PALINDROMES (US, Todd Solondz)
Todd Solondz is one of those talented writer/directors whose work I don't like but will see nonetheless. (Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson are two others.) Maybe it's because I keep hoping he will finally grow up and make a film that truly does say something about my life, or maybe I'm just feeding my cultural literacy. Solondz, known for his punishing storylines, opens his latest film with the funeral of his Welcome to the Dollhouse heroine, Dawn Wiener, who has committed suicide. That act alone - killing off the one character that endeared him to art house audiences - should give you an idea of what to expect. (Having seen his previous films Happiness and Storytelling should do that too.) What follows is the story of Dawn's lonely cousin Aviva - her name one of the film's many palindromes (a word or phrase spelled the same forwards and backwards: "Madam, I'm Adam" et al) - and her decision, at thirteen, to get pregnant. Her controlling mother (Ellen Barkin, quite good) whisks her off to an abortion clinic against her will, and thus begin Aviva's hapless adventures. The gimmick behind Palindromes is Solondz's decision to cast seven different actors (eight, technically) in the role of Aviva. In an interview, he claimed that he was inspired to try this because, during the casting process, he often finds several actors perfect for a role, and hates having to choose just one. I've been there, and I agree with him. But whereas four of the Avivas are actual white teenage girls - presumably the four actresses who auditioned the best - Solondz also includes an obese African American adult, cult star Jennifer Jason Leigh, and even a young male actor. The director has his reasons - which I'll go into later - but the latter three choices suggest less casting idealism and more contrivance.

I've finally nailed down the problem I have with Solondz: In his last three features, he keeps taking the pompous stance that he is Saying Something About Real Life, when in truth he is merely reacting to traditional notions of story and character arc. In short, he's rebelling not against society, but against other filmmakers. Thus, his worldview is a lot narrower and a lot less significant than he believes it is. And I'll never forget what my friend Rob said about Happiness: that Solondz's unerringly bleak stories express their own sort of phony sentimentalism - only the sentiment here is misery. That he populates his work with the handicapped, the physically ugly and the morally repugnant (when in doubt, Solondz always pulls out the ol' child molester character) tells me that he is lazily relying on shock value to drive his points home. (Did I mention that Palindromes is about anti-abortionists?)

I have to reiterate: I really do think Todd Solondz is talented and I am never bored by his work. But I also think he's shallow, too busy making sophomoric "The world sucks!" declarations to explore the messy gray areas of real life. Palindromes is, in some ways, his strongest work, with several excellent moments, but he beats us over the head with his "palindrome" theme by the third act - in character names, in story structure, even in room numbers on the doors - because it's all supposed to mean (and Dawn Wiener's brother expresses this explicitly) that everybody ends up just like they started, no matter how much they insist they change. This is the apparent rationale behind the multiple casting of Aviva - the more she changes, the more she stays the same - but Solondz needs to trust his audience more. We got the idea, Todd, you don't need to keep reminding us of it every ten minutes.

PAN'S LABYRINTH (Mexico/Spain, Guillermo del Toro)
Pitch-dark fable that takes place in 1944 Spain, shortly after Franco's Fascists won the civil war. A young girl is taken to a castle-like structure in the forest where she is to live with her pregnant mother and her stepfather, a particularly brutal captain in the Fascist regime who is overseeing the obliteration of the last few Republican partisans in the area. The imaginative little girl soon finds an escape into a fantasy land of fairies and fauns (the literal English translation of the Spanish title is "The Labyrinth of the Faun"), but it is a domain as evil and as treacherous as the real world outside her bedroom. And although the advertisements would have you believe that a great deal of the film takes place in this alternate universe, in fact it's really one part fantasy to perhaps four parts reality - not unlike its closest cinematic cousin, Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. But the similarities end there; Writer/director del Toro is not filming a true story but rather creating a parable for the value of civil disobedience and the strength of the human will. That this parable is told via some gruesome scenes of vile imaginary monsters and an even more vile human one, with many violent and even disgusting images that are definitely not for children, is simply part of del Toro's vision. I certainly liked Pan's Labyrinth; it's an imaginative story and Sergi Lopez makes for a memorably nasty villain. But there is a key plot hole that, if you haven't seen the film yet, I urge you now to stop reading this review, for I'm going to discuss it. Without giving too much away, there is a scene late in the film where Character A does some vicious - and well-deserved - things with a knife to Character B. And then Character A simply walks away, allowing Character B to go crazy and seek revenge. With all that is at stake between the heroic Republicans and the loathsome Fascists, and given the tragic results that ultimately stem from this decision, it is ridiculous that Character A would not have simply killed Character B. I can only guess that del Toro avoided the logical choice in order to create a martyr to serve his story's themes. Anyway, it stands out like a sore thumb, but there are a few other confusions and contrivances which I can't overlook, and which took me out of the film.

PAPER HEART (US, Nicholas Jasenovec)
Childlike comedian Charlyne Yi, whose claim to fame heretofore has been a small but funny role as a stoner girl in Knocked Up, joins forces with director Nicholas Jasenovec to make a documentary about love, and why people fall in love, and why Yi is unable to. At least it purports to be a documentary. In what could be called the Blair Witch Project of romantic comedies, it quickly becomes evident that a lot of this is scripted - especially when beloved movie star geek Michael Cera enters the picture and starts dating Yi in front of the cameras. (To complicate matters, director Jasenovec is played on screen by actor Jake M. Johnson!) There are still enough cross-country interviews with real life lovers to qualify Paper Heart as a quasi-documentary, but whether you like the film or not depends entirely on how you react to Charlyne Yi's quirky personality. I'll be upfront: Some will find her cloying. Some will find her grating. But some will find her utterly charming. I was dreading the worst, to be honest, but I found myself liking her. She seems genuine, and a brief clip at the beginning of the film sums up her shtick: Performing her standup act, Yi tells the audience that her normal-looking hair is actually a wig and pretends to pull it off. Then she lamely says "Ha ha, bet you thought it was a wig," to weak laughter. Then she says, "Bet you thought it was my real hair" and actually reveals that it is a wig - covering up her hair, which looks exactly the same. The crowd goes nuts. This sort of gentle put on, where an obvious, half-baked gag reveals a funnier, smarter surprise and even a strange sort of truth, is what makes Paper Heart tick. There is more to this film than just cutesiness. It also makes a statement on how impossible it is to live normally when a camera is tracking your every move, a subtle critique not only on reality TV but on documentaries in general. In the end, I was won over by Yi and her unclassifiable project, and although it's nothing earth-shattering, it's a sweet little movie.

PARADISE NOW (France/Palestine, Hany Abu-Assad)
Quietly moving (and troubling) drama about two ordinary Palestinian men, good friends, who have been drafted by a secret "freedom fighting" organization to become suicide bombers in nearby Tel Aviv - the next day. Agreeing to the job without argument, as much due to the frustration of their own personal lives as to any hatred of Israelis or love of Allah, the two commit themselves to the task until a snag early on suddenly separates them, giving each man time to reflect on what they're doing, why they're doing it, and whether they really want to go through with it. The results are unexpected. Arab filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad clearly places himself among those seeking a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, but he nevertheless understands the bitterness felt by the Palestinians, leaving it up to us to judge their actions. In lesser hands, Paradise Now would have been preachy, obvious, hysterical and lumpen. But Abu-Assad and his excellent cast are honest and forthright in their work. The film is as subjective as possible - it is a war story without violence, a heart-wrencher without a musical score, a thriller without bad guys, a love story without sex. Watching the film puts the lie to the stereotype of the suicide bomber, exposing us to a human situation so complicated that the only thing we can really agree on in the end is its tragedy. Highly recommended.

PARANOID PARK (US, Gus Van Sant)
Another lovingly-shot tone poem about disaffected youth from Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park will remind many of the director's earlier, stronger Elephant, though it is even more abstract and less disturbing. The movie follows a teenage skateboard enthusiast named Alex (Gabe Nevins, a newcomer like most of the rest of the Portland-based cast), basically a good kid, as he is quietly overcome by guilt after the horrific death of a security guard near the titular skateboard park where Alex hangs out. The story teases at the extent of his involvement until a fairly startling mid-movie revelation smacks us in the face with it. (This sudden flash of violence in an otherwise lackadaisical narrative is becoming a trademark for Van Sant.) Nevins is quite good in his debut role, and Van Sant, celebrated cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and sound designer Leslie Shatz create a unique mood that reflects Alex's increasingly, well, paranoid conscience. Paranoid Park's eccentric soundtrack - a lot of cues are lifted from Nino Rota's spirited, even campy '60s score to Juliet of the Spirits - as well as its heavy use of slow motion may turn some viewers off, but I found these flourishes to add to the film's distinctive flavor. I wasn't nearly as moved by Paranoid Park as I was by Elephant or even by Van Sant's achingly slow Gerry, but I still found it a satisfying and genuinely new-feeling film. At a time when most American movies have been treading the same artistic and narrative ground for over a decade now, Paranoid Park, though slighter and more forgettable than it could have been, still feels like a breath of fresh air.

PARIS, JE T'AIME (France, various)
This is an "omnibus" or "portmanteau" film, in which twenty international directors were assigned to each make a short filmed in one of Paris' 20 arrondissements (neighborhoods) - though two were dropped from the final film as their shorts apparently didn't fit in. Nevertheless, as with most features like this, you're not really watching one movie as much as you are sitting through a short film festival. Which is fine, because just as with any collection of short films, there are some brilliant parts of Paris, je t'aime, some boring parts, some pretentious parts, some interesting parts, and some awful parts. Unlike a short film festival, however, one still has expectations that the film will maintain a certain consistency. And although the producers of this film did a pretty good job in assembling the wide variety of filmic styles and stories into a cohesive "group show," the film itself doesn't build to much. Still, there are enough great moments in Paris, Je T'Aime to compensate for the weaker ones and make the film, on the whole, worth seeing. The standout shorts for me were mostly the ones with little-known French actors speaking French. (The fact that half the cast and seemingly half the directors hail from Hollywood only serves to distract. Presumably the producers lured in big American stars in order to obtain better funding and wider distribution, but whereas actors like Natalie Portman and Steve Buscemi fit into the film's recurring theme of Americans abroad, I kept asking myself, "Why Nick Nolte, when a French actor would have made more sense? Why Bob Hoskins? Why Maggie Gyllenhaal?") The first two segments, about a lonely man in Montmartre who meets a strange woman and a young lad hanging out near the Seine falling in love with a Muslim girl, bring the film off to a charming start; from there the film has its ups and downs (a funny, if mean, segment from the Coen Brothers; an unbearably bad short from cinematographer/Asian fetishist Christopher Doyle; a beautiful passage from Isabel Coixet about a man about to leave his wife), though it ends particularly poignantly with Alexander Payne's segment about a chubby American tourist (character actress Margo Martindale) who wanders Paris alone and has something of an epiphany; it's funny (Martindale narrates in hilariously bad French), sad, touching and sweet. It's by far the best of all the short films, in my opinion, and I think the producers must have agreed, since they wisely chose it to close the film. But it's so good that it only had me wishing that Paris, je t'aime could have reached such heights more often.

PERSEPOLIS (France, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud)
A truly unique film, in that it is a black and white animated autobiographical feature, among the few adaptations of graphic novels helmed by the comics' own creator (Satrapi). Adapting and condensing her four books of growing up in Iran during the '70s and '80s (with a few troubled teenage years in Vienna), Satrapi, with codirector Parronaud, lifts her stark, simple cartoons off the page and invests them with breathtaking and wonderfully creative animation. Persepolis astonishes every minute with its inventive visuals, filled with rich detail and gorgeous texture. The film is at once a brief history of Iran, and how it devolved from a corrupt but Westernized nation into an oppressive religious state run by ignorant zealots, and Satrapi's own life story. Fortunately, by interweaving history with personal remembrances, Satrapi keeps us from feeling like we're just listening to somebody talk about themselves. Her own life may have been no more or less remarkable than anybody else's, but she knows how to tell a good story and provide wry, unsentimental insight into the making and unmaking of a nation that, in Western eyes, can appear to be mysterious and frightening. Although I was left wanting a bit more at the end - the film quietly concludes without any big hurrah - I still found it an excellent piece of cinema and a fresh reminder of what wonders can still be achieved with traditional, hand-drawn animation, even as everybody else continues to play with their computers.

THE PERSONALS (Taiwan, Chen Kuo-fu)
Rene Liu plays Du, a pretty young ophthamologist who suddenly quits her job and decides she wants a husband, so she places an ad in the local newspaper's personals section expressing her intentions. For the bulk of this quiet, low-budget film, Du meets a seemingly endless variety of Mr. Wrongs, all at the same teahouse that's like a second home to her. With its kitschy soundtrack and array of goofball suitors, The Personals comes across at first as a romantic comedy, ala the similarly-themed American indie Next Stop: Wonderland. But as we listen to the first of Du's many confessional messages on her ex-lover's answering machine, we realize that there may never come a Mr. Right: there are serious, even tragic, reasons behind her search for a mate. As layers of her character are gradually revealed, it becomes apparent that this is all some elaborate mind game Du is playing not only with the men who answer her ad, but with herself. And as she continues to reject the obvious humanity of her later suitors, she sets herself up for something of a meltdown, and the film builds to a startlingly emotional climax that lingers in the memory long afterward. The Personals is that rare film that leaves its audience with a gift - in this case, the most complex and three-dimensional female character to grace the screen in years. Rene Liu has a remarkably expressive face and serves her character very well; director Chen calls her "definitely the best actress in Taiwan." Made in 1998, it's only now getting a very brief and limited theatrical run in the U.S. Try to find it, if you can, for it shows once more that Taiwanese filmmakers - along with those from Iran - are producing the most honest, relevant and thoughtful cinema in the world today.

THE PIANIST (France/Poland/Germany/UK, Roman Polanski)
While walking away from the well-done The Pianist, I wondered aloud to my friend, "We've now been so saturated with Holocaust dramas, can anybody - even someone of Roman Polanski's caliber - really add any new angle, any fresh insight, as to what happened, or how it affected people?" The answer, of course, was "No." At least not unless you make a movie that shows Jews as evil and Nazis as sweethearts, which I don't think is gonna happen. So with The Pianist we have yet another impressive, grim, horrifying account of these events, seen through the eyes of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a popular classical pianist who lost his family but survived several years in the Warsaw ghetto - and hiding out in secret apartments throughout town with the battle literally at his doorstep - while World War II tore apart his country and his people. Adrien Brody does a fine job as Szpilman, speaking little but letting his naturally sad and sympathetic face do all the acting for him. Szpilman's saga might be amazing, but after the slightly similar story told in Europa Europa (which, while also based on fact, is far more outrageous as it tells the story of a Jewish teenager who posed as a Hitler Youth as his means of escaping the Nazis), even his experiences seem less surreal, less incredible. There is a hint of something new here, as it touches on the old theory that "art saves lives," literalizing it - the real-life Szpilman owed his own survival to the people who believed his talent as a musician was so great that somehow he had to be spared - but it's a subtle point that may not be entirely communicated. All that said, the muted cinematography is remarkable, as is the production design, and Polanski is in top form: devotees of his work will see his personality stamped all over the film. Not only because Polanski himself escaped the camps as a child in Poland, but because Szpilman belongs wholeheartedly in the director's coterie of lonely, isolated urbanites, trying their best to stay alive and stay sane.

THE PIANO TEACHER (France/Austria, Michael Haneke)
Let's forget, for a moment, that an Austrian director takes an Austrian novel, adapts it to the screen and even shoots it in Vienna, yet chooses a French cast and has them all speaking French. After all, we Americans do that all the time! The Piano Teacher is a gut-wrenching character study of its titular heroine (Isabelle Huppert, superb as usual), a sexually repressed woman who treats her piano students with the utmost contempt, has a hostile, unresolved relationship with her live-in mother (Annie Girardot) and, most notably, fosters a likeness for kinky, kinky masochism. If you think that sounds like fun, try to sit through an early scene in which Huppert sits on the edge of a bathtub and slowly slices up her private parts with a razor blade. Yikes! The Piano Teacher is a queasy, uncomfortable film. But it fascinates like a highway accident. Huppert is remarkable, as is Benoit Magimel as the young man who falls in love with her, and whose own levels of sadism are tested, explored, and never fully understood. If the film doesn't turn you off sex entirely, you can at least bear witness to one of the most complicated male-female relationships to hit the big screen in recent years. I still don't know if the story purports to say anything about human relationships beyond this one severely dysfunctional woman, though.

THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES (UK/Germany, Quay Brothers)
This inscrutable, overtly dreamlike fable is only the second live action feature from celebrated UK-based stop-motion animators (and identical twins) Stephen and Timothy Quay in ten years; their first, Institute Benjamenta, was poorly received by many critics, some of whom called it "legendarily boring." Personally, I loved Institute Benjamenta, so I was quite excited to see The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, despite a new volley of negative reviews. It's a strange movie, about a piano tuner who is taken to a remote coastal enclave to fix some elaborate wind-up penny arcade machines for a creepy doctor, whose intentions are never completely clear, but have something to do with a forced marriage. I think. Along the way, the piano tuner is pursued by the doctor's dominatrix servant (Assumpta Serna, still alluring in her late 40's) and falls in love with an opera singer who may be dead, an amnesiac, or something else. Those coming to this film expecting a coherent story and realistic characters are bound to be put off; the Quay Brothers are known for their own private lexicon of symbols and meaning. Instead, it's best suggested that one just watch the film and go along with the ride, as one does with a film like David Lynch's Eraserhead. Even so, I can't call this a great film. For me, the biggest letdown was that the Quays obviously shot The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes digitally, on HD. (This was clear even while watching a projected 35mm print of the picture in a theatre.) Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem for me, but so much of their work is about texture and lighting, and their animated shorts as well as Institute Benjamenta have an extraordinary visual depth to them. That depth is lost here, and it's a great loss. Also, much of the dialogue is so explicitly poetic and abstract that it will probably elicit giggles from some audience members - especially as the entire cast speaks English as a second language. (Accents galore!) Finally, the twins' trademark animation, gorgeous as it is, only appears in fits and starts. But I would hate to discourage the Quays from making more live action features. They have a unique voice and there's a lot to like about The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, including an inexplicable yet nevertheless heartbreaking ending.

POINT BLANK (France, Fred Cavayé)
Fast-paced Gallic suspenser about a nurse's assistant (Gilles Lellouche) whose pregnant wife has been kidnapped and who has been ordered to release a wounded criminal from his hospital if he ever wants to see her alive again. The action is non-stop, with plenty of dark little twists and turns and the proper amount of emotional manipulation. Point Blank - no relation to the 1967 Lee Marvin movie of the same title - is such a good old fashioned action picture that I don't have much to say about it. It's exciting, it's well-acted, and it's emotionally satisfying, with good guys you can root for and bad guys you can hate. It's not really unique, and it says nothing meaningful, but sometimes you just want to see a movie where people run around shooting at each other. I could have done without the epilogue, which introduces a couple of hard-to-believe story elements (unless France's criminal justice system is truly whacked) and ends abruptly with a terrible rock song playing over the end credits, but otherwise I found Point Blank a flawlessly engineered thriller.

POLICE, ADJECTIVE (Romania, Corneliu Porumboiu)
Film critics have been hailing what they call the "Romanian New Wave" because of two recent films from the Eastern European nation: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Though both films were unsentimental and chilly, with minimal camera work and bleak location scenery, they were still effective, thanks to strong - even harrowing - subject matter and engaging casts. The latest Romanian feature to reach the U.S., Police, Adjective, lacks everything that made its predecessors so compelling. Shot in what I like to call the "International Film Festival Style," with wide shots, extremely long takes and a camera glued to its tripod, Police, Adjective is almost defiantly boring in its depiction of a young detective's empty existence as he putters around on an insignificant drug bust involving three teenagers. A handful of deadpan dialogue scenes - mostly about the vagaries of words and language - do not make up for the many monotonous shots of the detective standing around, or eating soup, or waiting for paperwork to get done. Obviously, writer/director Porumboiu is trying to make a point about his characters' drab existence, but there's a way to get this across without boring your audience to tears. I don't mind a deliberately-paced film, but while watching Police, Adjective I could only think of how mercifully short this film could be if someone simply went in and halved the screen time of most of the shots. Nothing would be lost, not even the film's message. Other critics may be trying to convince you (and themselves) that there is something interesting going on here, but don't be fooled.

POOTIE TANG (US, Louis C.K.)
Clocking in at just over 70 minutes, this movie has "studio favor" written all over it: My employer Paramount, so keen on making the sure-fire hit Down to Earth with Chris Rock, seems to have made a deal with him: if he agreed to star in their big comedy, they would let him produce his own low-budget farce, made by and starring his buddies from "The Chris Rock Show" (including Lance Crouther in the title role). Well, Down to Earth wasn't a sure-fire hit, so Paramount put little effort into marketing Pootie Tang - they even limited their standard employee screenings to just 3 shows in the crummy small theatre on the lot (whereas Tomb Raider played at our marvelous big theatre throughout its opening weekend). For the record, if any of you were curious, Pootie Tang is a blaxploitation spoof (sort of) about a world-famous singer/actor/martial artist/ladies man (the titular Pootie) whose schtick is that he speaks in a completely incomprehensible form of Ebonics, saying things like "Wadda tay" and "Seppa tie" over and over. Which might have been funny if he didn't limit his babblings to the same 4 or 5 phrases. The joke gets old fast. Meanwhile, a big bad businessman (Robert Vaughn, saying "thanks for keeping me employed, Paramount") wants to thwart Pootie's do-gooding, blah blah blah. It's not as bad as it could be (surely it's no worse than Robert Townshend's overrated Hollywood Shuffle); there are a few amusing bits, and Crouther is quite likeable, but Rock, who plays several supporting roles, is not funny and not a good actor. I just don't know what people see in him. Perhaps Paramount is now wondering the same thing.

POSSESSION (US/UK, Neil LaBute)
Imagine that: In this day and age, somebody actually bankrolled a wide-release film about a pair of English literature researchers and a pair of Victorian poets! And not only that, but it was directed by the Mormon American Neil LaBute, best known for his scatching sexual satires The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors! Possession, based on the A.S. Byatt novel, weaves its story across two time periods: in contemporary London, an American research assistant (LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart) teams up with a priggish poetry expert (Gwyneth Paltrow, once again donning her British accent, which now seems almost like a running joke) to unravel the mystery behind their discovery of some long-lost love letters between Queen Victoria's poet laureate and a famous poetess who not only had no known connection to said poet laureate, but was known to be a lesbian. (Imagine Robert Browning having a passionate affair with Edna St. Vincent-Millay and you'll get the idea.) As they unearth more clues, the film flashes back to the two tragic Victorians (Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle). Did they or didn't they? Not what you'd call "high-stakes storytelling" - the "scandal" sure to break out should the affair be substantiated will only rattle the cages of a couple dozen poetry scholars - but the mystery is made intriguing enough, and romance is the whole point of the film anyway. It's a highbrow date movie that, although it bogs down occasionally (especially when documenting the budding romance between Eckhart and Paltrow, as I didn't find there to be much chemistry between the two), can also sweep you off your feet in equal measure, particularly during the segments of the film dedicated to the two star-crossed Victorians, filled with sweeping vistas of the English countryside and some passionate language indeed. Northam's performance is a highlight, as is Gabriel Yared's lush score.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (US, Robert Altman)
Weird mishmash of a movie, based on Garrison Keillor's long-running cult radio show of the same name. Costarring (as himself) and written by Keillor, much of the film is a sort of valentine from this man to his own creation. How comfortable you are about that will surely depend on how big a fan you are of his show, an intentionally old-timey affair combining new takes on classic American folk music, corny jokes, and good old fashioned storytelling. For myself, I don't go out of my way to listen to it, but if I catch it on the air I'll enjoy it. So it's no surprise to me that the best parts of A Prairie Home Companion - the film adaptation, that is - are the musical numbers, most of them featuring Keillor, his regular musicians, and Meryl Streep, who has a wonderful singing voice. There is also a very funny song called "Bad Jokes," featuring Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as a singing cowboy duo with a rather risque sense of humor. If this were solely a concert film, it would be a vast improvement over what we've got, for Keillor hangs these musical numbers upon a saggy clothesline of a story: the theater where "A Prairie Home Companion" is recorded is (fictionally) due to be torn down, it's the final night of the show, and death permeates the air, both literally and figuratively. This is where the film doesn't work. I'm sure there are many levels here - Keillor envisioning the day when his real-live radio show will have its final performance (most likely due to his own death or retirement); the 81-year-old director Altman showing an awareness of his own waning years; the film could even be seen as an elegy for two dying arts practiced by two unique artists - Keillor, with his antique-feeling radio program, and Altman, who makes ensemble films like no other. But it's ruined by a clunky subplot where the angel of death, personified by actress Virginia Madsen, comes to the theater not only to take the life of one of the show's performers but also to usher out the actual show. It's a stupid idea, pretentiously played out, and Madsen seems stiff and confused in the part. It quickly bogs down what's already a mixed bag of a movie: Kevin Kline, as a 40's-style detective named Guy Noir, utters some terrific Keillor monologues at the beginning of the film, but soon starts sleepwalking through a series of modest pratfall gags that are neither clever nor funny. And all the backstage scenes are pointless. Still, if you come across this film on television or on DVD, skip forward to the terrific musical numbers. Meryl Streep is especially appealing here. I must say, she's really grown on me in recent years. I never thought much of her in the 80's when she was America's Most Serious Actress. Now that she's mellowed into middle age, her face has become less severe and more buoyant, her acting warmer and funnier. Without question, she is the best thing about A Prairie Home Companion, which except for some funny dirty jokes by Harrelson and Reilly is otherwise a miss.

THE PRESTIGE (US, Christopher Nolan)
It's ironic that The Prestige would open in theatres hot on the heels of the sleeper hit The Illusionist. While it's not uncommon for two big-budget features about the same subject matter - in this case, Victorian-era magicians - to come out at the same time, what makes this coincidence especially interesting is that The Prestige is explicitly about the ugly rivalry between two London-based conjurers, one of whom (Hugh Jackman) has the showmanship but not the talent, the other (Christian Bale) having the talent but not the showmanship, and this could be said of The Prestige's unwitting rivalry with The Illusionist: With a bigger budget, higher-wattage stars, a notable director and a much more ambitious scope, The Prestige should have blown The Illusionist out of the water. But it's the subtle magic and elegant story that make the unassuming Illusionist the better film. For all of its drama and its tortured characters, The Prestige's twist ending - which I must believe was genuinely designed to shock and surprise the audience - is something you could see coming at least an hour beforehand. While this doesn't make The Prestige a bad movie, it does make it a bit of a letdown. Of course I won't give the twist(s) away, but I had a strong reaction of "That's it?" once all was said and done. It's especially disappointing given Nolan's track record: few can argue that Memento and Batman Begins aren't extremely well-made films with very strong storylines. They're so good, in fact, that I almost want to give Nolan (and his brother Jonathan, who cowrote the script) the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he wanted us to predict the obvious conclusion. Maybe that was the point? For whereas The Illusionist keeps its protagonist's tricks a secret, The Prestige constantly and intentionally shows us the sleight-of-hand behind its characters' acts. But even if that's the case - which I doubt - and even if The Prestige's dark themes of obsession, envy and loss offer more to think about afterwards, the fable-like Illusionist is still more satisfying. After all, when you're making a movie that's all about magic acts, you'd better have one humdinger of a grand finale. The Prestige just shows us something we could've easily guessed.

PRETTY PERSUASION (US, Marcos Siega)
Lead-footed revenge comedy about a manipulative, fame-obsessed high school sophomore (Evan Rachel Wood) who decides the fastest route to stardom is through scandal. So, enlisting the aid of both her dippy best friend and a shy Muslim girl, she files sexual abuse charges - which may or may not be valid - against a lecherous English teacher at their Beverly Hills private school. Though the idea is promising, it's killed within the first five minutes by Skander Halim's self-satisfied script that says nothing new, funny or insightful. In 1989, Heathers set the bar for high school satire. The flawless Election raised it sky high a decade later. 2004's Mean Girls couldn't compete, but at least it crammed in some amusing commentary about the social pecking order of teenagers. Pretty Persuasion, in comparison, feels like it was written in a vacuum. I don't know his background, but I get the feeling that Skander Halim hasn't experienced anything other than a few screenwriting classes. He hopes to skew not only high school life, but the legal system, TV news, the modern American family and the culture of fame as well. Unfortunately his talents don't match his ambitions - and moreover, none of his script rings true. The courtroom scenes alone are so phony that even a casual Law & Order watcher can tell that Halim hasn't done his homework. Ditto Jane Krakowski's pushy TV news reporter - she's not a clever send-up of anybody in the real world, because no on-air personality actually acts or talks like she does. One could try to defend Pretty Persuasion by saying that it's not supposed to be real. But the thing is, the best satire - not matter how outrageous its presentation - has firm roots in reality. And since the film's final fifteen minutes are deadly serious, it's clear that Halim does intend to make a Big Statement about Something. But it's a tired script, and a sinking tide lowers all boats: music video director Marcos Siega does little to enliven the proceedings; Ramsey Nickell's camera seems more enamored of the posh Beverly Hills locations than of the actors' faces; and Evan Rachel Wood, who was so great in the otherwise overrated Thirteen, seems stiff. (Her hair is fabulous, though.) The rest of the cast fares even worse, although they do seem to be oddly devoted to the project. James Woods, as Wood's racist father, gets in a couple of laughs as he chews the scenery, but his rantings don't shock nearly as much as they're meant to. Only Selma Blair, in a small role, leaves much of an impression. I'll stop now before wasting any more time bashing Halim's inane, senseless, pretentious script, which is chock full of weak explanations for its contrived plot twists and little believable character motivation. All I will say is that if film critics and festivals are heaping praise upon this heavy-handed bore (and they are), then our standards for the American independent film have plunged.

THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR (Germany, Tom Tykwer)
I'm beginning to wonder if Tom Tykwer's breakout hit Run Lola Run was a fluke. After seeing his earlier Wintersleepers, an interesting if pretentious drama, and now his latest offering, I'm here to tell you that this guy seems more comfortable making dry, slow films than his frenetic Lola. Time time around, he explores the odd relationship between Sissi (Lola herself, Franka Potente), a mousy nurse at a psychiatric hospital who is so selfless that she even masturbates patients who can't sleep, and Bodo (Benno Furmann), a gloomy ex-soldier who saves her life one day after she is hit by a truck (with a makeshift tracheotomy that made everybody in the audience squirm when I saw it) and then takes off. Sissi rather inexplicably falls in love with her savior, and searches for him far and wide. Then she finds him. That's more or less all that The Princess and the Warrior is all about, though there is also an interesting subplot involving a bank heist (which is filmed with great suspense) and mental patients who actually seem like mental patients, dirty and ugly and violent. No cuddly crazies in this hospital! But when it's all over, it doesn't leave the viewer with much to think about, and is quickly forgotten. A noble effort, but here's hoping the talented Tykwer can think of something more meaningful to say with his future projects. If not, then could he please make a fun film like Lola again? Because Princess is neither meaningful nor fun.

PULSE (Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
The latest creep-out by one of Japan's most intriguing directors, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (whose 1998 thriller Cure only recently was released in the U.S.), Pulse doesn't have an American distributor yet, but for those of you surfing around for a review, here it is. Though my old roommate found it derivative of some Japanese comic book, I don't know from those things, so I enjoyed it a great deal. I think it's his finest work thus far. The plot concerns a group of college students in Tokyo who start seeing ghosts over the Internet - and in sparse, industrial "forbidden rooms" - and the experience causes many of the students to kill themselves or disappear mysteriously. Gradually it appears that death is spreading across Japan as a sort of virus. Not that there's anything our hapless young characters can do about it. A horror film without gore, schlocky effects or stock "Boo!" tactics, Pulse slowly gets right under your skin and stays there. One of the most unsettling films I've seen this year, with dark, spooky atmosphere to spare - as well as a genuinely-felt message about people's increasing isolation in a society where everybody is connected to the Internet but unable to connect with each other. A fine effort from Japan's answer to David Lynch.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (US, Paul Thomas Anderson)
If nothing else, Paul Thomas Anderson will be remembered for his hubris. First he shamelessly apes Scorsese and Altman in his overstuffed and overrated Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and now he has decided he's going to be the guy who taught Adam Sandler how to act. Frankly, I had no real doubts that Sandler could put in a good performance if he wanted to. Considering the trademark stupidity of his comedies, he gives those movies exactly what they ask of him. And although I am certainly no fan of Anderson's previous work, I still recall many good moments in his films and hadn't yet relegated him to the dustbin of pretentious filmmakers. Nevertheless, I was more pleased than I thought I would be with Punch-Drunk Love.

Sandler stars as Barry Egan, a lonely loser who works at a warehouse selling kitsch and who is constantly belittled by his seven abusive sisters. Resigned to mumbling and lying whenever the conversation gets too personal, he also has a propensity for erupting into violent outbursts, smashing up windows or bathrooms in times of stress. Barry eventually finds meaning in his life when his closest sister Elizabeth (played by Mary Lynn Rajskub - who, by the way, stars in my film Claustrophobia and is a really nice person) sets him up with her coworker Lela (Emily Watson), who for some inexplicable reason has long been interested in him. (To buy the amazing Watson being attracted to a doofus like Sandler, you have to suspend the same disbelief you needed to when Christina Ricci fell for the scuzzy Vincent Gallo in Buffalo 66.) Together they embark on a fragile, nervous romance. And call me crazy but it's one of the purest, loveliest romances I have seen in recent American film (though admittedly, that's not saying much). Once Anderson gets over the more self-conscious moments of quirkiness at the beginning of the film - a sudden car crash, a stranger depositing a harmonium on the sidewalk, a sudden psychedelic light show - and settles into developing his characters, his film shines. (There's even an effective subplot involving a well-meaning call to a phone sex operator which pulls Barry into a paranoid nightmare that will scare you away from the idea of ever dialing a 900 number.)

Some critics have mentioned a lack of chemistry between Sandler and Watson, but in my book, Watson has so much chemistry with the camera that you don't even notice whether she and Sandler make a believable couple. Anyway, by redeeming his broken, self-loathing hero with nothing less than the power of love, Paul Thomas Anderson redeems his own integrity as a storyteller. I am cautious to out-and-out recommend Punch-Drunk Love as it is definitely a unique, oddball film that will turn off as many people as it enchants. But speaking as one of the film's more unexpected converts, I find myself liking it the more I think about it.