The French art-house hit Amélie is the kind of film that can be exhilarating to watch (it was rapturously received at both of the packed screenings I attended) but also leave you with niggling doubts after you leave the theater.

The film has been a massive success in France almost on a par with the Titanic or Harry Potter crazes here but also a massive controversy. According to the film’s many French critics, Amélie‘s fairy-tale, postcard-pretty Paris, fetishization of carefully selected French cultural icons (Renoir, Truffaut, the Tour de France), and homogeneous cast amount to reactionary propaganda, a purposeful negation of the ethnic diversity and immigrant culture that characterizes contemporary Paris. The film’s hand-wringing and dueling critiques in France are similar to what Forrest Gump might have inspired here if more Americans were actively concerned with cultural politics.

Co-written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children with former partner Marc Caro), Amélie opens with a long prelude section in which a comically clinical male voice-over recounts the unhappy childhood of Amélie Poulain, a little girl so desperate for attention from her cold-fish, M.D. dad that when he actually touches her for yearly medical checkups, her heart races, convincing him that she has a heart condition and should be home-schooled. With a lack of stimulus from family and no real friends, Amélie develops a wildly creative inner life.

The film flashes forward to Amélie as a young woman (Audrey Tautou), a waitress at a picturesque Montmartre café, living alone in a neighborhood flat. The film’s main plot is set in motion by a minor miracle when Amélie discovers a box of childhood trinkets lodged behind her bathroom wall, left by a boy who lived in her flat 50 years before. Amélie tracks the now-grown man down and anonymously delivers the hidden treasure, the man’s joy inspiring her to become an amateur do-gooder.

Most of the film is then centered on Amélie’s surreptitious attempts to improve the lives of her co-workers, neighbors, and lonely father. Amélie plays matchmaker to a hypochondriacal co-worker and a bitter café patron, acts as an avenging angel at the corner market where the grocer is unfairly chastising his simpleminded assistant, befriends a shut-in painter in her apartment building, concocts a forgery to make her weeping concierge believe that the woman’s long-dead, philandering husband went to the grave loving her, and, in one of the film’s most delightful subplots, frees her father’s garden gnome. But Amélie is so busy helping others that she neglects herself, a problem eventually solved via a hesitant, expertly plotted cat-and-mouse game between Amélie and one potential suitor that unfolds slowly throughout the film. The film is a fairy tale, touched by magical realism, but a very healthy one in that change is driven by the positive actions of its heroine.

With her big brown eyes and Louise Brooks bob, Tautou is a stunner. She’s constantly being compared to Audrey Hepburn, but Tautou is less porcelain and precious to these eyes. Despite Tautou’s magnetism, Jeunet relies too heavily on her cuteness, constantly having Tautou gaze into the camera with a conspiratorial cock of an eyebrow, essentially winking at the audience in an unfortunate gesture that merely symbolizes the film’s biggest flaw its overeagerness to please.

Amélie reminds me a little of the films of Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Bottle Rocket), which also seem to occur in a not-quite-real alternate universe and evoke the great ’40s and ’50s comedies of Lubitsch, Sturges, McCarey, and Hawks, films which were, in their own right, pretty artificial. Amélie is similar to Anderson’s work in its extreme attention to detail, its fetishized mise-en-scène, and its use of funny and effective expository or parenthetical asides: in Rushmore, the breakneck litany of Max Fisher’s extracurricular activities; in Amélie, the staccato ticking off of the eccentric but also quite ordinary likes and dislikes of individual characters, a catalog of sensory and textural pleasures such as dipping a hand in a bucket of grain, popping bubble wrap, stripping wallpaper, or the sound of a porcelain bowl settling on a tile floor.

Though Amélie‘s charms aren’t as natural as those of Anderson’s films it’s the kind of movie that does handstands and cartwheels so you’ll notice how adorable it is and it has nowhere near the emotional depth of something like Rushmore, it is a charmer. The modern aspect that distances Amélie from the early comedies it evokes isn’t just explicit sexual references or special effects, it’s the film’s reliance on gimmickry to provoke a reaction from the audience. Amélie ultimately walks that tightrope between cloying and enchanting with remarkable skill. You’ll probably be enchanted, but dwell on it afterward and you may detect a manipulative aftertaste.

The Man Who Wasn’t There, the new Coen Brothers film, is a tasty piece of pitch-black candy. It is a perfect ’40s-style noir that is, in many ways, the victim of its own perfection. In it, the Coens explore the “uncertainty principle,” whereby merely looking at an object or an event forever changes that object or event. As the film’s shit-slick attorney says again and again, “The more you look, the less you know.” And this, it would seem, is the Coens’ confession and open apology for having looked at too much noir. Their tough, street-real story is not as dark but is certainly more fatalistic than Double Indemnity. It’s more soul-numbing than Scarlet Street, with a loveless pedophilic twist that would make Jim Thompson giggle in his grave. But we are never content to watch the film as a film. We must watch it as a specific kind of film. We must watch it as a noir because every audio-visual cue is like an unsubtle nudge reminding us that The Man Who Wasn’t There has gotten every detail right.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Ed, a man so tight-lipped he makes Sergio Leone’s stable of nameless cowboys look like a pod of self-actualized telemarketers. He’s not an ambitious man but hard-working: the competent second-chair cutter at his brother-in-law’s barber shop in the just-this-side-of-bucolic Santa Rosa, California. There are no flickering neon signs here. No seedy hotels, femme fatales, or dark stormy nights. The environment is placid, sanitary, and as hypnotic as a spinning barber pole. Thornton, his hair oiled and molded to Glen Fordian proportions, is the exact mirror of his community. He’s strong, decent after a fashion, and non-violent: a sort of proto-northern Californian. He is also impotent. One might say cursed.

The chain-smoking Thornton manages to do the astounding: He is entirely the nebbish and entirely magnetic. It’s like he stepped from a Hemingway story fully grown. His most unsavory actions are, considering the circumstances, rather conservative and are motivated, it would seem, less by greed or jealousy than by a sense of quiet justice.

And then there are Thornton’s voice-overs. Though stylistically indispensable, the unrelenting voice-overs are painfully self-aware and bordering on the cutesy-pie. They are more akin to Nicolas Cage’s disembodied banter in Raising Arizona than a solid Mike Hammer narration. They are the whistle-clean but just over-the-top “tell” that pulls down the curtain on the Coen Brothers’ confidence game. They remind us most of all that we are standing outside a genre looking in.

Coen heavy-hitter Frances McDormand is cinderblock-hard as Doris, Ed’s career-gal wife who’s sleeping her way to the not-exactly-glitzy top of Nirdlinger’s department store. When she’s eventually implicated in a murder she didn’t commit it’s hard to blame Ed for not trying harder to save her.

The film’s real crimes are not the ones brought to justice but the ones caused by justice: Doris’ suicide and Ed’s execution. Two counts of murder are pinned on the wrong people. One murder was undeniably an act of self-defense. The only federal crime is that of blackmail. A film where four people end up dead, two the victim of unfair prosecution, should leave an audience feeling violated. It is the very essence of noir. But somehow The Man Who Wasn’t There only leaves the audience with a sense of completeness. It’s an ending that says, “There you have it, the most perfect of its kind,” and by saying so, sets it apart from its kind, and diminishes it.

As to the much-debated U.F.O. subplot, I ask, “What subplot?” It’s more of a dangling signifier to be wondered at than a plot to be followed. It’s completely out of place but it doesn’t feel particularly intrusive. Like the fantasy dance scenes in The Hudsucker Proxy, it’s just one of those beautiful things the Coens sometimes do perhaps for no other reason than because they can.

Longtime Coen collaborator Roger Deakins (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink) has outdone himself in terms of cinematography. The black-and-white world of The Man Who Wasn’t There is gorgeously photographed in that wonderful way that early critics of the genre always called “mannered.” It’s like Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street, Metropolis, The Big Heat) never went away.

— Chris Davis

Having doubts about that young wizard Harry Potter and his new movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Don’t worry. Though Hollywood has rarely paid enough attention to the fantasy genre (Dungeons & Dragons is a recent example of yet another big-tech, little-story adventure with a dragon thrown in and imagination left out), Harry Potter, based on the wildly successful childrens’ series by J.K. Rowling, takes a step forward.

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is an orphan, living with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, who discovers he’s a wizard. His life sucks. He has no friends, his so-called family treats him badly. No one has Harry’s imagination, courage, or curiosity. Radcliffe, looking eerily like a cross between the Harry of the bookjackets and John Lennon, embodies these traits well. Whether he’s calmly surveying an ogre or relentlessly pursuing a bad guy on a broom, Harry is a talented boy destined for great things who only wants to be a touch more normal. Maybe with a family all his own.

That’s not to be. Harry is whisked away to Hogwarts castle, where he begins his training as a wizard. The transition from Harry’s world to the world of Hogwarts is magical. Whether it’s the subtle difference between a London train station and the Hogwarts Express or the less than subtle difference between the relative safety of a wizard’s mess hall and a trap-door guarded by a gargantuan three-headed monster named Fluffy, director Chris Columbus does a good job playing the dynamic between reality and imagination, imagination and dream, and dream and nightmare.

Those transitions, however, are sometimes spotty. This movie employs a huge variety of sets and stages, so the film is necessarily episodic with few overall themes, except, of course, Harry. But keeping up with those episodes almost necessitates reading the book just to know the significance of each element.

Supporting Harry in this world is a large cast of characters, few of whom are treated in depth. To be fair, the movie is two-and-a-half hours long, but that’s still not enough time to capture the full range of characterization found in the books. Still, caring for any character but Harry is difficult, with the exception of Harry’s two friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Grainger (Emma Watson).

But however episodic or overrun with characters, this film at least shows a respect for Rowling’s work by faithfully working with the events and complexities of the original book. The result is a good movie with huge scope and imagination. Columbus’ goal now is to translate the next seven (longer) books into manageable films. That might be a bigger magic trick than anything Harry or friends could ever perform. — Chris Przybyszewski

Richard Linklater’s Waking Life certainly isn’t one of the best films I’ve ever seen, but in a way it’s one of the most wondrous. One of the most significant graduates of the late-’80s indie scene (and another graduate, Steven Soderbergh, appears in Waking Life), Linklater has built a varied body of work through five features, tackling a romance (Before Sunrise), a Western (The Newton Boys), a teen movie or two (Dazed and Confused, Suburbia), and a narrative experiment (Slacker). Now, with feature number six (his seventh film, Tape, is being released simultaneously with Waking Life but hasn’t hit Memphis yet), he’s become one of the few important live-action directors to try his hand at a cartoon.

Waking Life is a visual experiment first and foremost, and on that level it’s an outrageous success. Linklater shot the film with live actors, mostly friends and colleagues, on digital video and then edited it into a complete film. This footage was then processed with computer software and a device called a Wacom Tablet created by the film’s art director, Bob Sabiston. Sabiston’s creation allowed animators to paint over the video with an electronic pen. Waking Life employed 31 animators, roughly matching the number of characters in the film and allowing most characters to be depicted in individual animation styles. The film’s mise-en-scène is largely abstracted, a shifting, constantly flowing patchwork quilt of images that gives the film an expressionistic grandeur that knows no precedent. But the faces of the individual characters are amazingly precise, which helps draw the audience into the situations being dramatized. The only other film I can think of that has a similar visual impact is Jacques Tati’s Playtime, which is composed entirely of immaculately orchestrated long shots, giving it a live-action Where’s Waldo quality. Both Waking Life and Playtime, and nothing else I can remember seeing, have the power to physically alter your perceptions upon leaving the theater. In other words, the world will look a little different for a little while after seeing this film.

Waking Life revisits characters and actors from previous Linklater films (including a marvelous scene with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke seemingly reprising their roles in Before Sunrise), and the whole thing is like a less comic, more philosophically weighty reinterpretation of Slacker. Like Slacker, Waking Life is less a narrative than a tour of personalities, a series of moments. But where Slacker was constructed as an interlocking chain, in which one set of characters meets another and then the film follows the new characters to another situation and so on, Waking Life primarily follows a single protagonist (Wiley Wiggins of Dazed and Confused) through a waking dream where he meets a succession of loquacious characters.

The Wiggins character appears to be drifting through some type of permanent dream state, with many of the conversations he has along the way concerning the nature of dreams and of free will, which makes the film’s visual style a perfect match for its content. Wiggins moves from one monologue-spouting character to another and acts mostly as a passive receiver of the film’s philosophical queries. (Waking Life also has the same college-town communal vibe as Slacker, even if Linklater’s native Austin doesn’t seem to be an explicit location.) Waking Life is a more serious film than Slacker, its verbal barrage intelligent rather than pretentious. But I still treasure Slacker‘s offhand humor and bemusing pace more. Waking Life is an odd creature indeed — a visual marvel that is also the weightiest talkfest since My Dinner With Andre.

— Chris Herrington

Ticket Of Gold

I remember watching Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory starring that annoying little British kid and his golden ticket. With that one magic pass, all class distinctions melted like gooey caramel so that he — a poor kid with no money and just a little luck — hit the jackpot: the entire Wonka candy kingdom.

I was made to feel the same way when I was handed a pass for a preview of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. These tickets were hot property. Normally, four tickets per seat are handed out for movie previews in hopes of getting a full house and, in turn, a lot of interest for the film. Since Potter was sure to sell out, the Warner Bros. regional distributor handed out only one-and-a-half times as many tickets for its preview held last Sunday afternoon.

That left me with one ticket for one seat in my one hand. I needed another for my “associate” reviewer (aka my wife, who would not forgive me if I got to go and she — the consummate J.K. Rowling fan — did not). I made some calls, was told to wait in line and hope for the best. There was no chance, none, nada, of being guaranteed a seat.

Arriving at noon for the 2 p.m. screening, a mere eight people stood in line. Things looked good. Twenty minutes later, 60 more people had arrived, each trading in his preview pass for a magical red ticket. It’s an ordinary red ticket, like the kind that allows you in the county fair. Ordinary anywhere but here at this movie theater, where the red ticket has immeasurable value.

Fifteen minutes later — a full hour and 25 minutes before the movie was set to start — the place was full of red-ticket holders. I wasn’t one of them. My associate reviewer had already taken my one ticket. I was reduced to groveling before various theater personnel who began to shoot me multiple nasty looks.

I also had a chance to chat with any number of Potter faithful, movie preview junkies, and — of course — little kids. They were forming a sort of impromptu community. Each had a ticket, that token of belonging. The rich were made equal to the poor, and I, the writer, stood to the side and watched, pathetically casting a glance here or there for a companion who might recognize my plight and get me one of those damned tickets.

And then, with about an hour to spare before the movie, a little red slip of affirmation fell into my hand. A fellow at the top of the line was given two tickets when he walked in. The movie attendant — one of the gatekeepers watching me with suspecting eyes — had made a mistake and doled out to this man double the reward for his golden ticket. And then this fine man handed his extra to me. When the moment came to flash my ticket and smile, the gatekeepers had no choice but to let me into the group, to acknowledge my existence. And then my associate reviewer even let me buy her some popcorn. — Chris Przybyszewski

It’s the dead of night, and Frank Morrison, father and boat-builder, stands at the end of a pier, staring out at the sea. If the water provides Frank with any answers, they are ones he already knows: His ex’s new husband, his son’s new stepfather, is a bad, bad man. What Frank can’t seem to see — and obviously what the makers of the thriller Domestic Disturbance didn’t intend — is that this villain is quite the wuss. But more on that later

John Travolta stars as Frank, a plain guy enjoying the simple pleasures of small-town life in coastal Maine. As one of the last builders of wooden boats, he takes pride in craftsmanship while treading water financially. He’s divorced, but he gets along fine enough with his ex, Susan (Teri Polo), and really great with his 12-year-old son Danny (Matt O’Leary). The most troubling aspect of Frank’s life is when Danny acts out, the episodes timed to register frustration with his homelife, usually ending up at the police station. One outburst comes days before Susan’s marriage to Rick (Vince Vaughn). Everybody loves Rick, a newcomer already named the town’s man of the year and a constant flesh-presser pumping money into the local economy. Everybody loves Rick, that is, except for Danny (who wants his parents back together), Frank (who wants his son to have one father), and the just-appeared Ray (played by Steve Buscemi, who wants the money Rick stole from him).

Danny then pulls the daddy-of-them-all stunt. He claims that Rick murdered somebody. He swears he saw it, and he did see it. But no one believes him, given his past antics, and even he changes his tune after stepfather Rick clutches his neck and suggests that maybe something truly awful will happen to dear old real dad unless the kid shuts up. And so Frank stands out on that pier, puzzled by his son’s behavior, until he figures it out.

According to the press notes for Domestic Disturbance, the story was pitched to screenwriter Lewis Colick by his neighbor. What this means, of course, is that you should stay away from your neighbors. The plotline is rather transparent — it’s never a question of what will happen but how, and the how is not that compelling. What is interesting is the idea of the wicked stepfather, though Vaughn’s delicate performance as Rick is never truly menacing. Sure, he can push around a 12-year-old pretty good, but how tough can a guy who tucks in his sweaters be? — Susan Ellis

In 1964, a young banjoist, Jerry Garcia, approached an equally young mandolinist, David Grisman, outside of a Pennsylvania folk-music venue called Sunset Park. Both were out picking during the intermission of a show by father of bluegrass Bill Monroe. Garcia had driven from San Francisco, Grisman from New Jersey. As both were amateur musicologists, their shared affinity for music of all genres, especially “old-timey” and bluegrass, sealed their friendship as much as the pleasure of swapping licks and turning each other on to various musical arcana did.

It is their relationship which Grateful Dawg, an 80-minute documentary directed by Grisman’s daughter Gillian, celebrates. Some might prematurely assume that this film is another shameful vanity piece, a silly, Grateful Dead-centric touting of Garcia as “Gawd,” but the film is so down-home and intimate, so lovingly assembled, its credibility is secured. Even viewers unaware of the Garcia/Grisman connection should enjoy this story of two friends and their love of music.

The “Grateful Dawg” of the title is a song written by the duo which reflects both of their musical approaches: the Garcia sound of the Dead, which he brought to acoustic as well as electric guitar, and Grisman’s “dawg” style of bluegrass seasoned with jazz, Latin, gypsy, and swing. “Dawg” was the nickname Garcia gave Grisman when the two were involved in the bluegrass-revivalist band Old & In the Way with guitarist Peter “Panama Red” Rowan, fiddler Vassar “Clamp” Clements of Bill Monroe’s band, and John “Mule” Kahn on the double bass. Garcia, who played banjo in the band, called himself “Spud.” Old & In the Way, a live album released in 1973, is one of the best-selling bluegrass albums ever and has done wonders for the music, exposing generations to its unique sound and importance as an original American genre.

After the short-lived Old & In the Way, Garcia and Grisman drifted apart until 1987, when the two reunited while doing session work. It was this reunion which sparked another burst of creativity and resulted in the later recordings Shady Grove, The Pizza Tapes, So What, Not For Kids Only, and an eponymous disc, all with the rhythm section of the David Grisman Quintet, bassist Jim Kerwin and percussionist/fiddler Joe Craven, providing accompaniment. Much of the music from these recordings is featured in Grateful Dawg, which stands alone among musical documentaries for the fact that each song is presented uninterrupted, usually mixing live and studio footage, with interviews thrown in the mix while the songs continue in the background. Even the 16-minute, solo-heavy “Arabia” is presented in full.

Although a couple of the interviewees border on weepiness when discussing the loss of Garcia in 1995, the film is marked by a generally steady hand. While illuminating the fruitful relationship of two of the 20th century’s most visible musical pioneers, Grateful Dawg avoids altogether the stigma of the adoring hippie’s take on these two “beards of a feather.”

— Jeremy Spencer

Grateful Dawg opens in Memphis later this month.

In the planet K-PAX, there are two suns and several purple moons. The light, according to K-PAX‘s hero and alien, Prot (Kevin Spacey), is twilight soft. Here on Earth, however, the cast of the sun is a good deal harsher, and quality of life depends largely on the angle from which you view it. The same can be said of the quality of K-PAX.

Prot just appears one day at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Unable to explain himself satisfactorily (he has no luggage), Prot gets tossed into a mental hospital and into the care of Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). Prot is clearly delusional, though there are things he says that make sense and some other things that are truths yet to be discovered.

If it sounds corny, it is. The whole idea behind K-PAX is that of letting go of the understood and being open to the impossible. Mental-patient Prot is the noble creature here, free of society’s gobbledygook and tuned into the real nitty-gritty so he can give us the lesson of the day: Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. What’s more, Prot may just be that alien he claims to be. He can cure the sick and talk to dogs and work out complicated astronomical problems. For someone to bring about this wealth of goodwill and wonder he just can’t be human, can he?

Whether you like K-PAX or not depends largely on your willingness to be led on this parade of hope. If you buy it, then the curve the film takes is that much more meaningful. If you don’t, then you can blame it on Spacey’s spaced-out performance. The burden of belief is all on him, and, boy, does he work it. His movements suggest he’s a tourist on this planet: His steps are shy and careful, as if testing the ground for stability, and his head swivels to check out everything. Later on, he runs through different ages: He’s a scared young boy, then an overconfident teen, and finally a man with a family. It may come off as Oscar-winning acting, or it could just be a hell of a lot of overemoting. — Susan Ellis

It’s a damn-near tragedy, really. Here she is, multiple piercings, heavy liner and heavier attitude, surrounded by a bunch of girls happily named Ashley. The real humiliation is that her name is the equally peppy Jennifer.

It’s just one of the many indignities that 17-year-old Jennifer (Leelee Sobieski) — call her “J” — suffers through in the ultra-light, super-awful My First Mister before she realizes what’s really important.

The path to that revelation is through a high-end clothing store, where she’s hired by Randall (Albert Brooks) to work in the stockroom. While J uses her goth look to intimidate, Randall’s merely curious. She goads him about his belly; he questions her about her nose ring. By not backing away from J’s hostility, Randall becomes something different entirely. He, this square, 49-year-old man, is dark teen’s friend.

The first quarter of My First Mister is promising. Sobieski’s scowl and Brooks’ gentle sarcasm mix well. She buys him a Hawaiian shirt; she takes him to get tattooed. He loans her money and makes sure she doesn’t rent a ground-floor apartment. They bond over music. She forces him to have fun, while he tears down her defenses a little.

And while everything between them is officially chaste, J wants to be Randall’s lover. She likes the way the word “lover” rolls over her tongue. It’s absurd. But that absurdity is dropped in favor of an ooey-gooey storyline that’s beyond cloying and beneath everyone involved — the actors and the audience alike. Is that paper airplane in the film really floating to heaven with a note to a departed loved one? Yes, sadly, it is. — SE

As far as scary movies go, I do not watch them. Well, if you count the slivers of screen visible between my fingers, then I watch “parts” of them.

13 Ghosts is different. It was actually quite good, in a ghoulish, not gross, sort of way. A remake of the 1960 William Castle film — this time directed by music video and commercial vet Steve Beck — 13 Ghosts revolves around the Kriticos family, which has seen its share of hard knocks. The mother (Kathryn Anderson) has recently died in the house fire that destroyed all their possessions; and the dad, Arthur (Tony Shalhoub), is just getting by. So, all the responsibility falls to Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth), the trustworthy daughter.

Just when they think all is lost, Arthur inherits a house from his estranged Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham), who has mysteriously passed away. The family gets to the house, which is made completely of glass, and loves it. They figure: put up some curtains and everything will be okay, right? Wrong. Soon Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), the tortured psychic, shows up and makes them see that their house really isn’t a house and good ole Uncle Cyrus really isn’t good. In fact, the house is a machine ruled by the devil and Cyrus is a collector of spirits.

Of course, the ghosts are conveniently located in the basement. In the original film, Castle lured theatergoers by promoting the “Illusion-O!” viewing glasses which allowed audiences to see on-screen spirits that were invisible to the naked eye. Although glasses aren’t passed out for the remake, the gimmick infuses in the movie. The actors cannot see the tortured souls without donning special glasses. And once they put them on, see the souls, and are attacked by the souls, they finally realize that “it’s time to get out.” Had any thinking person walked up to an all-glass house which contained a massive gear-shift contraption inside, they would have immediately known it was “time to get out.” But this is the movies and intelligence isn’t always in this script.

Either way, the family, Rafkin, and babysitter Maggie (played by female rapper Rah Digga of the Flipmode Squad) continue to battle the ghosts and finally Uncle Cyrus while simultaneously freeing all the trapped souls.

The film does a good job of scene-setting by having most of the action take place in the house. The ghosts look real but aren’t too scary and don’t yell mindless threats of death and destruction. It is clear that they, too, are victims of crazy Uncle Cyrus. Also, the film avoids the typical horror-film scenes of people running through the woods, ax murderers chasing teenagers through abandoned homes, and the continuous flow of victims’ blood.

Take your hands away from your face. This scary movie is worth watching. — Janel Davis

I have no idea whether David Lynch has seen Jacques Rivette’s great 1974
French film Celine and Julie Go Boating, in which two women meet and
embark on a strange, possibly supernatural adventure centered on cinema,
theater, and identity, but Lynch’s new Mulholland Drive reads like a
nightmare remake of that masterpiece.

The film’s narrative is like a dream-logic Möbius strip, which is
turned inside-out and upside-down two-thirds of the way through, with the
actors seeming to take on different roles and the truth of what has come
before being thrown into question. Near the beginning of the film, a
devastating brunette (Laura Elena Harring) emerges from a car crash on
Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills, stumbles down into the city of
lights, walks along Sunset Boulevard, and eventually hides in an empty
apartment. The apartment is soon occupied by Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a
perky, seemingly naïve young blonde from Canada who has moved to L.A. to
pursue acting and is staying at a relative’s apartment. A startled Betty finds
the brunette — an amnesiac after suffering head trauma in the accident —
naked in the shower. The brunette calls herself Rita after glancing at a
poster for the Rita Hayworth film Gilda on the apartment wall. This
meet-cute variation out of the way, the film embarks on a dual course that
follows Betty’s career attempts and the two women’s detective work to
determine Rita’s true identity.

But two-thirds of the way through, Betty and Rita have a traumatic
experience and soon end up in bed together, a bit of trademark Lynch weirdness
which sends the film spiraling through a wormhole of sorts, with Watts and
Harring playing completely different characters — characters who had appeared
in lesser form earlier — for the film’s final section.

The film is obviously open to a wide array of literal interpretations,
and I have mine. For the record, and for those who’ve seen the film, I think
the first part is Betty/Diane Selwyn’s nightmare — a dream-state reimagining
of her arrival in Hollywood and relationship with Rita/Camilla Rhodes,
including Selwyn’s witnessing her own decomposing corpse after the suicide
that later ends the film. This dream is signaled by a brief shot after the
opening credits and ended by the “Cowboy” character appearing from
Selwyn’s closet and telling her to wake up. But I also think that to fully
appreciate Mulholland Drive, one should view it less as a traditional
narrative (which it clearly isn’t) than as a meditation or essay. Lynch’s
concern here is for the young women who show up in Hollywood, 8-by-11s in
hand, searching for stardom and find only degradation. It isn’t a new idea,
but it’s one that Lynch is somehow able to imbue with mystery, soulfulness,
and maturity unrivaled in his previous work. Fans of the Hollywood
Babylon series (the great Kenneth Anger books filled with these stories),
James Ellroy novels, and film noir who also have a taste for the surrealism of
Luis Bunuel will devour this film.

Mulholland Drive originated as a TV pilot for a Twin Peaks–
like series that was never made. The final section is a new ending that Lynch
shot to convert the pilot into a theatrical feature. That, as much as Lynch’s
native weirdness, accounts for the film’s distracting detritus: characters
introduced then discarded, plot strands left unexplored, and oddball red
herrings. I have no idea what the creature behind the garbage bin is or what
the significance of the assassin’s stolen black book is. Leave it to the
Lynchophiles to sort out. I just know that, as much as those offhand strands
seem to hold no real purpose, the core of this film hasn’t left my head since
the moment I left the theater.

Mulholland Drive is a paranoiac view of Hollywood as a patriarchal
maze governed by shadowy powers — a wheelchair-bound dwarf deciding a film’s
fate from a dark room personifies the city’s psyche while a Howard Hughes-like
eccentric controlling a director from a compound high in the Hollywood Hills
hints at the city’s bizarre history. And this Hollywood story gives Lynch a
focus for his cinematic fetishes that seems more broadly relevant than ever
before.

The film is filled with knockout individual scenes: a Kafkaesque
director’s nightmare set in a blank conference room; Betty’s first audition,
where we discover that Betty (and Watts) can really act; a murder-for-hire
gone awry in Rube Goldberg fashion.

This is plainly Lynch’s best film since Blue Velvet, which it
mirrors in many ways, and I think it’s even better. These actresses, virtual
unknowns, find depths of feeling and insight that only Isabella Rossellini in
Blue Velvet has previously provoked in a Lynch film. The voluptuous,
doe-eyed Harring conjures up the great damaged-goods dames of film noir past,
and the petite Watts, her character(s) forming the film’s core narrative and
emotional trajectory, is an incredible find. This combination of blonde
innocent and wounded brunette mirrors the Laura Dern and Rossellini characters
in Blue Velvet, but Mulholland Drive takes that potential
relationship much further — morphing from Nancy Drew to Persona to
uncharted territory.

The aforementioned Celine and Julie Go Boating is one of the
medium’s great love letters to the cinema itself. Lynch’s even more twisty
doppelganger, by contrast, is hate mail to the American industry that has
corrupted the form. But like Rivette’s film, Mulholland Drive is
suffused with ineffable and transfixing mysteries likely to only deepen with
time and repeated viewings. — Chris Herrington

It’s been a rather long-standing practice to put fab singing groups into
films, usually at the height of their appeal and usually with a corresponding
soundtrack. Think the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night or the Spice Girls’
Spice World.

On the Line is a comedy in that vein — sort of. Lance Bass and
Joey Fatone (of international singing sensation ‘NSync) might not play
themselves exactly like Ringo or Posh Spice did, but they play
characters pretty close to their on-stage personas.

Bass is the sweetly romantic Kevin, a guy who can’t step up to the p1late
for the life of him. He’s an all-around wuss at work, at home, and especially
in his love life (I only said pretty close to their on-stage personas).
Fatone, on the other hand, plays Rod, a sort of crazy, anything-goes kind of
guy. In fact, the film borrows heavily from the boy-band formula of “the
type.” Kevin and his roommates fall neatly into the categories of
“the nice guy,” “the smart one,” “the rocker,”
and what can only be described as “the freaky Chicago Cubs fan”
(okay, so no boy band in history has ever used that ype before, but the movie
is set in Chicago, so maybe they wanted some local flava).

Just as ‘NSync’s fans will go see On the Line no matter what, it
will probably be shunned by the rest of the world. So, if anyone else really
cares, here’s the plot: Kevin, the movie’s No Action Jackson, meets this girl
on the subway. Except he doesn’t really meet her; he doesn’t get her name or
her number or really any identifying info. And after kicking himself for
being, again, such a wuss, he decides to do something about it. He posters
Wrigleyville with photocopied signs asking her to call him. The tabloidish
daily paper takes notice, and the hunt is on.

Meanwhile, tons of honeys are calling Kevin’s number, wanting to meet
such a romantic guy. This leads his roommates to hatch a tag-teaming scheme
where they help Kevin find “Her” and get their mack on at the same
time.

The shocking but true part: The movie isn’t half-bad. In fact, I kind of
found myself really digging it. Both of the ‘NSync boys have an on-screen
charisma, no doubt due to all the time spent making music videos, and they
give pretty good, solid performances. Add in a little Jerry Stiller, some Dave
Foley (Kids in the Hall), and a sweet little storyline and you’ve got a
highly enjoyable thing going on. A little sitcom-y, truth be told, but
enjoyable nonetheless.

Lest Justin Timberlake and Chris Kirkpatrick fans feel left out by Bass’
star vehicle, those two ‘NSync-ers also have an extremely funny cameo (sorry,
J.C. fans). It’s probably only a matter of time before the group tries to do
their own version of A Hard Day’s Night. Based on On the Line,
I’m not sure it’s a bad idea. — Mary Cashiola

Haiku Tunnel began as an autobiographical monologue performed by
co-writer, co-director, and lead actor Josh Kornbluth on San Francisco’s
stand-up comedy circuit. And in the process of changing the performance to a
movie, Kornbluth and his brother, Jacob, manage to retain many of the original
one-man-show qualities while successfully incorporating a quirky, humorous
cast of characters and plot.

Haiku Tunnel is an office comedy following the transformation of
neurotic and frumpy Josh Kornbluth from a temp worker who moves from job to
job in a state of semiconsciousness to a full-fledged “permanent with
responsibilities and everything.” The plot’s tension revolves around
Josh’s first official duty at the S & M Tax firm: 17 “very important
letters” must be transcribed from a dictation tape and mailed
immediately. Days go by and the letters stay put while Josh thinks and thinks
and thinks — about his ex-girlfriend, his bed, his unfinished novel, anything
except the letters.

The climax centers around an envelope-wetter explosion. Josh flashes back
to the most perfect temp job he ever had, which was at an architecture firm
typing specs for the Haiku tunnel that would connect Haiku to Oahu in Hawaii.
But he doesn’t want to go back to the Haiku tunnel. Or does he?

With the help of his offbeat, upbeat co-secretaries, his supervisor
(played by Helen Shumaker), and eventually his boss, Josh makes some kind of
recovery. Haiku Tunnel eventually wilts into the sentimental, but the
audience forgives, as is the case in most light comedies, for the sake of all
the preceding wit.

This low-budget movie is framed by the frequent interruptions of a
narrator, the real Kornbluth, who, while standing in front of a chalkboard,
manages not only to add to the humor of the picture but move the plot along
and get himself out of some precarious acting situations. Kornbluth, who is
accustomed to working alone, falters a bit in the company of other cast
members.

And though the Haiku tunnel itself is never fully realized as an
important symbol (either by the writers or the audience) and ends up being a
flimsy impetus for character development, the movie succeeds at conjuring up
more than a few guffaws and grins. Haiku Tunnel is not a spectacular
film but one that works hard to make the audience laugh. — Lesha
Hurliman

Good manners are no excuse for criminal behavior,” one bank manager says in Bandits. That might be true, but the other 122 minutes of the film would have you believe otherwise.

Joe (Bruce Willis) and Terry (Billy Bob Thornton) are bank robbers with a better way. Deciding regular robbery is too risky (the guards, the tellers, the customers) the duo become … the Sleepover Bandits! — the most successful bank robbers in the history of the United States.

Sadly, it’s not as exciting as it sounds. The evening before a heist, they show up on the doorstep of bank managers’ houses, eat a surreal dinner with the families (never injuring even a hair on any hostage’s head), and politely rob the bank the next morning, all the while becoming media darlings.

Told within the framework of a real-life crime television show, the story is a little uneven. Some things make perfect sense; others will leave viewers shaking their heads and saying, “Huh?” (especially a side story about a pretty hitchhiker and the duo’s frontman). And the time element is downright confusing. During what seems to be a 12-hour period when Terry’s getaway car runs out of gas and he’s forced to bring a lonely housewife (Cate Blanchett) to the group’s hideout, Joe has spent two weeks and all his money with some Norwegian girl. It’s a problem for much of the movie; during any given scene, it’s impossible to tell how much time has passed or how many banks have been robbed.

But the film’s director, Barry Levinson, is not as concerned with that part of the plot, because the movie isn’t so much a high-flying crime-spree adventure as a madcap menage a trois love story: an update of Bonnie and Clyde and Clyde’s best friend. Both Joe and Terry fall for Blanchett’s Kate and she, a case of Stockholm Syndrome just waiting to happen, says that together the two make the perfect man.

Luckily, in this parade of neuroses, the entire cast shines. Willis and Thornton are both at a comedic high point: Willis as a man who charms women out of their cars (as well as their pants) and Thornton as a hypochondriacal basket of nerves. Blanchett strikes the right chord of misery and hopefulness as a woman whose husband says her house misses her more than he does. And Troy Garity, the aforementioned frontman, rounds out the cast as a stuntman with a penchant for lighting himself on fire. The only question, really, is how these characters can stand being around each other for very long.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the movie is the way the “American people” (as well as the audience) take to Joe and Terry. When they show up at one house, the woman at the door says almost gleefully, “Hot damn, you’re the boys from TV. Guess that makes me a hostage.” At another robbery, a hostage says, “Bye, Joe. Bye, Terry,” as they walk out the door with all the loot. They’re celebrities. It’s a theme that has shown up in other movies but never this pervasively — or, at the same time, this understatedly. It just goes to show how accustomed we’ve gotten to reality programming. Good manners might not make criminal behavior excusable, but it sure makes you look better on TV.

— Mary Cashiola

There is no question that since the arrival of action stars Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun-fat, the Eastern martial-arts film is here to stay. But here’s a simple request: Make the movies in their original languages with indigenous casts, writers, and directors. Don’t let American influences screw the whole thing up a la Rush Hour.

A good example of pure martial-arts filmmaking is director Yuen Woo-ping’s Iron Monkey. This re-release of the 1993 movie is already better than most of the action fare in today’s market. And though there are some Western tweaks in the subtitles and in the music, this version still holds the original’s vibe. The main reason: Unlike their Western counterparts, Asian filmmakers understand that their audiences are smarter than the average bowl of rice.

Dr. Yang (Yu Rong-guang) is the Robin Hood-esque Iron Monkey, a mischievous and benevolent superfighter bent on stealing from the rich and giving well, you know the story. Anyway, the evil Governor Cheng has his hands full with the Monkey’s antics and forces young martial-arts master Wong Kei-ying (Donnie Yen) to fight the Monkey and holds Wong’s son, Fei-hong (Tsang Sze-man), as collateral. Okay, sure, it’s a simple plot device; there’s no argument that the movie’s focus is the fighting.

At the same time, please understand that the similarity with American fare ends there. An example is the ubiquitous verbal sparring between combatants. The good guys don’t content themselves with beating the crap out of opponents. A good martial artist must also have a quicker wit. There is also emphasis on achieving goals without the use of violence. The Monkey illustrates this by playing trickster to the governor and getting a bit of gold in the process.

The director uses food as an indicator of moral status. The bad guys want shark’s fin soup. The good guys want fresh bread. The bad guys want their food served. The good guys cook their own or at least buy it themselves.

All this comes together in a well-told story, with each character shining in his or her own way. Dr. Yang’s father was killed by corrupt officials and the Iron Monkey was born to avenge him. Dr. Yang’s helper, Miss Orchid (Jean Wang), is no less than a reformed prostitute who lost her child. Little Fei-hong yearns for his strict father’s love and becomes the Drunken Master Wong Fei-hong, one of the most famous characters in Chinese folklore. This movie isn’t just about characters running around kicking each other. This movie is about people trying to prove something to themselves about those who look to them for guidance and about those who think that evil pays.

Bottom line: This movie is good for the soul. The good guys kick butt and the bad guys don’t.

— Chris Przybyszewski

With the dusty Western noir Red Rock West (1993) and the fabulous
The Last Seduction (1994), director John Dahl emerged as a fine
“B” movie director in an age when action blockbusters had supposedly
eradicated such distinctions. But Dahl’s subsequent graduation to bigger
budgets and more respectable projects with 1998’s generic poker tale
Rounders was an artistic regression, and now he’s back to where he once
belonged with the boilerplate cheapie Joy Ride.

This sardonically titled film is an entirely familiar mix of
horror and noir, a road-bound thriller that consciously evokes Steven
Spielberg’s Duel as well as lesser antecedents such as The
Hitcher and Breakdown. But Dahl’s film brings its carbon-copy
skeleton to life through often inspired directorial craftsmanship and
characters (and performances) that are sharp and believable by present
Hollywood standards.

The film’s setup is deftly handled and thankfully swift, if a
little unlikely. California college kid Lewis (Paul Walker, who also starred
in this year’s other highly entertaining “B” movie, The Fast and
the Furious, although one that banked “A” box office) buys a
beat-up car in order to pick up high school friend and unrequited love
interest Venna (Leelee Sobieski) at her Colorado campus en route to their East
Coast hometown for the summer. But before he leaves, Lewis finds out that his
troubled older brother Fuller (Steve Zahn, whose calculated goofiness balances
nicely with Walker’s bland good looks) has been arrested in Salt Lake City and
reluctantly decides to pick him up on the way. Dahl is such an ace
practitioner of these scuzzy little genre exercises that you almost suspect
that he named his protagonists after bygone pulp-fiction auteurs Samuel Fuller
(Pickup On South Street) and Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy).

Fuller has a cheap CB radio installed in the car and gleefully
(and recklessly) spouts CB lingo into the contraption, exclaiming to his
brother that it’s “like a prehistoric Internet.” Fuller convinces
Lewis to play along with a practical joke, aping a woman’s voice under the
name “Candy Cane” to get the faceless truckers on the road all hot
and bothered. This prank works, with a trucker calling himself “Rusty
Nail” responding to Candy Cane’s call.

In order to pay back an obnoxious racist at the roadside motel
where the brothers are staying, Fuller and Lewis make another Candy Cane call,
asking Rusty Nail to meet them/her for a “romantic” rendezvous at
the motel and giving him the room number of the aforementioned nemesis. What
follows is the film’s strongest scene, as Fuller and Lewis wait in the room
next door, ears pressed against the wall, a cheap seascape painting between
them, the lightning outside almost making the canvas’ stormy mise-en-
scène come to life. Rusty Nail is never seen and the conversation next
door is heard only in muffles, but Dahl, along with his two actors, finds an
eeriness here often lacking from modern scary movies. Unfortunately, it’s a
style that Dahl sometimes neglects throughout the rest of the film.

Joy Ride may be a return to Dahl’s “B” roots,
but it’s a compromised return. At its best, Joy Ride makes sparkling
use of its seamy, intimate interiors, the shoddy roadside motel rooms and the
interior of the car, where the disembodied voice of Rusty Nail, accompanied
only by the bloody-red glow of the CB volume levels, is extremely
discomforting. But Dahl also succumbs to the sadism and sensationalism that
tend to mar modern Hollywood thrillers, devoting too much screen time to
grisly visuals and relying too much on crashes and explosions when simpler,
more human developments provide the real thrills.

— Chris Herrington

When it comes to fighting crime, is there one moral code or
several? Which do we want more: law-abiding police or police who get the job
done? Can there be any compromise in between?

Training Day director Antoine Fuqua takes us deep into the
world of police and criminals and crime that isn’t always perpetrated by
criminals. Denzel Washington plays 13-year veteran narcotics officer Alonzo
Harris. Years of patrolling the streets have conditioned him to live by one
rule: “In the streets you must figure out which you are, a wolf or a
sheep.” Alonzo has become a wolf but not a lone wolf. With his group of
crooked police counterparts, he has built a reputation for doing whatever is
necessary to survive, even if it means excessive brutality, planting evidence,
or murder.

Ethan Hawke plays a wet-behind-the-ears cop, Jake Hoyt, whose
dream is to be a narc officer. But first he must impress his new boss (Alonzo)
and prove that he, too, can be a wolf.

The film takes place in a 24-hour period, beginning with Jake
leaving home for his first day on the job and ending with his return. During
the course of the day, Jake comes to understand the intricacies of police work
as the lines of justice are continually blurred by Alonzo and other law-
enforcement officials.

As soon as he reports for duty, Alonzo takes Jake straight to the
streets. Here is where his teaching begins as we meet the drug dealers, petty
thieves, and muggers who make up Alonzo’s Los Angeles. These interactions
provide insight into the ways in which Alonzo may have shifted over time.

Hawke does a good job playing the new, naive kid on the block.
It’s easy to identify with his clear-cut form of enforcement and the morals
that shape his actions. He is the perfect foil for Alonzo, who started out
like Jake. The characters make you question your own standards, though the
film never jumps to conclusions. No excuses are made for the criminals and
none are made for Alonzo. Each character truly believes in what he is doing,
and that’s all that matters.

Also, the film is not overdone. Los Angeles is not made rougher
than it actually is, project residents and gang members are portrayed sensibly
instead of as mindless criminals, and as in real life, everyone doesn’t live
happily ever after.

Why did Washington want to play a role out of the realm of his
usual, however imperfect, heroes? Maybe he figured playing a bad guy would win
him an Oscar since portraying a race-harmonizing football coach, Civil War
soldier, imprisoned boxer, and religious leader did not. Or maybe he was just
bored with being the good guy and wanted a taste of how the other half lives.
Either way, Washington delivers a good performance as always, but we still
like Denzel the hero. Some guys just aren’t meant to be bad.

— Janel Davis

In Don’t Say a Word, Michael Douglas stars as Nathan Conrad, an average-enough man and talented psychiatrist who has given up the grimy, chipped-tile walls of the city mental hospital for a more prosperous wood-paneled practice, shifting from slobbering patients doped up on anti-psychotic drugs to slobbering prep-school teens with panty fetishes. “It’s okay to whack off,” he assures a member of his new clientele.

Conrad has the mien of a man who’s earned it: the beautiful wife Aggie (Famke Janssen), who wears a cast on her leg denoting the privilege of a ski weekend, the precocious 8-year-old daughter Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak), who can spout off psychiatric terms and earn a wealth of kisses and hugs, and, of course, the fabulous New York apartment to match. And Conrad has the affectation of announcing himself everywhere he goes. “This is Dr. Nathan Conrad,” he says, over and over, at the hospital, wherever. Even arriving home, he turns to this branding, taking care that those around him know exactly who he is.

And now it’s time for Conrad to be taken down a notch.

Don’t Say a Word was directed by Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) and based on the novel by Andrew Klavan. Its lead in box-office receipts on its opening weekend has some entertainment writers concluding that Americans aren’t ready for comedies, such as Zoolander, the male-model farce starring Ben Stiller, which opened the same day. But maybe those same citizens are heeding President Bush’s suggestion to get back to normal. Don’t Say a Word is nothing if not normal — a decent-enough film with its share of lapses.

The film begins with a full-speed-ahead jewel heist. The team of thieves consists of a jive-talker, a muscled thug, a couple of workaday crooks, and their particularly cruel British leader, Koster (Sean Bean). The job goes smoothly, well within its set time constraints, but somewhere along the way, the object of Koster’s desire — a cheap-looking red diamond — is pocketed by one of his men. Koster discovers the betrayal mid-getaway and insists on returning to the site of his own destruction; flames rage as he stares through them, his eyes equal to the fire’s fury.

Flash forward 10 years. Conrad is face-to-face with one of his oversexed teen patients. It’s Thanksgiving Eve, and his wife has demanded he bring home a turkey. He promises, but on the way home he has to stop by his old stomping grounds, the city mental hospital, to look in on a troubled young woman named Elisabeth (Brittany Murphy), whom he will treat pro bono.

Elisabeth is a 10-year vet of the mental-health system with matted, dirty hair, a way with a razor blade, and a repetitive rotary-dialing motion of her right hand. Elisabeth also has a six-digit number locked securely in her head — a number those decade-ago jewel thieves, now resurfaced, want. They kidnap Conrad’s daughter, whom they’ll return only when he retrieves that number from Elisabeth. But Conrad has less than 24 hours.

Thrown in is detective Sandra Cassidy (Jennifer Esposito), a cop who gets things done and has a knack for arriving on the scene just as the subject of her investigation disappears around the corner. This character is not completely superficial, just a little forced, like a number of elements in the film, such as the ESP-ish way the jewel thieves know about Elisabeth and Conrad’s too-smart 8-year-old and and the way the oldish Conrad can be as bad as a prison-hardened tough guy. But these days, in most movies, that’s just back to normal. — Susan Ellis

Here’s a cheap shot: Mariah Carey is probably not the only person who’s going to have a breakdown after Glitter. I’m expecting other people will too — like the producers, the director, or anyone who actually pays for a ticket. Here’s another: If Mariah is jealous of J. Lo, she has good reason to be. J. Lo can actually act.

Glitter is a Norma-Jean-Baker-turns-into-Marilyn-Monroe-type story of a little girl who is abandoned by her mother and dreams that superstardom will prove she was worth keeping. Except that Billie Frank (Carey) wants to be a singer, is racially “mixed,” and falls in love with her producer.

As a singer on a stage, singing, Mariah is believable. The girl has mad-ass pipes. As an actress, well, she fares only slightly worse than Madonna. Post-Tommy Mattola, Mariah seems scared of making herself look bad, even “in character.” The irony is that she goes to such lengths to make Billie look good that she comes off looking ridiculous every second of the movie. She simpers and smiles, and even her eyebrows never have less than a perfect moment (absolutely horrifying).

It is entirely possible that our main character could have easily been replaced by a smiling cardboard cut-out. Mariah could have come in a couple of times a week to sing the songs, bat her eyelashes sporadically for the closeups, and deliver deadpan lines like, “I know you’re a fly deejay and everything … ” The end result would have been virtually the same. Except that it might have prevented the breakdown.

Sadly, what she lacks in talent, the girl does not make up for in style. Her look is supposed to be that of a “street urchin, sexy, slutty thing,” which in essence (or as far as I could tell) means that she never, ever wore a bra. And then she has a swipe of “glitter” that alternately adorns her arm, clavicle, and back. It is never explained; it just appears, like a magical birthmark calling Mariah/Billie to greatness.

If this sounds harsh, it’s because it is. And because the only saving grace of the movie just happens to be the cheap shot. You can call it Mariah’s well-lit tribute to herself or you can call it only slightly more gripping than a Dentyne Ice commercial (same special effects), just make sure you have an intelligent, bitchy friend sitting next to you. It’ll be really, really funny. — Mary Cashiola

Actor John Cameron Mitchell and songwriter Stephen Trask initially conceived the off-Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a rock opera, to be performed in nightclubs. Mitchell adopted the persona of a transgendered German pop singer named Hedwig, and both Trask’s songs and Mitchell’s between-song patter related the saga of Hedwig’s journey from East Berlin to Junction City, Kansas. In their tale, the wide-eyed Teutonic glam-rock fan immigrates at the pleasure of a lusty American G.I. who pays for Hedwig’s sex-change operation — a botched procedure, as it turns out, that leaves her with a stubborn hunk of flesh between her legs.

The concert version of Hedwig quickly moved into theaters, and though the staging grew more elaborate, the play remained anchored by songs and monologues. So what may be most amazing about Mitchell’s achievement in transmuting his stage work into a motion picture is how visually attuned the filmmaking is. Mitchell has directed the film with an emphasis on montage, stringing together meaningful images while reducing the torrent of words through which he previously told the story. Those of us whose only access to the New York theater is what we read about in the Sunday Times will likely be unable to imagine the piece as anything but a film. But then, fans of the play probably believe that it’ll never be better anywhere other than onstage. And it’s a testament to Trask that the soundtrack to Hedwig — both the original cast recording and the weirdly out-of-order but better recorded and performed film accessory — captures the tale’s spirit in playful lyrics and vigorously catchy rock music. Perhaps Mitchell and Trask have created an idea, not a narrative, and the idea can’t be contained by any one format.

The character of Hedwig has clearly been inspired by — and is the embodiment of — the alienation that haunts many of us in this megaplex era, especially homosexuals. Born in a divided city (which she escapes just before the wall comes down), transplanted to a city named after the very concept of a nexus (where she is abandoned when her sugar daddy splits), and stuck in a body that is neither wholly male nor wholly female (which her lover will only approach from behind), Hedwig has an affinity with many worlds but is at home in none. Mitchell’s lead performance encapsulates that tentative balance, as he assumes the defiant posture of an underdog and the stung expression of a victim.

The movie opens with a blast of fury, kick-started by the Guns N’ Roses-ish anthem “Tear Me Down,” performed by Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch at a chain restaurant in Kansas City. The group is on a tour of malls, shadowing the arena tour of a rock star named Tommy Gnosis (played by the Billy Corgan-like Michael Pitt), whose multiplatinum album is made up of songs stolen from Hedwig. The Angry Inch’s appearances in middle-class suburban eateries are confrontational, parading in front of the “straight” world the stylized decadence and kinky sexuality that the mainstream has winkingly appropriated from gay subculture.

Trask and Mitchell reference the glam trinity of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie in a procession of show tunes that fill in the characters’ backstories while simultaneously expressing more abstract emotions. The movie itself makes a shift toward the abstract, becoming less about what will become of Hedwig and more about the feelings associated with being used, betrayed, and generally unlucky.

That brings Hedwig in line with the recent “new musical” mini-movement in cinema exemplified by Lars Von Trier’s simplistic but wrenching Dancer in the Dark and Baz Luhrmann’s breathlessly romantic Moulin Rouge and also the new trends in sophisticated musical theater best represented by the idea-saturated and melody-rich work of Adam Guetell. Singing has always been the best way to convey an inner state without the nakedness of under-articulate speech. The musicals of today are moving beyond direct expressions of love and despair, in the case of Hedwig roping in social politics, gender confusion, even the philosophy of Plato. Even if it moves too far beyond conventional narrative to be completely explicit, the music video imagery and memorable songs of Hedwig and the Angry Inch evoke an implicit understanding. You see it, you hear it, you feel it. — Noel Murray