A friend of mine with whom I went to see American Dreamz made a comment as we were leaving the theater that I think sums it up pretty well: "That was not a good movie, but there were moments of [sheer] brilliance." I don't see many satires, so it's unusual that I would see two in two weeks. This one certainly suffers in the comparison. It was just too absurd and too heavy-handed to be an effective commentary, and lacking that it can hardly be an effective satire. On the other hand, a lot of the jokes were very funny. The details, especially, were often hilarious. A song lyric here, a TV caption there--in those instances the ridiculousness worked. As a complete film, though, it was just over the top. Writer-director Paul Weitz has done some decent films in the past, but this is definitely not his best work.

Viewed: 2006-04-27 | Released: 2006-03-03 | Score: C

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The second feature we saw at the film festival also turned out to be an ensemble piece. This one was quite different from Jam, though. For one thing, the storylines were only very loosely connected--I believe the only intersection is one very brief scene where several of the characters happen to be in an elevator at the same time. And where Jam was kind of lighthearted and sweet, The Great New Wonderful was more profound. The performances, too, were much more profound and moving. They were all really outstanding. Of course, I've come to expect good acting from people like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edie Falco, and Olympia Dukakis. (Gyllenhaal had, arguably, the emotional climax of this film.) Judy Greer has been steadily rising in my estimation, and this performance certainly follows that trend. And Tony Shalhoub was, as usual, delightfully quirky. The two surprises for me were Jim Gaffigan and Steven Colbert, both of whom I've appreciated for their comedy work in the past. As it turns out, they also both have a talent for dramatic acting. Given the recent success of smaller films and ensemble casts, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this movie garner some nominations when the awards seasons comes around. In my opinion, The Great New Wonderful is the best drama so far for 2006.

Viewed: 2006-04-21 | Released: 2006-04-21 | Score: A

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Thank You For Smoking is probably the smartest comedy I've seen in the past year. It's also one of the funniest. Aaron Eckhart gave a brilliantly slick performance as Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobbyist. Here's a character who is utterly sleazy and yet you still find yourself rooting for him. The supporting cast was also quite good. David Koechner and J.K. Simmons both made me laugh out loud, as did Rob Lowe. William H. Macy and Robert Duvall were also quite capable in their roles. The low points were probably Adam Brody, who seemed a little forced, and Maria Bello, who was kind of boring. Neither of them was actually bad, though, just not as good as some of the others. It's rare that you find an effective satire these days--too often they're too heavy-handed and not funny enough. This one, though, is well worth seeing.

Viewed: 2006-04-20 | Released: 2006-01-19 | Score: A

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This was the first of the two features we saw at this year's Newport Beach Film Festival. We had just sat through two sets of really bad student shorts, so I was feeling a little discouraged. Jam really turned the day around, though. The film follows the interactions of a bunch of very different people who get stuck out on a country road for an afternoon due to a car crash. There's a cellist on her way to a concert, a father and son out on a road trip, a yuppie couple, a single dad with his kids, a pregnant lesbian couple, a bride on her way to her wedding with her two bridesmaids, a retired couple, and two bumbling criminals (who turn out to be the major comic relief). I think this movie really exemplified what I like about ensemble movies. None of the performances were truly outstanding but they combined (like Voltron) to produce something that surpassed its constituent parts. I think it's unlikely that Jam will make it to theaters, but if you happen upon it at the video store I'd say it's definitely worth renting.

Viewed: 2006-04-21 | Released: 2006-03-31 | Score: B

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I've never really considered myself a fan of Neil Young, although I do like several of his songs. I think, perhaps, that this movie may lead me to investigate his music a bit more. The movie is pretty much just a concert, but with a bit of backstory added on the front. Just a few months before the show, Young had had a couple of unfortunate events: the death of his father and the diagnosis of a brain aneurism. It seems that those events did something to make him more conscious of things like the passing of time and his own mortality; the whole concert has this very personal, introspective, sentimental feeling. On top of that, the music was great, very heartfelt and passionate. He also introduces many of the songs with a story about its creation, which I understand is quite unusual for him. Sadly, I think that this movie is out of most theaters--the big screen adds a lot to the experience. It's still worth seeing as a rental, but if you get the chance to see it on the big screen it will add a lot to the experience.

Viewed: 2006-04-12 | Released: 2006-02-09 | Score: A

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I'm kind of surprised that this movie hasn't been advertised more. I haven't seen any trailers on TV, and the only one I saw in the theaters was only a week before it opened. It's a little strange, because it's actually quite good--the dialogue, in particular, was clever and drily funny. What's more, it had a very bankable cast: Josh Hartnett as the lead along with Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, Morgan Freeman, and Ben Kingsley. I mean, come on, how could a movie with Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley fail to be good? Well, whatever the reason for the lack of promotion, I hope that the word-of-mouth spreads fast enough to keep this film in theaters for a few more weeks, because it's one of the better films I've seen in the past year. If you're into gangster movies at all, check this one out.

Viewed: 2006-04-10 | Released: 2005-04-06 | Score: B

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If you're the type that likes to organize and analyze, you can pretty easily split the caper genre into two groups: the ones where the audience is told about the plan beforehand and the ones where they aren't. The former type can get by on action sequences and gadgets, but the latter has to be a little smarter--it's crucial that the misdirection works well. A good caper movie can give you all of the pieces of the puzzle and still surprise you in the end. I'd say this was a pretty good one. It was well-written with an interesting premise and the performances were all pretty solid. Christopher Plummer was particularly good (which is no surprise, really), as was Denzel Washington. Apart from my normal pet peeve about accents (Clive, man, I love your work, really, but you should really stick to English roles) my only real complaint is that the movie made me overthink things. Really, the plot was a pretty straightforward caper, but there were lots of little details--a large poster in the background of one scene, the music under the opening credits, several lines of dialogue pertaining to race and religion--that had me expecting a plot twist involving terrorism or something. I guess I was paying just a bit too much attention, but that's alright since it didn't really diminish my enjoyment of the film.

Viewed: 2006-03-31 | Released: 2006-03-23 | Score: B

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It's quite likely that you haven't heard of this movie. In fact, the only reason I knew about it is because I knew some people who worked on it. Overall, I'd say I liked it. I don't generally enjoy "message movies," because the themes being portrayed--in this case, the effect of the proliferation of guns on American society--are often pushed into the foreground at the expense of good storytelling. This movie didn't totally avoid that problem, but I think that the quality of the performances was enough to offset the fact that the script was a little shaky. All of the principal actors did a good job, and I particularly liked Forest Whitaker and Donald Sutherland. I've also been noticing Linda Cardellini more and more lately--I think she's pretty talented and I found it a little unfortunate that her storyline wasn't developed more. It was a little hard to see how it fit with the rest of the film. From a technical standpoint, it seemed a little obvious that the writer-director was new to filmmaking, because he chose to use a lot of what I call "film school" techniques. Some of it worked, like the way the different storylines had different film textures and color balances. On the other hand, some of the camera angles and cuts kind of bothered me. Still, I think that the film does what it sets out to do, which is to spotlight an issue that we as a culture are currently dealing with. I'm not sure that I completely agree with the standpoint the film seems to take, but it's a subject that certainly merits discussion. If it comes to your local indie theater (and you can check the release schedule at the film's web site), you might want to check it out.

Viewed: 2006-03-25 | Released: 2006-03-21 | Score: B

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I got the feeling while watching this movie that the filmmakers were doing something brilliant but that it was going over my head because--as is so often the case--I wasn't familiar with the source material. Having had a few days to do a little digging, I think I was right. What the writer and director has done here is take a book that is widely regarded to be unfilmable (Laurence Stern's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and restructured it in such a way that it works brilliantly on film. Rather than try to put the novel on film, what they've done is captured the spirit of the novel by making a movie about making a movie about the novel. (Is your head spinning yet?) The book is described as a self-reflexive, stream-of-consciousness satire full of both low-brow bawdy and more intellectual, meta-literary humor that still manages to ask some serious questions about the limits of self-knowledge and deliver some touching scenes of paternal love. And that's exactly what you get from the movie. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Now, to go get myself a copy of the book.

Viewed: 2006-02-25 | Released: 2006-01-26 | Score: B

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As you may know, Judi Dench was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the woman who first brought nudity to the West End stage. I'd say the nom is well deserved. Of course, Dench could do just about anything and it would be good, so it's not terribly surprising. Bob Hoskins and Christopher Guest were also quite good and between the three of them there were some truly hilarious scenes. Much of the film focuses on the shows themselves, nudity and all, and while a real show like that would come off today as hokey and gratuitous, in the context of the film it was kind of endearing--sort of a glimpse into a time that was more innocent despite the tragedies brought about by war.

Viewed: 2006-02-19 | Released: 2005-12-08 | Score: B

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