Author: Bo List

A Very Long Engagement is set during World War I, and horrors abound. Manech (played by Gaspard Ulliel) is a young soldier so pretty and fresh-faced that he is nicknamed “Cornflower” by his unit. Manech has, like many, seen too much on the battlefield and resorts to deliberately having his hand shot in order to be sent to the hospital and, hopefully, home. But there is a stiff penalty for self-mutilation: death. Manech and four others like him are tossed into “No Man’s Land” between the trenches of the French and the enemy Germans. The assumption is that they will quickly die and their inevitable deaths will caution against the shirking of duty.

Manech has a lover back home named Mathilde (Audrey Tautou). Mathilde is a headstrong beauty who has overcome childhood polio, and while she limps, she is no less determined nor is she any less brave than Manech. When she receives word that he has been killed on the front, she cannot believe it. She would know, wouldn’t she? In her heart?

Three years pass, and Mathilde is tired of waiting. She hires charitable investigator Germain Pire (Ticky Holgado) who unravels mostly dead-ends until gradually a confusing paper trail hints that maybe not all of the soldiers died. Could it be that Manech survived? Mathilde waits at home for news until she can’t wait any longer, finally visiting the sites her investigator has brought to her attention — a graveyard, the battlefield, and even a prostitute who is on a quest of her own: to kill the men responsible for the death of her lover, one of the four with whom Manech was condemned. Every clue brings Mathilde closer to the truth, and while Manech’s fate is never optimistic, there are more and more hints that not all was as it seemed three years ago in the trenches.

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has created an impressive juggling act with A Very Long Engagement. Too intimate to be an epic, the film manages to be a beautiful romance, a sometimes-funny mystery, and a harrowing war film all at once, without slighting any one of its varied components. It is accomplished by a fanciful visual scheme that captures the whimsy of young love and the very worst possible images from a grueling war. Perhaps the best way of describing the film is as a series of successful juxtapositions — war against love, the grim acceptance of reality against the fantasy of desire. Moving on after grief versus a life of hope.

Jeunet created a fantastical confection with 2001’s popular Amelie, also with Tautou in the lead. A Very Long Engagement is, by comparison, an adventuresome meal with tastes and smells both exotic and familiar and with one course moving swiftly to the next. At two and one-quarter hours, it never feels long — so brisk is Jeunet’s pacing and so purposeful his action. And while the details of Mathilde’s investigation can move at a dizzying rate (Engagement is subtitled, and I confess that I was not able to read as fast as some of the facts were presented), the story itself is as clear as Mathilde’s determination.

And oh — the sights and sounds of this film: 1920s Paris, at the bus station and in the market. The French countryside. The many kinds of mud that the good fighting men trudge through or fall in. The warfare. The cobblestones. If there were computer-assisted vistas or landscapes or battles, they were inconspicuous enough to lend substantial impact to the more gripping moments, such as when an unexploded bomb wedges into the ceiling of a makeshift hospital in a zeppelin hangar, and a zeppelin is accidentally released from its moorings, slowly rising to the bomb’s trigger while doctors, nurses, and patients scream, trapped.

I cannot recommend this film to everyone. So successful is A Very Long Engagement at depicting the absurdity and terror of war and so completely does the film sweep the viewer up in its hopeful search for Manech that it reminds us that we ourselves are engaged in a terrible war and that many of our own husbands, wives, and lovers are in their own trenches, some of whom will not return. I imagine this would be a difficult film to watch if you are one of those who wait — by the phone for a call, by the door for the mail, or by the TV — for any word whatsoever that your loved one is okay. For the rest of you, I wholeheartedly encourage you to enjoy a beautiful film destined, most likely, for a very limited engagement. ·

While there are several vicious and visceral treats to be gained from a viewing of House of Flying Daggers, there are three primary set pieces that would each warrant the price of admission. This is not to discount the other many virtues of the film, though I would be remiss if I didn’t add also that the pleasure of the film is not so much in the fantastic whole as in the sum of its splendid parts. These moments, each more astounding than the last, provide an elegant three-sided symmetry to a film that suddenly and unexpectedly becomes a story about a love triangle set against the conflicts of the 9th-century Chinese Tang Dynasty.

Magnificent Moment One: “The Echo Game.” Mei (Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is a talented, blind dancer in the Peony Pavilion, a brothel. When a drunken customer, Jin (puckish Takeshi Kaneshiro), causes a scene, a military captain orders them both arrested. The madam insists that the brothel can’t do without her particular talents, but the captain scoffs. What could a blind dancer do that’s so essential? Mei proves her worth by submitting to a test of her grace and reflexes in which she is encircled by a battalion of standing drums. The captain flicks a bean onto a drum (or three or hundreds) and Mei dances a ferocious ballet with long, weighted sleeves, hammering out the beat of the beans, not unlike playing the electronic game Simon blindfolded and at super-speed. While danger hangs in the form of a prison sentence, the captain is pleased by the performance and Mei is sated by the challenge. The effect: spellbinding.

But Mei is imprisoned when a set of distinctive daggers is found among her possessions. They are the mark of a secret society of warriors known as (you guessed it) the House of Flying Daggers. Blind or no, she’s a threat. But that belligerent brothel guest, Jin, turns out to be a Daggers sympathizer. (Or is he? Actually, he is a government spy charged with tricking her into leading him to the Daggers’ lair.) He breaks Mei free and takes her across the Chinese countryside in the hopes of finding her brethren. Along the way, as the two seem to be falling more into love, Mei learns that Jin’s name means “wind,” and like the wind, there is no holding the attentions of Jin for very long. They part when Jin can’t commit beyond the impending end of their journey. But a small army of government soldiers attacks the lone Mei, and Jin’s commitment to his superiors and his very real love for Mei send him back to protect her from an AWESOME bamboo fight: Magnificent Moment Two. Bamboo is used as swords, staffs, shields, daggers, stilts, ladders as just about everything bamboo can be used for short of panda food. As these shoots and ladders are wielded and hurled, a high-speed chase ensues with Jin and Mei on the ground and the assassins racing across the tops of the trees. It’s just incredible. Beautiful and horrifying.

Magnificent Moment Three: a gorgeous battle between the eventual love triangle’s tortured participants in a thick and relentless blanketing of snow another example of arrestingly beautiful violence as articulated by striking production design. While these may not be people we would want to buy a beer, we come to respect their adherence to a code of honor and discipline that is both foreign and mostly absent from our ways of the West. By the time we discover who Mei’s mysterious Other Man is, the stakes are enormous, and he, Jin, and Mei have everything to lose with only questionable potential gains. The snow, the music, and the blood that spills are truly heart-stopping, and the level of sacrifice to which all are prepared to commit is staggering.

There are, incidentally, many other smaller magnificent moments.

That both Jin and Mei have secrets is all one needs to know to enjoy the construction of the narrative of Flying Daggers. There is some intrigue in the politics of the Flying Daggers, but it is almost a distraction from Jin and Mei’s angry, awkward, charming courtship amid spectacular fight sequences the heart and essence of the film. Another 30 or so minutes to its brisk two hours could have fleshed out some of the neglected back story (which possesses enough tantalizing mystery for an entire additional film), but no matter. House of Flying Daggers is so rich with color, conflict, and poetry that any deficiency is easily overlooked.

Next year, the long-awaited Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will arrive, with Johnny Depp inheriting the top hat from Gene Wilder, whose 1971 bizarro Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has become an oddball classic. During the search for the right Wonka, I wondered who in Hollywood could blend strange, affectionate, magical, and gently disturbing without tipping the scales over into Creepyland and was actually disappointed when Depp won out. Although I was impressed with the range of roles he had played and the consummate dedication with which he embraced eccentricity within them, I still had not seen what I wanted in terms of pure heart. After seeing Finding Neverland, my reservations are allayed.

Armed with a soft and pleasingly Scottish brogue and an uncommon restraint, Depp plays J.M. Barrie, a frustrated novelist and playwright whose latest play is a flop and whose producer, Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman), is anxious to scrounge a quick success. Barrie is married to the beautiful but cold Mary (Radha Mitchell). It is a stilted, formal arrangement, complete with separate bedrooms and a long dinner table across which they sparsely converse.

One day, while walking in the park, Barrie comes across widowed mother Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four boys, and it is not long before his aching, starving heart is filled with affection for Sylvia and these sons that he never had. Barrie’s affection for Sylvia is odd chaste, really and it is almost as though he loves her more as the mother she is to her boys than anything sexual or even romantic. This doesn’t stop the rumor mill from kicking into high gear, not only for the impropriety of the married Barrie spending so much time with a recent widow but also with whispers about what he may be feeling for the boys. Sylvia’s mother, Mrs. Emma du Maurier (Julie Christie), soon swoops down on her family to protect them from gossip and what she sees as Barrie’s unhealthy influence. (He plays with the boys.)

Meanwhile, Barrie’s literary imagination has been reignited. Sylvia’s youngest son, Peter (Freddie Highmore), is a serious young man hardest hit by his father’s death. He’s a boy who didn’t quite get to be a child, which inspires Barrie to write about a boy who is nothing but: Peter Pan. By creating a boy of perpetual youth, Barrie gets to live out some of the childhood he himself never got to experience, and it creates a fictitious “double” for whom young Peter Llewelyn Davies can live and imagine vicariously. But this feeling of youth is fleeting, for both Peter and Barrie must accept that Sylvia is ill. Peter may grow up with no parents, and Barrie may lose the one woman he can love as both mother and wife.

Thank God for Depp, who manages to live inside a man of limitless whimsy while restraining his delivery. Winslet, likewise, balances lightheartedness and the gravity of motherhood with soft bohemian flair, while Christie and Mitchell play cold women without resorting to villainy. Again, balance is key here. This film takes us to a magical land while simultaneously preparing us for a death. In Barrie’s play, we see the wires that allow his characters to fly, and in director Marc Forster’s (Monster’s Ball) film, we know that those wires that hold Sylvia may soon be cut.

Finding Neverland brushes over the tragedy of Barrie’s youth: His brother died while young, and the family’s means of grieving were to call Barrie by the dead brother’s name in a way, killing Barrie. Unmentioned are the fates of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who die in war or by suicide. Young Peter came to resent his namesake Pan, and the specter of pedophilia never left Barrie, though there is no evidence aside from rumors to substantiate the accusation. It’s an ironic coincidence that a modern-day Peter Pan, Michael Jackson, literally built a Neverland and now faces the accusations in court that only haunted Barrie as gossip. Lesson to all: We must grow up sometime. But Finding Neverland succeeds because it doesn’t pretend that the tragic before and after doesn’t exist. Rather, it captures that in-between place where most of us live for a while when we’re young our own Neverland before reality and work and finances and death make us grown-ups.

For those unacquainted with singer-songwriter Damien Rice, the opening track of Closer may be a bit of a revelation. “And so it is,” the song goes, “just like you said it would be. Life goes easy on me, most of the time. And so it is, the shorter story, no love no glory no hero in her sky ” and then “I can’t take my eyes off of you” repeats and repeats.

Rice’s work is extraordinary in its raw combination of emptiness and longing, never better expressed than on “The Blower’s Daughter,” which opens Closer. We hear this song at the beginning and at the end, and while I will not spoil the latter for you, I will say that it encapsulates the mood of the film.

Written by Patrick Marber (from his acclaimed play of the same name), Closer examines four lonesome souls, adrift in different London worlds. Dan (Jude Law) is an obituarist. Alice (Natalie Portman) is a stripper. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer. Larry (Clive Owen) is a dermatologist. When Dan sees free-spirited Alice hit by a taxi, a chain of events begins that unites and sunders each of this quartet into a strange, sexy round-robin of lust and envy.

Dan and Alice live together after the accident. Time passes, and Dan writes a book. While posing for the jacket photo, he meets Anna and is instantly obsessed with her. Since he can’t have Anna, he stalks and toys with her, eventually playing a prank (via an Internet sex chat room) that brings random and unwitting doctor Larry to a rendezvous at an aquarium. He’s there for sex. Anna wants to look at fish. Of course, they end up married. But not for long. Anna succumbs to the desperation of Dan’s affections. Lonely and devastated, Larry visits a strip club, where he meets a newly single Alice. “And so it is ”

My first exposure to Closer was back in 1998, a year after the play’s debut in London. A group of enthusiastic actors had acquired the unpublished manuscript and organized a midnight living-room reading. For the famous chat-room scene, they drew up index cards with the chat text written on them to give the best sense of the typed, unspoken dialogue. The experience of this reading was electrifying. The language was so darkly, crudely poetic (“It tastes like you but sweeter!“) and the relationships so raw and real. Few of us had experienced anything quite like it in theatrical form.

Now, in 2004, the film is released, and at its helm is Mike Nichols, who knows a little something about theater (as an accomplished stage director), a little about sexual jealousies and “love rectangles” (having directed 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and 1971’s Carnal Knowledge), and a lot about turning great plays into great films (Woolf, Wit, Angels in America). Best of all, he may be Hollywood’s premier actor’s director forgoing visual or conceptual excess in favor of drawing the best performances out of great actors. This is invaluable in Closer. The relationships are so thoroughly complicated and the need for pomp or periphery so spare.

Credible and unnerving performances abound. Owen, who played Dan in the original London production, stands out a bit from the otherwise superlative bunch perhaps because he has spent so much time with this text and its tricky, sticky wordplay and perhaps because he has the most to gain, as the least recognizable name on the marquee. When he bellows “BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING CAVEMAN!” you believe it. Law does just fine playing quite a different kind of cad than his Alfie, while Portman offers her most adult performance to date as a darker, sexier wild child than her Garden State waif. Roberts plays to her strength vulnerability wrapped in insecurity and tied together with guts and while her performance isn’t particularly remarkable, it’s nice to see her choosing ensemble roles in interesting projects rather than bland star vehicles.

While it never entirely escapes the confines of a stage play to open up a film world of its own, Closer provides perhaps the closest look at the fickle nature of fidelity that we have seen in cinema in a while and the closest look any of us want to take. •

As we near Christmas, I am reminded daily of the life and work of Jesus Christ. And as we approach the end of the year, Hollywood is rolling out the big prestige pictures. Among them: Oliver Stone’s Alexander. The similarities between Jesus and Alexander are striking, not the least of which being that both had mothers who broke the news to them that their fathers were gods and not the guys that the mothers married. With Jesus, that father was, well, God. Alexander’s real dad was supposedly Zeus, or so thought Alex’s mother Olympias. So, from the start, both had absentee fathers and mothers who thought their sons were gods. How could they not succeed?

And yet, Alexander fails. It’s hard to make good movies about legends. Either they lack humanity or they cheat the myth. Look at Troy, which humanized Achilles beyond consequence (but turned a profit anyway, thanks to Brad Pitt’s ripped bod and Orlando Bloom’s twinkling eyes). Look closer at Cleopatra. Bloated, self-important, disastrous. But even that 1963 debacle has become a legend in its own right for being first among film fiascos. As of this writing, Alexander‘s opening-weekend box-office take is a measly $13.4 million (compare this to a budget of $150 million), at sixth place on the chart safely behind the second-week take of SpongeBob SquarePants. I seldom mention a current film’s box office in my reviews, but I do now to try and explain why I don’t think people want to see this movie, aside from the fact that it’s boring. Oh wait, that might be it. It’s boring.

The plot, in an extremely small nutshell: Dysfunctional parents King Philip (Val Kilmer) and Olympias (Angelina Jolie) beget young Alexander (Colin Farrell), who, after his father’s death and by age 25, conquers most of the known world from Macedonia to Greece to Egypt to Asia. His great love is his childhood pal Hephaistion (Jared Leto), though he marries exotic princess Roxane (Rosario Dawson) as a political gesture. At 32, he dies mysteriously. Murder? Maybe. Regardless, the greatest empire in history falls, and a living legend enters the pantheon.

Why Audiences Will Reject Alexander in three movements:

Alexander the Grating: The film begins, ends, and middles as a history lesson. Forty years after Alexander’s death, wizened Ptolemy (stately Anthony Hopkins) rattles off the story of the legend to his scribe Cadmus at the Great Library at Alexandria. And he keeps rattling. This is a big-budget history lesson an expensive History Channel documentary with violence and boobies. While impeccably cast (though the imagination stretches to believe young Jolie as Farrell’s mother), Alexander never gallops like a 175-minute movie should and is so full of exposition and dry political maneuvering (which is hard to follow) that the grandeur of Alexander’s quests and successes are never exploited to the extent that a son of Zeus deserves.

Alexander the Gaelic: Almost all historical epics have a few things in common. Foremost, they feature prominent British farts in small but important statesman roles (Peter O’Toole in Troy, Richard Harris and Derek Jacobi in Gladiator, Christopher Plummer in Alexander), and they tend to feature myriad dialects. The real Alexander would be speaking Macedonian, not speaking English with a Macedonian accent, so why bother trying to make Farrell sound Macedonian? Ironically, everyone else in the film from Macedonia speaks in Farrell’s native Irish brogue, even Kilmer. This is off-putting, especially when Irish slang creeps into the dialogue, and it’s hard to differentiate the great warrior king from Farrell, the handsome drunk.

Alexander the Gay: Alexander is commonly acknowledged to have been mostly gay not that this appeared in my high school history book. There’s lots of Alexander gushing over Hephaistion in the film, backed by a romantic Vangelis score, but it’s all declarations, goo-goo eyes, and glances. I think even the modern frat boy would rather see two guys getting it on than hear them go on and on about their honorable, sexless man-love (though the sex is implied). I appreciate director Stone’s willingness to explore it, but he seems to have stalled in a strange compromise I don’t think anyone will be happy with the least of which our newly minted Red States.

Long on talk and short on action despite some rough Rosario Dawson sex and some impressive battles (with elephants!) Alexander falls short of greatness. Stone spent half of Alexander’s lifetime getting this made. Life is too short to sit through it.

We all have that friend, I guess. The one we love regardless of the fact that they embarrass not only themselves with by-the-minute regularity but everyone within a 15-foot radius. Or perhaps we are that person slipping down stairs, mispronouncing important words in front of important people, drawing undue attention to ourselves by means of inappropriate attire, etc. Or perhaps we are that odd other kind of person who is neither embarrassing nor tolerates the company of the embarrassing. These are the people who scowl or grimace or whose jaws hang open while eyes bulge when a mess of a person loudly says something off-color or rips open her dress accidentally or uncontrollably pees. I don’t get those people. I mean, everybody accidentally pees sometimes, right? Right? Right?!? Anyway, in life there are Bridget Jones-es, the people who love them, and those other people. I am a Bridget, and there are Bridgets in my life, but after seeing Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, I have more in common with the others than I thought. I mean, will Bridget ever get her act together?

Bridget Jones’s Diary was one of the best surprises of 2001. Funny, fresh, British, and even sexy, Diary accomplished several things at once: It reaffirmed how sexy and fun Hugh Grant can be, established Renée Zellweger as a major, bankable star, and introduced Colin Firth to scads of American women who have been longing for a stoic, humorless, handsome Brit to arrive on the scene as a thinking woman’s sex symbol. It also made Rubensesque sexy again in the American consciousness. As a cousin of mine once said, “Bones are for dogs. Meat is for men.” Amen! Not that Zellweger is exactly chunky, even at 30 pounds over her scientifically determined optimal body weight (which is what she gained both times she signed on to play Bridget). Regardless, Bridget eats, drinks, and smokes too much and realizes it. Part of her charm is that she struggles, as so many of us do, with just keeping it all together.

I haven’t gotten to the sequel yet. I guess I should. But Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is almost more of a remake than a sequel, so there’s not much to say. It’s the same characters and similar situations mostly scenarios that seem set up for a girl like Bridget to fumble through again and again. Nothing new here.

In any case, in the last installment, Bridget overcame insecurities and the battle of the bulge and ended up with human-rights attorney Mark Darcy (Firth) instead of her slimy but sexy boss Daniel Cleaver (Grant). Edge of Reason picks up six weeks later, and Bridget and Mark are happily shagging the days away, combining their lives awkwardly (she’s Dharma to his Greg) but happily, until Bridget is bitten by the Green-Eyed Monster. Yep, that’s right jealousy. Mark has a sexy assistant who seems to be making eyes at Mark all the time, and now suddenly Bridget can think of a dozen reasons why Mr. Right is Mr. Wrong. So, she sinks the ship before it can sink her and finds herself single again and back in the treacherous path of that cheating cad Daniel, who promises he’s in sexual-addiction therapy and mending his ways.

The major difference between the first and second Jones films is that in this sequel, tele-journalist Bridget is mistakenly jailed in a Thai prison while on assignment. Whoops-a-daisy! This sets up the means by which the major plot elements of the first movie can be reprised: Mark proves his love, Daniel proves his caddishness, and Bridget proves that she can keep her chin up and smile through the darkest of times namely, being mistakenly jailed in a Thai prison. (Isn’t Thailand where they cane people? Yikes!)

This might be an interesting development for Bridget if the movie indulged in a tonal shift worthy of how dire the situation could be. I would love for there to be real emotional consequences to this imprisonment and the legal wrangling it takes to free our girl. Alas, there is none.

Zellweger, who is probably the most versatile actress of her generation, holds it all together with spunk and self-effacing zeal. But every other element Firth and Grant included (thanks to a script that asks nothing more from them than a reprise) seems like a rerun. Even the fight (choreographed brilliantly to “It’s Raining Men”) between the two men, so memorable in the first, is repeated here, to lesser effect. Bridget Jones: More of the Same would have been a more appropriate title to this fun if trivial and unnecessary sequel.

Biopics are awful. Let’s just get that out of the way, shall we? No film genre is so historically stodgy, so dull, so consistently conventional. No matter the subject, they all have the exact same story arc — rise, fall, redemption. Rinse and repeat. And the bad news about Taylor Hackford’s Ray is that it could be the archetypal example of this sorry genre.

Ray Charles is an irresistible subject for this kind of treatment. As a beloved and recently deceased cultural hero who triumphed over addiction, racism, and disability, it’s a role waiting for an Oscar moment, and you’d better believe Jamie Foxx is already clearing mantel space.

From the stiff chronology to the slideshow segues to the hackneyed flashbacks to a truly awful final stretch that goes from a too-snappy Freudian deus ex machina to a classroom-doc wrap-up, Hackford and co-writer James L. White do everything in their power to trip this film up. And yet Ray succeeds in spite of it all.

A lot of this success has to do with acting. Given the blindness, the sunglasses, and the identifiable mannerisms, Charles might be easy to mimic, but give Foxx credit for nailing the role. Following excellent performances in Any Given Sunday, Ali (a far more failed biopic but supplying perhaps Foxx’s best performance as Ali’s cornerman), and Collateral, Foxx’s Ray completes his transition to A-list status.

But it’s the “Hey, it’s that guy!” factor in the supporting cast that’s really special. Ray may boast more immensely likable but underrecognized actors in good roles than any movie this year: Kerry Washington plays Charles’ gospel-singer wife Della Bea. Best known for her supporting role in Save the Last Dance but best seen in her lead role in Jim McKay’s great indie Our Song, Washington might have the most glowing face of any young actress in movies today. Energetic Regina King (who hasn’t had a role this juicy since playing Mrs. Show Me the Money in Jerry Maguire) is a joy as Margie Hendricks, the lead Raelette who has Ray’s illegitimate child and whose torturous relationship with the star feeds scorching duets such as “Hit the Road Jack” and “(Night Time Is) The Right Time.” David Krumholtz, the Sizzlin’-lovin’ eldest son in Slums of Beverly Hills, gets to grow up as savvy, constantly bemused agent Milt Shaw. Ike Turner lookalike Thomas Jefferson Byrd (brilliant in Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus and Bamboozled) pops up as a bandmate who helps Charles get hooked on heroin. Best of all are Richard Schiff (intensely mopey Toby on The West Wing) and Curtis Armstrong (“Booger” from Revenge of the Nerds and the “Sometimes, Joel, you just have to say ‘What the fuck'” guy from Risky Business) as the patron saints of record geeks, Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun, respectively.

That brings us to the other thing that Ray gets right: the music. That Ray Charles isn’t a cultural figure on par with Elvis, Dylan, and the Beatles can only be explained through racism, a case this movie doesn’t make. But the genius of “The Genius” is something it nails. Recording-session scenes — such as the one where Charles begins to break away from his influences (particularly Nat King Cole) by playing with Ertegun’s “Mess Around” or the excitement you see on the faces of the Raelettes as they’re coached to greatness –are thrilling even if they’re mostly too brief. An obviously embellished if not outright fictional scene where “What’d I Say” is written on the spot to fill time at the end of a concert is electric. The song surely wasn’t conceived this way, but the experience of the scene is true to the sense of spontaneity you get whenever the song is played.

If Ray misses anything it’s in not underscoring enough the historic transition Charles presided over merging gospel and R&B into soul. You get the reaction of his audience to the new sound, but without the on-screen presence of the gospel standards that Charles rewrote, the audience doesn’t hear it. But what the audience does hear is still plenty. Ray is a music movie in which the music — and the film’s attitude toward it –makes up for the deficiencies in moviemaking.

— Chris Herrington

In Birth, the latest film directed by Sexy Beast helmer Jonathan Glazer, an extraordinary premise is set forth against a realistic backdrop and acted out by realistic people. Anna, an ordinary woman (played by the unordinary Nicole Kidman), has just announced her engagement to Joseph (Danny Huston — director John’s son). It’s been 10 years since her beloved Sean died suddenly while jogging in the park, and now Anna is ready to move on. Or is she? As if on cue to spoil her potential happiness, a young boy who shares Anna’s departed husband’s name wanders into the home of Anna’s affluent mother and makes a startling announcement: He is Sean. The Sean.

At first, the boy is doubted, of course, but then he starts to demonstrate that he knows things. Things that only the departed Sean could have known. He recognizes furniture. He remembers that he and Anna got married 30 times in 30 churches. He remembers places where he and Anna “did it.” Surely this is a joke, right? Well, it’s not very funny. “Does Mr. Reincarnation want some cake?” asks Anna’s mother (played by wry and wonderful Lauren Bacall). He does.

There is an immensely rewarding pace in Birth that makes itself evident just when Anna starts wondering if there might be something to the young boy’s claim. Instead of sinking into a race-against-time format or conjuring up some urgency that requires car chases, death wishes, or, heaven forbid, special effects, Birth allows events to unfold in a deliberate but unforced near-crawl. Every day — be it an exceedingly important one or one like any other — still has 24 hours in it, and Birth treats time with the utmost regard. Sean, while claiming to be a reincarnated dead husband, still has to go to school. People have to go to work.

Everything about the way Birth unfolds seems exactly how real people might behave in these circumstances. They are skeptical to the point that we too would be skeptical, angered at the point when we ourselves would be angry. Its characters are bestowed with a respectability in that regard. Even as Anna becomes more and more obsessed with the boy’s claims, her surrounding family gets more and more worried about the potential harm of the situation. A lesser film might have them plot against the boy or send Anna to therapy or Do Something Drastic. Instead, they just worry aloud — as I think most people would do.

When the ever-patient Joseph erupts against the boy in the middle of a private concert (for sitting behind him and kicking his chair, as young boys do), his attack is not merely a dramatic, cinematic outburst; it is a fit of rage. These emotions are those of a confused, angry person instead of a Hollywood construct of the jealous boyfriend. His actions, like those of each of Birth‘s characters, are unpredictable and palpable. When Anna allows young Sean to take off his clothes and join her in her bath, one gasps, not because it’s sensationalistic or even sexual (it’s not), but because it is so honest and true to what Anna must be feeling.

Cameron Bright plays the boy, Sean. He is deadpan almost throughout yet has the presence of a little adult. There is a staidness and a posture that makes it very easy to believe that there is a husband — a man — somewhere inside the boy. He makes it easy to believe that Anna is confused. So are we. Is this a hoax? Is this boy the real thing or a gifted liar?

A pall hangs over the wealthy condominium where most of Birth takes place. Everything’s just a bit dimmer than it should be. The atmosphere is thick. You can almost smell it. There is, likewise, a musicality to the film that helps articulate its themes of birth, life, and death within that pall. The film’s beautiful scoring is filled with near-sacramental themes that evoke baptism, childhood, marriage, funeral. In one scene, Anna and Joseph have gone to the orchestra, and for almost a full minute, the camera indulges in a close-up of Anna’s face as a tempestuous movement is played that is reflected clearly in Anna’s eyes. This moment is like the rest of the film, edging us slightly to a place we may not want to go, to a mystery we may not want to solve but feel we must

I attended a party over the weekend where I overheard the following, slightly drunk, rant exchanged over ice-cream cake and beer: “Did anyone see I Heart Huckabees? Well, I did, and I didn’t ‘heart’ Huckabees at all. I hated it. That’s what they should have called it: I Hate Huckabees.” Other partygoers jumped in with “What do you mean? I ‘hearted’ Huckabees a lot,” or “I didn’t understand it, but I guess I ‘hearted’ it well enough.”

For the record, I did not heart Huckabees, nor did I hate it. And I feel like I did a substantially good bit of homework. The two movies I saw before it were What the Bleep Do We Know? (another metaphysical indie that explores the interconnectedness of the universe) and Team America, which suggests that the world’s occupants are puppets. I left I Heart Huckabees tired, if mildly amused, and wrestling with the notion that I should have gotten something that I didn’t get: I have a masters degree. I should get this, right? I would like to heart Huckabees.

The titular Huckabees refers to a megastore like Wal-Mart or Target, with a bouncy 1950s Old Navy-style of retro marketing. Its slogan: “One World. One Store.” Yikes! A conservation group, Open Spaces, is trying to preserve a marshland that Huckabees would like to turn into a shopping complex. (Can you even build a mall in a marsh?) Open Spaces frontman Albert (Jason Schwartzman) leads the crusade against the project, but Huckabees exec Brad (Jude Law) has joined Open Spaces and tries to craft a compromise that will save part of the marsh while keeping the mall.

Brad’s success, hot girlfriend, and shifty politics upset Albert, who counters Brad’s compromise by reading poems at construction sites and generally flaking out as the leader of an organization of flakes. Muddled, he seeks the services of Vivian and Bernard Jaffe — a pair of “existential detectives” (played in a funny but odd way by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) — hoping that by being followed and charted, his life can start to make sense. Particularly troubling is a series of “coincidences” that involve running into a tall, Sudanese exchange student who lives with a family of Christian capitalists who have delegated him to gather celebrity autographs (?).

When the detectives start following Albert to work and become involved in the lives of the people there, Albert’s life unravels even more. That is, until Albert runs into a fellow neurotic: environmentalist firefighter Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), whose examination by the Jaffes is interrupted by a competing philosophical detective, nihilist Caterine Vauban (French actress Isabelle Huppert). Meanwhile, the ever-smiling pig Brad — whose work with Open Spaces reflects the need to seem caring without actually being caring — casually enlists the Jaffes for detection of his own life. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? But the Jaffes discover that beyond Brad’s pretty face and successful image, there is a deeper, troubled soul that deserves examination and change. This causes trouble between him and his trophy girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), who soon enlists the Jaffes herself. Existentialism is everywhere — it’s chaos!

This movie bills itself as “existential comedy.” That being box-office poison aside, I Heart Huckabees is not very funny. There are some chuckles to be had here and there, and while the comedy is played very broadly, my response was generally curiosity and confusion rather than laughs. The film only really gets good when the Jaffes are studying Jude Law’s Brad. Not because that section is funnier (it’s not) but because their work actually uncovers something interesting in Brad. I, Bo List, have never had the problem of being a shallow, successful pretty boy in need of introspection (alas), so I was fascinated to see this smiling, gee-whiz corporate cad get upset about what was inside of him. I was bored watching Schwartzman’s Albert deal with the same things because he already thinks too much. What’s the fun in watching an intellectual dwell on himself even more than usual?

The cast is top-knotch, not to mention diverse (Hoffman, Wahlberg, Tomlin, Tippi Hedren), but nothing gels in David O. Russell’s script and direction. (He wrote and directed 1999’s wonderful Three Kings.) It’s like the philosophy in the film: Everything connects, yet it doesn’t. Yet it does. What the Bleep Do We Know? cleverly illustrated that things that seem to touch really don’t. I Heart Huckabees illustrates something similar: Things that should be funny, by law of mathematical probability, probably aren’t.

A few weeks ago, I reported on the virtues and vices of M. Night Shyamalan s The Village, and while I was impressed by its glorious production design, I was disgruntled by what I felt was, essentially, a hollow film. This week I offer my thoughts on another beautiful and hollow film: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. But this one comes by its hollowness more honestly and thus is more enjoyable.

Picture it: 1939. In a world seemingly free of Nazi peril, another menace looms: the evil scientist Dr. Totenkopf and his army of giant, flying robots! Our spunky Gotham news hound Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) wants the scoop, and she ll dodge giant feet, death rays, and bullets to get it! Just when it looks like her number is up, Sky Captain (Jude Law) zooms in and saves the day! But they have a past, these two! Yes, they were a couple once, but Polly may or may not have sabotaged Sky Captain s plane, and Sky Captain may or may not have catted around on Polly! Regardless, it s been a couple of years since they last saw each other, and neither is too thrilled about needing the other to stop Dr. Totenkopf! But where is he? And what does he want? Fuel! And generators! And machine-y things! Bwah-ha-ha-ha! How can he be stopped? Nobody knows! Except for SKY CAPTAIN! And his sidekick, Dex! Played by Giovanni Ribisi! And then there s Angelina Jolie! Yaaaaaay!!!

Okay, now I m tired of using exclamation points. I guess I m trying to add a little zip to my description of a potentially thrilling plot that is unthrillingly executed. The impending end of the world, giant death-ray robots, dirigibles all exciting stuff. And the whole concept is modeled after vintage science-fiction comic books and the whiz-bang movie serials of the 1930s when everything had an exclamation point. (Will Rocket Man get out of this one, kids? Stay tuned!)

Back to the plot. A note arrives on the desk of ace reporter Polly, instructing her to meet the note s scribe at Radio City Music Hall (now playing: The Wizard of Oz). A mysterious old man cautions Polly that trouble is afoot and that he is the last in a string of scientists who have been disappearing. The End is Near. He disappears just as an air-raid siren evacuates the theater. But it s not airplanes that are swarming over Gotham City. It s giant robots, here to steal the city s generators. But why? Toward what nefarious end? When Sky Captain arrives, it s clear that he has the brawn and Polly has the brains for the mission and only the two of them can figure out who this Dr. Totenkopf is and stop whatever Doomsday plot he s working on. Along the way, though, they need a little help from Sky Cap s friends, techno-wizard Dex and the sultry and sergeant-y Franky (Jolie) who commands a flying sky fortress for the Brits. Together, they dodge the aforementioned giant robots, some mid-sized robots, some small robots, some bulky aquatic robots, and one sexy lady robot.

The positive: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is an astonishing technical feat. Only the actors are real. The sets, the backgrounds, the robots are all computer-generated. The actors filmed all of their work against a blue screen, and the rest was conjured by, if I may borrow a metaphor, the man behind the curtain. The film is gorgeous to look at, and while sometimes it s obvious that what you re looking at is computer-generated, that in no way diminishes the beauty of some of the landscapes and compositions that first-time director Kerry Conran has cooked up. The art direction is spot-on as homage to its influences Fritz Lang s Metropolis, all those Rocket Man-type heroes from the 30s, and lots of comic books.

The negative: boooooring! Director Conran is obviously more at home behind a computer than working with actors. Oscar-winners Paltrow and Jolie and Oscar-deserver Law take a backseat to special effects. There s little onscreen chemistry, and the dialogue is wooden. There is a bonus, however, in the reveal of Dr. Totenkopf, thanks to the FX wizards.

Final verdict: Oh Captain, you sure are pretty to look at, but I wish you were a little smarter. n

If a custom-tailored vet/asks me out for something wet/When the vet begins to pet — I cry, Hooray!/But I m always true to you, darlin , in my fashion./Yes, I m always true to you, darlin , in my way.?

These lyrics are from Cole Porter s triumphant 1948 musical Kiss Me Kate. They could serve as the thesis for De-Lovely, a biopic of Porter s life from his courtship of wife Linda to his death. Porter was always true to Linda — in his fashion. He had trysts and flings with men, but his heart belonged (primarily) to his wife.

They meet. He s the talk of the town, and she s a coveted socialite. She is drawn to his talent and charm, while he admires her style and poise. Played by Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, they are a handsome couple. Even if they weren t, it would be easy to understand the attraction. But Porter s a bit more complicated than the average 1920s Joe: He has other interests. That s okay with Linda, who says early on, Let s just say you like men more than I do. So long as Cole always comes home to her, she s happy. And that s that. Or is it? Being a less-than-closeted homosexual, Cole enjoys more than just the physicality of his affairs. There is an entire subculture built around this particular adulterer and one that the wives aren t exactly invited to. Linda and Cole s relationship is built on a sharing and understanding that society couldn t fathom, so her exclusion from portions of Cole s life outside of the sexual turns out to be more daunting than either could expect.

Meanwhile, Cole goes from one musical to another, with parties and after-parties, Hollywood and Paris in between. But tragedy eventually strikes: Cole s legs are broken in a riding accident, and Linda develops emphysema. Their dedication to each other is tested yet again when they must become each other s caretaker. For Linda, this means securing a partner for Cole after she is gone. For Cole, losing Linda is like losing a muse.

Watching De-Lovely is not unlike standing in the wings and witnessing the inner workings of a musical unfold. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn t, but we forgive the messy conceits because we love the form. Or we don t forgive because we don t love musicals.

Alas, De-Lovely doesn t have a very strong narrative or directorial push. In musicals, a director knows when to take a pause and when to keep things fast and funny. De-Lovely ambles along, sometimes singing and sometimes not, and the musical numbers have even less definition than were they onstage. Sometimes the world is a big musical, and everyone is a participant. Sometimes it s just Cole and Linda sitting at a piano with Cole crooning to his lady love. Amid it all is a peculiar framing device that has Jonathan Pryce appearing as a phantom producer beckoning Cole to tell his story and revisit old triumphs and hurts. I wish that the writer Jay Cocks and director Irwin Winkler had committed to the idea of making this a musical. Instead, it moves along like a long dress rehearsal, with some production numbers fully realized and others limping along.

Kline is rather wonderful as Porter. He makes no grand overtures toward likability, opting instead to depict Cole as the complicated and often difficult man that he was. Kline has also toned down his own singing abilities to better mimic Porter, who, while a musical genius, was not an accomplished vocalist. This makes his many serenades to Linda all the sweeter — labors of love instead of ease. Judd doesn t fare as well, and while I am not a big fan, I can credit her for at least rising to the material. The film seems content to state early on that the Porters have a unique understanding, but the film doesn t evolve much beyond their adoration and her occasionally looking the other way.

Those who hate musical theater typically do so because they can t understand what the fuss is all about. Nor can they invest in the conceit. This movie is not for them. Like a musical, Linda and Cole Porter are messy and, in their way, beautiful, and they don t always jibe. But they forgive and persist because of that same elusive quality that allows one to suspend disbelief and love the musical. n