EASIER WITH PRACTICE (US, Kyle Patrick Alvarez)
The Hurt Locker's Brian Geraghty plays Davy Mitchell, a sad sack writer on a book tour/road trip across the Southwest with his brother, who answers the phone at their motel one night to find a woman named Nicole on the other end - who wants to have phone sex. Over the course of the following month, Davy and Nicole share a number of intimate conversations over the phone, but we all know that something's fishy when Nicole won't tell Davy her number (which is blocked on his cell phone) or her last name. First-time writer/director Alvarez, working off an apparently autobiographical story by Davy Rothbart, the editor of Found magazine (and its popular website), could have focused on the obvious story thread: who is this Nicole, really? But he smartly skews his story into more of a portrait of Davy and the sexual hang-ups which keep him from having normal relationships with the seemingly endless line of cute young women who are attracted to him even as he carries out this doomed phone relationship. In this respect, the film is kind of like a modern-day version of The Graduate. When, in the third act, Nicole re-enters the picture (so to speak), I had almost forgotten about that initial question of who she is, and why she is keeping her identity a secret. Then comes the inevitable revelation that Nicole is not exactly what we might have expected, but Alvarez handles this twist with delicacy, even if it essentially erases the first hour of the movie and tells us that the story was not really about Davy, but about his semi-anonymous lover. It's not a completely satisfying film - Geraghty is good, but his character is too socially awkward to be believable; his motivation would still have been believable even if his character had lightened up a bit - but it's an enjoyable 100 minutes, and a good example of what American independent cinema is supposed to be doing. Its NC-17 rating, however, is ridiculous - it earned its "Adults Only" scarlet letter due to explicit language alone.

EASTERN PROMISES (UK/Canada/US, David Cronenberg)
One dark night in London, a Russian teenager dies in childbirth and the midwife at the hospital (Naomi Watts), who conveniently is half-Russian herself, takes the woman's diary and seeks to have it translated in order to find the girl's next of kin to give the baby to. In one of the film's many implausible moments, she doesn't wait for her Russian uncle to translate, but instead finds a business card for a Russian restaurant in the diary and takes it to the creepy old man who runs the restaurant (German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl is fine as usual). Surprise, surprise: this restauranteur, Semyon, is actually a Russian mobster who has some ties to the dead girl. But the film is more about Semyon's live wire son Kirill (French actor Vincent Cassel) and Kirill's driver (American actor Viggo Mortensen - apparently there are no actual Russian actors in the world), who forms a bond with Watts as she discovers the truth about Semyon. There's a lot wrong with Eastern Promises, mostly with Steve Knight's clumsily-plotted screenplay. Knight wrote the more successful script for Dirty Pretty Things, and his follow-up lives in the same territory: a London filled with immigrants and underworld types. But while Dirty Pretty Things was somehow elevated above the standard screenwriting cliches that Knight threw in, thanks perhaps to director Stephen Frears' familiarity with London and the freshness of the multiracial cast, Eastern Promises doesn't quite get away as easily. A potentially explosive moment of betrayal is dumbed down with some obvious dialogue so that the idiot in the last row of the theater will get it; a subplot involving Scotland Yard features a clunky and completely unnecessary plot twist; a romantic moment is tossed into the finale that feels like some studio executive's interference (i.e. "You got a guy, you got a girl, you gotta make 'em kiss!"); finally, the film just kind of ends. Also, the decision to have the Russian characters speak to each other sometimes in Russian and sometimes in heavily accented English feels arbitrary and distracting. Finally, Naomi Watts is totally lifeless in her role. But while I can't recommend this film, I will give credit to Mortensen for his flawless work. He's terrific, by far the best thing about the movie. (If only that Scotland Yard plot twist were thrown out, then his character would have been as strong as his performance.) I also found the relationship between his Nikolai and Cassel's Kirill fascinatingly ambiguous. It's certainly the most interesting part of the movie. As for cult director Cronenberg, he paces his film briskly enough, considering its intimate (read: rather too small) scale and modest story, and throws in a few of his trademark squirm-inducing scenes about, shall we say, the fragility of human flesh. But it can't save the film from the disappointment of the usually-reliable Watts's dull performance and of Knight's lazy script.

EAST IS EAST (UK, Damien O'Donnell)
A 1971-set story about a Pakistani immigrant and his white English wife, raising 7 children in a poor suburb of Manchester, England, based on screenwriter Ayub Khan-Din's semiautobiographical play. Stressed father George Khan (legendary Indian actor Om Puri) can't deal with the fact that his kids are not growing up to be good traditional Pakistanis (though it's small wonder to the audience: they're half-English! Born in England!), so he tries to force them all into thinking his way, becoming more and more abusive as the film goes on. But the film never explains why he would let all his kids grow up to be fairly free-thinking individuals, only to suddenly try to tighten the clamps of traditional Pakistani values on the poor souls, so it's too hard to see George as anything other than a creep, and equally hard to buy his family passively allowing him to beat up whoever he wants. But that may just be my American moviegoer opinion; apparently this was an enormous hit in class-conscious Britain. I had the same reaction to the thuggish father in New Zealand's top film, Once Were Warriors, and many disagreed.

Kudos to the cast, though. They are excellent, especially the seven actors hired to play the Khan "children" (most of whom are over 18). They relate to each other remarkably like real siblings, and all their distinct personalities are beautifully etched. The film also paints an enlightening picture of the large Pakistani population in England, and the racism they've had to deal with. But a big thumbs down to what really wrecks the film: a gushy, mushy, overly manipulative musical score. East Is East may have been more effective as a stage play. One final note: though it has a few moments of hilarity, Miramax in their infinite wisdom is marketing a serious drama about domestic violence as a wacky comedy. Don't be fooled!

EDMOND (US, Stuart Gordon)
It seems odd that Stuart Gordon, the director best known for culty schlock titles like Re-Animator, Robot Jox, Castle Freak and Space Truckers, would be helming a a David Mamet-written film, but apparently Gordon's association with Mamet goes way back to the Chicago stage. Even if it didn't, Gordon's background in horror somehow fits Mamet's lowbrow aesthetic, despite the highbrow audience that usually gravitates towards Mamet's work. It certainly seems a good match for Edmond, which Mamet adapted from his own 1982 play, a punishing odyssey for a supernaturally naive, if ill-tempered, businessman (Mamet regular William H. Macy) who abruptly leaves his wife one night and, while walking the seedy big city streets looking for sex, finds himself being ripped off left and right by strippers, prostitutes, three card monte hustlers and more - until he finally snaps. Up through this point, Mamet has opened up his play nicely for the screen. Soon after, however, when Macy meets up with Julia Stiles, playing a waitress, it's as though Mamet just copied and pasted the rest of his play into his film script, for at that point Edmond becomes very talky, very stagy. Gordon films it reasonably well, but this is an example of how, with the right cast, a writer like Mamet can make points in live theatre despite the unlikablility of his characters or the ultimate murkiness of his vision. But a motion picture requires more clarity and more sympathy. And while Edmond is never boring - not for a second - it is also never as good as the sum of its parts. Mamet explores issues of race, sex, violence and the cruelty of the world, but it never gels into any cohesive theme. And the third act is merely just a showcase for Macy's acting talents, prodigious though they may be. I didn't dislike Edmond, but for all its physical and verbal brutality, it left me rather cold. In short, if you're not a fan of the work of David Mamet, this film won't make you one; rent House of Games or Things Change instead.

AN EDUCATION (UK, Lone Scherfig)
The early 1960s are definitely "in" these days, thanks to the cult TV series Mad Men and a spate of high-profile independent features, including A Single Man, A Serious Man (set in 1967, when most still embraced the clean-cut early '60s style) and now An Education, which bucks the trend of having "Man" or "Men" in the title and is instead emphatically About a Girl. And I'm punning slightly, because the screenplay was written by celebrated British novelist Nick Hornby, author of About a Boy and High Fidelity, among others. Hornby adapts journalist Lynn Barber's memoir of her strange year in 1961 where, as a sixteen-year-old girl, she became romantically involved with a charming but suspicious man in his mid-30s. The roles have become slightly fictionalized, with the young Lynn now named "Jenny" (played with effortless appeal by British TV actress Carey Mulligan, 24 years old but easily passing for 16) and her suitor now portrayed more sympathetically than Barber depicted him by American actor Peter Sarsgaard. There's an understandable creepiness at work in the relationship between this young girl and this worldly but sketchy man, but Danish director Scherfig and her cast underplay it, with the results being lighter than expected - even though you know things are bound to work out poorly for this star-crossed couple. The cast is all fine, especially Alfred Molina (whom Hornby has given the funniest lines) as Jenny's exasperated father. But I do think this film's been overrated by many critics. First of all, Paul Englishby's score is intrusive and cloying. And Peter Sarsgaard, though always a strong actor, seems uncomfortable with a British accent, which does not suit his soft, slow speaking manner. I was distracted in ways that I'm not distracted when hearing other American actors (Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow) talk like Britons. Finally, although my eyes glazed over the opening title card which indicated that this story is based on a memoir and so I thought I was watching fiction, the characters and their motivations are so particular that this could only have come from fact. So Barber's story has an intimate, "Let me tell you about this weird guy I met when I was a teenager" ring to it that, in the end, isn't very shocking or unusual, and doesn't justify the glossy big screen treatment. There are some quasi-feminist lines about how a girl like Lynn/Jenny in the early '60s didn't have many choices in life, even with a proper university education, and that life as a housewife was seen then as an inevitability no matter which path a young woman took, but Scherfig's film is really just about the characters and the actors who portray them. If that's all you need, then you'll like An Education. (I thought it was a reasonably entertaining picture myself.) But if you expect something a bit meatier, something that will really haunt you, then you may, as I did, leave this film with a shrug.

8 MILE (US, Curtis Hanson)
Not since Kurt Cobain has there been a male recording artist as fetishized as Eminem. Is it the controversy surrounding his music? His dangerous attitude? His checkered past? Or is it just that he's beautiful to look at and the macho hip-hop crowd won't admit it? Say what you will, there's a reason why more people paid to see 8 Mile during the first three days of its release than purchased the rapper's last album The Eminem Show over the last six months - and that was a hugely successful album. And who am I to argue with the allure of those wounded eyes behind the hateful lyrics? So I saw 8 Mile.

As has been previously ascertained by other critics, Eminem does a credible job playing a character who is basically himself, seven years ago: a poor white kid in Detroit, struggling to stake his claim in the competitive hip-hop scene while dealing with poverty, a wretched mother (here played by Kim Basinger, affecting a broad Southern accent that is of questionable justification) and his various enemies. Other than that, it's just another Rocky movie, only substituting rapping for boxing. This makes perfect sense on one level: these days, the big ticket out of the inner city lies not in boxing, or writing, or painting, or any of the other aspirations worked over again and again in Hollywood films. It's hip-hop. But the funny thing is, being lily white as I am, while my head agrees that it makes for a very logical choice for a good-kid-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-trying-to-make-it saga (hip-hop is a billion dollar industry), my gut couldn't quite buy how winning a signifying match on a Saturday night could be seen as that important an achievement, or that suspenseful a plot for a feature film. Maybe it's just not as cinematic as boxing.

Still, it's fascinating to pick apart this movie on a social basis. Can you imagine the outrage if Hollywood made a movie about a white kid who beats all the black guys at their own game and cast somebody other than Eminem in the part? This way everybody gets to have their cake and eat it too. But the film itself falls apart upon further analysis. The story is too sloppy: Eminem has a girlfriend who is apparently pregnant with his child but she is quickly forgotten about (it definitely feels like she had a few key scenes that were cut); Em's other love interest just kind of comes and goes; Basinger is good but that Southern accent really doesn't jibe with the gritty urban feel of the film; Em and his buddies hang out with a token white dude who I see in movies like this all the time: somebody so moronic and dorky that you really wonder why the rest of the guys even give him the time of day, much less stand by his undeserving side. I have a feeling that Curtis Hanson - a decent director who stages his film with aplomb and expertly captures the decay of Detroit - was working so hard to get a good performance out of his star that he neglected the story's subtler points. As for Eminem, though he is perfectly acceptable in the role, his performance ironically adds little to his mystique.

8 1/2 WOMEN (UK, Peter Greenaway)
Peter Greenaway's films are an acquired taste. I've never been to one where I haven't seen people walking out of the theatre in disgust. Look - here's what to expect from Peter Greenaway: clever seriocomic art films about sex, death and revenge, showcasing copious amounts of grisly violence, corpses, illicit sex, ample nudity (both male and female), witty dialogue, and excellent acting by some of England's finest. You will also be treated to Greenaway's taste for ornate set clutter, operatic lighting, endless tracking shots, and obsessions with numbers, systems, art, decay, bodily functions, games, rituals and language. Got it?

I'm a big Greenaway fan, but I feel he lost steam with Prospero's Books and The Pillow Book, where he spent more energy in his computer-created multilayered imagery than he did in his storytelling. The acting in both films was terrible and their dense atmospheres were too serious, even deadening. Audiences were walking out for new reasons! Happily, 8 1/2 Women dispenses with the computer imagery as well as the sickening violence; unhappily, its story wanders and the quality of the performances is variable.

A wealthy British industrialist living in Geneva (John Standing) has just lost his wife, and his son (Matthew Delamere) returns from Japan to console him. After viewing the classic Fellini film 8 1/2, the two men ponder the likelihood of films merely reflecting the sexual fantasies of their directors (typical self-referential Greenaway humor), and then decide to fill up their mansion with eight and a half women (the "half" is an amputee) in order to live out some fantasies of their own. As it turns out, they're overwhelmed by the complex, intelligent women they take in, and the film becomes a breakdown of sexual stereotypes as these baffled men eventually kneel before female mystery. But the director already tackled this topic a decade ago in his infinitely better Drowning By Numbers, and halfway through, 8 1/2 Women finds itself in a storyless muddle. After the Japan-set The Pillow Book, Greenaway continues his apparently newfound obsession with a rather outdated Japanese culture, bringing back the untalented Chinese actress Vivian Wu, along with several Asian actresses, to make up half the "fantasy women." The others include Polly Walker (Enchanted April), Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense) and Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction), who, if you're interested, all get buck naked. But only Walker emerges with much dignity - Collette is saddled with an awful Norwegian accent(!) and Plummer tries her best with a similarly ill-chosen Austrian one. I am of the opinion that Greenaway's clipped-and-clever dialogue is really written for the British tongue, and works only when British actors are speaking it. Oh - finally, yes I did see people walk out of this one too.

ELEPHANT (US, Gus Van Sant)
A fictional take on the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, Gus Van Sant's Elephant takes its name from a similarly-themed British film with the same title, which took its name from the adage of somebody ignoring a problem as big and as obvious as an elephant in a living room. A love-it-or-hate-it experience if ever there was one, I noticed that even before it was released in the U.S., American critics were bashing it as being exploitative, wrongheaded, irresponsible, and above all, "too pretty." There are claims that Van Sant's depiction of an ordinary high school looks like a Calvin Klein commercial. That the teens are unrealistically beautiful, fetishized by the director's camera. I disagree. The kids (all amateur actors from Van Sant's native Portland, Oregon) look like regular contemporary teens to me - some good-looking, some plain, some homely. And anyway, how does one "correctly" depict the minutes leading up to a massive slaughter caused by two distraught teenage boys? Well, some might say, "not at all." And they might be right: The niggling thing about this movie is that it is so objective - at least on the surface (Van Sant throws in a lot of subtle commentary, some of it useful, some of it clunky) - that an audience member leaving the theatre may wonder what the point actually is. I think it's just to show the horror of the actual experience, which Elephant does so well that my cousin and I - watching it at a film festival in Norway, far away from nattering American film critics - were cringing the whole time, even during the long periods in which nothing interesting happens. You are kept fully aware that something terrible is about to come down, and Van Sant cuts back and forth through time so frequently as he follows various students around that you feel that the gunshots and screams could begin at any moment. It's gut-wrenching. However, this probably wouldn't be the case upon a second viewing, at which point I'm afraid Elephant's endless tracking shots of teenagers roaming the strangely empty hallways during lunch may come across as a bit aimless. But Van Sant and crew have provided so many images, both graceful and horrifying, that stuck with me long, long after seeing it, that I can only come to the conclusion that, for me anyway, Elephant is a great, haunting film.

ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (US, Alex Gibney)
Everybody knows about the corporate disaster known as Enron. But - and I don't think I'm being too presumptuous here - not many people (myself included) really know just what the scandal was about, outside of a giant company ripping off people and then folding. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, based on the bestselling book, is as informative as it is entertaining; significant viewing material for anybody who feels embarrassed that they don't really have an informed opinion about the story. Here's a brief primer: Enron was a Houston-based corporation that invented a new way of doing business: buying and selling energy futures, basically creating a stock market for energy. What went wrong? Well, they never made much money, but told everybody otherwise, thanks to some shady trade loopholes where they could announce profits based on projected (as opposed to actual) earnings. When that started falling apart, Enron's traders pulled the dirtiest of tricks, making millions for the company by creating a false energy crisis in California. Shocking phone messages reveal traders calling up power plants and telling them to shut down at random, in order to convince the people of California that there was a shortage - thereby driving the cost of energy sky high. When investors and whistle-blowers smelled a rat, Enron quickly went out of business, taking the money out of its employees 401k plans with it. CEO Jeff Skilling and chairman Ken Lay are the de facto bad guys in the scenario, but it seems they were no more or less to blame for Enron's criminal activities than the scores of greedy, amoral traders working the floor below their cushy offices. Arriving a year after the glut of liberal documentaries in 2004, The Smartest Guys in the Room seems like a johnny-come-lately on the surface, but the film itself is less a dig at right-wing corporate culture (George W. Bush's infamous connections with Enron are only briefly touched upon) as it is an angering, useful, nonpartisan look at the fallout of unchecked greed. There are the dry figures - no matter how Gibney tries to play up the human drama (even opening his film, noir style, with a re-enactment of Enron exec Clifford Baxter's suicide), the scandal remains very much about accounting and shifty policy - and this may require a bit of concentration on the part of the numbers-challenged audience member. But there's enough truly weird stuff - the sordid life of mysterious executive Lou Pai, Enron's bizarre idea of trading shares of Internet bandwidth, the suggestion that California was the chosen target for an energy crisis as a way of ousting Governor Gray Davis, replacing him with corporate yes-man Arnold Schwarzenegger - to keep even the most math-phobic viewers entranced. It won't change your opinion on what happened, or what should happen to those responsible, but it will inform that opinion greatly.

ENTER THE VOID (France, Gaspar Noé)
Anybody who sat through the challenging, ultra-violent Irreversible already knows about French cinema's enfant terrible Gaspar Noé, and what he's capable of. So if you have any idea who he is, you've already decided whether you can't wait to be thrilled by the director's visionary new Enter the Void or if you want to stay away from it at all costs. In either case, this film will not defy your expectations. Noé sets his story in the most modern, most soulless neighborhood in Tokyo he could find, where a small group of drug-using expats from various countries has gathered. At the center of the story is the relationship between Oscar and Linda, a brother and sister from the U.S. who have become extremely close following a family tragedy when they were children. How close they are is somewhat left to the imagination, though Noé suggests a connection as creepy as it is supposedly profound. The film is shot, in a certain sense, entirely from Oscar's point of view. In the first section, this is quite literal, with the camera "blinking" every time Oscar does. After his untimely demise (I'm not really giving anything away), the rest of the film is a hallucinatory trip through Oscar's post-death existence, where we not only see his life flash before his eyes (though this "flash" is at least a half hour long, possibly even an hour long; it's easy to lose track of time while sitting through this 2 hour, 40 minute odyssey), we also observe the lives of those he's left behind. It's not really an exaggeration to say that Enter the Void's story is, as its core, the same as that of The Lovely Bones, only with explicit sex, pervasive drug use, and 21st century psychedelia. The same dank, moody cinematography from Irreversible is on display, and if the English-speaking cast doesn't quite rise to the level of the previous film's French superstars, they are adequate, though the jury's still out on whether New York scenester Paz de la Huerta, as Linda, is a good actress or merely an exhibitionist. I can't say that you will either love or hate Enter the Void, for I myself am rather ambivalent about it. There's no denying that Noé's visuals are spectacular, and that he is one of few major filmmakers working today who are truly dedicated to expanding the medium. However, as with Irreversible, I found his deeper ideas pretentious and juvenile, the sort of self-serious artsiness that most good directors get out of their system while in film school. I know I'm not the only reviewer to sum up Enter the Void as a stupid movie but a mesmerizing sensory experience, but Noé himself compared his film to Avatar, and that may tell you everything you need to know. See it on a big screen with loud stereo sound, or don't see it at all.

ERIN BROCKOVICH (US, Steven Soderbergh)
Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts, who else) is a sweetly trashy unemployed mother of three living in an L.A. suburb. When her rumpled lawyer Ed (Albert Finney) fails to win her a nickel in an auto accident case, she demands that he at least give her a job as a file clerk, which he reluctantly allows (Erin, as it turns out, is a hard woman to say "no" to). One day, while going through a routine real estate case, Erin discovers medical documents in the folder. She does a bit of investigating and starts to smell a rat: a public utility company might have poisoned the water of the small desert town of Hinkley, California. She shares the news with Ed, who is looking forward to retiring from his law practice but has enough idealism left in him to pursue the case.

You can probably figure out what happens next. Yep, it's another David vs. Goliath story, the kind which the American public can't get enough of, especially when Goliath is a nasty corporate giant and David is, well, Julia Roberts. Not to say that Erin Brockovich is a bad or even uninteresting film. It's actually solid entertainment. It's based on a true story, which allows the filmmakers to justify some good old-fashioned stand-up-and-cheer populist filmmaking. Susannah Grant's script is lean and truthful, if a bit over-polished. The very talented director Steven Soderbergh is also very smart: he knows he's making a Julia Roberts film, and he knows that her legions of adoring fans worldwide won't respond to his usual fondness for experimental structure and editing (i.e. The Limey, Out of Sight): they want to see Julia smile, act sassy, and outsmart all the pompous dimwits who get in her way. Soderbergh thus keeps his eccentricity in check and relies on his other talents: creating a rich atmosphere (you can practically taste the dust blowing across Hinkley's quiet streets) and working with a perfect supporting cast of ordinary-looking folks.

As for the star? Well, basically she plays herself. Surprise. This isn't Erin Brockovich, struggling mom. It's Julia Roberts, the most popular actress on the planet. Perhaps there can never be any getting around that. And while she's not always a bad actress, she is an obvious one. She doesn't know how to subtly shade a character, so she can only play the same bright, brassy, fun gal with a huge heart and a lot of well-thrown attitude, film after film after film. Soderbergh lets her do her thing and wisely emphasizes her strengths while downplaying (or even cutting away from) her weaknesses. The end result: she's appealing enough in her role. Go see Erin Brockovich as a rousing bit of entertainment with a fairly involving storyline. But don't be surprised if you aren't thinking much about it afterwards. The film's only real flaw is that its general levity ultimately negates the seriousness of its subject. One walks away thinking that the problems of the world's suffering are easily solved - as long as Julia's in charge.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (US, Michel Gondry)
When we first meet sad-sack New Yorker Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), his voiceover tells us that it is Valentine's Day, 2004, as he spontaneously skips work and takes a train out to Montauk, Long Island instead. Wandering the empty beach, he bumps into blue-haired free spirit Clementine (Kate Winslet), and they wind up spending 24 hours in each other's company. Though they obviously hit it off, there's something uneasy about their sudden bond. Moments later, we have either flashed forward or flashed back in time, for Joel is moping about having broken up with Clementine after a long, unhappy relationship. What happened? We soon discover along with Joel that Clementine has gone to a screwball hole-in-the-wall clinic called Lacuna, where she has had all memories of their life together erased from her mind. Heartbroken, Joel checks into Lacuna himself and requests the same operation. While Lacuna's rogues' gallery of technicians (a casting director's dream: Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Kirsten Dunst) work on Joel's brain as he sleeps, we dive into his subconscious to watch as memory after bitter memory dissolves around him. Charlie Kaufman has quickly established himself as Hollywood's favorite pop surrealist screenwriter, and his schtick consists of (often literally) getting into the heads of self-obsessed creative types as they learn to let go of their neurotic tendencies in order to be happy. While this, his latest script, is definitely inventive, he's more or less on auto-pilot. It is director Gondry who is the unsung hero here. With a reputation as one of the world's most visually creative music video directors (Björk, Chemical Brothers, White Stripes, etc.), he's that rare filmmaker who actually embraces visual effects foremost as art. It must have been hard to find a feature film that suited Gondry's eclectic style (his debut, Human Nature, also written by Kaufman, was poorly received), but Eternal Sunshine seems tailor-made for him - indeed, he shares a story credit with Kaufman - and fans of his work will be pleased.

However, when all is said and done, Eternal Sunshine is, ironically, forgettable. For sure, it's entertaining, with fine performances and terrific production values (Gondry assembled the hippest crew around, including cinematographer Ellen Kuras and composer Jon Brion), but after the credits roll, there isn't much to dwell on. The main problem is that there is no chemistry between Joel and Clementine. Whether this is the fault of Carrey and Winslet, or of Gondry, or of Kaufman himself, I'm not sure. But so much of the story depends on the few happy memories that this star-crossed couple shared, and unfortunately they seem like such a poor fit that it's hard to want them to get back together. (Without revealing too much, the plot involves Joel having second thoughts about his memory erasure - in the middle of the process itself.) If they seemed truly in love, the sweet sentiment of the film would've had greater impact. As it stands, the secondary characters are far more intriguing, their emerging stories far more interesting. Because so little is done with Joel and Clementine (and how can it, really, when the bulk of their story unfolds in Joel's subjective memories), they become a generic couple, and a lousy one at that. Instead of feeling moved by film's end, I found myself thinking, as Clementine says of Joel, that the film is merely "nice."

EUREKA (Japan, Shinji Aoyama)
Are you the sort of person who is open to the idea of watching a 3-hour, 40-minute, black-and-white Japanese film? If so, then keep reading. If not, then nothing I can say will get you into a theatre to watch Eureka, because it is exactly that. All the same, this film offers many rewards for an audience member's patience, both aesthetically and emotionally. Nor, amazingly, does it bore. The story follows the lives of three survivors of a horrendous bus hijacking: the bus driver (Koji Yakusho, bext known in the U.S. for his starring role in the sleeper hit Shall We Dance?) and two young teens (real-life siblings Aoi and Masaru Miyazaki). The children, since orphaned after the incident, have retreated into a world of stunned silence. Together with their bemused older cousin (Yoichiro Saito), the driver attempts to create a makeshift family, bonding with the children over their shared trauma.

The monochromatic cinematography is breathtaking; virtually every shot could be framed and hung on the wall. The pacing is, obviously, a bit on the slow side, but it ultimately benefits the film: we are given a rare opportunity to spend enough time with these characters that we feel we really know them, and not for what they say, but just for what they are: how they eat, how they sit, what it's like to be in a room with them. Finally, what we're left with is what connects our broken protagonists: a shared memory of a shattering experience. Eureka isn't one of the greatest films ever made, but it has something to say, and there's an admirable boldness in its deliberately-paced approach.

EVEN THE RAIN (Spain/Mexico/France, Icíar Bollaín)
Decent political drama about a Spanish film crew (led by an apparently Mexican director, played by Gael García Bernal) who come to Bolivia in 2000 in order to shoot a feature about Christopher Columbus' early subjugation of South American Indians, only to find out that the local Quechua actor they cast as a martyred Indian (Juan Carlos Aduviri) is simultaneously leading a people's revolt against a corrupt international water company. Inspired by the actual 2000 water protests by the indigenous residents of Cochobamba and dedicated in its very first frames to Howard Zinn, Even the Rain's politics are worn very obviously on its sleeve. Fortunately, it doesn't feel preachy, even as it reveals the parallels between Columbus' treatment of the Indians (in "film within the film" scenes) with the 2000 Bolivian government's treatment of its poor. It reminded me somewhat of 1997's Welcome to Sarajevo, presenting the plight of the suffering through the eyes of cynical "Westerners" (a strange term to use for a Mexican in Bolivia!) forced to understand the meaning of the battle that wages around them. Although what I've described sounds less like a fun time in a movie theater and more like homework, Even the Rain is an entertaining picture - predictable, perhaps, but always engaging, and certainly its themes are still timely, especially in the 2011 era of Middle East revolutions.

EXILED (Hong Kong, Johnny To)
It's been a long time since I've seen a Hong Kong action movie in an American cinema. Back in the 90's, with fanboys and cineastes alike going ape over the so-called "new wave" of Hong Kong filmmaking (thanks mainly to John Woo's legendary shoot-'em-ups), stateside distributors took more of a chance in putting HK flicks up on US screens. But as the once-glorious HK cinema began its decline in the late 90's, thanks to the (mostly symbolic) handover of Hong Kong to China; defection of actors and directors to Hollywood, and sudden deaths and premature retirements of other top stars, the exports thinned out. Nowadays, only the most fanatic of Asian cinema buffs could name a Hong Kong film (aside from Wong Kar-Wai's features) to come out over the past 10 years. But the prolific director Johnny To, who was there at the birth of new HK cinema, has kept at his game, cranking out at least one feature a year. After the stateside release of his Triad Election, he gets another modest bit of distribution for Exiled, a strong, quirky film that opens with a quartet of gangsters descending on the house of a former friend, with one of the four under orders to kill him. After a brief and confusing shootout in which nobody gets hurt, the gangsters then help their old friend and his wife set up their furniture. It's the first of many funny and strangely sweet twists in an otherwise familiar HK plot setup of brotherly love amongst gangsters. Aside from the expectedly exciting gunplay and the charismatic talent (particularly the great Anthony Wong), Exiled's strong characterizations and quiet emotion either stand as evidence that HK cinema is maturing in tone, or simply raise Exiled above the corny humor, broad performances and incomprehensible storylines that have marred many a Hong Kong thriller.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (US/UK, Banksy)
Entertaining "documentary" from the hugely popular (if anonymous) British graffiti artist known only as Banksy. What Banksy - his face hidden in shadow, his voice distorted in post-production - explains to us at the beginning of the movie is that a strange, annoying little Frenchman named Thierry Guetta had been videotaping the world's great graffiti artists obsessively, and was going to make a documentary about them and about Banksy in particular. But then Banksy found this odd little documentarian to be a far more interesting subject, and so he decided to make a film about Guetta instead. What follows has its share of surprises that I dare not reveal, but the end result feels like the cinematic equivalent of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, an amusing experimental novel consisting of a long poem by a fictional poet, followed by the footnotes on the poem by the poet's fictional biographer - who then uses the footnotes to tell his own self-aggrandizing autobiography, interpreting the deeply personal meaning of a relative stranger's poem to serve his own ends. At least with Pale Fire, you accept that it is a work of fiction from the mind of one author, Nabokov. With Exit Through the Gift Shop, you just can't tell. It might be real. It might be a big put-on. Thierry Guetta may not even exist. I can only say that, if the film is a hoax, it's an extremely elaborate one, for many of the events depicted in the film took place in Los Angeles and I remember seeing evidence of the events at the time. The film rides the narrow line between "too good to be true" and "truth is stranger than fiction", and one has to remember while watching it that Banksy is not only a clever artist - he's also a legendary prankster. In either case, the film, like Pale Fire, is about the creative process, professional jealousy, and experimenting with art forms - whether it's spray paint on a wall or a documentary film - to question the forms themselves. If that sounds too heady, the truth is that Exit Through the Gift Shop is, like Banksy's art, accessible - even light-hearted. Actor Rhys Ifans' perky voiceover narration and a jazzy music score only add to the fun.

EXTRACT (US, Mike Judge)
This average comedy stars Jason Bateman as the young owner of a thriving extract company (meaning a small factory that churns out bottles of almond, cherry, root beer and vanilla extracts) who feels that his wife (Kristen Wiig) has lost interest in sex and so he starts to fixate on his company's hot new temp (Mila Kunis), who is in reality a con artist. On the advice of his moronic bartender friend (Ben Affleck, in the kind of minor comedic supporting role he should have been doing throughout his career), Bateman hires an even more moronic "gigolo" to seduce his wife, so that he won't feel guilty about potentially cheating on her. This weak premise results in an agreeable but forgettable comedy, with few laughs but a good cast and an inoffensive tone. For me this is typical of Judge's work. I've seen his two previous live action features, Office Space and Idiocracy, and as with Extract, they were likable enough movies that nevertheless didn't try too hard. Extract is even less successful, because unlike its predecessors it doesn't even have a point to make. Judge can obviously be funny, but he seems content with first drafts and first takes instead of pushing the jokes further and adding more strength to his story. This is the sort of movie that will play great on cable, where you can start watching at any random point and stop watching at any random point without feeling like you're missing out on anything. Not a bad film, just an unremarkable one.

THE EXTRA MAN (US, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini)
Paul Dano is Louis, a nervous young man with an interest in 1920s literature and a gnawing curiosity about wearing women's underwear. After a humiliating incident at the New Jersey prep school where he teaches, he relocates to New York City, where he finds a new roommate in Kevin Kline's Henry Harrison, an eccentric dandy who dabbles in being a gigolo - or, as he calls it, a "rosen knight" or an "extra man" - accompanying wealthy dowagers to social functions. I'll tell you why I was compelled to see this mostly indifferently-received comedy: first, living the life of an underemployed indie filmmaker myself, I was drawn to the idea of a story about an "elegant bum" and hoped to identify with these characters' creative approaches to living the good life on pennies a day. Second, I quite liked the underrated comedy The Great Buck Howard, and although the two films do not apparently share any personnel, they are quite alike in spirit, pairing an up-and-coming young actor (in the case of Buck Howard, Colin Hanks) with a veteran character actor given free reign to ham it up (Buck Howard had John Malkovich). There are other similarities, too: one of Buck Howard's running jokes was its titular magician's ambiguous sexuality. And so too in The Extra Man, Henry Harrison's sexual preferences are vague, even as he himself boasts of his asexuality. Alas, my hopes of getting some tips on surviving with style during tough economic times were dashed: The Extra Man is about character, not environment. However, I was nearly as satisfied with the movie as I was with Buck Howard. Based on Jonathan Ames's 1998 novel, The Extra Man often has that "quirky novel" feel, where many of the characters and situations are just a wee bit too offbeat. (John C. Reilly, usually a welcome presence, annoys as a Hagrid-like neighbor with a distractingly high voice.) And whereas one could search for deeper themes in the story about sexuality, masculinity, loneliness, or identity, the film comes up empty on these fronts. Mostly it is a love letter to the Big Apple's charming oddballs, who are fast becoming priced out of post-Giuliani Manhattan. And there is something endearing about its characters' fondness for bygone days, when gentlemen wore tuxedos out to the opera and feasted on caviar at the Russian Tea Room. I wish The Extra Man showed more of a sense of loss for those genteel times, but Kline is enjoyable, Dano adroitly straddles the line between sweet and creepy, and the rest of the cast is peppered with fine character actors. It's a nice, light movie, not particularly memorable, but an agreeable way to pass an hour and a half of your time.

THE EYE (Hong Kong, the Pang Brothers)
Hotshot Thai filmmakers the Pang Brothers (Danny and Oxide - yes, Oxide) crank out another slick offering, an Asian variation on The Sixth Sense in which a blind woman named Mun (Lee Sin-Je) receives a cornea transplant and almost immediately starts seeing ghosts all around her. This gimmick provides for numerous scenes in which Mun has one eerie encounter after the next. Good scary fun, but after nearly an hour of this you start wondering if she's ever going to do anything about it. Finally a story hatches, involving a recurring dream Mun has, and in hopes of banishing these images from her sight she determines to find out what happened to the person whose eyes she inherited. Not much new here - this is another in a long line of "women who have creepy visions" films (Eyes of Laura Mars, In Dreams, Blink) - but there's still some freaky moments that should entertain fans of ghost stories. It gets better as it goes along, with several intriguing twists in the third act. Suffers from some sophomoric character revelations, not uncommon in Hong Kong cinema, and thus the emotional scenes towards the end don't resonate as deeply as the Pangs intended. But the story remains interesting and delivers some chills.