In the meantime, if Daniel Craig never does another Bond film he will at least have this incredible two-part Bond set. And it would be a perfect way to depart from the role if he so chooses. Casino Royale, the 2006 version, and Quantum of Solace are two of the best Bond films in the franchise that really must be seen as one entity. It will probably be packaged and marketed as such on DVD and Blu-ray, and later it will be looked upon as this superb anomaly in the Bond series. Mostly because both films almost do all they can to avoid Bond expectations. Almost achingly so (and they somehow improve the earlier Pierce Brosnan films, especially Die Another Day). But it’s a perfect book ended set with no books in between.

There is no “Bond, James Bond;” there is no “shaken, not stirred;” there is no Q and except for some snazzy touch screen computers at MI6 headquarters there are no gadgets. He does drink martinis, and he does wear the famous Omega Seamaster watch, he does drive an Aston Martin DBS but the watch has no lasers and the Martin has no machine guns (except his own). The martini is even a bit off, using Gordon’s gin instead of Smirnoff vodka (though the original Fleming book, Casino Royale had James drinking a gin, vodka, and Kina Lillet Blanc wine martini with a slice of lemon, just as he does in Solace (he called it a Vesper in Royale named after the double-agent beauty that stole his heart, Vesper Lynd, before she killed herself, thus the reason in Solace he drinks six of these on a plane to Bolivia)).

We do get Bond action, beautiful Bond girls (Olga Kurylenko from Max Payne) and multiple exotic locations, like Garda Lake, Italy and Siena, Italy; Colon, Panama as Haiti (what film crew would want to shoot in Haiti); Lake Constance, Austria; La Paz, Bolivia; and locations in Chile to fill the gaps. The only Fleming-like Bond girl with the innuendo nickname in Quantum of Solace is Strawberry Fields, a redheaded agent stationed in Bolivia. But the reduction of such familiar elements is for a reason, and that is to highlight the character of Bond himself. He’s the most important aspect of the film and the pillar for which the whole bloody franchise is predicated upon. If it weren’t for a sturdy Bond character, we’d be going to see Bond movies for everything other than Bond, which is primarily what we’ve been doing since Live And Let Die. In fact, the writers and director almost go the opposite direction with vehicles and communication devices. The bad guys in Solace have better stuff. Bond even trades a Range Rover for an old Douglas DC-3 airplane in an attempt to exit Bolivia then gets caught in a dogfight with a high-powered, machine gun carrying Marchetti SF 260 acrobatic plane. The Marchetti is faster and more maneuverable than the 1930’s era DC-3, but it is Bond, not the DC-3 who manages to escape the situation.

Escaping conflict is key to Bond’s style. Put him in a box with a rattlesnake and a bomb and watch him escape virtually unscathed, and voila, you have the essence of Bond. Cool, calm, collected, and ready to wrap up the day with a martini and a fine female friend. He’s quick, too, to do what he needs to survive. Almost uncouth at getting out of sticky situations, even at the cost of losing a friend. Or letting a friend die. Just as much emphasis is put on Bond escaping as it is on him getting into a situation. And sometimes the style and cleverness by which he escapes is just as entertaining as anything else because it’s Bond overcoming conflict, Bond style.

More important, Casino Royale was Fleming’s first Bond book and after what is suppose to be the first Bond adventure he should be expected to be a little green, ready to put some experience behind his name, sow the wild oats before settling into a routine that calls for wisecracks and martinis to break what, years later, has got to be the boredom of everyday spy adventuring. It’s almost as if Bond has to get the rookie kinks out of him before he can relax with funny witticisms and casual sex, as opposed to now feeling almost forced to tag a sticky situation with a joke in order to show how reserved he is in the face of his adversary. So I suspect one can expect to see more of those cooler habits later. Plus, the dude invested his soul in a woman who just committed suicide. He’s going to need a film or two before he starts to mellow, before he’ll let gadgets do his dirty work (I will say though that when we get a joke in Solace, it’s so well placed and unexpected that it is smartly comical and not derived from the cause or effect of a gadget). But like all heroes, Bond is not complete without an enemy, played here by Mathieu Amalric (Munich). He is a proper Bond enemy with a bent ego, an odd characteristic smile, and a fever for power and control.

Solace starts almost immediately where Royale left off. Bond is angry, hurt, and seeking revenge for Vesper’s suicide. M, played again by Judi Dench, doesn’t trust Bond. She feels he can’t do his job, that emotions are in the way. She essentially takes everything away from him, passport, access to credit cards, transportation. But it doesn’t stop Bond. He gets himself around the globe in search of a Mr. White, the man from Casino Royale’s last scene; Bond believes Mr. White and his secret society called Quantum might have something to do with Vesper’s death. In Haiti, Bond finds himself in the presence of Camille Montes played by Kurylenko. She seeks her own revenge for the death of her father (kind of like For Your Eyes Only), and together Bond and Montes deal with their own revenge issues while at the same time chasing down her husband Dominic Greene and his attempts to control the use of water in South America. Bond is sort of side tracked into dealing with Greene, but in the end he’s back on track to find the guy who ensconced Vesper with double-agentry.

Director Marc Forster has done some fairly decent films. Forster’s Finding Neverland was nominated for Best Picture; Johnnie Depp nominated for Best Actor. And Halle Barry won best actress for Forster’s Monster’s Ball. I personally love Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Even his film Stay with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts is done in such a fascinating way that you can’t help but be mesmerized by the events on screen. All of that Oscar work shows up in these last two Bond films. So in Solace, as with Royale we’re not dealing with brightly lit rooms and funny bad guys floating in space with metal teeth that bite through cable-car size cables. In Solace, it’s all very subtle. In a way it’s almost as if they’re trying to reinvent Bond, possibly to compete with Jason Bourne. This Bond is very much a hands-on, close-quarters kind of fighter the style of which is very Bourne-like. Solace, Royale, and the Bourne films have stunt men using a method of fighting called Krav Maga. Or a form of it. There is also parkour, a manner of run-jumping and scaling walls that is used in all of these films, specifically Casino Royale and The Bourne Supremacy. It’s used in conjunction with that close in, slap-boxing kind of thing Bond does here. Mostly in the first thirty minutes of the film (according to the trivia page for QoS on IMDB, Dan Bradley who was the stunt coordinator on the three Bourne films as well as the last two Spiderman films is the second unit director on Solace).

Forster’s other technique in this film is cross-cutting. Showing you action in one scene while something like horse-racing is taking place nearby. We then cut between Bond fighting and the horses racing. This happens at least three times in the film, in each act, to sort of add a sense of familiar structure to the plot. We cross-cut from one scene happening simultaneously with another scene which is a handy editing trick to use in filmmaking, in action films mostly, to move the film forward. But in Solace it feels forced at times. Actually, maybe a little too noticeable. As if the rhythm of the cutting, the length of time each shot is on screen, is too measured, too similar in length to one another and it loses a sense of spontaneity, or creativity at the least.

Paul Haggis, who wrote Royale and Solace, is the great screenwriter behind Crash and In The Valley of Elah. I do think, however, Haggis needs to utilize more humor with his drama. In the Valley of Elah is one of the best films I’ve seen in years, much better than Million Dollar Baby or Crash, but Haggis who knows how to do drama really well lacks the ability to give us a smile after something heart wrenching occurs. Best example is at the end of Steel Magnolias, written by Robert Harling, when Sally Field is angry at the death of her daughter and she’s delivering this blistering monologue of how angry she is, she says she just needs to hit something, and Olivia Dukakis says, “Here, hit Ouiser.” It’s such an unexpected bit of humor that it turns the tears around on a dime. And Haggis needs to see that (but In the Valley of Elah, if I haven’t mentioned it already, is probably the best film of 2007). Brilliant, though, is the fact that this is a sequel of sorts, two years our time, not story time, after the last film and there’s not a single flashback to the events in Casino Royale. That, my James Bond friends, is hard not to do in Hollywood.

Jeffrey Wright, again playing CIA agent Felix Leiter, is a fantastic actor. So subtle in his delivery of lines. I really think he is the finest actor out there. Craig does a great job too. These people are real actors and the casting is excellent. I never get the sense in Royale or Solace that the actors are weak, chosen for looks alone, or silly actors such as some from For Your Eyes Only, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, or Octopussy. Nor is this Bond film photographed like those brighter films, always more than enough light so that you wouldn’t miss the action, rooms with barely any contrast. In Solace, like Royale, the lighting is sometimes as dark and moody as Bond’s mood. Camera tricks and movement are solid and stay with the characters well in action sequences. Cameras mounted to cars or even to the actors, or should I say stunt people as they fall several stories from a building, or through glass and over scaffolding, or through explosive buildings provide superb shots that give a sense of extreme realism.

This Bond is clever, he’s smart. Maybe too smart for the average audience member. Most people going to see this Bond might be a tad bit disappointed that there aren’t more gadgets, Bond girls, or jokes. Like with Batman, it might be increasingly difficult today to ask the average film-goer to stick with the character and take him a little more seriously than we have in the past. Especially with today’s economic environment. We may be looking for something to kind of lighten the mood more so than give the mood weight.

But I like this Bond character and I like this film. Now bring on Q and his gadgets.

Quantum of Solace is rated PG-13 for brief violence and sexual content (can’t think what that would be, really, there’s so little of it). Running time is 106 minutes or just over an hour and a half. Which is actually short for a Bond film.

NOTES:

Very cool insight into the film from a crew perspective--News from the set at 007.com: http://www.007.com/blog/
Vehicles in QoS: http://cars.uk.msn.com/News/car_news_article.aspx?cp-documentid=10310327
Huge pile of Trivia at IMDB for QoS: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/trivia
Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger: http://www.astonmartin.com/eng/heritage/heritagecars/db5anddb5convertible

Something about Daniel Craig reminds me of French actor Dominique Pinon. If in the future there’s a Bond film where an evil scientist tries to clone Bond, the result, if the lab experiment were interrupted, might be Pinon. See Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, or Alien: Resurrection to see Pinon at his best.
Quantum of Solace did just over 67 million dollars in its first weekend, November 14th through 16th. The best first weekend of a Bond movie ever. Overseas, the film has raked in more than 250 million.

 That and the fact there are team after team of characters and names you almost have to have CliffsNotes on just to remember. Or so it feels like anyway until you’re about a half-hour into it and past all the introductions, then familiarity sets in and the characters come alive and come and go like favorite comic book heroes. Or lost characters from Dick Tracy’s comic-strip world.

There’s Lenny, Archie, The Councilor and their gang who scalp construction permits to drug lords and crime bosses who are making mid-career moves into city real-estate; there are the Russians—Uri, Victor, and The Czar who pay seven million for one of those sneak-around permits; there’s the Accountant, played by Thandie Newton, who musters up the money for her client Uri; and there’s Mumbles, One-Two, Handsome Bob, and Cookie of the Wild Bunch who are hired by the Accountant to steal Uri’s money before it’s ever delivered to Lenny. And there’s Lenny’s step-son junkie, Johnny Quid of the band The Quid-lickers who in a very Hamlet way steals a painting from Lenny knowing it will antagonize his old abusive step-dad (played by the brilliantly talented Tom Wilkerson (Michael Clayton)).

It is this painting, what Hitchcock would call the MacGuffin*, that the film’s plot comes to hinge on. But we never see the front of the painting, only the back of it and sometimes the easel it sits on. Like we never see the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction (as you can tell, RocknRolla is a lot of things and influenced by many Taratinos, and like Taratino himself, original it is not). The fact the painting was Uri’s lucky painting loaned out to Lenny as a show of good faith in their new business partnership just makes matters a bit more intense. Lenny has to find the painting; Uri has to get his money to pay Lenny so Lenny can get the permit from The Councilor; and making out like bandits are The Wild Bunch who keep stealing Len and Uri’s money, even if it does draw bloody severe fights with Russian thugs. And as it turns out, it’s some guy named Sydney Shaw who’s to blame for all this.

But in terms of dramatic art, or theatrical experiences, RocknRolla is no Shakespeare play. It’s a Tarantino film that tries to be a Scorsese film that tries to be a French New Wave film like Bob le Flambeur, but comes off as kind of a copy of Smokin Aces, which in turn was inspired by all of the above including Ritchie.

Plus, this is the second “cool-guy” film this Fall that meanders for forty minutes or so until an appearance by Chris “Ludacris” Bridges turns things for the better. Ludacris marks the spot again where the film finally moves forward and he’s not even central to the plot. In both films, this one and Max Payne, Chris has a minor role, has less than a hundred words but upon entrance somehow both films improve as the plots work their way toward the end. What I’ll call the Ludacris luck.

There’s a mix of accents from Scotland, England, Ireland, Russia, and America in RocknRolla. Jeremy Piven plays Mickey and Ludacris, Roman. They are record producers and club owners who are Lenny’s link to Johnny, and while they have very little screen time I think a movie about them alone would intrigue many action thriller fans across the pond.

In fact, where RocknRolla loses it in terms of plot, it makes up for in actor ensemble. It’s a truly great young cast and I’d love to see these actors reprise their roles in better written sequels, or maybe even in RocknRolla prequels, or separate character stories in graphic novels or on TV, like what else have the Wild Bunch done, or how did Archie come to have such a firm belief in proper slapping; what kind of escapades have Johnny Quid and Quid-lickers had; what kind of war crimes have Uri and his men committed.

There’s a face slapping session by Lenny’s right hand guy Archie and his men that comes out of nowhere. Funny in a Tarantino way, via Guy Ritchie. Archie tells one of his guys to slap another of his guys after a stupid remark. There are about four or five slaps before Archie shows them correctly as to how it’s done. Then Archie says, “If the slap don’t work, you pay them, and get a receipt because this ain’t the mafia.”

Scorsese would love to have these guys in his films, and should seriously consider these five actors: Gerard Butler of 300, Reign of Fire, and Laura Croft as One-Two; Mark Strong from Body of Lies, Babylon A.D. and as the scary Mussawi from Syriana, as Archie; Idris Elba from Daddy’s Little Girls, American Gangster, and 28 Weeks Later as Mumbles; Toby Kebbell from Match Point and Alexander as Johnny Quid (who uses a pencil as a weapon, not to write with but to stab with); and Karen Roden from Bourne Supremacy and 15 Minutes as Uri who’s breath quivers with a controlled anger when having his dirty deeds done. These five actors, and Tom Wilkinson, make the movie worth seeing.

They can be the future of the crime genre, if a director so chooses. Like young Pescis and DeNiros, or Al Pacinos; young Havey Keitels, John Cassevetes, and Michel Poiccards and Alain Delons. Even young Humphrey Bogarts. Not quite as good, but with better direction and better scripts, and a cameo by Ludacris, these guys will make any action film zing. The only thing missing (besides a better script) is a certain sense of horror film elements one might see in Tarantino’s films, or the use of the supernatural that you might see in a Shakespeare play. Elements of each, or at least something outside of the crime genre ordinary, maybe an element from another genre like horror or fantasy, would elevate this film past its attempts to just be a “cinema of cool,” and would generate for Ritchie a level of storytelling that his characters almost demand. They seem boxed in, ready to explode, slaves to cliché lifestyles and routine when what they wish to do is find deeper meaning in life and leave behind some sort of legacy.

But for language alone, and the gun-waltz of all these groups of thugs and thieves, musicians and junkies, bosses and henchmen, it’s done pretty smoothly, not too complicated, and fun as heck to watch.

An action comedy of cool. Which also reminds me of the Brit film Layer Cake.

Rated R for language, violence and drug use.

NOTES:
*Merriam-Webster definition of MacGuffin: an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance

Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, Predator, Die Hard, The Matrix) is one of the producers.

“When you’re in bed with Len, he likes to sweeten the cash deal. He’ll be in there like swimwear.”

It’s all kind of Godfather-ish like when Michael is at his Godson’s baptism and his men are out killing the other family’s members. All done to the sounds of the baptism’s church organ. Ritchie does the same thing in RocknRolla, in a hand-full of scenes.

A decent soundtrack with The Clash, Lou Reed, Flash and The Pan, and featuring club footage of The Subways singing their single Rock and Roll Queen.

Like Cinderella, it’s conflict then resolution throughout the story until the slipper is lost, found, then fit again. For W, it seems Bush wins a few conflicts, but it’s pumpkin time in the end and there is no glass slipper. One that fits him anyway.

Which is funny because Toby Jones (Infamous, Finding Neverland) who plays a brilliant Karl Rove, says to Josh Brolin’s Bush when Bush tells Rove he makes the decisions, not Rove, that, “I’m just a fairy, laying down magic dust.”

W is basically Stone’s perspective on how George W. Bush became president, and what he did in regards to Iraq as president. It’s by no means all-encompassing, it’s very selective, and through editing that gives a thirty-five year history in flashbacks, through off-screen musical accompaniment and through reference to Stanley Kubrick’s great film Dr. Strangelove, Stone paints a sympathetic, human portrait of a buffoonish man-child who while trying to be the son his father always wanted simply becomes derailed, and aged, by poor decisions and by poor decision makers who surround him. Or so the non-story goes according to Stone.

I feel like I received exclusive insight into the psyche of Bush while watching this film, in what I will say was a theater I sat in nearly half full, most of whom looked like adults over the age of forty-five. But this feeling of getting White House insight is a false one simply because I haven’t read any biographies on Bush and can’t say I’ve ever had security clearance to sit in on some of the war room activities to know if Chaney really talked about taking Iraq for the sake of oil, and if he said, “we’ll have an empire, a real empire, and no one will mess with us.” Or if Powell really put up a fight about going into Iraq, if he said, “There’s got to be some global assistance,” or asked what is the exit plan and Chaney said, “There is no exit.” It’s entertaining to watch, and whether you’re liberal or conservative it’ll make you think. But in the end you have to understand it’s just a movie. Good or bad, there was a script, there was a budget, there was casting and try-outs, there was production, editing, marketing, all of that to try and bring this beginning and middle to a theater near you. And it seems so timely, too. Right before the Presidential Election of 2008 (and I’m just insinuating, but maybe there was a rush to complete the film before the election and in doing so Stone left out some quality work). 

And so Stone uses some movie techniques to make his points, such as in the around-the-clock bombing of Iraq. It is done so in a montage of explosions to the tune of an upbeat marching waltz called The Yellow Rose of Texas by Mitch Miller, and adds an almost good-natured, some might say comical, take on the explosions. Like a Fourth of July show set to the 1812 Overture only it’s images of bombs blowing up targets in Iraq. And it’s the first similarity in W to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Later, when there is chaos in Iraq, the montage of deaths and people suffering has a somber, tragic musical composition played over it that suggests sadness and suffering, music that matches the images on screen and kind of contrasts the earlier, more comical tone of dancing bombs.

Another specific Strangelove moment comes when Bush leans over the table in the war room and we see a circular set of lights above him. It’s a reminder of the war room in Strangelove, and the kooky list of satirical characters discussing war in that film as they sat under that white halo of lights. When comparing Strangelove to W, then, it can only be surmised that Stone is comparing Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Rove and the others to the characters in Strangelove, and that if Strangelove took a comical look at the President and one General’s mad quest to arbitrarily drop bombs on the Russians for fear they “sap and impure our precious bodily fluids,” then surely it’s the same with Bush. A film making fun of the President and war, paying homage to a film that made fun of the President and acts of going to war. <

This kind of filmmaking form is purely manipulative and reminds us that film can be propaganda, that like the Soviets who won their revolution of 1917 they did so with the help of cinema; that Lenin said cinema is the most important of all arts. And so it is. But I’m not saying Stone is a Communist, or that W is a far-left film. I’m just saying it makes suggestions and does so through the use of film’s various forms.

Such as Stone’s notion that Bush was a Christian man who talked to his Texas pastor about everything in his life, going so far as to say it was his “calling” to be President, and who as President asked for bowed heads and moments of silent prayer after big meetings, saying, “let’s close this out,” and then prayed. With George as a Christian man dropping bombs on a Muslim part of the world, it doesn’t necessarily show him as being in the right. Even if he is going after weapons of mass destruction.

The talk about Jeb Bush too, George’s younger brother by father George senior and Barbara seems to infuriate George at times, prompting George to say things like, “why always Jeb, what about me?” As if George only did things for the sake of being better than his brother, to prove to his father he could be the kind of man his father would be proud of. All of that is insinuated by George’s actions in the film, through his dialogue and in the relationship he has with Laura played well enough here by Elizabeth Banks. And there’s the anger George has toward his father’s loss during the 1992 Presidential Campaign that drives him to say, “if only you had gone all the way,” in regards to the first Iraq war. George Sr., says, “I won that war,” and Jr. says, “I’ll never let that happen to me.” It’s all as if to say when he’s President, he’ll do things differently. And so he does.

You get the point. There’s scene after scene that portrays George Jr. in this way, a very human way, that you can’t help but think he did these things as President not for the people but for himself, and for his father, and to work out things in his own life on the path to becoming a man. In working to find his own place in the Bush family, and to finally, in the end, be a man (but dare I say, again, there is no ending to this story).

The film is entertaining, needless to say simply because you’re given access to the President, even if it may be one sided. The film is very sympathetic to him, it shows him trying, and failing, and like most Oliver Stone films it shows the main character trying again, trying to rise through the flames sort of speak. It does portray him as a person trying to do the right thing. It’s certainly not a farce, though it is very funny at times especially when we see Brolin deliver the bumbled words and phrases we’ve heard repeated over the years. And the fact it is lit and staged like a play makes it even more off-Broadway-like in it’s portrayal of a well-known Western figure.

The all-star cast do impersonations extremely well. Richard Dreyfuss plays Dick Chaney, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, James Cromwell as George H. Bush, and Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush. They all do an amazing job as these people we’ve come to know in the White House.

The truth is, if you’re liberal and you see this movie you’ll probably enjoy it more than if you were conservative. If you’re liberal, you’ll believe what you see too and agree with much of what transpires. And if you’re conservative you’ll question the whole damn thing. I mean, it is Oliver Stone after all. However, Stone does know how to put together a cast and has made some fairly decent films (none better than Platoon, Wall Street, or JFK), and regardless of how you feel about the subject matter you won’t be able to deny that this cast is probably the best ensemble of the year. If nothing else, go see it for the acting.

Rated PG-13. Two hours and eleven minutes.

But don’t get me wrong, the first hour is excessively boring and the film noir, high contrast look of the film wears on the eyes. I actually started to feel sick thinking about the millions of dollars spent on this film, and though I thought a Coke might help I couldn’t bring myself to spend another dime after spending ten dollars for one ticket at the box office (a side note here: AMC ticket prices have gone up again and no student discount except for Thursdays). It’s not until Chris “Ludacris” Bridges makes an appearance about thirty minutes in that the film starts to get better. And at exactly an hour in we get exposition from an old friend of Payne’s as to the why of Payne’s pain and exactly what happened the day of his family’s murder. After that scene, I felt like the movie really could have started here and it would have been great. I mean I’m telling you, it would have been so good you would have seen the sequel. As it is now though, you’re likely to rent the DVD but you probably won’t go back for any more Payne. Unless the next film is all slow-mo.

The rest of the film, the last thirty minutes or so is a great short film of slow-mo gun fights and a battling for Payne’s soul conveyed in the golden hues of his happy past and the gray darkness of his lonely present. The two sides of Payne rage against death, and Payne’s inner monster roars like King Kong with such vehement inner-evil that the snow flakes swirling in the sky spark to flames and burn the skyline. Figuratively, of course, in Payne’s mind. Sure, it sounds like I’m trying too hard but that’s basically the cheese I was reading on screen during the handful of minutes I thought to be entertaining.

The true oddity moments of the film have Mila Kunis packing a sub-machine gun like a child carrying a purse, a tattoo guy who gives a ridiculously staged Halloween reading of the Norse myth of the Valkryie and hence the name of a drug called Valkyr that seems to have everyone seeing shadowy devil-winged creatures (reminiscent of devil-angels from the 2005 Keanu Reeves movie Constantine (most of Max Payne is a Constantine rip-off)), and Beau Bridges doing to Mark Wahlberg in Payne what his brother Jeff did to Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man which is (spoiler alert) basically stabbing him in the back. “What was I suppose to do,” says Bridges’ character BB Hensley, “Michelle started digging,” etc., etc. Corporate corruption run amok, of course. And it’s enough to really ruin a film. That and Nelly Furtado as a grieve stricken police widow (though I really like Furtado).

The director, John Moore did a remake of Flight of the Phoenix in 2004, and the fast paced Behind Enemy Lines in 2001. Along with The Omen remake from 2006, they’re all mediocre movies that with a bit more work on the scripts and a few more creative turns of plot could have been better movies. But they weren’t, and they’re not, and they won’t be.

"I don’t know about heaven,” Max Payne says in voice over, “but I do believe in angels.”

And I believe in better movies.

The following is their list of films for the day:
The Rack (1956) – From a Rod Serling teleplay 6:00 AM
Until They Sail (1957) – Dir. Robert Wise 8:00 AM
Torn Curtain (1966) – Dir. Alfred Hitchcock 10:00 AM
Exodus (1960) – Dir. Otto Preminger 12:15 PM
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) – From Tennessee Williams 3:45 PM
Hud (1963) – Book by Larry McMurtry; shot by James Wong Howe 6:00 PM
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) – Dir. Robert Wise 8:00 PM
Cool Hand Luke (1967) – Dir. Stuart Rosenberg 10:00 PM
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) – From Tennessee Williams 12:15 AM
Rachel, Rache (1968) – Dir. Paul Newman, starring J. Woodward l 2:15 AM
The Outrage (1964) -- Dir. Martin Ritt; adaptation of Rashomon 4:00 AM

The film isn’t about the Heisman as much as it’s simply about a young man becoming a great football player. The fact that he did so and was recognized for it, during times of racial adversity, in Southern States as well as in the locker room, makes his story heroic.

When Ernie Davis says in the movie, “I do my talking on the field,” it is a dialogue he converses in with “words” of gymnastic athleticism that cut, jump, roll, and stiff-arm the opposition into hearing what he has to say, in a touchdown sentence or two, regardless of how many fans are screaming racial epithets. His super-human running skills are enough to make anyone ask, black or white, “who is that guy?”

So when the time is right and everyone is paying attention, Davis breathes these choice words to life for a Texas reporter who asks before the big Cotton Bowl game, “In light of what’s going on in this country, do you think you can add change?” Davis answers, “When I’m out on that field I only think about winning the game, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the color of my own skin.” Here, confidently, Davis finds his voice in Civil Rights history.

Now how does Rob Brown as an actor do with all of that? Well he has one of the sweetest faces on film among today’s younger generation of actors. He plays young-man-becoming-a-man very well. I think his casting in the film is perfect. The director, Gary Felder (Runaway Jury, Kiss The Girls, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead) could probably get a little more out of Brown, but Brown blows-up fine when angered in pivotal scenes, and convincingly portrays legend status when he gets in the face of Coach Ben Schwartzwalder, played here with fine run of the mill authority by Dennis Quaid. The two conflict over plays or “the way folks do things down here,” which creates nice change-of-character moments for both actors.

The story of Ernie Davis, one man’s story in sports and U.S. history, how he grew up, went to college, how he was accepted by white establishments and how he persevered to win a trophy that until 1961 only recognized the best of white college football, is the most important thing here. And the film should be seen for those reasons. A good film for history class.

Other than that, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in other football movies such as Remember The Titans, Friday Night Lights, Varsity Blues, All The Right Moves, The Best of Times, Invincible, We Are Marshall, or even Wildcats.

There is the obligatory list of football movie clichés:
• Our team struggling in the rain, in the mud, at night
• The injured player slow to get up
• Slow motion and darting camera shots to convey player disorientation
• Coaches pulling players by the face mask
• Name calling and dialogue on the line of scrimmage
• Opponents who break rules and get away with penalties
• Bad calls, or opponent support from the referees
• Thrown footballs that hang in slow motion for eternity
• Close-ups of key players who see vital changes in plays and then make heroic plays
• Players who talk back and disobey the coach’s calls
• Blood and mud on the uniform after a hard-fought game
• Locker-room dancing and celebration, usually around the lovable, funny guy
• In-fighting amongst team members and locker-room fights
• Jolly, happy-go-lucky fat linemen
• Riding the bus and seeing snippets of American history
• Celebrating on the road at the home team’s local bar or restaurant
• A funeral
• A championship game

It’s also why we rent football movies and watch football period. We’re looking for this kind of gridiron entertainment. But so many of these elements from the football genre “codifies” the film to such a degree we develop a kind of sensory to and expectation for the end, usually right after the most climactic clash-of-the-titans moment. Instead, in The Express, we get an ending before the ending. Shave off fifteen minutes or so and it would be fine, but here it throws us off and makes the film feel longer than it truly is.

Omar Benson Miller (8 Mile, Shall We Dance) plays Jack Buckley, the big lovable linebacker friend of Davis, and does a better job here than he did in Miracle at St. Anna (though Spike Lee may have taught him a thing or two before filming The Express). Great character actor Charles Dutton (A Time To Kill, Alien 3, TV’s Roc), has a small role as Ernie’s grandfather, Willie ‘Pops’ Davis. Like he is in most of his films, his character is the wise man with words of guidance. In The Express, his character introduces Ernie Davis to Jackie Robinson, who in 1950 saw Jackie as a man “who’s doing a lot without saying nothing.”

These actors and the characters they play, including Jackie Robinson, help solidify Brown’s performance making them just as pivotal to Davis’, and Rob Brown’s, development as the athlete/actor doing the running on the field. Most importantly, Davis’ friendship with running back Jim Brown played here by Darrin Dewitt Henson (The Hustle, Stomp The Yard), a kind of Jackie Robinson of the college football field who helps Quaid’s Schwartzwalder recruit Davis to Syracuse, gives us insight into the sports’ rarely seen mentor/apprentice relationships. Henson exudes older brother with more experience in just a smile or two more so than a cut-back or a leap on the practice field.

A few scenes with Rob Brown and Darrin Henson alone, away from the field and media, made me wonder what a fictional story of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis might be like, since the two never really had a season in the NFL together as they had hoped. I imagined them the dynamic duo they were marketed to be, for the Cleveland Browns, for the NFL, with telepathic powers to rage touchdowns down on the enemy.

Screenplay by Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond, K-PAX) and Robert Gallagher, adapted from the book by Gallagher, is fine at building a historical background for Ernie Davis. But, again, it’s too long.

The cinematography is decent, with grainy film stock to create game-day film-reel footage, as well as some nice travel shots as we kind of run with Ernie Davis past thousands of cheering, or sometimes angry, crowds. It’s as if we’re running with him. Hot spots on papers and desks or the midriff of characters create a glowing affect in dark, contrast-heavy rooms like historically old buildings and locker rooms, libraries, etc. Locations like these and costumes of the period, additionally give the film an authentic feel.

Rated PG with racist language, and lots of emotions. This is not a great movie, but it is an emotional, historical movie for history and football fans alike.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF COOL HAND LUKE)

DRAGLINE: He was smiling. That's right. You know, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right until the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it they could tell right then they were not going to beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy.

One of the greatest actors of our time, Paul Newman, died Friday of cancer. He was 83.

The following are five must see movies, in order, to pay tribute and get a sense of how great an actor Paul Newman was:

Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Verdict (1982)
The Color of Money (1986)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Slap Shot (1977)

For deeper cuts, see these spectacular films:

Nobody’s Fool (1994)
The Left-Handed Gun (1958)
Hud (1963)
Fort Apache The Bronx (1981)
The Sting (1973)

In The Hustler, Paul Newman played Eddie Felson, a young pool player who goes up against the great Minnesota Fats. “I got to be a pretty good pool player,” said Newman, about games he played with Gleason between takes on the set. “Jackie Gleason and I played four games during the course of the film. I beat him three games out of four. The three games were for a dollar. The fourth game was for $200. He was hustling me. He was looking down my throat the whole time. And the thing that was marvelous, he had such patience. Because everybody in the crew is standing around watching these games going on. He had the patience to lose the first three to sucker me in for the last one.” 

“The funny thing, after the film was over, if you would go into a bar with a bunch of guys and they had a pool table, you'd always get some guy coming up and saying, ‘You've got to play. Shoot a game of pool with me.’ And I said, ‘I really don't play.’ And they'd say, ‘Come on. Come on, we'll play a little game.’ I'd say, ‘I'm really sorry. I don't want to play.’ They'd say, ‘Come on. We'll play for something. What would you like to play for?’ And I said, ‘How about your house?’ I never had to play again.” 

He directed his wife Joanne Woodward in 1968’s Rachel, Rachel. They’ve been married for over 50 years.

He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won an Oscar reprising his role as Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.

In Hud, Newman said his character “had all the external graces. He was thin and muscular and drank well and was great with the ladies and had a sense of humor, had a sense of boldness. He was simply rotten at the core.”

"Redford gave me a Porsche for my birthday, except that it had been hit sideways or the front had hit the other -- it had hit a trunk, and there was no engine in it. And the only way it got into my driveway was some truck had to dump it off the end of a hook and with a note saying ‘Happy Birthday.’ So I had the whole thing compacted and put in a wooden box and he had a summer place in Westwood that summer and I got the name through the real estate agent, got his alarm number and the key to the house and had four of us bring this Porsche into his vestibule and just drop it there with a bolder note. But of course, he won. He never admitted that it was in his vestibule.”

“But I learned something about practical jokes. I played one on George Roy Hill once and it was -- it scared him and scared a lot of people actually, and this was during ‘Slap Shot,’ and there were a couple of days when he wasn't speaking, and finally at the end of it when we had kind of a confrontation. He said, ‘at the core of every practical joke there's an element of maliciousness.’ Because you're trying to make somebody look stupid or you're trying to take advantage of them.’ So I've cut down on my practical jokes to people who I really don't like.”

Newman started his food company in 1982 as a “joke that got out of control (Newman microwave popcorn is the best of its category, in my opinion, and you have to try all varieties of his cookies).”

Paul Newman and Newman’s Own Foundation have given more than 250 million dollars to charities around the world. Read more about Newman’s Own and see a wonderful clip of Newman himself at http://63.131.143.186/

His “Hole In The Wall Gang Camp” is named after his gang in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. For children with life-threatening diseases, the camp has had more than 135,000 kids attend, all free of charge.

“Well, when we started the camp in 1988, let's say 70 percent of the leukemia patients, children who have childhood leukemia died. Now it's the other way around. Seventy percent survive. So that's good news. We, I think, had the first camp that allowed children with HIV, and now with pediatric AIDS under control, especially in the United States, that whole session with HIV will disappear in about three years, I think.”

Find out more about Hole In The Wall Camps at http://www.holeinthewallcamps.org/

Read the screenplay to Cool Hand Luke here http://sfy.ru/sfy.html?script=cool_hand_luke_1967

Quotes provided here from Larry King Live and CNN Transcripts online (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0809/27/lkl.01.html). Aired September 27th, 2008.

Newman was also an avid racecar driver. Part of the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing Team, he developed a love for the sport while filming 1969’s Winning. He raced with the Sports Car Club of America, 24 Hours of Daytona, 24 Hours of Le Mans, and Six Hours of Watkins Glen where he drove cars such as the 1972 Lotus Elan, 1979 Porsche 935, 1977 Ferrari 365 GTB4, and several Nissan Z cars such as the Z31 Turbo (and plugged the Nissan Skyline in the mid 1980s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzz32iPqJS0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKK-l8zFeMY ).

On August 31st, he took his last laps in a Corvette GT1 at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut.

Carl A. Haas writes on their website, “Paul and I have been partners for 26 years and I have come to know his passion, humor and above all, his generosity. Not just economic generosity, but generosity of spirit. His support of the team's drivers, crew and the racing industry is legendary. His pure joy at winning a pole position or winning a race exemplified the spirit he brought to his life and to all those that knew him. We will truly miss him."

Eagle Eye is nothing we haven’t seen before, in say movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enemy of the State, Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, or Minority Report. And to a lesser degree a terrible 2004 Kim Basinger film called Cellular.

The Eagle Eye premise is simple. Someone, and I won’t reveal who, uses cell phones, surveillance cameras, computers, anything digital and on a network to trap and control, and cajole Jerry Shaw, LaBeouf’s character, and Rachel Holloman played by Michelle Monaghan (Heartbreak Kid, Gone Baby Gone, MI3) into performing tasks and crimes against their will. It’s not all for fun and games, either, as each conflict escalates in gun-play and property damage until their final task, which involves a super bomb made of crystal, finds its way into their hands and into dangerously public places.

This is one of those “what if” movies like 2001 or Minority Report, but taking place in the present, and regardless of whether it really could happen or not, Eagle Eye’s director D.J. Caruso (2005’s very awful Two for the Money) and screenplay by John Glenn and Travis Wright (The Lazarus Project) won’t suspend your disbelief. Yes, it’s plausible, especially with today’s Homeland Security terrorist surveillance program that monitors everyone’s phone calls, email, text messages, bank transactions and internet activity, etc. But as smart as it begins and as well as it hooks you in it is the cliché of plot devices from other wrong man movies and a deficient use of Shia LaBeouf’s talents that keep the film from rising above sea level.

When we first see Jerry Shaw, he’s very much a fast-talking kid playing poker in the back-room of the Kinkos-like Copy Cabana trying to talk a co-worker into upping the ante on a bad hand. It’s very much a Vince Vaughn kind of role that you’ll wish Vince Vaughn had played, and that another director like John Favreau had directed.

And you would think that if you had Shia LaBeouf as your main actor, and dialogue potential like that of a character from Swingers that you might shape the screenplay a bit more to encourage this kind of collision, something like Die Hard—a hero’s ability to actually find humor and humanity while bonding with another character via phone, and saving the day. But instead you get more saving the day kind of stuff, against an enemy that is ubiquitous in everyone’s cell phone, like say The Wizard from The Wizard of Oz, the enemy is a voice versus an enemy with a face that looks our hero directly in the eye (lack of a true enemy is something that maybe prevents our hero Jerry Shaw from being complete).

Regardless of all that, the stunt work and car chase scenes are on par with anything from a Bourne movie, and I’ll bet if director Caruso boosts his resume a bit more with action like this we’ll see a fine film before long. As long as he has a good script, of course.

A scene at the airport as the characters go through security, is fairly entertaining simply because we all know what that’s like. But the all omnipotent cell phone and “surveillance” voice in Eagle Eye, however, is annoying, and at times really cheesy. Enough to ruin a film. And a scene involving the turn-right, turn-left directional voice of a GPS device attempts to be funny but comes off stale, like a bad techno-joke that didn’t make the final cut of I, Robot.

Also staring Michael Chiklis and Rosario Dawson, and of all people, Billy Bob Thornton. From Executive Producer Steven Spielberg, and Dreamworks, SKG. Distributed by Paramount, Eagle Eye is worth renting or downloading if you can’t find anything else, simply because of LaBeouf and Monaghan, but if you skip this one you won’t miss much of either actors’ work.

Running is about a half-hour too long. 118 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Summer Honorable Mentions
American Teen
The Dark Knight
Son of Rambow
Pineapple Express
Vicky Christina Barcelona

Summer movies that started with a bang but fizzled after the 1st hour:
Nearly all of them but Indiana Jones IV and Hancock were the worst offenders

Best Summer DVD
Semi-Pro

Worst Summer DVD
Smart People

Top Summer Actors
James Franco
Danny McBride
Brandon Jackson
Ron Perlman
Rob Corddry
Shia Labeouf
Kal Penn
Robert Downey, Jr.
Josh Gad
Leslie Bibb
Tom Cruise
Jason Bateman
Will Smith
Stephen Coogan
Heath Ledger
Terrance Howard
Jeff Bridges
Morgan Freeman
Ellen Paige
Mila Kunis
Russell Brand
Javier Bardem
Christina Applegate

Best Director
Guillermo del Toro

Best Surprise Direction
Tie -- Ben Stiller and Jon Favreau

Best Cinematography
Tropic Thunder

Best Sound Design
Iron Man

Best Editing
American Teen

Best Score
The Dark Knight

Best Pyrotechnics
Iron Man

Best Computer Graphics
Speed Racer

Best Screenplay
Tropic Thunder

Best Screenwriter
Etan Coen (no relation to Coen Brothers)

Best Character
Special Agent Johann Krauss (Hellboy II)

Best Duo
Nate Torrence and Masi Oka (Get Smart)

Summer Oddity
Star Wars: The Clone Wars*

Money Maker
The Dark Knight

Money Loser
Speed Racer

Summer Studio/Distributor
Paramount (had three 200+ million dollar movies—Indiana Jones IV, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda)

Best Atlanta Theater for Explosions
Atlantic Station Regal Cinemas

Worst Writer/Director Team
The Wachowski Brothers

Most Anticipated Fall Movie
Burn After Reading

In The Clone Wars, Palpatine/Sideous and his apprentice Count Dooku (voiced by Christopher Lee) have conspired to kidnap Jabba the Hutt’s baby son and blame it on the Jedi nation, thus causing a war between the Hutt’s mafia-like family and The Republic. For the Separatists to get the baby back (they kidnapped the Huttlet in the first place) it would make the Separatists look good, the Jedi look bad, and it would trick the Hutts into allowing the Separatists to use the Hutt’s trade route, opening the universe up to further their evil plans. Sound confusing. It is. But it gets better when Anakin gets his own padawan, Ahsoka Tano, and the two set out on an adventure to retrieve the kidnapped Hutt. Several light saber duels and blaster battles later, we get temporary peace in Space and a peak at some of the iconic images from the planet of Tatooine that we will see later in Episode IV: A New Hope.

I can’t say I enjoyed the animation in Clone Wars but the attempt by the characters to be heroic in endeavors other than winning a light saber duel is somewhat rewarding. The ending, too, is more cinematic and well conceived compared to the rest of the film. And the dialogue between Separatist droids is funny in a Martin and Lewis sort of way. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll want to see this eventually (but don’t rush).

Nevertheless, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and all of the Star Wars films of late are like Russian nesting dolls. We open box after box anticipating each new opening to behold a gift of discovery and wealth like the first one but in the end we only get a smaller, blander version of itself. Instead of going out and moving forward into a galaxy filled with stories really far, far out there, George Lucas just keeps going back inside himself. And like an anti-social, self-conscious teen, The Clone Wars is awkward and soaked in delusional fantasy.

Lucas should have paid Pixar to animate and re-draft the story. The animation is weird; for the metallic objects like droids and space crafts, it’s fantastic and looks almost like real metal, but for the characters such as Obi Wan and Dooku, they are all stilted in their movement and look like wooden dolls (I believe critics’ comparison to Team America: World Police, or the 1960’s marionette series Thunder Birds is spot on, as are comments that the animation represents the “woodenness” that we’ve seen in the acting and delivery of lines in the last three movies). A risk to do this, yes, but if The Clone Wars is to help close the gap between the highly polished and digitally animated video look of Menace, Clones, and Sith, versus that of the faded 70’s/80’s celluloid look of New Hope, Empire, and Jedi, well Lucas might be on to something. And if he tweaks the look and costuming of the live-action TV series due out in 2009 or 2010 even further toward New Hope, then maybe we’ll think differently of his efforts in the last three features. I mean Lucas can just keep creating cartoons and TV shows until he’s blue in the face, as long as when it’s all said it done there is cohesion between all the Star Wars films.

But if you’re like me you’re probably tired of all this Clone stuff. The battles and meaningless jargon that goes on and on between the Clones and the Separatist droid army is so self-indulgent on Lucas’ part, I mean who really gives a crap about all this; after we’ve seen all the explosions and light saber duels we can possibly see, plus some of the worst dialogue delivery and acting from Hollywood’s 2nd century of films.

The way it has all panned out for the Star Wars franchise isn’t how I imagined it. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s I just figured the back story would be something like John Boorman’s Excalibur; King Arthur and round table kind of stories. Here, in Clone Wars, like all of the Star Wars installments since 1999, I feel forced to get involved and I don’t want to. I could care less.

And I think that will be a problem for Lucas in years to come, that even if Lucas gets new generations of Star Wars fans, some who with Clone Wars may be seeing their first Star Wars film, it will be the original audience from 77 who will stop caring and simply tune out.

If you want to see The Clone Wars wait for it on DVD, cable, or download.

Voices by Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anthony Daniels.

Rated PG. Running time is a little more than an hour and a half.

The Star Wars Turning Point

Of all the moments in Star Wars film history, this is probably crux of it all. A sword made of light, a wise old warrior, a story of knights, pending dark times and a fight against an evil Empire; a son just learning for the first time that his father was a knight. This was the exposition that kicked it all off for us in 1977, that gave us some insight, besides the scroll-worded opening, as to why the big guy in black was so hell-bent on finding two droids.

INT. BEN KENOBI’S DWELLING - DAY

The small, spartan hovel is cluttered with desert junk but still manages to radiate an air of time-worn comfort and security. Luke is in one corner repairing Threepio’s arm, as old Ben sits thinking.

LUKE No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

BEN That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

LUKE You fought in the Clone Wars?

BEN Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father.

LUKE I wish I'd known him.

BEN He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me...

(Ben gets up and goes to a chest where he rummages around. As Luke finishes repairing Threepio and starts to fit the restraining bolt back on, Threepio looks at him nervously. Luke thinks about the bolt for a moment then puts it on the table. Ben shuffles up and presents Luke with a short handle with several electronic gadgets attached to it.)

BEN I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

THREEPIO Sir, if you'll not be needing me, I'll close down for awhile.

LUKE Sure, go ahead. Ben hands Luke the saber.

LUKE What is it?

BEN Your father’s lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster.

(Luke pushes a button on the handle. A long beam shoots out about four feet and flickers there. The light plays across the ceiling.)

BEN continuing) An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.

(Luke hasn't really been listening.)

LUKE How did my father die?

BEN A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

LUKE The Force?

BEN Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

(Artoo makes beeping sounds.)

BEN Now, let's see if we can't figure out what you are, my little friend. And where you come from.

LUKE I saw part of the message he was...

(Luke is cut short as the recorded image of the beautiful young Rebel princess is projected from Artoo's face.)

BEN I seem to have found it.

(Luke stops his work as the lovely girl's image flickers before his eyes.)

LEIA General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

(There is a little static and the transmission is cut short. Old Ben leans back and scratches his head. He silently puffs on a tarnished chrome water pipe. Luke has stars in his eyes.)

BEN You must learn the ways of the Force if you're to come with me to Alderaan.

Scenes could use some major tightening; a lack of discipline in the editing room causes some funny jokes to play flat. I’m guessing the script could have been tweaked a bit more. Conflicts seem forced at times. Maybe improvisation would have helped some awkward moments between Wilson and Teddy Geiger (a John Mayer-sounding artist, talented singer, bad actor, who played a character on the short lived VH1 show Love Monkey).

But The Rocker has a great cast with some real talent, and would be a good date movie. Or one you see with mom and dad, and little sis. It’s 1986 and the Motley Crue looking, Poison rocking Cleveland band Vesuvius is on the cusp of something better than bar shows when their manager tells the guys to lose the drummer, Robert ‘Fish’ Fishman played by The Office’s Rainn Wilson, just so an interested record label’s chief can get his nephew on the kit. The guys are surprisingly defiant but after money, chicks, and a record deal are dangled in front of them (two Saturday Night Live alums, Will Arnett and Fred Armisen, along with Wedding Crashers’ bad boyfriend Bradley Cooper), the ‘Fish’ is rim shot right out of the band. (And he doesn’t take it well. For about five minutes it’s like a scene out of a bad horror movie—one that starts The Rocker off beat: Wilson with eyeliner and a bad 80’s rocker haircut looks like a Mike Reno version of Chucky on acid, with dagger-like drumsticks, chasing after his bandmates as they try to get away in their rock van.)

20 years later, ‘Fish’ is working a call center and Vesuvius is the band on every rock fan’s hard drive. We get the impression that co-workers listening to the latest Vesuvius album, or reading magazines with Vesuvius on the cover, or riding buses with Vesuvius painted on the side, are just some of the reasons causing ‘Fish’ to flounder.

He moves in with his sister Lisa played by Jane Lynch (40 Year-Old Virgin, A Mighty Wind, Best of Show), and her family, husband Stan played by Jeff Garlin (the Ship Captain in WALL-E, Curb Your Enthusiasm), and son Matt played by Josh Gad (21, the recent Kelsey Grammer show Back To You). Matt has a band and the drummer gets pulled (wouldn’t you know it) days before their high school prom gig. Matt is forced to ask his uncle to fill in and ‘Fish’ surprisingly picks up, clicking sticks in 4/4 time, right where he left off more than 20 years ago. The prom gig goes well and ‘Fish,’ rocking “a pocket of puke,” promises to get them a real gig. He does, but in trying to be his 1980s self, drinking and carousing with the groupies, he gets the band members’ parents pulling back the reins and splitting up the band.

When they cleverly practice via webcams (allowing ‘Fish’ the freedom to forgo clothing) the video gets posted on YouTube and a million hits later manager Jason Sudeikis (another Saturday Night Live guy, very funny in a Dane Cook sort of way) offers a record deal and tour. The parents, including single mom Christina Applegate, reluctantly let go and several time-lapse montage sequences later, we have sold out shows and a chance to open for guess who. Vesuvius. And it’s at the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of this now famous 80’s hair rock band that ‘Fish’ helped create. ‘Fish’ goes nuts. The band falls apart. We get another montage or two, before finally, a happy ending.

The Rocker reminds me of a little movie from 1996 called Bandwagon more so than School of Rock or Rock Star, in the sense we get real listenable, airwave music from the movie band within the movie (and I don’t mean Vesuvius). It seems to be done on a small scale, sort of intimate. And the music is good. Something you would hear on 99x.com. In fact next time I feed my iPod I’ll look for the soundtrack and some stuff from Teddy Geiger on iTunes.

Wilson has the best lines in The Rocker, and Emma Stone (Superbad) does Lindsey Lohan while the real Lohan is on sabbatical. Josh Gad is a real star. I’ve only seen this kid in a few things but he’s really good, has a great personality. I’d look for him in a James Cameron, Michael Bay, or Spielberg film sometime soon. But I’d say he has the potential to be somewhat of a Richard Dreyfuss for Hollywood’s current young generation.

Christina Applegate…give that girl a star. She’s going through some personal issues in real life and is not hiding the fact she had breast cancer and bilateral mastectomy. As an actress who makes part of her living from her looks and part from acting in TV’s Samantha Who, or movies like Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story, Applegate is hiding nothing from the public, is promoting The Rocker like any other job she’s done and that others might detect breast cancer early from what she’s communicating, is heroic. And she’s talented.

Howard Hesseman’s talent (WKRP in Cincinatti, About Schmidt, Head of the Class and about a hundred other projects), however, goes wasted here as a mere bus driver.

The Rocker is rated PG-13 (surprisingly, because it’s pretty tame), at about an hour and fifty-two minutes (which is about twenty-two minutes too long).

“Lots of bands play drum loops.”

"And lots of elevators play Celine Dion but that don’t make it right.”

NOTE: It’s called The Rocker, not The Drummer so don’t expect a lot of drum stuff. But you will get some city shots of Cleveland.

Tropic Thunder is a Ben Stiller comedy. So you wouldn’t expect to see Oscar winning cinematographer John Toll’s name in the credits as Director of Photography. But you do.

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr. (and others I won’t mention just for the sake of surprise), it’s a look at high profile celebrity movie stars you see on TMZ and Access Hollywood, some Oscar winners, some box office heroes, a rapper named Alpa Chino played by a talented Brandon Jackson, all trying to make a Vietnam War pic under the movie within the movie direction of Stephen Coogan (24 Hour Party People, Around the World in 80 Days). When Coogan loses control of his prima donna cast, the Executive Producer and financer of the film, Les Grossman (played by I won’t say who), has a Zeus-size temper tantrum that threatens a shutdown (among other things). This prompts the author of the fictional movie, Vietnam vet named Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte, perfectly cast), to suggest Coogen throw the blockbuster cast into the real jungles of Vietnam with scenes sketched out for the stars to act in. While doing so, Coogan will film with hidden cameras, reality style, as pyro-maestro Danny McBride (Foot Fist Way, Pineapple Express) blows things up with “200 pounds of [crap] your pants” explosives.

And explode it does. Straight to the top of my favorites list for 2008. This Ben Stiller directed film hits the target on all the important categories: acting, cinematography, screenwriting, editing, casting, sound…you name it. And done so in a way that retains the Stiller brand of movie-mocking humor while upping the cinematic ante.

The color popped off the screen. The focus was right on the money. Lenses sharper than a field ion microscope (look it up). A perfect amount of contrast in lighting—shadows, rim light, sunsets, darkness, light by fire. Camera moves like you see in films from the Best Picture category; dolly into close-ups like you see in a Spielberg film (you’ll know the moves when you see them…Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders). And action photography like you see in a John McTiernan film (Predator, Hunt for Red October, Die Hard), with helicopter mounts and guys-with-guns type of steadycam motion that keeps the spoof you normally see in Stiller films from spilling over the top.

Pieces of production value not readily recognizable, but a variation so great from other films that you’ll feel the difference. Like getting eye-laser surgery and seeing the world perfectly.

The dialogue is fantastic. The screenplay, smartly written by actor Justin Theroux (I don’t know his work as a writer but a few of his projects as actor are Mulholland Drive, Miami Vice, Six Feet Under), with Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen (Idiocracy) as co-writers, it is, well…it’s really damn good. The premise is set up quick and fine; the plot thickens and turns and surprises you; there’s action, then a gag, then action, some jokes, then action; a moment to ponder, then action; a moment where you think the script is done and Stiller’s falling back on Zoolander humor only to be immediately saved by a joke, then gags, dancing, jokes, and laughter like you haven’t laughed in years.

And I say dancing because your jaw will drop, you’ll bust a gut, you’ll cry you’ll be laughing so hard at Executive Producer Les Grossman’s moves.

Tight script though. Good characterizations with Hollywood stereotypes that could easily go cliché but Thunder takes it to the next level. Stereotypes are used here just to set the tone for each of the characters, to make them immediately recognizable before giving them opportunities to change. The code of Vietnam War movies, also, like Platoon, Uncommon Valor, Apocalypse Now, and Rambo-type films do much to create expectations from the genre for Stiller and gang to play off of before flipping those perceptions around to entertain us.

And the length of film is so delightfully ideal, it’s just the foam on top of a faultless beer. See it in the theater. Don’t wait too long because everyone will start leaking the good stuff. It’s better with a crowd, but will also be tops on your iPod and in your Netflix queue, your gift list, your Facebook list, your MySpace page, etc. Will be first on your TiVo, when that time comes.

Now, having raised your expectations let me just ask that you do everything you can to lower them. Think of all those Ben Stiller movies—Dodge Ball, Zoolander, The Cable Guy (as director), Starsky and Hutch, Mystery Men—the comedy of those movies. Kind of over the top, right? Keep that in your mind when you walk into Tropic Thunder and you’ll enjoy it so much more.

But get there early for the trailers. You know how people like to talk over the trailers? Well pay attention because they’re going to talk over the beginning of Tropic Thunder.

And that’s all I’m saying. Did I mention the casting is superb?

Tropic Thunder is an hour and forty seven minutes. Rated R.

NOTES:
John Toll won two Oscars back to back for his work on 1994’s Legend of the Fall, and 1995’s Braveheart. His list of movies as a Camera Operator is longer than his list of movies as Director of Photography. See his body of work at www.IMDB.com.

Ben Stiller’s character Tug Speedman says some things in Tropic Thunder that The Special Olympics and the National Downs Syndrome Congress, among others, disapproved of. Specifically the use of the word “retard.” Stiller’s character is not the smartest guy on the planet. Does his character change by the end of the film? And will audiences get a sense he’s matured a little past using words like this? We’ll have to see.

Also, Robert Downey, Jr.’s character, Kirk Lazarus, does black face, but Brandon Jackson’s Alpa Chino calls him out on it and addresses the same issues we as audience members might have with the portrayal. It’s actually quite a brilliant way to address racial stereotyping and deal with it in smart dialogue, as you’ll see. But, yes, if Alpa Chino wasn’t busting Lazarus’ chops and causing deep-rooted changes in Downey’s character, then we’d have a problem for sure.

See the Lewis interview with Brandon Jackson here