2004 / 130 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

It begins promisingly enough, and now really is the time to unleash a remake of a movie that is still as surprisingly topical as the original “Manchurian Candidate” on an unsuspecting public. The movie begins with ominous visuals, a surreal twist on political partisanship and debates that could actually be something you might see on CNN one of these days. After all, the current polarized political situation is ripe for a biting satire and timely thriller like this, one that uses events like 9/11 and the rampant undercurrent of paranoia in this country to make a cracking good thriller with up to the minute undertones and some real social relevance. The film begins with edgy ideas like these…and then it seems to go to sleep.

The original “Manchurian Candidate” is still a ballsy, caustic and brilliant thriller. It’s part satire, part drama, part nail-biting suspense thriller and it’s pitch black all the way. In fact, I think it needs to get more credit. It is a movie that definitely deserves its due. When I first watched it, I was actually shocked that this film could get made in 1962. It’s so edgy and vibrant and brilliant, bustling with, what I am certain, were topical issues such as Communism and McCarthyism and paranoia and brainwashing. It still feels relevant and topical today, in fact. Would that this new version of “The Manchurian Candidate” had half the guts the original possessed. Even taken on its own terms, this new “Manchurian Candidate” inspires more yawns than shock. The plot is much the same as that of the first film: a war veteran is plagued by terrible dreams involving a Medal of Honor winner (Leiv Schreiber). In those dreams, he sees the man kill two members of their lost platoon. These dreams lead that veteran (Denzel Washington) to stumble onto a plot involving brainwashing and political intrigue and more than one murder committed on home soil. With this plot, one could definitely satirize the current political climate and craft a thriller that hits very close to home.

But Jonathan Demme seems uninterested in taking this film to the ends that it almost begs to be taken to. He seems more interested in creating a woozy, surreal movie that weaves from one odd scene to another without crafting much of a bridge. He’s great with the surreal imagery. But it would be nice if we were actually hooked by these images and involved by them, rather than just saying “That was messed up” and feeling nothing more about them. In fact, the dreamlike sequences of the movie just don’t stick with us, and that’s a problem since they make up so much of this film’s running length. Another problem is that the politics that make up such a large point of this film are so murky and hard to follow. Not only that, but they are about as much fun as sitting through two hours of C-SPAN. No, I’m not kidding. I did a lot of shuffling in my seat.

Some of the performances are quite good. Meryl Streep is passionate but woefully underutilized. Leiv is solid but still doesn’t quite involve us. He’s got some great moments here, but the performance feels less organic, less human than Laurence Harvey’s brilliant portrayal of an unlikable and rather unsympathetic yet riveting man in the original film. Leiv seems like a detached zombie for the majority of the film, which I suppose is one way to take the character, but it really doesn’t give us much of a reason to care about him. Denzel Washington is just the wrong choice, in my opinion, for the Major Marco character. He’s played this seemingly delusional crusader role so many times that there are no surprises left in it for us. We feel that we’ve seen him do this before, and we have little rooting interest in him. Not only that, but the way in which some characters in this film are brainwashed is a lot less interesting than it was in the original. In the original, the methods were simple psychological conditioning. Here we get some fanciful crap involving microchip implants and drilling into the human head (and I can’t be the only one thinking of “Ghostbusters” lines when the main character has a hole drilled into his head).

This movie pays lip service to all the issues that are being discussed in this election and I liked how the idea of terrorist cabals in this version has taken the place of the Communist threat in the original film (I feel that certain politicians use the whole vague threat of terrorism as their forefathers used the whole vague threat of Communism, and to the same ends…the only reason they get away with it is because terrorists have actually attacked us, where the Communists never really did) but the movie never really explores this idea the way you hope it will. Many such ideas are picked up and just when I got excited and thought this movie might use this fictional forum as a way to tangentially explore them, they are discarded without really being put to any good use. The film suggests interesting issues of national security and corporate political influence, and then falls back on the usual, tired plot machinations and the usual set of bad guys that every other political thriller seems to use. I was amazed at just how boring most of this film was. Maybe it would be better to someone who hadn’t seen the original, I don’t know. But the whole political landscape was put to better use in films like “Fahrenheit 9/11” or, if you prefer a fictional thriller that really goes for the jugular, “Spartan”. There are some differences and some new twists that make the plot of this one decidedly different from the original, but these new twists don’t really enhance the story being told, and they really don’t pack as much punch as the original story did.

Maybe it’s a little unfair to compare this film to the film on which it was based. Perhaps. But don’t the filmmakers bring that upon themselves as soon as they choose to remake a classic film in the first place? Just a thought. Even if the two movies were unrelated, I’d be unsympathetic to a movie that is less topical, shocking and mesmerizing than a thriller made at the height of the Cold War. A remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” isn’t a terrible idea. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s a pretty good idea. But how anyone, especially the director of “The Silence of the Lambs” can use that source material to make a film as dull as this is frankly beyond me.

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2004 / 109 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

The first time I saw “The Bourne Identity” I had just had my wisdom teeth removed a couple days beforehand. Hence, I was hopped up on painkillers and went in and out of consciousness during the course of the film. I didn’t remember much of it after the credits had rolled and, in the intervening years, I basically decided that the movie was a bore. Why else would I have lapsed into a coma during its running length?

Two weeks ago, at Jones’s apartment, in fact, I watched the film again. It was like seeing it for the first time, since I remembered only sketchy details of my initial viewing. And it, quite frankly, blew me away. How could I have slept through a film so involving, so richly entertaining and thought provoking? How could I have missed a film that was like a Bond movie with all the bullshit nicely drained away? I don’t know, but I now own it on DVD, so I have rectified that mistake, at least.

So it was with some anticipation that I attended “The Bourne Supremacy”. You’ll be happy to know that this time I was fully alert through the entire film. And this film is as intricate as the first and nearly as involving. For the majority of its running length, it’s one of the best spy thrillers ever crafted. But it’s not without a major stumbling block.

But first, let me attend to matters of plot. The plot involves a sabotaged CIA operation that results in the deaths of two CIA agents working under one Pamela Landy (Joan Allen, tough as nails without being melodramatically so). For some reason, retired CIA agent (and amnesia victim) Jason Bourne’s fingerprint is found at the scene of the crime. Pamela becomes very interested in Bourne and the defunct sub-agency that he once worked for (known by the code name of Treadstone). It seems they might have had something to do with a shady Russian oil magnate, as well as the disappearance of twenty million dollars of CIA funds. But once an assassin pays a visit to Jason Bourne, he comes out of retirement to find out what exactly is going on, and why assassins and government agencies are suddenly interested in him.

The film has an edge and an uncanny ability to generate suspense, just the ingredients that have been missing from most of the James Bond catalogue for the past twenty years or so. Bourne is cold, methodical. He makes Bond look like a pansy, in fact. He can handle himself with almost preternatural agility during a fight or a chase, and he’s got more ingenuity than most movie spies. In short, he’s believable. Damon inhabits this role very well. He has a focus and gravity that you may not expect from his youthful good looks. He’s excellent here, one of the few of his generation that could pull this role off so effortlessly (then again, for those paying attention, Damon has been maturing into a magnificent screen presence over the past several years). Then again, the acting is fine across the board in this film from Joan Allen’s businesslike performance to the dark corners of Brian Cox’s Ward Abbot. There’s also some great work by Julia Stiles and Karl Urban. The production design is also noteworthy. Instead of taking place in fancy balls and upper crust social functions, like so many overblown spy films, this one grounds itself in real-world locales: grocery stores and drab apartment buildings, unspectacular hotels and dingy basements, even CIA offices so realistic you can nearly smell the coffee percolating and the warm plastic of computers at work. It’s these details that lend gravity to the events of the film, which helps ground us in the reality and breathless excitement of the moment at hand. They help us relate to the film in a way we might not relate to a more spectacular set of locales and events. Every moment of the film is given just the right amount of intensity to thoroughly hook us, but never so much that it makes the film seem melodramatic. It also deals honestly and intriguingly with themes of identity and revenge and corruption, finding unique spins on these subjects about which I had nearly assumed we knew everything.

However, all is not perfect. The film is hampered by one major problem, and that is that the action sequences are shot and edited at far too quick a pace. They are edited into incoherence, in fact, which is something of a flaw. A nice, rapid action sequence is great, but these go by in a blur, and I’m not even exaggerating. Each sequence seems like it has some amazing things going on it, but what is the point of staging an amazing action scene if you’re going to make it indecipherable with rapid camera movements, camera angles that are too close to the action, and editing that would make even Michael Bay confused. I can appreciate the fact that director Paul Greengrass is trying to create immediacy in these scenes and to let us experience these bewildering moments, as they must appear to the characters involved in the scenes themselves. But I must say the experiment is a failure. The effect of these scenes is simply to confuse and frustrate the viewer, even causing me to have a headache by the time the film had finished.

Yet despite this major qualm, I must admit that “The Bourne Supremacy”, like its predecessor (though not quite as well) puts a refreshing spin and a sense of danger back into the spy genre. These films strip away all the irritating, cheesy ingredients and provide fascinating, character-driven entertainment that actually respects the audience’s brain without sacrificing any of the excitement and adding real-world flavor. If not for the shoddy action editing, “The Bourne Supremacy” might have been a miraculous film. As is, however, it is merely very good.

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2004 / 91 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

The thing that distinguishes Will Farrell from many of his Saturday Night Live comrades is simple. The others always seemed to be about ready to burst out laughing during any sketch. Farrell, on the other hand, seems so wholeheartedly committed to whatever he’s doing that he doesn’t even seem to be in on the joke. He is serious about his comedy, and that makes us laugh even harder when he does something funny, because he seems so absolutely unaware that it even is funny.

It is this level of commitment that helps “Anchorman” work so well. It’s a slight piffle of a movie that really doesn’t have much in the way of plot. But what it lacks in plot, it more than makes up for in sheer volume of laughs. It’s basically the story of a dunderheaded ladies man and male chauvinist who rules the airwaves of San Diego as a local anchorman. Farrell’s Ron Burgundy is lord of the manor until a foxy new female journalist arrives with an eye toward becoming anchorwoman in a time when there are no anchorwomen. This, of course, creates a problem. You’d think that the joke of male chauvinism would have beaten like a dead horse by now, and you’d mostly be right, but there is still a surprising amount of life in this premise, mostly because it’s hard to believe that there were ever men so beef headed considering the era of female empowerment in which we now live. Much of the jokes arise from this notion, but I think the film works best when it abandons all notion of topicality at all and just reaches for good, old-fashioned silliness. The sillier this movie gets, the more sublimely it seems to work. The off kilter and surreal moments of the film (an all-out rumble between the city’s anchors, an encounter with a surly biker, a dog that speaks Spanish, and the character of Brick Tamlyn) are the ones that really resonate. The rest are cute and cause a few chuckles, but are never quite as inspiring.

As I said before, the reason the film works is because of the commitment of the cast. Will Farrell is damn near perfect as Ron Burgundy, as I already mentioned, but I was surprised by the steady work of Christina Applegate as his foil, Veronica Corningstone. She proves nearly as adept as Farrell of handling a potentially outrageous character with just the right balance. I also loved Steve Carell as the aptly named Brick Tamlyn. Brick is the meteorologist at Channel 2 (the station where Burgundy works) and he’s got an IQ so low that he is technically retarded. Virtually everything coming out of Brick’s mouth is simply hilarious, it’s delivered with a perfect, childlike pitch and seems to come from a dimension totally unlike our own. (One of my favorite of his strange remarks was “I ate a big, red candle.”) Paul Rudd and Vince Vaughn are also great in their smaller roles.

However, the film’s inconsequential nature is its biggest stumbling block. It’s cute, and it’s often fall-down funny, with big laughs and unexpected cameos, but once it’s over, you’re really not too sure why you bothered with it. Sure, “Anchorman” has a general tone of inspired wackiness and sublime silliness. I’m just not sure that it has much relevance or repeat value. It’s fun enough, but I’m not sure it will have the staying power of a movie like “Used Cars”, for example. It all seems a little too light and bright and breezy; even in comparison to this year’s own “Eurotrip” (a film I keep returning to and am always amazed to find still has the power to keep me thoroughly delighted).

Then again, it does have a joke about a men’s cologne named “Sex Panther”, so you never know.

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2004 / 127 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

The first “Spider-Man” took me by surprise and left me breathless. In retrospect, it does not deserve the “A+” I awarded it, but it’s still a great movie and I still love the characters and the plot and all the elements that worked so seamlessly in it. It’s a rare action movie with emotional heft, and we have far too few of those these days.

The sequel still has some of that emotional heft and it still packs a punch, but it didn’t leave me as breathless with excitement and as completely thrilled and spellbound as the first film. It’s got some wonderful moments and certain scenes of this film play better than any comic book film ever made but, overall, I’d rank it several steps lower than “Batman”, a couple steps below the “X-Men” films, and certainly a few steps beneath the original “Spider-Man” which, while not a perfect film, at least left me with the impression that it was for several months.

The plot is essentially this: Peter Parker finds that his superpowers are complicating his life to a very frustrating point. He can’t hold a steady job because he’s always got to stop a robbery or save someone from a fire or vanquish a super villain. He can’t get very close to the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) because he might risk putting her in jeopardy. And his grades in college are slipping as well. Soon, because of the enormous psychological weight of this, he finds that even his powers are suffering. This comes to him almost as a blessing, however. When Tobey Maguire tosses his Spidey suit into a trash can (don’t bitch at me, it was in the trailer) I think everyone in the audience can see where he’s coming from. Oh, and Doctor Octopus is in this too.

While I appreciate the fact that this film focuses mainly on the psychological and emotional ramifications of being a superhero, and it does prove rather refreshing, I think the film almost dwells a little too much on this. So much so that Doctor Octopus (played with a perfect balance by Alfred Molina), a fine and psychologically interesting character in his own right, becomes almost a throwaway character. He’s really little more than a device for discovering Parker’s shortcomings and examining his problems. It’s an interesting technique, but I could’ve used more of Doc Ock. He’s always been my favorite of Spider Man’s adversaries, and I was a little bummed out that he didn’t get to do more or get more screen time. He doesn’t necessarily need to rule the roost as The Joker did the first “Batman”, but a few more villainous acts would have been nice. I loved the way Molina invested the character with a sense of insanity and a sense of tragedy, and kept his emotions recognizable even as he risked going over the top. And the effects work on his tentacles is nothing short of astounding. They can rip the door off a bank safe, but they’ve also got a delicate touch that allows them to light a cigar or remove a pair of sunglasses with a subtle flair. The tentacles, in fact, are almost characters in themselves. It’s just a shame we weren’t treated to a few more scenes of this stuff.

I also loved the character of Harry Osborne, played by James Franco. Franco is getting very comfortable in this role and it’s very, very interesting to see how the personality of this character has developed since last time. There are a few too many moments of his Spider Man obsession (less would have been more here, I’m afraid) but his father’s death has definitely made Harry a more intriguing character. He’s one of the movie’s strengths, and I was surprisingly interested in his motivations and the choices he made here. He’s a great character.

So is Peter Parker, but the movie dwells a little too long on his personal problems, and does so in a rather clunky manner. This guy gets dumped on a few too many times, if you ask me. It’s melodramatic overkill. He loses a job, gets a lecture from a teacher, doesn’t have rent money…by the third time he gets stiffed while trying to grab a cocktail, I was thinking that enough was enough. If I were Pete, I think I’d kill myself. (Though the movie never really makes it clear exactly what Spider Man’s powers are, which is another fault. Yes, he can make webs and glide among buildings, but when one of his webs fails and he falls the length of a skyscraper only to get up and be perfectly fine I was a little confused. Is he invincible or what? So maybe he can’t kill himself.) The movie makes Peter’s character so frustrated that I, too, was frustrated right along with him. I mean, can’t the guy get a freakin’ break? The movie goes too far out of its way to give him a hard time and then goes a little too far out of its way to give him a nice ending (it’s not all wine and roses, don’t get me wrong…).

And, really, that was my problem with the film: overkill. There’s just a little too much of everything here. There are a few too many speeches about the nature of being a hero (I thought Cliff Robertson’s line about “great power” and “great responsibility” summed that up nicely, here the filmmakers are just beating a dead horse) and a few too many beats about the choices that we make in life. Less would definitely have been more. If the movie could’ve been a bit subtler in this regard, it would have been a lot more satisfying. The first film was subtle and mostly understated and it worked more efficiently. It also had better pacing, with every scene flowing organically to the next, unlike in this film where certain things feel shoehorned in. Oh, and there are a couple action sequences here, as well, and they are all rather stunning. The elevated train scene is very effective, and I loved the thwarted bank robbery. But it’s almost like the movie isn’t interested in those scenes. The movie is more attentive to the little moments than it is to the big scenes. It takes great care with the few action sequences it has, but even with the inclusion of those, the film seems irredeemably talky. Yes, I know, it’s nice that the film isn’t all bluster and explosions, but I would have liked a little more bluster and explosion. This is a summer action movie, after all. “Minority Report” had plenty of emotional heft and meditative dialogue and it was still packed with action. And the action climax of the film is a bit of a letdown. I won’t go into further detail, so as not to ruin it for the three of you that haven’t seen it, but it seems that something capable of causing an unlimited power source and nuclear fusion would be a little harder to get rid of (there, those of you who’ve seen the movie know what I’m talking about and the rest of you shouldn’t have a clue).

All in all, it’s a movie with some great moments of reflection and some great acting. But it could’ve used a little more oomph, a little more excitement, and a few less redundant dialogue-driven moments. It’s a little talky and a little clumsy, even if it is rather great at times. And it didn’t leave me breathless with amazement and mentally stimulated as the first “Spider-Man” did. I know the screenplay of this film has an Oscar winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner involved, but perhaps what this movie really needed was an alleged hack like David Koepp. He had a masterful sense of pacing and a real feel for the emotional without overdoing it that kept the first “Spider-Man” head and shoulders above this one, and maybe that only comes with doing as many summer movies as Koepp has, and doing most of them with the precision of a Swiss watch (as Koepp has).

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2004 / 112 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

No, I am not a raving liberal. At least, I don’t fancy myself as such. There are some things on which I have a liberal slant and some topics on which I do not. But there is one thing I must say and that is that Michael Moore’s most recent documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11” demands to be seen. Moore’s film is the reason that our soldiers are allegedly fighting, my friends, and anyone who deems this film “un-American” or “unpatriotic” is a complete and utter moron. Moore supports the troops, as we all do. The people currently serving in Iraq are our brothers, our sisters, our friends and neighbors. But they are also people. We can’t forget that. Moore takes the time to interview the actual soldiers serving over there, and he presents a surprisingly fair portrayal of them. Some of them come off as jarhead meatheads, true. But many of them also come off as simple people stuck in a terrible situation, in a war that has no foreseeable end, as people who just want to come home and don’t really know why we are over there in the first place. Sure, he includes some footage of American soldiers teasing and taunting Iraqi war criminals. But he includes a lot more footage of American soldiers that have been killed in the war and the American veterans with lost appendages that lay forgotten in hospital wards.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” is a great movie and I don’t care if you are Democrat, Republican or none of the above, this is a movie that will move you, that will force you to take a side, that will open your eyes and make you think. If you don’t believe the points that Moore is making in this film, then that’s fine. Moore wants to challenge you to investigate them. Moore wants to present the findings he has come to and he wants you to make up your own damn mind. Michael Moore may be a bit rabid for my taste (personally I thought his Oscar acceptance speech in 2003 made him come off as a bit of a buffoon) but I still admire him for one simple reason: HE CARES. He cares so deeply that it hurts him not to do something about the issues he sees. He cares so much that he has to make a movie that will shake you up and leave you feeling uneasy. He uses humor and sarcasm and great wit to get you interested in the movie, to get you settled in, and then he hits you with some truly disturbing facts that he has found. Perhaps he does go a bit far sometimes. There are perhaps one or two too many shots of a mother crying over the loss of her son in Iraq. But, dammit, this is a true moment and it is truly heartbreaking. He wants to rub your nose in it and make you admit that it’s happening. Michael Moore has made a movie that demands you to leave your comfort zone and actually take a look at the world around you. He has made a movie to make you stop and think. And he has made the most riveting documentary I have ever seen. I didn’t much care for Bush before I saw this movie, I won’t lie about that. But now I really dislike the man. I can’t say if I was really going to vote before I saw this movie, but now I can’t in good conscience NOT vote. I don’t know if John Kerry is going to be a very good president, but I’m willing to take a chance on him after seeing the atrocities that Bush has committed and the strange bedfellows that the Bush family has apparently had for several decades.

Again, I don’t know if all the facts he points out in this movie are true, but he raises far too many doubts about far too many things for me to disregard this movie entirely. It may smack of propaganda on occasion, but it’s damn effective propaganda. It’s the sort of movie that makes you cry and laugh and, above all, makes you angry. And that’s a great thing. It’s a very admirable thing. And he doesn’t really manipulate things all that often. More often that not, Moore just allows the actual footage to speak for itself. He lets you see Bush’s speeches and decide for yourself. He takes footage that was already out there, from sources like the Fox News Network and CNN and a plethora of network broadcasts, and he compiles them into a handy little guide for your perusal. Let’s say that you disbelieve his claims about our government’s alliance with the Saudi Arabian oil businessmen, one of the more damning subjects in this documentary. Well, if the American government doesn’t have an alliance with them, why is it that Secret Service agents arrive to ask him questions when he is conducting an interview across the street from the Saudi consulate? I highly doubt that was staged. It certainly doesn’t seem that it was. If Moore HAS finessed the facts to make his case, at least the facts are so massive that you will feel the need to investigate them for yourself. If you don’t believe the things Moore has to say, then he challenges you to find out for yourself. (By the way, if these were complete fabrications, we would hear about the libel lawsuits leveled against Moore, wouldn’t we? If he did say something completely fictitious about our current president, wouldn’t there be a massive uproar from the president himself? Where are these things then? Eh? Just a thought.) Knowledge is power. And it’s high time the American people stop acting like mindless sheep, myself particularly included.

I’m sorry that I’ve mostly gone on in great detail about this film made me feel personally. But politics is, after all, one of those things that are intensely personal for most people. That’s the way I feel and I’m sure you feel that way too. I’m not trying to get you to conform to my beliefs. America is founded on the ability of every citizen to make up his or her own damn mind. Well, folks, use that power. Wield this executive authority that has been granted you by the founding fathers. See this movie and then think it over, decide for yourself what YOU believe, but see the movie. It will galvanize you one way or another. If it doesn’t, then you don’t have a soul. I sincerely believe that. There’s no way you can be human if you can see this movie and not feel one way or the other about the subjects it brings up. I can’t review the facts in the movie, because I have not done Moore’s research. But I can and am reviewing the effectiveness of the movie itself. And the movie is undeniably effective. There is imagery and detail or extraordinary, haunting power here. You owe it to yourself to see this movie.

Most years don’t make even ONE mandatory movie. 2004 has, thus far, given us two of them: “The Passion of the Christ” and “Fahrenheit 9/11” and both movies are really propaganda trying to convince their audience to feel one way or another about a certain subject. In fact, these films seem to be covering the two most taboo subjects in modern society: politics and religion. It’s a very exciting time to be a filmgoer. And I am so thrilled to see that people are not shying away from these movies. “The Passion” was a massive hit, grossing hundreds of millions in very quick time. The theater I initially tried to see “Fahrenheit” in was sold out for two days in advance, so I drove across town to a theater where it soon sold out…in the middle of the day on a gorgeous Saturday. Thank God that people are actually attending these important films. Thank God people like Michael Moore and Mel Gibson had the gall to make them. And of the two, I believe Michael Moore’s is the more powerful of the two. If you have to choose only one, make it “Fahrenheit 9/11”. Sure, religion is fairly important. But I think that maybe making sure your country is heading down the right path is a little more important. It’s just my opinion, though. You find your own.

Incidentally, if you are blown away by this movie, I’d like to recommend a fake documentary on the American political process that is also immensely powerful: “Bob Roberts” made by Tim Robbins with a firm grasp of Orwellian social satire. It’s a satire so pitch black that it’s actually disturbing. And, like this one, it will definitely make you reconsider a few things.

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2004 / 128 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I loved this movie. Really, I loved it. But I won’t delude you that it achieves perfection. Much as I love it, it’s got a couple minor defects that keep me from recommending this film as whole-heartedly as I might have otherwise. As it is, it feels like a great movie that just needs another pass through the hands of an editor. Then again, a lot of Spielberg’s most recent films have felt that way. “A.I.” was a magnificent, riveting science fiction wonder…until the final act when things started to go awry. “Minority Report” was a bleak, ballsy, exciting bit of fiction…until the denouement that I thought could’ve been a bit more spectacular. And now we have “The Terminal”, which is a more intimate and character-driven film from Steven Spielberg, like the best of his most recent work (“Catch Me if You Can”) and yet still carries the modern Spielberg curse of just not knowing when to quit.

But first, let me extol the virtues of the film, lest I turn you away from it entirely, which is certainly not my attention. If nothing else, this is one of the most intelligent films currently unspooling at national multiplexes and it definitely deserves your consideration. The film is the story of Viktor Navorsky (Tom Hanks) a man visiting New York from a tiny country that I believe was once a part of the Soviet Union. He arrives at a New York airport just as his country’s government has been overthrown in a violent coup. Thanks to the fact that his country no longer technically exists, a web of red tape has suddenly come to surround Viktor. His passport is invalid. Hence he cannot progress forward to New York City and he cannot go home. He is a man without a country, and he can only live in the airport terminal until this whole mess gets sorted out. Unfortunately, his country remains in a state of flux for nearly a year.

In this time, we get to know Viktor very well and we get to see him adjust to the situation he is suddenly trapped in. He makes friends with the denizens of the airport, including a baggage handler (Chi McBride), a food service worker (Diego Luna), a beautiful immigration worker (Zoe Saldana) and a crotchety old janitor (Kumar Pallona). It’s a slight, heart-warming little tale that is mostly saved from degenerating into sappiness by the strength of the performances and the general ingenuity of its script. The film bounces lightly along and even manages to touch tangentially on a few sticky subjects as it goes. Despite the fact that this is a slight tale, Spielberg seems to be relishing it, and it is definitely a change of pace for the filmmaker. Steve has never quite done a movie like this before, and it’s interesting to see what Spielberg makes of what is essentially a low-key comedy in one single setting and a showcase for its leading man.

And, of course, that leading man does a brilliant job. The great thing about Tom Hanks, and the reason that I think he’s the best actor movies have ever had, is that he can make us forget that he is Tom Hanks so damn effortlessly. Every role has his unmistakable stamp upon it, but since the early Nineties I have began to notice that Tom Hanks performances are sort of like snowflakes: no two are ever the same. In “The Terminal” Tom makes you forget that he is the biggest movie star in the world and instead has us completely convinced that he is just a lowly foreign man trapped in an airport. His accent is spot on and his facial expressions are priceless. In a way, his performance reminded me of silent movie comics, especially toward the beginning of the film where his character knows no English. Even when he learns English, however, his character is mostly displayed in what he does and how he does it, what we see him learn and in the little triumphs he makes along the way. It’s not hard at all to imagine Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin doing much the same with this role as Hanks does, and if that isn’t immense praise, I don’t know what is. It’s a simple comic film and it lives or dies based on Hanks’s performance. Because of him, it definitely lives.

The other truly great performance in this film belongs to Kumar Pallona. Kumar should be familiar to all of you who’ve seen “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” (and even “Bottle Rocket”, where he was the safecracker). He’s a little, old Indian man with a very thick accent and a very distinctive look to him. He is absolutely great as the suspicious, devious and crotchety janitor in the airport. The scene where he watches people slip on the floor he has just washed should be enough to have you eating out of the palm of his hand. Along with Hanks, Kumar gives this film a wealth of heart, but he doesn’t do it in any obvious, hamfisted way. He’s a sly one, our Kumar, and he’s a glory to behold here. But everyone in the cast is largely wonderful. I’m not usually a huge fan of Catherine Zeta Jones, but she is perfectly cast here. My only qualms with her are in the way that her character is written. There is an arc given to her character which I enjoyed, until the film did a complete 180 and had her go right back to the way she had been for very shaky reasons. Sure, it might be realistic that her character would do as she did, but this isn’t exactly a film where realism is a prerequisite. By the end of this film, we have expected the unexpected and the whimsical, and what is done with her character, especially after the film has done so much to earn another life for her, seems like something of a slap in the face. I liked her too much to see her continue in the rut she had made for herself. I wanted her to have the life she would’ve had with Tom. But oh well. That’s one of my minor quibbles.

Also perfectly cast in this film is Stanley Tucci, as the hard-hearted head of Homeland Security within the airport. He’s a great foil for Hanks’s character, and Tucci turns in a great performance, but I felt that the film went a little too far in making him a villain. It would’ve been more effective if he’d been a little more human. I doubt anyone would do some of the things Tucci devises to do to Hanks in this film, at least I hope not, otherwise I am totally against Homeland Security, no matter how many buildings explode. But the supporting cast led by Kumar and enhanced by the lovely performances of especially Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna really shine through in this movie. And the script is largely clever and witty and filled with human sentiment. Except for a couple mistakes it makes with the characters played by Tucci and Zeta Jones, of course, and the fact that it has the perfect ending and then goes on for another five minutes. The last five minutes aren’t really necessary and I would’ve preferred it if the film had been a bit more open-ended. Hence, my claim that this film suffers from the same affliction as most of Spielberg’s recent efforts (except for “Catch Me If You Can”, which was above reproach).

But even with its occasional rough patches, “The Terminal” is a great movie with some truly great performances and a lot of heart and ingenuity. It makes the most of its limited setting and its small cast of players and it had me completely riveted for the entire length of its running time. But if you’d rather watch a bunch of idiots getting smacked by dodgeballs, then I guess that’s your funeral.

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2004 / 119 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

When “Pitch Black” arrived in theaters in early 1999, it was a breath of fresh air. Here was a science fiction thriller of uncommon intelligence and economy, a tightly wound, suspenseful thriller with unique characters. It was a B movie in the best possible sense of the word. It had everything that was necessary to make it a successful story and nothing extraneous. It reminded me of the early work of James Cameron, in fact, which is a pretty dandy compliment.

Now we have the sequel to “Pitch Black” and it is pretty much everything that the first movie wasn’t. The first was tight and economical; this one is broad and slack. The first one told a small story in close quarters and was dripping with suspense. This one sets out to tell an epic tale, but gets caught up in redundancies and dull situations. This one hasn’t got an iota of suspense or even an iota of sense.

It also hasn’t got a revelatory performance by Vin Diesel. In the first movie, Diesel was a hungry, young actor who still had to make his mark. He gave a great performance as Riddick because he had to. He gave a dangerous and unpredictable performance that was one of the benefits of that earlier film. In the subsequent years, however, Diesel has fashioned something of a persona that he feels he must adhere to in each and every film. His character in “The Fast and the Furious” is basically the same as his character in “XXX”. He’s no longer modifying his performances to suit the characters. Instead he is modifying the characters to suit his own persona. In “Pitch Black”, he became Riddick. In “The Chronicles of Riddick”, he transforms Riddick into the average Vin Diesel character, one with a surly, macho attitude and a witty catchphrase for each bad guy he excises. He’s no longer the same guy he was in the first movie, nor is he that guy as he would have been shaped by the events of that movie. Instead, he is a boring action figure with a gravelly voice and some truly awful dialogue.

No, Diesel isn’t the only thing wrong with this movie. He isn’t even the main problem. The main problem is the plot. At no time did I really understand why characters were doing what they were doing and at no time did the movie really give me a reason to care. The plot of the film, on paper, seems pretty cool: a group of religious warriors are moving through the universe converting every planet they encounter to their own beliefs and killing everyone who will not convert. It’s a great idea for a science fiction thriller, sort of like The Crusades in Outer Space. Unfortunately, instead of taking this idea and using it to its full potential to, like the best sci-fi, expose our own foibles and hold a distorted funhouse mirror up to humanity’s own beliefs and shortcomings, the film devolves into a dull action-fest. Instead of making the most of the film’s potential, we are treated to some really terrible computer effects and some wildly incoherent action sequences. Even the action scenes that this movie can’t screw up with bad editing it manages to mangle with inappropriate lighting or having them take place in silence. None of these effects ever enhance the material, they only ever detract. A scene about a group of people having to make it somewhere before the sun hits them could be cool if the film didn’t seem to change the rules about how the sunlight moves or how intense the heat is within the sequence itself. It’s hard to feel suspense when you have no idea what the hell is going on.

That’s the main problem with “Riddick”. It’s all action, and we have no reference for the action, so we feel absolutely nothing. I actually enjoyed the first ten minutes or so of the film, when it still looked like it was setting up something rather unique and cool. But the film then devolves into nothing. While a cult of fanatics is trying to convert everyone to their religion, where does the movie choose to spend its time? Watching Riddick catch up with an old friend in a penal colony. I guess this side-trip might have been kinda interesting if there wasn’t a potentially interesting story going on. But there is, so we don’t really care. Sure, the character of Kyra is a really interesting one (she’s the one he meets up with in prison, and she’s also the girl everyone thought was a boy in “Pitch Black”, all grown up and hot now) but the movie doesn’t give her much to do.

The effects are cheesy and dull, the production design is dull and lifeless, the score is generic, the direction is mundane, and the actors try but they are all at the mercy of some truly lame dialogue. You want an example? Okay, Riddick is being circled by the gorgeous Thandie Newton (by the way, to HELL with Halle Berry; how can anyone consider her attractive when Thandie is walking the Earth?) and he takes a big whiff of her. He then says, and I quote, “It’s been a long time since I smelled beautiful.” No, you didn’t misread that. That’s actually what he says. The rest of the dialogue isn’t much better. Dame Judi Dench and Thandie both seem to be trying to make the most of it, but there isn’t a hell of a lot they can do here. Colme Feore emerges best as the chief baddie of the piece, but he’s not as memorable as he was in the Stephen King miniseries “Storm of the Century” (my favorite of King’s miniseries, rent it today).

If all you want out of your summer entertainment is watch Vin Diesel walking around looking vaguely phallic and sounding gravelly, that’s fine. This is the film for you. Enjoy. But if, like me, you were hoping for a little something more, then give this flick a pass and move on with your life. There has to be something better for you watch. There just has to be.

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1932 / 99 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

If memory serves, the Tarzan of Edgar Rice Burroughs novel was actually a verbose, coherent lord stranded in the jungle. He spoke well and was actually a regal gentleman. But that image was forever shattered once Johnny Weissmuller donned a loin cloth, unleashed his trademark yodeling cry, and began swinging through the jungle. In the same way that Bela Lugosi owns the image of Dracula for most people and it’s almost inconceivable to think of anyone but Boris Karloff when considering Frankenstein’s monster, it is former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller that most of us, even those of us who have never actually seen the movie, think of when we think of Tarzan.

And it’s with good reason. Weissmuller gives an iconic and rather sturdy performance here as a man of the jungle who speaks no known language (he seems to have concocted some speech of his own with no supervision that, I guess, the apes understand somehow) and isn’t pinned down by any of the civilized, moralistic trappings of the modern world (at least, the modern world as it was in 1932). He may not be what Burroughs envisioned but, frankly, Burroughs take on this white man of the jungle seems pretty boring once you’ve seen what Weissmuller can do with the character. He completely convinces us a simple man with jungle smarts and he especially convinces us that he could fall in love with the first white woman he has ever seen: Jane, as played by the beautiful Maureen O’ Sullivan.

Maureen’s performance is also fascinating. From the moment she first sees Tarzan, and is abducted by him shortly thereafter, we get the sense that she wants to jump his poor, uneducated jungle bones. There’s a near rape, some erotic playfulness by the local watering hole, and even some implied jungle sex! Fading to black when Tarzan is taking Jane in his arms back to a tree is the same as playing some obnoxious saxophone music. We get the idea, and what an idea! Maureen and Johnny have such erotic, intense chemistry that the mere notion of the sex that happened off-screen is more arousing than the marathons of sex you see in the average night of Cinemax viewing. I have no doubt this is one of those films that helped usher in the dreaded Hays Code of the 30’s, the bureau that monitored and policed all films to keep the average filmgoer safe from the mere implication of sex. There is some heavy stuff going on here. Not that Maureen’s performance is great only for her wanton jungle boy lust, no. It’s also noteworthy because of how her character develops. It would be hard for any actress to convince us that her character has gone from shrieking at everything in the jungle to wanting to stay and make a life with a jungle man she barely knows (but that she definitely knows pretty well pretty quickly, wink wink) but somehow Maureen O’Sullivan has us thoroughly convinced of it. She does it so effortlessly that you barely notice the skill with which she has accomplished this turn around.

Maureen and Johnny’s performances are so good, in fact, that you gloss over a lot of the film’s rough spots. The movie’s exposition is fairly dull and doesn’t move very well. Until the party of intrepid explorers begins to be attacked by hippos and crocodiles, you may be on the verge of going to sleep. Once Tarzan shows up to seduce Jane and start wrestling any animal to cross his path, however, the film kicks it into overdrive and scarcely stops for breath. Most of these action sequences involve fake animals and stock footage, but somehow that adds to their charm. Maybe I’m just really tired of CGI, I don’t know. There is a breathless level of excitement to this film which is all the more amazing since there isn’t a note of musical score in the picture. The producers were either too cheap to spring for one, or they trusted their material enough to keep the audience hooked and riveted without a musical score cueing them on how to feel about it. I must say that I barely noticed the lack of a score and, besides, most old movies had an overabundance of music anyway. I’ve seen a lot of old movies use background music almost constantly, and that can get really annoying really fast. The movie doesn’t bother to tell us the whys and hows that have brought Tarzan to the jungle, but that’s also not a big deal. After all, Tarzan can’t speak English and none of the other people onscreen know how he got there, so how the hell are we supposed to find out?

Another major stumbling block of viewing this picture in modern times is the slightly racist overtones of it. The black people in the film are all viewed as soulless savages at worst or bumbling slaves at best. There is more than one moment where the leaders of the expedition are whipping their servants to get them to go where they want them. This is hardly enlightened cinema. The filmmakers also seem to kill the Africans off without thinking twice about it. (At least the Africans are played by actual Africans rather than an obvious white guy with black makeup on. I’ve seen some silent films where such was not the case.) Whenever danger is near, you can be sure that one of the guides or servants will die in order to prove how dangerous the circumstances are. Oh, and the reason that all these people are going into the jungle? To find a mystical elephant’s graveyard and make a fortune from ivory, how’s that for politically correctness? Yet, it’s rather fascinating (strangely) to consider that there was a time when views like this were no problem for the moviegoing public to swallow, that they were accepted, normal values. It’s like discovering a time capsule buried in 1932.

Simply put, viewed over 70 years later and accepted on its own terms, “Tarzan: The Ape Man” is a fascinating, strangely erotic adventure spectacle that thoroughly entertains. It’s far from perfect, and it’s got some rather glaring problems, but it’s got a charm and a relentless desire to entertain that so many modern films so sorely lack.

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2004 / 142 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Just as the “Harry Potter” novels seem to get better as they go along, so do the movies based on those novels. But this film represents a surprising leap ahead from the first two. Whereas the films are still not as good as the novels they are based on, I am happy to report that the quality of the films has gotten a few nudges closer, and that’s mostly due to the involvement of director Alfonso Cuaron.

Prior to this film, I had only seen one Cuaron movie, and that was “Y Tu Mama Tambien”. I thought that movie was highly overrated, personally. For all its critical acclaim, I thought the movie was no better than a Mexican version of “Porky’s” only with a little more pathos and better character development. I guess I can see why critics enjoyed it, but it did nothing for me personally and I found it largely uninvolving. So it was with a sense of trepidation that I approached this latest installment in the Harry Potter film canon, but my trepidation disappeared shortly after the Warner Brothers logo appeared onscreen. It is evident from this film’s first moments that much of the clunkiness and ponderous respect that was evident in the first two Harry Potter films has been thankfully jettisoned. I liked the first two films and I thought they were very true to the novels upon which they were based. And while that was an admirable thing, it also proved an odd drawback. The films were so slavish to the books that they never quite soared in the way that the books do. Reading the J.K. Rowling novels is a breeze, the pages seem to fly by as the reader is so gloriously immersed in her richly imagined worlds. Watching the Potter movies, the first two, at least, takes more of an effort. Sure, they’re good, but they’re just not transcendent. They don’t seem effortless, they seem so eager to be faithful that they haven’t got the sense of fun that they should have. They come off as more austere and a little boring. They’re trying too hard. “The Prisoner of Azkaban” suffers from none of this. It’s a lighter, more fleet-footed film all around and also one that seems to better understand the undercurrent of darkness that gives the books such weight and charm. The Potter books are ones that kids can enjoy, but that have layers and a tone that adults can probably appreciate even more. “Prisoner of Azkaban” is the first movie of this bunch that really gets that right.

If you’ve read the book then you know the plot. If not, then here it is: Harry is going back to his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry only there is a convict loose from the wizarding prison of Azkaban and, apparently, that dark wizard (Sirius Black) has some manner of fixation on Harry. The whys and wherefores of this are the great pleasure of the movie, and so I shall not ruin them. I shall only say that it was brilliant of them to cast Gary Oldman as Sirius Black. Those who have read the novel know why and those who have not will understand why as soon as the final revelations of the movie are made. Oldman has a limited amount of screen time here, but he makes the most of it and delivers a haunting and memorable performance that will stick with you. I also loved David Thewlis as kindly professor Lupin, who has a secret or two of his own. The kids are all back and they seem to be getting more comfortable with their characters in each installment (that’s to be expected, really, I think the majority of their present time is now spent in character as Harry or Hermione or Ron or Draco). They all do great jobs here (congrats to you: Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson). I also loved the fact that the filmmakers have finally allowed Alan Rickman to play Professor Snape with full Alan Rickman mannerisms firmly in place. Rickman is a great actor who is finally allowed a chance to breathe in this film. He seemed too reigned in in the others, but here he actually gets to liven things up. And, of course, Robbie Coltraine is great as Hagrid, as he always has been. The only actor that doesn’t really work for me is Michael Gambon as Professor Dumbledore. He’s a good actor, but he just seems to hit the wrong note in this portrayal. Not that it’s really his fault. I doubt anyone could bring to the role what the late Richard Harris managed to do with it. From this point on, I doubt I’ll be able to watch any of these movies without feeling a pang of loss for Harris and his undeniable gifts.

Cuaron is a more magical filmmaker than Chris Columbus (whose script for the film “Gremlins” remains my favorite thing that he’s done) and that much is amply proven with each frame of this film. The production design is just as grand as in the first two films, going a long way toward bringing Rowling’s novels to glorious life. And John Williams’ score is one of his best in ages. The music for this film seems to sparkle and pop in a way that the scores for the first two just didn’t quite manage. All in all, everything seems a little peppier this time. The only complaints I have with the film are that the film seems as though it could have been about five minutes longer. Some of the explanations and little details from the book that have been cast aside for the movie are crucial and I think that people who have not read the book may find it a little difficult to know exactly what’s going on. Then again, that just illustrates why the books will probably always remain better than the movies. Rowling effortlessly weaves detail and background into the novels that the movies would have to stop to establish. The first two did stop to establish this and felt slightly clunky. The new one is breezy and yet could have a little more background in it. Will this series of films ever achieve perfection? I do not know. I have high hopes for the fourth film (which is, so far, my favorite of the novels, though I am still reading the fifth book) and cannot wait to see if the movie made from it can match the one in my imagination as I read, but I still have a suspicion that the movies in our minds when we read Rowling’s dazzling fantasies will remain above those of any Hollywood mogul. That is the power of novels, when they are truly great, and that is why I firmly believe most movies should be only movies and most novels should exist only as novels. There are a few exceptions (the “Lord of the Rings” films were remarkable, as were “High Fidelity” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Jaws” was vastly superior to the book on which it was based) but for the most part, that’s my feeling on the matter.

But this is still a fabulous movie that is rousing and magical. I was remarking to Jones the other day that the Harry Potter movies are rather like the Bond films. They adhere to a certain formula every time and there are certain scenes that are in every Bond movie and every Potter movie or book. In the Bond films there is always the pre-credits action sequence, the Q scene, the scene where he gets his mission, and the scene where he orders a martini “shaken, not stirred”. These are traditional. In the Potter universe there is always the Dursley scene, the scene where they arrive at Hogwarts, the Quidditch match, and the Hardy Boys sort of scene at the end where everything gets explained and the problem of the school year is finally dealt with. If that is the case, then think of “Prisoner of Azkaban” as the “Goldfinger” of the Potter series. It’s the best of the bunch so far, and may emerge as the best of all the films when all is said and done.

But my favorite of the Bond films is still “From Russia With Love” and I’m hoping that the Potter equivalent is still somewhere just down the road. Until then, I shall be waiting with anxious anticipation.

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2004 / 93 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Once upon a time, there was a movie named “Shrek”. And “Shrek” made a lot of money. A surprising amount of money, in fact, for a non-Disney movie. It was funny and clever and it had heart and most everyone who saw it enjoyed it at least a little, and the stockholders of Dreamworks lived happily ever after.

Until they started thinking that they could perhaps make another movie about everyone’s favorite green ogre and obnoxious talking donkey (well, aside from Francis the Talking Mule) and make even more money. And so they took “Shrek” and made “Meet the Parents” with Shrek in place of Ben Stiller and John Cleese in place of Robert DeNiro and, as evidenced by the box office receipts, they once again lived happily ever after.

The fact that “Shrek 2” isn’t very good is largely irrelevant. Everyone has already gone and everyone that hasn’t probably will go, simply out of a sense of civic duty. But “Shrek 2” isn’t all that great, my friends. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but here I am. Yes, as I already said, the plot for this movie has Shrek meeting his in-laws: the parents of Princess Fiona, who are played by John Cleese and Julie Andrews (and, by the way, neither of this pair’s particular gifts shine through their digital counterparts, they could’ve gotten anyone with proper British accents and had the same effect). Fiona’s parents are shocked that Fiona and Shrek are ogres because, naturally, they had expected Fiona to be rescued by the effete and self-absorbed Prince Charming (played by Rupert Everett) and therefore to be forever changed into a beautiful woman, rather than a dumpy ogre lass. So the king hires an assassin to take care of Shrek: Puss in Boots (played by the movie’s shining heart- Antonio Banderas). Puss in Boots is easily the best character in the movie, but the movie flubs most of the humor inherent in him by making Puss befriend Shrek and Donkey right away. I think it would have been much funnier if Puss had made a few failed attempts on their lives before switching over to the side of right, if perhaps he had learned a lesson of friendship or something before finally jumping to the good guys aid. But oh well. That’s not the movie’s most glaring problem.

The problem with this movie is that it wants to be too clever, too hip. The movie seems to bend over backwards to load up with pop culture jokes and anachronistic references rather than sticking with its own story. There is a way to meld anachronistic humor into the narrative without bringing it to a screeching halt and sabotaging any sense of sentiment you might be trying for. Look at the “Toy Story” movies or even the first “Shrek”. But here the filmmakers are too busy trying to keep the adults entertained that they seem to have forgotten the playful magic they brought to the best moments of the first film. And most of the pop culture references also fall quite flat. Aside from a moment with a giant gingerbread man (and that was only slightly humorous) and a parody of “Cops” entitled “Knights”, most of the jokes seemed shoehorned in. Perhaps references to Oscar ceremonies (complete with Joan Rivers) and image transformation are hilarious to the Hollywood folk that made the movie, but they weren’t to me. The jokes just didn’t work and, what’s worse, they deflated the story and the characters, which is always a lethal problem. The result was that I was shockingly bored during the middle of the film, perking up only when Puss in Boots had some moment to shine. Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers are wasted here, really, and Antonio is the only one given memorable things to do. Not only that, but also most of the supporting characters are shrill and annoying and one-note. Prince Charming is more concerned with his hair than he is with finding true love (I half expected “You’re So Vain” to show up on the soundtrack). That’s funny for about one scene, and then it just keeps coming back. And the Fairy Godmother is a steamrolling bitch. That’s not even funny for one scene. Perhaps the filmmakers were trying too hard or perhaps the freshness of the “Shrek” concept has grown stale in the intervening years. I don’t know. But I do know that something is amiss here. Some vital ingredient of the first film is sorely lacking.

In short, the movie’s so busy (TOO busy) being hip that it forgets about virtually everything else and becomes sadly hollow and boring. That might not matter to eighty percent of the people who went to “Shrek 2”, but it mattered to me.

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