New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Bedtime Stories (2008) *½ Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) is a down-on-his-luck guy who’s always telling bedtime stories to his niece and nephew, and whose life is turned upside down when these fantastical stories suddenly turn into reality. Sandler’s laziness, sloppiness, and cynical pandering are all over this film, and it turns what’s intended to be a graceful intersection of fairytale whimsy and real-world slapstick into an ugly, head-on collision.

"Music Within"

I have been told that this movie won the Audience Award at the 2007 AFI Dallas International Film Festival. I hated to hear that because it is either an indictment on Dallas film audiences or the quality of films at last year’s festival. The movie tells the story of Richard Pimentel (Ron Livingston) who lost his hearing in Vietnam and returned to the United States where he eventually took up the cause of other disabled veterans. He soon broadens his scope to include non-vets as well and his efforts lead to the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Although the acting throughout the film is first rate (I defy anyone seeing this to immediately recognize the actor playing Art, physically handicapped by cerebral palsy who becomes Richard’s best friend, as the same actor, Michael Sheen, who gave an equally magnificent performance as British Prime Minister Tony Blair in "The Queen"), the problems with the film are those of first time director Steven Sawalich and his trio of screenwriters. The movie’s opening scenes play like a quirky comedy, with Richard’s mother (Rebecca De Mornay), shipping him off to an orphanage because she refuses to accept that he’s really alive (don’t bother to ask why, it’s too complicated and absolutely irrelevant to explain) and his Chinese father (Clint Jung) perishing when a large jar of soy sauce falls on top of him. Then in the last third of the movie there’s an undercurrent of a dark side to Richard’s personality that drives his wife (Melissa George) away from him and Richard away from many of his friends. But it is just an undercurrent, the film doesn’t have the courage to actually let us see it for ourselves. What were left with is an unsentimental, superficial look at a man who made a difference, kind of like something you would see on A&E’s "Biography," only with actors. Grade: D+

"Reservation Road"

"Reservation Road" has the makings of a great movie, but midway through it takes a terribly wrong step and never recovers. Ethan Learner (Joaquin Phoenix), his wife Grace (Jennifer Connelly) their daughter Emma (Elle Fanning) and their son Josh (Sean Curley) are leaving a recital which featured Josh on cello. At the same time, Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) and his son Lucas (Eddie Alderson) are leaving Fenway Park after seeing their beloved Boston Red Sox play. Dwight’s ex-wife Ruth (Mira Sorvino) is calling Dwight constantly because Lucas should have been back home hours earlier, but the game went into extra innings. So he’s rushing his son back to the ex-wife’s house in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Learner family stops at a gas station so Emma can use the bathroom and Josh dashes out of the car to free fireflies Emma has collected in a Mason jar. Just at that moment, Dwight speeds by, his concentration is interrupted by another call from Ruth, he begins to veer into the wrong lane, swerves to miss an oncoming car and then hits and kills Josh. Lucas, who’s been sleeping in the front seat, bangs his head on the dashboard as a result of the collision. For reasons we can’t fathom and later become even more unexplainable, Dwight speeds off instead of stopping to render aid. The rest of the film’s first act focuses on the psychological effect this tragedy has on the Learner family and on Dwight and if the film had the courage to stick with this and deal with it—to really explore it—it might have achieved greatness. Instead, it goes for the far-fetched.

Ethan is determined to find the man responsible for killing his son and keeps pressing the police to do more. When the authorities don’t give him the satisfaction he demands, he decides to take matters into his own hands. First he hires a law firm to maintain pressure on the police (what a law firm could do in this regard is really not explained, but never mind). The law firm he hires just happens to be the one Dwight works for and, of course, Dwight is assigned to the case. Now we discover that Dwight is an attorney which brings me back to the unanserable question of why he left the scene of the accident in the first place. He was not drunk. It clearly was an accident. And, as an attorney, he should know better. But wait, there’s more. As a tribute to her brother, Emma decides to take up where he left off and begins studying music, specifically the piano. Who is her teacher? Why, it’s Ruth, of course. All this is explored in the film’s second act and just when you think there can not be any more implausible coincidences, the screenwriters throw us one more bizarre one, which I won’t go into, that convinces Ethan that Dwight was responsible for his son’s death.

Phoenix and Ruffalo are two of the finest actors working in films today. And they turn in terrific performances in this film. However, their performances can’t avoid the traps set for them by the screenplay. As a result, all we get to do is witness Ethan and Dwight’s separate sorrows, but we never have the opportunity to truly understand them. Grade: D

"Sharkwater"

"Sharkwater" is a somewhat devious documentary. First writer-director Rob Stewart attempts to debunk all our preconceived thoughts of sharks as dangerous to human existence, insisting, among other things, that soft drink dispensing machines kill more humans each year than sharks. Sharks are, Stewart claims, warm cuddly creatures that you could have as pets in your home and take for walks in the park if they didn’t need to remain underwater constantly in order to stay alive. This section of the film features stunning underwater photography and some "Oh, wow!" moments Stewart’s photographic crew has managed to capture on film. Then, after domesticating the shark—gettng us to abandon our fears and embrace the shark—Stewart describes how the shark population is being decimated by uncaring Asians demanding shark fin soup, that how the shark fin industry is a multi-billion dollar business that has created its own mafia to help with the production and distribution. This annihilation of the shark population is not only consequential on moral grounds, Stewart posits, but also because sharks eat those fish that feeds on the plankton that absorbs carbon dioxide. Thus, drastic reductions in the number of sharks could, according to Stewart, be another factor leading to accelerated global warming. But it’s here that the film begins a downward spiral, not because Stewart’s arguments can’t stick, but because he (1) ceases to be reportorial documentarian and becomes the leading man in his own "Save the Sharks" campaign and (2) he directly inserts himself into the film so that this crusade becomes all about him and not about the endangered shark. He joins the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society led by activist Paul Watson who has the reputation of ramming and sinking ships he believes are poaching illegally in international waters. Together Stewart and Watson begin patrolling the waters off Costa Rica to catch those involved in shark finning—the hooking of sharks, cutting off and saving their fins and dumping the rest of the carcass back in the water—but run into trouble from what Stewart claims is the Taiwanese Mafia that controls the shark fin industry. This Mafia is able to go so far as to have Stewart, Watson and their crew arrested on charges of attempted murder. We also get plenty of shots of Stewart in a Speedo, Stewart caressing sharks in the water and a rather long, boring interlude in which Stewart is hospitalized with an infection in his leg. There is no way he can defend that this segment has any relevance whatsoever to the subject of saving sharks. I’m surprised he didn’t call his film "Stewartwater." Grade: C-

"The 11th Hour"

"The 11th Hour" is a documentary that expands on the themes of "An Inconvenient Truth," warning that not only is global warming bringing us to the brink of disaster but that the notion that the human race no longer chooses to live in harmony with nature will all too soon spell the end of life on this planet as we know it. It gathers an expert array of talking heads to spell out these dire consequences and there’s some impressive photographic montages to accompany the lecture. The movie’s title comes from the notion that in a 12-hour cycle of human existence, we still have an hour left to correct all our past mistakes. The problem I found in this argument is that the movie argues that a lot of what has led us to the brink is human greed. I will agree that humanity can change its actions, but I find it a lot more difficult to believe that we can alter the basic human nature that lies at the root of those actions. Therefore, the movie left me feeling hopelessly pessimistic about our future even if I wasn’t already pessimistic about the ability of our leaders to reshape this future. Grade: C

"Resurrecting the Champ"

Probably the most honest review I’ve read of "Resurrecting the Champ" comes from J.R. Moehringer who wrote that Samuel L. Jackson did a wonderful job of resurrecting an old boxer "and it was surreal to see him do it." He also said "I loved seeing Champ come to life." Of Josh Hartnett, as Erik Kernan, a Denver Times reporter, Moehringer wasn’t so kind. I mention this only because Moehringer is the Pulitzer Prize winning Los Angeles Times journalist who wrote the original story, "Resurrecting the Champ," on which this movie is loosely based. I also mention it because, as a newspaperman and someone who really knew the character Jackson plays in this movie, he should be able to separate truth from fiction better than anyone, especially when it comes to a movie that deals with separating truth from fiction. The movie portrays Erik as a third-rate sportswriter (his editor, Metz [Alan Alda] says he forgets Erik’s stories as he’s reading them) who sees his chance for a big time story when he stumbles across a homeless man being beaten by some young hotshots in an alley. He learns the victim is actually Bob Satterfield, a heavyweight boxer of the 1940s and 1950s. He decides to write a story for the newspaper’s magazine supplement of how this boxer who once fought such notables as Ezzard Charles and Jake LaMotta, could wind up with all his belongings in a shopping cart in the alleys of Denver. Moehringer is correct when he wrote "Hartnett wasn’t playing me." It isn’t Hartnett’s fault so much as it is the lingering idea that films screenwriters never set foot in a newsroom in their lives. We see Erik getting information from Polly (Rachel Nichols), a researcher at the paper, and spending a lot of time with the Champ and then, seemingly out of nowhere, there’s this story on the cover of the magazine. We never see him anguishing over the writing of it. The other problem is that Kernan’s motives here never seem to hinge on journalism but on seeking the redemption of his wife Joyce (Kathryn Morris), from whom he’s separated and his 6-year-old son Teddy (Dakota Goyo), who idolizes him. The most interesting character in this movie is the Champ, but for some reason, director Rod Lurie doesn’t see this and focuses his story on Kernan, neglecting the Champ as much as the rest of humanity did. Grade: D+

"The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep"

Fantasy adventure starring Emily Watson, Alex Etel, David Morrissey, Ben Chaplin. Directed by Jay Russell. About five years ago, my son and I took a car ride around England and Scotland. One of my most favorite memories of this trip was the morning we spent on the banks of Loch Ness. The loch is many things but one thing for sure it isn’t. It isn’t separated from the ocean by a narrow channel. Other than that geographical misstep, I found this film about how the Loch Ness Monster came to be rather charming and a wonderful example of the term "family film," providing the children in your family are at least close to double digits in age. It tells the story of Angus MacMarrow (Etel), a young lad during World War II who finds an egg on the shore of Loch Ness, takes it home, discovers that a strange little creature has hatched from it and then watches it grow quite rapidly which becomes a major problem since his mother (Watson) has refused to allow young Angus to have pets. "E.T." is a major influence in this film, although the climax of "The Water Horse" is far more in the rousing adventure tradition and is the reason the film might be a little too intense for younger children. The monster is wonderfully created and realized, from infancy to full beasthood. The movie borders on over-sentimentality at times, but never fully crosses the line. Grade: B-

"There Will Be Blood"

Drama starring Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor, Ciaran Hinds, Dillon Freasier. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. This story of how greed corrupts both business and religion, especially when business and religious leaders abandon their own humanity, is an excellent one that misses greatness only because of its contrived finale. What does achieve greatness, however, is Day Lewis’s performance as turn-of-the-20th-century oil baron Daniel Plainview, a performance that ranks among the best in movie history. In fact, I have to go all the way back to DeNiro as Jake LaMotta to find one to equal it (Day Lewis seems to go even further back. His inspiration here seems to be John Huston in “Chinatown.” And Anderson has said that his inspiration was “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” which was directed by Huston.) Plainview is a dark character. He is mean when the movie opens and a maniac when it ends, and the film is the story of how his greed got him from Point A to Point B and sucked out the life of just about everyone he came in contact with. In a tour de force opening 15-minute segment without any dialogue, we see Plainview has a silver miner who is not going to let something like a shattered leg keep him from getting what we wants. He soon becomes an oilman, posing as a family man with his adopted son H.W. (Freasier) to con poor ranchers out of their oil rights. But in order to stand up with the big guys (i.e., Standard Oil), Plainview needs an oil bearing parcel of land he can call his own and he finds it one day courtesy of Paul Sunday (Dano) who tells him about the California town of New Boston where oil is so plentiful it is seeping to the surface. With his son, Plainview travels to New Boston where he confronts Paul’s twin brother Eli (also Dano), who is the minister of the charismatic Church of the Third Revelation. Plainview immediately recognizes Eli as a fellow con artist and the rest of the film involves their duel as each reaches for more power and what each chooses to surrender in their personal lives in order to gain that power. Grade: A

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"

Comedy starring John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Raymond J. Barry, Margo Martindale. Directed by Jake Kasdan. Written by Kasdan and Judd Apatow. This uneven parody of "Walk the Line" with a little bit of "Ray" thrown in contains as many strikeouts as homeruns, but when the title character (Reilly) is singing the songs composed by the likes of Marshall Crenshaw and Van Dyke Parks, this film hits all the bases. His duet with soon-to-be wife (although he’s already married) Darlene (Fischer), aptly called "Let’s Duet" could be said to be filled with double entendres if they weren’t all so singularly intended. And his spin on a Bob Dylan "Highway 61 Revisited"-era song, "Royal Jelly," is dead-on perfect. Reilly is absolutely electrifying as Cox, especially when he’s on stage performing in concert. He’s earns his laughs by playing the role completely straight—he never telegraphs the punch lines which is the mark of a superb comic actor, a breed all too rare these days. Some of the bits where Cox encounters famous rock stars -- Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Beatles -- fall flat, although there’s a classic bit near the end involving The Temptations. The movie’s second half doesn’t seem to measure up to the first, but then that could be because the very idea of a Johnny Cash parody has worn thin by that time. The songs are so delicious, however, and Reilly is so wonderful performing them, it makes me think "Walk Hard" makes a better soundtrack album than it does a movie. Grade: C

"August Rush"

Drama starring Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Terrence Howard, Robin Williams, William Sadler. Directed by Kirsten Sheridan. One magical night in early 1997 Louis Connelly (Meyers), the lead vocalist and bassist in an Irish rock band comprised of his brothers, meets classical cellist Lyla Novacek at a New York City party. They make love under the stars on the rooftop of an apartment building overlooking Washington Square and fall asleep in each other’s arms. They awake the next morning, each vowing to meet that evening under the Washington Square arch (despite the fact that there’s absolutely no chemistry between them.). For reasons too idiotic to go into here, that meeting never takes place. Lyla soon realizes she is pregnant as a result of her tryst and decides to keep the baby. However, following an argument with her domineering father Thomas (Sadler) near her due date. Lyla storms out of a building, onto a Manhattan street where she is struck by an unseen vehicle. When she regains consciousness in a hospital, Thomas tells her she has lost the baby. In reality, the child was saved, but Thomas has given the child up for adoption. Flash forward 13 years. Lyla has become a music teacher in Chicago, Louis is some kind of businessman in San Francisco and their son, Evan, has run away from the upstate New York orphanage convinced that if only his parents can hear the music swirling around in his head, they will come and find him. Does that happen? Are there stars in the sky?

Evan (who, while born and raised in New York, manages to have an English accent, I assume in tribute to the father he’s never met) escapes to New York and (where else?) Washington Square where he becomes Oliver to a Fagin that wants people to refer to him as Wizard (Williams). By this time any sensible viewer has put away all concepts of logic and reality with one unbelievable coincidence piling on top of another all the way to the sappy finale which finds Evan — now renamed August Rush by Wizard — conducting the New York Philharmonic in a symphony he composed himself while studying at Julliard. Now, I’ve always believed in the redemptive power of music; in fact, some will argue my entire life has been guided by this concept. I do know that the Rolling Stones’s "Brown Sugar" can and has pulled me out of many a serious depressive state. But this film takes that concept to patently absurd lengths. Grade: F

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

Musical/Thriller starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baren Cohen, Timothy Spaall. Directed by Tim Burton. What a marvelous combination this is: Burton, a director I’ve always considered very overrated, his alter ego Depp and his wife Bonham Carter all coming together via composer Stephen Sondheim — and just when I was giving up on the notion that a decent movie would ever be made from a Sondheim score. Benjamin Barker returns to London seeking revenge on the judge (Rickman) who sentenced Barker to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, raped Barker’s wife and took Barker’s infant daughter as his own ward. Changing his name to Sweeney Todd, Barker sets up shop above a restaurant run by Mrs. Lovett (Bonham Carter), with whom he forms a grisly professional partnership, although Mrs. Lovett craves one far more personal. Burton’s prior films have been, to me, all approach with no substance. But here he combines his flair for superb visuals with his unique approach to the horror genre and applies them to a plot that always knows its destination and arrives there without one false step or one missing beat. Purists may quibble about the fact that Burton dropped the show’s title song from the movie’s score, but that song was far more a theatrical device than a cinematic one to begin with. Plus, I much admire Burton’s leaner, cleaner ending. Grade B+

"The Good Night"

Drama/Fantasy starring Penelope Cruz, Martin Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Pegg, Danny DeVito. Written and directed by Jake Paltrow. The depressingly unfunny tale of the mid-life crisis of an uncaring one-hit-wonder rock star (Freeman) now living in a drab New York City apartment, stuck in a dying relationship with his drab girlfriend (Paltrow and, yes, she is drab) and reduced to writing commercial jingles. The only place this self-absorbed jerk can find happiness is in his dreams where he fantasizes every night about one particular woman (Cruz). A combination of the worst elements of "10" and the superficiality of "The Seven Year Itch." Grade: D

"Romance & Cigarettes"

John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes" is one of the most audacious movies I've ever seen. It takes audacity to have James Gandolfini, following a confrontation with his wife Susan Sarandon, during which she tells him "I hate you with all the hate that you can hate with," to burst into song. It takes audacity to cast Aida Turturro as Gandolfini's daughter. It takes audacity to have Sarandon in a church singing "Piece of My Heart" backed by a choir that gives new meaning to the word "eclectic." It takes audacity to have Kate Winslet, having a ball playing a red-haired tramp in Queens with a Lancashire accent, send up her "Titanic" personna by singing a love song underwater as she appears to be drowning.

Unfortunately, all this movie has is audacity. Other than that, it's like spending an hour and 45 minutes with some well known actors in a karaoke bar and, in its last third, the movie forgets what was supposed to be.

The movie tells the story of a blue-collar bridge worker (Gandolfini) who returns to his home on the border of New York's Kennedy Airport one afternoon to confront the facts that his wife (Sarandon) has learned of his affair with a sultry underwear saleswoman (Winslet). The rest of the movie involves Gandolfini considering a circumcision which he thinks will improve his sexual performance, Sarandon calling her cousin (Christopher Walken) to help her get even with Winslet, and one of Gandolfini-Sarandon's three daughters, Mandy Moore, and her plans to marry a local jerk (Bobby Cannavale) who wants the world to know his name is "Fryburg." This gives Ms. Moore the opportunity to utter one of the film's best lines: "Dad, I'm going into wedlock."

For the first two thirds of this film, these actors play out their scenes to the hilt while they break out into such songs as "Trouble," "Prisoner of of Love," "Red Headed Woman," and the film's show-stopper, "Deliliah," with Walken channeling not only Tom Jones but also John Travolta and George Chakiris.

Eventually, however, the movie collapses under its own weight, especially during its third act when it forgets the grand musical numbers to explore such issues as redemption and mortality. I also have this strange feeling that this movie would have never seen the light of day if it had been written and directed by a relative unknown and not John Turturro, if it had not assembled this marvelous cast of actors (I didn't even mention Mary-Louise Parker as a third daughter, Steve Buscemi as Gandofini's clueless co-worker and Elaine Stritch, who has the movie's single best scene, as Gandolfini's mother) and if it had not been backed by the Coen Brothers. It says something that the film was made in 2005 and floated around for awhile--playing the Venice Film Festival that year, opening to a lukewarm receptance in a handful of European countries in 2006, before getting booked into a limited U.S. run only last September.

I'll give Turturro credit for having the chutzpah to attempt something this audacious. It's a shame he didn't have the moxie to pull it off.

Grade: D+

"Feast of Love"

The Beatles sang "All You Need is Love" and this overly simplistic pattern for life is at the heart of Robert Benton's too-sweet "Feast of Love," in which a number of very good looking adults find themselves in various forms of love.

First and foremost, there's Bradley (Greg Kinnear), the proprietor of a coffee shop in Portland, Ore., called Jitters where most of the folks in this flm gather. He is married to Kathryn (Selma Blair) who early in the film leaves him for Jenny (Stana Katic), a woman who tagged out Kathryn out in a softball game and then immediately comes on to her while everyone in the world, except Bradley, notices. Bradley then marries Diana (Radha Mitchell), a real estate agent who is still in love with the married man with whom she's been having an extended affair.

One day, a young girl named Chloe (Alexa Davalos) walks into the coffee shop and immediately captures the heart of Oscar (Toby Hemingway), the kid Bradley has manning the counter who convinces Bradley to hire Chloe. Then there's Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman), the wise old college professor wjo hangs around all these youngsters but never with anyone his own age, and his understanding wife Esther (who, because she's played by the marvelous Jane Alexander, should have had a bigger role).

Story lines are taken up and then forgotten. For example, we never really here of Kathryn and Jenny again after they take up together except for one exploitative scene of them in bed (this film features a number of forced scenes of naked lovemaking couples). There's a silly subplot of how Chloe and Oscar have no money and are forced to make a pornographic film. Chloe gets less money than she thought she would for the film, but that's the last we hear about it. And after they meet, I don't recall another scene that shows them working in the coffee shop. There's an extended sequence in which Bradley steals a dog from an in-law, but nothing ever comes of that misadventure either.

It all seems very superficial. People engage in nefarious activities but suffer no consequences for them. All the loose ends are tied up at the end of this film. It's called "Feast of Love," but actually all we get is some warmed-up leftovers.

Grade: D+

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is a historically inaccurate mess of a costume drama with the emphasis on costume.

Although much has been made of Cate Blanchett's performance in this film (it's been nominated for an Oscar, for heaven's sake, and praised to the hilt), I think it was a mistake for her to portray Elizabeth as more of hungry virgin woman than a royal virgin queen. The movie takes place in 1585 when Elizabeth was 52 years old. Blanchett does not look like or act like anyone over the age of 30 in this film.

She is, of course, a Protestant queen, beset on all sides by Catholic usurpers. Across the seas, there's King Philip II (Jordi Molla) of Spain who is ridding his country of all its trees to build a mighty armada with which to conquer England. Then there's the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) who plots to assassinate Elizabeth and assume the throne herself.

Luckily for Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) has returned from the New World bearing gifts of potatoes and tobacco just in time to bring out the romantic yearnings in the queen, yearnings, of course, that can never be realized. (If they had been realized, Raleigh would have had to come up with a new name for the place he landed in the new world.) However, in the film, Raleigh does command the British fleet in a stunning defeat of the Spanish Armada, even though history tells us the real Raleigh never set foot on a ship during this battle.

Although Blanchett has received all the accolades, my favorite performance in the film comes from Geoffrey Rush as Elizabeth's trusted Sir Francis Walsingham. Rush plays him as a man of many dimensions. He is loyal to a fault, but has no compunctions about resorting to barbaric torture to get what he wants. Is a hero? Is he a villain? The genious of Rush's performance he is shows us both without ever forcing us to decide.

The film, of course, is a continuation of director Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth," which was much more alive and witty than this treatment. This time a luscious screenplay has been sacrificed for luscious sets and costumes.

Grade: D-

"Across the Universe"

Julie Taymor needs to take some lessons from Richard Lester, the British director who knew exactly how to place the songs of the Beatles in their proper exhilarating context. Look at Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help," for example, to see the anarchic joy the lads bring to their music. In "Across the Universe," Taymor captures some of the anarchy but none of the exhilaration the music of the Beatles brought to the 1960s.

Taymor's film tells the story of Jude (Jim Sturgess) who journeys from Liverpool to Princeton to find his father. (I found this premise somewhat distasteful as soon as I realized the film had no inrerest whatsover in exploring any kind of missing father-son dynamic.) Once at the university, he meets Max (Joe Anderson) who invites him home for Thanksgiving Dinner where he meets Max's sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and, of course, falls in love. The three eventually wind up in New York City where they have a series of adventures with a singer named Sadie (Dana Fuchs), patterned after Janis Joplin, a guitarist named Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy), patterned after Jimi Hendrix, and Prudence (T.V. Carpio), inserted because Taymor needed a Prudence to fit the song patterns of the film and because I guess she felt she needed a lesbian to round out her 1960s group of stereotypes.

Under the old adage of "If you can't say anything nice ...," let me say at the outside that, at times, the film is, in parts, visually stunning (but that's Taymor's forte) and most of the performances are spot on.

Having said that, however, this film has problems. This is a musical comprised solely of Beatles songs. But instead of inserting Beatles songs into a proper context within the framework of the narrative, Taymor forces the narrative to follow the songs. And because it seems Taymor insists on forcing as many songs into the film as possible, it runs an unbearably long two hours and 15 minutes, much longer than needed to tell this skeletal a tale. As a result, I lost all interest in these characters and what their outcome would be.

It has been argued that the music of the Beatles is timeless. If this is so (and I'm not arguing it isn't), then why force a Beatles musical into the 1960s? I think by now we know that the 1960s gave us racial conflicts, anti-war protests, hallucinogens, assassinations, the birth of the counter-culture movement and so-on. Do we really have to see it all again, especially without any depth? Why not take the same concept--that the music of the Beatles can tell the story of a life--and set in the present day? Then the music is not a relic, it comes alive.

Grade: C-

"The Brave One"

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
--William Congreve, "The Mourning Bride" (1697)

"Lay that pistol down, Babe. Lay that pistol down. Pistol packin' mama, lay that pistol down."
--Al Dexter, "Pistol Packin' Mama"

If Congreve thought a woman scorned was furious, he ain't seen nothin' until he's seen a pistol packin' mama whose boyfriend has been killed by street thugs. Especially one as portrayed so expertly by Jodie Foster in director Neil Jordan's "The Brave One," an otherwise ludicrous, gender-twisting turn on "Death Wish."

Foster plays Erica Bain, the hostess of what comes across as the world's most boring radio commentary show. Armed with a boom mike attached to a portable tape recorder (in this digital age?), she walks the streets of New York City, which she repeatedly refers to as "the safest city in the world," recording all kinds of sounds -- everything from birds chirping to jackhammers pounding. Then she returns to her studio where she ways whatever comes to her head while the sounds play in the background. The format of her radio show has nothing to do with the events in the movie except the film asks us to believe that this show makes her so well known that all she ever needs to say in public is "I'm Erica Bain," and everyone instantly goes "Radio star."

One evening Erica and her fiance, David (Naveen Andrews), are walking their dog in Central Park when they are viciously attacked by three thugs. The reason for the attack is not made all that clear but there is the implication that it's so one of the three can "record his first kill." David, in fact, is killed in the attack and Erica is so badly injured that she remains in a coma for three weeks.

She no longer feels safe in her city; in fact, she has problems walking out the front door of her apartment building. One day she does, however, skittishly making her way to the nearest gun store where she is told the law requires her to apply for a license first and that there's a mandatory waiting period. That's no good. If Erica is ever to go out in public again, she needs a gun now. But, it just so happens (as these things often do when the plot requirements are that this woman get a gun pronto) that a shady gun dealer overhears the conversation in the store and says he'll sell her a gun on the spot for $1,000 cash. Now this assumes that Erica, who up until this moment has been too afraid of what might happen to her to even leave the confines of her home, will make her first tentative trip outside with $1,000 cash in her pocket, but, who knows?

So now Erica has a gun and she quickly gets an attitude. Erica goes to the corner grocery to pick up a few items. Next thing you know, a guy burst through the door and shoots the cashier (who also happens to be the gunman's wife) to death. He's about to leave, thinking no one has seen what he's done, when Erica's mobile phone rings. Thus begins the cat-and-mouse you-walk-up-this-aisle-while-I walk-down-this-one bit until Erica shoots him right between the aisles. Next thing you know, Erica is on the only completely deserted subway in the history of New York City when she is accosted by two more thugs who want more from her than the directions to Madison Square Garden. Bang! Bang! They're toast. Fortunately for her, the subway's nexy stop is at the only completely deserted subway station in NYC, so she can make a clean getaway as the bodies tumble out of the open subway door onto the platform. Next she runs into a pimp and a prostitute he's kidnapped ...

Well, you get the picture. Suddenly this woman can't go anywhere without meeting the dregs of the earth who cry out for Erica to kill them.

All these shootings, plus the shooting of a gangland-figure's wife, are investigated by a detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) and his partner Detective Vitale (Nicky Katt) because, it appears, they are the only two homicide detectives in New York City. And because Detective Mercer, like all of New York City, knows immediately who Erica Bain is, he agrees to be the subject of an interview for her radio show. OK, sure, this last little twist is a gimmick but I'm glad it's there because the best scenes in the movie are the series of conversations between Foster as Erica and Howard as Mercer. And they are the best scenes solely because of the way these two fine actors pull them off. It made me really wish I could see them in a psychological tug-of-war movie that didn't involve something so exploitative as vigilanteism.

That's all I'm going to reveal about the narrative of "The Brave One" except, if you value your life, don't hold your breath waiting for an ending that works.

Frankly, this movie did not convince me that turning the avenger into a woman was enough of a reason to trot out revenge-thriller genre for one more trot around the track. My advice? "Lay that DVD down, babe."

Grade: C-

"The Jane Austen Book Club"

Jane Austen is capable of solving all the world's problems. Well, not the minor piddly ones such as the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy, but the really big important ones like should I stay in my marriage, should I cheat on my spouse, should I be serving red or white wine with this meal. You know, stuff like that.

At least, that's the premise of Robin Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club," her superficial adaptation of the book of the same name (unread by me) by Karen Joy Fowler. I gather from this film that if Jane Austen was alive today, she probably would be writing advice to the lovelorn columns for the daily newspapers and self-help books instead of novels.

I have read some reviews of "Book Club" that claim you don't have to be familiar with the works of Jane Austen to appreciate this film, reviews, I am convinced, that were all written by critics familiar with the works of Jane Austen. Don't believe it. That's like saying you don't have to be a mathematician to appreciate an algebriac formula.

My familiarity with Jane Austen extends only to the film adaptations of her novels that I have seen: "Sense and Sensibility," "Emma, "Mansfield Park" and four different versions of "Pride and Prejudice," including one from Bollywood. But, I gotta tell ya, none of her characters reside in my memory bank, not like Marge Gunderson or Indiana Jones or Travis Bickle or Randall McMurphy or J.J. Gittes, Mrs. Robinson, Norma Desmond or Charles Foster Kane. But that's me.

Austen and her creations, however, are the center of the universe for the characters in this film, which centers on five women and one embarrassingly endearing man who form the titular club. Each month they read one of the six Austen novels (in addition to the ones mentioned above, there's "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey") and one of them then hosts and leads a discussion on that month's book. The six are Bernadette (Kathy Baker), the club's ringleader; Jocelyn (Maria Bello) a single woman who breeds dogs; Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) who is told in the movie's first act that her husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits) is leaving her for another woman; Allegra (Maggie Grace), Sylvia's and Daniel's lesbian daughter; Prude (Emily Blunt), a high school French teacher who is feeling estranged from her uncaring husband (Marc Blucas) and is moving toward an affair with a student (Kevin Zegers); and Grigg (Hugh Dancy), the one male in the group, a science-fiction buff roped into the club because he's attracted to Jocelyn.

The film is divided into two parts that run concurrently. One is the meetings of the group in which they discuss that month's book and the other is their private lives which seem to be (of course) paralleling the lives of Austen's characters.

Of the private lives, there is one that is maddening and one that is somewhat interesting. The maddening one is the dance of Jocelyn and Grigg. They meet cute at the beginning of the film and you know they are going to wind up together at the end, but the machinations of the plot force them to circle annoyingly around this inevitability for the film's entire running time. The interesting one is Prude's, largely because Emily Blunt, who was such a revelation in "The Devil Wears Prada," comes through with another amazing performance that makes you feel about Prude exactly the way you are supposed to feel about her at every stage of the film. Trust me, these feelings undergo radical transformations.

The film has a manufactured, sappy ending that is totally unbelievable. If you want to be held somewhat in suspense, don't read the rest of this paragraph, but the film ends with Sylvia and Daniel back together. How this woman could be so weak as to take back this lout is beyond me. I give that relationship six months--tops!!!--before he leaves her again for another woman and smashes her heart in a million pieces.

I am going to come down right in the middle on this one, neither recommending nor condemning it. It really depends on how you feel about Jane Austen. If you are a fan (and, if you are, you have probably already read Fowler's book as well), then, by all means, rent this movie, curl up on the couch before winter ends completely and watch it. I'm betting it will make you feel warm all over. If, like me, you have no feelings about Jane Austen one way or another, I would suggest you bypass this one. A tip for a guy whose wife or girlfriend wants him to watch this movie with her: You might respond with a line from the film. "Sure. Isn't Austen the capital of Texas?"

Grade: C

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"

Andrew Dominik's film is about fame and respect. It's also about one man who has both and about another who doesn't have either, and in his pursuit of both gains infamy instead. It's also about 45 minutes too long.

Dominik was a second unit director on Terrence Malick's "The New World" and his treatment of this story can be described as Malick-Lite. Dominik has the magnificent cinematographer Roger Deakins ponder ever cloud (making them all seem ominous), every horizon, every backdrop. We get shots that are blurry on the edges and sharp in the middle. I know, that's how photographs from that era appeared, but why does Dominik slip in this film school trick only occasionally so that the effect grabs your attention, not what's actually happening on the screen?

The film tells the story of the last six months of Jesse James' life and often during the film I felt it was telling that story in real time.

To its credit, however, the film is not about heroism. Dominik doesn't try to portray James as a misunderstood hero, although there is one unintentionally hilarious shot at the beginning of the film where Brad Pitt as James is posed at the crest of a hill while a narrator describes him and all his various afflictions. One of the things the narrator tells us is that James suffered from a disease that caused him to blink much more than the average man. Throughout this long shot, Pitt never blinks once.

For the most part, however, Dominik and Pitt capture a James who was pathologically cruel and paranoid. He only kills one person in the film, but he shoots that person in the back. In fact, everyone killed in this movie is shot in the back. James comes close to killing someone else, an agent on a train the James Gang robs, while the potential victim lies face down and unconscious. These folks are definitely not heroic.

It's the robbery of this train that sets the film on its course. Jesse and Frank James' old gang, which also included the equally notorious Younger brothers, has long since dispersed and for this caper the James brothers have collected a motly crew of near relatives and hero-worshippers, two of whom, Robert (Casey Affleck) and Charlie Ford (Sam Rockwell), are riding with the Jameses for the first time.

It also turns out to be the last. Jesse and Frank have already decided this is going to be their final holdup, even though it doesn't produce the bounty the brothers were planning on. Immediately after the robbery, Frank (Sam Shepard) leaves for Virginia never to see his brother alive again. Jesse seems to settle in with his wife and two children. All the while his biggest fan, Robert Ford, hovers around, his presence making everyone uncomfortable if not insecure.

There is a lot of this middle section that could have been trimmed, especially scenes in Kentucky where one of the outlaws, Dick Liddil (marvelously brought to life by Paul Schneider) has an affair with the wife of one of James's relatives or scenes on a farm where most of the gang has gathered.

In fact, we see how good this movie could have been during its last half hour when it shows us what happened to the Fords after Robert killed Jesse. It is during these scenes that Affleck really shines and where he earned his Oscar nomination. I do wonder why it's a supporting actor nomination, however--Affleck and Pitt seem to be co-stars in this movie. Shortly after the Oscar nominations were announced 11 years ago, I rewatched "Fargo" with a pair of stopwatches and noted with interest that William H. Macy, nominated in a supporting category, had more screen time than Frances McDormand, who won the Oscar for best actress that year. I wouldn't be surprised if Affleck has more sceen time than Pitt in this film--but, unlike "Fargo," "The Assassination of Jesse James ... " is not a film I would relish sitting through again, with or without a stopwatch.

I'm going to recommend this film, however, but only marginally. If you like Malick's approach and pacing (and I did in "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven" when he wasn't trying to film an epic like he was with "The New World" or "The Thin Red Line"), then this is a DVD you might enjoy. If, however, you're like me and think Dominik should have used someone like Anthony Mann for inspiration, this film could drive you as mad as Jesse James.

Grade: C+

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters"

This is a funny and fascinating documentary that is not so much about the Reagan-era video game as it is about obsessions. Perhaps, the movie suggests, we all have them and the fact that I'm sitting here typing out these words this very minute undoubtably proves that point. But the beauty of this film is that some people's obsessions are easier to observe than others.

The movie tells the classic story of good vs. evil and sets in the world of video gaming. The fact that the game is Donkey Kong is really beside the point--we never get any lessons, only theories, on how to play Donkey Kong. And, I gathered it's impossible to actually win the game; the object is simply to get the most points, knowing that, no matter how many points you ultimately score, someone, somewhere, if not this decade than perhaps three or four decades down the line, will score more than you.

That's what happens to Billy Mitchell. As a teen, in 1982, he scored 874,300 points in Donkey Kong and was recognized by an organization called Twin Galaxies, the self-appointed authority on all things related to the world of competitive video gaming, as the grand champion. He even wound up with a spread in Life magazine that touted his achievements. In the intervening years he has become a hot sauce mogul and the owner of a restaurant in Hollywood, Fla., who talks about the sacrifices required for being the best in the world at anything competitive. As the film progresses, you realize this guy is a first-class jerk, so full of himself that he is a crowd when he's the only person in a room. But the folks at Twin Galaxies think of him as god-like.

Meanwhile, across the country in Redmond, Wash., lives Steve Wiebe, a guy who always finishes second in everything he tries--baseball, music, even his professional life. He gets laid off from his job on the day he and his adoring and supportive wife sign for their new home. One day he reads about Mitchell's accomplishments in Donkey Kong and figures, "Gee, I can beat that."

And beat it he does. He scores over a million points and submits a video tape of his accomplishment to Twin Galaxies for recognition. However, when it's discovered that Wiebe has associated with a sworn enemy of Mitchell's, the powers-that-be disallow the tape. What follows is Wiebe's futile attempts to gain complete recognition.

The movie is blatantly manipulative. Wiebe is portrayed as a family man who plays drums with his son, and spends time swimming with his son and daughter, a husband who makes sure he kisses his wife if they are going to be apart for a second. Mitchell has children as well, but you never see them in this film. In fact, you never really get a glimpse of Mitchell's private life at all except for some terribly unflattering views of his wife. I have read reports that Mitchell is extremely upset about his portrayal in the film and, if I were him, I would be as well.

But, in the end, it really doesn't matter, because, like I said, this is not a film about their domestic lives so much as it about their obsessions with an arcade game and even the obsessions of the people at Twin Galaxies who never play video games but spend all their time managing the results of them. (I kept wondering throughout the film what these guys do for income.) Because these obsessions are not over anything approaching "life and death," it's funny to watch them obsessing and you should get plenty of laughs seeing these kids pretending they are grownups.

Grade: B+