THIS WEEKEND - Critics are pretty well split on Robert De Niro's new movie City by the Sea (see yesterday's post for more details). Rotten Tomatoes currently shows 28 negative reviews and 24 positive, though none of those are particularly glowing. The consensus seems to be that this cop drama is formulaic and really nothing better than your average TV movie of the week except for its heavyweight cast -- Deniro, Frances McDormand, and up-and-comer James Franco. Here's how Roger Ebert sums up his 3-star review: "City by the Sea" is not an extraordinary movie. In its workmanship it aspires not to be remarkable but to be well made, dependable, moving us because of the hurt in the hero's eyes." Ebert's next line is the most interesting, having recently read the sharply-crafted Esquire article that inspired the movie: "A better movie might have abandoned the crime paraphernalia and focused on the pain between the generations... Obviously, I can't say Ebert is right or wrong since I haven't seen the film yet. But Mike McAlary's story focuses on just that -- "the pain between the generations" of the LaMarca family -- and not so much on the crime end of it. Leave it to Hollywood to take what could have been a fascinating character study and turn it into more or less just another conventional crime melodrama. Slate's David Edelstein does a nice job summarizing the real-life back story, and how its been altered for the screen. Overall, his praise for the film is faint : "That City by the Sea isn't laughed off the screen is testament to Caton-Jones' attention to actors and to some tightly written scenes...[De Niro] gets his mugging under control and gives a decent performance -- the plainest and maybe the best he has given in a decade or more." I'll see for myself this weekend.
Also opening today is Swimfan -- or as I like to call it, "Erika Christensen's Career Suicide Watch 2002." Is it that hard for a young actress to find work these days that you have to follow-up a strong performance in Traffic by vamping around in this "teen psychodrama" about a stud high school swimmer (Jesse Bradford) who gets in too deep (sorry) with the new girl in town (Christensen)? It's Fatal Attraction meets The Crush, and if Christensen isn't careful, she could soon end up in the "no longer relevant file" along with that movie's young star, Alicia Silverstone. Reviews are exactly what you'd expect -- out of 18 so far, only 2 are positive. Reel's Tor Thorsen is even brave enough to throw out a Hitchcock reference: "On the surface, the film is played straight, with sustained tension and effective frights. But the director has done his research, and fills every scene with a subversive humor that's 100% pure imitation Hitchcock." I suppose watching what amounts to a parody of Hitchcock might be entertaining, though I'm not sure I buy Thorsen's implication that director John Polson had this in mind all along. I'll probably avoid this one, especially since I am heading back to Chicago this weekend. Check back Monday for a review of City by the Sea. Also next week, I'll have reviews of two arthouse flicks available soon on video and DVD -- Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, both finally playing in Iowa City at the Bijou, the University of Iowa's student-run theater.

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WHICH GODFATHER NEEDS A NEW AGENT? - In a review of the recent movie Simone, a local movie critic quite incorrectly stated that Al Pacino "has had a string of forgettable roles over the last 10 years." Everybody knows the 80s were a tough decade for Pacino -- Author! Author!, Sea of Love, Revolution -- but the past 10 years? Something about this comment seemed dubious, so I went to IMDb to check it out. Sure enough, take a look at Pacino's body of work over the past decade: Insomnia (2002), Any Given Sunday (1999), Insider, The (1999), Devil's Advocate, The (1997), Donnie Brasco (1997), Looking for Richard (1996), City Hall (1996), Heat (1995), Carlito's Way (1993), Scent of a Woman (1992), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Of these 11 movies, only 2 could be described as "forgettable" (i.e. bad): The Devil's Advocate and City Hall. More importantly, there are at least five movies on this list that are decidedly unforgettable -- Glengarry, Scent of a Woman, Heat, Donnie Brasco, and The Insider. Simone is a step back, but Pacino's next three movies, all set for 2003 releases, look promising -- The Recruit with Colin Farrell, Gigli, and the movie version of Tony Kushner's acclaimed Broadway play Angels In America. The 70s icon who really needs to reevaluate his choices is Robert De Niro, who stars as a (shock!) New York City homicide detective in City by the Sea (opens tomorrow). De Niro's been much busier than Pacino over the past 10 years -- so much so that I'll simply provide the link rather than list all of the titles -- but to what end? Showtime, Men of Honor, Flawless, 15 Minutes, The Fan -- now those are some truly forgettable movies. Based on the real-life story of Vincent LaMarca, a distinguished cop whose father famously murdered a baby in 1956 and was put to death in the electric chair, City by the Sea at least should be watchable. The story centers around LaMarca's attempts to protect his estranged son (Spider-Man's James Franco), who is on the run after being pegged for murder. It's the kind of role De Niro can sleepwalk through -- haunted, distant, cop, New York -- and, unfortunately, he just might. I'm somewhat optimistic, however, because Franco is a talented, charismatic young actor; let's just hope the movie gives him something to do other than run fast, hide in shadows, and talk on pay phones. If the movie is even half as good as Mike McAlary's riveting 1997 Esquire article that inspired it -- somewhat loosely, from what I gather -- it will be worthwhile. Frances McDormand, George Dzunda, and Eliza Dushku co-star. Michael Caton-Jones (The Jackal, Rob Roy) directs. Click here for the official site.

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BAKER ON BOURNE - CS contributor Eric Baker takes issue with me and the esteemed critic Stanley Kauffman with regard to the realism of The Bourne Identity. I'll post a response after his comments.

* I'm the biggest Stanley Kauffmann fan in the world, especially since reading a collections of his reviews and essays, Regarding Film. In fact, other than M. F. K. Fisher, I think he might be one of the most compelling writers of the last century. But sometimes, like with the quotation below, my BS sensors go off. Kauffmann's prose can flow like honey, but it can also get gummed up. I liked The Bourne Identity as well, but the only thing that's ineluctable about the photography is that it is gimmicky during the action sequences. It doesn't certify anything, except that MTV-style jump-cut editing is necessary when your action star (Matt Damon) is trying to beat up baddies bigger than he is. I'm all for realism -- I find those movies to be consistently the best because they are the easiest to relate to. And in end, I think Kauffmann agrees; here's an excerpt of his review of Pulp Fiction (newly released on DVD):

"Some of the action strains belief in a picture that dwells mostly in the naturalistic realm. On her night out, Thurman takes a life-threatening overdose of heroin, is revived at someone's house with a jolt of adrenaline straight to the heart, then is taken home by Travolta and dropped off as if it had been an ordinary date. I suppose there's meant to be some burlesque edge to this sequence, but even so, it's pretty farfetched. More matter-of-fact glitches: guns are fired in residential areas, and no neighbors seem to hear them. Willis kills a man, wipes the gun free of his fingerprints, and then puts his prints on a doorknob. etc."

To be clear, if I was rating The Bourne Identity on the Tomatometer, it would be "fresh." But I don't think Kauffmann is being completely truthful about one of the major downfalls with the movie. People were laughing during the action scenes when I saw it. *

CS response: Eric and I have had this debate before and I'd be curious to know what readers think. There were laughs during some of the first few Matt Damon fight scenes when I saw the movie too. But Eric was and is still wrong to construe these laughs as having anything to do with a lack of realism. When Damon quickly unarms two officers in a park, for example -- the first time we see any hand-to-hand combat -- the humor stems from the fact that he is just as startled as we are at how skilled he is as a fighter. (Remember, he has amnesia and at this point doesn't have any idea who he is or why he has this ability.) Liman deliberately pauses on Damon's reaction so we can see the surprise on his face. To repeat a phrase, we're not laughing at him -- we're laughing with him. Eric seems to think it's unintentional comedy, whereas I say Liman got exactly the reaction he wanted from the audience. I also wouldn't describe any of the cutting in The Bourne Identity as "MTV-style jump-cut editing." Liman does, I think, speed up the action during some of the fight scenes. But jump cuts? I'd have to watch it again, but I don't think so. In fact, and maybe someone can help me out here, doesn't the fight scene in question occur in one take? As Kauffman said, "When Bourne disposes handily of three armed opponents, we see it, don't we?" We do. And the beauty of it is that Liman doesn't try to disguise it with a flurry of cuts.

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MUSINGS ON BOURNE AND BLOGS - Last week when I announced the results of the CinemaScoped Critics & Readers Poll (8/26, scroll down), I omitted one of my favorite films of the year so far -- in addition to About a Boy, Signs, and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing -- The Bourne Identity. It's XXX minus the lobotomy and James Bond without the paint-by-numbers story and characters. Doug Liman's (Swingers, Go) direction is stylish without being flashy and he proves that you can make an engrossing, action-packed spy thriller that isn't just explosions and special effects. The quiet, tense confrontation scene in a field between Matt Damon and Clive Owen near the end is the antithesis of the modern Hollywood fight/chase scene -- and 100 times more effective. As usual, The New Republic's Stanley Kauffman (7/3) articulated better than anyone else what makes the film so successful:

"The tenuous moments in The Bourne Identity -- such as Bourne's karate disposal of multiple armed enemies, or a man bursting into a room through the window of a fourth-floor apartment -- soar on that innate power, because the essence of film is realism. Even trick photography photographs the tricks, sweeps them into the real. Digital maneuverings, special effects, are all embraced in the camera's ineluctable realism. The camera certifies the existence of what it looks at: the bedrock of film is factuality. When the Lumière brothers showed a train arriving at a station in 1895, there could be little question in the audience that this was a real train. They saw it. When Bourne disposes handily of three armed opponents, we see it, don't we? We may know in a corner of our brains that this action would be unlikely in life; but we accept it here because the camera's currency is fact. In a way we are grateful to the film medium for giving such moments their being."

And I'm grateful to CS Chicago correspondent Sam Hallgren for reminding me how good this movie was. One online source says The Bourne Identity will be released on DVD December 3. No word yet on extra features.

For readers who might be more interested in blogs than movies -- or, at least, my ramblings about movies -- there's a pretty great e-mail discussion about weblogging going on over at Slate between uber-media pundits Andrew Sullivan -- a senior editor at The New Republic and A-list blogger -- and Kurt Andersen, the author of Turn of the Century and the host of the public radio program "Studio 360." Sullivan started the exchange yesterday and Andersen responded. Sullivan's next post should be up this afternoon and the discussion will continue throughout the week. This feature on Slate -- take two intellectuals/pundits/writers/whatever and have a colloquium of sorts over e-mail -- has always been one of the zine's most endearing features, I think. The end of the year "Movie Club" between David Edelstein, Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott, and Sarah Kerr (and sometimes Jonathan Rosenbaum) is always provocative and entertaining. (Click here for last year's Movie Club). Slate asked Andersen and Sullivan to discuss the Weblog phenomenon in relation to two new books, We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture and The Weblog Handbook. Fortunately, they spend more time dishing their opinions on weblogging and how it has affected our culture than they do discussing the above-mentioned texts. Call me a geek, but is there anything more fun than reading really smart, arrogant individuals speak their mind while also taking pointed snipes at one another? For example, Andersen had this to say in yesterday's exchange:

"Too many bloggers remind me of Dennis Millers manqué or the comic-book store owner on The Simpsons ... combined, in the Rebecca Bloods of the world, with Mr. Van Driessen, Beavis and Butt-head's hippie teacher. In other words, passionate and smart but also irritating and smug and faintly, inescapably sad. (andrewsullivan.com is not a bit sad, of course, although as salutary as ad hoc, post-publication fact-checking by bloggers may be, your harping on Howell Raines—e.g., eight mentions in the last week—and the New York Times does seem unnecessarily predictable and self-congratulatory.)"

Of course, now that I read that passage again, I wonder how much of Andersen's blog assessment -- "passionate and smart but also irritating and smug and faintly, inescapably sad" -- could be used to describe CinemaScoped. Too much is my guess.

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REVIEW: MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING - I realize that probably 95% of you have already seen this big fat Greek hit, but its jaw-dropping success compels me to post a few comments. My Big Fat Greek Wedding had its highest showing at the box office last weekend -- its 20th week of release -- finishing #2 behind Signs with $14.5 million. With a budget of under $5 million and a box office take of $82 million (and rising!) to date, it has to be one of the most profitable movies of all-time. I finally saw the surprise hit about a week ago and I can say that while it by no means blew me away, I certainly understand why it has generated so much positive word-of-mouth. It's cute, funny, and it touches on subjects almost everyone over the age of 20 can relate to: falling in love, figuring out your purpose in life, and, of course, the torture of trying to stage a wedding these days -- whether your family is Greek or otherwise. Based on her one-woman play, Greek Wedding stars Nia Vardalos as Toula, a frumpy, unmarried thirty-something who hates working at her family's Greek restaurant and dreams of changing her life. Her family wants her to find a nice Greek boy and start pumping out kids, but Toula decides to enroll in college classes and use her computer skills to work at her aunt's travel agency. In the meantime, she pulls one of those 80s movie geek-to-hottie routines -- dumps the glasses, gets her hair done, buys some new clothes -- and suddenly, the self-conscious ugly duckling blossoms into a confident swan. Toula's transformation attracts the attention of a high school English teacher named Ian (John Corbett); the problem is, he's not Greek, which her fanatically patriotic father has some trouble accepting. A few weeks ago somebody wrote in to Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man complaining that they couldn't swallow the fact that a "hunk" like Corbett (Northern Exposure, Sex and the City) would fall in love with Vardalos' character -- that she isn't attractive enough. Ebert rightfully rebuked the reader, though not for the same reasons I would. In my opinion, Corbett just isn't all that "hunky," while Vardalos is definitely attractive enough to garner the affections of a good-looking guy. (Click here to see Corbett and here to see Vardalos.) My complaint would be that Ian isn't too good-looking -- he's just too good. He's one of these dream guys that's cute but sensitive, smart but not pedantic, confident but unassuming, and he always says the right thing and supports Toula even when he has good reason to show a hint of anger or impatience. (Quick digression: Is it just me, or is every high school English teacher portrayed as the "perfect guy" in movies?) I hate to disrespect my gender, but as most women will probably tell you, guys like this simply do not exist. It's a total fantasy, and yet the relationship works because of the chemistry between Corbett and Vardalos. I actually enjoyed and laughed more at their courtship scenes than I did the over-the-top scenes with Toula's loud, abrasive family. Admittedly, a lot of the jokes in these scenes are pretty funny, but there are many others that scream "one woman show." The film is also too earnest at times and relies on a few too many cliches. The scene where Toula's boneheaded brother, a cook in the family restaurant who has a knack for drawing, tells Toula that she has inspired him to go to school and take art classes, oozes greeting card sappiness. Even worse is his parting bit of advice not to let her family run her life, but to never forget where she came from. I would have written the actual quote down but I think I was too much in awe of her brother's Confucious-like wisdom to grab my pen. I'm ripping on this movie now and I don't really mean to. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out, I doubt you'll be disappointed. The love story is charming enough and most of the jokes work, especially if you've ever had the misfortune of having to plan a wedding.

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THIS WEEKEND - If Skeet Ulrich is the poor man's Johnny Depp, does that make Stephen Dorff the poor man's Skeet Ulrich? I'm not sure Dorff even deserves that title based on his movie output in 2002. First there was the much-vilified 50s street gang flick Deuces Wild, and now Fear Dot Com, the movie that will officially send summer out with a whimper. I'd provide my own synopsis here, but this movie sounds so incredibly repugnant I can't bring myself to expend the energy. Here's how Rotten Tomatoes explains it: "When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly (STEPHEN DORFF) teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston (NATASCHA MCELHONE) to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging on to feardot.com." I like this description, though, because it further proves a theory I have that every young New York City detective is required by law to be described as "brash." No big surprises on the critical front -- 16 reviews so far and only 1 positive, from Luke Y. Thompson of the New Times Los Angeles who embarrassingly admits that "Fear dot com's thrills are all cheap, but they mostly work." For me, the only thing worse than actually having to sit through this movie might be reading all of the critics who diss the movie with clever computer puns:

"Press the delete key."
-- NEW YORK POST

"Anyone not into high-tech splatterfests is advised to take the warning literally, and log on to something more user-friendly."
-- SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

"As scary and minor-chord heavy as FearDotCom can be, there's no big payoff, no logical resolution. It's like waiting for a site to download, only to find that when it happens, anticipation was more than half of the empty thrill."
-- CHICAGO TRIBUNE

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BIRTHDAY MOVIES - Your friendly neighborhood CS is a year older today, which isn't important except that it got me thinking about birthday movies and whether there are enough movies centered around birthdays to establish a genre. The only one that immediately comes to mind is John Hughes' 80s classic Sixteen Candles. If you can think of any others, e-mail me at CinemaScoped@hotmail.com or start a discussion in the Feedback Forum.

2:33: Ben Murphy from Milwaukee suggests the Nicole Kidman movie Birthday Girl, which featured Ben Chaplin as a boring Brit who orders himself a mail-order bride from Russia. I never saw it and can't say I plan to, but at least I know what to ask for next year.

RETURN OF QT - "Celebratory in its approach to violence (and with a body count far higher than that of "Pulp Fiction"), it is rife with severed limbs and flying gore." What, you thought Quentin Tarantino's next movie was going to be a light-hearted romantic comedy? That's how the New York Times describes Tarantino's long-awaited next film, Kill Bill, in a recent piece titled "Return of a Violence Auteur". Kill Bill stars Uma Thurman as a pregnant bride and professional assassin -- yes, you read that right -- who is shot and left for dead on her wedding day. Did I mention that the guy who pulled the trigger was none other than her groom-to-be, Bill, who is also a professional assassin? This is either the worst case of cold feet in history, or the textbook example for why people in the workplace should never get romantically involved. After five years in a coma, the Bride (her actual name is never used) wakes up with only one thing on her mind -- no, not a glass of water or plate of prime-rib; she wants revenge. Warren Beatty was originally slated to play Bill, but dropped out and was replaced by David Carradine, a likely favorite of Tarantino's from the 70s TV show Kung Fu. Never one to try and hide his influences, here's what the Times says about QT's upcoming ode to gore:

"Kill Bill," in contrast, pays homage to the "grindhouse" exploitation films produced by the Shaw brothers of Hong Kong and others. Unlike the current hits, which avoid serious bloodshed, these cult films — from spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" to the Shaws' kung-fu classic "The Five Deadly Venoms" — revel in the details of violence, whether by gun, sword or fist.

Anyone hoping for CS to go against conventional wisdom here and suggest that Kill Bill doesn't sound like a very good film, or that Tarantino is unoriginal and crude, let me apologize now. Like most critics and assorted movie geeks, I'm a huge fan of all three of his previous films -- Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, all recently released (finally!) in special edition DVD sets -- and if anyone can make me enjoy watching a movie "rife with severed limbs and flying gore," it's Tarantino. The film is scheduled to premiere at Cannes in May, with a release date slated for Oct. 10, 2003. All the latest Tarantino hype/info can be found over at Ain't It Cool News. Harry Knowles is actually on the set of Kill Bill in China and is sending back daily diary entries. I'd recommend them except I'm still trying to wade through his comments. Is there anyone more in need of an editor than this guy? The entries are called "set reports," but all I gleaned from the first one was how sexy his Chinese waitress was and how Beijing is a lot like Austin. And here I thought one of the most fascinating filmmakers in recent cinema history was shooting his first project in six years.

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REVIEW: THE GOOD GIRL - On my way to Chicago late last Thursday night with CS contributor Eric Baker, I stopped off in Rock Falls, IL, for some fast food. It was almost closing time and the 30-something woman taking our order had the face of someone who wasn't happy with her position in life, but wasn't necessarily that unhappy either. She simply seemed indifferent. "At what point does someone just abandon their dreams and accept their role working night-in, night-out at the Rock Falls Burger King?", I asked Eric, trying hard not to be smug, as we got in the car. A few miles down the road we hit our first toll booth and I wondered, as I do every time, whether there is a more lonely and tedious job on the planet than toll booth collector. At this point I still wasn't planning to see The Good Girl during my trip to Chicago, but looking back on it now, it seems almost pre-determined. Of all the characters in Miguel Arteta's often-hilarious take on life in a small Texas town, only one, a Salinger-obsessed writer named (what else?) Holden, is still hanging onto a dream. Unfortunately, his passion and intensity are obscured by the fact that he's an immature, manic depressive, no-talent hack. Everyone else working at the fabulously-named Retail Rodeo seems blissfully ignorant of their mundane existences except Justine (Jennifer Aniston), a 30-year-old cashier with a dimwitted husband, Phil (John C. Reilly), who spends more time numbing his brain with pot than he does with her. [As an aside, Phil's lack of interest in sex with Justine ranks a close second on the Unbelievable Subplot scale to Mike McGlone cheating on Aniston in Ed Burns' terrible She's The One.] Inevitably, Justine and Holden make a connection and begin an affair that involves daily dalliances at a local motel. When her husband's best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) uncovers the relationship, Justine breaks it off, sending the unhinged Holden into a fit of fixation and heartache. I had doubts about The Good Girl from the opening shot of the Retail Rodeo, accompanied by Aniston's voice-over (which you can hear the first part of by going here and clicking on 'the story'). Voice-overs are generally abused by filmmakers attempting to add perspective and insight where it is usually lacking; add to it Aniston's not-quite-right Texas drawl, and I was contemplating a rush to the exit sign. Fortunately, her accent improves and Arteta uses the voice-over sparingly throughout the rest of the movie. What makes The Good Girl worth seeing is its laugh-out-loud, cynical screenplay and eccentric ensemble of supporting characters. Along with Reilly and Nelson, screenwriter Mike White (Chuck & Buck) is very funny as a bible-thumping security guard who tells Justine that "other than the usual stuff, his bible study group doesn't preach fire and brimstone." When she nicely explains that she likes to have her nights to herself, he shoots back with a smile, "Well, maybe you'll have your nights of eternal hellfire to yourself too." Zooey Deschanel, who played William Miller's rebellious sister in Almost Famous, almost steals the whole movie as an ill-mannered, acid-tongued cashier who gets sent to work in cosmetics after too many rude remarks over the store's intercom. It's worth the price of admission alone just to watch her cake make-up on an old lady's face while reassuring her that the look is all the rage in Paris right now -- "It's called cirque de face, which means circus of the face." But The Good Girl's mordant wit is perhaps its ultimate flaw. You can laugh at people you care about; to care about someone you are constantly laughing at -- and not necessarily with -- is quite a bit more difficult. Here it's not just the minor characters who Arteta helps us feel superior to, but the main characters as well. Holden, played with perfect Gen-Y poutiness by Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), isn't really named Holden at all. His name is Tom; he just likes to envision himself as Holden Caulfield, fighting against the phoniness of the world. And while we admire Justine for trying to improve her life, her awakening only serves to inflict great pain on almost everyone she comes in contact with -- which would be forgivable except that, in the end, she seems to have learned nothing from her mistakes.

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CINEMASCOPED CRITICS & READERS POLL RESULTS - The summer movie season officially ends this weekend -- according to the current double-issue of Entertainment Weekly, anyway, which starts its Fall Movie Calendar on Sept. 6 -- so now seems like the perfect time to post the results of the first CinemaScoped Critics & Readers Poll. Just over two weeks ago I e-mailed 34 newspaper, magazine, and online movie critics and asked them to tell me 1) their favorite film of the year so far and 2) the movie they are most looking forward to. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit disappointed with the response. Only 11 of those 34 wrote me back, and two of them are former colleagues of mine from The Daily Iowan. Alas, only 2 readers felt compelled to submit their votes. However, CS understands that everyone, professional critic or otherwise, has busy schedules. I would sincerely like to thank all of the critics and readers who took the time to respond. If you missed your chance to vote but still want to voice your opinion, e-mail me at CinemaScoped@hotmail.com. I'll publish all of the late responses sometime in the next week or two.

Before jumping to the results, I suppose I should share my picks. Like many of the respondents, I was unable to narrow down my answers to just one movie. But hey, it's my poll and I'll cop-out if I want to.

Best Film(s): In alphabetical order, my favorite films of the year so far are: About a Boy, Signs (reviewed 8/6), and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (scroll down for review).
Most Looking Forward To: Also in alphabetical order: 8 Mile, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gangs of New York, and Punch-Drunk Love. (I'll highlight each of these films in more detail in the coming weeks.)

CRITICS

Jeffrey Anderson, San Francisco Examiner
Best Film(s): My favorites so far (in order): I'm Going Home, Werckmeister Harmonies, Spirited Away, Last Orders, Possession, Spider-Man, What Time Is It There, The Rookie, and Minority Report.
Most Looking Forward To: Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale", Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York", Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus", Francois Ozon's "8 Women", Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch Drunk Love," Spike Jonze's "Adaptation," George Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," and, of course, the new Bond and Star Trek flicks...Also David Cronenberg's "Spider," but I don't think that has a distributor yet. Same with Roman Polanski's "The Pianist."

Eric Baker, The Daily Iowan/CinemaScoped contributor
Best Film: Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Most Looking Forward To: The Two Towers

Rob Blackwelder, SPLICEDwire
Best Film(s): 1) Lagaan: Once Upon a Time In Inida 2) The Rookie 3) Italian for Beginners 4) waydowntown 5) Igby Goes Down
Most Looking Forward To: Secretary, Invincible, Heaven, Frida, The Weight of Water, Die Another Day, Solaris, About Schmidt, Adaptation, Punch-Drunk Love, The Two Towers, Gangs of New York, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Pianist

Chris Hewitt, St. Paul Pioneer Press
Best Film: Frailty
Most Looking Forward To: N/A

Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News
Best Film: "Frailty" in a walk
Most Looking Forward To: N/A

Lou Lumenick, New York Post
Best Film(s): Minority Report
Most Looking Forward To: Gangs of New York

Rick McGinnis, Movieblog
Best Film(s): The best film I've seen all year was Jia Zhangke's "Platform". I've made two big discoveries so far in 2002 -- Bollywood and Sixth Generation Chinese cinema. Of course, "discovering" them was like suddenly noticing the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi, but "Platform" was a real highlight for me, all the more impressive since it wasn't exactly short, and hardly a thrill-a-minute action film, so it had to be good to keep me rapt from beginning to end. I like a film that tells me a bit about the world that I couldn't have imagined, and Jia's film was like a history lesson on China through the post-Mao period, told from a distant spot in the provinces, not from the centre, in Beijing or Shanhai.
Most Looking Forward To: I'm looking forward to the remake of The Four Feathers -- an epic adventure tale set in British colonial north Africa -- and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. I'm curious how well Moore will deal with the "changed" America after 9/11. Will people have any patience for his brand of patriotic skepticism any more? We'll see. As for The Four Feathers, I'd be a bit less interested if it weren't directed by Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen, Elizabeth); a colonial tale directed by a citizen of a former colony -- it's got to have something going for it, right? Anyway, those are my answers, and I'm sticking to them.

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News
Best Film: Road to Perdition
Most Looking Forward To: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Steven Rosen, Denver Post
Best Film(s): As far as Hollywood movies go, the best this year for me is Insomnia. For foreign, there have been numerous good ones -- Y Tu Mama Tambien, Fast Runner, Late Marriage.
Most Looking Forward To: I'm especially looking forward to The Hours.

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News
Best Film: Road to Perdition
Most Looking Forward To: N/A

Nate Yapp, The Daily Iowan/Classic Horror
Best Film: Spider-Man
Most Looking Forward To: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

READERS

Joe Horaney, Iowa City, IA
Best Film: 1. Signs 2. About a Boy
Most Looking Forward To: The Two Towers

Kymm Zuckert, New York, NY
Best Film: Favourite movie so far this year is tricky, because though I have liked many movies this year, there hasn't been one that I have become obsessed with, like Moulin Rouge and Ghost World last year, or Gladiator and X-Men the year before. I can easily tell you the one that I hated the most -- that was the loathsome Chelsea Walls, which had me praying for death about five minutes into it. I think I'll go with About a Boy, which I thought was simply marvelous.
Most Looking Forward To: Just one? I am looking forward to many movies, Solaris and Ghost Ship and Red Dragon and Welcome to Collinwood and and and (see me cheating by mentioning more than one?)... but the one that I am most looking forward to seeing, the one that I will see on opening day is: Secretary. James Spader AND bondage in the workplace? Life doesn't get any better than that.

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The post below was scheduled to be published Friday morning -- apparently, I didn't hit the right button. My apologies to anyone wondering why the hell I didn't write anything on Friday. As it turns out, I did not make it to the Wilco doc, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, during my weekend trip to Chicago. I did see 24 Hour Party People and Miguel Arteta's The Good Girl, with Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal. Look for those reviews later in the week. This afternoon I'll post the CinemaScoped Critics & Readers Poll results of the best film of the year so far, and the most eagerly-anticipated upcoming film.

THIS WEEKEND - Summer is almost over -- which means, remarkably, that the movies actually get worse. Studios release all their sure-to-be stinkers just before Oscar season, treating moviegoers to such dreck as the Matthew Perry-Liz Hurley "comedy" Serving Sara and Undisputed, the prison boxing movie with Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes. Also opening today is Andrew Niccol's (Gattaca, Truman Show) Simone. Al Pacino, Hollywood satire...sounds good, right? Well, it did on paper. All the previews, however, have looked perfectly dreadful. CS is on the road in Chicago this weekend hoping to catch some higher-brow fare like the Wilco documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, and Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. Check back next week for reviews.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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COMING UP - Along with Blue Crush and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (no really, I'm finally going to see it), I'll have reviews up next week of two of the most critically-acclaimed films of the year so far, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, and John Sayles' The Sunshine State. Both movies are currently playing in select cities.

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REVIEW: AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER - I realize any comments about Goldmember are probably irrelevant since it was released three weeks ago [When would my comments actually be relevant? Good question], but I promised a reaction so here goes. I was surprisingly entertained by this third installment in the spy-spoof series. I say surprisingly because I wasn't expecting much after The Spy Who Shagged Me, which I thought was almost completely incoherent and lacking in humor. It didn't help that Heather Graham, an actress who I usually like from movies such as Drugstore Cowboy, Boogie Nights and a small part in Twin Peaks, had such terrible comic timing as Austin's love interest/co-spy Felicity Shagwell that she made Liz Hurley in the original look like Katharine Hepburn. It may be the most obviously phoned-in performance since Michael Caine graced the screen in 1987's Jaws: The Revenge (more on Caine in a moment). Either that or Graham was simply trying to prove the old adage that comedy is harder to play than drama. Taking over for Graham in Goldmember is the "bootylicious" pop singer Beyonce Knowles. She plays a spy named Foxxy Cleopatra -- an amalgam of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones from the 70s blaxploitation flicks -- who teams up with Austin when Dr. Evil kidnaps his famous spy father (Caine) and takes him back to 1975. Knowles shows some genuine talent in front of the camera, despite having very little to do. She's not a co-star so much as a model whose job it is to look sexy in skimpy outfits, which I suppose makes Goldmember the most accurate James Bond imitation in the series. Myers' smartest casting choice, though, was undoubtedly the addition of Caine as the charming Nigel Powers. When three of Dr. Evil's henchman attack him, Nigel quickly disposes the first two with his fists, then gets the third to surrender simply by insulting him -- "Look at you, you don't even have a name tag." What easily could have been a throwaway scene was probably my favorite joke in the whole movie thanks to Caine's deadpan wit. Another perfectly delivered bit occurs when Austin comes to rescue him from the title villain, a disco fanatic from Holland whose private parts were covered in gold after a smelting accident. "There are only two things I hate; those who are intolerant of other people's cultures...and the Dutch," Nigel tells Austin. In addition to Caine's scene stealing, I got a kick out of the opening credit sequence -- well, most of it anyway -- featuring a bunch of big-name stars in cameo roles. Slate's David Edelstein loathed it: "The director, Jay Roach, can't give these showstoppers any momentum, and the fun palls quickly: Scattershot but thudding, it made me want to bolt after 15 minutes." The first five minutes were hilarious; once Britney Spears appeared on screen, however, I had the exact same reaction as Edelstein. I sat there stupefied wondering, "Does Myers really think this is funny, or is he simply content with the fact that Pepsi gave him a load of cash to include Spears in the movie?"

Ultimately, Myers isn't breaking any new ground with Goldmember -- most of the jokes are just variations on gags from the previous two movies, and for every joke that works there are two that flop around on the screen and die (When Austin meets the Asian twins "Fook Mi" and "Fook Yu," for example). And while Roger Ebert is certainly correct to suggest that "maybe the original inspiration has run its course," I laughed enough to make it worth my time.

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THIS WEEKEND - Two new movies opening wide tomorrow -- one has generated waves of positive buzz; the other hasn't produced even a trickle of buzz period. In fact, I've heard so little about Eddie Murphy's new movie The Adventures of Pluto Nash that I can't even give you a one-sentence plot summary. According to its web page, Pluto Nash is "an action/adventure comedy set on the moon in the year 2087." Apparently, Murphy plays a successful nightclub owner who gets into trouble with a "lunar gangster" played by Joe Pantoliano. Paging Quentin Tarantino...Formerly huge movie star and pop culture luminary in desperate need of career resuscitation. Seriously, who is helping Murphy pick roles these days? The last decent "adult" movie he made was Bowfinger in 1999. Since Shrek (2001), his credits include Dr. Dolittle 2, Showtime, and now Pluto Nash. I actually have the option of attending a sneak screening tonight, which would allow me to have a review up tomorrow morning. But I'm guessing I can find something less painful to do with my evening.

Blue Crush could be a classic summer popcorn movie -- formulaic and trifling, but without the pre-packaged lameness of MIB 2, or the overcooked thrills of XXX. Directed by crazy/beautiful's John Stockwell, Crush is about a female surfer (Kate Bosworth) out to prove her worth on the waves of Oahu's North Shore. Guys will like the eye-candy of Bosworth and company in bikinis; girls will dig the sandals-are-gonna-walk-all-over-you-attitude. Throw in a love story with a hunky quarterback (Matt Davis), a slick soundtrack, and some awe-inspiring (if computer-generated) waves, and you've got a hit. Of course, I could be wrong. I just asked three female co-workers, all in their early- to mid-20s, whether they plan to see it. One had never heard of it; one was embarrassed to admit she'd probably go see it; and the other felt it wasn't worth her hard-earned cash, saying, "You mean Coyote Ugly Hits the Beach"? Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman could probably use a towel after writing this review: "Powered by Blestenation's hip-hop remix of Bananarama's great ''Cruel Summer,'' the movie has a purely sense-orama dimension, yet John Stockwell, who cowrote and directed it, proves that it's more than possible to use thrill-ride techniques in a supple, nonbombastic way. His interweaving of digital effects, rapid-fire downshifts to slow motion and back, and whooshing, crashing, in-your-ears sound creates a foam peak momentum of exhilaration laced with anxiety."

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