male, who hang out, share knowledge, and trade insults in traditional neighborhood establishments – Smoke in a cigar store in Brooklyn; Barbershop in, well, a barbershop on the South Side of Chicago. But a more fitting comparison would be the barbershop scenes from Coming to America, where Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall play multiple characters, lifted out and extended over the course of one day. Cedric The Entertainer’s character in particular, a seen-it-all, know-it-all barber named Eddie, could have been an extra from America. It's only too bad that Cedric, with his affected old man's voice and gray-ish hair, never really had me convinced he was an old-school barber -- just a younger actor acting like an old man -- which distracted me considerably from his jokes. Barbershop has other problems, chief among them a near disastrous beginning that has two (or three?) characters trying to steal an ATM from a neighborhood convenience store. The sequence is shot deliberately to keep the characters in the dark, so that we just hear their voices, because director Tim Story doesn't want us to know who all is involved in the crime. (One of the movie's subplots involves a two-time felon named Ricky, who Ice Cube's character, Calvin, has given a job as a barber, and whether he reverted to his criminal ways and helped steal the ATM.) The result is a chaotic, unintelligible waste of two minutes; it might be one of the worst openings to a good movie ever. Actually, the whole ATM subplot just should have been excised from the story completely. The movie alternates between the main storyline -- Calvin selling the barbershop his father left to him to a slimy "businessman" named Lester (Keith David), then trying to get it back -- and the two bumbling criminals who spend the whole movie trying, unsuccessfully, to pry open the ATM. Only a handful of the jokes involving these two made me laugh, and, on the whole, these scenes just distracted from the more interesting story of Calvin trying to figure out what to do with his barbershop, a place he has somewhat ambivalent feelings toward because it was his father's dream, not his. What ultimately saves the movie is that most of the dialogue in the barbershop, especially the in-fighting between an elitist, highly-educated barber named Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas) and the shop's lone white guy, Isaac (Troy Garrity), is quite funny. But what pleased me the most is that Barbershop didn't settle for the easy ending when it would have been so convenient to do so. As soon as Calvin learns that he has to come up with $40,000 to re-purchase his shop, I was sure the big finale was going to be one of those, "Hey, let's all pitch in and do a big fundraiser that will revitalize the community and get the barbershop back!" The cliched, sappy ending was sitting there with a big red bow on it, but the filmmakers chose a different ending -- one that is still positive, but more consistent with the overall tone of the movie, which is the tone that you get when two or more guys try to one-up each other with clever insults. They may be dissing each other, but a certain level of respect and comfort has to exist in order for the dynamic to work.

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DE NIRO VS. PACINO REDUX - About three weeks ago (9/5), I posited the question, "Which Godfather needs a new agent?" It was basically a response to a local movie critic remarking in his review of Simone that Al Pacino had acted in a string of unforgettable roles over the last ten years -- a statement not supported by Pacino's resume, which includes Scent of a Woman, Glengarry Glen Ross, Donnie Brasco, The Insider, and Heat. I went on to point out how, despite being one of the best actors ever, Robert De Niro has been in more unforgettable movies over the last decade or so, much to the chagrin of one of my readers. I'm revisiting this debate because ESPN.com Page 2 writer Bill Simmons -- by far the most entertaining, plugged-in sports/pop culture columnist on the planet right now -- provides a comprehensive assessment in today's column. Scroll down about halfway to where you see this question from one of his readers: Q: My friends and I loved the "Cheers" vs. "Seinfeld" debate that you wrote a couple of months ago. But what about the ultimate Dr. Jack breakdown: Pacino vs. De Niro? Good stuff.

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BARBERSHOP CONTROVERSY - I had planned to go into some detail today about the movies I intend to see at the upcoming Chicago Film Festival. However, my delinquency in posting my review of Barbershop, the #1 movie at the box office the past two weekends, coupled with the fact that the movie has generated a bit of a controversy in the black community, compels me to finally write about it. Apparently, quite a few prominent African-Americans, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, are angered about two different scenes, totaling two minutes of screen time, in which a grizzled old barber named Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) calls Martin Luther King Jr. a "whore," and demeans Rosa Parks by saying that "all she did was sit her black ass down." I happened to be flipping channels last night around 6 pm and both MSNBC and CNN were doing full segments about it, which I suppose doesn't really mean much in the era of 24-hour news channels when any story can be hyped into a controversy to fill time. On MSNBC, Brian Williams was interviewing columnist Mary A. Mitchell from the Chicago Sun-Times --the movie was shot on the city's South Side -- who defended the film's right to skewer revered African-Americans like Parks and King, and a talk show host from Radio One whose name I have conveniently forgotten. The radio host's basic contention was that Parks and King were such important figures in the civil rights movement that any type of disrespect toward them is irresponsible. Furthermore, the filmmakers should consider removing the two offending minutes before the movie is released on video and DVD. Frankly, listening to his arguments made my head hurt. As others have surely pointed out, what these outraged pundits are completely overlooking is the context of Eddie's derogatory statements. From the first time he opens his mouth, Eddie is clearly the movie's fool; everything he says is questionable in its truthfulness and is subsequently dismissed by the barbershop's patrons and other employees. And what happens when he launches into his rants about Parks and King? Everybody in the joint dismisses his claims and more than one person then provides an intelligent counter-argument. That people can get this worked up over something clearly meant to be a harmless joke, delivered by a character who has absolutely no credibility, just stupefies me. The radio host explained it was his understanding that Eddie's dialogue was not even in the original script, and he believed it was added at the last minute to make a political statement. First, the fact that it wasn't in the original screenplay only confirms what I suspected at the time, which is that Cedric the Entertainer improvised the dialogue. Second, there's absolutely no way that the filmmakers were actually trying to call into question the contributions of Parks or King. Cedric's goal was simply to provoke laughs, which should have been obvious to anyone watching the movie. And he got laughs because his statements were so ridiculous that everyone in the barbershop and the audience thought he was foolish. It's not as if the lines were spoken by Ice Cube, the movie's main character, in an impassioned speech about the fallacy of black leaders. It was meant as a joke, and I hope the filmmakers are firm enough in their convictions to keep the lines in the movie. How sad is it that a movie written, directed, produced by and starring black people -- a movie that has achieved mainstream success -- is being attacked by the same people who arguably should be praising it the most? So, is the movie any good? Check back later for my review.

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MY CHICAGO FILM FEST SCHEDULE - Every year the Chicago International Film Festival kicks off its festivities with an opening night tribute and screening. This year the gala is Friday, October 4 at 8 pm, and CS will be there to soak up all the pretentious film fun. Then again, maybe "pretentious" isn't the appropriate word for this year's event. Last year's honoree was Chicago's own David Mamet, who was showing off his latest film Heist. How cool would it have been to attend that little shindig? Despite my disdain for The Spanish Prisoner and the uneven reaction I had to Heist, Mamet's still one of the most exciting filmmakers around, whether it be as a screenwriter, director, or both. And, of course, he's one of the most important American playwrights...well...ever. So who did this year's organizers decide to honor with their Career Achievment Award? 007 himself, Pierce Brosnan. The movie Brosnan is promoting isn't his latest Bond effort, Die Another Day, but a little Irish movie called Evelyn that sounds halfway decent, if a little too weepy. Directed by Bruce "Driving Miss Daisy" Beresford, Evelyn is based on the true story of a man named Desmond Doyle in 1950s Ireland who lost his wife, his job, and then his kids because of some inane law called the Irish Children Act. The Irish courts and Catholic Church apparently believed it was better for Doyle's three children to be raised in orphanages than to be without a mother. But rather than hit the pub and drown his sorrows in Guiness, Doyle decided to fight the power and try to get the act overturned. It figures to be a real tearjerker with a little bit of courtroom drama thrown in. Hopefully, Beresford can restrain himself and let the story and actors do the work. I'm not counting on it. The supporting cast is solid, though, with Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, and Alan Bates, who I had the pleasure of seeing in Ibsen's The Master Builder in London's West End in 1995. Former ER nurse Julianna Marguiles also appears as a "tough but sweet barmaid." As if there was any other kind. Brosnan is no David Mamet, but I suppose I shouldn't complain -- a few years ago they honored Richard Gere.

Below is a list of the other movies I plan to see over the two-week festival, with more likely to be added. I'll have reviews of each movie posted here on CinemaScoped as I see them.

Monday, Oct. 7 -- Bowling For Columbine (Michael Moore)
Tuesday, Oct. 8 -- Punch-Drunk Love (P.T. Anderson)
Wednesday, Oct. 9 -- Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass)
Thursday, Oct. 10 -- Roger Dodger (Dylan Kidd)
Saturday, Oct. 12 -- Auto Focus (Paul Schrader)
Wednesday, Oct. 16 -- Rabbit-Proof Fence (Philip Noyce)

Now I'm just waiting for the e-mail from someone wanting to know why, if it's called the Chicago International Film Festival, am I only bothering to see four American movies, one from Australia, and one from Great Britain/Ireland? Maybe by tomorrow when I go into detail on each movie listed above, I'll have a respectable answer.

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WEEKEND MOVIES - I don't know if it's because I'm too excited about the films I'm going to see at the upcoming Chicago International Film Festival (more on this tomorrow), or that I don't have the connections to see movies for free in Chicago like I had in Iowa City, but nothing about this past weekend's new movies looked interesting to me -- interesting enough, anyway, to actually shell out $9 to see them. The synopsis for the movie Trapped features this great line: "Three locations, three kidnappers, three hostages - one family and a chilling, breakneck 24 hours until it's all over." I gotta hand it to Columbia's marketing people, it almost makes the movie sound interesting, doesn't it? Kevin Bacon stars as one of the kidnappers, with Charlize Theron as the kidnapped girl's mother. Who knows what Bacon is doing with his career these days? With apologies to Paul Verhoeven-Hollow Man fans, he really hasn't made a decent film since 1995's Apollo 13. And then there's Theron, who might actually be the worst actress in Hollywood right now. Her performances in The Legend of Bagger Vance and Cider House Rules are textbook bad acting. In The Banger Sisters, Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn play two former '60s groupies who reunite and reminisce about their infamous pasts when Hawn's character is faced with a life crisis. Enough said. The unfortunately titled spy movie Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, with Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas, is so bad it actually hasn't garnered a single positive review yet on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe this doesn't surprise you that much, but at least one critic, usually writing for some fringe Internet site (like this one), always finds something to recommend about even the worst dreck. But here's Ballistic with 65 reviews and not one critic liked it. (Click here to see a list of other movies with 0 "fresh" reviews.) I saved The Four Feathers for last because it's the one new movie I might break down and see at some point because the subject matter -- British colonialism in North Africa, ten years before Khartoum -- is somewhat interesting and Rick McGinnis over at Movieblog listed it, along with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, as the movie he is most looking forward to this fall during my CinemaScoped Critics & Reader's Poll.
There are two things keeping me from being too excited about this movie: 1) I wasn't as enamored as everyone else with director Shekhar Kapur's last movie, the best picture nominated Elizabeth (1998). Frankly, I thought it was over-directed and far more confusing than it needed to be. 2) The cast -- Heath Ledger, Kate Hudson, and Wes Bentley -- conjurs for me the phrase "junior varsity." Apparently, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, and everyone else from Dawson's Creek was unavailable. OK, that's not completely fair. I enjoyed Bentley as the moody misfit Ricky in American Beauty, and loved Hudson in Almost Famous. Even Ledger impressed me with a brief role as Billy Bob Thornton's son in last year's Monster's Ball. But those were all supporting roles, and something about all three of these young actors taking on British accents scares me. Reviews have been less than stellar so far, with only 42 out of 102 positive. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times writes: "The picture's wheezing fussiness and devotion to the British empire and its minor nods to questioning unthinking loyalty to an ideal make The Four Feathers a possible first of a kind: a movie that's halfhearted about ambivalence." On a similar note, Salon's Charles Taylor says: "For all of the contemporary post-colonialist consciousness that Kapur tries to bring to The Four Feathers, the oddest thing about the movie is how it winds up affirming the same damn moldy values the material has always held dear." The cinematography should be luscious though with Robert Richardson's (Oliver Stone's cinematographer of choice, currently working on QT's Kill Bill) careful eye surveying all of that desert.


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CRITICS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR? - I'm a little more settled into my new job and apartment in Chicago so I can finally get back to blogging. Hopefully, my devoted throng of readers (it's a nice thought, anyway) didn't lose patience with me. My brief hiatus has me playing catch-up on what's going in terms of film commentary -- so behind, in fact, that this post is going to deal with something that was actually published online more than a week ago. But it's too good to ignore, especially since it ultimately calls into question the function of every film "critic" out there, whether it be a little blogger like myself or Roger Ebert. Speaking of Ebert, a reader named Paul Montgomery from Chicago recently wrote into his bi-monthly Movie Answer Man column with this question:

Q. Your review of "Auto Focus" from Telluride was the final straw for me. How you can rave about a film that contains "wall-to-wall sex" escapes me. I guess I'm just a fogie about such matters. Films aren't often being made for people like me, and the critics have forgotten that people like me exist.

This question is truly fascinating, partly because Paul totally misinterpreted Ebert's comments (as we will soon see in Ebert's response), but primarily because the implication is that a film critic should somehow consider his or her audience when reviewing a movie. Moreover, Paul is saying that a critic actually has a duty to try and judge a movie from the audience's perspective. Perhaps you're thinking to yourself, "Isn't that a critic's job...to tell me whether a movie is good or bad so I can decide whether I should pay to see it or not?" Well, no, that's not what a critic is supposed to do. And yet that's exactly how most people I run into see it. And it's not just moviegoers. Here's how Philip Wuntch of the Dallas Morning News explains his approach to film criticism -- or perhaps I should say, film "reviewing" -- in this quaint bio (click on his name; you may have to register to view it):

I THINK THE ROLE OF A CRITIC IS: On the most immediate basis, after I see a film, I put myself in the place of those who pay first-run prices, and maybe pay a baby sitter in order to see a movie. Is it worth it? My first responsibility is to the reader and potential moviegoer. I also hope that somewhere along the line, someone of authority in film making may read something I've written and be informed/enlightened/enraged by what they read. But my foremost responsibility is to the potential moviegoer.

Mr. Wuntch certainly has his heart in the right place, and I hate to be too negative towards him since he took the time to actually respond to my CinemaScoped Critics & Readers Poll 2002, but I can't imagine a more misguided view of film criticism. How does someone actually put themselves "in the place of those who pay first-run prices, and maybe pay a baby sitter to see a movie?" And who are these people? Mr. Wuntch seems to think that a) every person who hires a baby sitter to see a movie (in Dallas, presumably) shares the same taste in movies and b) that he is somehow able to tap into their brains when he reviews a movie. The fact is that not every moviegoer can be packed into such a neat little box, and even if they could, what benefit is there in a critic who simply tries to regurgitate what the supposed masses think about a film. That's not film criticism; that's market research. I'll give another example. My friend Nate Yapp, who writes reviews now for The Daily Iowan and runs the site Classic Horror, is very smart about movies. On one of his old review web sites, he wrote in his statement of purpose (and I'm terribly paraphrasing here) that "if you're tired of self-important critics, this site is for you because it will tell you what you really want to know: 'Will I enjoy myself.' " Now again, I'm not trying to demean Nate or his reviews. The problem with the question Nate poses, however, is that it presupposes that he can tell his readers whether or not they will enjoy a certain movie. But how does Nate know what I, or anyone else for that matter, think is funny, or sad, or thrilling? All Nate can do -- all any critic can do -- is articulate his or her own biases as clearly and consistently as possible. The great irony is that disregarding one's readers is the only way a critic can actually be useful to them. If you really wanted to know whether you might "enjoy" a particular film, all you'd have to do is read the one critic who you always agreed or disagreed with -- the critic who seemed to have the same criteria for judging a movie as you did. And how would you know what a critic truly believed if he simply tried to tell his mass of readers how they'll react to a particular movie -- which, as I said before, isn't really possible anyway. As for Ebert's answer, I'm happy to report he nailed it:

A. I have not forgotten that people like you exist, but I am not you, just as you are not me, and unless I honestly report my own opinion, I am of no use to you or anyone else. I admire Paul Schrader's new film very much; Greg Kinnear is surprisingly effective in charting Bob Crane's self-destruction. Certainly sexual addiction is a valid subject for a movie, but I didn't "rave" about the sex. I wrote: "Schrader somehow succeeds in making a film with wall-to-wall sex in which sadness and loneliness, not passion, is the subject." There is a difference between a movie that is wall-to-wall sex, and a movie that is about it. Here is a crucial rule for anyone seriously interested in movies: It's not what the movie is about that makes it good or bad, but how it is about it.

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NEW FEATURES/PLEA FOR PATIENCE - As you can see, I've added links above to all of the reviews and articles I wrote as the film critic for The Daily Iowan. I've also added links to a sampling of my academic essays on film and a brief biography. Some personal news I should share because it will directly impact my blogging: I'm relocating to Chicago (later today, in fact) from Iowa City to start a new job. The good news is that CS will now be able to cover more independent and arthouse flicks that can only be seen in major cities (right when they open, anyway), in addition to events like the Chicago Internation Film Festival, which runs October 4-18. I've got nothin' but love for Iowa City, but for a movie buff, Chicago has to be one of the most exciting cities in the country to live in. The bad news is that this first week could be kind of sketchy in terms of blogging. I'm moving into temporary housing tonight and have no idea what my Internet access will be like yet. But please be patient. I saw Barbershop over the weekend and still have some thoughts to share on Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. I'm also eager to address an issue that came up in one of Roger Ebert's recent Movie Answer Man columns -- just who is a film critic supposed to be writing for? I'll have these posts and more up as soon as I get organized in the Windy City. Stay tuned...

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