NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (US, Jared Hess)
This was in theatres for a full two months before I got off my ass to go see it. I had written it off as yet another unfunny "slacker" comedy and thought it would whimper away quickly. But the thing just kept sticking around, making more and more money (around $44 million when all is said and done - not bad for a movie with a budget of just $400,000) and being quoted left and right by trendy theatregoers. So I finally caved in, accepting it as some sort of cultural mini-phenomenon that I should at least have an informed opinion about. Besides, an acquaintance of mine (Ellen Dubin) has a small role in it, so I figured I owed her one. One interesting thing Ellen told me beforehand is that, with the exception of herself and a handful of other professional actors (the cast is mostly untrained locals from Preston, Idaho, where the movie was filmed), everybody who worked on Napoleon Dynamite is Mormon, including writer/director Jared Hess and his cowriter wife Jerusha. The filmmakers' religious background may explain why Napoleon Dynamite is probably the most chaste high school comedy made since, perhaps, the 1940's. (They don't even say "God," they say "gosh!") But is it funny? I guess so, though I don't understand how it got hyped as he most hilarious comedy of the year. At the somewhat sparsely attended matinee I was at, there were some scattered chuckles, but that's it. Maybe it depends on the crowd. Anyway, Hess's tale of an overly self-confident teenage geek (Jon Heder, love him or hate him) and his nutsy friends and family was not nearly as cloying as I had predicted. Part of this is the nostalgia the movie triggered in me - not so much for my own high school years (though it's refreshing to see actual teens playing high school students, and a dorky character that's like real dorks, not the Hollywood version), but for the small town in Idaho where my grandmother lived. Though that town is hundreds of miles from Preston, Idaho is Idaho, and I oddly miss that barren golden landscape. Anyway, Napoleon Dynamite is cute, in a dumb way, but I won't give it much more than that.

NARC (US, Joe Carnahan)
I can just see how this film was pitched: "It's Training Day meets Rashomon!" So stylish that the movie often drowns in its own style, nevertheless Narc offers, at its core, two really interesting characters: Detroit cops Ray Liotta and Jason Patric, who are paired up to find out who murdered Liotta's former partner, a much-loved officer with a wife and kids. The rest is your usual "gritty cop drama" stuff: lots of guns, lots of yelling, liberal use of the "F" word, junkies getting their brains blown out, etc. In the end the film isn't about much; the only drama lies in the question "Who actually killed that officer?" The final answer is unexpectedly touching, but the rest of the story meanders, as those in "Actor's Films" tend to do. Liotta (who produced) and Patric are excellent, and they lead a uniformly strong cast, but the whole thing is shot like a music video, and the sound editor was given a bit too much free reign: it seems that half the visual cuts all have a Bang-Pow-Boom sound effect attached to them. And somebody was having too much fun with the "balance" level. A character walks slightly off camera left and suddenly his dialogue is mixed into the left channel. It's like these guys just discovered stereo or something. But I digress. Narc isn't bad for what it is, and fans of tough cop movies should appreciate it. Of course it doesn't come close to the original Dirty Harry. Not even in the same ballpark.

THE NEW WORLD (US, Terrence Malick)
This, Terrence Malick's fourth feature in more than thirty years, was not released with the same fanfare that his 1998 The Thin Red Line received. But then, a mere seven years passed between that film and The New World, whereas Thin Red Line was his first work in two decades. It's too bad, because while I liked Thin Red Line, it was at times a clumsy, muddled film, where Malick, perhaps aware of the pressure to produce something great after such a long absence and two much-loved features (Badlands and Days of Heaven), overreached. The New World, by contrast, is a far more concise and affecting work, and deserved more widespread attention. (It did wind up on most film critics' top ten lists for 2005.)

Malick's characteristically poetic take on the oft-told story of Native American princess Pocahontas (newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher), her legendary romance with explorer John Smith (Colin Farrell), and her crucial role in the survival of Jamestown, Virginia, the first English settlement in North America, doesn't just present its heroine as a symbol of the new world's virgin paradise, but as a complicated woman who, because of her love for Smith, almost single-handedly opened the door to English colonization... and the rest is history. Malick's lyrical style - jump cuts, long silences, lingering cutaway shots of trees and grass, and almost embarrassingly intimate voiceovers from the characters - may not be for everybody, but you can't deny the sheer gorgeousness of Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography (supposedly he shot it all with natural light; his work was the only Oscar nomination this film received), and even the doubters will find it hard to remain unmoved by the final act, where the tragedy of Pocahontas's life comes to light, as she quietly resigns herself to the English settlers' destruction of her land and her people as well as to the emptiness in her heart after losing Smith. It's heavy stuff, and yet it's too richly presented to be written off as simply depressing. Kilcher is extraordinary in her debut. Shouldered with an emotionally complex role as one of history's most famous women, she not only carries it off, she becomes the soul of the film. As for Farrell, I must say, he has such an irritating off-camera personality that I wasn't even sure he could act. (It doesn't help that he usually picks lousy projects.) But I was very much surprised by the soulfulness of his performance here. His other movies may soon be forgotten (indeed, most already are), but if The New World is what he'll be remembered for, he's a lucky actor. Again, while the film is not for everybody, I found it an incredible experience - beautiful, haunting, important. Say what you will, Terrence Malick - even with only four features to his name - remains one of American cinema's most distinctive voices, and I hope he has time to tell one or two more stories before he leaves this earth.

THE NEXT BEST THING (US, John Schlesinger)
Dreadful. Again, one of those "free Paramount films" I get to see, else I would have avoided it. Madonna and Rupert Everett play best friends. He's gay, she's not, both are lonely. One night they get drunk and sleep together. The next thing you know, she's pregnant. Rupert decides to move in with Madonna and raise the baby together. Cut to six years later: the baby has grown into a sensitive young boy and everybody's happy. (How can they not be? Despite Madonna and Rupert playing, respectively, a yoga teacher and a gardener, they somehow live in a fabulous house in the Hollywood Hills that only the very rich can afford.) Then Madonna meets The Perfect Man (played nicely by Benjamin Bratt), falls in love...

And then suddenly Rupert turns into an insane, evil, hyper-jealous, revenge-obsessed bastard! I kid you not! Which of course is ridiculous to witness, though frankly he's not that nice even early on in the film, when he's supposed to be "charming." So Madonna, one of the stiffest and most uninteresting actresses ever to be placed in front of a camera, feels really bad and just wants everyone to be happy. Then, in another completely silly plot twist, it turns out that she's been a lying, nasty idiot all along. But guess what? That's right: it all works out in the end.

John Schlesinger's reputation as a director sure is getting a lot of mileage out of his classic Midnight Cowboy. That was over 30 years ago. These days I wouldn't trust him to direct traffic. The Next Best Thing is a mess: it looks like an overlit student film and is shot and edited haphazardly. There's no sense of pacing; decent character actors show their faces and are given absolutely nothing to do; the music (by the usually dependable Gabriel Yared) is trite; Madonna looks like a sweating, leathery ghoul throughout. Joyless. Headache-inducing. Kill this movie, please.

THE NINTH GATE (France/Spain, Roman Polanski)
Roman Polanski is back and in very fine form with his dark, witty, suspenseful thriller about amoral New York book expert Dean Corso (Johnny Depp), who is hired by sinister book collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to do some field research: Balkan owns an incredibly rare old book that is rumored to have the power to raise Satan from the fires of Hell. There are only two other surviving copies on earth; Balkan is convinced that only one of the three is authentic. So Corso sets out to Portugal and France to compare the other two copies with Balkan's and determine which is the real thing. Along the way he is followed, and occasionally saved, by a mysterious French woman (Polanski's wife, Emmanuel Seigner). As Corso's investigation deepens, he becomes aware that he is caught in some sort of bizarre Satanic puzzle. But who's behind it? Who is that mystery woman? And what secret is hidden in the books?

This is Polanski's first foray into "horror" territory (though do not assume I am comparing this film to a Freddie Krueger movie) since his wacked-out creepfest The Tenant in 1976, and he's picked up directly where he left off, particularly when the viewer is reminded of his earlier classic Rosemary's Baby, to which this film owes some affinity. In fact, in many ways The Ninth Gate feels like it was made 30 years ago - there's something wonderfully anachronistic (some would say timeless) about Polanski's style; instead of having his camera fly around the room with rapid edits, he takes his time, bringing the audience down deeper and darker along with his protagonist. But I wonder if many people really understand Polanski anymore. He has a very distinctive approach to storytelling, constantly leavening his films with absurd moments, wildly over-the-top scenes, rich black humor and a cleverness that only really hits you as you leave the theatre, especially after his typically low-key "twist" endings that don't seem to explain much at all until you're given time to reflect. In short, The Ninth Gate is entirely a European Art Film, albeit with sensationalistic trappings, and the post-Tarantino generation might fail to see its value. Which is a shame, as it is truly an expertly constructed thriller concocted by a long-misread master of the medium.

NOBODY KNOWS (Japan, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Kore-eda's second dramatic feature, 1998's After Life (released in the US the following year), is one of my all-time favorite films. I urge everybody reading this now to seek it out at your local video store. I think it's amazing. So you can imagine I was quite excited to see Nobody Knows, especially since Kore-eda's 2001 film Distance was never distributed in the States. Inspired by true events, Nobody Knows charts the year-long decline of four young siblings, aged 5 to 12, who have been abandoned in a Tokyo apartment by their detestably irresponsible mother. In an unhurried, naturalistic way, the film follows them through the seasons as their quality of life deteriorates, not marked by the usual sadistic scenes of being robbed, raped or otherwise betrayed - as, I feel, a lot of other directors would have resorted to including - but playing out as a single trajectory downward, one great, slowly compounding crisis as opposed to a series of sharp minor ones. Though it is worrying to watch, Kore-eda has picked a particularly appealing quartet of young actors (a quintet, really, as a lonely neighbor girl befriends them and becomes part of the family unit) who are very sweet and clearly at ease in front of the camera, and he includes several scenes of normal childhood levity that become all the more heartbreaking in the context of his characters' hopeless situation. Nobody Knows is not for the impatient, and the story's final tragedy is so muted - in part because it is seen through the uncomprehending eyes of children - that it doesn't resonate as fully as it could. Still and all, the kids are great, Kore-eda's visual direction is in peak form, and there are many, many poignant moments.

NON-STOP (Japan, Sabu (aka Hiroyuki Tanaka))
Silly but spirited comedy about an unemployed loser whose hopes to rob a bank go awry when he bumps into an angry convenience store clerk, who takes his gun and chases him on foot around Tokyo. When the two bump into a guilt-laden yakuza (who coincidentally is both the clerk's drug dealer and the unemployed loser's gun dealer!), suddenly it's a three-man chase throughout the streets of Tokyo. And as the three runners keep the pace throughout the day and into the night, vengeful gangsters and gun-crazy cops join the fray, and various flashbacks and fantasy sequences revealing these men's motivations underscore the message of the film: to send up the macho posturing of the modern Japanese male. While that's plenty amusing, Sabu's style is too amateurish to carry much weight. His point is a valid one, but it comes early enough, and after that he has nothing more to add, though the film keeps going. Still, if the idea of watching three Japanese guys run for hours around Tokyo sounds goofy enough to be enjoyable, you will enjoy it. And thankfully, at 80 minutes, Non-Stop sprints to a fairly satisfying finish before wearing out its welcome.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (US, Joel & Ethan Coen)
After two disastrously-received studio comedies (Intolerable Cruelty and the Ladykillers remake), cult filmmakers Joel & Ethan Coen return to the West Texas badlands that put them on the map over 20 years ago, when they unleashed Blood Simple on an unsuspecting public. Like their auspicious debut, No Country for Old Men opens with a montage of bleak but beautiful Texas landscapes, under a twangy voiceover (Tommy Lee Jones here, M. Emmett Walsh in Blood Simple) that sets the fatalistic mood. Adapting Cormac McCarthy's novel (which I haven't read, but which everybody agrees was faithfully adapted, with few changes or ommissions), the Coens find common ground between their first film and what I deem their best, Fargo, by placing a thoughtful, world-weary sheriff (Jones) in the middle of a clutch of ne'er-do-wells killing each other over a bag of money. In this case, though, while the usual Coen wiseguy dialogue fills much of the movie, Fargo's jokier tone is abandoned for a lean, mean and relentlessly suspenseful approach. The plot is as simple as could be: a young Texas loser (Josh Brolin, very good) comes across a mass murder in the desert and finds a satchel with two million dollars in it. Without a pause, he takes it for himself, and his paranoia sets in quickly. Naturally, he has a good reason to be concerned: that $2 million was the prize in a major drug battle, and he knows that somebody will soon be looking for that money. (Ironically, it is the one kind thing he does - returning to the scene to give water to the dying outlaw that was still breathing - that sets the bad guys on his trail.) So while Mexican gangsters, Jones's laconic sheriff and Woody Harrelson in a somewhat undefined role are all after Brolin, the chief villain is one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a loner who kills without mercy and who leaves a body count so high that you can't even keep track of the number of his victims some twenty minutes into the film.

Bardem has been taking the lion's share of No Country's considerable critical acclaim, and he deserves it. He's wonderfully frightening, even if it's never made clear just who he is and why he's there. But Jones shouldn't be overlooked. His deadpan performance has a real sadness at its core, and he anchors the film as Barden provides its viscera. However, while I won't argue that for much of its two-hour running time, this is one super tense nail-biter of a thriller, I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon and hail this as an "instant classic." (Of course it took me two or three viewings of Fargo before I really understood its message, and it's since become one of my all-time favorite movies.) Without giving much away, the tension-filled storyline takes a typical Coenesque left turn in the final act, and No Country ends somewhat abuptly. There's method to the Coens' madness - you may notice, for instance, that the murders in the film become less explicit as they mount, to the point where you're not even sure if people are dying; you just assume they are. I'm also sure there's something in here that I'm just not getting: In this chilling crime drama, the heart and soul of the movie belong to Tommy Lee Jones's lawman, who pines for the simpler, safer times of the past. And the key to understanding just what it's all about are, I believe, contained within two dialogue scenes: a cryptic excange between Jones and Northern Exposure's Barry Corbin (in another undefined role), and the final scene of the film, which you don't even realize is the final scene until the end credits suddenly start rolling. There is something deep and meaningful in these two scenes, but, anxious as I was to find out what happened, and who was alive and who was dead and what happened to that 2 million dollars, I blinked and missed it. You might too. Shrug it off as you may, there's no denying that No Country for Old Men, with the double meaning of its title and the potential relevance of its unusual 1980 setting, is a masterfully-made motion picture. Just don't be surprised if it leaves you a little baffled.

NORTHFORK (US, Michael Polish)
What does my having gone to CalArts at the same time as Michael Polish have to do with this review? Nothing. Nevertheless, I wanted to support a classmate's efforts, even if I never knew the guy, and I did like the first film put out by Michael and his twin brother Mark (who co-writes with Michael, produces, and often stars), Twin Falls Idaho, a quirky but touching look at the brothers' closeness as they reimagined themselves as Siamese twins. Their next film Jackpot was hardly seen. Northfork finds them with a bigger budget, bigger stars, and bigger ideas that don't often work. Set in 1955 Montana, Northfork documents its fictional namesake, a small town about to be flooded - a little too Biblically - by a nearby dam. Most of the residents have been paid off by the government and move on. A few stragglers stay put, however, which brings a half dozen G-men in black suits (with angelic white feathers in their hats - another too-obvious bit of symbolic imagery) to clear them out. As that happens, the town's priest (Nick Nolte) cares for a sickly orphan (Duel Farnes) as the last child in his orphanage. A good portion of the film takes place in the young boy's imagination, as he sees himself healthy and cavorting with a quartet of eccentric angels in a nearby house. Lots of dreamy imagery here, with little substance, this is a film that tries too hard to be called "visionary." It's understood that angels dreamed up by a resourceful young boy would have a childlike way about them, but the presentation - despite strong acting, especially by Daryl Hannah (in a cropped brunette wig that makes her look for all the world like an older Liv Tyler) - is too precious. Meanwhile, the government boys (namely James Woods and Mark Polish as a father-son team) encounter numerous Coen and/or Lynch-inspired kooks, and the preciousness compounds. M. David Mullen (another CalArts grad from my year) provides some incredible cinematography, but after a while the film becomes embalmed by its own style. On the upside, Nick Nolte is wonderful - and I hate Nick Nolte. I guess I found him so good in Northfork because for once in his career he isn't barking and screaming. Farnes is also excellent in his debut role. Together, they bring about a surprisingly sweet conclusion that almost forgives the film's plodding artsiness.

NOT ONE LESS (China, Zhang Yimou)
It's always a pleasure to catch a new film by Zhang Yimou. He has long been a favorite director of mine and I consider him one of the very best filmmakers working today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see his masterpieces Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad or Ju Dou, among others. They all made a star out of Zhang's then-girlfriend, the amazing actress Gong Li, but now that the two have broken up and no longer work together, what is a Zhang Yimou film like?

The answer: pretty good. In Not One Less he eschews his usual elegant style in favor of a rawer look (this film is very similar in feel to his earlier The Story of Qiu Ju). The set-up: in an impoverished village in rural China, the local schoolmaster must leave for a month, and the only replacement the government can supply is a 13-year-old girl, Wei Minzhi (played by Wei Minzhi - part of this movie's charm is that the cast is made up of non-professionals who all act under their real names and portray characters who share their real-life occupations). Teacher Wei does her best to corral her students, just trying to keep them in school for the month in hopes of getting a meager monetary bonus for her efforts. However, when the 11-year-old class clown (Zhang Huike) bolts for the big city to look for a job, Wei sets out to track him down and bring him back, enlisting the help of her cheerful students.

What follows is a very touching odyssey - and clear-eyed critique of a desperately poor modern China - as Wei tries to find the missing boy in an enormous city, meeting opposition at virtually every step from an array of pessimistic and unsympathetic adults. The film is much more light-hearted - even downright cuddly (the kids in this film are the cutest I've ever seen) - than Zhang Yimou's earlier tragedies, but one can't watch this without recalling Zhang's pointed opinions about (and harassment by) the Chinese government. Not One Less inarguably portrays a China so choked by bureaucracy that even ordinary citizens have lost their sense of compassion, replaced by a self-serving pettiness. That Wei persists in her search no matter how many times she is knocked down by those above her is, in Zhang's view, nothing less than epic heroism.

However, Wei's patience may outlast the audience's: the film's only downfall is its endless repetition of Wei's frustrating encounters. It will exhaust you! However, stay with it and you will be treated with a wonderful twist in the last 15 minutes that brings the story to an ironic, emotional and wholly satisfying conclusion. Serving as a reminder that the value of a great film is not measured by the 2 hours it's in front of your face but by the lifetime of memories it leaves you with.

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE (US, Mary Harron)
Meandering, inoffensive biopic about 1950's pin-up queen Bettie Page, the sweet Christian gal from Nashville who went to New York to pursue acting and wound up the unwitting star of a legendary series of bondage photos for the brother-sister team of Irving and Paula Klaw. Harron and cowriter Guinevere Turner don't have much of a story to tell, but it's hard to blame them for this film's general pointlessness: they, as well as their appealing star Gretchen Mol (a slender blonde who, however charming, proves my theory that just about any woman can look like Bettie Page if you put a black wig with bangs on her), seem to be true to the character. The fact of the matter is, the real-life Page isn't too terribly interesting a person - at least not when she was a model. (There are stories about a crazed, middle-aged Page forcing her family by knifepoint to gaze upon a picture of Jesus - there's nothing like that in this movie.) Unlike her fellow 1950's inspiration for latter-day camp adulation, Ed Wood, Page didn't make much happen; instead, things happened to her and, more to the point, happened around her. And so, unlike Tim Burton's Ed Wood, you don't so much see Page as an eccentric character boldly making a name for herself as you do a generic innocent swept up in other people's affairs. Indeed, it can be argued that Page was just a pretty girl who took some naughty pictures. Thus, while she'd be a fun supporting character, she makes for a hollow protagonist. There are hints at a uniqueness in her personality - a non-drinking, non-swearing, deeply religious lady who had no fundamental issues with nudity or sexuality - but instead of doing something smart and unusual with the story, Harron and Turner churn out an achingly ordinary biopic. I'm sure this was one of those cases where a bunch of people thought it would be cool to make a movie about a particular cult figure without asking themselves if there's anything worthwhile to say about that cult figure. I don't think this mattered much to Harron, who's not known for being much interested in characters so much as having a fondness for capturing a particular era in New York: the 60's, with her first outing, I Shot Andy Warhol, and the 80's with American Psycho, her defanged adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's gruesome novel. I Shot Andy Warhol worked because it had rich, bizarre characters who came to life on screen. American Psycho didn't because Harron was afraid to delve into the book's disturbing mindset. The Notorious Bettie Page follows along the path laid forth by its predecessor, long on kitschy period style (Mott Hupfel's cinematography, mostly noirish black and white but occasionally exploding into ultra-saturated technicolor during the scenes where Page goes to Miami to shoot nudist pictures for Bunny Yeager, deserves much of the credit here, and the soundtrack is perfect for your swinger tiki parties), but short on everything else. It makes for a harmless, moderately entertaining hour and a half at the movies. If that's all you're looking for, great. But if you want any substance, move on.

NOTORIOUS C.H.O. (US, Lorene Machado)
A concert film of comedian Margaret Cho, recorded live in Seattle in December 2001. I don't usually see these films (most of them only play on cable) but I was curious about Cho's act, having heard so much about her over the past few years. Well, after watching Notorious C.H.O., I walked away remembering that I don't really find stand-up comics that funny. I am much more entertained by watching normal people in comic situations. Stand-ups have always struck me as obnoxious, self-involved, high-strung people, the kind I would never want to hang out with, and Margaret Cho is no different. But will you find her funny? Who knows? I can at least tell you what her act is. She does one of four different schticks: extremely - even excessively - raunchy sex jokes; amusing imitations of her judgmental Korean mother; clear-eyed, Richard Pryor-style reflections on her past problems with alcohol and eating disorders; and rather tiresome platitudes about how all minorities, especially gays, need to be treated with respect and love. Well, no duh, Margaret, 90% of your audience is gay, of course they're going to applaud you every time you say that! Talk about preaching to the choir! Anyway, her impressions of her mother are fun to watch for a while, and her personal stories are very interesting (though I have a feeling that the jokes about her sexual shenanigans are mostly invented), but I didn't find her as funny as everybody else in the theatre did.

NURSE BETTY (US, Neil LaBute)
Deadening, unsatisfying comedy about a cheerful Kansas housewife (Renee Zellweger) who goes into shock after witnessing her husband's murder and, caught up in a trauma-induced fantasy wherein she believes a soap opera doctor (Greg Kinnear) is actually her ex-fiancee, travels out to Los Angeles to be with him. Meanwhile, her husband's killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) try to track her down in order to take care of some unfinished business - losing their own grip on reality in the process.

Nurse Betty's greatest liability is its script: it plain stinks. The characters' motivations are completely unbelievable, the plot points all forced, and all in all it just doesn't work. Which is especially a shock considering its director, Neil LaBute, who made a name for himself with his first two films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors. Both low-budget films were crudely filmed but expertly performed, with scathing dialogue and a world view that was brutal - some say brutally honest. The difference here is that LaBute is working off someone else's script (first-time writers John C. Richards and James Flamberg). Though LaBute admits to having rewritten nearly all the dialogue himself (with mixed results), he insists that he didn't muck around with the characters or the story - probably why the whole thing is a mess. I can't see any real defense for the film's implausibilities; even satire and farce (and this is neither) need grounding in the real world in order for the absurdist payoff to work. And there's a lot of "meaningfulness" that I dread is done too much in earnest to suggest irony. As for the performances, Zellweger tries her best with her unengaging character, Kinnear does his typical smarmy bit as the soap actor who plays along with her fantasy, Rock is bad as usual, but Morgan Freeman! The poor man! He is such a fine actor, but here he seems as though he thought LaBute could elevate the characters above their sophomoric origins, and is let down. His disappointment shows in his lack of chemistry with Rock and Zellweger. The film's saving grace is Jean-Yves Escoffier's rich cinematography; its final downfall an intrusive, downright awful score by Rolfe Kent.