Author: Bo List

I was dragged to a Chicago suburb Saturday night to watch an abysmal set of stand-up comics in the basement of a bowling alley. One performer began his set with this: .Anyone see the ads for Troy? Is it just me or does this look like the most expensive gay porno ever made? Or at least like a birthday party an eccentric gay billionaire would throw for himself.. His Troy gag was helpful to me in that it highlighted a challenge of the film and its marketing: its appeal to men. Will Joe Average and Hank Beer want to see a movie about Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and 50,000 sweaty, muscled, tunic-wearing men . even with a war as its centerpiece? The answer will be seen over the next few weeks when word of mouth reveals Troy to be either an omni-gendered affair or an expensive, almost all-male chick flick.

For those not familiar with the oldest and most enduring story ever told (older than the Bible), or for those who only know Homer as a bumbling, animated family patriarch, Troy goes like this: Trojan princes Hector (Eric Bana) and Paris (Bloom) are on a peace-keeping errand in Sparta. Paris falls for kingly host Menelaus. lovely young bride Helen (Diane Kruger), and he whisks her back to Troy for his own. This starts a war between Troy and most of Greece, and only a great, big, wooden horse and the might of warrior Achilles (Pitt) can infiltrate the impenetrable walls of Troy and avenge the .theft..

Pitt worked out ferociously for months, with four hours a day of intensive body-building and four hours of fight training. Physically, he is everything that Achilles should be: beautiful, god-like, a fighting machine. But the script and direction betray him. Achilles is not a brooding, James Dean, introspective Hamlet-type, which is how he is played by Pitt. Achilles is a hero with a tragic flaw (almost always hubris). The Iliad, like the writings of the ancient Greeks, is not about language or character development. It.s about larger-than-life themes: gods, goddesses, vengeance and might, and fury and fate. With fate behind all decisions, there is almost no need for character because there is no inner struggle. The Greek myths are painted in the broadest of strokes to create the largest of pictures. Twenty-first century audiences require nuance and detail (not that Troy has much of either), and so this story is saddled with a mortality and humanity that saps it of what makes it great in the first place: infinity.

Unfortunately, the disappointment lands on Pitt, who must straddle immortality and death in a role that asks little more of him than pouting . especially when his .cousin. Patroclus is killed, mistaken for Achilles. This would have made more sense if the script acknowledged Patroclus as Achilles. lover. But since that could be a turn-off, we will just have to wonder why Achilles gets so mad when Patroclus dies . just like in the 1958 film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with the threat of homosexuality confusingly excised for mainstream audiences.

Troy has much to prove. Pitt, a superstar and a member of Hollywood.s $20-million club, has only carried a blockbuster once: Seven, and that was nine years ago. Likewise, Troy.s success will have much to say about the leading-man future of Eric Bana, whose supporting performance was the best thing about Ridley Scott.s 2001 Black Hawk Down but who languished as Ang Lee.s 2003 titular Hulk. Pitt will do fine because he.s buff and fights well, and we all know he can act from Seven and Twelve Monkeys, and he should have hits long through Ocean.s Twenty. And it will be some time yet before a romantic comedy or courtroom drama will test Bloom.s mettle. But so long as he.s shooting arrows and buckling swashes in the company of $200 million-grossing Hobbits and pirates, he.s safe. It.s Bana who is the revelation as Hector. His warrior physique and huge, vulnerable eyes mix perfectly for a romantic hero. Hulk, Shmulk. He will survive.

Fortunately, Troy follows the model of all great and not-so-great Hollywood epics by having a multi-national cast with British accents for characters who wouldn.t have spoken English, anchored by the last surviving British theatrical aristocracy. That.s why we get Peter O.Toole as King Priam, who, dusted off, is still the best actor in any scene he is in, despite squandering his legend for a quarter century with poop like Club Paradise and Supergirl.

My advice: Come for the Brad, savor the Bloom, and stay for the Bana. And never, under any circumstances, underestimate O.Toole. n

Anyone who has ever lied to a mother, and lied big, supposedly for Mom’s own good, will understand and appreciate the premise of Good Bye, Lenin!, a charming new film from Germany. There are just some things that mothers are better off not knowing, right? My own mother thinks that I sell insurance in upstate New York and have a lovely wife and a child on the way, and I’ll thank you to keep it that way, Memphis. Best not to rock the boat. Anyway, not all mothers are sheltered from so delicate an issue as the fall of communism and the infiltration of Western culture, Coca-Cola, and Burger King. So I suppose most of us can count ourselves lucky as we navigate the white lies and half-truths that surround, say, why we are in the “disorderly conduct” section of the newspaper police report or where we are getting the money for all those new clothes and cars.

Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass) is a single mom with two normal children, Alex and Ariane (Daniel Bruhl and Maria Simon, respectively). The year: 1989. Roseanne ruled the airwaves and Johnny Carson still ran The Tonight Show. George the First was the president. However, to an East German family, these would be trivialities. And to a proud socialist like Christiane, these would be the things that the Berlin Wall was meant to keep out. Well, one day, son Alex marches in a demonstration, just as Mom is on her way home from work. She catches sight of Alex being dragged off by police and has a heart attack in the middle of the protest. Alex is released, only to find his mother in a coma, which lasts eight months.

When she awakens, much has changed. Alex has a new sweetheart: Mom’s nurse. Ariane is married to a doofy West German named Rainer. And, oh yes, that wall came down, and Germany is trying its hand at capitalism. The doctors caution the kids that any shock might send Mom into another, fatal heart attack, so Alex’s solution is to keep Mom in the dark about the whole “fall of communism” by keeping her in bed and rigging her TV with old tapes of pre-fall news programs and new ones cobbled together by his video-enthusiast friend Denis (Florian Lukas). Mother is, after all, a good socialist, and the crass influx of all things corporate and, well, American, just might do her in.

If it sounds like a sitcom plot, it kinda is. Compare this, if you will, to 50 First Dates, another recent comedy about manufacturing elaborate lies around a loved one’s fragile health problem. In that case, Drew Barrymore’s character forgets everything that happened the day before (and consequently, many days before), so her family labors to keep her thinking that it is the day before, lest she fret the passage of time. In both cases, the elaboration of the ruse becomes so complicated that outside forces disapprove, and the executors of the deception learn that lies can be heavier than the truth even with the best intentions. Good Bye, Lenin! bests 50 First Dates by a lot. Granted, the latter film concocts a zany premise and then lets it sit, sloth-like, on the shoulders of personality/performer Adam Sandler. What I like about foreign films is that they rely on story and subtlety and characterization more than American, or rather, Hollywood, films. Writer/director Wolfgang Becker takes great pains to see every element of the deception through, from the meticulous (and credible) methods by which Alex constructs Mom’s fantasy post-communist communism to the funny accidents that happen or almost happen that could shatter Mom’s health and the premise altogether. (Like the epic-sized Coca-Cola banner that gets draped on the building next door or the upstairs neighbor whose West German TV can be heard through the ceiling.)

Ultimately, this is a bittersweet comedy and one that does not fit easily into any kind of emotional category. And it had never occurred to me that there might still be some diehard communists in Germany longing for the good old days and still having trouble adjusting. As an American, that’s not quite in my teaching, I confess. But as we continue to disrupt and reorganize the politics and economies of countries in the Middle East, it’s nice to have a sweet family comedy like this to remind us that there are sweet moms also in Iraq and Afghanistan who have children who love them enough to tell them that things are better than they are just to keep Mom happy.

Alamo. What a strange name for a car rental company. As I first sat to ponder the film The Alamo and what it would mean to America during this very patriotic and jingoistic time, I wondered what aspect of the Alamo’s story motivated the founder of a company to name a business that rents cars after a battleground known for its against-the-odds massacre of American soldiers.

So, I went to Alamo.com and looked up its history, and all it says is this: “Alamo Rent a Car started in 1974 with four locations in Florida, pioneering the concept of Unlimited Free Mileage. Immediately carving its niche in the leisure car rental industry, Alamo focused its mission on providing a fun, low-cost, high-value rental experience to family and leisure travelers.”

Anyway. People died at the Alamo, and while they did so bravely, they did so because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reason. Texas belonged to Mexico. Like the rest of the geographic United States, our forefathers lied, cheated, fought, killed, and stole to get from one coast to another. Texas was a spoil of war, and Sam Houston is considered a hero for managing to defeat, in battle, a general who was positioned to relinquish it.

I liked The Alamo. As history, I hear that its inaccuracies outweigh its accuracies, but as a film it is enjoyable, not horrifically violent as other action-ers have been recently, and it addresses, to a certain degree, the power and responsibility that come with legend. There are four legends here, each at odds with the other to some extent: Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid), William Travis (Patrick Wilson), Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), and Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton).

Houston navigates the bureaucracy surrounding the acquisition of Texas by the U.S. Troops are placed at the Alamo when it is thought that the Mexican army has moved out of the area. But the tyrannical General de Santa Ana has tricked the “Texians” and returned.

Meanwhile, there are two egos battling for control of the Alamo’s men: fancily uniformed, bookish Travis and the rough ‘n’ ready Bowie. Both are too big for their respective britches, and both have lessons to learn about respect. In the midst of all of this is the visiting Davy Crockett — onetime Tennessee congressman and legendary sharpshooter and “bear wrestler.” When the Mexicans surround the Alamo and force a waiting game, Crockett balances the opposing Travis and Bowie, who is ailing from “consumption” (modern-day tuberculosis or, as my Texan friend pronounced it, “syphilis” — scandal!). All the while, Houston waits it out miles away, hoping for reinforcements to arrive — wise enough not to commit his own soldiers to slaughter without proper backup. Two weeks after surrounding the Alamo, Santa Ana’s troops surprise the exhausted Texans and the legendary defeat ensues.

What weakens this big-screen Alamo is the sense that it doesn’t know who the story is about. We start and end with Houston, but it’s Travis’ lessons and changes we follow most closely. We spend the most time with Crockett, but it is Bowie who is afforded dream and fantasy sequences. The film would have done well to focus on one of these men more closely. It is Crockett who gets the best lines and the best moments, though, thanks in no small part to Thornton, who has as much charisma and humanity as any working film actor. His violin serenade, which accompanies the Mexican battle trumpetry and inspires both sides to a night’s peace, is the film’s most beautiful and effective scene, while his frequent reminders that there is a difference between Crockett the man and Crockett the legend are excellent theses to inspire all to live within their own sense of who they are and not be slave to the expectations of others.

All of the performances are good, particularly Wilson as Travis, who mines more expression out of his icily intellectual deadpan than, say, Jim Carrey typically can with his famous rubber face. Quaid, meanwhile, shows strength and command without worrying about Houston being likable. Likability is not the point. Victory is.

The other Texan slogan that this film conjures, aside from “Remember the Alamo,” is “Don’t mess with Texas” (not said in this film, FYI). If Texas history or American war movies appeal to you, you will like this film. If not, then you probably won’t. Regardless, this is patient, introspective action filmmaking, and it sure does explain a lot about Texans.

We must have waffles. We must all have waffles, forthwith. And think. We must have waffles and think.”

This is my favorite line from The Ladykillers and the moment from the film’s trailer that inspired me to see it. Tom Hanks as “Professor” Goldthwait H. Dorr, an anachronistic Twain-type — replete with Southern drawl and three-piece ice cream suit, sitting in a Waffle Hut — plots a robbery. Most would try to be inconspicuous, but Professor Dorr is too eccentric to notice that he’s eccentric or that his team of misfit conspirators is indeed misfit. There is the dumb brute, Lump (Ryan Hurst), the hip-hopper Gawain (Marlon Wayans), the chain-smoking Viet Cong veteran, the General (Tzi Ma), and the blowhard handyman Mr. Pancake (J.K. Simmons). They are like a joke — the kind that walks into a bar with a priest and a rabbi. They are fools.

Anecdote: I recently dined with my friend Brannen at a Starbucks. I got a salad, which came in a large, saucer-like plastic container. Brannen and I sat near an intense, artsy looking fellow who kept falling asleep, literally hitting the table as he fell, thus waking himself up. Nearby, a clutch of giggly girls squealed about whatever they were squealing about. Eating my salad, I had to stop to remove something strange I had bitten into. It was a prong of the fork that had somehow dislodged and stuck in my throat. As we left, I tried with one hand to dispose of my garbage into the prohibitively small hole of the Starbucks garbage can while holding my brambleberry tea in my other hand. The salad container was too large to be downed. The girls stopped giggling long enough to chime, “Well, that’s not going to work!” before erupting into even shriller peals. I tried harder to push the container down, but the top flipped up and the fork flew away. More squeals and even a smirk from the sleeping man before once again drifting to sleep. Brannen asked, on our way out, if I had ever been likened to the movie character Mr. Bean.

Ah, Mr. Bean. Played by Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean is a smug bumbler, haughty and arrogant on the outside, stooge on the inside, a desperate, weird man searching for the slightest modicum of dignity. This is why I enjoyed The Ladykillers. Not because it’s good, because it isn’t very, and not because it’s howlingly funny, because it isn’t that either. It’s because this film is essentially about two souls on two different quests for dignity, without the slightest comprehension of their ridiculousness. Like Mr. Bean. Like me.

Soul #1: Professor Dorr. Soul #2: Marva Munson (the sublime Irma P. Hall), an elderly black lady whose devotion to Jesus through prayer and churchgoing is seconded in regularity only by her monthly $5 checks to Bob Jones University of which she knows little except that it’s a Bible college. Dorr hides behind his vocabulary in his search for esteem. Marva’s shield is the Good Book. Dorr rents a room in Munson’s home, only so he and his cronies can use her root cellar to burrow to a nearby casino vault. Their guise: They are Renaissance-period instrumentalists who play devotional music. Hallelujah! The plot thickens once Marva stumbles onto their scheme. Money in hand, the mission changes from thievery to murder. But like the Energizer Bunny, cockroaches, or Dick Clark, she can’t be killed.

As far as comedy goes, this is fairly broad. The Coens’ recent O Brother, Where Art Thou? at least had a ribbon of drama through it (not to mention that fantastic bluegrass music, grounding it to something just beyond drama or comedy). In classical terms, this is more like a Larry, Curly, and Moe film, where a Buster Keaton-style might have been more appreciated. There is even a portrait of Marva’s late husband that changes expressions to suit whatever slapstick moment has preceded — just in case the audience didn’t know to laugh. The treat, therein, is the quirky chemistry between Hall and Hanks who are as evenly matched in wit and delivery as can be seen in any film duo this decade. The scene where Marva talks to Dorr as he’s hiding under a bed, while a sheriff looks on assuming that she’s crazy and talking to a cat, is probably the film’s funniest.

The Ladykillers is not for everyone, which is par for the course for the off-center Coen brothers but not for the mainstream Hanks, who’s trying something a little different here, folks. I wish The Ladykillers had been a worthier vehicle for the kind of villainous experiment he performs, but at least it has revealed the luminous, dignified “fool,” Irma P. Hall.

I’ve often remarked when a relationship goes bad that I don’t want the offending party to die — merely to fall off the face of the earth. No suffering, please. Disappearing will suffice nicely. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has taken this notion to a technological extreme with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and in the end it seems that ignorance is not always bliss.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are Joel and Clementine. (She’s sick of jokes about her name and Huckleberry Hound.) He’s quiet and introverted, while she’s a spunky, intense extrovert. Like most couples, they met inconspicuously, have had good and bad times, and sometimes wish they had never met. One Valentine’s Day, Joel shows up at Clementine’s work only to discover that she doesn’t seem to know him. When Joel confides his confusion to friends, he discovers that they have all received a card from a mysterious Lacuna Inc., informing them that Clementine has had Joel literally erased from her mind. Distraught, Joel goes to Lacuna and signs up for the procedure himself, and Lacuna’s Dr. Howard (In the Bedroom‘s Tom Wilkinson) assures him that the procedure is no worse than a night of heavy drinking.

Joel, semiconscious of the procedure in his sleep, changes his mind mid-removal and tries to alter his memories in order to save Clementine there. Somehow the good memories are stronger than the bad, and at just the moment when she is almost gone forever, he finds some new nook of his consciousness to hide the impulsive Clementine.

Meanwhile, the technicians who perform part of the procedure are bumbling idiots. Patrick (Elijah Wood), in a breech of professional ethics, takes advantage of Clementine’s procedure and somehow inserts himself as the boyfriend in her life. Her unknowing inability to adjust without Joel spoils the romance somewhat, but Patrick is too much of a stooge to notice that there’s anything wrong with that. Fellow techie Stan (You Can Count On Me‘s Mark Ruffalo), meanwhile, has invited the office secretary, Mary (Kirsten Dunst), over to watch the procedure. They get drunk and stoned while Joel sleeps nearby, inadvertently influencing the erasure as they carouse. All the while, Joel races through every possible memory in his mind, desperately looking for somewhere, nay, anywhere, to hide his darling Clementine.

This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.

Director Michel Gondry is aided by an exceptional cast, whose finest performance is Carrey’s. I tend to hate Jim Carrey’s work in the way that I hate Robin Williams’ least disciplined performances. I was not fooled by his “transformations” in The Majestic or The Truman Show into thinking that somehow he was able to tap into some elusive, expansive serious side. Rather, I felt like he was some kind of emotional alien, trying his best to reproduce the appearance of human emotion without ever having felt it. Not so here. With the exception of a momentary glimpse back into Joel’s childhood, Carrey underplays to wondrous effect, carefully navigating the real drama of telling a loved girlfriend that her drinking problem is ugly or that she gets people to like her by sleeping with them — without resorting to histrionics. Winslet, an actress I always admire, effectively balances the funny and touching without ever approaching maudlin or even sentimentality. The remaining cast is an excellent, complementary ensemble.

We all have those relationships and those memories, don’t we? Ones we would will away if we could? Some are so hard that I can’t bear to even think of them. Some losses are accompanied by memories so sweet that to think of them seduces me back to that place of bliss only to feel the loss again. For me, that collection includes a Santa hat, the I Love Lucy episode in which Lucy stomps the grapes, and a sunny moment on a balcony early in the morning while my sweetheart kept sleeping — as I basked in both his dreamland smile and sunlight. To dwell on these bears a certain degree of madness. But to forget them, I think, would be even madder. Eternal Sunshine strides the line between hilarity and heartbreak with ferocious truth and dizzying ease.

I offer this beautiful, challenging film my highest recommendation.

This is a movie about two police officers — one ridiculously straight-laced and the other a charming, laid-back rule-breaker. At the beginning of this TV-cop-show spoof remake, they are terribly at odds with one another, but by the end they come to enjoy and respect each other. In between: a diabolical plot involving drugs and sexy women masterminded by an otherwise pillar of the community. Our dynamic duo is taken off the case, but they stay on it out of principle. All is revealed at a banquet hosted by the crime boss, and cameos from the original cast abound.

This movie is 1987’s Dragnet. That movie, better than Starsky & Hutch by a yard, featured two skilled comedians playing (and never overplaying) to their strengths while generating real chemistry between them. Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks were the comics in question, and while I would have never guessed I would cite a minor amusement like Dragnet in any manner of journalism, here I am extolling the virtues of chemistry, laying a solid (if ludicrous) plot, a classy and accomplished supporting cast (Elizabeth Ashley, Christopher Plummer, Dabney Coleman), and a character called the Virgin Connie Swail.

Anyway, the plot is simple. Starsky & Hutch‘s plot, I mean. Charmingly corrupt cop Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson (Owen Wilson) is paired with David Starsky (Ben Stiller), a meticulous by-the-book officer of great repute but no respect. (He’s the butt of departmental jokes.) Their first case is figuring out who killed a “reformed” ex-con, but it soon leads to a drug ring. Someone has developed a form of cocaine that looks and tastes just like artificial sweetener. The two don’t get along at first — especially when Hutch runs personal errands while on the clock, including a few visits to swanky informant Huggy Bear (played by Snoop Dogg, a working actor of questionable thespian merits but incalculable cool even when his shockingly thin, lanky body is stripped of his pimp-wear and replaced with garishly WASP-y caddy clothes). Hutch has a few other quirks too, including his less-than-professional investigation of this new cocaine and a tendency to relieve dead bodies of excess cash. Later, after chasing the sleazy drug kingpin Reese Feldman (Vince Vaughn) through the streets of L.A. and one loving bat mitzvah, they finally square off at a charity benefit. A car chase ensues, and, well, there we go. Starsky & Hutch, ladies and gentlemen!

I liked Dragnet 17 years ago because I was 13. Watching Starsky & Hutch, I feel, at 30, too old to enjoy it. Or too young, perhaps. I was still in diapers when the ’70s ended. (So I was 6. Don’t judge me!) My awareness of eight-tracks, bell-bottoms, and men with perms is less nostalgic than kitschy. I was busy watching The Incredible Hulk, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and The Dukes of Hazzard. Ah, The Dukes of Hazzard Talk about nostalgia. Twenty years ago, I wanted to be Bo Duke. Twenty years later, I realize that I probably was more interested in marrying Bo Duke. Bo and Bo would be cute, don’t you think? Except that we could come to be known, collectively, as “Bobo.”

And speaking of homoeroticism (we were, weren’t we?), they’ve got it aplenty in this movie. Yes, there’s some sex in the film — Hutch has an investigative threeway with cheerleaders played by Carmen Electra and Amy Smart — but the real love story is between the two guys. And that’s on purpose. The movie is at its funniest when it deals with these two guys trying to please one another and make amends when things go sour. Among the tongue-in-cheek precursors to their affection: accidentally wearing hand towels around the department locker room, Hutch crooning a sweet ’70s guitar ballad on a double date (not to the ladies but to Starsky), and a conciliatory kiss on the cheek that definitely breaks what my roommate Jared would call the “Roommate Clause.” Regardless, this works better with Wilson, who has an easy comedic charm that is both sexy and sincere while Stiller seems to be working overly hard, as in his most recent comedies like Along Came Polly.

Anyway, 2005 will see a remake of The Dukes of Hazzard, so I offer this advice: Save your money and steer clear of the ’70s until you hear the distinctive horn of the General Lee.

Happy Oscars! My favorite time of year. Or tied with Christmas, anyway. Time to trot out my earnest but oft-incorrect predictions for the best and brightest in cinema.

Best Supporting Actor

Alec Baldwin, The Cooler

Benicio Del Toro, 21 Grams

Djimon Hounsou, In America

Tim Robbins, Mystic River

Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai

The Cooler scored mixed reviews, and while Alec Baldwin is racking up more accomplished performances as a character actor than he did as a leading man, he’s out. Del Toro has won in this category in recent memory (2000’s Traffic). Hounsou is the surprise nominee in this bunch, and as this is his first nomination, that may suffice to reward his dignified performance in In America. Ken Watanabe was the best thing about the bloated Last Samurai and could win if the politically wily academy wants to reward a film that extols the Eastern virtues of stoic dignity over American bullying. But it’s time to give Tim Robbins his due. After years of heralded work as actor (Bull Durham, The Shawshank Redemption) and director (Dead Man Walking), it’s Tim’s year. He should and will win.

But where’s the hobbit?

What a shame that Sean Astin wasn’t nominated for the best acting seen in any of The Lord of the Rings‘ three films.

Best Supporting Actress

Shohreh Aghdashloo, The House of Sand and Fog

Patricia Clarkson, Pieces of April

Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River

Holly Hunter, Thirteen

RenÇe Zellweger, Cold Mountain

Shohreh who? This virtual unknown gets all the thanks she needs from the nomination and from the higher-profile projects she will get as a result. Clarkson gave two nominate-able performances this year: Pieces of April and The Station Agent. Harden and Hunter have statues at home (Harden for Supporting Actress in 2000’s Pollock and Hunter for Best Actress in 1993’s The Piano), but neither improves upon their previous accomplishments with these roles. This is RenÇe Zellweger’s year. After consecutive Best Actress nominations in Bridget Jones’ Diary and Chicago, RenÇe will and should take home Oscar for another transformative turn in the otherwise gorgeous (and slighted) Cold Mountain.

Robbed, robbed, I tell you!

One of the finest performances last year, male or female, was Catherine O’Hara’s heartbreakingly dignified turn as the faded folk singer in A Mighty Wind.

Best Actor

Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Ben Kingsley, The House of Sand and Fog

Jude Law, Cold Mountain

Bill Murray, Lost in Translation

Sean Penn, Mystic River

I’ll start with who should get this award: Johnny Depp. Funny and over the top without ever betraying the truth of the character, Depp provided one of the most complicated and complete performances on screen last year. But he probably won’t get it because Oscar seldom rewards comic performances. Kingsley won’t win either. A great performance, yes, but not the most significant of the bunch. Law has more dues to pay, because, while Oscar will go home with any pretty girl (Marisa Tomei, Jennifer Connelly, Mira Sorvino), he’s really selective about pretty guys (no wins and some snubs for Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Law himself). There is a contingent that feels Bill Murray was owed for 1998’s Rushmore, but it may be that the nomination is thanks enough for redirecting his career toward craft and gravitas and away from the smug antics of, say, Meatballs. This will be Penn’s for the taking. He could have been nominated for 21 Grams, so his long career as a respected actor and director will finally have icing for its cake.

I would like to thank the academy …

… for rightfully omitting Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise for their fine but forgettable turns in Master and Commander and The Last Samurai, respectively.

Best Actress

Keisha Castle-Hughes, Whale Rider

Diane Keaton, Something’s Gotta Give

Samantha Morton, In America

Charlize Theron, Monster

Naomi Watts, 21 Grams

Castle-Hughes, at 13 the youngest nominee ever in this category, has roughly 60 more years to get back into the race, so she’s out — though I would love to see her raw, intelligent work acknowledged. Samantha Morton, Charlize Theron, and Naomi Watts have provided, I think, equal dues in the Lovely New Stars of the 21st Century club, but all the buzz is with Theron, who has won most of the major critics’ awards for convincingly looking like most people do: scraggly and normal. Not to discount her transformation and work, but I think there will be an upset. Keaton will take the statue. I think that the voters in this category (women all) will prefer to reward a woman who proves she can be sexy in her 50s to a woman who confirms that she can be ugly in her 20s. Call me crazy.

No Kidman

Kidman graduated from Mrs. Tom Cruise to Hollywood A-List with last year’s Hours win. Oscar has decided that his account with her is paid in full for a while, leaving her Oscar-grabbing but adequate turns in Cold Mountain and The Human Stain unnoticed.

Best Picture (and Director)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, director Peter Jackson

Lost in Translation, director Sofia Coppola

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, director Peter Weir

Mystic River, director Clint Eastwood

Seabiscuit, director Gary Ross

I combine the categories because they are almost always identical, save one Best Picture nominee whose director is snubbed in favor of some other auteur. In this case, the snub is Gary Ross, director of Seabiscuit, who is replaced in the Director category by Brazilian Fernando Meirelles for City of God. Neither Seabiscuit nor Meirelles will win, since neither a body nor a head can live long without the other. Sofia Coppola won’t win, because, at 32, she has plenty of time to match her father’s success. Neither Peter Weir nor Clint Eastwood will win because nothing can stop The Lord of the Rings. This isn’t the best structured film of the year (of the film’s six endings, I prefer the third), but it is the biggest, and Hollywood will want to crown the accomplishment and vision of director Peter Jackson. Return of the King is the best of the trilogy, and while one can argue that the three films are only parts of one larger film, fine — let’s reward that larger film now. The King is king.

What about the Big Fish? No, not Big Fish!

I’m sorry, but the best film of 2003 was Finding Nemo. Gorgeous, funny, wise, witty — it had it all, not to mention Ellen DeGeneres in one of the year’s best performances of any species.

There are genres of films: comedy, drama, horror, romantic comedy, etc. There are also subgenres: legal dramas, buddy comedies, monster horror as opposed to stalker horror or suspense. And then there is the genre that tailors a film to personality. Examples: the Tom Cruise romantic drama, the Jim Carrey comedy, the Kevin Costner speculatively historical Western epic, and in this case, the Adam Sandler comedy and the Drew Barrymore romance. What makes the Sandler/Barrymore combo interesting is the mix of Sandler’s tart, broad comedy with Barrymore’s natural sweetness and vulnerability. It mixed well in 1998’s The Wedding Singer and it mixes well here in 50 First Dates. But that’s chemistry. And movies require more than chemistry alone.

Sandler is Henry Roth, a marine biologist at a Hawaiian sea park. We first see him in the act of breaking up with a week-long fling just as she’s about to board a plane home. Will they ever see each other again? No, because Harry insists he’s a secret agent, soon to be incommunicado. He jumps on a passing jet-ski and vanishes from her life forever.

This scene follows a montage of lovely women (and one man) who relate to friends a wonderful, sexy man they met while vacationing in Hawaii. All seem to have gotten a different story as to why he can never see them again. He has commitment issues. Got it? Good — because after the first 20 minutes, all of this establishing-character exposition is worthless. Harry’s player-dom is never revisited, and Harry is never faced with the consequences of his fear of intimacy. Nor does he learn a lesson. You with me?

Next, Harry meets a lovely woman in a diner. She makes houses out of her waffles and she’s pretty, so of course she inspires the interest of Harry. She’s Lucy (Barrymore), an art teacher waiting until lunchtime when she and her father will ritually pick a pineapple on his birthday. Breakfast is nice, and the two agree to meet again the next morning for another breakfast. Harry shows up, but Lucy doesn’t remember the day before. Lucy never remembers the day before because a car accident has wiped out her short-term memory. Her father Marlin (Blake Clark) and brother Doug (Sean Astin) meticulously reconstruct the circumstances of that next day (it’s always Dad’s birthday!) from her choice in clothing to reprints of that day’s newspaper to rewrapping Lucy’s birthday present. (It’s a video of The Sixth Sense, and Dad and brother act surprised at the end every time.)

Harry finds a way of integrating himself into Lucy’s life, starting his courtship over every day, gaining a little more insight, information, and success each day. Soon, he suspects that keeping Lucy in the dark is the wrong way to go, and he develops a video orientation for her that explains everything that happened the previous year. This works, and gradually Harry figures out how to reduce her freak-out time so that he’ll have more of the day to woo her honestly. Imagine, going to bed with someone only to have no idea who they are when you wake up with them the next day. I hate it when that happens! (Just kidding, Mom. Even at my most incorrigible, I always have, at least, an inkling.)

The idea for this movie is more satisfying than the execution. But unlike other recent lame-o romantic comedies like Along Came Polly, this one starts poorly and actually gets better. Instead of being a genuine hybrid of the Sandler/Barrymore genre, 50 First Dates seems to start off Sandler and end up Barrymore. That’s a good thing, because she does better films than he does. In this case, the movie starts off crass and gross and grows sweeter and more thoughtful as it progresses.

But like Polly, this film has no narrative or comedic compass. A smarter film would tie in Harry’s commitment issues to Lucy’s obviously parallel memory lapses. But 50 is schlock, employing not one but two gross sidekicks (Hawaiian hippie cad Rob Schneider and a lusty, vinegar-y androgyne played by Lusia Strus) along with a needlessly lisping Astin, deplorable reaction shots from marine life, the worst projectile vomiting this side of The Exorcist, and the least funny cameo (Dan Ackroyd) since Ted Danson in Saving Private Ryan. It’s as though neither writer nor director trusted this to be a sweet fantasy and so have saddled it with limp slapstick to enliven the proceedings. By the satisfying end, however, a lot of the early rabble is forgiven, but not by much, and one wonders what this would have been like if it were a Drew Barrymore movie that only featured Adam Sandler. Oh well, maybe tomorrow…