OUT TO LUNCH - Some good lists of the top ten movies of the last 25 years in the Feedback Forum so far. Let's see some more. Sam, Eric and I have almost finished our list and should have it up Wed. or Thurs. I'll also have a post about a Netflix rival and the movie 'Scotland, PA.'

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WE WANT YOUR VOTE AND ARE THEY SERIOUS? - Sam, Eric and I are in the midst of whittling down our list of the top ten films of the past 25 years (see my post from last Tuesday, Dec. 3rd below). We would like your help in constructing this list. Use whatever criteria you would like. Send your picks to: CinemaScoped@attbi.com.

I have to admit I was a bit shocked (and disappointed) to see Ebert's three-star review of the new J. Lo-Cinderella tale, 'Maid In Manhattan'. But not half as shocked as I was to read Jonathan Rosenbaum's take in the Chicago Reader. You think you know someone...

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SPEAKING OF MOVIES NOBODY WILL SEE - Has anyone seen this new movie 'Russian Ark', which is shot in one long, unbroken take? Here's the NY Times' blurb about it:

Russian Ark" is a magnificent conjuring act, an eerie historical mirage evoked in a single sweeping wave of the hand by Alexander Sokurov. The 96-minute film, shot in high-definition video in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, consists of one continuous, uninterrupted take. Thanks to recent technological innovation, it is the longest unbroken shot in the history of film. As the Steadicam operated by Tilman Büttner (the German cinematographer of "Run Lola Run") floats through the museum's galleries, a cast of 2,000 actors and extras act out random, whimsical moments of Russian imperial history that dissolve into one other like chapters of a dream.

And here I thought Welles' long take at the beginning of 'Touch of Evil' -- and Altman's spoof at the beginning of 'The Player', and Scorsese's tracking shot into the Copacabana in 'GoodFellas' -- were the most amazing uses of the long take in cinema. Sadly, like 'Adaptation', it's not playing in Chicago. How did the Windy City suddenly become Star City, Arkansas? And if you can name what movie is set in Star City, Arkansas, you get...well, I'm not sure what you'll get other than my respect and admiration.


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RABBIT-PROOF FENCE - I've been promising comments about Philip Noyce's 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' (opened limited, 11/29) for so long that whatever I have to say about it now will probably be a disappointment -- especially considering I saw the movie back in October at the Chicago International Film Festival and have no notes to reflect on. But then this is a movie playing on like five screens in the whole world so this post will be relevant to almost noone. Set in Australia in 1931, the movie is based on the true story of an Aboriginie girl named Molly Craig who was taken from her home along with two friends to a British training facility. According to British policy at the time, "half-caste" children (whose mothers were Aboriginal and whose fathers were white) were required to be removed and trained to work as servants. The end goal was that through marriage the half-caste children would eventually reproduce and somewhere down the genetic line the Aboriginal half would be washed away. It's basically an aristrocratic brand of ethnic cleansing -- the same horror but with tea and crumpets instead of guns and bombs, which is what makes it seem all the more horrific. If your interest isn't sparked yet, I haven't even gotten to the heart of the story, which follows Molly and her friends as they escape from the facility and embark on a 1500-mile journey back home using the titular fence as their guide. That's three kids. 1500 miles. Walking. The movie is a remarkable one, primarily because the story itself is so remarkable. Using non-professional actors and a cinema verite style, Noyce's only misstep is that he marks the line between good (the kind-hearted, happy natives) and evil (the British regulators) a little too neatly, at least in the scenes with Kenneth Branagh who plays A.O. Neville, the man in charge of overseeing the half-castes. The scenes of the Australian landscape are bathed in a warm, yellow glow against a clear-blue sky and shot with simple, fluid camera movements. There are also not as many close-ups, which would cinematically accomplish what the British were doing to the Aboriginies, which is to remove them from their surroundings. In contrast, all of Neville's scenes are a crisp, cold blue with harsh whites and sharp cuts that immediately make you uneasy. It's just a little too obvious for my taste, especially when Branagh is consistently shot at a low angle to signifiy his power. Noyce doesn't want us to think even for a second that their is any kind of nobility in Neville's endeavor -- and there definitely isn't -- but the fact is that evil people very rarely view themselves as being evil. They're just doing what they believe is right, no matter how misguided it might appear to others, or to us 70 years later. Neville is positively sure he is helping the Aboriginies, an irony that Noyce could have toyed with a bit more rather than color-coding who the bad guy is. Switching gears for a second, Sam piqued my interest with something he mentioned in his musings on Wednesday. With regard to 'Monsoon Wedding', he wrote: "Are actors in foreign films inherently more believable than actors (particularly well-known actors) in English-language films." I'll raise you one: Are non-professional actors, especially foreign ones, inherently more believable than professional actors (particularly well-known ones)? I automatically attributed a certain naturality to the behavior of these girls -- actual Aboriginie girls playing Aboriginie girls -- that I'm not sure I would have granted to regular actors. And I find that I always have this reaction with foreign non-actors. Is it because they are speaking in a foreign tongue and our ears are not able to pick up the kind of inflections that sometimes make a performance seem fake? Take Ed Burns' 'The Brothers' McMullen, for example. Burns cast is actual girlfriend at the time, Maxine Bahns, who had never acted before, to play his love interest in the movie. And really all she is doing is playing herself -- a 20-something living in New York, probably a student, which she was at the time. But her performance is textbook bad acting, horrible even by low-budget indie standards. Why couldn't I buy her performance, but every time I see a non-actor in a foreign movie -- any of Rossellini's and Fellini's neorealist efforts, the recent 'Himalaya', and so on -- I am inevitably convinced buy it? I'm not sure, but Noyce's semi-neorealist aesthetic worked for me and I was moved by the story and the performances of the girls, particularly the lead.

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MY RANDOM MUSINGS- You've heard the rumors, and, alas, they appear to be true. A deal is apparently in place that would have Sly Stallone lacing up the gloves one more time to play the Italian Stallion in 'Rocky VI' -- something about running a youth center and being roped back in for one more fight. I think what I'm looking forward to most is the inevitable scene where Talia Shires yells, "You're gonna get killed!" Stallone, who did write the screenplay to the best-picture winning original -- 'Rocky' beat 'All The President's Men', 'Network', and 'Taxi Driver' in 1976; think about that for a sec -- is reportedly developing the script. We can only hope the dialogue is as good as his last effort, 'Driven', which produced this gem: "Faith is like a good disease...it's contagious." As a blogger I know I'm supposed to come up with fountains of snarky remarks here -- and I picked this story to comment on just for that reason -- but I can't bring myself to do it. The story is it's own punchline. * I was flipping channels this past weekend and came across 'As Good As It Gets', a film that was nominated for best picture and earned an Oscar for its star, Jack Nicholson, back in 1997. I've caught parts of this movie on TV a few times since seeing it in the theater and I'm always struck by an awful feeling of self-loathing for having actually enjoyed it the first time I saw it. As some CS readers will recall, I ranted about this same subject on my old Iowa City radio show, "Burn Hollywood Burn," earlier in the year, but I just can't seem to let it go. This time I had the pleasure of tuning in to see Nicholson deliver his "Don't knock on my door ever again you little queer speech" to Greg Kinnear. How did I fall for this? How did I find this amusing? And how did Nicholson win an Oscar for such a tedious, ham-fisted performance? His delivery is so protracted as he basks in his "Jack-ness" that the scene becomes interminable. He just seems to be working sooo hard. "Mugging" is probably the best word to describe it, which is exactly what Slate's David Edelstein does when mentioning the performance in his tepid review of Nicholson's latest, 'About Schmidt', which was written and directed by Alexander Payne of 'Election' fame and opens Friday. (See, this post is topical after all.) Sadly, it only opens in NY and LA, which leaves the rest of us with: 'Maid In Manhattan', 'Star Trek: Nemesis', 'The Hot Chick', and 'Drumline'. Ouch. Guess the DVD player will see some action this weekend. 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' comments coming Friday...no really.

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SAM'S RANDOM MUSINGS - In my effort to catch up on this year's best-reviewed films, I saw "Monsoon Wedding" over the weekend. As I watched it, it was impossible for me not to compare it to this year's biggest box office surprise (and recent Oscar-talk bait) "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." A comparison may be unfair, because they are very different films; but watching the two films in fairly close succession has given me some clarity in articulating what I didn't like about "Fat Greek Wedding" (which itself might be redundant and unnecessary). Using a camera that remains in almost constant motion, "Monsoon Wedding" succeeds in submerging you into the frenzy of the few days preceding an upper middle class "dot com" wedding in New Delhi, India. The script, which has characters speaking interchangeably in English and Hindi, offers only scant help in sorting out the various and sundry family members; but what you get is a wonderfully chaotic portrait of a family in transition. Despite reports that the characters that make up Nia Vardalos' Fat Greek Family are based on actual family members, the film is still a canvas painted with a large, cartoonish brush, and the script is little more than a series of hit-and-miss punch lines. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” still works on the strength of the actors, but no better than an above-average sit-com. The extended family in Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" looks, feels, and sounds like a real family. When the film strays from character into plot, the film loses momentum and occasionally comes off as contrived, but I found these mild distractions. The sheer volume of ideas and characters and sights and sounds that the film introduces is intoxicating. Nair doesn’t condescend to any of her characters; instead, she mines humor out of a community of (very un-cartoonish) individuals who are provoked to sometimes outrageous fits of passion due to extraordinary circumstances. The extraordinary circumstances in this case being a wedding that brings together a bride and groom who have only met days before their wedding (it’s an arranged wedding); family members who have used the springboard of the global economy to leave New Delhi and India; and members of opposing classes and castes who struggle to shed the burden of history, while still embracing tradition. Not everything works in Nair’s film, and end is more cathartic than it is dramatically sound; but there is a contagious spirit of well-earned fun to the film. Definitely one of the better movies I’ve seen this year.

Something on a related topic that my girlfriend raised after we watched “Monsoon Wedding” that Adam and Eric might have an opinion on: Are actors in foreign films inherently more believable than actors (particularly well-known actors) in English-language films? I don’t watch a lot of foreign films, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid them either; and I think there’s some truth to this. I know with “Monsoon Wedding” I shut off the part of my brain that, with American films, is used to identify examples of illogic or inconsistency. I don’t know anything about traditional Indian customs, so I paid more attention to the story and the relationships. Ignorance is bliss. The same could be said for the power of unknown actors. Joaquin Phoenix is great in “To Die For” (for example), but the impact of his performance was all the greater because we had no expectations of him. There are a thousand examples of this; I just can’t think of any. Guy Pearce and (the relatively unknown) Russell Crowe in “LA Confidential;” Matthew McConaughey in “Dazed and Confused” (it’s impossible to watch that film now and not see “Matthew McConaughey;” whereas, when I first saw it, I thought to myself: “where did they find THAT guy?”). There are some films out there that I’m convinced I would have loved if they had been re-cast with unknown actors (“The Thin Red Line” comes immediately to mind; or basically any war movie where you know the guy played by Bruce Willis or whoever probably isn’t going to die). Thoughts on this, guys?

Final thought on the best sports movie of all time. I insist that anyone who claims that “The Natural” is their favorite sports movie should go and watch it again (as I did less than a month ago). It is atrocious. Terribly cast and boringly acted, it has almost nothing to do with baseball. It is moralistic, misogynistic and trite. I can’t believe I sat through it as a child. What a boring movie. A single caveat: the scene at the end still gives me chills. But that’s because it’s a baseball fantasy, and I love baseball. The music, the cinematography. You don’t need the rest of the film to appreciate that. “Hoosiers,” which I also saw again recently, is hands-down the best sports movie of all time. No question. Three things allow it to trump the entertainment value of “Bull Durham”: it’s based on a true story; it makes you feel like shooting hoops; and it’s got Gene Hackman’s laugh (which, in the event of his passing, should be put in the Smithsonian).

SPORTS MOVIES - I'm going to have a review of 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' tomorrow along with some other random musings. But until then, Rico has provoked a bit of a debate in the Feedback Forum on the subject of sports movies...why I'm not entirely sure, but it's worth commenting on nevertheless. Everyone seems to agree that 'Field of Dreams' belongs at the top of the list or at least near it, and as a baseball fan first and foremost, and as someone who (rightly or wrongly) doesn't consider 'Raging Bull' to be a "sports movie", I'm inclined to agree. Sure Ray Liotta plays Shoeless Joe Jackson as a righty -- how did the casting agent/filmmakers overlook this? -- and they mispronounce White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte as 'Che-cotty' when it should be 'See-cot', as anyone who has seen Sayles' great 'Eight Men Out' is well aware, but it's truly an American classic. It's a movie that's as much about fathers and sons as it is baseball. 'Bull Durham' is a close second because, as LawDog admits, I can watch it three times a week and not get tired of it. Joeycotton stands out from the group by putting 'Slap Shot' at the top of his list and then slamming 'The Natural' as "the worst sports movie ever." Shamefully, I have never seen 'Slap Shot' despite the fact that I work for a professional hockey team! I come to work each day scared to death that I'll be found out, outed for all of my co-workers to humiliate and ridicule. As for 'The Natural', Joeyc and the Movie Club's own Sam Hallgren are on crack if they hate this movie. Much like 'Field of Dreams' and it's source material -- the book 'Shoeless Joe' -- 'The Natural' is actually a better movie than a book, even if Barry Levinson makes Roy Hobbs into the embodiment of perfection and Hollywood-izes the ending. Manipulative? Maybe, but if you don't get a chill down your spine when the ball hits the lights at the end and the sparks fly onto the field, then I say there's something wrong with you. I am absolutely unashamed about the fact that this moment provokes the same response from me today as it did when I was 12. For what it's worth, ESPN Page 2 produced this list awhile back of their top 20 sports movies of all-time. You can also read Bob Halloran's missive about how 'Bull Durham' is over-rated, self-indulgent crap. He argues his points well even if there is only one criticism that really holds up, which is the fact that Nuke (Tim Robbins) somehow gets called up straight from "A" ball to "The Show," skipping the usual "AA" and "AAA." My college roommates and I, who watched this movie about 100 times senior year, have always had a problem with this bit of fantasy too. And who knows, maybe Halloran is right about 'Durham.' After all, Ron Shelton did direct the dreadful 'Cobb' and the even more dreadful -- I mean despicably bad -- 'Play It To The Bone.' I also dislike Shelton's 'Tin Cup' about as much as Halloran does 'Durham' -- probably for the same primary reason, too, which is that everyone else seems to love it way too much. But don't you ever say an unkind word about 'White Men Can't Jump'. Forget Newman and Redford, Astaire and Rogers, has there ever been a better on-screen duo than Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes?

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SOLARIS, OSCAR TALK IS ALL GREEK AND MORE - To close out our 'Solaris' discussion... I do think a case could be made that Soderbergh did mislead Sam, and the rest of us, a little bit in making the central struggle of 'Solaris' appear to be that of Kelvin vs. Solaris -- man of reason and intellect, a psychiatrist, forced to confront something that defies all reason. I was going the same route and, like Sam, felt that Soderbergh perhaps forsakes this struggle too abruptly. The first time the fake Rheya comes, Kelvin keeps his sanity and sends her away, literally, out into space. The next time she shows up, however, he seems to succumb almost immediately to Rheya/Solaris' will. The next thing you know, he's shouting at the crew members telling them that he isn't going back to Earth without her. With all of this said, I had no problem following this "new" narrative thread, as it were. It's odd because every critic who complains about the movie says that Soderbergh reduced Tarkovsky's more poetic, philosophical film to a simple story of lost love; but as my initial post illustrates -- as misguided and confounding as it may be -- it's the larger statements the movie makes about freewill and the very nature of human existence that struck me as so fascinating, not the love story. I'm glad I could enjoy Soderbergh's vision without comparing it to Tarkovsky's, though now I am eager to pick up the new Criterion disc and scope it out. I also thought that Clooney's performance was one of his better ones, free of his usual ticks and mannerisms. I almost started to think Clooney was a good actor after 'Out of Sight' but after watching it a few more times I started to notice that he's not good so much as Soderbergh and writer Scott Frank make him seem good. Watch any scene that he's in with Don Cheadle and Steve Zahn and it's amazing how stiff and un-charismatic Clooney appears. But while Clooney may not be a great actor, he has, since the 'Batman' debacle, shown near impeccable taste, and I applaud him for that. And if Natasha McElhone doesn't get a Supp. Actress nod for her performance it's a shame. She's asked to convey the emotions of a being that isn't quite human and is filled with all sorts of memories, but none of them are her own. She's a creature, ultimately, with no freewill, no mind of her own, and somehow she finds a way to reflect this confusing state while also being incredibly sensual.

Reader Joe Horaney wrote in again with a complaint about the Oscar buzz 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' seems to be generating. "If 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' continues to get Oscar buzz just because it grossed over $200 million, I'll be sick," is how he put it. It's an interesting dilemma. I don't think most movie snobs like myself would say 'Greek Wedding' is one of the top 5 movies of the year, but it's also a fairly entertaining movie made outside the big studio system so it's hard not to root for it, or at least cheer it's amazing success. The Academy does love to throw in a light-hearted little comedy every year it seems, so I guess we should prepare to hear it's name mentioned when they announce the nominees.

The Movie Club next week will likely be a potpourri of whatever Sam, Eric and myself see this weekend. The only new movies opening wide are 'Empire', which I know nothing about, and 'Analyze That', and not one of us intends to see either one. I have to admit that the trailers for 'Analyze That' do seem semi-amusing, but I really did not enjoy the original and as long as Harold Ramis is directing, and he is, the movie will surely suck. The futuristic 'Equilibrium' with 'American Psycho's Christian Bale opens limited and is playing in Chicago, but the critics are really hating it -- only 20% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course, the movie we all want to see is 'Adaptation', but for some reason it isn't playing in Chicago. Rotten Tomatoes lists it as opening wide so now I'm really confused. The critics, as expected, are eating it up -- 91% positive.

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RANDOM MUSINGS - Tying up some loose ends before closing out the Movie Club on 'Solaris'... * First, reader Lisa Hannon wrote in to ask, "While you're doing lists [referring to our discussion about filmmakers whose movies we will always go see], who are your favorite female directors, if any?" So I thought about it...and I thought...and I thought...and I'll be damned if I could come up with a single one. There are a number of great female editors out there, the most notable of all being Scorsese's longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, but men still dominate the directorial landscape. In fact, as this Salon article from April tells us, 96 percent of films are directed by men. In Hollywood who do we have -- Amy Heckerling? Nora 'You've Got Mail' Ephron? Penny Marshall? Thanks, but no thanks. There are quite a few Kathryn Bigelow fans out there ('Point Break', 'Strange Days'), despite the disastrous 'K-19: The Widowmaker', but I'm not really one of them and I can safely say her name alone wouldn't entice me to see a movie. On the foreign/arthouse/independent front there's Agnes Varda, Mary Harron ('American Psycho'), Jane Campion, and younger filmmakers like the Sprecher sisters, whose recent 'Thirteen Conversations About One Thing' I enjoyed while Sam and joeycotton in the Feedback Forum found it mostly annoying. But I'm either not familiar enough with the work of these filmmakers or they haven't made enough movies to warrant instant credibility. Who am I forgetting? Sam, Eric...do you have any favorite female directors? If a reader out there would like to enlighten me on the merits of a particular female director, please send me an email at: cinemascoped@attbi.com. * On Greg's Previews over at Yahoo, his poll question is: "Which of these December releases do you think has the best chance of being this year's big Oscar winner?" I point this out not because I care to even hazard a guess at the answer, but because seeing all of the choices in a row made me realize just how great December is going to be for movies. Spike Lee's '25th Hour', Alexander Payne's 'About Schmidt', Spike Jonze's 'Adaptation', Denzel Washington's directing debut 'Antwone Fisher', Spielberg's 'Catch Me If You Can', 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind', Scorsese's long-awaited 'Gangs Of New York', 'The Hours' with an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, and a little movie called 'The Two Towers.' The only movie on the list I'm not excited to see is 'Chicago', the movie version of the famous Bob Fosse musical starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellwegger. I can't really explain why; I just know I probably won't see it until it's been out for many weeks, if at all. * Speaking of the '25th Hour', CS reader and former 'Burn Hollywood Burn' co-host Joe Horaney sent in this link to the trailer for Spike Lee's latest about the last twenty four hours a guy (Edward Norton) spends before he goes to prison for seven years for pushing heroin. David Benioff wrote the screenplay based on his own novel of the same name...well, almost. Lee dropped the "The" to make it just '25th Hour'. Joe read the book and had this reaction to the trailer: "Looks great. Definitely captured the tone of the novel and the cast is awesome. Edward Norton wouldn't have been my choice for the main character because of how he is described in the book, but he can pull it off. Will be one of Spike's better movies I'm betting." Joe went on to say that there character in the books is supposed to be "'black Irish,' dark and really good looking, the kind of guy that walks into a room and everyone notices. Ed Norton played a good sleaze in 'Rounders' for a reason; you could buy him as that. The guy described in the book sounded more like a Billy Crudup."

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MOVIE CLUB: SOLARIS
From: Eric Baker
To: Adam Kempenaar; Sam Hallgren
Subject: I Think Psych 101 Would Have Shed More Light

I agree somewhat with Adam and "Island girl's" distillation of the film, but probably more with Sam's gut reaction upon leaving the theater. I usually don't enjoy reading a number of reviews about the same movie, but this one generated such visceral reactions from everyone who wrote about it that the critical response suggested there was HOTS going on (that's Higher Order Thinking Skills for the uninitiated, and yes I got that from my 5th grade teacher). I didn't read the story either, and in this instance I'm quite glad I didn't, mainly because I like to get my entertainment by staring at something for a few hours with my mouth open. I was flipping through the channels the past week and came upon one of those "Making of the Movie: 'Solaris'"-type shows. They made a grand to-do about how, though James Cameron owned the rights to the story, Soderbergh wanted to do it so badly he came up with an entirely original treatment that blew Cameron's production company out of the water. Two items caught my attention as the over-earnest documentary continued: 1) Cameron felt his role as producer required him to stay away from the set but become hands-on once the editing work began, and 2) the studio panicked when the movie tanked in front of test audiences. I'm not suggesting we have another "Touch of Evil" here, but I wonder if this really is the picture Soderbergh envisioned. Unlike a lot of critics, I stayed with this sci-fi, and it started to work a little for me in the second half, but I thought the plot manipulations hamstrung the film. Not the Macguffins in the beginning, but the meetings with everyone at the end, and the posturing as Viola Davis' character tries to escape seemed to stray from what Soderbergh was building as an allegory to love lost. (Do you guys keep typing "Soberbergh?") I felt it was pretty clear that Kelvin's dreams were a manifestation of his guilt over his wife's death, even if it was Solaris, which is the biggest Macguffin of all, responsible for creating them. It's likely Soderbergh, or more accurately Lem, though it was ironic to cast Kelvin as a psychiatrist as he struggles with his feelings about her, but I felt it just made it that much harder to swallow. Maybe I've been reading the psychiatrist's club dissect too many of the "Sopranos" episodes on Slate. I didn't feel like the "dilemma," as Adam has couched it, was really a dilemma at all. So ultimately, in my mind, the blame has to fall to Soderbergh for creating such surface-level characters and denying the narrative access to Kelvin's point of view. Soderbergh's trademark flashbacks provided context but lacked emotional heft in a story deliberately unraveled at a snail's pace so as not to let on too much. Of course the camerawork is impeccable, and who would expect anything else from a Soderbergh film? But where did all the money go in this supposed big budget feature: Clooney's salary? Apparently there are no natural fibers in the future and everything looks like Battlestar Galactica, which really is enough to make me want to kill myself. I have to assume Soderbergh, like the aforementioned Michael Moore, makes films primarily to entertain people, meaning he has to get people to go to them first. The box office numbers are crap -- Soderbergh better be careful, lest he become more irrelevant than Woody Allen. To paraphrase Crash Davis: "You can afford to be artistic when you're making $50 million a movie."

As to directors whose work I'd see despite exhortations otherwise, Adam knocked most of mine off with Scorsese, Lynch, Sayles, Wong Kar-Wai, and the Coen Bros., though he left out Atom Egoyan and probably Garry Marshall. Adam also forgot to mention that any show produced by Dick Wolf he will dutifully watch no matter the critical washout. Of course it wouldn't be a film snob list without perennial snooze maestro Abbas Kiarostami on the list.

It sounds like we're going to be placing an increased reliance on lists during the next month, so I thought I'd just reiterate my thoughts on how I rank movies for both club writers and readers. I liken my method to Justice Potter Stewart's explanation of obscenity: "I can't tell you what it is but I know it when I see it." I make some kind of judgment after I watch a film about whether I liked it, then I try to fit it in some haphazard framework at the end of the year. Given how messy that sounds, I guess I can't blame Hollywood for withholding their Oscar contenders until December.

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MOVIE CLUB: SOLARIS
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: Solaris Reconsidered

I think I may have finally figured out what bothered me about "Solaris." It was Adam's identification of, as he calls it, the movie's "central dilemma." According to Adam, that dilemma is Kelvin's choice between returning to Earth to resume a "normal" (but loveless) life, or staying on board the ship, alone in deep space, with what, by all appearances, is his wife, recalled from the grave. I think Adam's "central dilemma" is correct, but it's not the one I recognized when I watched the film. If I were to identify the movie's "central dilemma"--as I took it to be when I watched the film--it would be something like this: when forced to choose between reason and desire in a situation that tests all of this emotional and professional faculties, how does a man use logic to defeat temptation? An entirely un-metaphysical construction on my part, I realize. Without realizing it, I had set myself up with expectations that the film had no intention of satisfying. In my mind, Kelvin was the protagonist and the planet Solaris was the antagonist. My thoughts during the whole movie: How will Kelvin defeat Solaris? And it's not that Kelvin doesn't defeat Solaris at the end that bothered me; it's that he stops trying to defeat Solaris halfway through the film. From the moment that Kelvin sends the first Rheya to her "death" in an escape pod, I was rooting for Kelvin to outmaneuver whatever it was that had incapacitated the rest of the crew. Now why did I think that? Have I been watching too many conventional sci-fi action movies? Because I became increasingly irritated as Kelvin further submits to the power of Solaris. Now that I think about it, the film is, in many ways, like a more typical (if slow-moving) protagonist/antagonist struggle -- but -- absent a third act. In a traditional format we see the following formula: in the first act, we witness our hero's physical/mental prowess when faced with various obstacles; in the second act our hero's nemesis, the antagonist, gets the better of him by exploiting our hero's weakness(es); in the third act our hero uses his superhuman strength/will to defeat the antagonist. In "Solaris" we get the first two acts, and no third act. But this formula is disappointing only if that's the formula that Soderbergh is employing. Which, according to Adam, he isn't. And I agree with him. So how did I get so off-track? I'm glad that I finally understand what kept me from enjoying the film, but I don't want to take all the blame. Eric and Adam: Did Soderbergh mislead me at all, or am I just too conventional a filmgoer to have figured out what he was up to?

On another subject, Eric asked me to explain my current obsession with Netflix, the online DVD rental service. I'm not sure how many Cinemascoped readers use the service, or have replaced their VCRs with DVD players, but, for even the casual renter of DVDs, Netflix beats Blockbuster ten times out of ten. For one thing, Netflix completely changed my renting psychology. Before Netflix, I'd go to Blockbuster, peruse the new releases, and eighty-five percent of the time I would rent something from the new release section. I might stroll through the "Blockbuster Favorites" aisles, but even if I saw something that caught my eye--an overlooked classic or an intriguing indie film--I'd probably hold onto my $4.00+ new release. I wish you could all take a look at the list of films I have rented through Netflix in the past six months. Just last week, the following films arrived in my mailbox: Fellini's "8 12," the Christian Bale/Matt McConaughey dragon epic "Reign of Fire," Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," and the Tim Robbins Vietnam Vet warped suspense film "Jacob's Ladder" (not to be confused with "Jakob the Liar"). I've also rented "The Last Starfighter" (lots of unintentional hilarity) the original "Get Carter" with Michael Caine (a great movie), and "Godfather III" (just as bad as you remember it being). I'm not sure I would have rented any of these movies at Blockbuster, assuming they even had them. Also, depending on the volume of films you watch per week, or per month, Netflix can be an incredible bargain. Granted, I wouldn't be watching nearly as many movies if I had to rent them, but as it stands, my roommate and I spend on average about $1 per rental--based on a cost-per-month rental/cost analysis conducted by my roommate in his prodigious spare time. Compare that with Blockbuster's ever-increasing prices, and it's a no-brainer. Plus, with Netflix, there are no late fees. I know that this sounds like an advertisement; but I reap no rewards for this kind of commentary. Consider this a public service message. And why'll you're at it, rent "Klute" or "The Right Stuff" or "The Last Detail" or "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" or Michael Mann's "Thief" with James Caan. All great films that I rented through Netflix that I would never have rented from Blockbuster. A single warning: not all of the chances you end up taking on films pay off. For every diamond in the rough, there are two or three stinkers: turns out “The Stunt Man” is only a cult classic for people who love terrible movies.

MOVIE CLUB: SOLARIS
From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Should have paid more attention in Existential Philosophy

Before commenting specifically on Steven Soderbergh's 'Solaris', I want to mention right off the top that I have not seen Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 version, nor have I read Stanislaw Lem's book (1961). I've gathered from reading various sources that Soderbergh's rendition is closer to the book than Tarkovsky's while also being a lot less confusing. If this is true, I can't imagine how negatively Sam would react to the original. (A 2-disc Criterion Collection DVD comes out today.) Sam faults the current 'Solaris' for lacking specifics and for raising questions that it can't or won't answer -- “What is Solaris?”; “How should we get rid of the "visitors?" “How dangerous are the "visitors?" -- but one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie so much is precisely because these questions were left open for interpretation. These are the kind of questions that a standard, plot-driven sci-fi movie would try to answer, but for Soderbergh (and I'm guessing Lem and Tarkovsky) these issues are merely MacGuffins, plot means to a much larger end. The movie isn't concerned with trying to explain why this strange planet is somehow able to interpret one's dreams and actually produce a flesh and blood version of someone close to the dreamer. It is, as Sam says, "a story of relationships, loss, and the psychology of mourning and forgiveness," but it's also much more than that. Depending on how you interpret the ending -- which I will admit to having some confusion about -- 'Solaris' is either the ultimate exitentialist manifesto or the ultimate affirmation of God's supreme power. The movie's central dilemma is fascinating enough -- Clooney's character, Chris Kelvin, has to decide whether he would prefer to go back to Earth and resume his normal life, or exist essentially in isolation in space with someone -- something, really -- who is an exact replica of his dead wife, Rheya. Fortunately, I have yet to experience the loss of someone that close to me. But if I had, I could see this actually being a difficult decision if I was placed in a similar situation. Life on Earth without the person I love most in the world, or life with that person in a place without any typical human concerns -- no job, no mortgage payment, etc... The conundrum is that the allure of an existence without those daily concerns is also what makes it seem so frightening because our ambition and material items are what define us. Even more intriguing, however, is the way the film frames the age-old philosophical debate on freewill, an issue that we see being discussed specifically in at least one flashback during the film. The planet Solaris enables Kelvin, in a sense, to become God. As islandgirllizzie says in the Feedback Forum, Rheya is defined by Kelvin's memories of her and while Solaris may be responsible for "making" her, it is Kelvin who is responsible for "creating" her in his dreams. One could posit that what is ultimately so disarming about Rheya and the other "visitors" to the ship is that it forces Kelvin and the scientists to accept a position they are not equipped to take. Man aspires to be God, and in His absence (thanks to freewill) has not choice but to do so. Perhaps Lem's message is that Man is not quite ready.

Looking back over this I'm not sure any of it makes sense, but oh well. There's still much to discuss about 'Solaris' -- the performances, Soderbergh's signature camerawork and editing, plus Eric still hasn't chimed in yet...

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MOVIE CLUB: SOLARIS
From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Filling space

Hmm...my list of directors "whose films I will see despite any and all criticism suggesting I do otherwise?" Sam is part of my Movie Club because he consistently inspires fun little games like this one. His list is, by his own account, small -- Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Steven Soderbergh and David O. Russell, if Russell ever makes a follow-up to 'Three Kings'. My list is a bit bigger. Anderson and Soderbergh, definitely. Add Scorsese, David Lynch, John Sayles, Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, the Coen Bros., David Fincher, Woody Allen (despite the fact that he hasn't made a good film in almost 10 years and a great film in about 15, as I wrote back on 10/29) and Spike Lee. Michael Mann gets my honorable mention...which brings me to this tangent. Since we're on the subject of lists, it's worth mentioning that Sight and Sound magazine's current issue responds to criticism that their decade poll of the best films and directors neglected recent movies by publishing a new poll that focuses exclusively on films since 1978. Mann, somewhat surprisingly to me, made the list of directors at #5. The rest of the list is as follows: 1. Scorsese 2. Krzysztof Kieslowski 3. Wong Kar-Wai 4. Abbas Kiarostami 5. Mann 6. Lynch 7. Pedro Almodóvar 8. Francis Ford Coppola 9. Spike Lee 9. Ingmar Bergman. The films (in order): Apocalpyse Now (Coppola), Raging Bull (Scorsese), Fanny and Alexander (Bergman), GoodFellas (Scorsese), Blue Velvet (Lynch), Do The Right Thing (Lee), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), Chunking Express (Wong Kar-Wai), Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies), Once Upon A Time In America (Sergio Leone) and Yi Yi (Edward Yang). I'll save commentary on these two lists for later in the week when Sam, Eric and I provide the "Official" CinemaScoped list of the best directors and films of the past 25 years.

I didn't quite finish my comments on 'Solaris' last night. Check back this afternoon for more Movie Club fun.


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MOVIE CLUB: SOLARIS
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: In space, no one can hear you wonder what the hell is going on

Steven Soderbergh belongs to a small group of directors whose films I will see despite any and all criticism suggesting I do otherwise. Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch are the other two; and -- if he ever directs another film -- David O. Russell would be the fourth. I have to admit that my predilection for Soderbergh and his films stems equally from his films themselves and from the commentary he provides on the DVDs of his films. Having listened to his commentary for "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "The Limey" and "Ocean's 11," Soderberg strikes me as someone in love with the art of making films. And not just the technique of making films, but the art of storytelling that is unique to filmmaking. Soderbergh comes off on these commentaries as humble; self-critical; confident, but not cocky; and always curious -- as much a student as an auteur. Last Wednesday afternoon, on the film’s opening day, I attended a matinee of Soderberg's "Solaris.” I didn't like it. Even worse, I left the movie confused -- unsure of what I was supposed to take from it. I don't mind leaving a film confused if that is the filmmaker's intent (David Lynch may not intend for me to leave his films perplexed, but I invariably do, and that didn't keep me from enjoying "Mulholland Drive"); but "Solaris" was clearly about something -- I'm just not sure what. At its essence, “Solaris” is a story of relationships, loss, and the psychology of mourning and forgiveness. Alone, a cinematic meditation on these ideas might have been interesting; but the film itself feels plot-heavy—and yet, at the same time, lacking in specifics. I honestly think I would have been less confused -- and found the film more moving -- if I had seen “Solaris” without its unnecessarily confusing dialogue. There is something very moving about the basic story as it is told visually: melancholy man (Clooney) is called to join a mission in deep space; man arrives to find evidence of some mischief (blood stains, dead bodies, etc.); man meets eccentric crew member (a bearded, tic-ridden Jeremy Davies) who gives him absolutely no indication of what the hell is going on; man meets another crew member (Viola Davis) who is so freaked out that she won't leave her room; man goes into his room, sleeps, wakes to find a woman in his bed (Natasha McElhone); man freaks out, goes to shocking ends to remove her from the ship; man has more confusing conversations with crew members; man goes back to sleep and the same woman returns; flashbacks to his past indicate that this woman is his girlfriend/wife; etc., etc. If it weren’t for the intrusive exposition that keeps hijacking the film, the music and the visual momentum of the story would make for a seriously creepy and profoundly moving film. “What is Solaris?”; “How should we get rid of the "visitors?" “How dangerous are the "visitors?" The film offered no answers to these questions, and I left the film wishing they hadn’t been asked. I look forward to watching the film again on DVD. I look even more forward to hearing Soderbegh’s DVD commentary, so I can finally understand what the film was about. As I finish this post, I learn that Adam has provocatively names "Solaris" as one of the best films of the year. I am eager to hear his thoughts. I am even more eager to see a film that I really like. I haven't written a good review of a film since this Movie Club began...For the record, of films I saw this year, I really liked "Punch Drunk Love," "Heaven," "Roger Dodger," "The Dancer Upstairs," "The Bourne Identity," "Full Frontal" and "About a Boy." I just wanted to get that out there.

COMING SOON - I won't be able to get my comments on 'Solaris' up until tonight. But I'll leave this morsel to entice my Movie Club partners, Sam and Eric -- I think it might just be the film of the year.

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING - CS will be off until Monday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The Movie Club will be back next week to discuss Steven Soderbergh's 'Solaris' and the intriguing question (posed by Sam) about which type of "bad film" is the worst. I'll also have a review of Philip Noyce's 'Rabbit-Proof Fence'.

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MOVIE CLUB: DIE ANOTHER DAY
From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Bond, a historical perspective

In his last post, Sam wondered: "Are their guiltless Bond gourmands out there?" In fact, there are, including my friend Chris Kaduce, who has written in with a nicely-detailed historical perspective on 'Die Another Day' and the Bond franchise. But before I get to Chris' remarks, I wanted to mention that I think Eric is really onto something when he discusses the commercialization of James Bond. It's not a startling notion really; the marketing of Bond has been in high-gear ever since Brosnan revitalized the series -- with BMW, most notably -- but 'Die Another Day' really could be seen as simply a 130-minute commercial. Eric writes: "Bond transforms from a gruff refugee to Rico Suave in a matter of minutes with the new Norelco super razor." It's funny because what struck me as odd about the scene where we see Bond shaving is that they don't show him actually shave off the the thick beard he developed in the North Korean jail; they just show him smoothing himself up afterwards with the electric razor because that is what they are selling. (I can't recall if the Bond people are in bed with Norelco, or another company, but I know I have seen the ads). Also, Eric reminded me that the Madonna cameo is, in fact, really bad -- so bad she makes Halle Berry look like...well...an Oscar winner. To Madonna's credit, however, I saw the movie Sunday and I still haven't been able to get that damn techno theme song out of my head. I'm sure Eric was up in the aisles doing the "Robot" during the credits. Now to Chris' analysis:

Critic proof? Perhaps -- like any franchise movie, you know what you're getting when you walk up to the box office window. It's hard to criticize DAD for being what it is. But part of the amazing 40-year success of the Bond franchise is that is has shifted ever so slightly through the years, while remaining true to the essence of what it means to be James Bond. Little boys dream of being Superman or Batman---once they grow up, they dream of being James Bond: a guy who knows exactly what to do and say in every situation, in control of every predicament, who lives for the moment.

In the 60's, the emphasis was on the suave and debonair aspect of the character. Bond got to do things, see places, and bed women that you would never experience. The plots were relatively small in scope (watch 1961's Dr. No now, and you'll wonder what all the fuss was about), and the series had the feel of gilded detective series. Bond was cold and almost inhuman (although not as dark as in the books), and this character was maintained throughout most of the 60's. The lone exception: the underappeciated On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which had it featured Sean Connery, would probably have gone down as the best Bond film ever.

In the 70's, Bond was forced to change, not only to reflect the movie times, but to ward off a bunch of hokey rip-off series (Man from UNCLE, Our Man Flint). The films Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, and the Man With the Golden Gun reflect the times in which they were made--the Smokey and the Bandit, gratuitous car chase, crash and shoot 'em up films most Gen X guys grew up on.

Roger Moore is credited (or denounced) as giving Bond an almost comical, campy feel throughout his 7 films. The wisecracking, push-button-to-eliminate-danger Bond lasted until Moore's last film, 1985's View To a Kill. In an effort to make the franchise edgier, Timothy Dalton was cast as Bond in 2 relatively-disappointing films (from a financial perspective). Dalton was also brought in to replace the nearly fossilized Roger Moore (although Dalton is only 3 or 4 years younger than Moore). It turns out that the producers had the right idea, but the wrong time and the wrong guy. Pierce Brosnan's more psychologically vulnerable Bond (along with copious product endorsements) has brought the franchise back to box office gold.

3 of the last 4 Bond movies have dealt with the betrayal of someone close to James. Our hero feels pain, shoots women, and visibly shows anguish and sorrow. It may not sound like much, but these characteristics were taboo for the first 16 films of the series. DAD takes the vulnerable Bond to the extreme, showing our hero looking disheveled and being tortured in a North Korean prison. Can you imagine Roger Moore in such a position? He'd be more likely to double-poke the interrogators eyes, Stooges-style.

As for DAD, my biggest complaint was the number of reused plot elements already seen in past Bond films. There's the satellite solar laser (Diamonds Are Forever), the MI6 double-agent (Goldeneye), the property-destroying sword battle (Moonraker), the laser cutting table (Goldfinger), the Hong Kong hideout (The Man With the Golden Gun), the secret, new-face-on-old body science lab (Diamonds Are Forever). There's paying homage to the past, and simply recycling old ideas. But that's about it -- well, that, and having Mr. Blonde as the American spy boss.

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MOVIE CLUB: DIE ANOTHER DAY AND MORE
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: Baddest Movie In The Whole Damn Town

Maybe it's Timothy Dalton's fault. I don't think I've seen a Bond movie since "The Living Daylights." And despite Adam's contention that Mr. Brosnan is the best Bond of all time, I still don't have an interest in seeing "The World Is Not Enough" or any other Bond film. I have, tucked away in some compartment of my brain, a pubescent fondness for "Octopussy" and "For Your Eyes Only," which, together with the two Dalton Bond films, account for my complete Bond education. Maybe I saw "Goldfinger" on TV once, but I can't remember. Some might call me a philistine or a traitor to my sex. I came of age during one of the series’ darker periods, and I have never bothered to remedy that fact. So I get my guilty pleasures elsewhere. Or is Bond not a guilty pleasure? Am I minimizing the cultural impact of the series? Are their guiltless Bond gourmands out there?

As to the title of my post, I am not accusing the new James Bond movie of being a terrible movie (I haven’t seen it), nor do I suggest that Adam has implied as much from his review of the film. The title of this post in an effort to engage the readers (and Adam and Eric) in a conversation that may help me answer a question that occurred to me as I thought about the film I saw last night: "13 Conversations About One Thing." "13 Conversations," as Joey Cotton misogynisticly -- but accurately -- relates in the Feedback Forum, is a terrible film. Of this there is no question. According to his review on 8/20, Adam liked the film. He calls it "intelligent and engrossing." I found it intellectually lazy and pretentious. One of my least favorite combinations. There are characters in the film with interesting stories. Any one of them would have made for an interesting character study. Unfortunately the director, Jill Sprecher, has such a limited imagination that she can't find the means to tell a single story with a coherent arc. The first fifteen minutes of the film offer an intriguing visual aesthetic, and Sprecher sets a thoughtful and patient tone. But after carefully introducing her bruised and broken characters, she abandons them to an hour and fifteen minutes of self-indulgent conversation. It is a conversation Sprecher is having with herself; and it couldn't be less enlightening or interesting. The end is contrived, and a symptom of the film's half-baked "what-the hell" quality. Here are two recommendations that accomplish what Sprecher’s film could not (to show that I am not a slave to Aristotelian structure like Joey Cotton): "Waking Life" (sure it's pseudo-intellectual and indulgent; but at least it's honest about it); and "My Dinner With Andre" (it could be called "One Conversation About 13 Things;" it's fascinating -- like listening to your two favorite college professors having a wine-fueled conversation).

What I meant to say when I brought up "13 Conversations" (which, by the way, sits at the bottom of my "films of the year" list with "XXX"), was something about categorizing bad films. There are countless bad films out there; but how many TYPES of bad films are there. "XXX" goes in the "big budget/incompetent action filmmaker" pile (anything with Arnold after T2); "13 Conversations" goes in the "lazy and pretentious" pile ("American Beauty"); "Road To Perdition" goes in the "style over substance prestige picture" pile ("A Beautiful Mind;" "Forrest Gump"). And on and on. Give me some help here, guys. Bad films. What do we do with them? And which kind of bad film is your least favorite? This might be a good time to elaborate on the select group of films that get this response from me when the credits roll: "that director just shit on my face" (also known as the "Robert Zemeckis"). Details to follow.

MOVIE CLUB: DIE ANOTHER DAY
From: Eric Baker
To: Sam Hallgren; Adam Kempenaar
Subject: Lady Madonna

I'm including a link to my Daily Iowan review of 'Die Another Day' though I know it's self-serving and my editor made several of the transitions awkward. But I thought it would cut down on the repetition. Sitting in the front row, I really did feel like Alexander DeLarge. As I state in my review, virtually everything Adam points out is dead-on. My favorite is Adam's listing of the plot segments laundry-list style, which is probably how the screenwriters did it. They knew, like everyone else, that no one is coming to see a coherent story. I could go on about how asinine certain plot segments are, but they only serve to bridge action-adventure sequences. Because of that, I agree with Adam that this movie didn't need to be 130 minutes long, but then nobody in my packed theater seemed to mind too much. A word about the changing role of Bond films, as I see it: I can't compare how audiences felt about the films in the 60s and 70s, but I sense there was a wanderlust for the cheeky swashbuckler who was able to get out of tight spots and save the world over the course of two hours. Now I think Bond -- and this may just be an overreaction to the glut of marketing partnerships with Bond films -- represents the same kind of thing travel magazines and car commercials do: a lifestyle attainment. Bond isn't just a sleek British agent who scores with all the chicks; he's something closer to you if you buy this new sports car. Bond transforms from a gruff refugee to Rico Suave in a matter of minutes with the new Norelco super razor. Back to the movie... Halle Berry was, well, passable. I mean, she's hot, so I didn't think she had a problem with sexiness, but I think she did run into problems with her dialogue. On the other hand, she's not doing anything they didn't ask Toby Stephens to do: over-the-top showmanship in the grand tradition of Bond melodrama. I felt her awkwardness came across when she was trying to imbue Jinx with sexiness while spouting corny lines, rather than just letting her actions speak for her. This is an action film after all. For some reason, my editors at the Daily Iowan always see fit to cut out good lines from my reviews, so I leave you guys with my judgment of Madonna's cameo: "Madonna has reached the point in her career where she is best served by cameos, as her grating schtick is not given enough screen time to gnaw away at an audience’s resolve." Look at what happened when they gave her a whole movie? She was swept away.

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MOVIE CLUB: DIE ANOTHER DAY
From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Still better than 'XXX'

When Eric first raised the idea of discussing 'Die Another Day', I objected on the grounds that there were too many more "important" films playing in Chicago for me to spend my time and money on than the latest Bond opus. But there's perhaps an even better reason. Bond films, like any movie made explicitly for entertainment only, especially a popular franchise, is absolutely critic-proof. Criticize any Bond movie for being predictable, having a stupid, convoluted plot, and bad acting and you'll get the same response -- "Nobody is going to a Bond flick to see great acting or artistic cinematography, etc...It's just about having fun!" The Deacon proves my point in the Feedback Forum when he mentions a time that the two of us, along with Eric and a few other chums, went to see the first Pierce Brosnan effort, 'Goldeneye', when we shared a flat together in London. Here's how he tells it: "...during the pre-credits sequence Adam actually says out loud - "No Way!" when Bond motocycles off the cliff and skydives into a plane -- I mean really, who questions the astrophysics of a Bond movie?" So there you have it. You can't criticize any of the ridiculous stunts in a Bond movie because, well, that's what a Bond movie is all about. As pure entertainment goes, you could do a lot worse than 'Die Another Day' -- like, say, 'XXX'. If you believe the hype, then you know that Vin Diesel has supposedly rendered Bond obsolete, but the key difference is that 'XXX' director Rob Cohen is such a terrible filmmaker that he makes any rotating Bond helmer look like Steven Spielberg. There's probably no sense in discussing the plot since every Bond flick essentially follows the same storyline -- Bond thwarts madman bent on world domination -- with new villains and hot chicks rotated in. 'Die' has something to do with North Korea, DNA replacement therapy, a gigantic "laser" that harvests the power of the sun like something out of 'Superman IV', and the more I thought about the plot later, the more I realized how little sense it actually made. But again, who goes to a Bond film for a sensible plot? One thing I did like about 'Die' is that we get to see a haggard, torutured James Bond; one who actually thinks he is about to die. I don't know, but I'm guessing that's a first for the franchise. And for what it's worth, I think it's possible that Brosnan is, in fact, the best Bond ever, despite all those so-called purists who say "Sean Connery" simply because they think it makes them cool to do so. But Brosnan brings a certain acuteness and intelligence to Bond that none of his predecessors had. Furthermore, unlike Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, Brosnan is a halfway-decent actor. I also didn't mind the token madman, a rich egomaniac named Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens. (Which reminds me...during our time in London, Eric, The Deacon and I saw Mr. Stephens on stage playing Shakespeare's 'Coriolanus'. He's a talented actor, though he playes Graves with the same childish temperament that he imbued Coriolanus with. As our former English prof, the venerable Ed Moore, so aptly put it: "Coriolanus doesn't CRY!!") Among my criticisms: 1) With a few more performances such as her turn here as Jinx, an American spy who teams up with Bond, Halle Berry may just deserve to have her Oscar taken away. She's just plain awful trying -- laboring, I shold say -- to play a sexy, bad-ass. It's like you can see the strings attached to her mouth as she talks, especially through all of the sexual innuendo which Brosnan has mastered. I've heard talk about spinning her character off into her own series and I personally think this is a great idea because the Unintentional Comedy potential would be unlimited. 2) The token goofy-looking henchman, Zao (Rick Yune), has a properly goofy look -- shaved head, albino skin, bright blue eyes with fragments of shrapnel stuck in his face -- but so what? He's not nearly scary enough as he doesn't really boast any interesting fighting skills. 3) Finally, as much I hate to fall back on this criticism, can anyone honestly say that at 2 hours 10 minutes the movie isn't at least 20 minutes too long? There came a point after one of the big set pieces -- and all this movie is is brief moments of dialogue stuck inbetween large set pieces -- where I simply didn't care what was going to happen next. I felt a little like Malcolm McDowell in 'A Clockwork Orange' after his little forced viewing session. 'Die Another Day' didn't excite or offend; it just left me numb.

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