Mikeonalpha99 Reviews

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

"I'm very discreet, but I will haunt your dreams"

[9/10 · 19 September 2005]

It's rude, crude, and irreverent, and it's one of the best films of the year! It's the Forty Year Old Virgin, a film that is so full of gross-out gags and cheeky humour that most viewers will be aching with laughter. Together with a hilarious, acerbic script, sharp performances, great characters, and a willingness to tackle taboos, it's also a charmingly engaging love story.

Like one of the plastic-encased action figures that line his Studio City apartment, Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) is all wrapped up. A stockroom manager at consumer electronics store, in The Valley, Andy's never learned how to drive, never had a steady girlfriend, and, at the ripe old age of 40, has never had sex. His sexual history is a chronology of embarrassing near misses. He certainly likes women; he's just a victim of circumstance.

When his brash, beer swilling colleagues David, Jay, and Cal ((lovelorn Paul Rudd, quirky Romany Malco, and rakish Seth Rogen) invite him for an after hours card game, they find out that he's never been with a woman. So they set out to rid him of his wretched virginity by helping him find a girl – any girl. They are full of stupid schemes, the point being, of course, that they are even more childishly screwed up in their relations with women than he is, and delusional as well.

Amongst the drunken girls, the partying, the dope smoking, and all the embarrassing humiliating moments, Andy meets a Trish (Katherine Keener – just wonderful!). Trish is a real woman, a laid back, middle-aged divorcée, who has been around the block a few times. She's nearly Andy's opposite, Even her job - running one of those we-sell-it-for-you-on-eBay stores - is symbolic: She spends her days trafficking in other people's unwanted goods.

So it comes as no surprise that Trish is attracted by Andy's innocence, even turned on by it - before she knows why he's so innocent. While Andy is inspired by her to finally let go of his childhood childish things, Trish, along with Andy's timid blessing, is more than happy to develop a relationship without sex for a change.

Carell so fully inhabits this role, making Andy a handsome but dorky kind of guy with a too bright smile that flashes nervously. He's is a man who has more testosterone than he knows what to do with; his over exercised chest bristles with thick, dark hair, and one can just see the sexual frustration dripping off him. But Andy's inhibitions go so deep, that he's almost sad to watch: he clings to his childhood toys for safety and closes up with a tense angst at the slightest suggestion of sex.

The romance comes alive every time Catherine Keener is on the screen. Keener has a big smile and a husky laugh, and she's such a warm charmer that it's impossible not to fall in love with her. The supporting players are spot-on and lend their own liveliness to the proceedings: both Elizabeth Banks and Leslie Mann shine as predatory women who terrify the hero, and Jane Lynch, as the tough boss at the electronics store who suddenly softens and takes a shine to Andy, is hysterical, especially when she breaks into a tender Guatemalan love song in an effort to seduce him.

Yes, it's all pretty ridiculous, and some of the scenes verge on the offensive, but the characters are played with such understated charm and extremely quick wit, and there's real chemistry between all of them.

The film has a raw, natural tone that infuses even the film's most outrageous sequences: there's the chest-waxing scene, which mixes authenticity with toilet humour, and the sex clinic workshop which touches on people's real insecurities, even as it maintains a wildly comical tone. Along the way the clever script genuinely taps into issues of masculine insecurities, male obsession, and even female attraction.

Ultimately, The 40Year Old Virgin is the story of a rather lonely, insecure, and reserved man who becomes a better lover for having been abstinent. Yet throughout Andy's journey there are arguments to be had, temperamental adolescents to be contended with, and unavoidable truths that must be revealed.

Along the way, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is mercilessly honest about all this, even as it is being ruthlessly funny. Perhaps then, the movie is ultimately an ode to the benefits of virginity, an irreverent and bawdy advertisement for the saying that "only good can come to he who waits." Mike Leonard September 05.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

"Don't panic!"

[6/10 · 17 September 2005]

Having grown up with the radio show, read the book at an early age, and then seen the BBC television series, I was interested to see what they would do with the feature film. Well, this movie version of Hitchkikers Guide to the Galaxy is sort of a mixed bag.

The film certainly romps along quite merrily, and there are plenty of strange characters, improbable, silly situations, and some spectacularly expensive special effects sequences. The producers have also largely kept Douglas Adam's legacy pretty much intact. But its greatest fault is that it simply doesn't live up to the reputation that preceded it.

The film also suffers the problem of familiarity. Those viewers who have not read the book, or are not in some way familiar with the story, will probably be scratching their heads in bewonderment at the torrent of talk, much of it of an oblique and scientific nature, and all of it delivered with a parched, dry, and insouciant British wit.

The film is narrated by the guide book of the title (the voice of Stephen Fry), so director Garth Jennings can interject passages of Adams' text, accompanied by amusing animation, into the plot's intergalactic shenanigans. This actually works pretty well, and it doesn't swamp and slow-down the pacing of the main story.

One morning, Englishman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) wakes up to find that his farmhouse in rural England is about to be bulldozed for a freeway. Up pops his pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def) to tell him to forget about it. Ford confesses that he is actually an alien, and he tells Arthur that his house doesn't matter anymore because Earth itself is about to be demolished by the Vogons of the planet Vogsphere to make way for an inter-space expressway.

Just as the planet is about to explode, Arthur and Ford transport themselves onto a Vogon spacecraft. The two escape only to have to plead for their lives with the commander of the Vogon Constructor Fleet (voice of Richard Griffiths), a gigantic rhinoceros-like creature in whom Arthur discerns a poetic soul and a longing for love. This is the first of many tests and narrow escapes.

Arthur and Ford are rescued from the Vogons by president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), Earth's only other survivor, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), and their maniacally depressed android, Marvin (voiced by Alan Rickman). Madcap adventures ensure as this mis-matched group of outlaws wonder the galaxy, trying to escape from the Vogon army.

But the group is also given a mission; they have to find "the meaning of life, the universe and everything," a search that takes them to a variety of different exotic planets. Some of the best of the British A-list actors fill the minor roles and voice-overs, particularly Bill Nighy as a planetary architect, Helen Mirren as the voice of Deep Thought, a supercomputer whose task is to compute the meaning of life, Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin, the terminally depressed robot, and John Malkovich as a shrewd, half-bodied religious leader.

Rockwell is extravagantly narcissistic as two-headed Zaphod. Only Def is poorly cast; he just seems too small and inexperienced to play the dashing Ford. The brightest presence is the always-fresh Zooey Deschanel, who has a light touch otherwise absent.

The film is goofy and silly, and for the novice viewer probably totally mystifying. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is sometimes audacious in its metaphysics, along with its attitudes towards religion, politics, and life.

The consummate geeks will probably love it, and the loyal fans of the books in the series, will be left feeling mostly pleased with the outcome, even though it doesn't quite measure up to the original sacred text. The makers of "Hitchhiker's Guide" don't quite get it right, but they don't exactly miss either. Mike Leonard September 05.

Fever Pitch (2005)

"I date poodles, basically,"

[8/10 · 16 September 2005]

Admittedly, I know nothing about baseball, I'm not even a fan of the sport, but that didn't stop me enjoying the Farrelly brothers' latest film, Fever Pitch, a charmingly irreverent romantic comedy. The film is not really about baseball; rather, it's really about relationships, and the emotional disconnectedness that can often take place.

Jimmy Fallen – giving his best performance to date – stars as Ben, a dorky, lightly nerdy schoolteacher. Ben is a kind of man-boy, who unfortunately has never really grown up, and he fosters an almost fanatical addiction to the Red Sox baseball team. Ben has devoted his life to the Sox, and does everything from making the pilgrimage to Florida for spring training to decorating every square inch of his apartment in team paraphernalia.

One day, while taking his honors geometry class to on a field trip to her office, Ben meets the go-getting Lindsey (a wonderful Drew Barrymore). Lindsey is a corporate, career orientated kind of girl, but she has a kind of cuteness that Ben finds totally endearing. He's initially hesitant to ask her out, thinking that she's way out of his "class," and, Lindsey doesn't immediately see a potential partner in Ben.

Their first date gets off to a disastrous start when Lindsey is stricken with a severe case of food poisoning — and her resonant retching provides the first clue that we are, in fact, watching a Farrelly brothers movie. Rather than accept Lindsey's - rather urgent - request to reschedule, Ben sticks around to play nurse, orderly, and janitor. So Ben scrubs the toilet and the dog's teeth, while his love interest is passed out with a bucket next to her bed.

When Lindsey wakes up in the morning and finds him asleep on her couch, she begins the long, fitful process of dismantling the web of status anxiety and ambition she has come to think of as her standards. Soon they are falling in love, with Lindsey blithely accepting Ben's fanatical devotion to his sport.

Having inherited choice season tickets from his beloved uncle, Ben has organized his life around the season — he's never missed a game. But their relationship, which has progressed without a hitch throughout the winter, hits a snag at the start of the season.

Lindsey wants Ben to do other things, like holiday with her parents and party with her friends, but Ben begins to have trouble modulating his interest to meet Lindsey halfway. Can Lindsey consent to his irrational devotion to the boys of summer in order to make their relationship work? Can she really accommodate Ben's infatuation with sports? Can a die-hard and nerdy Red Sox fan find true love after all? Of course, Lindsey and Ben come with a colorful assortment of opinion-wielding friends. Lindsey's strictest buddy, the skinny, rich and blond Robin (KaDee Strickland), insists that there must be something wrong with the guy if he's still single at 30. However, plump, curly-haired Sarah (Marissa Jaret Winokur) and Molly (Ione Skye) supply a more optimistic and positive view of Ben.

Ben's eccentricity could be applied to virtually any obsessive sports fan, while Lindsay's frustrations could be representative of any upwardly mobile career driven woman. Fallon is terrific as Ben, exhibiting real big screen potential, overcoming the not-insignificant challenge of keeping Ben from being unsympathetic. Barrymore, meanwhile, is equally charming as the workaholic Lindsey, particularly as she struggles to accept Ben for who he is without losing sight of her own needs.

Fever Pitch really works, and even though there are lots of inspired comedic moments, the movie is also addressing the serious problem of sports addiction and how difficult it can be for couples to negotiate this fragile territory.

Much of the movie was filmed at Boston's Fenway Park, which adds a fine sense of authenticity to the proceedings, as well as the ambiance of the games, though fully appreciating what transpired with the team will probably be limited to baseball aficionados. Even so, Fever Pitch is blessed with such a finely wrought and intelligently funny script that even novice baseball fans will find much with which to connect. Mike Leonard September 05.

Whirlpool (1950)

"I can't remember anything about what happened!"

[7/10 · 11 September 2005]

One of the first things that struck me about Whirlpool is how good an actress Gene Tierney actually was. She does such a terrific job of portraying both the vulnerability and desperation of her character.

Set in Los Angeles, Whirlpool is an unassuming and unpretentious thriller that sort of fits the mold of noir. The movie certainly isn't the best example of the genre, but it does have many fine elements that, combined with Ms. Tierney's performance, make it eminently watchable.

Gene Tierney stars as Ann Sutton. Ann is the wealthy and respectable wife of successful psychiatrist Dr. William Sutton (a marvelous Richard Conte). The film opens as Ann is caught shoplifting a jeweled broach from a ritzy department store. The police and the store manager are determined to prosecute, but she gets off the hook thanks to David Korvo (Jose Ferrer), a mysterious hypnotist whom Ann employs to help her sleep.

Ann initially thinks that Korvo is out to blackmail her, and she offers him a large some of money to keep him quiet. Korvo, however, has another, far more furtive agenda. As he gradually builds Ann's trust, it soon is revealed that he has been having an affair with Sutton's former patient Theresa Randolph (Barbara O'Neil).

Shortly thereafter, Theresa turns up dead, and Ann is implicated as the murderer since she was found at the scene of the crime. Ann is arrested and charged with murder, but bitterly denies involvement telling her kindly husband that she just can't remember anything. So, who is the murderer? Surely it can't have been Korvo, as he was in the hospital during the time of Theresa's death.

It is left up to Lt. Colton (Charles Bickford) to use his detective skills and Dr. Sutton as the committed psychiatrist to break the hold that Korvo has on Ann and finally learn the truth behind the Theresa's murder.

Ferrer is terrific as the enigmatic Korvo. From the beginning it's plainly obvious that he's a sleazy, amoral confidence trickster, who is probably out to milk the Ann of her money and nothing happens to compromise his position. Richard Conte is also very good as Ann's concerned husband; he knows that his wife is not guilty but he's frustrated at the lack of inaction on behalf the local police to prove her innocence.

The issues of hypnotherapy, especially with the idea that hypnosis can make people do stuff they don't want to, is also interesting. Although, by today's standards it perhaps doesn't carry the kind of psychological weight and dramatic punch that it did back when the film was made.

Perhaps influenced by the wave of films during the period that utilized the growing field of hypnotherapy the picture might have seemed a bit fresher when it was first released. However, the Whirlpool is still fun to watch, especially for the lovely Gene Tierney who apparently used Whirlpool as a comeback after a two-year absence. Mike Leonard September 05.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

"I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille"

[10/10 · 9 September 2005]

Rumor has it that Gloria Swanson was absolutely devastated that she didn't win the Oscar for Sunset Boulevard. 1950 was an unusually tough year for competitors, with the statuette eventually going to Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday.

Admittedly, Gloria is fantastic in this film - she's able to send up herself, while also scandalizing the business she was product of - but the acting chops must really go to William Holden, who provides the willful self-loathing thread that ties much of this noirish and twisted tale together.

Director by Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard represents classic movie making at its peak. Set in Los Angeles, it's a dark, twisted, cynical tale of love, deceit, and opportunism. The film is all about Hollywood behind the scenes and how screenwriters, directors, and actors will sell themselves out for fame and fortune at a moments notice.

Spiritual and emotional emptiness, and the price of fame, greed, narcissism, and ambition is at the heart of this devilishly stylistic film, with the somber mood beginning almost immediately when a dead man is found floating facedown in a swimming pool.

The man is hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (a very sexy William Holden). All we know is that Joe was at the run-down mansion of deluded former silent-film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Through Joe's voice over narrative it soon becomes clear that he was somehow involved with the wealthy Norma.

Down on his luck, three months behind on his rent, and with his car about to be repossessed, Joe accidentally stumbles upon Norma's faded mansion while trying to escape the police. Norma initially mistakes Joe for a coffin-maker for her deceased pet monkey, but once she figures out that he's a screenwriter, she gets him to read one of the scripts she's been working on.

Norma is an insane and faded silent-film star, who is hoping against hope to make a comeback. She's bitterly resentful of the price the "talkies" have taken on her career, so now she soaks in her own misguided and imagined greatness, in profile with the flickering projector lighting her outline in the dark.

Joe is initially hesitant to help the glamorous woman, and then asks $500 a week for his writing services. But slowly we come to realize the contract is actually the other way around. In preparing for her return comeback, Norma quickly turns Joe into a pawn - or more to the point, a slave.

Joe becomes a virtual prisoner in her rundown mansion; the moment he leaves, she slits her wrists, forcing him to come back. With minimal resistance, Joe allows himself to settle into the life of a kept man, as Norma desperately showers him with gifts and fine clothing. The house butler, Max von Meyerling (Erich von Stroheim), grimly looks on, tending to Norma's demanding whims and tolerating Joe's disruptive presence.

Joe wobbles back and forth between heedless acceptance of his strange companionship with Norma and his half-hearted pursuit of a career. He sneaks away to collaborate on a project with Betty (Nancy Olson), a Paramount script reader who is engaged to Joe's best friend. Betty is gradually falling in love with Joe, but when Norma finds out, that he's been sneaking out to meet wit her, all hell breaks loose.

The self-loathing motif is rampant throughout Sunset Boulevard. Max completely does away with his self-respect, Joe hates himself for his unwillingness to commit to a career or love, and seems to sell himself out for money and clothes almost immediately, and Betty despises herself for falling in love with Joe while she's engaged to another.

Norma, despite her haughtiness, is the most blatant case of self-disgust. When she isn't raving about her greatness, she comes across as a frightened and tortured soul – a sad and lonely woman, who is not only remarkably self-delusional, but is also trying to grasp one last chance at happiness. She thinks so little of her current 50-year-old self that she no longer acknowledges the present.

Sunset Boulevard is a must see movie for cinema buffs. There are lots of treasures to be had here, including Nancy Olson's strangely under appreciated performance as Betty, whose misguided love for Joe spirals the film to its grisly conclusion. There's also the hilarious appearance of a skinny and madly grinning Jack Webb as a happy-go-lucky assistant director, and viewers will get a kick out of the excessive exuberance that Norma displays when she towels down a hunky and hairy-chested Joe at poolside.

The funniest scene in the movie is when Norma rolls on top of Joe while he is reclining on a couch, and then does an imitation of Charlie Chaplin in order to cheer him up; the scene is an uproarious mixture of the sad, the funny, and the pathetic.

Billy Wilder's accomplished direction is full of wide shots that capture the depressing set and brave close-ups of our anti-heroes. But in the end, Sunset Boulevard stands out, as one of the finest examples of the frenzied circus of obsession, fixation, and greed that is oftentimes symbolizes Hollywood. Mike Leonard September 05.

Control (2003)

"Life is a dream, even in the underworld"

[9 September 2005]

Kontroll would have to be one of the most visually arresting and eye-catching films of the year. All the elements are there – mystery, suspense, and humor, it's just a pity that first time director Nimrod Antal's first film, which has fantasy, thriller, and dark-comic elements, couldn't have been a bit better paced.

Some of the scenes are excessively long, and the movie sort of sinks in the middle, as though Antal just can't sustain the tension that he so marvelously creates throughout the first half. Having said that, Kontroll is a mostly rewarding viewing experience, and contains some of the most slickly drawn action sequences that one is likely to see in a movie.

Kontroll opens as a boozy blond struggles to open a champagne bottle as she descends into the Budapest subway. She's barely able to stand up, let alone balance on her high heels; she is seemingly knocked over by the rush of air from an arriving train. Suddenly she vanishes and only one of her red shoes remains.

Enter the ticket controllers who patrol the subway day and night. They are told to be on the look out for "jumpers." Apparently, this girl is just the latest in a long line of people who have been inexplicably jumping onto the tracks. Or have they? One ticket inspector, Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi) swears he has seen a hooded man lurking about as another victim falls before a speeding train.

The scruffy and unshaven Bulcsú doesn't dare go above ground; he doesn't even bother to report what he's seen. Instead, he spends his days traipsing through this underground netherworld together with his mismatched collection of colleagues, who move along in pack that sometimes resembles an aging street gang.

There's the quick-tempered Muki (Csaba Pindroch) a narcoleptic with a face stained with tomato sauce, and a burned-out old man simply known as the Professor (Zoltan Mucsi). There's also the newest arrival, the impetuous Tibor (Zsolt Nagy), whom Bulcsú takes under his wing.

Bulcsú soon finds himself having to contend with rival crews of ticket takers, a prankster (Bence Matyasi) who keeps eluding Bulcsú and leads him on a race through the subway stations. In one suspenseful sequence, Bulcsú is challenged to go railing: jumping down onto the tracks in a race to the next platform before the midnight expresses approaches from behind.

Bulcsú is also entranced by Sjofi (Eszter Balla), who wears a bear costume, and apparently lives underground, like him. But Bulcsú is the reluctant anti-hero, not only is he frightened of going above ground, but there's something in his past that prevents him from getting too close to people. It's only when he is able to confront his inner demons that he can finally face the light of day.

Is Bulcsú actually the killer? Or is it all just the dark, subversive, and fearful sides of his personality? His paranoid bosses certainly suspect that he knows something about the murders. Partly because he seems so detached, partly because he's a former intellectual and professional who abandoned a promising future aboveground for unknown reasons, and also because he's a surly outsider who, sleeps during breaks on abandoned benches and in the far tunnels.

Completely set in the bowls of the underground transport system, Kontroll is an absurdly and totally maddeningly existential film, It's where a woman inconspicuously rides the train in a bear suit, after-hour raves parties materialize to pulsating dance beats, and men discuss a cooking recipe while cleaning body parts off the track. It's also a movie that is peppered with some of the sexiest and grooviest young men I've ever seen!

This is a very heavily stylized film and is far from realistic, with Antal and cinematographer Gyula Pados shooting the Budapest underground with a gritty and rich detail that gives the film a strange and beguiling mixture of the authentic and hallucinatory.

The film is mostly a type of psychological fantasy, a kind of dream-movie in which we see the world of the kontroll through Bulcsú's eyes, experiencing this underground, subversive, and anti-establishment world - its horrors and possible deliverance - from his embattled and beleaguered point of view. Mike Leonard September 05.

Chrystal (2004)

"You poison everything you touch"

[5/10 · 8 September 2005]

The characters in Chrystal are just so damaged from life's misfortunes. Wondering through a haze of disappointment and lost love, Chystal (Lisa Blount) and her estranged husband Joe (Billy Bob Thornton) are trying to reconnect when Joe returns after serving a twenty-year prison sentence.

Before his conviction, Joe was involved in a car wreck while being pursued by the authorities for smuggling drugs. Though he survived, Chrystal (Lisa Blount) suffered permanent back injuries and the couple's young son was killed.

Chrystal now lives on her farm in the wilds of the Arkansas Ozarks, a kind of semi-recluse, occasionally visited by her garrulous mother, (Grace Zabriskie) and with only her pet dog to keep her company. When Joe finally turns up unannounced, very little is said between them. The ghosts of the past and the spirit of their child, whom Chrystal sees as a vision in the forest, continue to haunt them both.

As the submissive, and guarded Joe quietly takes up residence on the porch with the dog and begins doing odd jobs around the property, Chrystal, who moves slowly and stiffly due to pain from the old accident, watches him and slips him food outside. Slowly, however, the couple begins to speak.

Although Chrystal tells him that, "You poison everything you touch," she has always loved Joe. However, she's been paralyzed, not only physically, but also emotionally by the accident that occurred so long ago. For his part, Joe, putting his welding skills to use, creating an enormous free-form metal sculpture in the yard, just wants his wife to tell him what to do.

Drugs eventually rear their ugly head when a local marijuana grower Snake (a very slimy Ray McKinnon), starts to lord in over Joe. Snake makes it clear that any weed growing must be done with his permission and he even pressures Joe to grow marijuana for him on his property. After a big and oddly fought public fistfight, it's clear nothing good can result between these two.

While the clash between Snake and Joe, and Joe's attempts to reconnect with Chrystal, provide much of the dramatic arc of the film, there's also a rather extraneous subplot involving a visit to the area by a blind musicologist, Kalid (Harry Lennix), who's writing a book on mountain music and wants to track down local legend and mountain music avatar Pa Da (Harry Dean Stanton).

Chrystal's own singing so impresses Kalid that he photographs her with the promise that he will write about her in his book. There's a tentative emotional connection between Kalid and Chrystal, and their relationship could go further were it not for Chrystal's lingering issues with Joe.

There's no doubt that Chrystal is a well intentioned, earnest, and beautifully made film. However, the proceedings unfold at a virtual glacial pace, despite the periodic bursts of violence. Consequently, rather than dramatizing the story, the producers have almost succeeded in entombing it, much as Chrystal's farm is entombed in the mountains.

Director Ray McKinnon is obviously trying to imbue the story with mythical like elements - we have a part backwoods melodrama, part symbol-laden tragedy, and part druggie/crime drama. It's a worthy effort, but it doesn't really come off that well, particularly when McKinnon handles everything so ploddingly.

The result comes off more like a Southern Gothic funeral, a zombie trash-fest, rather than a serious treatment of the themes of loss, guilt, redemption, and moral repayment. The acting is generally good with Blount particularly memorable as Chrystal, her mix of vulnerability and emotional instability make her the most heart-felt of all the characters. But her resolute steadfastness makes the character a bit monotonous after about an hour.

Overall, Chrystal has periodic moments of compelling drama, but the pacing is often so labored that the film ends up coming across as extremely hard going. Designed to appeal mostly to Southern viewers, the film just lacks the radiance it so obviously aspires to, and will probably end up finding a nice home on late night cable. Mike Leonard September 05.

One Last Dance (2003)

A happy enough pas de deux?,

[5/10 · 7 September 2005]

There's nothing more tiresome that watching dancers who are way past their prime trying to recapture a sense of their lost glory. This is what you'll be getting when you watch One Last Dance, a rather costly and pedestrian exercise in ballet melodrama. Full of unmitigated histrionics and rather ordinary dancing - particularly from the three leads - One Last Dance is pretty much a train wreck from beginning to end.

If viewers want to see some really good dancing they would be far better off tuning into You Think You Can Dance, Fox's current reality show - the dancers are young, and unlike Patrick Swayze, their not trying to fake it.

One Last Dance apparently took years to make the transition from idea to stage production to screenplay to screen and it was reportedly a labor of love for Swayze and professional dancer Lisa Niemi. But after seeing it I wondered why, during all those years, nobody stepped in and stopped them from doing any more damage to the world of dance.

The movie centers around three older dancers who are now retired. Travis (Swayze), Chrissa (Niemi), and Max (George De La Pena) are all former members of Alex McGrath's dance company. Through flashbacks it is gradually revealed that Alex treated the trio terribly, he was abusive and nasty, and his constant taunts eventually caused Chrissa to have some kind of mental breakdown.

The principals have now all gone their separate ways. Travis owns several fitness centers, Max gives seminars at schools, and Chrissa performs in a kind of vaudeville show where she's a model for a knife thrower! But Alex is now dead and the artistic director of the company decides to hunt the three out, hoping that they will reunite to bring to life the production they were working on when they decided to call it quits.

The three ex-dancers are all well into their forties, so reestablishing their former level of competency doesn't come to easy. After much panting and sweaty puffing, they manage to develop a semblance of what they once were. They even work on their basics and join and "adult beginners" class where the teacher is warm and supportive, encouraging everyone to find the "heart" in their dancing.

Of course, everyone is bringing back lots of emotional baggage. It is soon revealed that Chrissa has a young daughter whom she is reluctant to let dance. But could this little girl be Travis's? Chrissa also has a bad attitude problem - there are unresolved issues, which were probably to do with her breakdown and to Travis's betrayal of her. Travis decided he couldn't go on after Chrissa left the company, and now he's plagued by stiffness and injury, and Max is carrying abandonment issues.

There's lots of scenes involving angst-ridden confessionals and brooding shots of the actors against the New York City skyline. There's also lots of dance numbers, some of which are better than others. Watch for several younger members of the chorus who really stand out. But the sequences involving the three leads rapidly become corny and tedious, and they go on for far too long. Yes - we already get the point, they're forty and they can still tread the boards.

Will the three ever overcome their petty malice, spite, and neuroses and join together for one...last...dance? You have to wait a full 113 minutes to find out, but perhaps, by then, most viewers will have had enough and switched to Fox. Michael Leonard September 05.

Strange Bedfellows (2004)

"I want to be the spouse!"

[7 September 2005]

If Australian viewers will cast their minds back to the seventies, they may remember The Paul Hogan Show, a variety show in which Paul irreverently played the larrikin host. The twist was that he would make a grand entrance wearing tight fitting black shorts and a rugby top – a caricature of a footballer.

In Strange Bedfellows almost thirty years later, he cleverly parodies this costume by dressing up in close hugging spandex shorts and a black figure hugging tank top. Paul is probably having a good old chuckle at himself, and we are too, because there's generally lot of laughs to be had in this irreverent, and funny, but never offensive Australian film.

This is the best film that Paul Hogan has made in years. He doesn't over-play it, he's instantly amiable and most of all, he's giving life to a character that fits him like a glove. But kudos should also be given to the talented Michael Caton, who at times, gently steals the movie from beneath Hogan's feet.

Hogan plays Vince, a theatre owner in the small Victorian country town of Yackandandah. Vince's wife has recently left him and now he's left with nothing, apart from the single-bed he sleeps on in the projection booth. When he gets a letter from his ex-wife's accountant ordering he pay back years of back taxes, he turns to his best friend Ralph (Michael Caton), the town mechanic, for help.

Vince has just read that the current government, in a race for electoral votes, is giving gay couples the same legal rights as married couples including a retrospective tax law that allows them to claim all the usual tax rebates for up to five years. Vince decides the best thing to do is become gay - at least on paper.

Ralph is initially hesitant, but once Vince explains to him that it's just form filling bureaucracy, and that no one in the small town need ever know, he decides to help his best friend out. Things seem to be going well, until a letter arrives stating that a representative of the tax office is coming to visit, in order to make sure Vince and Ralf really are a same-sex couple.

Vince and Ralf are forced to embark on a crash course in learning how to be gay. Enlisting the help of the local gay hairdresser, (Glynn Nicholas) they learn how to "place a hand on a penguin," wax lyrical over a photograph of Liberace and call each other "she" and "girl." They even take a trip to Sydney where they befriend a group of biker gays and drag queens.

When the reserved and seemingly threatening tax inspector (Pete Postlethwaite) is sent to audit their claim, Ralph and Vince must try and convince him that they are a loving homosexual couple in a small town who knows them as anything but. Adding to the shenanigans is Ralf's daughter (Kestie Morassi), who is coming up to stay from Melbourne; she's devoted to Ralf, and has a surprise in store for him.

What makes Strange Bedfellows work so well is the amazing script that never condescends to either the urban gay community or the country people of Yackandandah. Judgment is never passed, even though the rural folk might see the gays as "weird," while the gays might view the country people as homophobic. Stereotypes abound, but the tone of the film is such that one cannot take any of them seriously.

Paul Hogan as Vince seems to be having a great old time; he's empathetic to the gay community, and seems to be opening his heart to a segment of society that he knows nothing about, while Michael Caton delivers a wonderfully warm character with enough complexity and self-contradiction to be three-dimensional.

Detailed, effectively paced, Strange Bedfellows is crammed with characters you'll feel are old mates by the time the credits roll, but best of all, Strange Bedfellows is a terrific plea for tolerance and equality for the gay community, along with a kind of homage to the age old Australian tradition of mateship. Mike Leonard September 05.

Sahara (2005)

"I'll find the bomb! You get the girl!"

[3/10 · 7 September 2005]

Surely a movie starring the delectable Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy can't be all that bad. Well, when you have Penelope cast as a doctor from the World Health Organization, and Matthew McConaughey as a surfer-like deep see expert and treasure hunter, it's pretty much downhill from there.

Sahara involves the adventures of Dirk Pitt (McConaughey) and his intrepid faithful sidekick Al Giordino (a rather forced Steve Zahn). Dirk has been searching for a Civil War Ironclad battleship that he and he alone believes somehow drifted from Virginia to Africa 140 years ago.

While he plies the water of the coast of Niger, Dr. Rojas (Cruz) is determined to locate the cause of a baffling new plague in Mali. Her search has no real connection to Dirk and Al's quest, yet they keep running into one another in the vast wilderness so that they can keep rescuing each other from gun-toting African militia.

The trio's escapades come to the attention of evil French entrepreneur Massarde (Lambert Wilson) and Mali strongman General Kazim (Lennie James) who send the entire Mali army after them to cover up the source of the rapidly spreading illness.

First-time feature director Breck Eisner does a respectable job in maintaining forward momentum and he enlivens the proceedings with some quirky moments, especially the banter between the actors. The film's action set pieces come off quite effectively, including a battle between boats on a river, breaking into a mysterious power plant in the middle of the desert, and various skirmishes between our heroes and the general's faceless soldiers.

But the movie is ultimately hampered by story is totally preposterous and unrealistic - a civil war ship ending up in a river in Africa! Please! There's absolutely no sense of plausibility to the plot and there's just to many leaps in logic as our heroes wisecrack their way through fights without a scratch. They also seem to have a remarkable immunity to bullets.

Perhaps Sahara would have been considered a good action film thirty years ago when movie going tastes for this kind of fair where not as sophisticated, but these days a movie like this comes across as rather stale and formulaic. There's nothing much to Sahara that we though we haven't all seen before: glamorous girl, evil megalomaniac, swashbuckling hero, comic sidekick etc.

I'm not sure whether Sahara's sloppily interconnected storyline comes from a blind fidelity to Clive Cussler's adventure novel or severe deviation from it. Whatever the case, you know that all is not right, when during the opening credits, you see an army of scriptwriters. I also can't quite fathom the inclusion of loud, clangy rock music into the soundtrack - surely African tribal music would have been more appropriate.

On the plus side, the film's otherworldly locations and sets neatly blend into the startling vistas and spruce up the otherwise generic and standard happenings. But generally, Sahara is as flat as the desert on which most of the action takes place. Mike Leonard September 05.

Clay Pigeons (1998)

"There are some people out there who need killing'',

[8/10 · 7 September 2005]

It's hard to categorize a movie like Clay Pigeons. The film is certainly an interesting mix of genres - part satire, comedy, and melodrama, and it gives the scoundrel the best lines, the most machiavellian aura, and the keenest temperament in the story. There's no doubt the movie, which takes place in a small Montana town, is a work of considerable originality.

The story is fraught with murder, sex, and mayhem, and contains some of the most deliciously convincing characters ever seen on film. There's the stable scout, slatternly tart, laid-back law-officer, magnetic mischief maker, and caustic cop - all of them coming together at different stages to create a maelstrom of confusion and violence.

Director David Dobkin and scriptwriter Matt Healy don't waste a lot of time on exposition: The story opens on a shooting match as best friends Earl (Fregory Sporleder) and Clay (Joaquin Phoenix) test their skills at shattering beer bottles. Earl suddenly turns on Clay, accusing him of having an affair with his sluttish wife, Amanda (Georgina Cates).

Earl eventually turns the gun on himself, partly because he's fed up with Amanda's antics, but also because he reckons that he can set it up to look like a murder, thus framing Clay. Afterwards, Clay returns to the newly widowed, but conspicuously unconcerned Amanda and is disgusted by her lack of distress.

At first Amanda tells Clay to get lost, yet deep down she still desires him. After he spurns her advances, she begins stalking him which results in terrible and fatal consequences for them both. Soon Clay is plunged into an ambivalent fellowship with the engaging visitor, Lester Long (Vince Vaughn). Lester is an enigmatic cowboy drifter, who's swollen cowboy Panama matches his towering personality. Complete with sly giggle, he's aware that he can work his charms on men as well as women.

Soon Clay finds himself having to dispose of a dead body, but to add to his problems, he finds himself confronted with the sardonically deadpanned Janeane Garofalo as a pot-smoking federal agent Shelby and unexcitable local sheriff Mooney (Scott Wilson). Mooney seems enveloped in a melancholic haze from suddenly having to deal with so many dead people, while the permanently tough-minded Shelby is hot on the trail of a serial killer.

Phoenix is terrific as the bewildered good guy, who mostly through no fault of his own lets everything disintegrate around him. Garofalo is also good as the mordant, but focused Shelby, and her reaction when a lusty cowboy attempts to pick her up in the village bar, is absolutely priceless.

Best of all is Vince Vaughn who shows his depth in a wholly distinct, ominous performance. His congeniality covers up a startling penchant for something much darker and his contempt is excited by the ease with which his victims flock to his all American allure.

Clay Pigeons is a quirky, pitch-black comedy-thriller, in which everything turns out the contrary of what you'd expect. With dead bodies piling up all over the place one wouldn't expect movie like this to have such an amusingly mean-spirited groove. But that's why it's so good, especially when one considers the surprise finale, which neatly cleans up all the mess and confusion that precedes it. Mike Leonard September 05.

Paragraph 175 (2000)

"I didn't even know why I was being sent to the camps!"

[7/10 · 7 September 2005]

Paragraph 175 is a powerful documentary that deals with a provocative subject. I just wish filmmakers Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein had fleshed out the subject a bit more. While this film about gay men who were persecuted and imprisoned under the Nazi regime, is in many respects absorbing, the film ultimately suffers from an overly narrow and constricted focus.

Perhaps the problem was that there were just not enough men alive today who were willing to talk about their experiences. From the outset, the pool of interviewees was certainly going to be limited, but also limited is the actual archival footage of life in the concentration camps.

Instead the directors have chosen to pepper the film with well-preserved family photographs, and lively footage of gay and lesbian culture blossoming during the days of the Weimar Republic after WW1. Sensitively narrated by British actor Rupert Everett, Paragraph 175 is all about the German penal code, which was originally enacted in 1871, and later used by the Nazis, to outlaw homosexuality.

The penal code stated: "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed," But Paragraph 175 was never really enforced until the Nazi's came to power. This documentary centers on six emotional accounts of the most elderly and frail survivors of the concentration camps who, up until now, have repressed their stories.

There's a Jewish gay resistance fighter who posed as a Hitler Youth member to rescue his lover from a Gestapo transfer camp in an ultimately futile effort; a photographer who was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, who upon his release joined the army because of the lack of men in his hometown and he "wanted to be with men." There's a young man who was freed from a sentence at Dachau only to be interned again at Buchenwald, and a Frenchman imprisoned from Alsace, who breaks down after telling of being raped and subject to inhuman torture. Their stories are indeed heart wrenching, because unlike the Jews, they have forced to live quietly, unable to share their horrific experiences for so long.

It is interesting to note that the penal code didn't cover lesbians. The Nazis considered lesbians to be "curable." Women were regarded, as vessels of motherhood - increasing the German population was top priority - therefore, they were exempt from mass arrest. Most lesbians went into exile or quietly married gay men. One woman, who tells her story in the film, was given exit papers and was lucky enough to escape to England.

The statistics are staggering: Between 1933 and 1945, some 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, roughly half of them were sentenced to prison, and from 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. The camps were used for re-education, slave labor, castration and sadistic medical experiments. It's believed only about 4,000 survived their ordeal.

The situation didn't improve after the war. Paragraph 175 remained in force until the late sixties, so many gay men were re-imprisoned and subject to repeated persecution. In this respect, Epstein and Friedman should be largely commended for bringing this subject to the attention of the world, and telling these powerful personal stories before the last survivors die. Mike Leonard September 05

Layer Cake (2004)

"I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine"

[7/10 · 7 September 2005]

Densely layered just like a layer cake, this new Daniel Craig film has so many twists and turns, with extraneous characters appearing and then disappearing, and a narrative that hurriedly switches backwards and forwards in time, that most viewers will probably be left absolutely giddy from the experience.

Admittedly, Layer Cake won't be everyone's cup of tea. The serpentine plot is often hard to follow, but the slick, pulsating production design combined with the raw and often brutal look at the shady underworld of drug dealing, more than makes up for the occasionally muddled narrative.

Layer Cake is all about the evolution of a businessman into a gangster, assassin, and double-crosser - a descent that comes as a surprise only to him. The sexy Daniel Craig is perfectly cast as a confident, cock-sure ecstasy dealer, who in an effort to apply solid business principles, treats his trade and as some kind of legitimate commercial practice.

As the film opens, Craig is explaining his philosophy in a voice over narrative - "you keep a low profile, work with people you know, and don't get greedy." He also announces his attention to retire from the trade, having made enough money from the sale of cocaine and other illegal substances to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

But just as he's visiting his bent accountant to have the profits of his last sale transferred into an anonymous bank account, his boss, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), gives him one last assignment. A buyer needs to be found for a huge consignment of Ecstasy pills that have been stolen from a tulip farm in Amsterdam.

Jimmy also wants him to track down the drug addicted, runaway daughter of his friend and corrupt business partner, Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon). Of course, both assignments are setups. Everyone wants to get their hands on the stolen pills, particularly the dealer, a loud-mouthed crook known as the Duke (Jamie Foreman), and their rightful owner, a sociopathic Serb called Slavo (Marcel Iures).

Helped by his trusted colleagues, Gene (Colm Meaney) and Morty (George Harris), our anonymous hero must navigate this shady world where no one is as they seem and where everyone is constantly trying to outwit and double-cross each other. There's not much honor among these thieves here, and even those whom our hero thinks are his friends, turn out to be his dreaded enemies.

It's certainly Craig's inimitable talents as an actor that keep this threads of the story hanging together, and he gives his character a bluster and conceit that eventually turns into an awkward shuffle once he realizes he's in over his head. But kudos must also go to first time director Matthew Vaughn, who does a good job keeping this complex film moving forward despite its labyrinthine plot structure.

Most of the action is seen and told through the perspective of Craig's nameless character, and there are numerous quickly edited flashbacks and shifting points of view, which emphasize the non-linear aspect of the story. A surprise ending will probably leave most viewers quite shocked, but perhaps it's best not to think too much how it fits into the rest of the story, as you'll probably find yourself getting confused.

Vaughn also makes the most of the London locales, shooting scenes in posh mansions, crack houses, construction sites along the Canary Warf, picturesque parks along the Thames River, and atop skyscrapers in London's financial district. Viewers who have given up following the story can sit back and enjoy the wonderful views of one of the world's greatest cities. Mike Leonard August 05.

Red Lights (2004)

"The devil is on vacation with you"

[8/10 · 7 September 2005]

Red Lights is a strange, abstract, almost existential exercise in movie making. Adapted from the 1953 novel by Georges Simenon and set to Debussy's elegantly creepy Nuages, writer-director Cedric Kahn offers up movie with attributes of a Hitchcockian suspense thriller.

The feeling of foreboding begins immediately when we meet Antoine Dunant (Jean-Pierre Darroussin a low-level insurance executive. He's just leaving his job to meet his beautiful wife Hélène (Carole Bouquet) in a local café. They are planning to drive to the countryside from Paris to pick up their kids from summer camp.

But as soon as Antoine gets to the café he guzzles three beers back to back with one eye on the street lest his wife arrive before he's suitably fortified. It soon becomes pretty obvious that their marriage is far from happy - Antoine armed with enough drink to sink an elephant, settles into a manner of truculent impetuosity, while Helene remains detached, cold, and almost abusive.

While in the road, Helen discovers that her husband is utterly plastered. She hardly says anything as he weaves all over the road, but her silence speaks volumes. Thus starts a trip of barely controlled hostility with the husband clenching the wheel and brooding, while the wife fumes beside him. Both are so busy bickering with each other and thinking dark thoughts that they're half oblivious to news reports of an escaped convict on the loose nearby.

Antoine isn't usually a drinker, but something has snapped in him, and as the neon signs of the roadside bars start to beckon him, he becomes obsessed with downing as much cold beer and whisky as he can. He leaves Helene angrily waiting in the car while he goes into yet another bar, to prepare himself for the long night ahead.

Hélène, freaked by his increasing belligerence and inability to drive in a straight line, abandons her husband to look for a train station. Meanwhile Antoine strikes up a conversation with a reserved one-armed stranger (Vincent Deniard).

When, minutes later, the stranger steps out of the parking-lot shadows, his face half hidden by the hood of a sweatshirt, and asks for a ride, the cocky, staggering Antoine doesn't even break stride. By now he's so sweaty and drunk that he waves the fellow right into the car.

What follows is detour into a night of terror for Antoine, Helene, and for the viewer. The movie starts to resemble everyone's nightmare - the inexplicable disappearance of a loved one. And as Antoine embarks on a desperate journey to track his wife down, it soon becomes clear that Red Lights is really showing us a portrait of a marriage, a marriage that has been enigmatically hanging by a thread.

Their need to see the children again is probably just a way of distracting them from the aridness of their relationship. She's beautiful and accomplished, while he plain and dull. Somehow the couple began their marriage as equals, but she soon eclipsed him, for which he can't forgive her. Other than this, Kahn provides very little reason as to why their relationship has suddenly gone sour.

What Kahn does provide, however, is the knowledge that marriage can often dissipate completely, leave two strangers in a car, totally sick of each other, in desperate need of a reviving shock to the system. But when the sun finally rises, and Antoine is released from his drunken hell, Kahn does provide a dash of hope for the couple.

In the end, Red Lights is showing that relationships are frail and that the machinations of marriage are often inexplicable. And if nothing else, Antoine and Helen show that it can all dramatically and irrevocably change and fall apart in a searing flash of red light. Mike Leonard September 05.