Minnesota 2nd Run Movie House King

After we got through Speed Racer, Blake decided to put in a movie from the franchise the Wachowski Brothers are more readily associated with by fans of films and sci-fi; The Matrix Revolutions.



It had been a while since I watched Reloaded, but my memory was refreshed as the third one got underway. I recalled the Oracle had guided Neo to meet the Keymaker, who was integral in helping him find the Architect at the end of Reloaded, in a room with hundreds of TVs projecting the camera feed of various locations throughout the Matrix. I also remembered that Neo had a premonition of Trinity getting killed, but at the end of the second film, Neo managed to cheat fate and save her. (Now that I think about it, I am reminded of 2005's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, minus the element of turning over to the dark side.)

At the opening of Revolutions, Neo (Keanu Reeves) wakes up in a place called the Mobil Station, a pristine, white train station that exists as a limbo between the Matrix and the Mainframe. Meanwhile, Trinity and Morpheus hack back into the Matrix to visit the Oracle (who has been fitted with a new "shell," a new body, now played by Mary Alice, cast in the role after the death of Gloria Foster due to complications of diabetes). Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) and Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) inquire about the whereabouts of Neo. The Oracle tells them about how they need to appeal to the Merovingian for his release.

Merovingian (Lambert Wilson, still slimy as ever) playfully mocks human emotions, questioning their utility in terms of human accomplishment within the Matrix, or outside of it, for that matter.

There's a spectacular gunpoint stand-off in Club Hel between Trinity, Morpheus, Merovingian and all of his henchmen. No sooner have they brokered a bargain with this nefarious Frenchman are they boarding a train to Mobil Station, where they hope to save Neo, before the Train Man, who looks like a homeless, younger Gary Busey, can get to him.

I have to say I was moved by the level of emotion in The Matrix Revolutions. My friend Austin Podsednik at the Omaha World-Herald had told me about the film's agenda of validating love in an environment where it does not serve a visible function. Now I see what he meant. The first Matrix was very post-modern and logical, "get out of the machine," no time for real human interaction and warmth...or at least until the very end, when Trinity kissed Neo and acknowledged the Oracle's prophecy that she would fall in love with a dead man. Reloaded went a step further, showing actual physical intimacy between the pair, and showing Neo risking everything for her safety.

Now in the third one, we have a top down debate between emotion and human function. I set aside the existentialist argument of Matrix Reloaded, and accepted Neo and Trinity as a couple that had made their union one of purpose, and one of profound meaning. Both would give anything for each other, even if it meant deviating from the Oracle's prophecy. I consider them to be one of the great screen romances of my generation, up there with Jack and Rose in Titanic, Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, and Robbie and Cecilia from Atonement. In the case of Trinity and Neo, It is their lot in life to have been born as batteries in a society where humans are useless to the computers that run the Matrix, save for the energy they provide. Maybe the emotion cannot serve the computers, as Merovingian tells Trinity and Morpheus in Club Hel, but through their individuality, unity, and vigor, the free humans of Zion provide the best argument against the existence of a Matrix.

The armored suits that the soldiers in Zion use to fight off the offensive of the probes from The Matrix were sort of unintentionally comical. I thought of Dr. Robotnik in the Sonic the Hedgehog videogames of the Sega Genesis era, seeing the Zion soldiers firing off rounds of ammo in machine bodies. But hey, it's a science fiction thriller. I'm glad the Wachowski Brothers are capable of taking themselves lightly enough to include such random action in such a cerebral, philosophically heavy film.

Many filmgoers and critics found Revolutions (and Reloaded for that matter) to be a headscratcher, and no doubt, it was. But I got the basic sense of The Matrix Revolutions without needing to understand the defense tactics of the army of Zion, or how Neo hacked back into the Matrix to do battle with his other half, Agent Smith. Their aerial fight in the rain-drenched sky was visceral and compelling, and I'm a little sorry this installment didn't get the same love in the technical categories that the initial Matrix received with its four Academy Award wins in 1999.

The Matrix Revolutions comes to be about bringing an existence full circle. Neo was the chosen one to bring about an end to the machine's rule. He had to give his life to the cause, he had the sacred feminine as his guide (Trinity and the Oracle), and he had a following who would carry on after him if they would choose to hack their way out of the Matrix. I also realize parallels between this trilogy and The Truman Show and Pleasantville, two films that preceded the first Matrix by mere months, also about individuals who seek to overcome the forces that bind them to a controlled environment, one that only seems safe out of the occupants' ignorance.

I think Revolutions is my favorite of the trilogy, but it would not be as good without the foundation of the first two. For every beginning there is an end, so says a character in the film. Thus it serves as a contemplation on life itself, what we can choose to stand for, and whether we will live safe but exploited, or free and endangered, in the limited parameters of our years of life. Hats off to Larry and Andy Wachowski.

Three and 2/3 stars.

Blake, you're going to make V for Vendetta a movie night now, aren't you?

I think Revolutions is my favorite of the trilogy,

"Uh, so, Keith, what do you feel like watching?" Blake asked me after I arrived in town.

I haven't seen Blake as much lately since he left Minneapolis-St. Paul, so I thought we'd get out to see something at theatres when I went out to visit him last weekend. But he'd already seen Where the Wild Things Are with his lady friend, and his enthusiasm to check out 2012 doesn't exactly match mine. As for New Moon, well, Blake and I were kind of in agreement that a cohesive, relatable romantic drama Twilight did not make. No reason to rush out to that.

Instead, Blake had me make good on a bet to see Speed Racer. "Damn Yankees," I was thinking to myself as Blake joyfully grabbed the DVD of the 2008 Emile Hirsch family adventure and walked up to the DVD player.

The New York Yankees won the World Series, so Blake made me watch Speed Racer. And the next time I go to Davenport, Iowa, I'm supposed to get a sandwich from Hungry Hobo and a malt from Whitey's, two of the local establishments associated with what they call the Quad Cities.

In case you were wondering, if the Phillies had won the World Series, I would have made Blake watch the 2007 drama "Day Zero," starring Elijah Wood, Chris Klein, and Jon Bernthal, a movie about the reinstatement of the draft due to escalations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a great film, but that's another movie night for another bet.

Anyhow, first, here's my review of Speed Racer.



Speed Racer didn't presume to be anything more than a modern live-action send up of a 1960's Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. I thought of The Flintstones often while watching Speed Racer. Like with Brian Levant's 1994 cartoon-to-big-screen-live action adaptation, Speed Racer brought its source material to life with a faithful recreation of original series music, emulation of the mood and tone of its progenitor, and a broad, larger-than-life performance by John Goodman. So I wasn't holding the film's feet to the fire to be a masterpiece.

Having said that, Speed Racer was written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy). So as you might expect, Speed Racer aims a little higher than The Flintstones in terms of the humanistic elements of characters.

We see Speed as a child in the beginning, played by Nicholas Elia, who worships his older brother Rex (Scott Porter), a race car driver. He makes drawings of race cars on the letter bubbles of standardized tests. He draws flip card animation of race cars on the corners of his workbooks.

The Racer family is dealt a blow when Rex decides not to race for his dad anymore, but for the big boys, the companies. Pops Racer (John Goodman) will have none of it. He gives his son the ultimatum of staying and racing for the family name, or leaving permanently. Rex goes out the door and doesn't look back.

Painfully, the family is no where near the race track when Rex's car goes up in flames in the Crucible cup. They watch the accident happen on TV at home.

In spite of his older brother's fate, Speed grows up still loving the track. Played by Emile Hirsch as an 18 year old, Speed is put in the same position as his brother, to race for a large racing outfit in the same competition that took his brother's life. But when Speed declines sponsorship of a major corporation, the upper echelons of the organization decide to sabotage his chances on the speedway. After making a surprising alliance with Taejo Togokhan (Rain) and Racer X (Matthew Fox), the team on whose ticket he's entitled to compete in the Crucible Cup, he and his fellow drivers find themselves the direct target of the race cars financed by Royalton.

The film ascends from simple children's movie to parable about big business and their sense of entitlement to not play by the rules. I imagine someone like former Illinois governor Governor Rod Blagojevich, former Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose, or ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling watching the movie and absolutely hating it. It is defiantly preachy in its David vs. Goliath premise, but you know what? If not for the sake of lending a grander theme of moral justice to the movie, we at least want to see Speed Racer take his Mach 5 down the home stretch just to teach the big boys the simple lesson that you can't expect to win at it all the time, or at least that your rules of pay to play don't work for everyone.

While not brilliant, Speed Racer was far from the abomination some critics made it out to sound like. Rather than overwhelming, I found the visual trickery to be kind of dazzling, and the otherworldliness of the film's largely-CGI backdrop to be sort of entrancing. I also enjoyed seeing an A-list cast of Hirsch, Goodman, Susan Sarandon, and Christina Ricci, totally ham it up for, if no other reason, the opportunity to work with the Wachowski brothers.

Yes, I laughed at the unintentional sight gag of a paunchy John Goodman getting jostled around in a helicopter against a computer generated sky, and seeing him in full fight mode, twirling one of Speed Racer's adversaries like a pizza crust in a sequence as cartoonish as the green-screened surroundings. But this film was by no means a disappointment. It may not make my top ten (or even my top 20) for 2008, but that's no fault of Speed Racer. It happens to be a good movie released in a great film year.

Now, to find another sporting event to bet on to get Blake to watch Day Zero.

He leaves his youngest daughter's fist communion mass and comes upon a crowd of bystanders surrounding a police investigation. The crime scene includes his oldest daughter's car.

The day that would have been momentous for shop owner and ex-con Jimmy Markum only for one daughter's religious rite of passage is eclipsed by the murder of Jimmy's eldest daughter Katie.

The spellbinding narrative that is Mystic River, a collaborative vision first conceived in the novel by Dennis Lehane, adapted for the screen by Brian Helgeland, and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a tale of the depths of despair into which people pass at the loss of a loved one, particularly a nineteen year old daughter by a deceased first wife.

Jimmy (Sean Penn) tries to internalize the heartbreak and anguish while being questioned by police detectives Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) and Sgt. Whitey Powers (Lawrence Fishburne). Sean and Jimmy were childhood friends. A third friend, Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) happened to be in the same bar as Katie and her friends stopped in on the evening before she was found dead. We see Dave take just an extra long look at her as she dances on table tops swigging beer.

The film opens with an innocent image of Jimmy, Dave, and Sean playing street hockey as young boys on the outskirts of Boston in the mid 1970's. One day, while tracing their names in the cement, two ominous men with badges apprehend them. They happen to live near Dave, and offer him a ride home, under the pretenses of explaining to his parents what he was up to.

Dave is not taken home right away. He is taken to a dank basement where he undergoes hell in a handbasket before escaping four days later.

Tim Robbins does an in depth job of portraying Dave as bruised fruit. Hours after leaving the bar where he saw Katie, he arrives home, bleeding from the hand and a flesh wound on his abdomen. His wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), immediately helps him clean his wounds. He gives the story that he was mugged, and fought the guy off tooth and nail. He thinks he may have killed him.

The truth behind Dave's story becomes increasingly hard to interpret, as the details continually change depending upon who he talks to.

We do learn over the course of the police investigation that Katie (Emmy Rossum, Phantom of the Opera, The Day After Tomorrow) was shot with ammo that was fired from the same gun as one used in a liquor store hold up in 1984. The gun belonged to Ray Harris, and he had carried out the liquor store hold up with Jimmy as his accomplice. Harris later ratted Jimmy out to police in a plea bargin, and Jimmy was sent to the penitentiary for two years hard time.

Jimmy had a score to settle with Ray, and it is perceived that upon his relase, Jimmy went and found him to get even before starting over with his new life.

We are left on the edge of our seat for 90 percent of the film wondering who was behind Katie's murder? Was it someone with ties to Ray? We know that Ray's son, Ray Jr. (Thomas Guiry) was dating Katie at the time of her death, and the two were planning to move to Las Vegas. We know that Jimmy hates the whole Ray Harris family, and would have forbid his daughter from dating Ray Jr. if he had known.

Sean and Whitey's investigation carries them to the household of the Ray Harris family, and to the household of Dave Boyle. Sean is torn, because he knows it's within reason that Dave Boyle's childhood molestation may have left him with a compromised sense of right and wrong, and with that distorted moral compass, he might have carried out his pent-up rage on Katie just as a random act of violence. On the other hand, Sean and Dave are old friends. Sean painstakingly works to disprove that theory and put the possibility out of his mind for that reason.

As an audience member, I wondered to myself if Sean should have even been part of the police investigation. Since he had such long-standing ties with Jimmy, the victim's father, and with Dave, a person of interest, wouldn't it be handled with less bias by another cop? Whitey and Sean have interesting interactions based around this idea.

On the other hand, his being so close to Jimmy and Dave may give Sean the advantage of having his friends be open and trusting, and his intuition of their nature may help him discover the truth.

The film provides few easy answers to Sean's role in the investigation. I could only sit back in wonderment at the complex moral nature of the whole story. I understand what each character is going through, and why they act out as they do in the process of finding Katie Markum's killer. Jimmy's emotions don't excuse him, by any means (that statement is directed at Blake, who found the film morally unsound), for taking matters into his own hands in bringing about justice for his daughter's murder. But if I were in Jimmy's shoes, and had every reason to believe a close confidante were responsible for the death of my daughter, I wouldn't be able to exercise reason either.

With that in mind, Sean Penn blazed an intense, emotionally fraught trail of character study here. He totally absorbed the emotional journey that Jimmy Markum goes on, immersing himself in the anguish, survivor guilt, aching need, love, blind rage, and resolve in a performance that was as hard to pin down in an adjective description as it was astonishing to behold. Jimmy would keep emotions contained for scenes at a time, like a lid on a boiling pot, only to blow them off in startling moments of exposition.

Kudos also to Laura Linney, as Markum's wife, who shows herself to have the same propensity for hostility as Jimmy in complying with her husband's quest for vengeance.

Blake blamed this movie for raining on Lost in Translation's parade in their respective Oscar race. I too felt bad for Bill Murray, but I consider Lost in Translation to be career momentum for Murray's next shot. He's consistent, and will turn in a role that brings him close to the stage at the Kodak Theatre again.

As for me, I can look back with a less heavy heart. Mystic River was one of the best movies of 2003; maybe the decade.

Every year, there's at least one film I see either in theatres or on DVD that I totally embrace, but the general public either pans or forgets about totally.

For 2009, that film is Year One. I saw it on a Monday afternoon with my landlord, Andy. I hadn't seen the box-office returns for the weekend, but after seeing it, presumed it had finished strongly.

Directed by Harold Ramis (Stripes, Groundhog Day), Year One has a resignedly simple premise; with a good chunk of the Old Testament compressed to serve as this storyline's backdrop, we are introduced to our heroes Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) early in the film.

Black's Zed is a hunter, and Cera's Oh is a gatherer. One day, Zed comes upon the tree of forbidden fruit, and gives in to biting from the apple. Oh tries to discourage him from it. I couldn't help but think back to the Stephen Schwartz musical Children of Eden when Zed starts to think of abstract questions he never had the critical thinking skills to even fathom before. Oh sees a danger in his newfound wonderment, and cautions him about the consequences of eating from the tree.

True to form, Zed gets banished by his community. He manages to recruit a reluctant Oh to accompany him on his journey to find a new settlement.

I loved that Jack Black and Michael Cera were granted the creative license to just be themselves while embodying the characters. Jack Black played Zed with the Jack Black antics we go to Jack Black movies to see. Likewise, Michael Cera played Oh with the same downbeat, quietly sarcastic pragmatism he brought to the screen as Evan in Superbad, Nick in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and to an extent, even to Paulie in Juno.

The two happen upon Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd), who milk the fratricide parable for every last laugh possible. At first the playing of violence for physical humor seemed a bit tired, but damned if David Cross' Cain didn't win me over with his witless defense of his compromised morals, and his ambivalence regarding whether he wants Abel back or not.

Zed and Oh also happen upon Abraham and Isaac (Hank Azaria and Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who play the sacrificial lamb gag well through utilizing it for irony's sake, looking back on it with wisdom through a modern-day lense.

Of course, no Old Testament journey could be complete without a visit to the communities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Zed and Oh encounter Cain with a score to settle, which puts them in a position of vulnerability to the city's seductive vice and excess.

Oliver Platt is hilarious in a small role as the hairy, overweight, effeminate High Priest of Sodom who insists on having Zed oil him down. I can't understate the range of Platt's acting ability. How does he get from playing a television journalist entrenched in the efforts to solicit an apology from former President Nixon in Frost/Nixon to this? While a role like this may not boost his credibility (and indeed he is walking a fine line in recreating gay stereotypes for laughs), it is interesting to see just how inventive the actor is, and capable of adapting to different film genres so seamlessly.

Let's not forget the female love interests. Zed has a burgeoning romance with Maya (June Diane Raphael) when he is banished for eating the forbidden apple. Meanwhile, Oh has been working over time to impress Eema (Juno Temple, and to add to the coincidence, she does resemble Ellen Page), a young woman from his tribe who becomes a slave in Sodom.

Surprisingly, Year One does make some room for spiritual debate, as Zed and Oh question the nature of human sacrifice as the powers that be in Sodom throw live virgins to the fire in exchange for rain. But then again, this is Harold Ramis, and even his most raucious comedies often have a surprising capacity for philosophical reflection.

To answer the box office question, Year One opened behind not only The Proposal, but behind The Hangover, as it entered its third week. It got pretty safely buried. And that's why I'm proud to include it still in my top ten list for 2009.

3 and 3/4 stars.

Every Halloween, I have a tradition of seeking out something R-rated that's gripping, pulse-pounding, with a mixture of character types who are working against time to prevent the sealing of their fate.

This year is no exception. That's right, for 2009, my Halloween pick: Frost/Nixon.



Working off of a screenplay by Peter Morgan, adapted from his stage play, director Ron Howard brings the same sure-eyed sense of time and place to the set-pieces and staging of this film as he did with Apollo 13 and Cinderella Man. Working as a mock-documentary, the supporting characters, as played by their actors, supply the narration directly to the camera throughout the film.

The story begins in 1974. After months of pulling executive staff from office, avoiding the press, and denying allegations of involvement in the break-in to Democratic National Headquarters at Watergate, Richard Nixon resigns the presidency on national television. The images we're well-familiar with, of the White House press conference, and his boarding the helicopter, are all faithfully recreated by Frank Langella. Then we see Nixon's face sink as the chopper lifts off, and the White House becomes smaller in the distance. That's when the movie gets really interesting, as it seeks to imagine what was going on beyond the camera.

British entertainment television journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen) watches Nixon's resignation from Australia, where he is currently producing his popular TV show. He blithely observes that Nixon should have waited until noon to make his resignation speech, as the west coast audience would be asleep.

After leaving office, Nixon comes down with a serious case of phlebitis, and watches from his hospital bed as President Ford offers him the controversial pardon that prevented him from facing criminal charges for the Watergate break-in. American people were furious that he would never have to answer for his indiscretions in office.

The last person who would be expected to get Nixon to open up about his political misgivings would be David Frost. He was an Access Hollywood type. He had no political convictions, but he did know what kind of sensationalism would capture the mass-market television audience. So he seeks to commit former president Nixon to a series of televised interviews. Back in London, he manages to enlist the support of his producer and friend, John Birt (Matthew McFayden), to come up with a budget to put together a series of four televised interviews, one on Vietnam, one on foreign policy, one on Nixon the man, and one on (drumroll) Watergate. With the help of Birt, as well as Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell), Frost drafts a list of questions to ask Nixon for each of the four segments.

It's interesting to watch how much Birt, Zelnick, and Reston give over of themselves into investigating Nixon's documents and activities while in office. They seem to have a score to settle, particularly Rockwell's Reston, who has watched U.S. soldiers continue to languish in Vietnam for four more years after Nixon is elected to office. He can barely bring himself to shake Nixon's hand at their first meeting.

Platt's Zelnick brings some much-welcomed comic relief to the film as he pretends to be Nixon and predicts Nixon's response to their questions.

Frost is off philandering with girlfriend Caroline Kushing (Rebecca Hall) while his journalistic crack team works out the interview details. The night before taping of the first interview in 1977, Frost takes off to attend the premiere of a movie he executive produced.

I kind of had the sense that Frost deserved to find himself in over his head when the first interview shows Nixon adroit at defending himself when questioned about Vietnam and Cambodia. We are left to wonder why Frost bothered to risk so much time and money on the interviews if he didn't have any political interest on his own behalf in driving Nixon to admit to wrong-doing. Frost seems like a huge flake for a solid hour of the film.

All the while, Nixon has Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon), an advisor and aide, stroking his ego and giving him feedback on the interviews. I had the sense Brennan still had such faith in Nixon only because he was kept so far on the periphery of what was really happening in his administration.

While this film doesn't contain violence or bloodshed of the garden variety suspense thriller, there is a lot of slow-building tension over the course of the film; the outcome of the interviews is that only Frost or Nixon can save face. Nixon can come out smarter, and render Frost's journalistic endeavor useless. Or Frost can bring Nixon to his knees with curve balls and pointed questions backed with research into his interactions with staff.

Initially, Frost prepares better for the Watergate interview to save his own skin, but one gets the sense he develops some actual political convictions in the process. By the fourth interview session, he unwittingly finds himself in a Murrow-esque position of potentially holding a public figure accountable for the truth. The more Frost peels away at Nixon for silencing his staff, the more obvious it starts to become that he was complicit in, or at least aware of, the infiltration and bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

And here is where we see Langella at his best. Nixon has some decisions to make when he is genuinely cornered. We see the facade start to break down, and he shows a surprising amount of candor. For any human to acknowledge they have done great damage to their country is an ingratiating endeavor. But Nixon had kept such a stalwart defense for so long, one can actaully feel his insides crawling as he comes to terms with his responsibility and guilt.

I would defy Blake Gothenberg's suggestion that Frost/Nixon was boxed, gift-wrapped and handed its five Academy Award nominations, including best picture, solely because it was a Ron Howard/Peter Morgan period docudrama. For the fifty and up contingent of the voting Academy, this film was as good as an apology from the grave by Nixon. In seeing him express guilt for his decisions, this film helps anyone who read the news during Watergate move on a little bit.

Well, okay, it did rain on the parade of Wall-E and Dark Knight. But Wall-E left with an Oscar for Best Animated Feature (Andrew Stanton, director), and Dark Knight won Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger and for Sound Editing, where as Frost/Nixon, knowingly entering a bridesmaid, left winless. With the 2009 race, having ten best picture nominations will prevent this from happening again.

Here is my best of 2008 list revised.

1. Synecdoche, NY
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Doubt
4. The Visitor
5. The Dark Knight
6. Wall-E
7. Slumdog Millionaire
8. Leatherheads
9. The Class
10. Milk

Honorable Mentions

Get Smart
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Marley and Me
Frost/Nixon
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Nim's Island
Ghost Town
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Iron Man
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Quantum of Solace
Definitely, Maybe
Yes Man
Pineapple Express

Less than stellar:

Hancock
10,000 B.C.
Mamma Mia!
Twilight
Flash of Genius

Need to finish:

Wanted

After months of Twilight mania, it was nice to have Hollywood place attention back on a book and film series I actually followed with some level of enthusiasm.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince generated a lot of discussion when it came out in the middle of July of this year. Much of it revolved around how a certain character's funeral was omitted from the end of the film. I had the advantage of not having read the book. This was the same with the first two Harry Potter films as well as 2005's landmark "Goblet of Fire."
I was in no position to begrudge plotlines and events being cut for the interest of an expedient storyline packaged within a two and a half hour running time.

After the Death Eater's attack on the Millenium Bridge in London, the film is surprisingly downbeat in its opening sequences. Gone is the bombastic John Williams score, the visual effects wizardry of the owls and flying cars, the knight bus, the dementors, and the underage patronus charms that have populated the frenetic openings of the series films thus far. We see Harry quietly make the moves on a pretty teenage girl in a diner, only to have Dumbledore swoop in and take him to meet a new professor.

Horace Slughorn, played by Jim Broadbent (so great in Bridget Jones's Diary and Hot Fuzz), is brought in as the new potions teacher. The previous potions teacher, Severus Snape, (the dependable Alan Rickman) has been promoted to his coveted Defense Against the Dark Arts spot, a position in which he may or may not be capable of great destruction to Hogwarts.

A new spell book has surfaced with the inscription "This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince." Harry uses this as a textbook in his Potions class, and finds the spells useful. But Hermoine is troubled by the enigma of who the half-blood prince might be. Dumbledore surmises that Harry could use the book, along with Professor Slughorn's memories, to find a possible means for defeating He Who Must Not Be Named.

Harry and Dumbledore are dependent upon witnessing one of Slughorn's memories, when a young Tom Riddle went to him for help learning a particular spell. Riddle had been learning spells from the very same copy of the textbook Harry is currently using for potions, the one engraved "property of the Half-Blood Prince." In addition to the book, Potter and Dumbledore surmise that Slughorn may be able to expose Voldemoort's Achille's Heel if they can get him drunk enough to impart that memory upon them of a young Tom Riddle coming to him for help.

This was the most dense Harry Potter film for me since Chamber of Secrets. Chock full of back story, spells, and hidden agendas, it absolutely requires a second viewing, and for my sake, a thorough reading of the book in the near future.

One element that did hold my attention, though, was the long-awaited revelation of mutual attraction between Harry and Ron's younger sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright.) Having not read the sixth book, I learned of this via word of mouth, by that my erstwhile bookworm roommate, Blake Gothenberg.

Oh, man, it was great to see those two standing before each other and breathing unsteadily, fumbling for words. There was a girl I met in college who looked a lot like Ginny Weasley who was a student worker the office over from me. That was not meant to be, but through this film, I get to watch Harry live the dream. And with all the holding and kissing that took place between them, this film proved more intoxicating of a romantic experience for me than many steamier films.

Of course Ron and Hermoine finally divulge true hidden feelings, and that was greatly satisfying as well. But I think I was less intimidated by Lavendar Brown as a romatic foil for Ron than I was Viktor Krum for Hermoine. I think Hermoine gave herself over a bit more emotionally to Krum than Weasley did to Brown (even Ron admitted Lavendar Brown was kind of obsessive), so it seemed only a matter of time before he came around.

The most gripping portion of the film for me, of course, revolved around finding the seven Horcruxes, Dumbledore's poisoning, and Harry's risky decision to go to Snapes for help. I felt Harry's angst was palpable. I've felt betrayed by professors in college who I reluctantly came to trust only to have them turn and give me a C for the course in the end. That's a weak example compared to Potter, but I'm familiar with the shame and anguish of letting one's guard down.

However, Snape's true nature is a mystery until the seventh book, of course. And I'm counting on all of you to keep your mouth shut until I read it...or see the movie...one or the other I should be able to get done in the next two years.

Three and 3/4 stars.

Typically, you have to wait until September or October for the Oscar season to kick into high gear. 2009 was an exception though. By the end of August, it was well underway, led with career-best performances by Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Marlon Wayans, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Arnold Voosloo, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Dennis Quaid in the across-the-board smash G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra.

What's that? You're picking up on my sarcasm? Alright, yeah, it is hard to hide.

Directed by Stephen Sommers (The Mummy), G.I. Joe had promised to be an unapologetic popcorn hit, with deliberately one-note performances designed only to serve as a backdrop to explosions, aerial assaults and acts of catostrophic biological warfare. I went into this movie promising myself I'd take it with a grain of salt. And incidentally, Blake bet me breadsticks that I would at least give the film three stars. Hoping to prove I wasn't just going to freeload him for breadsticks, I went in to it trying to enjoy the film.

At the opening of our film, A NATO security council is brokering a deal with Destro, a corrupt arms dealer, who has developed this biological weapon that, when unleashed, has the power to destroy an entire city. I imagine NATO's logic in accepting such a contract is to keep their friends close, and their enemies closer. That, or they were simply too dim-witted to not be skeptical of a weapons genius with an implacable foreign accent, slicked back hair, and a steely glare.

A special ops team of army commandos led by Duke (Channing Tatum) is commissioned to transport the briefcase carrying the control sample of this weapon from Destro's drop-off site to NATO headquarters. They are baffled when a fighter jet opens fire on their convoy, and sure enough, Destro isn't so willing to part ways with his weapon after all.

A bunch of Humvees get blown to smithereens, and when Duke finally sees who was operating the plane that opened fire on him and his men, it's Ana, a woman he was once engaged to. Ana (Sienna Miller) is now the Baroness, and married to Destro.

Duke and his buddy Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) make it out alive with the package, thanks to the arrival of Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). The two are quickly brought to meet General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), and invited to join his elite military unit made up of special operatives known as the G.I. Joe's.

The rest of the movie revolves around tracking down Destro's hidden base, retrieving the nano-technology after he steals it back, and stopping this mad man from using it to consume major world cities in his interest of global domination. But really, past the half hour mark, who cares about plot? This movie is only a loose semblance of plot details written specifically to accommodate the latest in ILM visual wizardry. If only there was a decent, coherent story line to hold it together, I might have been more involved in the aerial battles and air to ground attacks. As it was, I could feel a headache setting in over the course of the 2 hours and 10 minutes of film.

The one thing that worked in this movie was the dynamic between Duke and Ana. Duke was supposed to protect Ana's brother Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) when they went into battle somewhere in the Middle East five years before. Duke sends Rex into a building to acquire information on biological warfare from some criminal mastermind, and about a minute after he goes inside, the U.S. forces arrive way too early to open fire on the mad man's hold out. Duke tries his darnedest to warn Rex in time, but is unable to spare his friend, and would-be future brother in law, from certain doom.

Duke broke the one promise he made to Ana, to look after her genius brother. His guilt was palpable, and was the heart and soul of this weak-willed movie. Then the film goes and squanders what good will it had earned from me in the third act with a twist that is backed by very shallow exploration of the transition of certain characters from good to bad.

I hold no fault against Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the weakness of this movie. Clearly he was having fun, and yet approached his cookie cutter role with utmost professionalism. In his interview with Leonard Maltin, he went out of his way to warn viewers that it did not resemble reality in the slightest, and made his work on 3rd Rock From the Sun look like a John Cassavettes movie by comparison. In getting such a respected and talented actor, though, I did hope to see the screenplay allow him to demonstrate his range a little bit more. And I realize that's asking a lot from a dumb, mindless, convoluted summer action movie.

In a reconnaissance mission going from a weapons building holdout beneath the sands of Egypt to a mission control center underneath the waters of the Arctic circle, to the streets of Paris, the Joes pursue Destro and his cohorts in breakneck fashion. But I was left with more questions than answers. Why wouldn't Duke's desire to make amends with Ana be somewhat diminished after she's responsible for the deaths of faceless soldiers under his command? I know that love prevails over all, but for Pete's sake, it shouldn't be that easy. Why would Destro even bother to negotiate a trade deal with NATO if he would only risk letting the prized weapons fall out of his hands forever? What if he hadn't succeeded in breaking into the Joe's headquarters and swiping them back?

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra joins the ranks of Troy, Memoirs of a Geisha, and No Country for Old Men as a movie I just couldn't appreciate as much as Blake did. The fact that I don't grasp the appeal G.I. Joe holds for Blake does make his mental process all the more mysterious, which is part of the reason I'm so interested in his feedback.

Due to the fleeting moments of poignancy in the flashback sequences to Duke, Ana and Rex in happier days, the promise of romance between Ripcord and Scarlett, and the whimsy of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a role he clearly relished, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is actually spared being the worst movie of the year by 17 Again. And to be fair, I'm already predicting I liked it better than I would like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But a lumbering, piece-meal assemblage of action sequences clobbered together under the alleged storyline that is G.I. Joe makes Armageddon look like a skillfully crafted piece of art.

2 and 3/4 stars.

The argument of whether everything happens because of destiny or chance has been evident in movies across decades. In Fools Rush In, Alex and Isabel had the argument. In Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump's mom and Lieutenant Dan had alternate approaches (life is a box of chocolates vs. I had a DESTINY!).

In 500 Days of Summer, the principal characters, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) argue about whether destiny governs the meeting of lovers, or if it happens by chance.

I totally got Tom during this movie. Over the course of drinks at a birthday party, chance meetings, in the elevator ("I love the Smiths. The Smiths are the best."), Tom starts to think that this is all falling together for a reason.

Tom is ready to leap head first into a relationship with Summer, while she's more circumspect about defining their relationship. It's arguable that the two are in love. (Okay, well, it's official that Tom is in love with Summer, it's hard to refute that summer has strong feelings for Tom.)

The film plots the course of their relationship over roughly 500 Days, jumbling up the days so that we see Tom breaking plates at his apartment as the film opens. The first-time viewer will see this scene as hilarious, him standing dead-pan at the kitchen counter as he smashes housewares in indulgent self-pity. I imagine seeing this film a second time, though, knowing what news he'd just gotten, and feeling great empathy.

As the film goes back and forth from day 290 to day 8 to day 245 to day 21, we are left to piece together in our minds the arc of the story. I thought of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind often. Early in their relationship, Tom purveys a sense of puppy dog neediness, a wanting for Summer to hold and kiss him and call him her boyfriend. When he does get two of the three, he's on cloud nine. The scene where he walks out of his apartment and greets everyone who passes in his favorite park is so unabashedly hilarious I found myself laughing harder and harder the more over the top it became. I can only hope Saturday Night Live has Joseph Gordon-Levitt's agent on the line to arrange for him to host, because it absolutely begs to be parodied. And even though he has the goofiest behavior when things are going well, it's impossible to get tired of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this movie, because he shifts gears so rapidly. You don't have to wait long for him to display new emotions. It cuts rapidly to him walking out of the elevator with a death glare, reciting everything he hates about Summer. Credit is due in a large part to the screenplay and film editing where that's concerned.

Then there's Zooey Deschanel. She was very cute in Elf, Almost Famous, and Yes Man. But here, this may be the cutest I've ever seen her. Credit there goes to Zooey just for being so damn cute and likable, and to the cinematographers, for capturing her beauty so sure-handedly. She knows that she cares about Tom, and she opens up to him a great deal. What she doesn't know is whether or not she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. But she doesn't want to hurt him either. I would have liked a little more insight into what she wanted. But maybe not totally getting Summer is the point.

500 Days of Summer made me feel as earnest of an appreciation for the attraction of two individuals as I felt when I watched Kevin and Winnie on The Wonder Years when I was a kid. I can only speak for the film as far as my reaction goes. I'm interested to hear Blake and other critics do the same.

3 and 4/5 stars.

About a week and a half ago, I had a mini Sam Mendes film festival. I watched Road to Perdition on TNT, an absorbing period drama about Michael Sullivan, (Tom Hanks), a mob henchman from Rock Island, Illinois, who has to hit the road with his young son to find a new place to settle down after being targeted for murder by mob boss John Rooney (Paul Newman).

Then Blake and I went to take in a screening of Away We Go, a quirky, and I dare say high-spirited, modern comedic drama about a young couple, Burt and Verona (The Office's John Krasinski and Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph), who are faced with unexpected pregnancy as the film opens. They are living in a drafty bungalow in a northern midwest town as the film opens.

Verona takes a look around and realizes that the lifestyle they lead is not conducive to raising a child. This is not to say they live immorally, they merely live simply. A shabby couch, magazines and a scrappy coffee table adorn their modest living room. They decide they need to relocate to an environment a little more embracing to a newborn.

It's almost fate that I happened to rewatch Road to Perdition and see Away We Go on the same day. I otherwise would have been hard pressed to find similarities between this film and any other Sam Mendes movie. Like Road to Perdition, it's about relocating for the good of a child. It observes two people hitting the open road without a set itinerary (well, okay, Verona does staple a list of cities to visit on the inside of Burt's jacket), and hoping to land on a place that is safe and secure, interspersed with protracted driving shots across beautiful if desolate landscapes. (Mendes' former director of photography, the late Conrad L. Hall, would have approved.)

While Road to Perdition was a better movie, I think Away We Go would have greater rewatchability. Blake and I have often had the discussion about the different categories of "favorite" movie, how it can be distinguished by emotional reaction to artistic brilliance (Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Atonement) or a very basic affection for a movie which makes it a first choice for repeated viewings (Big Fish, Spiderman, Get Smart).

Burt and Verona first meet with Burt's parents (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels), who have been planning to move to Antwerp, Belgium for longer than Verona's been pregnant. They don't stall their plans when they find out they're moving a month before the baby's due. It's not that they're cold and indifferent (well, okay, maybe a little indifferent), it's just that they've reached a point in their lives where their kids are raised and they want to have their own life. They'd probably love to see the baby, I imagine they'd just expect Burt and Verona to hop a plane to Belgium to bring the infant to them. Entitlement would be the best way of describing them.

Verona's parents both died when she was 22. Reasons are never given, but we can imagine anything. I choose to imagine a car accident as the easiest explanation. Given that Maya Rudolph's own mother, R&B soul singer Minnie Riperton ("Lovin' You") died of cancer when Rudolph was 6, it's easy to see what she had to draw upon for the character, the reluctance to marry, the anguish at not having mom and dad around for key moments of her life, the fondness for memories of years past.

Burt and Verona go to Phoenix, Arizona, Madison Wisconsin, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada to find an environment conducive to raising a child.

Phoenix has Verona's ex boss Lily (Allison Janney, about 360 degrees removed from her character in American Beauty), is a drinker, may have some mental instability issues (I'd diagnose her as a candidate for Tourette's), and berates her kids incessantly. Her husband (Jim Gaffigan) is actually the quiet, enigmatic equivalent of Janney's surrendered wife of American Beauty in this relationship.

Madison has Burt's "cousin" Ellen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her husband (Josh Hamilton), a hippie couple who allow their children in the bedroom even when children should NOT be around), and breastfeeds her newborn and her six year old (appalled dropping of jaw).

Montreal has college friends Tom and Munch (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynsky), who have a great life with four foster children, but want so badly to conceive one of their own. Tom makes a great analogy about a family and a household using pancakes and syrup.

The film did better than I expected in terms of humor. I enjoyed the awkward silences that usually followed whatever absurdity was shared by Lily, Ellen, or their respective partner. Burt and Verona would merely sit stone silent, eyebrows raised. The humor is very much in the same vein as the Office, and with that in mind, it worked to Krasinski's strengths as a comedic actor.

I have a great fondness for Away We Go. To borrow from another Jeff Daniels character, "it's minor Sam Mendes," but that's a pretty weak insult when you take into account the man's track record.

Three and 1/2 stars.

Oh my gosh! News flash: Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian was awesome!

I loved the first Night at the Museum, because it was not only informational and educational, but so funny and original.

I went in holding NATM2 to reasonable expectations; give me a 3 and 1/2 star film and I won't be dissatisfied.

It vaulted that handily.

Ben Stiller returns as Larry Daley, the museum guard for the American Natural History Museum at Night at the Museum 1. In the first film, Larry was a struggling inventor who took a job as night guard to pay the bills so he didn't lose custody of his son Nick (Jake Cherry). Now, Larry is living the dream, having founded Daley Devices, a company that manufactures his inventions.

Larry learns that upgrades at the American Natural History Museum are making the old exhibits obsolete. Many of them (Sacajawea, Jedediah, Octavius), are going to be shipped to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where they will be frozen away for all time. In place of the live action exhibits, virtual exhibits will take their place.

Larry is still visibly consumed with the day to day tasks of running Daley Corp., as is evident by his frequent interruption of the living exhibits to answer his blackberry. When he finds out his friends are going to be locked away, though, he takes some time away from his all-consuming day job to try to restore them to their previous living arrangements.

Larry and son Nick work together to hatch a plan to infiltrate the Smithsonian. The first snag Larry hits is running into Brandon (pronounced Brundan, played by Jonah Hill), in a scene that felt like it fell right out of a Judd Apatow movie. I was so impressed with Hill and Stiller's comic intensity, and their ability to maintain it without once resorting to a four-letter word.

Larry busts in, finds that Dexter the Monkey had made off with the Egyptian tablet that brought the exhibits to life after dark.So they were able come to life in Washington. Now, they faced the ordeal of standing up to Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), the Egyptian pharoah who is brother to Akmenrah from the first Night at the Museum film. Kahmunrah and his forces had been fighting against our friends from the American Natural History Museum over the tablet the night before Larry arrived in Washington. Once they're brought back to life, Kahmunrah takes the tablet and inserts it into the gates of the Underworld, hoping to unleash all of his forces.

The tablet, which looks like a giant cellphone in bronze, has a new combination. Kahmunrah asks Larry to find him the new combination, based on the inscriptions on the tablet.

Larry has acquired a new sidekick. The exhibit of Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) accompanies him on his quest to find the new combination, which involves consulting with a number of other exhibits, including The Thinker, the Albert Einstein bobbleheads, and the Lincoln monument.

I never got around to seeing Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day, but after seeing Adams' Amelia Earhart, I'm adding it to my Netflix. Adams has perfected the art of the wry, quirky Girl Friday with her spewing of depression-era figures of speech, her mannerisms, and her whip-sharp comic timing. I thought of a Conan O'Brien sketch in 2005 promoting the remake of King Kong in which he dubbed over the original films with 1930's vernacular. Much like Conan O'Brien does from time to time, Adams managed to recreate a sense of the 1930's rhythm and culture. I really hope some time in the next year she gets a seat on the couch of the Tonight Show after O'Brien takes over. I can see them bantering now. "So's your old man!" "Why ya' gotta' give me the tomatoes?"

Earhart develops strong feelings for Larry. But he knows that there can be no future for the two of them, her being an exhibit confined to the museum, him being a living breathing human being. But God help him, Larry kind of loves her back. The film is surprisingly deeper than it presumed to be in its reflection on mortality, as Larry struggles to explain to her what will happen if she flies off into sunrise. I actually fought back tears. But hell, the same happened the second time through watching Iron Man.

I haven't even mentioned Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte yet. And shame on me for neglecting to mention Bill Hader as General Custer, who is one great comic lead role away from a Golden Globe nomination in my opinion.

I had the same sense of great possibility watching Night at the Museum 2 as I did watching the Toy Story movies. This film captures the essence of moments in history, extracts the people and mixes them together, and imagines how their interactions might play out based on their attributes and reputations. It is an absolute playground for any historian. And while it's intended to be taken lightly, I imagine the discussion it would generate between intellectuals and researchers over dinner about how certain famous (and infamous) figures would really react to each other if embodied and united in the present.

2009 has been an incredible year for movies so far. It is not yet June, and with Night at the Museum 2, I write my third four star review. Props to director Shawn Levy for taking this mindbending concept and running with it.

Four stars.

One silver lining to the 2007-2008 Writer's Guild of America strike was that shut down of production on NBC's Heroes freed up Zachary Quinto's schedule to shoot the movie Star Trek.

Directed by J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost and Alias, Star Trek (2009) takes a bit of a gamble in telling an origins story for Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Chekhov, Uhura, Scotty, and the crew of the Federation starship Enterprise.

As it happens, I'm not as devoted of a Star Trek fan as some other people I know, so placing new actors in time-tested role really wasn't as big of a travesty for me as it was for other people. As long as it told a good story with compelling action and human drama, I would be satisfied.

Wisely, I went in expecting something along the three and a half star line or lower. It took the pressure off of the film to impress me.

The film opens with the Federation starship U.S.S. Kelvin sustaining heavy fire from a ship emerging from a strange lightning storm. It is piloted by Nero, a Romulan with a vendetta that we find out about over the course of the film. While the Kelvin's captain disembarks to negotiate with Nero, first officer George Kirk is made acting Captain.

After negotiations turn awry, Kirk authorizes a top down evacuation of the Kelvin. His wife, nine months pregnant and going into labor, pleads for George to evacuate with her, as she needs him for the delivery. This was a heartwrenching scene, and if not for the fact I was dehydrated, I would have been in tears. Sometimes, you don't even think about what you're giving up when you have so many lives in your hands. George Kirk makes a tough decision quickly and naturally, and the emotional payoff elevates Star Trek to the level of Deep Impact or United 93.

Flash forward about twelve years, and we have a young James Kirk borrowing his step father's 300 year old automobile and hotrodding through the backroads of rural Iowa.

If this film has a flub, it is minor, but I'll bring it up anyways. Young James bails out of his father's 300 year old convertible just before it plunges over a huge cliff. First of all, how would they have kept that car from deteriorating over the course of 300 years? Alright, I admit, there are automobile museums around the world that exhibits of cars that are around 100 years old. (Autoworld at the Art History Museum in Brussels, Belgium comes to mind for me.) But would it still run? And would they still have the 20th century petroleum fuel to run it in the late 2200s?

And where in Iowa are there canyons? I'm scratching my head trying to think. I grew up across the river from Davenport, and I've been all over Iowa. There are some decent size bluffs over the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, but no precipice with as drastic of relief as displayed in the movie.

Evidently we have some major geological events in store.

We also see Spock as a child on the Vulcan planet, the son of a Vulcan and human, and proned to ridicule by his classmates for his cross-pollinated state. It is not easy to bear the scrutiny of his classmates who are full-blooded Vulcan.

Spock and Kirk are destined to meet, of course. Both enlist in Starfleet, Kirk (Chris Pine) recruited by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), following a wretched bar-room brawl; and Spock (Quinto) enlisting of his own volition, after consulting with his parents.

Kirk gets himself into trouble by hacking into a computer system and thus passing a flight simulation test created by Mr. Spock for the purpose of preparing a commander for an unwinnable battle. Kirk gets put on suspension, but his buddy, Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban) hatches a plan to sneak Kirk onto a Starfleet ship.

It is good that Kirk is there on the ship, because starfleet sees the same lightning storm that was present when the Romulan spacecraft emerged to destroy the Kelvin 28 odd years before. Kirk is able to identify the lightning storm for what it is, while Cpt. Spock authorizes further investigation.

Man, it was awesome watching Spock and Kirk exchange words. The dialogue absolutely crackles throughout the movie.

The Romulans want to destroy the Vulcan planet using "Red Matter," the film's MacGuffin, which can be inserted into a planet's core and suck it into a black hole. You see, Nero, the Romulan ship commander, lost his planet to a black hole 130 years in the future. The black hole was created by the Red Matter, a substance Mr. Spock had created for the specific purpose of swallowing a supernova.

Anyhow, I'm getting too involved with the space logistics. The supernova will be destroyed, but so will be the Romulan planet, sucked into the black hole, Nero's pregnant wife included. Nero, being away on a mining ship, had to watch.

The black hole will also be a temporal anomaly, since Nero goes back in time 154 years to destroy the U.S.S. Kelvin. Spock is transported back 130 years, and arrives right around the time Kirk is 26 years old, and exiled from the enterprise by the young Spock. Future Spock and Kirk meet up on the snow planet Delta Vega.

The future Spock (now played by, you guessed it, Leonard Nimoy), tries to convince Kirk to assist him in fighting against the Romulans. In order to do this, he must be beamed back to the U.S.S. Enterprise and somehow get Spock to give up his chair as captain. How will Kirk do it? No, not by telling him "I met you from 130 years in the future." But by pissing him off, thus emotionally compromising him.

If I were Nero, I would have used the opportunity of going back in time to warn the Romulans about the supernova coming 154 years in the future and devise some sort of relocation/evacuation procedure in the century and a half leading up to it. But no, Nero's a supervillain, so he'd prefer to use the opportunity to stick it to the aging Spock by sucking up the Vulcan planet with a red matter black hole; that is, once he arrives through the temporal anomaly 26 years down the line.

Yes, the plot is convoluted. But it is never boring. And the aforementioned actors do a dynamite job. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana). Saldana is good at showing sadness, anger, and fear. In a different manner from Kirk, she tries to get Spock to break down and show emotion too. I imagine the screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman watching that scene and jumping up and down, thinking, "oh, my God! That's exactly how I envisioned this on paper!"

While I was filled with questions about the film's continuity and logic, I abstain from taking the film to task on its details with respect for the film's favor of feeling over logic. The film has the right sense to its actions, and allows for some breach of consistency in temporal spatial logic with the pay-off of unmined emotional possibility. Hey, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Being John Malkovich achieved the same end. By comparing Star Trek to those two movies, I think you know where this review is heading.

Four stars.

This weekend, I went out to visit Blake. We had originally talked about going to see X Men Origins: Wolverine, but then we came to a collective decision we weren't all that enthusiastic about it after all, and opted to stay home and watch a DVD at his apartment instead.

Blake presented me with a number of choices. There's a long list of films he has been insistent that I see. Last night, we knocked Kingdom of Heaven off that list.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Kingdom of Heaven lived up to the precedent set by this often visceral director with abundant blood, carnage, and combat. However, there's a reason I continue to return to the well that is the Ridley Scott cannon; beneath the ultra-violent exterior beats the heart of a truly human story. Again, a precedent Scott set through his remarkable resume (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner, etc.)

Orlando Bloom stars as Balian of Ibelin, a blacksmith from France who goes to fight in the Crusades circa 1177 AD.

Early in the film, Balian prepares to cross the Mediterranean from Messina, Sicily. He sees Muslims bowing in prayer on the rocky shore. He asks someone what they are saying, and it roughly translated to "praise be to God, for he should be praised."

"Not all that different from our own prayers," reflects Balian.

There were tons of great moments in this film like that.

After a patient, paced set up, we see Balian land (or rather, shipwrecked) on the shores of the Holy Land (presumably present day Israel/Palestine.) He finds his way to Jerusalem, where he is appointed the successor to the Baron Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson). In fact, Bailan learns that Baron Godfrey was his father, and he was born out of wedlock.

I have to say that I thought of Batman Begins during the early training sequences in Kingdom of Heaven. Neeson's Baron Godfrey is a gruff but sensible in tutoring Bloom's Balian in the finer points of crusade warfare, much in the same nature as Neeson's Henri Dukard trained Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne to fight in the aforementioned other large-scale 2005 release.

Liam Neeson must have been busy as hell the year he had to shoot those two films back to back.

Anyhow, I digress. Balian receives welcome in Jerusalem from King Baldwin IV (Edward Norton, who is exceptional even from behind a heavy mask). Though his face and body are ravaged by Leprosy, Baldwin IV has pretty well rationalized the nature of the Christian Muslim conflict as it was in the Middle East in the 12th Century. The two religious cultures were working to establish their influence on the world front as a whole, but the cause boiled down to territorial conflict. It was a fight not over freedom of belief so much as land. So long as Muslims paid their taxes in Christian countries, they were free to worship as they wished.

I liked the message of this movie. The battles were never a fight to the death over whose God was better, but who could merely have autonomy over the Israeli city that is the point of origin for both Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammed. I was glad that both King Baldwin IV and Saladin, leader of the Muslim forces (Ghassan Massoud) seemed to get that.

The film could have painted itself into a corner by conveying a message that it was nobler to fight for one's religion than land. However, Ridley Scott would then have to open up a debate about whether Christians or Muslims carried the moral highground. Really, both sides are guilty of atrocities, so it would have been slanted no matter which side was presented as the morally upright. Plus, a film where Muslims and Christians attack each other out of pure intolerance would have made for an agonizing three hours. Wisely, Ridley Scott wove the story as one of Christians and Muslims fighting to preserve their collective ways of life, and dispassionately disputing over the land. (Be it praying to Jesus or Mohammed.) I thought of The New World and United 93 while watching this.

Oh, there is a villain, though. Surprisingly, it's not the Jeremy Irons character. He plays the Count of Tiberias, who is duty bound to the interests of Christians in Jerusalem. The real villain, if there is one, is the Guy of Lusignan (Marton Csokas), who does preach of Christianity's self-righteous entitlement to Jerusalem. He's married to Princess Sibylla (Eva Green), who for obvious reasons is more attracted to Orlando Bloom's character than her husband.

While it was lengthy, it was a good movie, maybe even as good as Gladiator. And while he's a generic cola when you wanted Pepsi or Coke, Orlando Bloom is adequate as the lead, and gets the monologues off with the right inflection.

Kingdom of Heaven was about as good as Gladiator, and it probably takes the #8 spot away from Crash on the top ten of 2005.

3 and 3/4 stars.

Throughout 2008, I went on a renting spree of low budget, direct to DVD movies. As a consequence, I didn't give four stars to a single movie I saw in the summer of 2008.

I guess after the emotional investment I put into the works of 2007, (good and bad movies), I felt drained. So I rented movies like "Thief Undercover," "Summer," "Easy," and "Wedding Crashers." "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" might have been the most substantial film I took home from the video store.

To quote Blake, "Life is too short to watch crappy movies." At first, I disagreed with him, following the philosophy that sometimes you just feel like watching a crappy movie.

But I made myself put Synecdoche, NY at the top of my queue on the Netflix account I just started. I knew it would require me to put my thinking cap on, but I had such great experiences with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I was ready to follow Charlie Kaufmann anywhere.

Written and directed by Charlie Kaufmann, Synecdoche, NY. is the tale of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theatre director in Schenectady, NY whose career is going well, but his marriage is falling apart. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) is an artist who makes paintings so tiny you have to look through special glasses to see them. Most of them have human subjects.

When Adele doesn't come to the opening night of Death of a Salesman, Caden is hurt but finds himself the center of attention of other women.

Adele has the opportunity to do artwork in Berlin, so she goes and takes her daughter Olive with her. Caden enters a series of romantic relationships. There's Hazel (Samantha Morton) who works in the box office and wears low-cut blouses. She's smitten with Caden very obviously from the start. There's also Claire (Michelle Williams), an actress from Death of a Salesman, who he eventually starts a new family with. And there's Tammy (Emily Watson), one of the actors in a massive new project he's starting.

Caden has received a MacArthur Grant to stage whatever theatrical production he wants. He decides to buy an enormous abandoned warehouse in Manhattan's theatre district. He hires many actors and starts staging a play about his entire life. Everything that we see happen offstage with Caden is recreated on the stage, a multitiered simulation of New York City.

The film spans across decades, and we come to realize that Caden is trying desperately to paint a portrait of his life before dying. He suffers numerous afflictions over the course of the film, and with each new twitch, infection, seizure, or injury, he becomes more compelled to leave something in this theatrical production that is lasting.

The actors become ancy to get an audience, and inexplicably stick with it for decades, even though it is clearly art for art's sake. (Like a giant, ongoing workshop.)

Caden is constantly longing for either the one he can't have or the one who got away. When he has sex with Hazel, he cries for Adele. When he's married to Claire, he worries about his daughter Olive, who grows up in Berlin and enters a destructive lesbian relationship with Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh.)

Has Caden's entire life been wasted on this theatrical endeavor? Or has he in fact crafted a microcosm of the meaning of life? We fall in love, we fall out of love, we try to do something lasting for the world before we die. But then we die, and did anything we did amount to anything?

Caden finally gains insight into the story of his life when Sammy (Tom Noonan) comes along. He wants to play Caden. He in fact has followed Caden around for years, and does an excellent job of recreating the idiosyncracies, right down to the romances. In fact, Sammy goes so far into method acting as to share in Caden's mounting sense of inferiority.

Synecdoche, NY made me aware of how miniscule I was in the grand scheme of things- and in a way, I appreciated how humbling it was to watch this film. It also exalts the smallness of the individual as part of something much more grand, and how we all play lead roles in our own lives.

Yes, it was mindbending, thought provoking, and emotionally gripping. Like with The Tin Drum, I had to take a break midway just to process everything. And Tin Drum got a resolute thumbs down from me. With that in mind, I can accept that people like Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz hated this film. There will be lots of people who hate it for reasons I understand. As an individual, though, I took a closer look at the parts of Synecdoche, NY, and saw a beauty in a father's unconditional love, an ex-husband's loneliness, and a man's mediocrity and genius. We see his sense of insignificance and great purpose all at once. And in taking a step back to observe the grand canvas that is this film, I felt it paid tribute to the smallness of the individual as part of the bigger picture of human experience.

Benjamin Button, you've had a good run. Synecdoche, NY is the best film of 2008...at the risk of drawing huge ridicule from Blake, it may be the best movie ever made.

Four and a half stars.

There are so many different angles from which you could approach Watchmen, such that the film is like a Rorshach test.

I know that's a very obvious point of entry to describing our characters. And I swear, no pun intended.

Set in an alternate 1985, the film opens with Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a surviving member of the Watchmen, observing the crime scene where Edward Blake, also known as the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), is found dead on the sidewalk below his highrise loft. If someone wanted one of the Watchmen dead, he or she is probably planning to pick them off one by one. So Rorschach collects clues in his journal, and duty bound, makes his rounds to the subsequent retired heroes. There's Dan, or Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre II (Malin Ackerman), Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup, computer generated most of the time as a blue naked configuration of matter not subject to the time space continum), and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the superhero who capitalized his reputation as a superhero to form a multimillion dollar corporation. Among other things, he hawks action figures of himself. If any of the Watchmen rolled over and gave in to the suit and tie capitalist mentality prevalent of the '80's, it was Ozymandias.

I don't get the sense that Rorschach cared about his fellow Watchmen's well being, but he did feel a certain strain of loyalty to them. If they were to be killed off, they had the right to be informed. Then they could protect themselves.

As for Rorschach, after gaining a glimpse as to his upbringing, I wouldn't expect him to make emotional investment in anyone. His mother was a prostitute who routinely neglected him in the interest of pursuing clientele while he grew up. The neighborhood bullies tormented him for the bastard child that he was. For all the sexual exploitation, carnage and human denegration he has witnessed, though, Rorschach is remarkably well-adjusted. Looking at the film as a Rorschach test, I see Rorschach as the closest thing to a moral compass. Now a rugged adult with a mesh of spiky red hair beneath a mask that bears the inkblots of an ever-changing Rorschach test, he surveys the city streets with a disgust at the humanity laid to waste.

"The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'save us!' ...and I'll look down and whisper...'no.'"

In this universe, Kennedy was assassinated, not by Lee Harvey Oswald, but perhaps as a plot by the right wing to enact stronger anti-Soviet policy. Once again, that's my own speculation, based on who carries out the hit.

The United States won the Vietnam War, thanks to the military industrial complex' reliance on two of the Watchmen in particular. Dr. Manhattan, who came back from a botched nuclear experiement, fights the Vietcong as a superhuman capable of mass slaughter; and the Comedian, bearing a flamethrower that could engulf scores of North Vietnamese soldiers in seconds. But because the U.S. won in this conflict, we have become isolationist, power hungry, and ultimately a threat to all nations. The Soviets feel all but duty bound to teach us a lesson with nuclear missiles. The ominous clock that indicates the threat of attack by atomic blast is set at four to midnight.

The impression I got, looking at the grand canvas that is Watchmen, is that their world is worse than the one we inhabit. In the universe of Watchmen, we have made more enemies than ever as a consequence of our brute force on the global front. In reality, we had the shame and disgrace of backing out of Vietnam in 1973, and letting Saigon fall to the North Vietnamese. But in a way, the shame and disgrace was worth it, because we revealed our vulnerability. And that has prevented us from descending into despotic fascism that we saw on display in the film and graphic novel with Nixon sweating away the inevitable loss of life that is to come when the Soviet Union and United States exchange missiles.

President Nixon must have weathered Watergate well, because he was reelected in '76, '80, and '84. We see him at the beginning of his fifth term. Soviet paranoia is at absolute fever pitch.

Rorschach figures if they can find out who killed the Comedian, they will trace the perpetrator to a motive. Was it a Russian plot? Was it U.S. military? Is there a terrorist threat someone didn't want them to find out about?

If there is a nuclear attack, will the Watchmen deem it a worthy cause to save a country that has been turned over to hustlers, organized crime and corporate greed? A scene in the 1970's, when Nite Owl II and the Comedian try to restore order results in a shoot out of rioters. The Comedian busts out a machine gun and goes to town. Nite Owl II feebly suggests that's not the preferable means of restoring order. But how many other alternatives to the Watchmen have in a world like this? The people need to be saved from themselves. In that respect, I thought of the Dark Knight often during Watchmen. Only in this world, you get a truer sense that everyone has become an assailant, and wiping them out is almost the best salvation a hero can offer.

Much was disturbing about the film, but I think the film realized that, and meant it to provoke discussion. This is not a mere comic book film. It is a philosophical lesson that is meant to be discussed in college film classes, at film conferences, and over dinner between critics.

There is a strong argument for humanity in the film, don't get me wrong. I loved the scenes between Dan and Laurie (Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II by another name.) They debate the pros and cons of going back to fight crime again, even as Nixon has repealed their contract. Dan's a science geek who grins sheepishly when Laurie comes to him after leaving Dr. Manhattan, a relationship that hit a snag, given the differentials of their physical properties.

Silk Spectre II visits her mother, Silk Spectre I (Carla Gugino, convincingly craggy in 1985, positively smoldering in flashbacks) who tells her daughter about the attempted rape by the Comedian, but also manages to portray him as a conflicted individual rather than a straight down the line wretch.

I also had a place in my heart for Dr. Manhattan, who is exiled to Mars and is blamed for spreading cancer through his experiments. Yet he lets himself be affected by the suffering on earth.

Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II seem to understand that "yeah, while the human race has gone to waste, they are still granted the looking out for that we can offer them." So they don the latex suits and look for Rorscach, who has gotten himself incarcerated and wrongly accused of Comedian's murder. With these powers working together for actual good, maybe they can figure out just what kind of terrorist plot is to take place.

There are some astonishing battles of wills between the Watchmen here, and plausible arguments from both the heroes and villains. It is remarkable to see how some among them can reconcile mass destruction as a necessary evil, and how others feel that crimes against humanity must be brought to justice, no matter what the ends are.

God, the cast was great. I haven't even gotten into the sexual tension or the personal characteristics of the Watchmen. I only hope that my failure to elaborate will intrigue more people to go to the movie and seek answers for themselves. I would petition heavily for Jackie Earle Haley to get some Oscar consideration. The cast overall is great. But he's on a level with Heath Ledger here.

It is right to end the storyline where it is. And at the same time, I'm left wanting more. I went to this movie because Blake wanted to go so badly. But, if a recent trip to Borders for the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel and a Rorschach poster is any indication, I've wound up a benefactor in my own right.

Four stars.

It is a remarkable thing to see an established supporting actor known for a particular style of acting break out and go in a completely different direction.

It is especially gratifying to see this happen after years of going unnoticed, or at least underappreciated.

Richard Jenkins has just such a breakthrough with The Visitor. Known for his deep, quiet, unassuming performances, thankless roles overshadowed by bigger names and faces, it seemed he was to be relegated to the same "hey, it's that guy" status as the likes of Ben Stein, Bill Strimovich, or Chelcie Ross.

(Who is Chelcie Ross? I knew you'd ask that! He played the basketball coach Gene Hackman replaces in Hoosiers, Notre Dame football coach Dan Devine in Rudy, and he's also in The Express: The Ernie Davis Story.)

In the Visitor, Jenkins plays Walter Vale, a widowed English professor at a university in Connecticut. He teaches one section of a course. He takes piano lessons. He listens to classical music, cooks, and drinks wine.

His loneliness is palpable. And yet it's a comfortable loneliness to him. He doesn't realize how much happier he could be if he took a step outside of his element. But not knowing keeps him safe in his parameters.

Then Walter has it thrust upon him to go present a paper at a conference at NYU. It's a paper he's credited with co-authoring. But it was another professor's work, almost entirely. He merely made over the shoulder suggestions. He feels like he shouldn't be the one going down and talking about it, but his higher ups leave him with no other choice.

Walter has an apartment in New York that he doesn't go to that often. I thought of my friend Greg O'Neill, who had an apartment in the Aspen Courts complex in Macomb, Illinois, which he had to sublease. It's there, it's yours, you have it paid for, you just don't make use of it. Well, Richard arrives at his apartment the night before the conference. There are fresh flowers in a vase. He hears noises coming from the bathroom. Waaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute.

Next thing he knows, Walter is being attacked as an intruder. See, a young couple has actually been residing there for several months, under a fraudulent subleasor.

For a time the film morphs into a comedy of errors of sorts, as we see Richard and the couple awkwardly address the misunderstanding and reconcile. The boyfriend, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), comes from Syria. He makes a living out of playing the Djembe, African bongos, in Central Park with other musicians. His girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira), comes from Senegal, West Africa, and sells blankets and handmade crafts at a streetcorner market.

One day, during a lunchbreak from his conferences, Walter sees Tarek playing in the circle. Intrigued, he stays to watch for a while. Next thing he knows, he's tagging along with the middle eastern/African couple to a gig in a jazz club. Walter could have taken an interest in anything and it would have helped him out of the rut he was living in. As luck would have it, circumstance are he discovers an unwitting passion for the Djembe. He puts his heart and soul into playing, practicing late into the night in his apartment, drumming on the table during faculty meetings, even softly pounding on the counter when he goes to visit Tarek, who is taken off by NYPD to a detention center after trying to get his drums through the turnstile of the subway.

The friendship that occurs between Richard, Tarek and Zainab is extremely unlikely, and because of that it is deeply moving. What is even more moving is the friendship that transpires between Richard and Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass). Mouna comes comes from Detroit to be there for her son, even as she can't go visit him, due to their speculative status as immigrants. She uses Richard as an intermediary, dispatching him to hold up letters for Tarek to read through the glass.

Given that Mouna will not go back to Detroit until her son is freed, Richard does grant her the opportunity to go on with her own life. He lets her stay at his apartment, and the two begin to spend time together. It's not only the Djembe that Richard takes a healthy interest in.

I will not spoil anything about the last half hour, but suffice it to say there's a showdown between Richard and customs and immigration officials. If you've ever had a mild-mannered teacher who lost it that one time during the school year when the class was misbehaving, that's what you get here. He quietly builds toward this breakthrough over the course of the whole movie.

I can't emphasize how close to my heart a film like The Visitor is. Like Benjamin Button, it doesn't overtly play the heart strings, but it scaffolds the plot development to a point where you know what they're feeling without them needing to display it.

Writer-Director Tom McCarthy won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. (One of a handful of decisions the Academy can be praised for this year.) Instead of providing the obvious Oscar clip, they had actor Adrian Brody deliver a moving speech acknowledging both Jenkins' performance and career. Jenkins kept a trademark poker face throughout, cracking only the faintest of smiles.

If you want to see just how affecting it is when Jenkins gives us a glimpse of what he's feeling inside, rent The Visitor.

Four Stars.

Rarely, if ever, does a movie come out that both Blake and I are tripping over ourselves to see. Usually, it's me lobbying that we see Hancock, 10,000 B.C. or Indiana Jones 4, while he goes along simply to be a good sport.

Or it's Blake who's insisting that we see No Country For Old Men, Across the Universe, or Atonement.

Two times out of three, I wind up apologizing to Blake for my choices or thanking him for his.

Slumdog Millionaire was a true rarity. Neither party had to cajole the other. We both willfully put on our shoes, went out to the car and drove out to see it. Neither side had to do much work to convince the other. Blake's motivation to see this film came from the strong word of mouth and the plot; it's an underdog story from tried and true director Danny Boyle about a kid who decides to call in to make it onto India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire after working himself up out of a hardscrabble life in the slums of Mumbai. But he's not on the show for the money. He desperately wants to reunite with Latika, the girl he has loved since he was a little child.

All that stuff seemed nice to me, but to be honest, my main drive to see the movie was Irrfan Khan. After seeing The Namesake last year, I was more or less willing to follow Irrfan Khan anywhere.

Like Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire plays in flashbacks. Early in the movie, the police inspector (Irrfan Khan) is cooly torturing Jamal, the hero of the movie. Jamal has made it all the way to the last question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The inspector suspects something out of the plot of the movie Quiz Show. Somehow he got the answers. Somehow he must have known.

Jamal is beaten and shocked, but there simply are no secrets to spill. He knew everything from the sheer happenstance of his life's experience.

There are moments of brutality in this film, like the raid on the Muslims living in the slums by their Hindi neighbors. Jamal escapes, and must ultimately look out for himself. Played as a young child by Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, we see him sleeping in shanties as the rain pours down. All he has left in the world is his brother Salim (Azharrudin Mohammed Ismail). One night, a young girl named Latika (played as a child by Rubina Ali) comes up to them, frail and shivering, begging for a warm place to sleep. Jamal lets her in with them after extended debate with Salim. This proves to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

We watch Jamal, Salim, and Latika get in and out of trouble, giving bogus tours at the Taj Mahal, selling trinkets on trains, and ultimately are taken in and cared for by Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a gangster who does terrible things to the children to make them more lucrative as beggars.

Jamal, Salim, and Latika are played by another set of actors as adolescents, (Tanay Chheda/Jamal, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar/Latika, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala/Salim), an age at which their lives take different paths. Salim's loyalty to protect his brother is conflicted by Latika. We ache for Jamal, who seems only ever to be this close to finding happiness.

Dev Patel plays Jamal as a young adult, serving tea at a call center. Freida Pinto plays Latika, now in indentured servitude (disguised as a marriage) to a philanderer. Madhur Mittal plays Salim, who has embraced the thug life, and has distanced himself from his background as much as could possibly be imagined.

The last forty-five minutes of the film are an exhiliarating drumbeat towards the 20 million rubies question. Really, the game is Jamal's entire life flashing before his eyes. And like Forrest Gump, we find ourselves totally entranced with our lead's plight, once the film has caught up to the present, watching to see what will happen should Latika happen to be watching.

I had a great time at Slumdog Millionaire. I thought of Shine and Lovers of the Arctic Circle, two other films where you had three different actors playing the same role at different ages, together constructing a fully realized character. And my gosh, what could have possibly prepared me to see Irrfan Khan as a tough as nails badass cop? Kevin Spacey, it's been nice having you in my list of ten favorite actors of all time, but someone has to go to make space for Irrfan Khan.

While my heart was with Benjamin Button winning best picture, I am far happier to see Slumdog Millionaire take the prize than The Reader. I read Harvey Weinstein's shameless promotion, and am glad to see that propaganda can only go so far, but true quality takes a film the rest of the way.

Three and 3/4 stars.

There's a funny thing about train stations. You can meet a complete stranger there and know that they're the love of your life instantly. Greg O'Neill met that girl from Pennsylvania who likes to write stories when he boarded a New Jersey Transit train in 2007. In Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's characters fall in love on a train trip across Europe. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet meet on a train in the film's opening, and hit it off beautifully. (Technically, yes, they were strangers at that point.)

Milk opens in 1970. Our subject, Harvey Milk, meets Scott Smith (James Franco) for the first time in a New York City subway station. Like Brokeback Mountain, the straight actors playing gay couples share remarkably good chemistry. Franco comes as no surprise. Days before, I saw him in Pineapple Express, and he had some memorable scenes with Seth Rogen. He brings the same unashamed sincerity to Milk.

Harvey tells Scott it's his birthday, and is able to persuade him to spend the evening with him at his apartment. By the time they're in bed eating cake together, they already seem like they've been together for a while.

Harvey and Scott leave New York for San Francisco, where they open up a camera shop in the Castro District, and Harvey soon makes a bid for the city council.

Like today, there was a lot of tension in San Francisco between the conservative establishment and the growing gay population. Actually, both sides seemed equally dangerous early in the film. In an early march scene, gays in the street seem about ready to start a riot after legislation is passed that more or less allows San Francisco businesses to discriminate based on gender preference in their hiring practices. What was remarkable about Harvey Milk the man was his ability to take a volatile, impassioned, disenfranchised group and mobilize them into a disciplined minority group working for social justice. He told people what they wanted to hear while imploring that they do so peacefully. It's not a far stretch to compare him to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Harvey struggles to achieve a balance between the two great priorities in his life; the man he loves and the cause he's fighting for. Scott, for example, loves Harvey too much to encourage him in his political aspirations. Only from a distance is he able to express his pride.

Then there's Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), a young gay man from Arizona who finds that his aggressive nature will serve Milk's campaign well. Cleve reminds me so much of Joe Scialla, a gay friend of Blake and me, it's uncanny.

Midway through the film, Harvey befriends Jack Lira (Diego Luna). Lira has some drug and alcohol problems, but manages to replace that dependency with one on Harvey. Convincing the men in his life that they are loved is as elusive a goal to Harvey as getting gay rights legislation passed. Really, Sean Penn hands us an emotionally searing performance, and it's the best I've seen from him since Dead Man Walking.

Josh Brolin plays Dan White, the man who has an uncomfortable coexistence with Milk as a fellow city supervisor. Ideologically they are night and day. White is a conservative Catholic who wants to fight for San Francisco's morals and values. He seems like the type who would show up as a keynote speaker at an Anita Bryant convention. But the film reveals that his hostility towards Milk evolves out of not so much an anti-gay agenda as political wrangling. Both had legislation they wanted to get passed. Harvey wouldn't give White an inch unless he approved a bill protecting gay people's jobs.

There were some splendid comic moments in the film. In a special session concerning the rights of gay teachers, Penn earns some of his biggest laughs since Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

As Penn himself mentioned, the film is about human rights. Never mind the fact that a person is gay. The fact of the matter is they are a human being, and thus are entitled to the same human rights as the next person.

While it wasn't quite the game changer that Brokeback Mountain was, Milk was an exhiliarating experience, and one you didn't have to be gay to appreciate.

"In your life, you're going to meet so many incredible, wonderful, sexy men, and by the end, you'll still be wondering which ones were the greatest lovers and which were your greatest friends," Milk tells Cleve in one scene. If you substitute men for women, doesn't that philosophy apply to basically anyone?

Three and a half stars.

In spite of my high expectations for it, I went ahead and watched WALL-E.

There are certain movies I put off seeing full-through for a long time purely out of my fear of being disappointed. Iron Man. (to an extent, my fears were warranted.) The Dark Knight. (Waited a solid two days after its Thursday midnight opening.)

WALL-E I did just finally manage to catch on DVD.

Set a little over 800 years in the future, WALL-E tells the story of a robot who compresses and stores trash on the planet earth years after all humans have fled. As the film opened, music from the movie Hello Dolly! was playing. On a personal level, this touched me, because I saw Hello Dolly! at the high school when I was in 7th grade. I remember seeing all those great performances really prompted me to want to get involved in theatre.

WALL-E was assembled by man. But I think some divine power must have endowed him with a heart. Like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man or Haley Joel Osment in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, WALL-E seems to have developed psycho-social impulses. He is self-conscious of his loneliness, and has a tangible vulnerability about him that can only suggest human experience.

When a rocket-ship lands, a female robot named Eva disembarks. Thinking of WALL-E as an enemy at first, she starts blasting away. Here is where I thought the film was going to derail. We get it! It's ironic that the female robot predominates over the male robot in strength!

Thankfully, director Andrew Stanton and his fellow story/screen writers Pete Doctor and Jim Reardon had some ideas to expand upon it.

WALL-E found and nurtured an actual plant while digging through the trash, and when Eva finds it, she is required to take it back to her BnL base ship. This puts her into a sleep mode, and WALL-E worries for her safety.

WALL-E hops aboard the outside of the ship as it blasts off from earth. This sequence where he has his first outer space voyage reminded me of Iron Man's flight over the Santa Monica Pier. It's what movie going is all about.

WALL-E gets himself into trouble trying to help Eva, but he is sincerely concerned about her well-being, and may even love her. Eva reprimands WALL-E frequently for causing a ruckus among the lazy overweight humans, but the inflection in her programmed utterances suggests a real affection for him. I have never been this excited about the sound mixing and sound editing categories for the Academy Awards. Moments in film like this are the reason those categories exist.

When Eva thinks she's lost WALL-E, we see a new well-spring of robot emotion. Panic. Desperation. Empathy. Past the midpoint, every moment WALL-E and Eva are together feels significant. I thought of my roommate Blake and his boss Nadine. Every time I see her pestering him to get work done, it's like Eva's heartfelt reprimanding. I wasn't there when Blake said goodbye to Nadine before leaving for China, but I imagine the moment was something like WALL-E and Eva clinging to each other in deep space.

Yes, there were some head-scratching moments. And yes, the sound of WALL-E booting up seemed like a product placement to go buy a Mac. It's Pixar. Steve Jobs must have had some sway in all of this.

Wait a minute, though, since Toy Story, product placement has become part of what's so endearing about Pixar.

WALL-E is almost up there with the Incredibles and the forty minutes I've seen of Finding Nemo. And that's saying a lot. It deserves to be nominated not only for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, but a few other categories as well.

Three and 4/5 stars.

It's a terrible thing to see a loved one off on a journey abroad. The tension in those last moments together at the airport or railroad station platform are palpable.

Early in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Monsieur Gateau (Elias Koteas) and his wife Blanche (Donna DuPlantie) are saying goodbye to their son Martin (Jacob Tolano), who is shipping off to Europe to fight in World War I. I remembered when I left for Ecuador in 2003. Before I headed to my gate, I looked back and there was my dad still watching from the terminal.

When the son they love doesn't come back, it breaks his parents' hearts.

Monsieur Gateau sets out to build a giant clock for the new train station, but he builds it to count the hours backwards, as if in an effort to bring back his slain son, and all the other fallen soldiers. This doesn't happen, of course, but it may be related to a temporal anomaly about to take place in one man's life.

On Armistice Day, Nov. 18, 1918, a baby boy is born, bearing the deformities of old age. The mother, hemorrhaging badly, lives to tell her husband, Thomas Button, to care for their child. Thomas is disgusted by the wrinkled, brittle creature. But he is benevolent enough to leave him on the porch steps of a colored couple, Queenie and Tizzy (Taraji P. Henson, Mahershalalhashbas Ali). The couple argues about what to do with the shrivelled deformity, but eventually agree to raise him in the nursing home where they work.

Benjamin is technically about the same physical age as everyone else in the house, only he seems to be accumulating lifespan as the days go on. By the time he's seven, he only looks about eighty. He's left to wonder why he's different, and why it will be his burden to outlive his friends.

The story is told as a flashback from 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana. An elderly woman named Daisy (behind the make-up, yes, that's Cate Blanchett), lies in a hospital bed dying while Hurricane Katrina begins its assault on the city. She asks her daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond) to read to her from a diary left behind by one Benjamin Button.

Thus, we hear Benjamin's voice narrating his own story. Psychologically, Button is in fact a boy. He approaches the world with a childlike wonder from a feeble body. The bond is instant when he meets Daisy (Elle Fanning), who affectionately calls him "odd" when she meets him as a seven-year-old. When she returns to visit at age 10 (now played by Madisen Beaty), a more able-bodied Button meets her underneath the bed and they tell stories.

When Button is about 18, he has reverted to the physique of a man in his mid-sixties. So he sets out to take a job at sea. Daisy asks him to write to her from everywhere he goes.

In one of the movie's funniest moments, the ship captain (Jared Harris) asks Button how many women he's had. Since Button is in fact a young boy in a much older man's body, he says none. And this baffles the captain, who inquires about Button's sexual abilities. Button readily assures him he's capable. I was the only one thought this inference was hilarious at my screening, and I laughed alone.

Everyone else must have been thinking to themselves, "that guy's a perv."

Button was going through the psychosocial effects of puberty, which was contrasted by the physical encumbrances of an aged body.

What I'm trying to say, I think, is Button was a marvelously paradoxical movie.

Button discovers the brothel with his shipmates, and regards it with the same joy as a teenage boy.

In a seaport in Russia, he has his first long-term affair with Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), the wife of a British spy. When World War II hits, her absence is noticed.

By the early 1940's, Button has reverted to late-middle age, now a fully recognizeable Brad Pitt. Back in New Orleans, he reunites with Daisy, now a fully-recognizeable Cate Blanchett.

Pitt and Blanchett were absolutely smoldering in every scene together. She tries to tempt him into bed, but he feels the public would misunderstand a girl in her early 20's getting in bed with a man who looked to be about 55. So he kindly declines. But he wants to.

The paradox of youth being seen as an end to life as opposed to a beginning totally blew my mind as the movie went on. A narrow period of time exists where Benjamin and Daisy can legitimately go public as being in a relationship. Past that point, he will be too young to uphold the fatherly responsibilites for his new-born daughter, and is forced to pose as the son/grandson to his wife. Instead of putting her through that, he leaves. But he leaves his daughter in good hands, and always stays in contact.

Benjamin Button had a resonant sadness to it. But it was a sadness that was punctuated by moments of euphoric comedy and joy. The man who gets struck by lightning seven times reminded me of plot devices in Forrest Gump. (the same old men who sit in the barbershop, generations upholding the previous routine as before.) Eric Roth is becoming an institution as a screenwriter.

Watching the rotoscoped face of an elderly Brad Pitt as his adopted father recites a Shakespeare monologue was enthralling. Late in the movie we see all the people who impacted Benjamin Button's life once more. Even as life is fleeting, there is something permanent about it; our lives carry on through all the lives we touch. I had thick tears in my eyes as we left the theatre.

David Fincher did a fine job, and I am eager to check out more movies in his resume, even if they do get progressively more violent the further back you go. Brad Pitt was spectacular. He's been hit or miss with his movies, but he delivers his best work here since The Devil's Own. I'm not being ironic. The Devil's Own was my second favorite movie of 1997 after Titanic.

Doubt, you've held the post deservedly for four days. Now it's time to politely step aside; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the best movie I've seen from 2008.

For the last six months or so, it's become a pretty regular occurrence to hear the phrase "what? you haven't seen Iron Man yet?"

And everyone I talked to seemed to love it.

Twice I had people insist on loaning it to me.

This, of course, set the bar unusually high for Iron Man when a copy of the DVD at last landed in my hot little hands.

I borrowed it from my friend, Madison, whom I've done theatre with in St. Paul. She had the added bias of being a Robert Downey, Jr. fan. So she insisted it was great.

The lone voice of caution was my erstwhile roommate, Blake Gothenberg, who warned me, "Keith, don't go in expecting to have the same type of experience as you had with The Dark Knight."

I felt fairly secure that Iron Man wouldn't disappoint as I loaded it into the DVD drive of my PC. This of course meant that if it did disappoint, it would disappoint royally.

Our film opens with one Tony Stark, (Robert Downey, Jr.), a manufacturer in the military industrial complex whose weapons keep our soldiers safe on the front lines in the Middle East... or is it the soldiers whose deployment keeps the weapons salesman in business? Is Stark a patriot or an opportunist? Seconds into the movie, we have a pretty good idea. Stark is making a visit to Afghanistan as our film opens, riding in a military convoy with soldiers who are only too happy to ensure his safety. One young soldier marvels at Stark's exploits with Maxim cover models.

It was a breath of fresh air to see someone so self-assured as Downey, Jr. in this role. He was oily, manipulating, and utterly lacking in moral compass. His rambling style of conversation reflected the acting style of the film's director, Jon Favreau. Favreau wisely allowed Downey to be creative with the Stark character, letting dialogue slide off his tongue with the candidness of an outtake. Downey made the character feel like a genuine person. That doesn't happen all that much in movies.

In a scene made famous by the trailer, which I saw countless times on the TV monitors at the cinemas or on the internet, Downey's Stark makes a pitch to the soldiers about the Jericho, an assemblage of bombs that ostensibly set up a wall of fire surrounding their enemies.

Stark is a genius, and he doesn't seem to care who he helps or hurts as long as he makes a buck out of it. Like Danny Archer in Blood Diamond, Han Solo in Star Wars, or the entire crew of the Serenity in Joss Whedon's Firefly, he is a soldier of fortune. But Stark's negligence to Stark Enterprises' sale of weapons to the enemy does seem to be grounds for criminal charges. However, his history of moral-ethical bankruptcy does make his transition all the more powerful.

Stark's Humvee convoy is attacked. The last thing he sees before being knocked unconscious is a defense missile with a Stark industry emblem on it.

Fade to black.

The next scene shows Stark staring pleadingly at the camera on a viral video as the burlap sack is pulled off his head. Terrorists with machine guns stand guard.

Iron Man is something I thought I'd never see during the Bush administration; a War on Terror blockbuster. Most movies that make reference to Iraq or Afghanistan are in protest (Fahrenheit 911) or remembrance (United 93). To be sure, Iron Man is a cautionary tale. Bush and Cheney would not be spared the scrutiny of this film, given their investments in the military industrial complex. In spite of its unsettling storyline of weapons manufacturer taken hostage, it sold tickets. Lots of them. Fantastical as it tends to be, much in Iron Man reflects the world in its present state.

It's hard to take the film completely seriously though. For example, when Stark arrives back in the US, his first two requests are for an American cheeseburger, and a press conference. Understandable. Even endearing that he missed American food. His assistant (played by Jon Favreau) brings him Burger King. "Did you bring one for me?" asks Obadiah, the salesbroker for Stark Industries. I'm not against product placement, but it was very disjointed having a film trying to address serious themes while tying in a fast food promotion. At least to me. Blake, on the other hand, thought it was kind of cool. Why didn't they just have that guy who dresses up like the Burger King in the commercials hand-deliver Tony the brown bag with the Burger King logo?

Well, the heart wants what it wants. I wish that Stark and Yinsen, an Afghani POW and inventor (Shawn Toub), would have had a discussion about the first thing they'd eat if they got out. This would have made the Burger King more meaningful.

I can see where parts of Iron Man would appeal to the Republican contingent of moviegoers, as well as the soldiers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and all hostile areas throughout the world. In fact, I imagine it would make a spectacular movie night for soldiers serving in the security outposts in Iraq. The scene where he tests his innaugural Iron Man suit on the insurgents is one that would have men in fatigues screaming "yeah!" and "badass!" while sitting around the tv set in the rec room of their base. However, I can also see where the film would appeal strongly to the anti-Bush faction of moviegoers, the side that calls for change and using technology for peace rather than war. It's possible that after cheering through the first forty-five minutes, the "support our troops" portion of filmgoers could feel a little alienated when Stark calls a press conference and says "the days of zero accountability are over."

Iron Man does try to please everyone, and that in and of itself is commendable. I personally felt it came across a little uneven in its endeavor, but if you can manage to withhold judging the film from a political perspective, (even as I felt squeamish at the pyrotechnic display of vengeance) and accept it as a sheer, simple black and white story of good versus bad, the film is a great ride.

The second act of the film was my favorite. Armed with the technology created for him by Yinson, Stark rebuilds the reactor that keeps the shrapnel from heading to his heart, and incidentally also powers his Iron Man suit. Then he goes about learning to fly. The scene where he soars over the Santa Monica pier reminded me of the sheer exhiliaration of the first Spiderman.

Stark commissions his salesbroker Obadiah Stane (a bald, bearded Jeff Bridges) to shift Stark Industries emphasis from military defense missiles to reactor technology, the likes of which were used in his chest implant. Obadiah was a sleazeball from the start, and it's no big spoiler that he was the movie's true villain. He had a certain ferociousness to him, a disciplined greed that would make No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurgh quiver with fear. I thought of Claudius in Hamlet. Stane would really stop at nothing to have uncontested control of Stark Industries.

The third act sky battle between Stark and Stane in their respective iron suits was impressive, if a little over the top. I admit I was on the edge of my seat watching them throttle each other, but you can only watch so many death blows without wondering why neither one will die.

And of course there's Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Palthrow), Iron Man's erstwhile assistant. She is as quiet about disapproving his lifestyle early in the film as she is appreciating his transition later on. The scene where Stark opens a welcome back present is startlingly touching.

There were some truly corny moments, mind you. Some of the dialogue was clunky enough to have made Fantastic 4 look deserving of a Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nomination by comparison. But I don't want to get Blake started here.

Overall, you can take Iron Man for what it is. And actually, that depends on what type of person you are. It could be either a zany comic book action spectacle, a morality tale, a war drama, a meditation on corporate corruption, or heaven forbid, a love story. I think of it most fondly as a zany comic book action spectacle, and hold it to less judgment by those respects.

And now that I've seen it, the conversation that leads to "you haven't seen Iron Man" will be replaced with "I bet you there will be an Avengers movie next." Well, yes, everyone who sat through the credits thinks they're some type of prophet for having figured that out.

Overall, yes, it was good. It wasn't groundbreaking like Dark Knight. But it was serviceable action with a surprising amount of reflection on justifiable weapons manufacturing and good business sense.

And it should be noted that Terrence Howard was entertaining as Col. James Rhodes. It'll be a chore for the sequel to explain how Rhodes transformed from resembling Terrence Howard to resembling Don Cheadle.

Three and 1/3 stars.