1997 / 125 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

One word: Shit.

That is really all I need to describe the horrible, teeth-gnashing cinematic experience known as “U Turn”, but I suppose I shall elaborate.

First off, the plot of this film is like an extended, bad episode of “Tales From the Crypt”. And it is directed by Oliver Stone at his most ham-handed and shameless. The direction of this movie is simple: there isn’t any. The narrative rambles incoherently and obviously. Not only that, but it is edited in schlock, faux David Lynchian strokes. I expect this sort of thing from De Palma, but Oliver Stone? I liked “JFK” and “Platoon”. But what happened here? Tell your crank dealer to stick to the good stuff, Ollie. I don’t know what he sold you before you lensed this movie but you should really lay off. There is a lot of symbolism, but I don’t think it’s symbolic of much.

The performances are embarrassingly bad, the movie is oppressively grim but without making any points or having any theme. Billy Bob Thornton tries to interject some life into these listless and depressing proceedings, but it is no use. The film is so bad that he is caught, thrashing and screaming, in its relentless undertow.

I guess this film is supposed to have some great twist at the end, but I wouldn’t know. I walked out long before that. Maybe someone can tell me the twist and then I will know it. I know that, whatever it is, it cannot be worth the torture of putting myself through “U Turn” again.

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1927 / 75 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Buster Keaton’s “The General” was made before movies were able to talk, but I guarantee that you will not miss dialogue. The film may not have been able to speak, but it moves like nobody’s business.

Buster Keaton is one of the all-time masters of comedy and he was, truly, willing to do anything for a joke. Absolutely anything. He risked life and limb in every single film. And for what? So he could amuse us. Maybe that isn’t a good enough reason to put one’s own life in peril, but it was good enough for Buster, and I am glad he did it. Jackie Chan has said that Buster was one of his greatest influences. Just watch one of his movies and it’s easy to see why. Charlie Chaplin’s films are very well done, but today they seem rather quaint and hokey.

Not so with Keaton’s movies. They may not have sound, they may be ancient, but there is something alive going on on the screen.

Especially in “The General”, a film that doesn’t even take time to slow down and gather its breath. It is pure energy from start to finish. “The General” is the story of a Southern railroad engineer during the Civil War. He loves only two things in life: his train and a woman named Annabelle. Annabelle will have nothing to do with Buster, however, unless he joins the fight against the South. But when he tries to enlist, the enlistment office rejects him. Heartbroken, Buster goes back to running the train. One day, his train is stolen by Union spies, with Annabelle on board. Buster sets out to get the train back by any means necessary. He travels first by foot, then by handcar, and then he takes another train.

The train chases make up the majority of the film, and they are dazzling. They have the ingenius creativity and off-the-wall energy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, but are much more eye popping when you consider that these are actual people performing these ludicrous feats of daring. And Buster is the ring leader of it all. Trains are derailed, cannons fire where they aren’t supposed to, obstacles are put on the track and cleverly averted and swords prove more troublesome than helpful. And I sat through it all with the amazement of a small child, a giddy grin hanging on my face. The pace never lets up and the jokes never fall flat. It is more than seventy years old, yet it still seems unbelievably fresh. This may be the most amazing stunt of all. When you see special effects in a film today, you know that they were likely accomplished with the aid of a computer. When you see the things they managed to do in this movie, you sit there scratching your head and wonder how on earth they ever pulled it off without killing someone.

It is ironic that this man performs such dangerous stunts because throughout the entire movie he seems to wear the impervious, bland expression of a tired narcoleptic. This adds to the film’s charm. Chaplin wore a grin and sometimes overreacted to the events going on around him. Keaton met each of them with his own subdued form of surprise. I believe that the latter works better. Especially in one hilarious moment where there is a boxcar in front of his train, slowing it up. He bends down to do something and as he does, the boxcar is forced off the track by the other train. When he looks up, the boxcar is gone and he can’t quite believe it.

The expression on his face in this moment says more than any line of dialogue ever could.

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1928 / 71 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I have sang the praises of Buster Keaton once before on this site. But since there are a lack of people out there singing his praises, allow me to do so once again. Buster was a comic genius who influenced our culture probably more than we will ever realize. No less than Orson Welles, the director of what is generally regarded as the best movie ever made, counted him among his influences.

The least we can do is watch his films.

While “Steamboat Bill Jr.” doesn’t quite have the same energy level as “The General” (few movies do) it does boast what is probably Buster’s most famous stunt. Buster is going through a small, Southern town in the middle of a fierce storm. Buildings are falling down right and left, ships are sinking, and Buster is smack dab in the middle of it. He is standing in the middle of the street when suddenly the front of a house falls over, right on top of Buster. But, instead of being crushed, the window of the building falls where he stands, passing right over him and leaving him unscathed.

I mean, Wow!

I have read a few articles about this film and have learned that this stunt was potentially so dangerous that the film’s crew would have nothing to do with it. They did not want to be on hand if it went wrong and ended up killing Buster. But Buster went and did it anyway, without a crew. Now there is a man who puts it on the line for his craft.

In the film, Buster plays the title character, the son of a Southern riverboat captain whose business has just been taken by a rich man who owns everything else in town. The old man has fallen on hard times and now his son is coming to visit. At first, Steamboat Bill Sr. is overjoyed.

Then he meets his son. Junior arrives wearing a fruity outfit, a beret and a pencil-thin moustache that looks much like the one worn by John Waters. Needless to say, the old man is mortified. The man’s first mate on the ship hands him a gun and says (in a title card, of course): “No jury in the world would convict you”.

Junior’s attempts to win his father’s affections, not to mention the affections of a fetching young lady who happens to be the daughter of his father’s rival, constitute the majority of “Steamboat Bill Jr.”. And the gags do come quite consistently. There is a charming moment in which his father teaches him how to fight, a very funny scene in which he tries to learn how to operate the steamboat, and the climax that involves a hurricane that uproots a tree that Buster is clinging to for dear life and sends it floating through the air like a helicopter.

And through it all, we are carried along by Buster’s fearless desire to entertain and his wonderful, underplayed charm. The genius of Buster Keaton’s physical comedy, as opposed to the physical comedy of most other comedians, is that it is so subtle. He plays against the ludicrousness of the situation with that stone-faced expression of his. Most physical comedy is preposterous. It is the throwing of a pie, a man morphing into another personality, a man beating the crap out of himself, the battering ram energy of the Three Stooges. Those are all great.

But Buster’s form of physical comedy is more subtle than that, and it is something you don’t see that often, if ever.

By the way, wasn’t the first Mickey Mouse cartoon named “Steamboat Willie”? Coincidence? Or was it another of Buster’s little donations to our cultural soup? You decide.

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1999 / 121 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Jason Jones

“Saving a person’s life is like falling in love. It’s the perfect drug.”

These are the words of Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), a New York City paramedic who, with these words, sums up the very essence of his occupation. It is in this essence that Director Martin Scorsese allows the viewer to languish for three days in Frank’s life. In doing so he shows us a world many of us would like to think doesn’t exist. That is why there are director’s like Scorsese in the world. They are here to tell the tough stories. The sort of a story that is analagous to a car wreck: We don’t want to look, but we do anyway to satisfy our primal curiosity.

We meet Frank at the outset of the film. He is a man who is at the end of his rope. It has been six months, since he last saved a life. That sad fact has begun to take it’s toll on Frank’s entire being. Much like Haley Joel Osment, Frank sees dead people. In particular, he sees a teenaged girl that he was unable to save some months ago. He sees her face everywhere he looks. She appears as a prostitute, a pregnant woman, and even a drunken old man. He cannot escape her. It is this image, along with all of the others he has been unable to save, that haunts his every waking moment. This is Frank when we meet him the first night.

It is a Thursday, and he is teamed up with Larry (John Goodman) for the night. Larry aspires to get off the streets and become a Captain. He plans on taking the exams a few months down the road. In the meantime, he keeps himself on track by knowing exactly what he is going to eat that night, long before his shift ever begins. During the night they are called to a home where a cardiac arrest has taken place. While trying to revive the man, Frank meets the man’s daughter, Mary (Patricia Arquette). Mary soon becomes Frank’s link to reality. He knows nothing of life anymore, so he clings to what he can to hang on. They don’t exactly form a relationship in the typical sense. Theirs is more of a give and take relationship that revolves around them keeping each other sane than becoming an item so to speak. After this call, Larry and Frank have an assortment of other stops during the night. Including a “regular” and a suicide attempt. To Frank this is normal. He has come to know this as routine.

On the second night he is hooked up with Marcus (Ving Rhames). Marcus chooses to make it through his nights by relying on the world. He also enjoys looking at hookers and flashing his cash at them. There are many more calls on this night. It gets to the point that Frank fears hearing the dispatcher’s voice. He has to turn to alcohol to get through this night. It is all he can think of that will keep him sane.

On the third night, Frank is paired with Tom Walls (Tom Sizemore). Tom has gone over the edge. He has taken to beating some of his patients due to his frustration with them. At one point this goes to far and Frank feels compelled to save this patient. It is something of a breakthrough for Frank, because he has finally “saved” someone. It is on this night that Frank finds that feeling of “the perfect drug” that is saving a person’s life.

What happens from there is what takes this movie from being an “A” to a “B+” in my book. The ending was a total letdown. I guess I can see what Scorsese was trying to do, but it just doesn’t work for me. It’s one of those endings where you are left there, when the screen goes black, thinking, “Okay, that’s not the end. That couldn’t be the end.” Unfortunately it is the end. In all fairness to Scorsese, this is a difficult movie to end, but he IS Martin Scorsese. What that means is that the viewer expects a little more. Instead we get a lot less.

On the positive side the performances are all upper tier. Cage is perfect as Frank. There are times when it feels like Cage is about to go into overact mode, but he rides the fine line between overacting and brilliance with great precision. Ving Rhames is his usual delightful self. What is it with him and these religious centered characters? First “Out of Sight” and now “Bringing Out The Dead.” Whatever the case may be. He is perfect as Marcus. Even Patricia Arquette does a fine job as Mary. I haven’t seen her in much, other than “True Romance,” but she does a fine job here. She balances her hatred for her father with her shaky past, while finding some form of innocence in Frank.

“Bringing Out The Dead” is not without a lighter side, but it only creeps up in a few instances such as the scenes with Frank and his Captain. Frank wants to be fired, but his boss won’t do it, because he doesn’t like to take orders. These are about the only lighter moments in the film. There are others where the humor is more subjective. Otherwise the film presses down upon your being with the weight of the world on your chest.

“Bringing Out The Dead” is a masterfully shot film. It feels as if Scorsese has taken us back to the world he created in “Taxi Driver.” The night driving scenes harken back to Travis Bickle’s cab making it’s way through these very same streets some twenty-plus years earlier.

If you are a fan of Scorsese, or enjoy gritty real life drama, you will not want to miss “Bringing Out The Dead.” It is a brutally honest visual feast that is a joy to the eyes, while bringing great sadness to your soul.

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By Dale Nauertz

There is a man in a white tux. He walks into a bar, glances nonchalantly at his watch, makes eyes with a dancer, and something explodes. Everyone else in the bar runs out to see what has happened. He stands still at the bar, doing something with his eyebrows that is subtly too cool for words.

His name is Bond, James Bond. And if any mere mortal man could muster the amount of cool that Sean Connery shows in this one scene, we would never have to worry about trying to get a date ever again. We would also, I venture, be able to die happy men.

There is something unmistakably cool about the man, no matter who plays him. The men who play him must be chosen for their good looks, their suave nature, their amount of chest hair (seems to be part of the equation) and, above all, their utter coolness. Bond is the man that we would all love to be: a chick magnet, owner of a really cool car, an arsenal of gadgets at his command. He also can save the world without even getting his hair messed up. This is why he has survived the decades while other movie series have fallen by the wayside. This is the reason he still endures. He is not a man, he is our modern myth, a larger than life figure, just a couple steps below Superman. And we can always count on him to deliver two hours or so of astoundingly fun entertainment. Another amazing thing about the man: in all these years, he has never given us a bad movie.

Although “The Man With the Golden Gun” was pretty close.

So, in honor of the release of several of his films on DVD, I have taken this opportunity to compile the list of my personal favorite Bond films. These are the best of the best, the cream of the crop as far as I am concerned. They are the reasons that I am a Bond nut, even after all these years.

1. “From Russia With Love”

The best of the best. Connery is in top form here, cooler than ever. The story is one of the series’s best: a wild concoction of intrigue, danger and suspense, with a little romance and globe-trotting thrown in for good measure. It has Bond’s best villain: the burly, enigmatic Grant (played to steely perfection by a young Robert Shaw). It has the most easy to follow plot, it has a marvellous match of wits and muscles between Bond and his adversary aboard the Orient Express, and it does all this without the usual over-the-top touches that the Bond movies are sometimes guilty of. It also has the most satisfying ending of any Bond film. A classic in every sense of the word.

2. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”

Although you rarely hear about him, George Lazenby steps very nicely into the role of James Bond. He exudes the coolness of Connery, yet he also allows you a glimpse into the mind of 007 that hasn’t quite been done since. Diana Rigg is the best of the Bond girls, and it is easy to see why Bond would want to stop his bed-hopping ways and settle down with her. She can drive, she can flirt, she can match wits with a supervillain. Who wouldn’t want to marry this woman? Telly Savalas also takes the role of Blofeld (the unseen, cat-loving psycho) and manages to put his own unique and graceful stamp on it. As Telly plays him, Blofeld is almost a match for Bond in the coolness catagory. And the ending will break your heart. Humor, wit, chemistry between Bond and his lady, a remarkable villain, one of the best ski chases ever filmed, and moments that will actually touch your heart. An amazing film. (A+, by the way).

3. “Goldfinger”

Connery shows up twice on this list, although that shouldn’t be a surprise. This one boasts the most memorable moments of any Bond film: the laser beam between the legs, the woman smothered in gold paint, Oddjob throwing his deadly hat and, of course, the meeting of Bond and Pussy Galore. The villain’s plot is ingenius (although we don’t really understand why he is showing it to these guys when he just plans to kill them in ten minutes anyway) and the Bond theme is used just enough to make things interesting. The only downside to this movie is the ending. The method in which Goldfinger is done away with is a bit of a letdown, but there is still more than enough to recommend this as mandatory viewing for any Bond fan or for those who want to be.

4. “For Your Eyes Only”

Roger Moore finally sinks into the role of 007 and shows us a bit of what is going on inside Bond’s head. We see true anger from him many times, as well as true regret and maybe even love. Not only that, but the action sequences are pure dynamite. Bond does not rely on the gadgets in this one, but rather he uses his wit and ingenuity to escape from every danger. And the part where he is rock-climbing to infiltrate the evil fortress will have you on the very edge of your seat. I guarantee it.

5. “Tomorrow Never Dies”

Brosnan is my second favorite James Bond and this movie is every reason why. He has the pure animal magnetism of Connery, the wit and dry humor of Roger Moore at his best, and the emotional range of Lazenby. If Connery had not already invented the role and made it his own, then Brosnan would be the best. The villain may be a bit too over the top, but other than that there is nothing wrong with this entry in the Bond series. His car is one of the best, the stunts and action are sensational and the villain’s dastardly plot is relevant to this day and age. All the planets are not quite aligned here, but it’s still one of the most entertaining spectacles that Bond has ever provided.

And there you have it. The five Bond films that you absolutely, positively have to rent, in my opinion. And, if at all possible, watch them on DVD. With the extras, the commentaries, the special features, and the documentaries you will have so many gadgets at your disposal that you might feel a little like, well, Bond.

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1986 / 98 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

These words are at the heart of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, a movie that is about the importance of stopping to have a good time. You may not think that is important, but just stop to imagine for an instant how miserable your life would be without those precious moments of recreation. After all, why the hell else do we go to work if not so that we can afford to have a good time when we don’t have to work? Think about that for a minute.

Ferris realizes the importance of having a good time. It is his mission in life, in fact. And he excels at it. So far this semester, he has been absent nine times. If he goes for one more, he’s going to have to barf up a lung, so he has to make this one count. Making it count is what Ferris does, and in high style. This is a lesson that Lester Burnham in “American Beauty” would do well to learn.

Speaking of Lester, this movie has its own Lester: a man whose senses are deadened to life all around him, a man who is undergoing a midlife listlessness at the ripe old age of 17. I am speaking, of course, about Cameron Frye. A very neurotic, depressed young man who reminds me of a couple friends I have. If anyone needs a day off under Ferris’s expert tutelage, it is Cameron. Ferris says it best: “If you stuck a lump of coal up his ass in two weeks you would have a diamond.”

Also along for the ride is Ferris’s girlfriend: Sloane Peterson. She’s just along because she is Ferris’s girlfriend. Oh, and because Ferris plans to marry her. Maybe even that day.

Another element of the plot, and one that is a great source of hilarity, is Principal Edward R. Rooney. Ferris represents everything he loathes about the younger generation. He wants to stop Ferris at all costs. Ferris is Moby Dick and Rooney (played exquisitely by Jeffrey Jones) is a demented Captain Ahab, determined to root this truant out at all costs. Rooney is a thin villain, but he is not entirely a badly written one. One teacher I had in high school actually said that Rooney was the most accurate depiction of a principal he’d ever seen. And he should know. He’s dealt with enough of them. And why wouldn’t he resent this kid? He’s breaking the rules that this man has set out and making him look like, in the words of his own secretary, “an ass”.

Plus, Rooney is probably more than a little jealous. I mean, here is this eighteen year old punk who has life figured out while Rooney is still searching for the answers.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is the best teenager movie ever made, and I will tell you why. It realizes that those experiences we had as teens basically set us up for all the stupidity of life and the disappointments that it brings. It was the time when the majority of our character was formed. How we dealt with situations back then is basically how we will be dealing with them for the rest of our lives. It is about more than just a kid skipping school. It is, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” only better, a story about a nonconformist who makes his own rules. It is a story about a man who swims against the tide and the figure of authority that wishes to force society’s rules upon him. It is about not taking things too seriously and about knowing when to kick back and relax.

And it contains a great performance by Alan Ruck as the ever-depressed Cameron Frye. He is hilarious simply because his portrayal is so expertly-drawn. He needs no pratfalls, no hilarious lines (although he does have quite a few). He is great simply because he becomes poor Cameron and gives the character all sorts of brilliant little nuances and moments that make it real. A good actor knows how to do this.

But Matthew Broderick’s performance is perfect also. He strikes just the right note. His character is a bit on the ludicrous side, but it has to be. Cameron is the character that most of us were like in high school. But Ferris is the guy that we all WANTED to be. He is on top of things. He has it all figured out. He has a beautiful girlfriend, gullible parents and access to a Ferrari. With all those things, it is quite an achievement that we don’t hate him, that we don’t absolutely loathe him the moment he comes on the screen. So I would say that Matthew does a fine job.

So does Jeffrey Jones as the poor, put-upon Rooney. I love this poor bastard in any movie he is in. He always makes me smile, just seeing his name on the credits is enough to make me happy. I know that whatever else may happen in the movie I am watching, at least he will be of interest. And here, my God, he is an unhinged loony and I love him for it. I love the way he walks around like Dirty Harry when he’s really just an impotent (you can tell just from his characterizations and the car he drives) little weenie.

All I am saying is that, if you haven’t seen this little gem of a comedy in a while, you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s a lot richer than you may remember. And, unlike all of John Hughes’s other movies, it holds up even after you forget a lot of what high school was really like.

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1999 / 139 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I am Jack’s vast sense of disappointment.

There are a lot of people who will tell you that this is an excellent movie, perhaps even the best movie of the year. First off, I must say that I REALLY disagree with them. Second of all, I must say that I envy those who were able to enjoy this film because I wasn’t one of them and I sorely wanted to be.

The film has an excellent first hour and, had it not strayed from this, it would probably have been up for a couple awards on Oscar Sunday. It begins with a very depressed young man, played to acute perfection by the enormously talented Edward Norton, who cannot sleep. Worse than that, he cannot feel. He goes through life like a dissatisfied drone. He has everything that the magazines say he should have to be happy, yet he has no emotions whatsoever. He goes through life in a state of numbness.

Then, one day, he starts going to therapy sessions for diseases he does not have. Here he begins to feel pain, shame, horror, infinite sadness, all the bad things in life… but the very fact that he is feeling fills him with glee. He becomes addicted to support groups and goes to them the way an addict uses their drug of choice. This portion of the film is a delightful bit of satiric comedy that I was very fond of. It’s the sort of daring, brilliant dark comedy that we just don’t see anymore these days.

But then Ed meets a character played by Brad Pitt. I did not love or hate Brad’s performance. It sort of just hangs there. With Brad, Ed starts “Fight Club”. This is, ironically, the weakest stuff in the film. The movie never reallly reveals what the point of fight club is. Maybe that is its point, okay, cool. But.. it just didn’t work for me. It didn’t work half as well as the support group stuff had. It struck me as quite stupid, really.

From there, the film just seems to unravel. So does Edward’s life. He discovers something about himself, a plot twist that made me groan. By the end, the film seems to be trying to pass itself off as some sort of poor man’s answer to “The Sixth Sense”. I guess the ending all makes sense, but I didn’t feel it was needed. It felt like the filmmakers were not secure enough in their story to trust it and instead felt the need to throw in some tricks.

Maybe it’s one of those films that I will appreciate more on a further viewing and, I must say, I am sorta interested in seeing it again. But on my first experience, I was left a bit disappointed. I loved many aspects of the movie, even after it started to careen out of control, but I was ultimately left cold by it.

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1999 / 124 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Pushing Tin is a great movie that falters a bit near the ending, but it is still a pretty great movie.

As many of you know, I think that John Cusack can do little wrong and he is superb here as Nick Falzone. Nick is the best air traffic controller in New York, and he’d be the first one to tell you. “They’re going to have to start making planes faster to keep me interested” he tells a colleague toward the beginning. He is satisfied with his job, his life, with his station in life. (Even if his kids are little more than props, we see them a grand total of twice in the entire movie).

Then a dark cloud arrives in Nick’s life, in the form of Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton), a controller who is possibly even better than Nick. He once stood underneath a plane during takeoff to “see what wake turbulence was like”. Another alpha male in Nick’s pack, needless to say, is not a welcome thing, and soon the two of them are engaged in a pissing contest to determine which is the bigger man (not LITERALLY, of course).

The film does a good job of demonstrating just how dangerous such a contest of masculinity can be. Macho posturing can cost a person many things, including his job, his wife and much of his self esteem. Much of it is very, very funny and quite sharp. Cusack seems to specialize in such sharp, richly observed films about various aspects of the human condition, and this one is absolutely no different. Both Cusack and Thornton do great jobs with their respective roles, particularly when the two men confront one another about a certain marital infidelity. I would not dream of giving this moment away, but it is wonderful and the acting is a joy to watch. The other actors in the film are very accomplished as well. Cate Blanchett does a fine job as a woman trying to keep herself sane in the midst of this madness and Angelina Jolie swaggers in and steals control of every scene she’s in as Thornton’s…. “interesting” wife.

In short, “Pushing Tin” is a sharp, funny take on the damage men do to one another in the name of their masculinity, and definitely worth seeing.

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1999 / 121 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“My name is Lester Burnham. I am forty-two years old. In less than a year, I’ll be dead.”

With these words opens the most hypnotic, poetic, life-affirming film of the year, and easily one of the best films of the decade.

The genius of “American Beauty” is not easy to describe. It is not easy to explain. The movie is not like your average film. It is, in fact, a movie unlike any that I have seen. More than anything I believe this suggests that the film is well on its way to becoming a classic.

It is a simple tale. It is the tale of a neighborhood. More specifically, it is the story of a family. The Burnhams. Lester Burnham (the main focus of the film, its imperfect heart, in fact) is a man facing the middle of his life with little or no interest. He’s the sort of man whom people don’t remember meeting. His ordinariness is the bane of his existence.

His wife, Carolyn, would seem to the source of many of his problems, but that would be unfair. She has a few problems of her own. She is better at hiding them, that’s all. So good that she barely acknowledges them to herself.

Their daughter, Janie, is perhaps the most well-adjusted. She has made no illusions about life. She is insecure, unhappy with herself, and searching for something better. Something which her parents begin to do through the course of the movie.

“American Beauty” is a rare, beautiful movie. It is a movie that could easily be depressing. As Lester tells us when we first meet him, he is doomed. Thus Lester’s metamorphosis becomes poignant and sad. As we see him striving, experimenting and discovering, we know that it will all end much too soon. As Lester, Kevin Spacey delivers a marvelous performance. The sort of performance that The Academy might overlook, but which the history of cinema certainly will not. This is a daring, brilliant performance. The sort of thing so good that a lesser actor might get typecast for it.

In fact, all the performances are superb. Annette Bening brings sadness and pain to a role which could have easily degenerated into yet another domineering bitch. It’s really quite amazing. As are the other performances in the picture: Wes Bentley as Ricky Fitts (a character we don’t quite know what to make of), Thora Birch as Janie, Mena Suvari as the seemingly-well-adjusted cheerleader (who isn’t quite as healthy as she seems) and the rest all give their all, imbuing American Beauty with amazing tenderness and intensity.

The film is, from beginning to end, a triumph of script, visuals, direction, acting, editing, you name it. This is a film focusing not on special effects or plot, but instead on humanity itself. It triumphs because it shines its light onto us and makes us examine our own soul.

And that is the most special effect of all.

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1999 / 114 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

From the trailers for “Three Kings”, you wouldn’t know what a groundbreaking film it actually is, but in a year of wild rides, this is one of the wildest.

The most surprising thing, however, is that beneath its astounding style, there beats a great deal of heart.

“Three Kings” concerns three men who find a map in the ass of an Iraqi soldier. Shortly thereafter, they decide to pursue the map to a bunker which they believe is filled with gold bullion which Saddam has purloined from the rich Kuwaitis. Since the war is over and they will all soon be returning to their day jobs, they decide to do so with a little money in their pockets. So off they go, under the command of Archie Gates (George Clooney) to find the gold and go home rich.

On the way, however, they are forced to confront the harsh reality of the war and how Saddam is treating the peasants they encounter along the way. It is here that the movie really takes off. The film has a gutsy, ambitious style and it is also quite a bit smarter than it starts out being. The film does a good job of showing the consequences of violence, both inside the body and inside the mind, and it does a good job of showing the unexpected consequences of growing a conscience as well when these soldiers soon find that doing the right thing is hardly ever easy.

This is ballsy, on-target filmmaking with a lot to say. The action scenes are intense, exhilarating, absurd, balletic and they actually matter. Through all the action scenes in the film, you remember the sight of that one bullet as it passes through a man’s chest, opening pockets of bile. Throughout the movie, that is never far from your mind, and therefore the actions onscreen make you squirm a little more than you usually would. This film has everything: drama, comedy, action and suspense, often in the same scene. All the performances are right on target and not a moment of the film feels phony. The tone veers wildly between scenes at times, but we get the sense that it is intentional. Life does not adhere to a single tone at all times. Why must our movies? The film makes its villains imposing without demonizing them. In fact, it goes to great pains to show us the humanity of most all its characters. It asks some tough questions and never goes for the easy answers.

In a world filled with light movies that bounce on the brain but rarely penetrate, “Three Kings” is a wonder to behold.

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