I AM DINA (Norway/Denmark, Ole Bornedal)
I caught this movie, as yet unreleased in the U.S., at a local Scandinavian Film Festival, trying to get back to my roots and looking forward to hearing some Norwegian for a couple of hours. To my surprise, it's entirely in English. Presumably this is due to some marketing person's findings that it is easier to sell a movie to foreign markets if it's in English than if it's in Norwegian; small wonder that the filmmakers would care, as this is the most expensive Scandinavian production ever, with a budget of a whopping $20 million dollars (that's right, the same money that Adam Sandler commands per picture). Desperate to make its money back, I Am Dina positively screams "Art House," perhaps too loudly. You've got your nudity, your crisp period detail, your sweeping landscapes, your pseudo-feminist politics, even your Gerard Depardieu. But I put this film in that box labeled "Contemporary Eurotrash Cinema" - not the exploitational cheese of yore, but the slick, overproduced and empty-headed bombastic multinational garbage of today like Brotherhood of the Wolf or The Fifth Element. The plot, if you're interested, follows our eponymous 19th century heroine (decently embodied by Maria Bonnevie) throughout her melodramatic life, from childhood (where she accidentally kills her mother in a horrifying lye accident!) through her troubled adulthood, and the mostly worthless men in her life (including Depardieu, who shows off his bare bottom, and Christopher Eccleston, putting on a phony Russian accent). During all this she has copious amounts of sex, plays the cello a lot, goes crazy intermittently and outsmarts the fellas from time to time. The biggest irony is, I Am Dina will probably never see the light of American theatres due to its being in English. If it were in another language, it could at least have appealed to the subtitle crowd. Not that it would be that interesting in any tongue. Nice cinematography though.

THE ICE HARVEST (US, Harold Ramis)
On a frozen Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas, two amateur crooks - Charlie (John Cusack), a lawyer with mob connections, and Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), the owner of a strip club - conspire to sneak off with two million in mob cash and get out of town as quickly as they can. Innumerable obstacles, of course, make such an easy escape impossible. The mob boss - Charlie's client - is somehow onto the heist, dum-dums keep getting in the way (including Oliver Platt, in a role even larger than Thornton's, as Charlie's drunken buddy), and of course a sexy, sinister woman (Connie Nielsen) is involved. While at first The Ice Harvest seems like a black comedy disguised as a film noir, in reality it's a film noir disguised as a black comedy. The laughs are black and bitter, a sense of doom is there from the get-go, and while there are no cramped apartments or dark alleys, an icebound Wichita is claustrophobic enough. This is a good B movie, and I mean that in the best sense, but comparisons with similar smalltown wintertime crime capers Fargo and A Simple Plan are unavoidable, with this film falling far short of the practically perfect Fargo in terms of character, place, and storytelling, and Thornton's work not nearly as interesting as his performance in A Simple Plan (which I feel is the best of his career). But The Ice Harvest still has a lot going for it. The acting and direction are as lean as the storyline, the dialogue is toxic and crisp, and there are some very mature reflections about the meaninglessness of things. So while the usual double-crosses lack any satisfying surprise, their very banality seems to fits in with the message. I only wish that the film could have been a bit longer. It's admirable to kick off a heist movie after the heist, but clocking in at under 90 minutes, Ramis & company could have afforded a good 10-15 minutes of back story, to tell us a little more about who these characters are, why stealing the money is important to them (neither Charlie nor Vic seem particularly desperate for cash), and why we should care. There are hints scattered sparsely throughout the script that these two men are doing it just because they need some excitement in their pointless Wichita lives, but because I never really got a sense of this desperate ennui, I felt like I was missing out on something. Still a nice dark film, worth a look.

I HEART HUCKABEES (US, David O. Russell)
The fall of 2004 is notable for bringing the American public the fourth releases from three quirky writer-directors who all arrived on the independent scene at the same time: Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and now The Life Aquatic), Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and now Sideways), and David O. Russell, who last made the incredible war drama Three Kings and now, with I Heart Huckabees, returns to the indie comedy of his first features Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster. I give you this complicated lead-in because I'm not that interested in talking about the film itself.

In short, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin play a husband-and-wife team of "existential detectives," who help those in need come to terms with the meaning of life. Enter Albert (Jason Schwartzman), a frazzled young anti-suburban sprawl activist who wants to know why he's run into the same anonymous African man on three different occasions. The detectives proceed to monitor Albert's life, focusing on his combative relationship with his onetime friend Brad (the currently ubiquitous Jude Law), a hotshot PR man for an outfit called Huckabees, a Target-like chain of retail stores. Thereafter a lot - and I do mean a lot - of philosophical dialogue ensues, some of it interesting, a tiny bit of it brilliant, and a lot of it not as eye-opening as Russell intends. Which sums up the film as a whole, frankly. A friend said that college students may find I Heart Huckabees amazing in its struggle to explore the meaning of the mysteries of the universe, but look: I'm 34. I've already thought about this stuff. So I wasn't that wowed. Personally, I think any movie that sets out to tackle the Meaning Of Life is just asking for trouble: you can find a more truthful examination in any good film that doesn't feel the need to discuss it explicitly. Still, I applaud Russell for putting such an intellectual-ish Hollywood film out there, and Huckabees is still entertaining, though its pacing is very same-y, with all the scenes running at the same level of manic blabbiness. But for all its grandiose vision, its ending is surprisingly pat, even trite. As for the cast, Jude Law, who appears in no less than six features released during the last quarter of 2004, needs a vacation, and it shows in Huckabees: he lets a juicy role run out of steam, thanks to a distractingly uneven fake American accent. Not that the rest of the cast fares much better: the equally overemployed Naomi Watts is wasted, Mark Wahlberg is good but his role is never really defined, and Schwartzman is simply annoying. Only old veterans Hoffman, Tomlin and the ever-alluring French actress Isabelle Huppert maintain a level of individuality that rises above Russell's whiny dialogue.

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD (UK, Mike Hodges)
Adequately compelling little film noir about former London mobster Will Graham (Clive Owen, whose big break came in Hodges' previous film Croupier) who, after retiring from crime and spending three years bearded and anonymous, living in his trailer in the forest, returns to his old haunts when he suspects something has happened to his arrogant little brother Davey - suspicions that prove correct, as Davey has been found dead in his bathtub, an apparent suicide. The twist here is that, unlike the standard film noir setup where our Mystery Man has to track down and get revenge on his brother's killer, Will in fact is after Davey's rapist (Malcolm McDowell, always there when the script calls for an aging British scumbag), believing that Davey killed himself out of the shame he felt for being raped. This disturbing angle to a shopworn setup sets I'll Sleep When I'm Dead apart from your standard thriller, as the aftermath of male rape proves to be so incomprehensible to tough guy Will and his thuggish pals that it forces them to re-examine their own feelings about Davey and about themselves. This is a tricky film to review, actually, because there is so much purposeful ambiguity that it renders a traditional examination of plot rather useless. Charlotte Rampling (not as good as usual, perhaps because Hodges is not good at directing women) has some sort of relationship to both Will and Davey, but it's never explained. And not to ruin any surprise, but we never really learn how McDowell's character came to know Davey in the first place. Given the film's slow pace, minimal dialogue, atonal score and no flashy camerawork, I suspect Hodges and screenwriter Trevor Preston aren't interested in telling a tale of vengeance so much as they are in creating a character sketch of a particular man in a particular situation. It's a mood piece, if you will. For his part, Owen is up to the task, full of focused brooding that cracks only when he begins to comprehend the meaning of rape. The film also paints a bleak landscape of the real London - charmless, ugly, depressed, a far cry from the Big Ben/rolling Thames postcard view you usually see in movies. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a good old fashioned art film, hazy and deep (and just slightly pretentious) enough to inspire post-viewing conversation between you and your movie-going partner. There is something unsatisfying about it that I can't put my finger on, but it's not enough to keep me from recommending it.

THE ILLUSIONIST (US, Neil Burger)
Fine old-fashioned drama about a mysterious magician (Edward Norton) in turn-of-the-century Vienna who must outwit the cruel crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire (a snarling Rufus Sewell, who looks like a brunette Jude Law in this picture) for the hand of his long-lost love Sophie (Jessica Biel, slightly miscast but forgiven). Some foul play occurs, and it is up to Chief Inspector Uhl, very nicely played by Paul Giamatti, to put the pieces together. Uhl is a difficult character to play: the story is more or less told through his eyes, and yet he is not a central part of it. It takes a particular actor to make such a character interesting, and writer/director Burger (adapting the short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser) is as lucky to get Giamatti for the role as he is to get the never-less-than-good Edward Norton in the lead. The two play off each other very well. Production values are all top-notch, with matchless talent such as costume designer Ngila Dickson, composer Philip Glass and cinematographer Dick Pope, best known for his increasingly stunning Mike Leigh films. The team expertly renders the time and place, and the cast finds just the right accent: Crisp and vaguely German-ish, without devolving into Sergeant Schultz-like parody ("I vill get dot schweinhund!"). But if the story's no good, the movie's no good, and The Illusionist's story is just fine, thank you. Intriguing, dramatic and filled with genuine magic and mystery, it's a movie that will appeal to both film snob you and your granny as well. It may not be the best picture of 2006, but it's very well done. I have no complaints with The Illusionist and happily recommend it to all.

I LOVE YOU, MAN (US, John Hamburg)
This isn't the sort of movie I would have rushed out to catch, but I was in Flagstaff and there was nothing else I wanted to see. That's my official excuse. That said, I Love You, Man is a cute date movie, another in the recent string of foul-mouthed "sensitive male" comedies to come out of the Judd Apatow workshop - except, amazingly, Apatow's name is not associated with this film, despite Apatow regulars Paul Rudd and Jason Segal in the lead roles. Rudd plays a variation on Steve Carell's naive sweetheart in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but unlike that film and other recent comedies either produced or directed by Apatow, there's no creeping misogyny here. Well, misogyny may be too strong a word, but I always got the sense that Apatow's films tended to see women as outsiders in the raunchy, buddy-buddy world of men. It's ironic, then, that I Love You, Man should be so female-friendly, when its very story is about a real estate agent (Rudd) who, just a couple of months before his wedding, realizes that he doesn't have any male friends and eventually hooks up with the dude of dudes, played by Segal. I haven't liked Rudd in his recent comedies, but as a man who has trouble relating to "typical guys" and who prefers the company of women myself, I identified with his character, even if the running joke of him becoming tongue-tied while trying to speak in "dude argot" quickly runs out of steam. Segal plays the role that Apatow might have given to Seth Rogen (and oh how nice it is to see a comedy without the ubiquitous and increasingly tiresome Rogen or Jonah Hill!) but hits the right blend of worldly and loserish. Mostly I was happy with the film for keeping its dignity, not relying on stale gags, stock characters or a mean-spirited attitude to get its laughs. It feels fresh, and though it's no classic, fresh is enough. Oh, and there's a few good laughs in it too.

I LOVE YOUR WORK (US, Adam Goldberg)
Stuck in distribution limbo for over two years, Adam Goldberg's sophomore feature finally squeaks into American theatres, one at a time, before heading straight to video. I Love Your Work is about Hollywood actor Gray Evans (Goldberg pal Giovanni Ribisi), whose private life is crumbling. Regretting his stiff marriage to a famous actress (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente), Evans is haunted by the memories of the girl he left behind (Christina Ricci) when he became a big star. Soon he begins to fixate on the cute young couple who run a local video store, whose happy, carefree marriage reminds him of his former life. The plot thickens as Evans eventually insinuates himself into their lives, but while Goldberg is adept at capturing the smoky, whirlwind milieu of young movie stars - no doubt drawing from his own experiences as a somewhat-famous actor - his film starts to fall apart as he delves into his hero's twisted psyche. Several early scenes shed light on the shallow, tiring, cigarette-clogged reality of most young stars' lives. Weird stalkers, boring agents bending your ear at trendy bars, petty jealousy over potential rivals for your spouse's affections - this all feels real. But the psychodrama that kicks in, while sensible in its way, is much less effective. Mainly because Gray Evans as a character is not somebody we care about enough to be compelled by his turmoil. The worst thing about this film, however, is Goldberg's insistence on shooting in what are clearly Los Angeles locations - there's no mistaking those palm trees - while pretending that he's really in Manhattan. Though they never officially name the city in which the story takes place, Gray Evans rides the (L.A.) subway frequently, lives in a Soho-style loft as opposed to a house in the hills, and walks the crowded city streets alone. This screams "New York" to me. (The story may have been inspired by the real-life breakup of Manhattan-dwelling actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.) Perhaps Goldberg was intentionally going for a hybrid of the two cities, but it just comes across as awkward low-budget cheating. Anyway, Goldberg and his editors exhibit a lot of style, and the cast - Ribisi in particular - is strong, but in the end I Love Your Work isn't as interesting as it could have been, with a plodding third act that is at once confusing, rushed, and phony.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (UK/Canada, Terry Gilliam)
Gilliam's latest madhouse adventure has already suffered nearly two years of infamy because of star Heath Ledger's sudden death halfway through production. Gilliam, who's had more than his fair share of challenges getting his films made and released over the years, then creatively salvaged his project by casting Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as alter egos for Ledger in several lengthy "through the looking glass" scenes. Amidst all the behind-the-scenes drama, it's easy to forget that there is an actual movie to watch - one with a story that has nothing to do with Ledger's death (even if the late actor first appears in Parnassus hanging by his neck from a bridge). We open with a scene of a 19th century carnival wagon pulling into contemporary London. A disheveled quartet of circus performers, led by the titular "doctor" (Christopher Plummer, as ever an old pro), attempts to entertain smatterings of drunken louts with a colorful but outdated sideshow act. Most ignore the spectacle; others hurl bottles and crash the stage. It's a thinly-veiled metaphor for Gilliam's own struggles to get his work seen and appreciated, perhaps, but Parnassus has no time to wallow in self-pity. The story soon kicks in when the troupe saves Ledger's character, the president of a children's charity who has a murky past and apparent amnesia, and he agrees to assist Parnassus in a race against the Devil himself (played by a dapper Tom Waits) to collect five souls in exchange for Parnassus' teenage daughter (Lily Cole). Early in the story, Parnassus explains to a police officer, "Don't worry if it doesn't make sense at first," and that's sage advice for watching this film. Actually, Parnassus isn't too hard to follow, even with the casting changes and the elaborate fantasy sequences, though its story does have several layers of complexity, character and darkness. If it feels like a return to form for Gilliam - at least to those who feel his best work was in the 1980s - it's probably because he wrote the script with his old collaborator, the elusive Charles McKeown, who cowrote Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. And indeed, Parnassus is reminiscent of much of Gilliam's past work, with moments that recall Munchausen as well as The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys and even Gilliam's old Monty Python animations. Which is to say that it should satisfy most of the director's fans even if it perplexes more mainstream audiences. It's not perfect: Verne "Mini Me" Troyer is simply not a good actor, but ironically it is Ledger who is often the weakest link, not because his acting is poor (it's never poor) but because Gilliam apparently allowed the actor to improvise his dialogue in several scenes, resulting in a lot of "you knows" and flat moments. A bad decision; the film is consistently stronger when the cast sticks to the script. But this is a small complaint. Parnassus is truly unique, a strange tale of guilt, death, immortality, aging, chance, storytelling and revenge, and one of the few films out there that uses digital effects for artistic purposes, rather than just to concoct imaginary characters or hide the strings. Some will adore this film. Some will hate it. No surprise for a Terry Gilliam picture, or for any true work of art.

I'M NOT THERE (US, Todd Haynes)
Writer/director Todd Haynes's abstract portrait of Bob Dylan in the '60s and '70s has garnered a little attention for its gimmicky casting of six different actors - Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, and relative unknowns Marcus Carl Franklin and Ben Whishaw - as six different incarnations of the legendary singer/songwriter. But the casting simply reflects the fragmentation of Haynes's film itself: each actor portrays a character who is not Bob Dylan, but rather a distinct aspect of Bob Dylan's life. Haynes defended his decision by saying that Dylan is such an iconic figure that no one performer could successfully embody everything the man was about. Fair enough. But now that I've seen the film, I think that Haynes could have done just fine - and maybe even created a masterpiece - if he pared down the entire movie to the "Electric" Dylan of the mid-'60s and cast only the gender-bending Blanchett. She is nothing less than phenomenal, and her segments' whimsy, note-perfect black and white cinematography and energy stand head and shoulders above the rest of the film. (Christian Bale, as the early folky Dylan and later as the born-again Christian Dylan, is also quite good - a pity we don't see more of him.) She is Dylan, at least the Dylan who was truly interesting. On the flipside, all the scenes with Ledger as the private, bad-husband Dylan are terribly dull and drag down the movie repeatedly. It's not any fault of Ledger's, or of Charlotte Gainsbourg as his put-upon painter wife. But it's boring. Haynes clearly felt that it was important to include this facet of Dylan, as his failed marriage surely informed his later songs, but I'm Not There could have survived just fine without it, in my opinion. As for the alternate universe Dylans portrayed by the young African American performer Franklin - his early Dylan is named Woody Guthrie - and by a shaggy, smirking Richard Gere - his Dylan-in-seclusion is named Billy the Kid and lives in the Old West - they are evocative, but so oblique that we don't really see the point. (Whishaw's Dylan, named Arthur Rimbaud, only provides a few funny non sequitur soundbites.) This is typical of Haynes, a former art and semiotics major and a classic postmodernist: this film, like many of his others, is filled with obscure cultural allusions, and it would take a dedicated Dylan (or film) scholar to catch them all. (For example, the Billy the Kid segments refer to Dylan's soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah's forgotten 1973 anti-Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.) This brings up the larger question, which Haynes, in his narrow focus, never acknowledges: Who really cares about Bob Dylan anymore? Undoubtedly, he changed the pop music scene in the 1960s. But has he really influenced any of the music that we've been listening to over the past three decades? Even an old-timer like me doesn't fully understand Bob Dylan's relevance. So it's hard for me to imagine anybody born after 1960 really needing this film (which is already, with its $17 million budget, a box office flop). It doesn't tell you enough about Dylan to explain who he is/was or why he matters/mattered, presuming instead that everybody knows what Haynes knows.

If you saw Haynes's 1998 Velvet Goldmine, his gay fantasia about glam rock-era David Bowie, you will likely find yourself having the same reaction to this thematic follow-up. I'm Not There is a similar experience in its loose narrative structure, its gorgeous obsession with period detail, and mostly its fatal overlength. Clocking in at 2 hours and 15 minutes, it's too long by at least half an hour. (Cut out all those Heath Ledger segments and it would be fine.) However, I fully support the career of Todd Haynes and all his eccentric pursuits. I'm glad he's around and I'm glad some people are crazy enough to give him millions of dollars to make these insular, noncommercial motion pictures (the accessible '50s weepie Far from Heaven notwithstanding). And again, Cate Blanchett is shockingly, amazingly fantastic in this movie. I mean it when I say this: she was born to play Bob Dylan.

INCEPTION (US, Christopher Nolan)
Nolan's latest outing, his first solo screenwriting credit since his debut feature Following, is heavy duty science fiction, densely plotted and filled with fresh, exciting ideas. That's the good part. I'll get to the not-so-good part in a minute. Inception follows a team of "extractors" - criminals who use technology to infiltrate corporate executives' dreams and steal their ideas for rival companies - who have been assigned an unusual case: to go inside the head of a young executive (Cillian Murphy) in order to plant an idea there - a tricky maneuver known as, you guessed it, an "inception". Leonardo DiCaprio, leading an all-star cast, agrees to take on the job if it means he will be allowed back in the United States to be with his children. (Why he had to leave the U.S. is something I won't reveal here.) What unfolds is a mindbending heist movie with shades of James Bond, The Matrix, even Solaris, as Leo's own demons follow him into other people's dreams and put him and his team at risk of a fate possibly - or possibly not - worse than death.

Nolan's script is dizzyingly complex, though the story flows fairly logically without losing the audience. It's only after the film is over that I started counting all the problems I had with it. To name most of them here would be to spoil much of the plot, but a general issue I had is that the "dream world", as Nolan depicts it, has little relation to the actual dreams we all experience. Nolan's defense may be that his team of idea thieves are not entering a person's dream already in progress but manufacturing the dream out of whole cloth, so if your high school English teacher doesn't make an appearance or if you aren't suddenly naked, it's because you're not in control - Leo and company are. Still, there seems something missing in this all-too-literal dreamscape of Nolan's. A sense of fantasy, perhaps. Or surprise. Or even surrealism: early on, Ellen Page's character, drafted as an "architect" with the job of creating the dreamer's world, does some nifty landscape modeling, but the visual coolness of this idea is almost instantly negated when DiCaprio tells her not to invent anything too weird, or else the dreamer's "projections" - the movie extras who populate the dream's background - will get suspicious and even attack. Uh, and why is that? It's one of many plot contrivances that do not make sense in the long run: after all, if these extractors can build the world, why can't they control the "projections"? Similarly, there is a moment where Tom Hardy's character - a "forger", or shape-shifter - pulls out a comically big gun, telling Joseph Gordon-Levitt "You have to dream bigger, darling." It's a cute moment that sheds light on the potential for the dream team to do whatever they want - after all, if a whole city full of projections is already attacking you, there's no reason you can't start flying or become 100 feet tall, since you're no longer trying to evade attention - but again, Nolan drops this idea as quickly as he introduces it. There are many other details which Nolan intentionally does not address - is this "dream-sharing" technology so commonplace in his future(?) world that everybody knows about it? Is that what Michael Caine, playing DiCaprio's father, is teaching in Paris? Why is Page so adept at constructing dreams within dreams within dreams, even though she is a neophyte? I think the main problem with Inception is that Nolan's head is bursting with so many ideas that, in his scramble to introduce them all during a breathlessly paced storyline, a few are over-explained, some contradict themselves, and many are inadequately explored. To further confuse things, Nolan attempts to balance the sci fi thrills with genuine human emotion, although only DiCaprio and to a lesser extent Murphy are given any depth to their characters. Still, during the two and a half hours that I was watching Inception, I was quite impressed with the concept, the cast, Nolan's filmmaking craft, and of course the awesome visuals, though I wished the story wasn't so dad-gummed serious about everything. Both Nolan and DiCaprio come across as trying too hard for profundity in their recent work, and I hope that the two men find some room to lighten up. It is possible to tell a dramatic, even gripping, story without being so gloomy.

IN CHINA THEY EAT DOGS (Denmark, Lasse Spang Olsen)
Proving that not everything coming out of Denmark is from the "Dogme" collective of filmmakers, the dark comedy In China They Eat Dogs owes much more to Tarantino than Von Trier. Which ordinarily wouldn't be a good thing, but here it works, however slightly, and the film was a big hit with the Danes when it was released there over a year ago. For the most part, though, it's just another crime caper with the requisite bloody and/or jokey plot twists. Early in the film, Arvid (Dejan Cukic), a henpecked nobody, thwarts a bank robbery with a squash racket(!); however, that act of heroism not only fails to impress his beyond-bitchy girlfriend but in fact inspires the apparent wife of the bank robber to barge into his house and kick his ass, explaining that her husband had to rob the bank so that they could conceive a child. A remorseful Arvid turns to his criminal brother Harald (Kim Bodnia, quite good, reminiscent of a young Bob Hoskins) and suggests that they rob an armored car in order to give the money to this poor couple. Harald, a bit of a psychopath, enthusiastically agrees. They pull off the heist, then naturally everything goes wrong and the body count starts to rise.

This first plot point is incredibly far-fetched, but it's not the last, so early on you either accept the film's kooky illogic or you don't. It's entertaining on a low level, but so much of it feels amateurish, story-wise, that it's hard to tell whether Olsen and his writer Anders Thomas Jensen are craftily sending up crime film stereotypes (wimpy protagonist, sociopathic brother, dumb accomplices) or simply don't know beyond those stereotypes. That said, there is a good shoot-out involving a scary-looking crew of Yugoslavians, and a completely whacked-out surprise ending that takes the entire film and turns it on its ear. In fact, the ending is so utterly mad that it almost justifies the rather average storyline and gives the film depth. But not quite. Its central theme about the subjectivity of right and wrong (referenced by its title) never resonates beyond the pop psychology level.

INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS (US, Zak Penn)
Disappointing comedy that follows famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog on his latest project, a documentary on the Loch Ness Monster. From the get-go, there's something fishy about the way the "documentary" on Herzog himself is played out. Within minutes, you realize that Incident at Loch Ness is that old, dying beast, the mockumentary. Writer/director Penn, who plays Herzog's producer on the Loch Ness film, is the one who blows the surprise. Not only because the film gets too kooky, too soon, but because, try as he might, he's not believable enough as an actual producer. Not that I needed to be snookered; going into the film, I had an idea that it was all fake anyway. But I was hoping that this movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie might have something meaningful to say - at an early point, in a talking head interview Herzog talks about his obsession with "truth vs. fact," and how he believes cinema, an art form based on lies, at its best delivers the "ecstatic truth," like a poem. But this is not a Werner Herzog film. It's a Zak Penn film. And Penn, who seems to be a jovial if rather spoiled studio screenwriter (responsible for such classics as The Last Action Hero, Inspector Gadget and Behind Enemy Lines), clearly doesn't have Herzog's way of looking at things. His viewpoint is mainstream Hollywood all the way. So Incident at Loch Ness never goes any deeper than its glib, producers-are-idiots premise. A game Herzog is deadpan funny, though, and there's a surprisingly good turn by non-actor Michael Karnow as a nutty crypto-zoologist. I mention him only because he lives next door to my girlfriend. Neither of us knew he was even in this when we saw it, so that was the film's one legitimate surprise.

THE INCREDIBLES (US, Brad Bird)
What makes The Incredibles stand out from Pixar's previous five computer animated features is that it's the first to be written and directed by an "outsider": Brad Bird, who also made the fine 1999 animated film The Iron Giant, and was one of the core team of The Simpsons, has an approach that, while not departing from Pixar's taut, twisty story aesthetics (no surprise, since, like the rest of the main Pixar guys, Bird went to CalArts), has more of a sense of individual vision. This is due in no small part to Bird being the sole credited writer for the film. In the past, Pixar releases were all credited to a team of writers, from within and outside the company. Also, this film, while still family-friendly, is geared even more towards adults (its PG rating is due to much comic book-style violence), and the mere fact that Pixar finally made a film about human beings instead of toys or fish is an undisputed milestone. You all know that the movie is about a pair of retired superheroes who, with their similarly gifted children, are called back into action to defeat an insane supervillain. So I'll continue waxing about the structural evolution evident in the film. You're dealing with a dysfunctional family. The story is far less gag-related than other Pixar movies. Thankfully, there are no Randy Newman songs (or songs of any kind, for that matter). And it doesn't try to be cute. On top of that, The Incredibles has even less to do with the maudlin superhero movies of late, much less cartoons or comic books, and feels more like a James Bond film, with its gadgets, secret lairs, sexy femme fatale and derring-do. There are also very obvious influences from both Raiders of the Lost Ark and the early Star Wars films (especially the sound effects, and a high-speed chase through a forest that's almost a shot-for-shot ripoff of the scene in Return of the Jedi). One thing that has stayed consistent with Pixar's previous output is that these guys are smart enough to know that audiences don't really care if a big Hollywood star is providing a voice. So whereas other studios bend over backwards trying to get you excited about Will Smith or Ben Stiller lending their vocal talents, Pixar knows you'll see their movies simply because they make good movies. Thus, The Incredibles' main voices are provided by Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter, hardly box office draws. I'd like to see more of that, please, where a voice actor is cast in the traditional way: if they're right for the part. (And thank God that Pixar never stoops to "motion-capturing" the actual actor, ala Robert Zemeckis with his creepy animated Tom Hanks in The Polar Express.) All that said, The Incredibles may not make my top ten list this year, since more interesting, oddball films have been released in 2004, and there are a few flaws in the human animation that are a little distracting (chief among them the characters' lipless mouths not fully suiting the dialogue), but so what - it looks fantastic and it's fun to watch. What more do you need?

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (US, Steven Spielberg)
For 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark - an undisputed masterpiece in the action movie genre - Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were famously inspired by the cheesy action serials from the 1930s. Had the Indiana Jones films followed the format of those serials and come out once or twice every year, Crystal Skull might have been a pretty decent entry. However, after keeping millions of fans hungry for years - this is the longest-awaited sequel in cinema history - amid scores of stories about Spielberg, Lucas and/or star Harrison Ford being unhappy with previous drafts of the script, there's no way audience expectations could be kept low. And so people around the world are disappointed, majorly disappointed, or only slightly satisfied with what has finally unspooled for them in 2008. And rightfully so.

I've accepted long ago that Raiders of the Lost Ark was lightning in a bottle. Whenever something genuinely new comes out, sequels are bound to pale in comparison (and I'm including Empire Strikes Back and Godfather II in my assessment), and frankly I thought little of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (though I find Temple of Doom, though gross and at times annoying, to be underrated). Still, while Crystal Skull is enjoyable, I'm surprised at how much of it doesn't work. Sure, Spielberg brings back all the Indy trademarks - the wry humor, the scares, the thrilling action sequences, the brutal deaths of bad guys - but there's something missing. Something like character development, an epic sweep and a real sense of danger. Also, there are a ton of plot holes and script contrivances that in no way validate the long wait. (One only wonders how bad those earlier, rejected screenplays were.) But more than that, the film feels a little too intimate, even claustrophobic, like a junior college's theater department taking on a Broadway classic; it seems like everybody who worked on the film was having a good time, but the cast is too small, the settings look too much like they were built on stages instead of shot on location, and there's a general lack of awe. Even the titular skulls look like cheap props. While I did enjoy the derring-do, and I thought Cate Blanchett was pretty good as the sexily evil Soviet villain Irina Spalko, mostly I wanted to stop the film as it unreeled and say, "Yeah, okay, I got it. I don't need to see any more. Now let's just watch Raiders on the big screen again, since that's really what we want." Because Karen Allen's talents weren't wasted in Raiders. Character complexity wasn't given short shrift. We got a real sense of travel in that film, too. And even the smallest bit players all left memorable impressions, from the guy with the eyepatch and the monkey, to the bald Nazi who beats the crap out of Indy in front of the plane, to Jock with his pet snake Reggie, to the sheik with the fancy sword who gets shot. There's none of that here. What's most interesting about Crystal Skull is its fleeting but serious meditation on the Red Scare mentality of the era (the story is set in 1957). I wish that there was more of that. So yeah, if I were told that this movie was made for just $25 million (that's what it looks like, frankly) and shot in a couple of months, I'd accept it as an enjoyable enough programmer. But as the uber-blockbuster it was designed to be, it comes up drastically short. Raiders' glory days of rich characterizations, exciting plots and timeless moviemaking are long behind us. It means something when ILM's undoubtedly expensive computer effects in this film still don't hold a candle to the organically frightening Angel of Death scenes at the end of Raiders, or for that matter anything in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released over three decades ago. Maybe it's time effects crews abandoned their computers and started working with models and optical printers again. Not to mention screenwriters caring about developing their characters from the ground up instead of just plugging them in. Then perhaps some of that old Spielberg/Lucas magic would return.

THE INFORMANT! (US, Steven Soderbergh)
Strange but not unsuccessful comedy-drama, based on a true story, about Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon, paunchy and mustachioed), a chipper executive at agricultural corporation Archer Daniels Midland, who somewhat inexplicably goes to the FBI to report on the company's illegal price fixing for their corn products. Although the story mostly takes place between 1992 and 1997, Soderbergh shoots the film flatly, almost like a 1960s studio movie (as usual, he doubles as cinematographer, here using the stage name "Peter Andrews"), then goes even further out by hiring legendary '70s composer Marvin Hamlisch for a score that redefines "jaunty". Hamlisch's score, for many, will be the best thing about The Informant!, and the dude might even nab an Oscar nomination for it. But some viewers will not be able to reconcile the extremely light comic tone of the music with the definitely weird but only intermittently funny goings-on. It's a bit hard to talk about why I ultimately liked this movie without revealing the big plot twist. I will say this: For the first hour or so, the story is actually kind of dull, following the perky Whitacre as he bumbles through various wiretapping scenarios and forges a sort of friendship with his main FBI contact (Scott Bakula). Once it becomes clear that, shall we say, Mark Whitacre has some serious issues, the whole film starts making sense. So in short, if you see The Informant! you'll need to stick with it all the way through in order to get what's going on. (Damon's loopy, stream-of-consciousness voiceover throughout the film provides clues as to his character's mental state.) And of course I can't end this review without mentioning the casting of Foreign Correspondents/Claustrophobia star Melanie Lynskey as Whitacre's wife Ginger. It's her largest role in an American feature that wasn't directed by me (a self-serving statement, perhaps, but true) so it's nice to see her get a break. Her presence may have served as a distraction for yours truly only because I have spent so many, many hours in editing rooms going over every nuance of her performances for me, and so watching her here basically took me out of the story just as much as Hamlisch's music did. Peppering his cast with cameos from popular comics (including Tom "Biff" Wilson, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, even Tom Smothers), using a wacky disco font for the titles, and especially adding that exclamation point to his title, Soderbergh further suggests that the film is a Brechtian spoof of movies like The Insider. Is it good? It's all right. Hilarious? Not really. Interesting? To a degree. Over all, I'd give it a soft recommendation. But it will have its fans - mostly film critic types.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (US/Germany, Quentin Tarantino)
Seventeen years into Quentin Tarantino's career, you should know what to expect from one of his films: it will be long. It will be talky. It will have sporadic moments of sudden, gruesome violence. It will be loaded with pop culture references. It will feature a retro soundtrack that is hipper than hip. And so it continues with Inglourious Basterds, a misleadingly marketed film that would have you believe that it is a fast-paced war epic with Brad Pitt in every scene. In fact, Tarantino started developing a remake of the little-seen 1978 "warsploitation" movie The Inglorious Bastards around the time he finished Jackie Brown in 1997, envisioning it as an homage to classic tough guy war movies such as The Big Red One, with a troop of American soldiers going on dramatic missions across Nazi-infested Europe. But over a decade later, his story has transformed into something of a heist movie, involving a plot to kill several high-ranking Nazi officials at a film premiere in Paris in 1944. Call it Quentin Tarantino's Valkyrie, if you will. Pitt and his titular team of Nazi-killing Jews are only part of the ensemble: Inglourious Basterds is as much about a vindictive French Jew (Melanie Laurent) and a suave if despicable Nazi "Jew hunter" (Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, who steals every scene he's in), as well as the various characters, real life and fictional, who come into contact with them.

Staged in chapters, the script for Inglourious Basterds is surprisingly tight. Every moment has an eventual payoff, starting with the opening scene, in which Waltz quietly interrogates a French farmer hiding Jews in his house and strangely switches to English in the middle of their discussion. It seems like a gimmick meant to segue the dialogue into English for American audiences, but there's a method to the madness - and in fact, around two-thirds of the dialogue in Inglourious Basterds is in subtitled German and French. It's a nice bit of authenticity in a film that clearly doesn't give a damn about historical accuracy. Some scenes are very long, but because every moment has a purpose, and because the cast is so good, and because there is a strong curiosity about just what will happen, the film never drags despite its two and a half hour length. In my opinion, this is Tarantino's most satisfying film, and certainly his best since his debut feature Reservoir Dogs. It's smart, it's funny, it's entertaining, and while it's clearly a Tarantino movie, the setting and even the movie references add a fresh spin to his typical shenanigans - no name-checking 1970s drive-in fare here; instead you'll find nods to Leni Riefenstahl mountain climbing pictures, Fritz Lang's Metropolis and America's own WWII propaganda star, war hero-cum-matinee idol Audie Murphy (re-envisioned as a young German soldier who is both subject and leading man in the movie set to premiere in Paris), even though you'll still see some inspiration from Tarantino's early directorial heroes John Woo and Sergio Leone. In short, Inglourious Basterds is, more than any of his earlier films, about Quentin Tarantino's mad love for cinema. If you're not into his movies, this one may not change your mind. But I've been on the fence about the quality and integrity of his work ever since Pulp Fiction came out, and I was happily surprised at how much I admired this film.

INLAND EMPIRE (US, David Lynch)
By now most filmgoers have decided whether they love what David Lynch has to say, are simply baffled by his oblique and fractured storylines, or think his work is overrated and pretentious. To let you know where I stand, I'd actually call him a genius. But I don't use that word in the sense of somebody being extremely clever or even brilliant. (Hitchcock, for example, was a highly creative and intelligent filmmaker, but he was not a genius.) A genius, in my mind, is someone who has the talent to find logical connections between completely unrelated things and ideas. I do understand why people say that genius is a form of madness, because this method of finding connections is similar, in many ways, to a shizophrenic's rantings (I've heard some where people are being turned into audiotapes by the government and their "essense" is being turned into food). The difference is that a genius discovers some real-world sense in it all. And so we have Inland Empire, Lynch's most inaccessible film since Eraserhead, if not more so. It's a three-hour-long opus that starts with a married Hollywood actress (Lynch regular Laura Dern) accepting a part in a film that has a dark past. From there the story bounces around feverishly between Hollywood, Poland, and the "Inland Empire" itself (an oft-maligned suburban/rural chunk of Southern California, east and southeast of Los Angeles), with Dern in multiple personas, few of which are clearly defined, other random characters who may or may not be real, repeated bits of dialogue and continued references to infidelity, murder and more. There's quite a lot to sift through, but I think I managed to figure out what the story may actually be about - I won't give away anything here, but Lynch's films tend to be about singular traumatic events in their protagonists' lives that lead to desperate denial fantasies broken up by nightmarish glimpses of the hopelessness of their reality, and I found that here as well.

Safe to say, if you didn't care for Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway then Inland Empire is most definitely not for you. It may even strain the patience of some who consider themselves diehard Lynch fans. As for me? Well, I was often lost, but never bored. And someday I'd like to see it again just to see if I can sort out more pieces to the puzzle. (The maddening thing about Lynch's films is that there always is a point to them - with the exeption of Wild at Heart, none of them are weird for weirdness' sake - and so one can't just brush off all the abstractions as just nonsense, because every scene, no matter how random, serves a purpose.) But so much of the film is basically incomprehensible, and three hours of it is hard to take in one sitting. So I'm in no hurry to do so again, even if I can't stop thinking about it. Kudos to Lynch for being confident enough to break all the rules - he shoots in consumer-grade video, the characters are frequently out of focus, and some shots aren't meant to cut well together. At times I tried to imagine my reaction to the film as if it was made by a nobody, just to see if I'd think it amateurish in that context. But I couldn't. There's a mature vision at work here, no matter how dressed down it may be. There's just something so assured about Lynch's sound design, about his talent in getting often gut-wrenchingly emotional performances from his actors, about the way he lights and frames a shot. For a filmmaker like me, it's intimidating. It's like giving a painter a small box of crayons and still seeing him create a masterpiece with them.

So did I like Inland Empire? Well, I didn't connect with it as much as I connected with, say, Blue Velvet, or even Mulholland Drive (though it took me a couple of viewings of the latter film to "get it"). And I just don't care much for Laura Dern, though her performance is strong here. However, I'll accept the film as a fascinating work of art and I look forward to discussing it with more people and hopefully getting more out of the story as the years go by, at which point I can revisit it.

INSOMNIA (US, Christopher Nolan)
I get suspicious by remakes of foreign films, especially when they come so soon after the original release. In this case, Norwegian filmmaker Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 cop thriller Insomnia barely had time to relax after its limited art house release before getting snapped up by the Hollywood adaptation police. This time, however, it's not a case of a great film being watered down, or slicked up, or turned into predictable hooey. There are two reasons for this: 1) the remake is smart, well-acted and atmospheric; 2) the original wasn't that great.

For those of you who missed the Norwegian film, the differences in the story are small but important: the big city police detective called to investigate the murder of a teenage girl in a remote Arctic town where the sun never sets all summer - played first by Stellan Skarsgård and here by Al Pacino - is haunted by a scandal. In the original, it's because he sexually harassed a witness. Here it's because he had planted evidence at the scene of a crime back in Los Angeles, and the internal affairs commission is investigating him. A key plot point in the story happens early on, where the cop, in heated pursuit of the girl's killer in thick fog, accidentally shoots and kills his own partner - and the killer becomes the sole witness. A nice twist in the American film has the partner (Martin Donovan) in a position where he's about to spill the beans to Internal Affairs, therefore giving Pacino a motive for killing him. This justifies his character's desperate attempt to cover up the accident, and willingness to make a deal when the killer (Robin Williams) suggests they team up to find a patsy to pin both deaths on. When Skarsgård agreed in the original, you got the feeling that he did so just because he's an amoral creep. Obviously Pacino had a hand in this, making sure his character is more sympathetic. It works to a point, but the story starts falling apart when you stop buying that an inherently decent cop would even bother talking to a psychotic like Williams' killer, much less seriously try to make a deal with him. Williams, for his part, plays it straight, and it's refreshing to see him tone down the mawkishness he's become known for in his more "serious" films. But as in the original, his character is all talk - pretentious, overly written talk at that. That's the sinker for both films: so much rides on the charisma and pathological nature of his character, and the story just never makes him a convincing enough foil for the sleep-deprived detective.

Oh well, there's still a couple of exciting chase scenes, and Hilary Swank is surprisingly effective in what could have easily been a nothing support role (written for the American version - "put a girl in it!" you can almost hear the studio heads shout). But it's the numerous plot holes and high "Oh come on" factor that keep Insomnia - Norwegian or American - earthbound. As for hotshot Memento director Christopher Nolan, he exercises the sweaty, claustrophobic visual style recalled from his previous film, but as a filmmaker, he doesn't seem to have any distinctive viewpoint yet.

INTACTO (Spain, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo)
A highly original story that redefines "good luck" as a physical - indeed, a supernatural - trait which but a select few possess. These few (sole survivors of plane crashes, earthquakes, etc.) have the ability to drain ordinary people of what little luck they have with a mere touch of the hand, thereby increasing their own luck while dooming their victims to horrible fates. Call them "vampires of fortune," if you will. A handful of such individuals in Spain meet up regularly to use their gift the only way they know how: by gambling. High-stakes gambling. Gambling in which the stakes somehow become the people whose luck they have consumed. (I'm still a little confused by this bit.) Max von Sydow plays the nefarious ringleader, a man so lucky that he can even drain the luck from his remarkable adversaries. As you might guess, this whole concept requires quite a willing suspension of disbelief from its audience, but fortunately the film is assured enough that I, for one, gave into it. It's a rich story full of twists and turns, even if the conclusion does seem inevitable. Suspenseful, cold, and fascinating, Intacto is a creepy gem released at a bad time, when all the theatres are still full of big-ticket studio "prestige" films. But for fans of the unusual, it won't disappoint. And von Sydow gets my vote for Best Monologue of the Year.

IN THE BEDROOM (US, Todd Field)
In the Bedroom is a film broken into three distinctive, if unmarked, acts: the first is a family drama about a college-bound Maine boy (Nick Stahl) who falls in love with a much-older married local (Marisa Tomei), against the cautious tut-tutting of his cozy parents (Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson); the second act focuses on the trials the parents must endure when their son's romance ends tragically; the third becomes something of a suspense thriller. Based on a short story by the late Andre Dubus (the title of which was thoughtfully changed, so as not to spoil any of the plot twists), In the Bedroom is bleak, almost relentlessly so: the middle hour of the film stretches out a family's quiet pain so torturously that their sadness becomes unbearable. But it's well-acted and well-told. If the final act brings some relief to the depair that precedes it, it also brings the story to a strangely numb conclusion. That's the point, of course, but it keeps the film from haunting me as much as it should have. Still, there's a lot to like here. Smalltown Maine is beautifully captured, and there isn't a single cheap or dishonest moment in its two-hour-plus running time. Call it the Boys Don't Cry or At Close Range of 2001.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Hong Kong, Wong Kar Wai)
Bar none, this is the most romantic motion picture I've ever seen. No big surprise, considering it's the latest from writer/director/producer Wong Kar Wai, who has proven adept at capturing the essence of heartbreak in his previous films (especially Chungking Express and Fallen Angels). But this film shines as the culmination of his work, as sophisticated and moody as, and yet far more approachable than, his earlier flims. Wong keeps his story simple: Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan (played by Wong favorites - and Hong Kong superstars - Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung) are two married people who move next door to each other in a noisy apartment building in 1962 Hong Kong. They barely acknowledge each other's existence until they each independently discover that their spouses (who are never shown on camera) are having an affair with each other. That friendship, and then love, will grow between Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan seems inevitable. But will they live happily ever after? Probably in Hollywood, but not necessarily in Wong Kar-Wai's city of lost souls. Which, the director seems to say, isn't even the point: who wouldn't deny, deep down, that longing for somebody is far more romantic than actually having them? In the Mood for Love offers you an hour and a half of that longing - beautiful, painful, suspenseful and real. The two stars are excellent, Michael Galasso's spare, Latin-tinged score is hypnotic, and the cinematography by Wong's longtime collaborator Christopher Doyle is as rich and saturated as ever. (Rumor has it that Doyle was once infatuated with star Cheung; if so, it shows, for he lights her beautifully and his camera is virtually obsessed with her figure - not to mention her endless array of fabulous, fabulous period dresses.) It's going to take a year's worth of really amazing films to knock this off my top ten list for 2001, even though January's not quite over as I write this review. I couldn't recommend the atmospheric In the Mood for Love any higher. If you've missed Wong Kar Wai's previous films, this is a dreamy introduction to his work. He will make you believe that the only way a person should move when they're in love is in slow motion.

IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL (US, Jessica Yu)
Henry Darger was a Chicago janitor who had no friends, no family, and barely even spoke to his neighbors, preferring to spend his evenings holed up in his one-bedroom apartment. It wasn't until Darger was dying, at 81, in 1973, when his landlords discovered that he had written a sprawling, 15,000-page novel, complete with hundreds of illustrations (some over 10 feet long) that he had created over the course of six decades. Since his death, Darger has been celebrated as the ultimate outsider artist: an uneducated hermit who had concocted a fantastical universe for himself, populated primarily by seven angelic little girls (often nude, and bearing penises) out to save the world from anti-Christian forces, led by a fictional character whom Darger had named after an old school bully. Thirty years later, renowned documentarian Jessica Yu set out to examine Darger's life and work. The results are mixed. Since the artist himself led an unremarkable existence, and since the handful of neighbors who remember him are ordinary folks themselves, the bulk of the drama relies on Darger's own words and images - which, it can be argued, might have been better suited for a book. I think Yu suspects this too, which is why she dedicates much of the film's running time to animated versions of Darger's drawings, as various voiceover artists recite Darger's rambling, half-crazed narrative about an endless battle between the forces of good and evil. Some audience members may find these sequences enthralling. Others, tedious. (I became a bit bored with them, myself.) I get the feeling that Yu's ambitions were so big, and her project so high-concept, that she wound up packing her film full of animation because ultimately she couldn't find much else to add. The interviewees simply repeat that he was quiet, while quotes from Darger's other secret work - his autobiography - shed light on his life, but not his mind. Yu does a good job at informing the details of Darger's own anguished novel with his pitiful memories, but I would have appreciated more reflection on the relevance - if any - of his work, or of his status as an outsider artist, or what that even means in today's art scene. But instead of taking a look at the greater scope of the world around him, In the Realms is all Darger, all the time. Yu has made a trippy, highly sensory documentary, but I still think Darger's work is best experienced when you can just sit down and gaze at his incredible drawings for as long as you'd like - in a book.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (US, David Sington)
After directing Apollo 13 in 1995, Ron Howard sure has been getting a lot of mileage out of his Hollywood relationship with the space program. And once again he lends his name to yet another Apollo-themed piece of entertainment, a stately documentary about the 24 men who actually flew to the moon as part of the United States Space Program in the late 60's and early 70's. I guess it is no surprise that the bulk of the movie covers the legendary Apollo 11 landing - the first - and Neil Armstrong's historic steps, although the stories and images from the less-discussed later landings were of more interest to me. As for the elusive Armstrong, he's a no-show amongst the ten talking heads in the picture - many of the surviving astronauts of the program, including Armstrong's crewmates Buzz Aldrin and a hilarious Mike Collins - but his mythic status looms so large that the film may as well have been called In the Shadow of Neil Armstrong. Anyway, despite the expectedly uncontroversial, awe-filled reminiscences of the aging space cowboys and the bombastic score, there's still lots of neat lunar footage (some of it apparently shown for the first time, though that's a bit hard to believe) and fine documentary storytelling. The film didn't - how shall I say it? - send me over the moon with its profundity, but I liked it well enough. But the grainy footage from space doesn't fare well on the big screen, and I'm sure In the Shadow of the Moon will lose nothing when it winds up on the small screen.

INTIMACY (France/UK, Patrice Chéreau)
A French film starring English-speaking actors and set in London, Intimacy has been getting a bit of attention in art house circles for its frank sexuality. At last! High art porn! The likes of which have not really been seen since In the Realm of the Senses. To be honest, though, there's nothing in Intimacy that even approaches the we-didn't-have-to-see-that level of Realm's fellatio close-ups, though it must be said that actors Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox, playing a man and woman who meet once a week at his flat for hot, anonymous sex, are pretty fearless with what they're willing to do in front of a camera. Of course anybody who's seen Last Tango in Paris or even this year's dud The Center of the World knows that whenever a couple decides to have sex but not get to know each other personally, there's trouble brewin': one of the pair - the lonelier one - is bound to become emotionally involved. In this case, Rylance starts yearning for Fox, and one afternoon he decides to follow her home - only to discover, to his shock, that she is happily married (her husband is played by the always reliable Timothy Spall) with a young son. It's here where Intimacy becomes most interesting, as Rylance decides to form a friendship with the unwitting Spall and even the son! The tension between them is great, as Rylance can't help but drop hints that he's schtooping his new friend's wife behind his back, and as Spall continually varies the opacity of his suspicion. Fox isn't given as much to do (except get naked and go down on Rylance), which is a shame, because she's an excellent actress. But she does her best with her uneven screen time. But despite the rich performances, the story bogs down with tiresome sub-plots involving Rylance's rotten friends and Fox's acting student (played by the undying Marianne Faithfull). I must admit, the strong accents eluded me occasionally, and crucial plot twists revealed mainly in dialogue were lost on me. By the way, if you're only interested in the sex scenes - which are fairly titillating - you might as well only watch the first 15 minutes.

INTIMATE STRANGERS (France, Patrice Leconte)
An unhappily married woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) enters the office of a psychiatrist for the first time, and immediately starts spilling her darkest sexual secrets to the man behind the desk. The problem: she's unwittingly wandered into the office of a tax accountant (Fabrice Luchini) instead. Even though the accountant eventually comes clean (after at least one more visit under false pretenses), the woman keeps seeing him, happy to find an eager listener. The shy accountant is equally happy to have such an interesting, beautiful woman add some intrigue to his humdrum life. Those who have seen any of Patrice Leconte's previous work (The Man on the Train, The Hairdresser's Husband, The Girl on the Bridge, etc.) will recognize this as familiar territory: Leconte has carved himself a niche as a teller of stories about odd couples, eccentrics from different worlds who meet by chance and who each find that they need the other's quirks to fill the empty spaces in their own life. Intimate Strangers is a bit more talky, claustrophobic and flat than these earlier films (the bulk of the story takes place in the accountant's office), but it's intelligent adult fare that will surely win the director more fans. As for me, I must admit that I just didn't get it. On the one hand, it's easy to understand the story: these two characters are finding a sort of bond by mimicking the intimacy inherent in the therapist-patient relationship. But there are a great deal of vague, delicate details that were simply lost on me, not from a practical story standpoint but from an experiential one. I likened it to being in a room where people are speaking in a different language. There's a point where you understand the general context but are missing out on all the nuance, due to your own ignorance of their foreign tongue. I'm not being literal, of course: there are English subtitles throughout Intimate Strangers. But, well-translated as they are, they couldn't help convey the full scope of the film's ideas to me. Call me stupid.

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (US, Joel Coen)
The least typical of the Coen Brothers' output, owing to the unusual participation of another producer (blandmeister Brian Grazer, responsible for producing Ron Howard's endless output of unmemorable, financially successful pictures) and no less than three other screenwriters (all hacks, judging by their filmographies), Intolerable Cruelty is thus their least satisfying. One gets the feeling that, after nine wholly idiosyncratic films, the Coens decided to coast. It's maddening, because they are obviously such intelligent filmmakers that one would think they could have done something interesting with such shopworn material. Okay, there are a few funny bits, and a couple of surreal moments, but on the whole, the package is strictly by-the-numbers. We're left with a strained blend of Coen cynicism and Hollywood feel-good screwball comedy. They failed at this before (with The Hudsucker Proxy and O, Brother Where Art Thou?), but back then they at least fell back on their eye-popping visual design. Intolerable Cruelty even looks uninspired. Which isn't to say I hated this film. I was just disappointed by the lack of effort put into it. The plot, if you're interested, centers around a goofily vain divorce attorney (George Clooney) falling madly in love with a femme fatale (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who plainly marries men for their money and then takes them for everything after a swift and painful divorce. A couple of cute twists to the story don't make up for a lot of labored comedy. The truly inventive Coen touches - an asthmatic assassin named Wheezy Joe, an ancient senior attorney who's rigged up to a string of tubes and plastic bags, and reads a magazine called "Living Without Intestines" - are few and far between. Fans of the filmmakers might call this an exercise in genre cliches. Others will just find it ordinary, and forgettable.

IRIS (UK, Richard Eyre)
Unhappy document of the decline of British novelist Iris Murdoch's mental acuity due to Alzheimer's, and the stress it put on her loving husband John Bayley. Based on Bayley's memoir, the film seems almost too intimate a look at their relationship: not that it's particularly shocking, but that nobody stopped this project along the way to ask, "Do you really think anybody wants this man's memories of his wife made into a film?" To be fair, Murdoch is not quite as renowned in America as she is in England, and I've never read any of her work, so I shouldn't judge. Maybe everybody in England has been screaming for an Iris Murdoch biopic. The film's selling point - and no doubt the reason that it did get made, and released theatrically instead of residing in its rightful place on Lifetime as another disease-of-the-week TV movie - is its A-list cast. When you have Dame Judi Dench playing Murdoch in her decline, intercut with Kate Winslet (who as expected and perhaps as required gets naked several times) as the young free-wheeling Murdoch, the money is sure to follow. Let's not forget the always reliable Jim Broadbent as the long-suffering John Bayley (with Hugh Bonneville, an uncanny Broadbent lookalike, playing Bayley in his youth), and there's no surprise that the acting is all first-rate. But there is no story. It's just a bunch of scenes of Bayley falling in love with Murdoch at college, then Bayley putting up with her senility in their twilight years. The film aims for the tear ducts (and the Oscars), but it remains depressing without being really emotionally engaging. This story could really be about anybody suffering from Alzheimer's, and sheds no real light on what we already know: what it does to its victims and how that affects those close to the victim. So unless you want to see Kate Winslet naked yet again, there's nothing particularly remarkable about Iris. I will mention that the usual sappiness composer James Horner suffuses his scores with is more restrained here. But there's far too much of it. Barely a single scene is played out without full orchestration driving the point home.

IRON MAN (US, Jon Favreau)
I remember when Die Hard first came out in 1988. The reaction my friends and I had was, "Bruce Willis, the smarmy guy from Moonlighting, starring in the sort of action picture that usually features Arnold Schwarzenegger? What a joke!" We went to see it for a laugh at Willis's expense, and were shocked at how much we actually liked it. The reason, of course, was that it was a well-written, well-plotted film about characters you actually got involved with. And the stunt casting of Willis was a refreshing change from seeing the likes of, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie) surprised audiences in much the same way, thanks to Johnny Depp's legendarily eccentric performance, and I suppose that's also why Iron Man has, even on its opening weekend, turned out to be a runaway smash hit. Smirky Robert Downey Jr., whom everybody has always generally liked and supported despite his seemingly endless drug-related shenanigans, is still not the sort of guy you would expect to see starring in a superhero movie. And that is a major part of why Iron Man works. It also helps that Iron Man the comic book doesn't have a huge following, so expectations, as with Die Hard, were low enough for people to accept anything good. This isn't Batman we're talking about. Casting a quirky anti-icon in a film about a not-very-well-known superhero was a double risk for Marvel Studios' first self-financed feature. But what often makes Downey too smug for his own good - his rapid patter, his jokey attitude, his squirreliness - works very well here in a film that would be deadly serious (and deadly dull) with a Tom Cruise or a Matt Damon in the lead. Pairing strong casting (Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges, well-respected thespians all, round out the principal cast) with a well-timed release date, after several months of tepid product hitting the box office, when moviegoers were absolutely starving for something big and fun to get their butts into theaters, turned out to be a very smart recipe for Iron Man's success.

But look at me. I'm going on and on about the business of this movie, and not about the movie. Shame on me. Well, it's a very basic superhero origin story, about how cynical weapons manufacturer Stark is kidnapped in Afghanistan, forced to build a missile for a team of frightening insurgents, and creates a super-powered iron suit for himself instead. There are a few twists and turns along the way and afterwards, but the screenplay is pretty formulaic: you've got the buddy, the almost-romance with the girl, and the friend who betrays our hero and becomes his worst enemy. That most of the film's ultimate conflict doesn't even arrive until the third act says a lot about how Iron Man is happy to take its time developing its story and its relationships (even if it doesn't delve too deeply into any of the characters' psyches, which may also be a good thing) before delivering the explosions. A smart move, especially as, in retrospect, those action scenes aren't really all that exciting. Most people, including myself, are enjoying Iron Man because it's fun to watch Downey play off Paltrow, Bridges, Howard, and especially an array of personality-rich computer systems and robotic arms. It's a breezy, enjoyable time at the movies, and serves as a worthy herald for the summer blockbuster season. Oh, and make sure you stay until the very end of the final credits for a truly wonderful fanboy surprise!

IRON MONKEY (Hong Kong, Yuen Woo-Ping)
A full eight years after its initial release in its native land, one of the finest - and final - examples of Hong Kong's "golden age" of action cinema finally sees the light of mainstream American movie theatres, thanks no doubt to the acclaim Yuen Woo-Ping has since earned for his martial arts choreography in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Thanks to the success of Crouching Tiger, too, Miramax decided to release this film subtitled, rather than dubbed (as it's done with so many Jackie Chan movies), and with only a few minor cuts and a decent new score by James Venable, Iron Monkey is fittingly repackaged for American audiences. Set in 19th century China, the story follows the title character (played by Yu Rong-Guang), a peaceful doctor who masquerades as a Zorro-like avenger at night, stealing gold from the corrupt governor and spreading it among the many impoverished immigrants of the region. The story spins into action when wandering fighter Wong Kei-Ying (Donnie Yen) arrives in town with his young son Wong Fei-Hong (played in drag by actress Tsang Sze-man, an amazing fighter in her own right). The elder Wong is blackmailed into tracking down the Iron Monkey when his son is held captive by the governor - a matter complicated when he befriends the Iron Monkey's daytime alter ego, Dr. Yang. This test of honor is a common theme in Hong Kong movies, but still feels fresh here: the dilemma is sketched simply, but the complexities of these characters' motivations read clear. And the fight scenes! Though Yuen didn't choreograph them himself, he obviously knows how to film them, and they are among the most thrilling and inventive kung fu sequences in cinema. (A three-way battle atop a forest of burning poles will knock your socks off.) So if you liked Crouching Tiger then for God's sake get out there and see Iron Monkey, every bit the real deal, with far more action, a strong story, tolerable amounts of low humor, and rich performances. FYI, the young Wong Fei-Hong grew up to be a revered Chinese hero, and many Hong Kong films have been made about his grown-up adventures, notably the Once Upon a Time in China series, which made a star out of Jet Li.

IRREVERSIBLE (France, Gaspar Noé)
This year's front runner in the "Most Assaultive Motion Picture" category. Most easily described as an extreme variation on Memento, Irreversible tells the story, in reverse chronological order, of a woman who is savagely raped and the revenge her boyfriend seeks on the man who did it. So the movie opens (after a strange prologue that I think has something to do with Noé's first film I Stand Alone, which I haven't seen) with the arrest, then follows through with the rapist's murder, on to the hunt for the rapist, then the rape itself... and continues with the rest of the day leading up to those horrific events. Already the film is drawing a big line between fans and detractors; thanks to the scenes of graphic murder and non-graphic, but still brutal, rape, most viewers are either appalled or riveted. But other than being an incredible technical achievement (the entire film is shot in a dozen bravura single takes, some lasting as long as 10 minutes), what does Irreversible have to offer? Not much, beyong Noé's pessimism, and a few thoughts on the concept of predetermination that I'm not sure even Noé believes. However, I have long been fascinated by the idea that a perfectly normal day could end up, within an hour or two, a living nightmare. It's what I'm trying to do with Claustrophobia so for that I found some affinity for Irreversible's setup.

For me, though, what was most unsettling about this film was not the violence, not the topsy-turvy camerawork, not even the accusations towards Noé of homophobia (which I personally don't see), but the shallow notion that his characters get what's coming to them. I didn't buy it. Nevertheless, Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel (as Cassel's intellectual friend who actually winds up committing the murder) deliver fearless performances, and there is no question that watching the film is a visceral, disturbing experience. It may be considered an important achievement mostly by the same angsty teenage boys who thought Pink Floyd: The Wall and A Clockwork Orange were high art, but although I still doubt that there's much going on under its creepy surface, on a physical level I haven't shaken it yet.

ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (Denmark, Lone Scherfig)
The latest in the "official" Dogme films from Denmark, Italian for Beginners starts off in a similarly dark vein, but lightens up as it goes along, following a motley band of adults in small-town Denmark whose only fun comes from a weekly Italian class at the local college (and even then, they don't seem to be having much fun). With comic swiftness, the class teacher drops dead, as do the tyrannical parents of two sweet-natured but put-upon women in the class. A priest who has come to the town to replace his predecessor (who has lost his religion - and most of his sanity - after the death of his own wife) has also recently become widowed, and it is through their shared grief that these people reluctantly come together, fall in love, and learn Italian. Far more charming than it sounds, it is still served well by the Dogme rules of handheld camera, no music or sound effects, location shooting and documentary-style editing. As usual with these films, the cast is excellent, the characters fully-formed, and the story tight (if melodramatic, though the melodrama is served up with a wink). Get out there and go see it. Whether you're a film snob or a romantic or both, you will find plenty to enjoy.

IVANSXTC. (US, Bernard Rose)
Strange little film, shot entirely on High Definition video using only available lighting, updates Leo Tolstoy's classic short story The Death of Ivan Ilyich and places it in contemporary Hollywood, where Ivan (Danny Huston, John Huston's son, whose voice is startlingly similar to his late father's) is no longer a mid-level bureaucrat but a high-powered talent agent. Which, I'm sure Rose (and partner/producer/costar Lisa Enos) wants to suggest, is basically the same thing. (After a while, it doesn't even matter whether the story is set in Beverly Hills or in Moscow). Ivan's sex-and-drugs-fueled but lonely life in the fast lane is cut drastically short by a surprise cancer diagnosis, and as he struggles to deal with the emptiness of his world, he eventually finds a sort of fulfillment in dying, which evades the shallow, self-serving people who surrounded him when times were good, and disappear from his side when the worst comes down. However, as in the Tolstoy short story, the presentation of Ivan's humble tragedy is so objective that, while still strangely affecting (thanks to Huston's touching performance), doesn't really have anything new to say about the meaning of life or death. But I commend motion pictures made digitally, with small crews and small budgets and big ideas, so I recommend you see this if only to keep the dream of affordable digital filmmaking alive. Rose and Enos completed this thing three years ago and only now are seeing a very small theatrical release. Go out and support them.