GALAXY QUEST (US, Dean Parisot)
The cast members of a tacky 80's sci fi TV show (somewhere between the 80's "Buck Rogers" and the original "Star Trek" series, in terms of both cheese factor and cult appeal) have found their careers floundering in the 90's, relying on embarrassing appearances at fan conventions just to pay the rent. Then a particularly odd collection of fans turns out to be actual aliens who have watched every episode of the show and believe it to be real - in fact, they have based their entire technology on stuff they watched on the show. Taking the TV "starship crew" for the genuine article, they whisk the show's befuddled cast members off into space to help them save their people from destruction. You get the idea.

Tremendous entertainment, extremely funny and surprisingly smart about the sci fi genre (and its fans), with a formulaic but very satisfying story and a definitely skewed sense of humor. The cast is great, especially Tony Shalhoub's laid-back "science officer" and Enrico Colantoni's hilarious head alien. The special effects are as impressive as they come. You aren't supposed to get anything out of this other than a good time, and on that, Galaxy Quest delivers.

GANGS OF NEW YORK (US, Martin Scorsese)
This long-awaited epic - Scorsese's 30-year quest to bring the story to the screen is well-known - arrives a year behind schedule (thanks to Miramax's post-9/11 squeamishness), but none the worse for it. A bloody, baroque sprawl of a film, Gangs of New York examines a heretofore little-explored chapter in New York history: the early 1860's, where tensions between American-born Manhattanites and the masses of Irish immigrants streaming into the city came to a boil when the controversial Civil War draft - targeting the poor, primarily the Irish - was put into effect, igniting what remain the worst riots the country has ever seen (at least 1200 men, women and children were killed). Scorsese holds up this critical period of history as evidence that the America we live in now was, essentially, created then, not in 1776. Immigration, racism, political corruption, gang warfare, a disgusting gap between rich and poor, the absence of real freedom in the land of the free - all of today's hot-button issues seethe equally in Scorsese's 1862 New York (specifically the dirt-poor Five Points neighborhood, an Old West-like shantytown where most of the Irish were packed in like sardines). The history lesson at first takes a back seat to a fairly standard storyline: good guy (Leonardo DiCaprio, credible) vs. bad guy (Daniel Day-Lewis, incredible) and the good woman with a bad past coming between them (Cameron Diaz, just fine). At least the story avoids the standard love triangle scenario: When DiCaprio, seeking revenge against Day-Lewis for the death of his father (Liam Neeson), not only infiltrates Day-Lewis's gang but gets involved with his girl, Day-Lewis could hardly care less. For his "Bill the Butcher" is far more interested in subjecting others to his cruelty than in wooing women.

Though there are a couple of very sexy scenes between two actors I don't find sexy at all (DiCaprio, Diaz), the romance eventually fades into the background as history takes center stage again. Which is a good thing, because it's there that Scorsese's direction really packs a wallop. Gallons of blood, passionate camerawork and the director's typical oddball mix of music (no, dear reader, no rock tunes) keep all three hours of Gangs of New York right in your face. That, along with its disturbing message about the birth of Modern America and Day-Lewis's vicious, captivating performance, make the film worth recommending highly to all but those who detest the sight of blood or violence. (It's Martin Scorsese, remember!) Of course it's exquisitely shot and designed, too, though for me I found the central Five Points square, where most of the action takes place, to be so claustrophobic that it started to feel like a movie set, not a New York neighborhood. That's pretty much my only qualm.

GANGSTER NO. 1 (UK, Paul McGuigan)
Another of the "new wave" of ultra-stylish British crime movies to come out lately, Gangster No. 1 is doubtless the bloodiest and most hallucinatory of the bunch. Learning that his old crime boss (David Thewlis) has just been released from jail after 30 years, gangland kingpin Malcolm McDowell looks back on his relationship with the well-dressed mentor he grew to idolize, then fetishize, then envy, then hate. The bulk of the film takes place in 1968, when the young gangster (never named, but played by Paul Bettany, best known now for his role as Russell Crowe's "roommate" in A Beautiful Mind) is recruited by Thewlis, finds a taste for killing, and plots endless revenge on his boss simply because he cannot have what the other seems to take for granted. It becomes pretty clear early on that this young gangster is little more than a psychopath, and there are plenty of gut-wrenchingly violent scenes to prove the point. But what is the point of Gangster No. 1? Is it a send-up of the genre, exposing the emptiness of gangland ambition? Is it a character study? Or just another exercise in style? All three, probably, and it delivers all the way up until the third act, which takes place in the present day, with McDowell getting his chance to chew the scenery ferociously as the bitter aged gangster (though it was a bad idea to have two actors play one character at different ages, while all the other performers make do with "age makeup" for the contemporary scenes). At this point the film starts to bog down, losing the energy and spot-on perfect atmosphere of late 60's London. Perhaps that's the point, but I preferred the slim, tailored suits, the dolly birds in their mini skirts, and that cool, cool soundtrack. An imperfect film, but with a lot of great cinematic moments and fine performances by Bettany and Thewlis, two of the most interesting British actors working today.

GARDEN STATE (US, Zach Braff)
For many years, I thought the word disingenuous meant "not very clever." In fact, it means "insincere, calculating." But it's a nuanced word, one that suggests not so much a liar as one who is bending over backwards trying to appear honest, and may even believe that he is being honest, when he's really putting you on. Garden State, thus, is a disingenuous film. I say that even though I was quite surprised at how much I liked it - at least for the first half. Writer/director Zach Braff stars as Andrew Largeman, a twentysomething actor in Los Angeles who returns to his home in suburban New Jersey after a nine-year absence to attend his mother's funeral. While there, he hangs out with his quirky friends, sees some quirky sights, and meets a cute quirky local (Natalie Portman, doing very well with a juicy role). Yes, Garden State walks that precarious tightrope over the bottomless pit of Quirk, but Braff infuses his characters and situations with enough honest feeling - and good humor - to keep things believable. (And after all, New Jersey is a weird state.) But nutty little observances do not a full-length feature make, and after an hour Braff gets serious as he turns away from sight gags in order to, well, flounder around in lengthy I'm-OK-You're-OK monologues and stale, by-the-numbers character growth. It's also around this time that I realized Garden State has no plot. Despite Braff's often keen visual eye, his script suffers from the usual first-time screenwriter failings: too much dialogue, no dramatic tension, and a desire to educate audiences about the Meaning of Life. I watched Garden State in a packed cinema and rarely have I seen a film so easily win the good will of its audience, only to squander it away so quickly. While almost every one of Braff's jokes scored a hit with the crowd, when it was time for all the characters to start "getting real" with each other, you could sense a communal squirming in the theatre. Most telling was the lack of applause at film's end. Even if people were mumbling "that was cute" to each other as they left, I don't think I was the only one who felt condescended to. The funny thing is, I think Braff (who has a bumbling, Ray Romano-esque charm onscreen) truly believes in his film. There's nothing cynical behind the making of Garden State. But it suffers from Royal Tenenbaums syndrome: although Braff's film is better than Wes Anderson's overrated comedy-drama, like Tenenbaums it presumes that a stylish, kooky veneer will let it get away with the falsely-played pathos it ultimately delivers. However, points added for the casting of Peter Sarsgaard as Braff's stoned Jersey buddy: he's become one of my favorite current actors, someone whose face can project both menace and hopelessness without doing a thing. But points majorly taken away for a mirthless, poorly edited soundtrack of slightly out-of-date yuppie-hipster bands (Frou Frou, Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, etc.), which feels like it's forcing us to feel something.

GERRY (US, Gus Van Sant)
Possibly the most intentionally slow-moving film starring a top Hollywood actor ever made in America, Gerry marks Gus Van Sant's heralded return to offbeat, independent cinema, with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck (Ben's younger, more talented brother) his lone stars: two guys named Gerry who go for a hike in the desert, take a wrong turn, and find themselves hopelessly - truly hopelessly - lost. Using single takes that stretch out nearly ten minutes in length, and leaving entire chunks of his film dialogue-free (that which is spoken is only banal: Affleck goes on about playing "Civilization," Damon recounts an embarrassing "Wheel of Fortune" moment - no soul-searching monologues here, thank God), Van Sant's deliberate pacing will undoubtedly bore 90% of his audience, but the remaining 10% may be, like I was, mesmerized by the experience. The widescreen desert photography is awesome, and the can't-get-any-simpler setup - two guys lost in the desert - allows all the subtle interplays between Damon's increasingly macho Gerry and Affleck's increasingly emotional Gerry to carry great symbolic weight, as the story draws to an oblique and disturbing conclusion that I can't get out of my head. Along the way there are a couple of hilariously dry interchanges between these two losers, and a couple of visual surprises as well. I don't think I ever need to see Gerry again, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile experience, especially on the big screen. Beautiful use of Arvo Pärt's (appropriately) minimalist piano arrangements, too.

GET HIM TO THE GREEK (US, Nicholas Stoller)
Casually entertaining spin-off of the 2008 sleeper comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall which pretty much does forget Sarah Marshall and completely eradicates the memory of its lead character, played by Jason Segal. Instead it takes Russell Brand's amusingly self-absorbed rock star character Aldous Snow and gives him his own story. Quizzically, Jonah Hill, who also starred in Sarah Marshall as a fatuous waiter at a Hawaiian resort, returns here in an entirely different role, as the put-upon record company assistant who is assigned by his ruthless boss (a hilarious Sean Combs) to fly to London, pick up the drug- and alcohol-abusing Aldous, and take him to his "comeback" performance at the Greek Theatre, a Los Angeles amphitheater which I actually went to for the very first time the night before I saw this movie. What follows has been compared to After Hours and The Hangover as a nonstop series of crazy escapades with crazy characters, but I found more comparisons with the Arthur Kopit play Road to Nirvana, in which a would-be Hollywood player is asked to perform increasingly bizarre and horrifying acts of self-mutilation in order to prove his loyalty. Road to Nirvana and Get Him to the Greek are, of course, both satires of what real-life show business underlings endure from their capricious taskmasters on a daily basis. But is it funny? Well, yes, it's often very funny, and Stoller directs with ease. The movie holds up well until its final act, which takes place in L.A., at which point the fun runs out and Stoller aims for a mix of sexual discomfort and personal pathos, which doesn't entirely work, but by then the movie has proven itself as such a breezy time that I didn't care too much. Admittedly, while I did enjoy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and would still call it a vastly superior and more honest film than Get Him to the Greek), I probably would not have gone to see this movie had my wife's boss, Dan Bern, not written several of Aldous Snow's demented songs. So there's your official disclaimer. Anyway, it will be fun to watch this on cable when you're a little drunk.

GET LOW (US, Aaron Schneider)
Robert Duvall plays Felix Bush, a cantankerous hermit in a small town somewhere in the South, sometime during the 1930s. Staring his mortality in the face, Felix goes to the local funeral home (led by a strong Bill Murray, in character actor mode) and asks for what we would now call a "living wake" - that is, Felix wants a funeral, but he wants to be alive and present when it happens. His plans to invite the townspeople to tell stories about him - a daunting task, as Felix is generally despised and feared by the local populace - change, and Felix decides he wants to do the talking. It's clear from the beginning that he has something heavy weighing on his soul... but what is it? Yes, it's another of those movies where the main character has a big dark secret, and spends the next ninety minutes making us wait until he finally says it. I am very tired of this plot device, frankly. It's cheap and distracting and the great revelation at the end rarely justifies the wait. That said, uniformly fine acting and an impressive eye for period detail keep Get Low afloat. Duvall, Murray, and Sissy Spacek are all in top form. I had a few other problems with the film - for instance, a black preacher is strangely accepted by rural whites, not very likely in Depression-era Southern U.S. - but it's a decent little movie that, despite its dark undertones, you can take your granny to.

GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (US, Jim Jarmusch)
Forest Whitaker is Ghost Dog, an African-American hit man obsessed with adhering to the ancient code of the Samurai warrior. As such, he singularly devotes himself to his "master" Louie (John Tormey), your typical Mafia goombah. After 12 successful hits, Ghost Dog finally screws up when a young woman unexpectantly witnesses one. That the young woman is the daughter of the mob boss who ordered that hit complicates matters for Louie, who is told by his mob friends that he has to find Ghost Dog and do away with him. The only explanation? "He killed one of our own."

This simple setup allows writer/director Jarmusch plenty of time to explore the various themes of honor, friendship and loyalty that run through his seriocomic story, as well as his usual wry take on modern Americana, seen through the eyes of "outsiders" (in this case, gangsters, gangstas, and a Haitian immigrant). As in his previous feature Dead Man, Jarmusch specifically targets the cult of violence as a regrettable but permanent aspect of American life. I admire Jarmusch very much as a filmmaker; he's an intellectual, but he's crafty enough to hide his intellectualism behind his trademark deadpan wit and languid, absurdist style. Thus, his films consistently come across as hip and clever, rather than preachy or pretentious. But the film's disturbing scenes of casual racism and violence are hard to shake, and it's pretty clear where Jarmusch's heart lies. The entire cast is first-rate, especially Whitaker, who's got one of the saddest faces I've ever seen. I highly recommend Ghost Dog; it's not too much to say that of all the films out there right now, this is the one to catch. It's a smart, moody, tense, important work.

GHOST WORLD (US, Terry Zwigoff)
After the success of his documentary about comic book artist Robert Crumb, Zwigoff turns again to the world of comics for this, his first fiction film. Here he adapts Daniel Clowes' graphic novel "Ghost World" (Clowes cowrote the script), which follows two directionless teenage girls (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) during the summer after their high school graduation. Really, though, it's about one girl - lonely, angry Enid (Birch) - as she is buffeted around her anonymous California suburb and against her wimpy father (Bob Balaban), her pretentious art teacher (Illeana Douglas), the loser she secretly has a crush on (Brad Renfro), her prettier friend Rebecca (Johansson), who at least seems to have a future, and most especially against Seymour (Steve Buscemi, toning down his usual manic performance), a lonely oddball who collects old records (shades of Robert Crumb) and bonds with Enid over their shared status as outcasts.

Let me just get this out of the way: I'm now in love with Thora Birch. Maybe it's her cute black bob (courtesy of the film's hair stylist Emjay Olson, who I'm proud to say also did the hair for Foreign Correspondents), or her glasses, or her pale moony face, or her refreshingly chubby body - but she soundly rules this film. The rest of the cast is well-chosen (character actress Lorna Scott, who had a bit part in Foreign Correspondents, also appears in Ghost World as a self-righteous art gallery owner), but now I'm dying to read the comic: Clowes has a talent for skewering the world's phonies, and his disgust (as well as his self-awareness of the pettiness of his disgust) is evident in Enid's abundant rants. However, as is often the case, Hollywood actors don't usually bring to their performances the same cynical, lonely histories that the writers invent for their characters, and so Ghost World is sweeter, and less malicious, than it should be. (An early line from their graduation party has Enid staring at an ill-matched teenage couple and muttering, "Hope she doesn't give him AIDS when he date-rapes her." Stingers like this could have permeated the film, but don't.) That said, I count this as one of those not-great movies that I personally love, mainly because of Birch but also because there is enough truth in it, and enough laughs, that I felt a genuine sense of purpose in its making. In short, I wish I had directed it.

THE GIFT (US, Sam Raimi)
Supernatural hogwash about a Southern belle (Cate Blanchett, playing Hollywood's new favorite stereotype, the Gutsy Single Mom) who's gifted with the ability to predict people's futures and see things that happen elsewhere. When she gets the feeling that a local debutante (Katie Holmes, who wins the prize for most gratuitous topless scene of 2000) has been murdered, all kinds of worms pop out of the can. This whodunit thriller is a B-movie to the core, with an A-list cast who must have been eager to play against type. Thus you have Keanu Reeves as a violent redneck (surprise, he's not convincing), Greg Kinnear not acting smarmy, Hilary Swank playing trailer trash, Giovanni Ribisi - well, once again playing the slow-witted loser with a heart of gold - and a bunch of other actors getting off on their ersatz Southern accents. But the script is a dud. It's predictable, unpleasant, much shallower than it thinks it is (it was cowritten by Billy Bob Thornton, who reportedly based Blanchett's character on his mother), and Blanchett's psychic abilities are treated as a mere plot device; there's nothing fresh or intriguing about them. Some cheap scares, but ultimately uninvolving. The only plus is the film's evocative bayou atmosphere (composer Christopher Young's Cajun score is good). Note to Sam Raimi: please have fun when you direct, like you used to with the Evil Dead movies! Just because you're a "serious" filmmaker now doesn't mean you have to act uninspired.

THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE (France, Patrice Leconte)
Gorgeous comedy-drama about an eccentric knife thrower who saves a nymphomaniac from committing suicide and hires her as the new "target" for his act, Girl on the Bridge is the latest effort by my favorite French filmmaker, Patrice Leconte, and it's every bit as unique as his previous efforts (including Monsieur Hire, The Hairdresser's Husband and Ridicule - all highly entertaining and worth watching). Filmed very athletically in widescreen black and white - one of the coolest looks in cinema - this is as much a wacked-out meditation on the meaning of luck as it is a coy love story about two people who are, in some sense if not the obvious one, soul mates. The always-reliable Daniel Auteuil and model-turned-actress Vanessa Paradis are both delightful as the kooky couple, and the soundtrack of jumpy jazz classics and Middle East kickers only adds to the fun. Though already over a year old, it's still one of the best films I've seen in 2000.

GIRL 27 (US, David Stenn)
Excellent, if disturbing, documentary about Patricia Douglas, a 17-year-old movie extra in 1937 who was hired to "entertain" at a rowdy convention of MGM studio salesmen, and wound up being raped by one of them. She defied conventions of the day and actually stood up and carried out a lawsuit against MGM, but in those days, the studios ran Los Angeles politics, and her case was mysteriously dismissed and forgotten. Nearly 70 years later, pushy Vanity Fair writer David Stenn stumbled across Douglas's shocking story and was bewildered at why, among all the potent Hollywood scandals remembered today, this one was erased from public memory. So he set out to find out what happened and properly report it - and even discovered an elderly Douglas, living a secluded life in Las Vegas, in the process. Girl 27 is more or less an account of the Vanity Fair story that Stenn wrote, and if it seems off-putting to some that Stenn, who directed the film, also narrates, frequently appears on camera and even insinuates himself into the story, I found it a refreshingly journalistic approach to documentary filmmaking. Stenn's aware of the theory that you cannot observe something without the act of observation itself changing its behavior, and Girl 27 smartly reflects that. But in the end it's less a chunk of tawdry Hollywood lore and more a saddening portrait of rape's long-term emotional effects. Saddest of all is that, 70 years on, MGM still wouldn't let Stenn use any of their own archival footage. It seems that some never want to own up to the past.

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (UK/Luxembourg, Peter Webber)
Let me just pull out the term "handsome production" right now. This movie is as sumptuous as they come. And it better be, as it's a drama about the great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, so audiences would practically demand that every shot look like one of the master's paintings. That's exactly what you get, thanks to the brilliant work of cinematographer Eduardo Serra, as well as production design by Ben van Os. Despite the story's enormous artistic license, the film itself is awash in incredible authenticity - it's even shot partially in Vermeer's hometown of Delft, Holland. This authenticity also applies to the depiction of daily Dutch life in the 1660's, and to Dutch morals of the time: the key to appreciating the film is the audience's acceptance of such social mores, where seeing a maid without her bonnet is akin to seeing her naked, and where a flattering portrait of somebody other than the artist's or the patron's wife is cause for scandal. If you can buy this, you might just love Girl With a Pearl Earring, a fanciful suggestion of the story behind one of Vermeer's most beautiful and enigmatic paintings. Moreover, it is that rare film about an artist that celebrates the art first and foremost. (Reason behind this may be the lack of gossip on Vermeer: by all accounts, he led an unremarkable life.) As Griet, the maid who becomes the painter's muse, Scarlett Johansson not only looks the part of a 17th-century Dutch girl but, even while rarely speaking, and wandering through her master's dimly-lit house with notably slack jaw, radiates a beauty that could conceivably inspire a great artist to create his best work. (Colin Firth is quietly intense as the brooding, though not ill-mannered, Vermeer.) What's so wonderful about the story is that it focuses less on Vermeer's fascination with Griet and more on Griet's budding awareness of art. There's a little strained flirtation, but that's just to add spice. What audiences walk away with is Griet's joy in learning how colors are made, why underpainting is important, and the play of light and shadow to create beauty. In its sneaky way, this film is basically Art Appreciation 101. Though no classic, Girl With a Pearl Earring is definitely enjoyable, and a film that must be seen in the theatres to fully enjoy rich colors, subtle lighting and minute detail that can't possibly be replicated on a TV screen.

GLADIATOR (US, Ridley Scott)
Earnest silliness starring Russell Crowe as the rather obviously-named Maximus ("the great"), a fictional Spanish general in the ancient Roman Empire who, after leading Marcus Aurelius' army into victory, is chosen by Marcus to be his successor as Emperor of Rome. This doesn't sit well with Marcus' ambitious son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who smothers his father and, as his first act as the new Emperor, orders Maximus executed. He also has Maximus' wife and son killed, for no particular reason other than to be evil, and to give Maximus a reason to seek revenge, which he does - that is, after he escapes his execution, becomes a slave, and proves his mettle in the battle arena as - you guessed it - a gladiator!

Hey. It's Hollywood. You get what you expect. Great action! Ancient Rome re-created before your very eyes! Star power! Corny dialogue! And a surprising number of slow, talky scenes! It must be a cardinal rule of cinema that everybody in ancient times (except for Charlton Heston and Jesus Christ) must speak classic English with educated British accents. (I admit, it would be strange to hear Joaquin Phoenix deliver his lines in his usual American burnout tone.) The acting is uniformly fantastic; not a single performer is wasted. Everybody gets their Impressive Dramatic Scene. I'm being cheeky, but they all do very well with their material (especially British acting warhorses Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi, and the late Oliver Reed in his final role), which is crucial, since the story is rather predictable and hokey. A lesser cast would have ruined it. I recommend Gladiator as pure spectacle. But one viewing tip: there is a kid in the film who looks and sounds a lot like Haley Joel Osment. Don't waste your time like I did wondering if it really is him. It's not.

GLOOMY SUNDAY (Germany, Rolf Schübel)
A 1999 film that took 4 years to get theatrical release in the U.S., Gloomy Sunday takes an intriguing premise - an examination of the infamous real-life tune that was so sad that numerous people throughout the world spun it on their record player as they took their own lives - and fictionalizes it to the point of tedium. The actual song was composed in 1933 by a Budapest citizen named Rezso Seress. The film's story begins in 1930's Budapest, but that's about the only connection to real life it has. Here the composer is a lonely restaurant pianist named Andras, who writes the song for the beautiful Ilona, the woman who runs the restaurant together with her Jewish lover Laszlo. Did somebody say "Jewish"? Yep, the moment you finally hear that word, halfway into the film, you know it's just a matter of minutes before the story swerves from a complicated love triangle between our three heroes to yet another tragic Holocaust drama. Cue the return of the lonely German who longs for Ilona and nearly drowned himself for her, only now he's in a crisp black SS uniform. There's a creative spin on making this Nazi not a violent Aryan aggressor but a crafty opportunist who "saves" hundreds of Jews in exchange for their lives' savings. Nevertheless, you've seen it all before in many other WWII films.

The real Rezso Seress has enough tragedy in his own life: the woman he wrote "Gloomy Sunday" for killed herself soon after hearing it; his song was banned in England and several other countries after reports of multiple suicides resulting from its play; and Seress himself ended it all in 1968. It's a shame that his own story was ignored and replaced by this rather predictable and shallow melodrama. But it's well-made, considering its low budget, and respectably acted by a mostly Hungarian cast. I should also mention that "Gloomy Sunday" itself, as depressing as it is, remains one of the most beautiful ballads of the 20th century, and its sadness infuses the film with deep feeling, much more than it deserves.

GOD GREW TIRED OF US (US, Christopher Dillon Quinn & Tommy Walker)
Poignant if not exactly profound documentary follows three of the former "Lost Boys of Sudan" - those thousands of young refugees who fled their war-torn country in the 80's only to wind up in a Kenyan camp, waiting for some kind of future. The subjects of the film, now grown men by the names of John Bul Dau, Daniel Pach and Panther Bior, were amongst the hundreds allowed to enter the United States legally as political refugees. Daniel and Panther wind up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the gigantic John Bul Dau is sent to Syracuse, New York. We see these intelligent, hard-working and highly introspective men adjust to the shock of living in their new country as they reflect on their lives and try to better themselves and their fellow refugees back "home," with John Bul in particular trying to raise awareness of the plight of the Sudanese. This film, in fact, primarily exists to raise this awareness, and much like last year's Born Into Brothels, it feels more like a Public Service Announcement than it does a feature film. Documentary filmmaking always walks a fine line between telling a story and providing a social service. The best ones feel like dramas. God Grew Tired of Us, in contrast, never transcends its National Geographic-like trappings (and indeed, it's a National Geographic production). It is unusual that this film should receive a theatrical release instead of merely being broadcast on PBS. My guess is that its being a double winner at Sundance 2006 helped. It's still a thoughtful, enjoyable movie, with three engaging subjects, and it's for a good cause. It's just not something you need to see in a theatre.

GONE BABY GONE (US, Ben Affleck)
This film may be getting a better reaction than it deserves - even from me - because, let's face it, with Ben Affleck making his directorial debut, the automatic reaction is that it's going to stink. And because it doesn't stink, not at all, in fact, having one's expecations surpassed might make Gone Baby Gone a great movie in some eyes. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone stars Affleck's more talented brother Casey as baby-faced private eye Patrick Kenzie, whose job is to find missing persons with his girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Liv Tyler lookalike Michelle Monaghan) around the slummy neighborhood of Dorchester, outside of Boston. A high-profile case involving a missing child ropes Patrick and Angie into the hunt for the girl and her abductor, and of course the story takes its twists and turns from there, as any good film noir should. Playing like a strong early episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, only with more cussing and a rough Boston milieu, Gone Baby Gone satisfies, especially when it takes its story a little further past the point of mere revelation and into the realm of murky moral choices and the aftermath of same. Ben Affleck captures the gritty - even filthy - side of his native Boston quite well (much better, in fact, than New Yorker Martin Scorsese did with The Departed, in my opinion - and the faces and accents are more authentic too), brother Casey is fine, and while well-known costars Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris do well, the real scene-stealer is Amy Ryan as the abducted girl's white trash drug addict mom. She's a revelation. All in all, a fine movie, and among the many films being released nowadays that call themselves throwbacks to the 70's era of American filmmaking, this is one that actually can truthfully make the claim. If Ben Affleck stays behind the camera and continues to make movies this good, then that will be better for all of us.

GOOD BYE LENIN! (Germany, Wolfgang Becker)
Weeks before the Wall comes down in 1989, a diehard socialist in East Berlin (Katrin Sass) has a heart attack, lapsing into a coma and missing the action. When she awakens eight months later, East Germany is no more, and her 20-year-old son (Daniel Brühl) takes it upon himself to keep his mother from dying of shock upon seeing these sudden changes to their country, and so concocts an elaborate hoax to make the poor woman believe Communist East Germany is alive and well. The idea behind this movie seems tiresome, like one long drawn-out "Three's Company" joke, and indeed it's been marketed in the US as such. But actually Good Bye Lenin! is a bittersweet fable about a family - and a nation - coping with massive, rapid change. For us Yankees who saw the fall of the Iron Curtain as simply and inarguably a good thing, it's a reminder that it was, in fact, the end of the world as millions of people knew it, and that for many it was not an easy or welcome new chapter in their lives. Little wonder, then, that as Good Bye Lenin! progresses and the son's charade becomes more and more complicated, it's apparent that it's not so much for his mother's benefit that he keeps the ideal of East Germany alive, but for his own. This film was a big hit in Europe, where people still remember their history, and deserves to be seen by Americans as an accurate, if comic, look at one of the biggest events of the last fifty years, and the repercussions - good and ill - it had on a country still plagued by its own past. This review is too serious; Good Bye Lenin! is also a lively, colorful crowd-pleaser, full of rich characters, attractive actors and unexpected plot twists. In short, see it.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (US, George Clooney)
Low-key drama about crusading television journalist Edward R. Murrow, who, in 1954, decided (with the producer and staff of his proto-"60 Minutes" news program "See It Now") to confront bullying Communist witch-hunting senator Joseph McCarthy. It's interesting that this film was released at the same time as Bennett Miller's Capote. Though on the surface the two stories have nothing in common, in tone the films are very similar: Both are flawless in capturing period detail. Both are biopics about notable mid-century figures whose legacies are somewhat neglected today. Both isolate their biographies on key moments in their subjects' professional lives. Both are absent histrionics or overdramatization in deference to authenticity. Both are humble, slow-moving pictures. Both are good. Stylistically, Good Night, and Good Luck one-ups Capote in director/cowriter/costar George Clooney's decision to shoot his film in black and white, entirely on soundstages. His claustrophobic staging makes Good Night feel almost like a 1950's TV drama, something that "Playhouse 90" might have produced, if it had sleeker production values. (In fact, while the camerawork is fluid, this story could be easily adapted to live theatre.) The only downside to this is that the film's small scale emphasizes the somewhat minor chapter of history that it relates. This isn't a stand-up-and-cheer populist drama but rather a sober re-enactment of a tense period experienced by a small group of people during the early days of TV. However, Murrow - eerily embodied by the great underrated actor David Straithairn - comes off as nothing less than an American hero. Presumably all of Murrow's on-air speeches are Murrow's original material. These are gripping speeches, powerful and spine-tingling, and Straithairn delivers them with a distinguished intensity. Go see this movie just to hear his words. As for Clooney's direction, I was impressed. After his debut feature Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, I was surprised by his mature visual sense but remained skeptical, as there are more Hollywood movie stars who direct one film - then give up - than you can shake a stick at. It's good to see that Clooney is dedicated to working behind the camera, as he shows genuine talent as a director. Good Night serves as a sort of counterpoint to Confessions. Both films dig into the behind-the-scenes world of television, with the protagonist of Confessions, Chuck Barris, representing TV at its worst (developing "The Dating Game" and "The Gong Show," among others), and Good Night's Murrow its best. The history of television seems to fascinate Clooney, and these two features serve his fascination well.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD (US, Robert De Niro)
A lot of critics have been writing off The Good Shepherd, an epic tale of the early years of the CIA, as boring and overlong. Personally, I found it surprisingly engaging - though it does lack the suspense you'd expect from such provocative material. The tone of The Good Shepherd is in fact an overwhelmingly sad one, as it follows the rise of an emotionless spy (well played by an ice-cold Matt Damon) from his college-age induction into the Skull & Bones, the infamous secret society at Yale that also counts several Bush family members as alumni, to his work in counterintelligence in Europe during and after World War II, to his involvement in the disastrous CIA-engineered invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs in 1961. (Damon's character, Edward Wilson, is fictional, but rumor has it that he is based on former CIA chief James Jesus Angleton.) It's unusual that an actor's actor like De Niro (who plays a small part in the star-studded ensemble) should make a film so short on monologues, drama and "actorly" exchanges. The Good Shepherd has a lot of information to pack into its two and a half hours, and it moves along from scene to scene and location to location with a steely efficiency deserving of its main character. Yet I'm not going to cite it as being too long, or packing in too many characters, or any of the usual gripes. However, I do find fault with Eric Roth's script. For what could have been a great movie for conspiracy theorists gets continually bogged down by a drab subplot involving Edward Wilson's strained relationship with his son, Edward Jr. (played by the unappealing Eddie Redmayne). It's an unfortunate decision, trying to turn a political movie into a Godfather-like family saga, where of course the senior Wilson is inevitably put into a situation where he must choose between serving his country and doing right by his family. This subplot is also uncomfortably - and unbelievably - woven into the real-life Bay of Pigs invasion that is the film's central reference point. I wish contemporary filmmakers could stop caving in to current "high art" standards that every Important Film has to be about Family. This is one film that shouldn't have been. De Niro should have learned from GoodFellas that, when you're making a mob movie (and in The Good Shepherd, the CIA is inarguably portrayed as a mob), it's the mob itself that becomes the family, with the flesh-and-blood relations relegated to the background.

THE GOOD THIEF (Ireland/France/UK, Neil Jordan)
Neil Jordan is a talented filmmaker with plenty of critical hits (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy) and misses (Interview With the Vampire, High Spirits, In Dreams) to his name. And star Nick Nolte, well, you either like him or you don't. And I usually don't. So walking into my local theatre to see The Good Thief, I had mixed expectations. But what can I say? The trailer piqued my interest. As did newcomer Nutsa Kukhianidze, an appealing young Georgian actress who ranks right up there with Jordan's other notable discoveries, Cathy Tyson and Jaye Davidson. Let's hope Nutsa has a better career than either of those two (remembering that Jordan also established Kirsten Dunst). It's not entirely flippant to go on about the cast when reviewing a Neil Jordan film; part of the director's charms are his unusual casting choices, and The Good Thief is a treasure trove of interesting faces, from French-Moroccan actor Said Taghmaoui (so good in Three Kings as Mark Wahlberg's Iraqi tormentor) to Serbian director Emir Kusturica to an uncredited Ralph Fiennes to identical twins Mark and Michael Polish, themselves fine filmmakers (who directed Nolte in their 2003 feature Northfork). But I suppose I should say a little about the plot, too: Nolte plays Bob, a strung-out former thief who has lapsed into a gloomy semi-retirement as a gambler and junkie on the French Riviera. When the sexy but lost young hooker Anne (Kukhianidze) falls into his lap, he finds himself becoming less of a dirty old man and more of a father figure. But no sooner does he decide to clean up his act than the ultimate "last big job" is offered him: several priceless works of art held in a private vault across from a casino that hangs duplicates of the paintings on their own walls. And thus begins a complicated but engaging series of twists, turns and double-crosses, with all the great elements of a proper heist film: colorful gang of thieves, frustrated cops and constant will-they-or-won't-they-get-away-with-it suspense. But Jordan fashions something more of a character portrait than a standard crime caper; after a while you realize that Bob couldn't really care less whether his own plan to steal all that art comes to pass or not. Which really throws any plot second-guessing out the window.

The Good Thief is a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur, and Jordan cheekily acknowledges that in his film rife with duplicates, forgeries and copycats, he himself has concocted something of the same. Which makes it no less entertaining, and besides, who ever saw Bob le Flambeur? The only thing about the film I didn't much care for were Jordan's stylistic fluorishes, freeze-framing several shots and step-processing others. They don't work against the story, but they seem like Wong Kar-Wai ripoffs. Oh well, as they say in the film, the greatest thief that ever lived was Pablo Picasso. So why should we mind one good artist stealing from another?

A GOOD YEAR (UK/US, Ridley Scott)
...but not a good movie. In fact, I admit that this isn't the sort of picture I'd actually pay to see, but I was out of town, my wife was working, and I had nothing else to do with my evening, so I trotted down to the local theater (in Ashland, Oregon), paid my seven bucks (which is cheaper than a matinee in Los Angeles), sat down and watched this inoffensive junk. The story: unrepentantly jerky financial trader Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) suddenly learns that his beloved uncle died and left him a gorgeous winery in the south of France. He decides to sell it off to make millions, but when he goes down there to clean the place out... well, a six-year-old could guess where this story is going. But just in case you need more help in predicting whether Max will find his soul again, a beautiful local woman is thrown into the mix as well. Ho hum. So who's to blame for this unwitty, uncharming film that tries so desperately to be witty and charming? I'll point the finger at Ridley Scott, who also produced. As the scoop goes, he actually came up with the story to this film, then hired author Peter Mayle to turn it into a novel, from which the film was then adapted. (Sounds backwards? Kevin Costner pulled a similar trick with Michael Blake and Dances With Wolves.) The result is glib, sexist male fantasy that could only be cooked up by somebody old, wealthy and powerful. Somebody like Ridley Scott. Who else would expect audiences to sympathize with an ultra-rich jerk who inherits an enormous and absolutely beautiful French chateau? Gee, poor fellow, I really hope things work out for him! Give me a break. Besides its elitist tone, the film suffers from Scott's own lack of humor. This is the first time the director's tried his hand at romantic comedy and - surprise - he shows no flair for either romance or comedy. (He similarly dropped the ball with his 2003 dud Matchstick Men.) I'm all for directors trying something a little different, but it's back to Alien and Gladiator territory for you, Mr. Scott. Russell Crowe has shown before that he can handle lighter material, and it's nice to see him doing something non-bombastic for a change, but his character is still insufferable and he does little to genuinely humanize him. I will say that the cinematography is pretty - though how can it not be, when filmed during a summer in Provence? The pop soundtrack, in contrast, is wretchedly chosen. All in all, this movie's lame. Harmless, but also worthless.

GOSFORD PARK (US/UK, Robert Altman)
Robert Altman is definitely one of those hit-or-miss directors, his stinkers far outnumbering his classics. (Note how everybody still lauds him as "the director of Nashville and The Player" while glossing over lesser recent efforts like Dr. T and the Women and The Gingerbread Man.) But he scores a direct hit with Gosford Park, a wry take on Agatha Christie mysteries as well as the old TV series Upstairs, Downstairs. Set during a hunting party at a posh English estate in 1932, mere moments before World War II brought the butler-and-maid world of wealthy English life to a necessary end, Gosford Park jumps back and forth between the snooty aristocrats taking tea and brandy upstairs and the down-to-earth, gossipy servants down below. Halfway through the film, someone is murdered (I'm not spoiling anything; the movie's very poster says as much), and in comes Stephen Fry as a Clouseau-like (only without the slapstick) police inspector to find out whodunnit. Though I figured it out early on, I hope that means the film is not really about the mystery behind the murder, but about the people along the sidelines. Not only does it expertly dissect the distinctions between the ruling class and the serving class, but it brings to light all the sub-classifications within both worlds. And Altman, always hailed as an "actor's director," is given a dream cast of England's brightest screen talents, including Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Richard E. Grant, Clive Owen (who could single-handedly make James Bond hip again) and my beloved Emily Watson. Hard to go wrong there, and fortunately there is actor Julian Fellowes' witty, knowing script ("based on an idea" by Altman and costar Bob Balaban, whatever that means) to bring it all together. This is a smart film that gets even smarter the more I think about it. As a portrait of a world not knowing it's on the brink of crumbling, as a class comedy, as a study of loss and revenge, Gosford Park gets it all right. Even Ryan Phillippe is good in it! I could go on and on, but it would be more fun to discuss it with somebody who's actually seen it, rather than ramble on now. But go see it, at least for Maggie Smith's hilarious performance as a bitchy old dowager.

GOZU (Japan, Takashi Miike)
Another ridiculously weird comic/gross-out movie from the fevered mind of Japan's most prolific (and most notorious) filmmaker, Takashi Miike. One of his five(!) credited films from 2003, this is probably the only one which will see a release in the US. Whether this is because it's the strangest or the least strange, I don't know, and won't unless I somehow manage to see the others. (Miike makes films faster than anybody can watch them.) The plot here, if you can call it that, involves Minami (Hideki Sone), a virginal Yakuza goon ordered to "whack" his insane higher-up Ozaki (played by Sho Aikawa, a veteran actor who's gamely deadpanned his way through so many bizarre roles in Miike's movies that he's become Japan's answer to Leslie Nielsen). He does so, but when Ozaki's corpse mysteriously disappears from Minami's car during a restaurant stop, Minami embarks on a quest for his "Brother" that becomes an increasingly surreal psychosexual odyssey, involving a man with a half-white face, a crazy pair of siblings running an empty hotel, and some things I can't even mention on a family web site. Though slower moving and far less "horrifying" than the ads for the movie would have you believe, Gozu still has a freak-out ending that is a definite crowd-pleaser. The audience couldn't help but laugh at the insanity of it all. The film owes a little too much to the ideas (if not exactly the delivery) of David Lynch for me to fully laud its inventiveness, but as usual, once the easy shocks were over, I discovered some method to Miike's madness on the drive home. There's a lot of subtle sexual and maternal symbolism at play, but don't let that stop you from gasping at the scene that explains the movie's title Gozu, which means "cow head" in Japanese.

GREENBERG (US, Noah Baumbach)
Ben Stiller stars as Roger Greenberg, a lonely fortysomething from New York who has just flown out to Los Angeles to housesit for his rich brother, off with his family on a working vacation in Vietnam. Roger arrives with some serious baggage: back home he suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an institution for a while. That doesn't seem to matter much to Florence (mumblecore "It" girl Greta Gerwig), the family's personal assistant, who takes an inexplicable shine to the troubled Roger, and so a tenuous relationship ensues, doomed only by Roger's awful behavior. Noah Baumbach seems to have found his niche in delivering chilly dramas about dysfunctional and profoundly unlikable characters (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) and Greenberg is more of the same. The performances are fine - anyone expecting a typical or even a funny Ben Stiller comedy will not get what they came for, but as I've avoided most of those comedies and still remember the actor from his straight roles in Reality Bites and Zero Effect, I have no problem accepting him in a dramatic role - and Baumbach does a good job at capturing the Los Angeles of 2009. Gerwig's character is the latest so-called "manic pixie dream girl," in the mold of Natalie Portman in Garden State, that quirky, cute, available young woman who falls for the protagonist no matter how big of a loser he is. And there is no question that Stiller's Greenberg is one big loser. But Baumbach wrote the story with his wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (who also co-produced and co-stars in the film), and she knows something about strong female characters, so some time is spent revealing the sad, empty life behind the fun hipster chick. Florence has a drab apartment, a weak personality, and a gloomy secret of her own. If she finds something to love about a man fifteen years her elder who has little to offer, it's not that hard to swallow, as she's not much of a catch herself. As for Stiller, it's not hard to imagine that this angry, neurotic, self-absorbed character may be closer to the real Ben Stiller than most of his other roles. I should also mention terrific supporting work from Rhys Ifans, playing Roger Greenberg's old friend and former bandmate. There are lots of nice character details in Greenberg, but I can't say that it's an enjoyable or even a satisfying film. As a man around Greenberg's age, dealing with the same issues of arrested development when everybody else my age seems to be getting rich, buying houses, and having children, I should identify with him at least to a degree. But I've never been able to connect with Baumbach's caustic characters in any of his movies. Maybe that just makes me sane, or maybe Baumbach's characters are not as true to life as he thinks they are.

GREEN LANTERN (US, Martin Campbell)
Considering the countless superheroes that Marvel Comics has taken to the big screen, it must have been kind of embarrassing to be Marvel's longtime rival DC, who up till now has only managed to make movies out of Batman and Superman - again and again and again. But now we finally see the cinematic debut of Superfriends cohort Green Lantern. I never read the comics, but his story is kind of cool: irresponsible test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds, well cast) is chosen by a mystical alien ring to join the Green Lantern Corps, a giant police force that protects the entire universe. With his ring, Green Lantern can fly and create anything he wants out of green energy. It's a little bit Star Wars, a little bit Matrix, even a little bit Lord of the Rings. Perfect for a movie adaptation, right? Well, yes, but Green Lantern never quite had the cult following that other superheroes enjoy. And the jury's still out on whether Reynolds is a bona fide movie star or just the dude of the moment. So it's no surprise that Green Lantern didn't come out of the gate breaking box office records. Still, I don't think it's a bad film. People are funny: Marvel's Thor got mostly enthusiastic reviews across the board, while Green Lantern has received an equal amount of snubs, yet neither film is any better or worse than the other. Reynolds has appeal, the infallible Peter Sarsgaard is having a swell time as creepy arch enemy Hector Hammond (who is infected with some yellow energy, the stuff of evil), and I actually kind of like the old-fashioned values of the story, where the green energy that powers the Corps is made of the "will" of every living being in the universe, while the yellow energy that fuels the movie's menacing uber villain Parallax feeds on fear. Will vs. Fear: you can't get any cornier than that in today's comic book climate, where every hero has to have some damn dark side. Hal Jordan's darkest secret is that he can't live up to his late father's legacy (in fact most of the film's human characters have daddy issues of some sort). That's it! But I bought it. Now, I'm not saying that Green Lantern is great cinema. It is thoroughly mediocre, with middling action sequences (surprising, as Martin Campbell helmed the well-regarded Casino Royale) and an altogether too small cast that doesn't quite give off the sense that GL is part of something so, you know, universal. But the movie is sweet, funny, and a welcome DC palate cleanser amidst the endless series of Marvel movies being thrust into our faces lately.

THE GREEN MILE (US, Frank Darabont)
Faithful, intelligent adaptation of the Stephen King story, with Tom Hanks as a guard on death row in a Southern prison during the 1930s and Michael Clarke Duncan as a new inmate who seems to possess healing powers. Adept combination of typical King elements: light humor, dark deeds, cute secondary stories (in this case, a mouse named Mr. Jingles), likeable, ordinary Joes caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and, of course, scenes of ghastly horror - you get to witness no less than three electric chair executions. (The film does make a good argument against the death penalty.)

As expected, fine performances throughout. A little schmaltzy at times, but that tenderness is necessary to the rhythm of the film and is certainly balanced out by the large amount of brutality. A long film that mostly breezes by.

GRINDHOUSE (US, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino)
That Grindhouse fizzled at the box office may have something to do with the reality that most moviegoers probably don't have the same love for the exploitation films of the '70s and early '80s that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez do. Still, while I am no big fan of either director, I got a visceral kick out of Grindhouse, their "double feature" tribute - complete with intentionally missing reels, scratchy prints and awkward reel changes. Rodriguez's film, Planet Terror, kicks off the show, and it's 90 minutes of blarney about some secret military gas that turns people into flesh-eating zombies, and the usual ragtag group of misfits who must do battle against the invading hordes. It feels very much like some 1982 Cannon Pictures film, with stock characters, stupid dialogue and cheesy music (composed by Rodriguez himself), updated to 2007 with cell phones and lots of CGI (mostly involving actress Rose McGowan's leg being replaced by a massive machine gun). It feels so authentic, in fact, that, while the shootout scenes are good fun and there are plenty of over-the-top gross-out moments, there's nothing really special about it. Like Rodriguez's other films, it's an exhibit of style over substance, basically forgotten once it's over.

Tarantino's film Death Proof follows a trio of hilariously sleazy trailers for nonexistent B-movies directed by their friends Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright (whose trailer delivers the biggest laugh of the whole event), and not two minutes into it, you realize you're not really watching a note-for-note pastiche of old trashy movies like Rodriguez's piece. You're watching a Quentin Tarantino movie. All of his hallmarks are there: long scenes where hip characters chatter on and on about pop culture; sudden brutal outbursts of cruel violence; a great soundtrack; and a Quentin Tarantino appearance. (He has a small role in Planet Terror, too, which as usual only distracts and disappoints.) Death Proof, starring Kurt Russell as a psycho killer who uses his car, instead of a butcher knife, to murder pretty young ladies, has its share of boring moments, but the payoff - involving a car chase that seems to go on for a good half-hour - is tremendous. It's the best car chase since Terminator 2, and is even cooler than watching Rose McGowan gun down zombies with her leg. But as Tarantino mostly ignores the beat-up look of old grindhouse movies that Rodriguez revels in, I for one started to wonder if Tarantino even cared whether his film felt like an authentic '70s exploitation flick, or if he was just making another one of his movies.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun during the three-hour marathon known as Grindhouse, and it is certainly an interesting experiment (and I have to hand it to Tarantino for his efforts to keep making unusually structured and marketed motion pictures), but it's a custom-made valentine to trash film aficionados that will likely put off everybody else. Me, I have fond memories of cheesy old movies, from Blood Feast to The Stuff, so I could get into it. But for all its sleazy glory, I did notice that Grindhouse is strangely coy about sexuality: in both films, the sex scenes disappear with "reel missing" notices. Does that say more about Tarantino and Rodriguez's own little-boy squeamishness about onscreen sex, or more about today's culture, where you can show people's bodies torn into chunks but you can't show a pair of bare breasts? Either way, those grindhouse days truly are behind us.

GRIZZLY MAN (US, Werner Herzog)
Timothy Treadwell was an amateur filmmaker and animal lover who, for thirteen summers, would go up to the Alaskan wilderness in order to film the local grizzlies and bond with them. In 2003, he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by one of their subjects. Veteran director Werner Herzog somehow was allowed access to Treadwell's 100-odd hours of video from his travels, and he uses them to create the standard wildlife documentary's evil twin. In a way, the film is co-directed by Treadwell; aside from a few talking head interviews Herzog conducts with those who knew the late bear enthusiast, Grizzly Man consists mostly of the man's own footage. Much of that footage is remarkable: close-up shots of grizzlies in action that not even the bravest documentarian could capture, as well as increasingly revealing into-the-camera confessionals by the seemingly lighthearted Treadwell himself. But it is in the editing where the film is truly Herzog's. Always the clever storyteller, he jumps back and forth throughout the five years of footage to create a psychological narrative of Treadwell's "meltdown," rather than stitch together the footage chronologically. Thus, while Herzog's rather portentous narration ("Thee landscape iz a metaphor for Treadvell'z tortured soul") seems an ill fit for the high-voiced, Peter Pan-like naturalist at first, as Grizzly Man unfurled I could see the real man that Herzog was talking about: an angry, lonely failed actor whose treks into the wilderness were really an escape from humanity, and whose hubris - he had convinced himself that it was his duty to "protect" a group of bears that rangers insist were in no danger - was his ultimate downfall. In this respect, Treadwell is very much the classic Herzog protagonist (such as the main characters in Herzog's best-known films Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo). His failure at becoming as one with all-conquering nature is what fascinates Herzog the most, and it reminded me very much of Jon Krakauer's non-fiction book Into the Wild, about Treadwell's soul brother Christopher McCandless, a misguided explorer whose bid to live off the land in Alaska ended with him starving to death in the cold. What's interesting is that in both Krakauer's book and Herzog's film, the doomed adventurers come across as arrogant fools who deserved their fate, and yet both authors insist on having a sort of respect for their subjects. That's the only thing that comes off as phony in Grizzly Man - Herzog's own brutal view of wildlife clearly clashes so much with Treadwell's romanticized one that you wonder how Herzog can even pretend to like him. But there may be something of a joke in it, too. One senses especially with the stiff and seemingly rehearsed interviews with the too-weird-to-be-real characters from Treadwell's life and death that the joke may be on us: I had to do research when I got home to prove that Timothy Treadwell was a real person who was actually killed by a bear, and not just an actor portraying a character invented by Werner Herzog. That said, Grizzly Man is easily one of the most interesting films of 2005, and is well worth seeing.

GROOVE (US, Greg Harrison)
Another "second-run movie at the cheap theatre" special, this ingratiating comedy-drama tracks several characters as they dance, talk, love and, well, "groove" the night away at a warehouse rave. Serving mostly as a rave primer for the uninitiated, Groove often cuts back to the audience's surrogate character, a dorky newbie (Hamish Linklater) who is discovering everything for the first time: ecstasy, techno music, and of course cliched romance. Blecch. Far more interesting, and riskier, is a sub-plot involving his freewheeling brother. Not much else to this movie except for tons of techno, an awkward cameo by famed DJ John Digweed (who, it seems, agreed to do the movie only if he could plug his new album, which he does) and plenty of young, smiling, blissed-out people digging each other - the sort of people whose teeth I would like to kick in. I must admit that I hate the rave crowd. I find them a bunch of spoiled children, self-satisfied and exclusionary. And that's how I found Groove.

It's interesting to compare Groove to Rave, a film which I reviewed earlier (and which far fewer people have seen), as the comparisons mirror those between San Francisco (where Groove was made) and Los Angeles (where Rave was made). Rave was cliched too, but was still very L.A.: pan-ethnic, prone to violence, and filled with a sense of good times gone bad. Groove is mostly Anglo, hippyish and tech-friendly, the essence of San Francisco. It says it all that when one of Rave's characters overdoses on drugs, she is carried out on a stretcher through an angry mob. When a Groove character does the same, he chills out in a quiet room with his girlfriend feeding him bananas and nursing him back to health. Groove is just as phony as anything coming out of the major studios, which must be why it made it into Sundance and got theatrical distribution, and the decidedly more downbeat Rave did not.