THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (Canada, Guy Maddin)
First and foremost, you must understand this: Guy Maddin makes very weird movies. In fact, he is a genuine underground filmmaker, so it's impressive that this, his latest feature, has not only gotten a U.S. theatrical release, but is even playing on two screens at L.A. megamall the Beverly Center. (Though it must be said, the Cineplex Beverly Center, built at the nadir of the "shoebox-sized multiplex" trend of the 80's, has fallen on hard times, and will play just about anything.) Where was I? Ah, yes. Imagine watching a recently-unearthed movie from 1925, made in some mythical country between Germany and Russia that had synchronized sound, English-speaking actors, and called itself "Canada," and you'll have some idea of what Guy Maddin's films are like. His latest, The Saddest Music in the World, takes place in 1932 Winnipeg, where legless(!) beer mogul Lady Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini, having the time of her life) decides to increase sales of her product by sponsoring a contest wherein, as the title suggests, musical groups from all over the world compete to see who can play the saddest song. This serves as a backdrop to another of Maddin's insane melodramas, sort of a love pentangle between Lady Port-Huntley, her caddish former lover from America, his lovelorn father, estranged brother and amnesiac girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros), who may be his brother's long-lost wife. The story, as usual, plays second fiddle to Maddin's style, using grainy, tinted film, old-fashioned visual effects, tinny orchestral music, and high-camp acting. Maddin's films aren't for everyone. In fact, I'm amazed he keeps getting the money to make them. But despite the ultimate fluffiness of his efforts (with titles like Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Sissy Boy Slap Party, there's no way you can take his work seriously), I'm one of his small contingent of fans, and I recommend the silly, strange Saddest Music to any adventurous moviegoer out there who is as tired as I am of the stale studio, foreign and independent fare that is clogging theatres in 2004, which so far (as I write this, in mid-May) is turning out to be the least interesting year for cinema that I have encountered, even moreso than 2003. See it at least for Rossellini, who, as she dances giddily on a pair of glass legs filled with beer, brings the house down.

THE SAME RIVER TWICE (US, Robb Moss)
In 1978, a group of friends in their late 20's who had worked for several years as river guides in the Grand Canyon decided to spend one last summer together on the Colorado, rafting, hanging out, and mostly being naked. One of them, Robb Moss, filmed the trip and made a little-seen documentary about it called River Dogs. Twenty years later, he revisited five members of this group to document how their lives had changed. Big surprise: they got older, and - with the exception of one amiable loser who stayed working as a guide - got married, had kids, and became respectable members of their communities. The Same River Twice is a good example of a film that works entirely on concept and not on delivery. It would be interesting to see how these five people changed only if we found them interesting in the first place. They all seem like nice folks, but Moss doesn't make their lives - past or present - feel compelling. Nor do they have much to say about aging, nostalgia, or even their own pasts. There are two or three wry observations on growing up, but they don't sustain a film that quickly runs out of ideas and winds up a boring home movie about people we don't know. The early footage - too sparingly used - is notable only for the nudity and the easy-to-capture beauty of the Grand Canyon. The Same River Twice would have been fine as a 15-minute short. In fact, the trailer shows you everything except the naughty bits.

THE SAVAGES (US, Tamara Jenkins)
Troubling but realistic comedy-drama about two neurotic siblings (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) who are forced to care for their dementia-addled father (Philip Bosco) after his girlfriend dies and he is left essentially homeless. We are briefly and succinctly informed at the beginning of the film that the father was an abusive, loveless man who drove his children's mother away, and this painful backstory informs every scene in which the bickering siblings lead the old man through the indignities of growing old in modern America. The Savages will be a depressing film for most, as it foreshadows the unhappy realities that many of us will face as our own parents enter their dotage and we are faced with the tough decisions of placing them in foul-smelling, soulless nursing homes to live out the final years of their life. As such, I won't blame anybody if they avoid this film entirely. But Jenkins' script and direction are solid, and Linny and Hoffman are great as usual. Watching these hopeless, scared adult children - both of whom have, interestingly, turned to (mostly unfulfilled) positions in the world of live theatre - flail about could have been irritating to watch with almost any other actors, but the doe-eyed Linney remains appealing as always, and Hoffman, who can be prone to screaming fits in his roles, delivers a generally restrained performance, cutting loose only when he absolutely has to. It's a sad portrait of a broken family, and moreover a gloomy reminder of things to come for all of us, but Jenkins invests enough humor, and there's enough genuine chemistry between Linney and Hoffman, to keep the film's spirits afloat.

SAVE THE LAST DANCE (US, Thomas Carter)
The box office success of this, 2001's first sleeper hit, surprised everybody here at Paramount, including the film's own producers. I must admit, when I saw it even I wondered if anybody would go to it. It is, after all, a black-themed story with a white girl at the center. A cynic might believe that it would thus turn away both black and white audiences. And it's about dancing, no less! By the guy who made Swing Kids! So why did it work for so many people? You got me. I suppose because it's fairly agreeable entertainment, if not much else.

Julia Stiles plays Sara, a white teenager from the Northeast whose ballet aspirations are shattered when her mother is killed en route to her Juilliard audition. Forced to move to Chicago to live with the jazz-musician father who abandoned her years earlier, she tries to adjust to her new life in the city's south side, where she is enrolled in a nearly all-black high school. Her racial isolation doesn't seem to faze her, though, and in no time she is picking up friends and hanging out with Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), a smart, handsome black student who sees that she can move like a dancer and thus takes it upon himself to teach her the joys of hip hop dancing. They fall in love, of course, and the film reveals some very truthful (and painful) insights about the risks of interracial romance. Its distinctly African-American point of view adds freshness to a tired setup, and I'm sure that director Carter's own ethnicity (he is black) is much responsible for the sympathetic, rather than white-fright cautionary, portrayal of inner-city life. And the story is at least smart enough not to suggest that these two live together happily ever after, just long enough to use their talents to get them the hell out of that suffocating neighborhood. A decent premise, naive but harmless, though Carter's direction is rather bland, and the story settles into the usual collection of cliches and contrivances (Derek's best friend is a gangster just asking for trouble; Sara's ballet dreams are obviously going to rekindle; etc.). Mostly, though, while the rest of the cast is competent if not spectacular, I lay the blame for my apathy at the feet of Julia Stiles. With her womanly voice and thousand-yard scowl, she projects a very gloomy screen presence indeed. Though it works for her shellshocked character, it also didn't win my heart. The girl is just too icy to love. In a few years she will make a wonderful femme fatale, possibly the Veronica Lake of her generation. But as a cute teenage heroine, she just doesn't do it for me. Fine choreography by Randy Duncan and Fatima, though.

A SCANNER DARKLY (US, Richard Linklater)
There are a lot of reasons why I should've hated A Scanner Darkly: I don't like the cast, I find Richard Linklater a hit-and-miss director, and I definitely disliked Waking Life, his first foray into "digital rotoscoping," where live actors were filmed and then painted over with a computer - a technique used again here. Hell, I'm not even that big a fan of science fiction. But this film, the eighth feature based on a Philip K. Dick story and supposedly the most faithful of all the adaptations, worked for me. For starters, unlike those other effects-saturated Dick films (Total Recall, Minority Report, Blade Runner et al), A Scanner Darkly is set in a depressingly realistic suburban future ("7 years from now"). Outside of some crazy holographic suits that are constantly shifting between millions of identities, the story could take place today. Sure, there's the usual Big Brother stuff and the conceit of an insanely addictive designer drug called Substance-D, which is so powerful that it's got 20% of the population hooked on it, but those are just minor extensions of what we already deal with in 2006. Nevertheless, the film still explores a common theme of Dick's, which is the questioning of reality. Here, Linklater's rotoscoped visuals work perfectly: you are seeing Keanu Reeves, but you aren't seeing Keanu Reeves. You are seeing a simulation of Keanu Reeves, who in turn plays a drug addict named Bob Arctor, who in turn leads a double life as Officer Fred, a covert operative for the police, showing up to meetings in one of those shape-shifting suits. His latest assignment is to literally spy on himself (his superiors not knowing that he is, in fact, Bob Arctor) and his two deadbeat roommates - played, often hilariously, by Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson. It's a stroke of casting genius, putting marijuana activist Harrelson and frequently-arrested substance abuser Downey in a film about drug addiction. Rounding out the cast is Rory Cochrane as their tragicomic Substance-D loving friend (another bit of clever casting: Cochrane is best known for playing the eternal stoner Slater in Linklater's Dazed and Confused) and Winona Ryder, coming out of semi-retirement (after her embarrassing shoplifting incident which some say was related to her own problems with prescription pills) to play Bob's girl - and possibly his target - and possibly something else. Too lazily paced to make a good detective story, A Scanner Darkly slowly reveals itself to be, first and foremost, a profoundly sad tale of drug addiction and the real human beings who fall prey to it. This film is not for everybody - it may not even be for those who want to see it - but I was surprised at how much I liked it and was haunted by it. It's a truly unique film, a fluid piece of literature, well worth seeing by open-minded audiences.

SCHOOL OF ROCK (US, Richard Linklater)
Every once in a while, I can appreciate a formulaic Hollywood story, if it offers up enough charm to make the predictability palatable. School of Rock is such a movie - almost. I like Jack Black, but here I didn't find him all that funny or interesting. He just does what he usually does, and though his character's name is Dewey Finn, it might as well be Jack Black. Dewey is a part-time rocker and full-time slacker who gets kicked out of his band just weeks before a local Battle of the Bands contest, which he insists he not only would have won, but would have also given him the money to pay his back rent to his long-suffering wimp roommate (Mike White, who wrote the screenplay). Down on his luck, Dewey poses as said roommate when an offer to be a substitute teacher at a private elementary school comes through the phone. He somehow gets away with teaching his class nothing, until he hears them playing music and gets the idea to turn them into a tight rock band that he can take with him to the contest.

All this would be perfectly dreadful, except that Black is an agreeable presence (if not star material), the film has a soft tweedy look to it, and the young actors cast to play his students are great. Kudos to the casting directors. It's not easy to cast kids, and the gang they came up with is perfect (I'm not the only one who thinks the girl who plays bass is a hottie-in-the-making). As is Joan Cusack as the high-strung principal with a taste for Stevie Nicks. It's rather nice that at least White doesn't make her character hook up with Black's, but his story otherwise adheres so closely to formula that I felt he could have gotten away with a little more subversiveness, and unwisely chose not to. This is, after all, the guy who wrote and starred in the disturbing Chuck & Buck. By the way, not only is his own character rather underwritten, but talented cult comic Sarah Silverman is wasted in a simplistic role as White's castrating bitch girlfriend. Oh well. Nevertheless, it's likeable fluff, and sure to score higher with fans of Black and/or people with a fondness for 70's hard rock. I put myself more squarely in the latter category; my friend Thomas, with whom I watched the movie, never much cared for the likes of AC/DC or Led Zeppelin, so I suppose he was predetermined not to enjoy School of Rock. But in my book, any film that can correctly reference Rick Wakeman's keyboard solo in Yes's "Roundabout" deserves some credit.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (France, Michel Gondry)
Celebrated weirdo music video director finally makes a feature film without a script by equally celebrated weirdo screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and the results are exuberant, kooky, disarming and, for the most part, successful. Stephane (art house "it" boy Gael Garcia Bernal) is an inventive young dreamer who returns to Paris after his father's death. Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is his standoffish new neighbor, who he at first doesn't care much for, then falls hopelessly in love with. Gondry, who wrote the script, continuously blends fantasy and dream with reality, to the point where the viewer is forced to give up trying to tell which scenes are "real" and which are in Stephane's head; Gondry uses the magic of cinema to do whatever he damn well feels like, and what we're left with is a sort of tone poem about the pain and confusion of unrequited love. Bernal's dorky performance fits the film's goofy attitude to a tee, and where I might have preferred seeing Stephane pursue somebody more attractive than the scrawny Gainsbourg, who looks like she smokes ten packs of cigarettes a day (and smokes about as much on camera during the movie), the rest of the cast is wonderful. Gondry has clearly made a very personal film: his sense for both whimsy and heartbreak are there in every frame. And while some may tire of the endless flights of fancy that Stephane and the movie set off upon, there is enough rich humor and wildly imaginative visuals to keep anybody interested in Stephane's misadventures. There is also a treasure trove of ambiguities in the relationship between Stephane and Stephanie, which will either charm or frustrate audiences. Me, I went with the flow: Like Gondry's protagonist and, I'm sure, like Gondry himself, I've been there before, in my own desperate crushes on girls whose interest in me maintained a maddening level of inscrutability. So I know that there is a lot of insanity in puppy love that can never be adequately explained, and commend Gondry for ultimately shrugging his shoulders when it comes to the question "Why do we fall in love?"

THE SCORE (US, Frank Oz)
Finally, Paramount churns out a decent film! The Score is a super-tense nail-biter about a professional thief (Robert De Niro) who agrees to take on the proverbial "last job," even though it breaks his rules - partnering up with a stranger (Edward Norton, impressive as usual) and working in his home town (Montreal, a refreshing filmic locale, well-used). But the money - a cool $6 million - is too good to pass up, especially since it means he can pay off his fancy home and his treasured jazz club, and retire with his flight attendant girlfriend (Angela Basset, who has maybe two or three scenes). Marlon Brando plays the "mastermind" of this score, which involves the theft of a prized French sceptre from an impossible-to-crack safe under heavy security in the bowels of a government building, and he is very fat, and very foul-mouthed, and interestingly rather pathetic. His performance is fine, but when you see Brando, you expect another "Godfather"-like figure, so it's a treat to see him play his character as, well, a fat loser. But the film is all about the heist, and builds incredible suspense around it, much like a modern Rififi. I have some gripes about the ending, which has a nice twist but comes across as a bit glib. If I have any other complaint with this film, it's that for such a well-crafted, intelligent, adult thriller, it doesn't leave you with anything to think about afterward. But not every film has to be deep - this one is exciting and entertaining, with strong performances, crisp dialogue and confident direction, and in this case that's enough.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (US, Edgar Wright)
If you asked any urban hipster under 30 what movie he was going to see on August 13, 2010, he would have said Scott Pilgrim, and you might be excused for thinking the movie was thus going to be a big hit. That it wound up bombing at the U.S. box office tells you that most Americans are not really into a film like Scott Pilgrim, a nearly unclassifiable mishmash of indie comedy, martial arts flick, rock musical, live action cartoon, and superhero movie. Adapted from Bryan Lee O'Malley's Toronto-set comic books, the film's simple setup is that fey 22-year-old slacker Scott (Michael Cera) falls for too-cool-for-school Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and, in order to win her, must defeat her seven evil exes in elaborate battles modeled after video games like Street Fighter. These over-the-top challenges serve as a metaphor for the insecurity young men feel when dating a girl who's out of their league: each of Ramona's evil exes represents someone hip, successful, or sexy that Scott can never be. Thematically, the film goes no deeper than that. There's no profundity here, merely eye candy - and lots of it, courtesy of the talented Edgar Wright, who gained legions of nerdy fans with his British TV series Spaced and his first feature, the excellent Shaun of the Dead. After his cop comedy Hot Fuzz faltered - perhaps it was too English even for Wright's Anglophile fans - it seemed the director would reclaim the film geek crown with Scott Pilgrim. Indeed, this movie is destined for cult status for its clever visuals alone, which push the medium to such limits that I honestly wonder where cinema can go from here. (I'm surprised it wasn't released in 3D.) But while this is a lively, funny, eye-popping experiment in mainstream filmmaking, it's not much more than that. Weirdly, Scott Pilgrim reminded me a little too much of (500) Days of Summer, with a generous helping of Run Lola Run, a dash of Sin City, and a hint of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In other words, I think Wright is trying just a wee bit too hard to appeal to every twenty/thirtysomething who flocked to those hipster classics. Don't get me wrong: I did enjoy this film, and would even pay to see it again. But if I'm being a little harsh, it's because Shaun of the Dead stunned me with the real emotion and depth lurking beneath its "zombie comedy" sheen, so I know Wright is capable of finding the soul in his poppy material, which he doesn't do here. There should be a rule: The more style you display, the more substance you need to back it up with. But the cast is perfect (Cera's boyishness may soon doom him to Ralph Macchioland, but his comic talents keep his career afloat) and you can't deny Wright's sincere passion for both moviemaking and pop culture.

SECRETARY (US, Steven Shainberg)
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a near-suicidal masochist recently released from the mental hospital and back into the suffocating folds of her family. Determined to get her life together, she applies for a job as a secretary. James Spader plays E. Edward Grey, her new boss, an attorney with a flair for command and punishment that Lee notices - and loves - immediately. They soon develop a mutually beneficial master-and-servant relationship, until Grey starts feeling pangs of guilt about his "abnormal" behavior. Lee, bless her heart, is quite happy to serve, and doesn't see anything wrong with sado-masochistic romance. Nor, to its credit, does Secretary, which despite its being a Sundance prize-winner (usually a sign of being reactionary and Hollywood-friendly) retains its edge and bite. Though the relationship shared by its two stars is about command, not bondage (so thankfully there are no boring forays into leather and whips), the story doesn't judge its heroine if she finds happiness in being spanked or crawling across the floor; nor does it back off from the idea that two people can find healthy love even while their sexual relationship remains abnormal. Gyllenhaal embodies her mousy character to such a grand degree that I wonder if she is this mousy in real life. Spader, now aging gently into Christopher Walken territory, finds a lot more humor in his role than many of the sourpusses in the audience I saw it with did. Secretary is actually quite funny. You know it's not to be taken too seriously when you see, at the beginning of the film, as Lee walks up to Grey's office to apply for the job, a wooden sign saying "SECRETARY WANTED" with flashing lights all around it. Even so, I was a little let down by the final 15 minutes of the film, when Lee puts her obedience to the test. I understand what the filmmakers are trying to say, but even with the unreality of the storytelling, I found this denouement a bit too silly. But if you're not such a square that you can't deal with the possibility that forcing somebody to bend over your desk and receive their punishment is a sexy thing, you may find Secretary a great date movie - with the right date.

SECRET SUNSHINE (South Korea, Lee Chang-dong)
A young widow (Jeon Do-yeon) and her little boy leave Seoul for the smaller city of Miryang, where her late husband grew up, in order to begin a new life. As the woman tries to fit in with her new neighbors, a surprise kidnapping attempt changes her life and sets her on several crises of faith. I'm cautious not to give much more away, because one of the joys of watching this film for me was not really knowing much about it beforehand. Alas, not many Americans will even get the chance to see Secret Sunshine in theaters, as it never obtained a U.S. release. But Jeon won Best Actress at Cannes this year, and it's not hard to see why: her performance is a tour de force, running the full emotional gamut during the film's lengthy running time (roughly two and a half hours). It's the main reason to see the bleak Secret Sunshine, a well-made picture that unfortunately, despite its complex religious questions and its intense emotional buildup, ends with a thudding anticlimax. This seems to be a common trend amongst today's art films (see No Country for Old Men), and frankly it drives me crazy. I don't need a happy ending - far from it - but I do like having an ending - something that leaves you with a lump in your throat, a tear on your cheek, or the feeling that you just experienced something. Rashomon, The Bicycle Thief and Nights of Cabiria are no less powerful for having solid, distinct conclusions, even while their characters have uncertain futures. Let's hope today's filmmakers come around to this more often, so we poor audience members aren't left with just a shrug when a movie ends.

SERBIS (Philippines, Brillante Mendoza)
Documentary-style drama about the day in the life of a seedy Manila porno theater run by a frazzled family is the first 35mm feature by newly prolific Filipino director Mendoza, a former production designer who only helmed his first feature (on video) in 2005, at the age of 45, and has since cranked out six more. (I could learn a lesson from this guy. Every indie filmmaker could.) His direction is skillful and the milieu he depicts is at once fascinating, depressing, stifling and, above all, physically filthy. After watching Serbis - Tagalog for "service," referring to the offerings of the gay street hustlers who ply their trade inside the theater (which, ironically, only screens heterosexual porn) - some viewers may long for a bar of soap and a fresh change of clothes afterwards. This is the sort of deliberately paced, slightly aimless international cinema that critics and festivals always go crazy for. While those films are often Emperor's New Clothes experiences for me, I still found Serbis compelling, partly because I had never seen a film from the Philippines before, but also because of the tantalizingly lurid subject matter. I recommend it for those who are curious to see what appears to be a realistic peek into one of the dingier corners of the world. And veteran actress Gina Pareño is great as the powerful matriarch of her otherwise listless clan. But I wouldn't consider Serbis a must-see.

SERENITY (US, Joss Whedon)
First, let me say that I enjoyed Serenity. But I think writer-director Joss Whedon is a big baby. He originally wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a feature film, but when it fizzled at the box office, he blamed the studio for screwing up his vision and then took his creation to network TV, where it became the hit he wanted. After several lucrative years writing about vampires, Whedon's follow-up show "Firefly" was cancelled after a dozen odd episodes. Livid, he came full circle and somehow convinced Universal's bean counters that a theatrical feature spinoff based on his dead show would be a hit, ala the Star Trek films. Hence Serenity. I gotta hand it to the man: he's got nerve. And as it turns out, he's also got a pretty shrewd sense of what works and what doesn't. Still, he sounds like a whiny little brat. That said, even as someone who never saw a moment of "Firefly," I didn't have much trouble following Serenity's story, though I'm sure I missed out on a lot of details. Whedon jumps right in, assuming everybody's been well-acquainted with the little universe he's created, and we follow the adventures of the spaceship Serenity, with its Han Solo-like pilot and his smart-talking rebel crew right out of Aliens and/or The Matrix, as it ferries around a waifish girl who turns out to be an ass-kicking Buffy type, programmed by the Galactic Empire - er, I mean the Alliance - to be some sort of secret weapon. If you think I'm suggesting that Whedon's ripped off ideas from virtually every successful sci fi picture from the last 30 years, you're right. Not that this is entirely bad. In fact, for fans of the genre who have been nothing but frustrated at the bloated sequels to Star Wars, The Matrix, Star Trek, Alien and so forth, Whedon's got to be seen as something of a savior. He's a geek writing for geeks, finding the best parts of the movies he loved while growing up and updating them with both youthful vitality and snarky teenage wit. Thus, he's managed that rare achievement: connecting with the under-30 crowd. So even if he defines his characters primarily by the schoolyard crushes they have on each other, it's a gimmick that continues to work for him. If you're a "Firefly" fan, you've already seen this movie. If not, don't be afraid of getting too lost. Though it's by no means brilliant, Serenity is still much more fun than any of the pretentious, plodding dreck that's been passing itself off as science fiction lately.

SERIES 7 (US, Daniel Minahan)
This film actually came out at the beginning of the year, and I avoided it, thinking it was just a cheap hipster bust on reality TV. Then last week it played at the local rep theatre, so I caught it - and I'm glad I did. For the record, it is a (not so) cheap hipster bust on reality TV, but it's a lot smarter and a lot more engaging than I thought it would be. (I was also reminded that it was filmed before "Survivor" hit the U.S. airwaves.) The film takes the form of a reality gameshow - "next, after these messages" plugs and all - called "The Contenders." The show's gimmick: 6 Americans are chosen randomly, given guns, and have to kill each other off until there's only one left standing. That one collects the game's only prize - his life - and proceeds into another game. The grand prize - after three successful games - is freedom.

On the verge of her third and final game, returning champion Dawn (Brooke Smith), a pregnant social misfit who takes no prisoners, returns to her home town to defend her title against 5 locals - one of whom happens to be her old high school boyfriend (Glenn Fitzgerald), dying of cancer. Series 7 could have been a shallow exercise, its target too obvious, its reference point too smug. Why does it work? In spite of his own satire (which veers, slightly amateurishly, between dead-on disturbing and plain silly), writer/director Daniel Minahan has concocted a compelling story filled with fascinating characters, all well-played by a cast of unknowns. I also heard that Minahan had some experience working on reality TV programs, which would explain the strikingly real feeling of his "show." This is one film that might actually gain impact on a small TV screen. It's violent, but there is a point, even if it's a little overplayed at times. However, it's the performances that make the film worthwhile: Smith and Fitzgerald are pitch-perfect, but the film's real breakout performance is by Connie Trabucco as a middle-aged Catholic nurse with a talent for murder. She could be your neighbor. She's awesome.

A SERIOUS MAN (US, Joel & Ethan Coen)
Offbeat even for a Coen Brothers movie, A Serious Man opens in a Jewish village in 19th century Poland, with a scene in subtitled Yiddish that has a never-explained connection to the rest of the story, which takes place in 1967 Minneapolis and centers on Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a nerdy physics professor whose finds his quiet life suddenly falling apart: his wife wants to leave him for another man, he is faced with possible blackmail at school, his mentally ill brother is staying with him indefinitely and his kids are going through the ugly pains of adolescence. What follows is a typical Coen Brothers exercise in sadism, as we watch things get worse and worse for poor floundering Larry. It took me a while to figure out just what this film is about, and I'm still not totally sure, but I'm going to venture a guess that, since a compelling narrative is somewhat absent, this is a character piece, a story of a man ensconced in scientific theory and academia who unsuccessfully tries to seek out rational answers for the irrational events in his life. (It's not coincidental that the film takes place at the beginning of the so-called "summer of love," when middle-aged, middle-class America would soon be confronted by the sexual/drug/rock&roll/youth/racial revolutions that were unfolding at that very moment.) Larry's quest leads him to the comically vague advice of various rabbis, and here I should point out that A Serious Man is absolutely, 100% steeped in Judaica. Not being Jewish myself, I was concerned that I wouldn't understand a lot of the references, but I didn't find it too difficult to follow. Those who have never been exposed to Jewish culture, however, may be lost. As for actual Jews, I have read some negative reviews by Jewish film critics who found the film's characters to be broad stereotypes. I disagree, but it should be mentioned. The Coens are Jewish themselves, and as they grew up in suburban Minneapolis in the late '60s, it stands to reason that they are telling a story very close to their hearts and are simply replicating the world of their youth, warts and all. Is the film satisfying? Well... We are in the fuzzy intellectual territory of the Coens' less accessible films, such as Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There, only moreso, for there are no major stars here (though a few character actors recognizable from TV), and the milieu depicted is esoteric to say the least. The humor is bone dry and the film ends with an abruptness typical of Coen Brothers fare. Look closely and you will find other recurring themes from their work, in particular the odyssey of the naive professionial forced to come to terms with the depths of corruption, selfishness and depravity in the world around him, a theme echoed in the two previously mentioned films as well as in Fargo and No Country for Old Men. I can't say that I loved it, but I was engaged by the film, and it gave me much to think about afterward. It is decidedly not "Coen Brothers Lite"; however, oblique as it is, A Serious Man is sure to win its own following.

SESSION 9 (US, Brad Anderson)
I was curious about this low-budget indie horror movie specifically because it was shot in Danvers, Massachusetts - the city in which I was born. Thankfully, I wasn't born in the film's central location, the (now derelict) state mental institution, where five macho construction workers (led by talented Scottish actor Peter Mullan and including the once-hot David Caruso, now accepting any work he can) are hired to strip the asbestos from the property for the building's new owner. Of course an abandoned nuthouse is full of bad memories and the suggestion of vengeful spirits, and one by one the men find themselves affected by their sinister surroundings. Eventually one of them disappears, at which point the film becomes more of a whodunit than a ghost story. Shot on 24 frames-per-second video, using mostly natural lighting, the film's realistic, psychological approach to horror precludes any threat of real phantoms in the asylum, so you wait to see which of the five men is responsible for things going wrong. You'd better have a pretty nifty payoff for such an obvious set-up, and for me the climax fell short. Session 9 is not that great, but it provides plenty of chills, and will undoubtedly find its own cult in time. It may also be the first true entry in the so-called "new horror genre" that The Blair Witch Project supposedly inspired. It's much better than Blair Witch, if only because the actors are stronger and the camera doesn't shake.

SEXY BEAST (UK, Jonathan Glazer)
Ray Winstone stars as Gary "Gal" Dove, a onetime London gangster who has retired to sunny Spain with his ex-porn star wife and their two friends. All is peaceful until an unwelcome face from his past comes to visit: Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a psycho with a short fuse who has been sent by their former boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShame) to take Gal back up to London for the Heist of the Century. Gal knows that, all-around, this is bad news, but unlike most caper films, the story focuses not so much on the heist itself but on the conflicting (and conflicted) characters of these two men.

Sexy Beast is obscenely stylish, but not shallowly so: Glazer may come from the world of TV commercials and rock videos, but here the gloss has voice and purpose. You get the sense that the camera is used thoughtfully, not just for show. The stylishness is also weighed down - literally and figuratively - by Winstone's sad, pudgy, very human hero. As for Kingsley, his eye-opening performance is already the most cherished of the year. He has a field day as the foul-mouthed, Cockney-accented, hyperviolent thug Don Logan - he's probably been dying to cut loose like this during his last 20 years of stoic, constipated roles - but he's still Ben Kingsley, short, skinny, bald, 57-year-old Ben Kingsley - and his physical weaknesses keep his character from being truly threatening, which actually serves the story well. Without giving any of the film's surprises away, there's something finally pathetic about Don Logan - the real menace is McShane's Mr. Big character, quiet evil with a heart of stone. Sexy Beast is a guy movie, to be sure, loaded with plenty of testosterone. But it's also a thinker's thriller, a character study and, in its way, high camp - dig that loungey soundtrack, those garish colors, Winstone's flabby belly filmed in wicked closeup - which brings out the lie in the characters' machismo. Sexy Beast belongs with the best of Britain's sporadic output of Great Gangster Films like Get Carter and The Long Good Friday.

SHAFT (US, John Singleton)
Who's the sex machine? Not this John Shaft - he's a killing machine! And so it goes with this very 90's update of the 70's blaxploitation classic. Whereas the audience for the 1971 Shaft wanted a strong, sexy, no-nonsense black man of the streets, here my employer Paramount believes today's audiences prefer a sexless black Terminator with an endless supply of bullets and attitude. (Samuel L. Jackson, the star of the film, has made public his disgust with the studio's decision - and director Singleton's acquiescence - to cut the sex scenes; he reportedly sneered, "I guess it's okay for Shaft to kill people, but not f*** people.")

In a nutshell, NYPD detective John Shaft (Jackson) has a score to settle: rich young white bastard Walter Williams (Christian Bale, replaying his American Psycho schtick note for note) has killed a black man outside a bar, and, after posting bail, runs off to Switzerland. Waitress Diane Palmieri (Toni Collette, even glummer than usual), the one witness to the crime, has disappeared at the worst time: when Williams returns to the U.S. two years later. When Williams is freed again on bail, an angry Shaft quits the force to find Diane on his own, in order to get her to testify and put Williams behind bars. Meanwhile, Williams teams up with Dominican drug lord Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright, unrecognizable and brilliant) in order to wipe out Diane, Shaft, and whoever else gets in the way. The plot thickens, twists, complicates - and in the middle of it is Shaft, killing people, scaring people, swearing at people, and having a grand old time. You can't dislike Jackson; he's just so damn cool to watch. But he's got no character. Nobody in this movie does. What's more troubling, John Shaft seems to have accepted his place in society: the white world is a separate universe, one in which he will never belong. Just as he takes in stride a motorist calling him a "crack addict," so too does he aim his gun only at other nonwhites. It's unsettling, because ultimately we see his character become irrelevant. Even the movie's shock ending (which I'm not giving away) winds up defining John Shaft as an unnecessary presence in his own film!

Still, it's good violent entertainment, if you're into that, and it breezes along thanks to Jackson's style and David Arnold's funky score (to say nothing of Isaac Hayes' indispensable theme song). But if there's any breakthrough in this Shaft, it is Wright's amazing performance, a role that could finally make him a star in his own right, but we'll see.

SHALLOW HAL (US, The Farrelly Brothers)
I never thought I would be a fan of the Farrelly Brothers back in the days of Dumb and Dumber, but they have grown on me. Though best known for their gross-out gags (of which the PG-13 Shallow Hal is mostly bereft), what I find most remarkable is the brothers' sense of humanity. They do more for the acceptance of people's differences than any other more high-minded Hollywood filmmaker around today. Of course a lot of morons don't understand that, and so many have a knee-jerk reaction of being "offended" by the Farrelly's taste for including characters who are retarded, albino, wheelchair-bound, dwarfish, or have other physical or mental abnormalities. Which is a shame, because these characters are invariably shown as being funny, smart, kind, and ultimately human. It's like going to a carnival side show and having the bearded lady look you in the eye and say "I don't mind if you stare, just so you know that I'm also a world-class chess player who is happily married with 3 great kids."

Shallow Hal is their most open call for tolerance. The Hal of the title (Jack Black) is indeed quite shallow - though a loser with the ladies, he still insists that only the supermodel-beautiful women of the world can meet his discriminating tastes. He is joined in this fight by his friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander), who is even more of a loser. But when stuck in an elevator for several hours with self-help guru Tony Robbins (playing himself), Hal is hypnotized by Robbins to only see the "inner beauty" of a woman. Hal's mind literalizes this command, and soon he starts panting after women who the rest of the world sees as unattractive, even repulsive. When he chances upon Rosemary (the skinny Gwyneth Paltrow to his eyes, a massive 300-pounder to everyone else), he falls head over heels in love. It's a one-joke idea: nobody, especially Mauricio, can understand how shallow Hal can swoon over the fattest girl in town, and we're treated to endless gags of the svelte Miss Paltrow crushing chairs and devouring tons of food while Hal can't understand why everybody is looking at her funny. But the sweetness at the core of this misunderstanding not only carries the film, but infuses the smart, witty Rosemary, who's had to endure a lifetime of rejection as a result of her weight, with great dignity. There is no question that she deserves to love and be loved, like everybody else (including a character who has spina bifida and has to walk on his hands, played by the amazing Rene Kirby, who actually has the condition and is shown downhill skiing on all fours during the end credits). Other filmmakers would probably cave in to our current skinny girl aesthetic and make Rosemary wind up losing weight and becoming pretty by story's end, so it's to the Farrelly's great credit that their leading lady is huge and decides to stay that way - which is, ultimately, just fine with Hal. Aside from that, there are plenty of rude jokes (don't miss the opening scene with Hal's father's raunchy deathbed advice), though the movie is much softer than the brother's previous outings; Black, usually cast as the big-mouthed best friend, is fine as a leading man (though I don't picture him in any romantic dramas any time soon); and for once I actually liked Gwyneth Paltrow, who even in skinny mode movingly conveys the low self-esteem of a woman subjected to years of being a physical outsider. Shallow Hal could be, in its own way, the most subversive and deeply-felt Hollywood comedy since Groundhog Day.

SHAME (UK, Steve McQueen)
Something akin to American Psycho only with murder replaced by sex, Shame is the sophomore feature from British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen (no relation to the late movie star). The suddenly ubiquitous Michael Fassbender stars as Brandon, a wealthy Manhattan corporate nobody who has a sex addiction. Or so the film wants us to believe - for much of its running time, Brandon doesn't seem to be getting any more action than any other good-looking, successful single New Yorker might. When his younger sibling Sissy (Carey Mulligan) suddenly shows up needing a place to stay, Brandon becomes even more morose than usual, even as his fixation on pornography, hookers, and one night stands continues unabated. That's pretty much it in terms of story.

There's so much potential in making a film about sex addiction. Though the jury's still out on whether it is a true addiction like alcoholism or drug abuse, it's compelling subject matter. But it remains maddeningly unclear what McQueen is trying to say with this film. He and cowriter Abi Morgan come across, frankly, as scolds - the film's very title suggests a Victorian tut-tutting of Brandon's promiscuous lifestyle, even though it doesn't really affect his work, always involves consenting adults, and isn't particularly deviant. But instead of suggesting that living in a world in which sex is employed to sell virtually everything may be creating characters like Brandon, unable to sustain healthy romantic relationships, or even saying that Brandon's soulless obsession with intercourse is a dark path that any single person could take, the story hints - only fleetingly - that Brandon's problem (and Sissy's too - for although she's not a sex addict, she's still a bit of a mess) stems from, yawn, some kind of abusive upbringing. But nothing is ever confirmed in what must be an intentional avoidance of naming a cause for these problems. In one sense, McQueen has a point - after all, in films about drug addiction, we don't usually see how the character first started using drugs. There's no need. We can guess a likely beginning; the point is how the character deals with the consequences. But since Shame keeps us at such a distance, rendering its characters as ciphers, it left me unmoved and wishing McQueen, Fassbender et al could have shed just a wee bit more light on their subject. But I'm still glad I saw Shame, only because it's made me think a lot about what I would have done to make it a better film. And for a writer/director, that's a weirdly enjoyable experience. The rest of you can take my word that Shame can be skipped, notwithstanding strong performances (albeit with slippery American accents; with a British cast and director, why didn't they just set the story in London?) and a lush string score by relatively unknown composer Harry Escott.

SHANGHAI NOON (US, Tom Dey)
Jackie Chan plays a member of the Chinese Imperial Guard who, in 1881, races to the Old West, where he and a reluctant cowboy (Owen Wilson) team up to save a princess - and each other - from an array of bad guys.

I hadn't seen Jackie Chan in an American film up until this point, and while his charm is indisputable in any language, I do miss the manic chaos of the Hong Kong films. The Hollywood style is, by nature, too clunky for Kung Fu - American directors continue to be absolutely at sea when it comes to capturing fight choreography with a camera. However, as a piece of pure escapism, Shanghai Noon delivers. And Owen Wilson, as a neurotic talkative outlaw with definitely modern gripes ("These guns are weird!"), is hilarious. As the script itself is typically hackneyed junk, I wonder if sometime-writer Wilson (he cowrote Rushmore) was allowed to script some of his own material. He and Chan keep the movie from settling entirely into tired cliche. And the scenery (a green, mountainous Alberta, Canada substituting for a Nevada that never existed) is breathtaking. If you're going to make disposable fluff, you might as well make it right.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS (US, Neil LaBute)
Writer/director LaBute adapts his four-character play about a college nerd (Paul Rudd) hooking up with an an arrogant art student (Rachel Weisz) who immediately sets to improving his appearance, affecting his relationship with his former roommate (Fred Weller) and the roommate's fiancee (Gretchen Mol). The result shows why most plays fall flat when brought to the screen: The chatty, stagebound dialogue betrays the story's origins at every moment. LaBute reportedly wanted to maintain the theatricality of his production. This begs the question, What's the point of making a movie? Simply committing his story to the permanence of celluloid? Whatever LaBute's intentions, the fact remains that The Shape of Things feels like filmed theatre, however prettily filmed. The cast is perfect - no surprise, since they originated their roles onstage - but because of the manipulative nature of cinema, we miss the joy of watching their live chemistry, or of deciding who to follow in each scene. The story itself, while a far cry from the viciousness of LaBute's first two films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, still carries a sting, and the last act does elicit gasps when you realize just what Weisz's character is up to, but LaBute plays it too safe while carefully avoiding the obvious Cinderella story cliches. Rudd's character is far too goofy to be likeable, so he never earns our sympathy; Weller's and Mol's supporting characters are rather one-dimensional; Weisz is such a creep that you know she's up to no good from the start. However, when the latter's cruel intentions are finally revealed, we neither feel that Rudd was undeserving, nor do we chuckle at his comeuppance. His personality is supposed to change as Weisz makes him more physically attractive, but the stretch isn't that great - the worst he does is get cagey about an indiscretion and tell a couple of lies that anybody, beautiful or homely, might tell. The whole movie is like that: Interesting, but not bold enough to provoke the sort of debate about love, art and morality that LaBute clearly hoped to provoke. The Shape of Things is pretty flat.

SHATTERED GLASS (US, Billy Ray)
Smart, absorbing drama about the real-life Stephen Glass, a 25-year-old reporter for the esteemed political news magazine The New Republic who was fired in 1998 for partially or completely fabricating 27 of the 41 stories he had written for the publication. Hayden Christensen does an amicable job as the opaque Glass, an ingratiating nobody who deflects suspicions with self-deprecating comments like "Are you mad at me?" - cheap attempts at getting his accusers to feel sorry for him. That doesn't fly with his editor Charles Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), a little-liked writer suddenly thrust into his new position through political machinations that distance him even further from his own staff - a staff that adores Glass. Sarsgaard is nothing short of mesmerizing in a tight, grounded performance that plays off of Christensen's whimpering Glass perfectly. His character turns out to be the far more fascinating one, as well - an unpopular man trying to convince his detractors that he knows the truth. But if we never find out why Glass does what he does, it's no failure of the film's. On my first feature Foreign Correspondents, I worked with a similarly charming character who also turned out to be a pathological liar. Such people are, by their own nature, inscrutable: there's simply nothing below their surface. (The movie's postscript, a blurb that reveals that Glass has since written a novel about an ambitious young journalist who invents his own stories, says more about his true narcissism than any movie ever could.) It's actually a great decision, turning what could have been an insignificant biopic into a cracking good detective story, as Sarsgaard (and a great Steve Zahn as the reporter for a rival news publication who finally nails Glass) puts two and two together. And for the record, Claustrophobia star Melanie Lynskey gets some good face time in, though I have my usual complaint that she isn't given enough to do. Her character suggests an envy for Glass's short-lived success, but it isn't explored.

My issue with Shattered Glass - and it's only a big issue because the film is so good - is its own loose handling of the truth. Any film that's about fact-checking and false reporting opens itself up to similar scrutiny, but you allow for Hollywood-style little white lies like casting beautiful people as homely dorks, substituting Montreal for Washington DC, and combining or deleting real-life characters in the name of good drama. However, writer/director Ray - who provides solid dialogue and direction - avoids the big question: How did some lying little punk manage to snow one of the nation's top news publications for so long? Because it actually happened, you can't call it a plot hole. But Ray cheats his hand: The film opens with the disclaimer that the "median age" of The New Republic's editorial staff was 26 (i.e. young and dumb, easily misled). Not average, median. The nearly century-old New Republic, of course, employs plenty of seasoned vets who were doubtlessly unimpressed by the squirrely young hotshot. This muddies the story, though, so Ray films the staff meetings in such a way that you only see the young writers - the ones who all love Glass. Even so, in hindsight they seem incredibly naive for professional journalists. But then The New Republic's thousands of readers were equally so. That nobody cared enough to question such easy-to-debunk tall tales until Glass had published over two dozen of them is even more troubling than the fact that creeps like him exist in the first place.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (UK, Edgar Wright)
A slovenly Londoner (cowriter Simon Pegg) decides to win back his uptight girlfriend and make amends with his poor fretful mother - and darn it if it doesn't happen on the eve of the End of the World, where everybody in London is turning into flesh-eating zombies! What starts off as a silly, even one-note comedy (it takes poor Shaun at least half an hour of the film's length to realize that those around him aren't just typical dead-to-the-world Londoners but actual zombies) takes on surprising depth and pathos as Shaun and his rogue's gallery of pals try to help each other escape from the thickening crowds of walking dead, before they wind up as dinner - or as zombies themselves. Thanks go to Wright and Pegg's tight script, a fine ensemble cast of actors known primarily for their work on UK television series, and, for me, a genuine creepiness. The fact that Shaun of the Dead's story takes place almost entirely during the daytime (hmm, just like Claustrophobia!), as well as the comic element, actually make the zombies wandering around in the background even more nightmarish. What we wind up with is a fine blend of humor, horror and humanity. That I don't have much more to say about this film owes as much to its flawlessness (particularly its epilogue, which is one of the most satisfying I've seen in years) as it does to the tardiness of my review (I saw it well over a month ago, but I was away from the computer all that time). It would take a lot of really great films to be released in the next month or two to bump this dark horse off my "Ten Best" for 2004. But as you may guess, a film that bills itself as "a romantic comedy, with zombies" is not for everybody, no matter how well it's made.

SHUTTER ISLAND (US, Martin Scorsese)
Bumped from its original release date of October 2009 (earlier that year, the film's advance pedigree may have been one of the reasons why the Academy optimistically increased its number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten), Scorsese's latest is a freakshow thriller set in 1954 where an obviously disturbed young federal marshall (Leonardo DiCaprio) is sent to a remote Massachusetts island that houses the criminally insane, in order to solve the mystery of a missing patient. Shutter Island is a star-studded affair with a few tense moments and a tortuous storyline (courtesy of Dennis Lehane's novel) that doesn't zig and zag so much as it simply spirals, slowly and deliberately, into madness. This pacing is significant, as the story relies on a twist that you will either guess within the first few minutes or not until the last half hour. Fortunately, the film doesn't wait until the very end to show its hand, which suggests that Scorsese and company were never interested in delivering a Sixth Sense-style shocker in the first place. (We're tipped off early that things are not what they seem - not only by DiCaprio's goatee, which would have been taboo for a federal marshall in 1954, but by his partner, played by Mark Ruffalo, who insists in the very first scene that he's from Seattle even though his accent is, like DiCaprio's, clearly Bostonian.) It's safe to say that if you have seen The Shining, Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, or especially the somewhat obscure 1980 nuthouse drama The Ninth Configuration, you will find yourself in familiar psychic territory here. It's an interesting and ultimately quite sad movie, but it's likely to divide audiences between those who find it a success and those who find it a failure. As for me, I think Scorsese succeeded in doing what he set out to do, but I am a little bored by stories that are mostly about what's going on inside the main character's head. Their plots are often fake-outs, not usually leaving the viewer with much to chew on afterward. Still, Shutter Island is a handsome, professional production, with top-drawer talent across the board, as you'd expect from a Scorsese outing. It's not enjoyable, but it is engaging. Though what I find most impressive is its soundtrack, which consists entirely of pre-existing music (a common trait of a Scorsese film), but with such a consistency to it that I could have sworn an actual composer was hired to score the picture.

SICKO (US, Michael Moore)
More entertaining, angering, depressing agitprop from Michael Moore. This time he takes aim at the U.S. health insurance industry. No surprises there: Almost every American has had some sort of nightmare story in terms of dealing with their insurance company, so it's an easy target. Yet, while this is an important film to see - especially for those morons who are mindlessly parroting the industry-sponsored political rhetoric that somehow a national health care system would mire patients in a tax-heavy "bureaucracy" (I remind them that the health insurance industry is already an excessively expensive bureaucracy - the only difference is that they're a for-profit institution that makes billions of dollars based on the health and illness of ordinary people. So how is that better for us than a government-run, not-for-profit system? Can you imagine if your local fire department or police force was similarly privatized?) - I get the feeling that none of the people who really need their minds changed about the need for universal health care in the United States will bother seeing this film. It doesn't really help that Sicko, at over two hours, goes on a bit too long - especially as all it really has to say is, "Look at all these other countries with a national health plan. See how much happier their citizens are as a result. And now look at the mess we've made." Don't get me wrong: This has to be said. Only Moore says it about twenty or thirty times. We get the point, Mike: We'd all do better with universal health care. But when even onetime health care proponent Hillary Clinton is revealed to have since accepted major campaign funds from insurance companies (once she backed down), what politicians can we trust to would make the huge changes that the country needs? The message in the film is as discouraging as it is obvious. There's just not a whole lot we can do except wait for the politicians to eventually come around. And I do hope they will. But they have a massive, contribution-rich, lobbyist-heavy industry to overthrow. In the meantime, how nice the Canadians, British, French, Cubans, etc. seem to have it. At least somebody on this earth can enjoy health care security.

SIDEWAYS (US, Alexander Payne)
The first film I know of that can be called a "wine lover's movie," Sideways is a simply told but morally complex comedy about two fortyish Southern California men - Miles, a stifled writer (Paul Giamatti) and Jack, a floundering actor (Thomas Haden Church) - who spend the week before Jack's gloomy-looking wedding to explore Santa Barbara County's wine region, tasting the wineries' latest offerings, playing golf, and male-bonding. But it quickly becomes apparent that Jack's primary goal for the week is to get Miles - and, more importantly, himself - a little girly action. While the self-righteous Miles sneers at flaky Jack for cheating on a fiancée whom he obviously doesn't care much about, he himself is freaking out over his ex-wife's new marriage, the unlikely future for his epic unpublished novel, and his own reluctance to romance a woman who seems perfect for him (Virginia Madsen). What follows is an often funny, squirm-inducingly real look at two losers - an uptight nerd and an oversexed himbo, an Odd Couple for the aughts - each finding himself neck-deep in midlife crisis. Good work all around from a quartet of often-overlooked actors (Sandra Oh - the director's own recent bride - rounds out the foursome as Jack's free-spirited "conquest"), with detailed, authentic set design and a jazzy score. But this film, like all of Payne's, is about the script, first and foremost. Thank God. Payne and his longtime cowriting partner Jim Taylor have established a routine of loosely adapting little-known novels (see also Election and About Schmidt) to tell painfully truthful tales of pathetic, self-deluded men and the unforgiving women in their lives. It's an ever-bleakening world view, one in which the bad go unpunished in a traditional sense (though their hollow victories are arguably punishment enough), and the good - or at least the slightly more redeemable - only find happiness by giving up on their dreams and accepting their place in the world as ordinary people who will never amount to anything. Which is so realistic, in the end, that it may be hard for many to find these films entertaining. But Payne and Taylor aren't pessimists. They constantly challenge the audience to look into their own hearts to find sympathy for characters that, in the movies, may be profoundly unheroic, even downright unlikeable, but in real life are the same people we forgive and tolerate on a daily basis: our friends, our families, and ourselves.

SIGNS (US, M. Night Shyamalan)
In the 1970s, Steven Spielberg had the market cornered on films about ordinary middle Americans put into extraordinary situations - usually involving sharks or aliens. Then he got caught up in his obsessions with special effects and World War II, leaving the field wide open for a successor. Enter M. Night Shyamalan, a young film student who grew up on Spielberg's Close Encounters. Shyamalan is smart enough to remember why Spielberg's early work resonated so well with audiences, and talented enough to revive that feeling with his own films, even though his visual style owes more of a debt to Stanley Kubrick. In fact, Shyamalan may have succeeded where even his mentor failed (see A.I.), in marrying Spielberg's warm humanism with Kubrick's chilly gloom.

In Signs, Shyamalan returns to his now-familiar formula of taking a pop culture/sci fi genre (ghosts in The Sixth Sense, superheroes in Unbreakable, aliens here, in case you haven't heard) and using it as a backdrop for deeper themes about loss and redemption, once again centering his story about a broken man (in this case Mel Gibson, nicely underplaying it for once as a farmer and former minister) who has become separated from his wife (in this case the woman is gone for good, having died in a traffic accident six months before the story begins) and learns to bond with his loved ones as he deals with unforeseen and incredible events (in this case, crop circles in the cornfields around his farmhouse which may or may not portend to an oncoming alien invasion). Watching the film, I felt the writer/director was more successful in plumbing the depths of his ideas than in his previous films. At 31, he still hasn't reached a level of life knowledge to really invest his deep themes with the wisdom that comes only with age, but he is clearly maturing. It will be interesting to see if he can continue to grow with his work, pulling it away from genre conventions for future projects, or if he's going to start running in thematic circles, using the same formula only applying it to, what next? Robots? Mind readers? Clones? Oh well. For now we have Signs, which is a worthy piece of summer entertainment, quiet, scary (sometimes unbearably so), thoughtful, and not at all reliant on special effects or big money shots to make an impression. In fact, Signs owes more to George Romero's original low-budget Night of the Living Dead than to Close Encounters, and although the climax feels a little, well, anti-climactic, Signs still satisfies on an intimate, human level. This could be Shyamalan's ultimate triumph: no matter how much money he makes, or how big the stars he works with are, his movies still feel like independent films, with a small number of characters, lots of dialogue, only a few locations, deliberate pacing and nothing exploding. That millions of people are willing to see these films and enjoy them does offer a ray of hope in a summer full of the typical bloated sequels and pre-tested, committee-approved garbage.

SIMON MAGUS (Hungary/France, Ildiko Enyedi)
Not to be confused with the other recent art film Simon Magus, an English-language fantasy starring Noah Taylor and Ian Holm, this is yet another intriguing - and kooky - feature from one of Europe's most interesting filmmakers, Ildiko Enyedi, who also made the better-known My Twentieth Century and the hard-to-find Magic Hunter, one of my favorite films of recent years. Simon Magus is a magician of sorts, an extremely low-key mystery man from Hungary who has been called to Paris to help solve a recent homicide. After deftly cracking the case (by analyzing the memories of the murder victim's houseplant!), Simon mills about Paris, gently pursuing a beautiful young Parisienne who is unaware that he speaks not a word of French. Meanwhile, his longtime competitor, another magician from Hungary, challenges him to a bizarre duel: who will survive being buried six feet underground for three days. Enyedi, who played with early Christian legend in Magic Hunter, once again examines the meaning of faith and resurrection in happily secular terms. Not as satisfying as her previous feature, but still full of rewards. So although I have no idea where you can see this film, I can at least make you aware of its existence.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (US, David Silverman)
Possibly the most amazing thing about The Simpsons Movie is that "The Simpsons" has been on TV since the late 80's, meaning that there are legal adults today who literally do not know what a life without "The Simpsons" is like. So it's funny that it should take so long for America's favorite dysfunctional cartoon family to hit the big screen - or that it happened at all. The Simpsons Movie delivers what you'd expect: the same old characters, the same sharp sense of humor, the same shtick, only with a bigger budget, a longer story and a few well-chosen moments too risque for network television. The story is about a toxic waste spill in Springfield (caused, of course, by the ever-ignorant Homer) and how it's up to the Simpsons, hunted by their own neighbors, to save their town. But like any good "Simpsons" episode, it's all about the gags. I laughed a lot during the film's first 15 minutes or so, as it poked fun at its audience and at itself, then I grew quiet as the plot thickened. In short, I could have done with a few more yuks, and was a little surprised that the talented "Simpsons" writers - exhausted though they may be after over 200 episodes of the show - didn't save their very best jokes for the big screen. But it was still good fun. In fact, my only complaint, weird though it may be, is with the casting of Albert Brooks as the "guest star voice." There is something about Albert Brooks that I just don't like. I don't find him funny, I don't find him interesting, and I wish they had cast somebody else. However, I guarantee you that you will not even recognize his voice, so this is just a minor glimpse into my own personal bias.

SIN CITY (US, Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller)
You won't get any argument from me that Sin City, pseudo-iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's cult comic book series, isn't "eye popping." Part Dick Tracy, part Pulp Fiction, part Rumble Fish, part Batman, this film is a fanboy's delight. Rodriguez found so much inspiration in Miller's stark black and white visuals that he apparently used the Sin City comics as storyboards for his film, giving Miller a co-director credit in the process. (Quentin Tarantino - no surprise seeing him here - has a cheeky "special guest director" credit for his hand in the sequences between stars Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro.) But make no mistake: This is control freak Rodriguez's film all the way through. (I counted no fewer than eight different screen credits for the guy, including editor, cinematographer, composer and visual effects supervisor.) I was briefly surprised to realize that this is the first of the director's titles that I've actually seen: On the one hand, he is a hero to me - as he is to many independent filmmakers - for being able to make successful movies outside of Hollywood while retaining complete control over his work. (He even quit the Directors Guild after they refused to allow Miller a co-directing credit.) And yet, for all his talent and energy, he channels it into these callow exercises in style over substance. Which may explain why I never bothered to rush out to see his earlier movies. To be fair, Rodriguez doesn't aspire to make anything other than Big Dumb Bloody Entertainment, he sure seems to be having a great time playing with all his digital toys, and the film itself is so completely over-the-top that it's hard to heap any real criticism on it. This may, in fact, be Rodriguez's ready-made justification for everything that he does: Call it irresponsibly violent, call it hopelessly juvenile - he'll only smile and shrug, "Hey, it's just a movie!" He may be right, but what's the point then? I mean, I enjoyed Sin City to a degree: There's good fun to be had in its hard-boiled campiness, it certainly is stylish, and, though the quality of the cast's work is variable, Bruce Willis adds his usual gravitas and Mickey Rourke (under pounds of make-up) is nothing short of fantastic as the toughest guy that ever lived. But it's all just so vapid. I'm sure film geeks will treasure Sin City just as they do the overrated Fight Club and Natural Born Killers. Everybody else will probably feel like me: Momentarily dazzled by the visuals and amused by the bombast, but in the end: "Eh!"

A SINGLE MAN (US, Tom Ford)
A couple of years ago, fashion designer Tom Ford was given the unlikely task of guest-editing Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood issue. The openly gay Ford infamously put himself on the cover, cavorting with a nude Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightly after Rachel McAdams suddenly backed out of being the third unclothed muse. (Ford kept his suit on for the shoot.) Little did we know then that it was part of Ford's transition into actual film director, and here he debuts with a sometimes moving, sometimes strange adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel A Single Man, in which Colin Firth stars as a gay college professor in 1962 Santa Monica who is dealing with the accidental death of his lover of 16 years. What is most remarkable about the film is Firth's performance. Slimmed down and focused, he is a far cry from the cute, pudgy British fuddy-duddy he usually plays (such as in Love, Actually and Bridget Jones's Diary). In fact, watching him here is almost like seeing the debut of a great actor we have never seen before. He completely carries the film and deserves whatever accolades he gets. Julianne Moore, putting on a fairly convincing British accent, is also good as Firth's lonely best friend, with whom he shares a poignant, sometimes painful evening during the story's daylong course of events. Where Ford falters is in casting young Nicholas Hoult as a college student infatuated with Firth. The British-born Hoult does well with his California kid accent, but he is no match for Firth; you can see the gulf in quality between their work in every scene. (This just goes to show you that gay directors often make the same mistakes that straight directors do: they cast a pretty face where they should have opted for a more forceful onscreen presence.) Ford also gives the film a visual style that, while unique, is sometimes heavy-handed. (There is a rather obvious gimmick throughout the film where, when Firth is alone, the colors fade to near-gray, but whenever he sees a beautiful young man or feels happy, the colors become super-saturated.) It is the work of an amateur, and I mean that in the best sense, in that Ford is trying out new things because this is a labor of love for him and he's excited about it. I do laud him for that. But these tricks come across as a bit pretentious at times. All in all, I appreciated A Single Man for Firth's performance, the cinematography, and the lush, Bernard Herrmann-esque score, but I felt robbed of the emotion I should have felt for its heartbreaking story by Ford's distractingly arty visuals.

SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY (US, Sydney Pollack)
If this documentary looks like something you'd see on PBS, that's because it is: Sketches of Frank Gehry is an American Masters production for PBS that surprisingly got a theatrical release by Sony Pictures Classics. And while I agree that Gehry, who in recent years has become the most famous architect in the United States (and perhaps the world), deserves the big-screen treatment for his often breathtaking buildings, this film about his life and work - made by Gehry's old pal, the notoriously dull studio director Sydney Pollack, trying his hand at his first documentary - still feels small. But then, Gehry comes across as such an ordinary Joe (unlike that other famous architect named Frank - Lloyd Wright - who bought into and in fact probably invented his own mythic status) that maybe Pollack's chummy, relaxed approach is fitting. But while Pollack's close friendship with Gehry is doubtlessly responsible for his subject opening up so readily, it also makes too many assumptions that viewers know as much about Gehry as he does. So while he asks the architect some probing questions, he also lets his film gloss over much of Gehry's life: after all, it was only Gehry's spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain that finally made him a household name in 1997... at the tender age of 68! But we see only glimpses - "sketches," if you will (the film's title is as much of a disclaimer as it is a description) - of Gehry's earlier life and work. And although Gehry gives off the impression that he'd be happy to talk about nearly anything, there's probably only so much Pollack could fit in. So while we are given some loving montages of Gehry's Bilbao masterpiece (as well as its equal, 2003's Disney Hall in Los Angeles), there's no explanation as to why his devoted wife Berta doesn't appear in the film, and most of the talking head interviews are not with fellow architects but with high-profile former Hollywood players such as Mike Ovitz, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, who reflect Pollack's privileged world more than they do Gehry's, and can only really speak as clients and dilettantes. And while Pollack picks one fey academic to speak on behalf of the anti-Gehry camp, his film is otherwise a love letter to his talented friend. But as even some of Gehry's biggest fans concede that a few of his buildings are "failures," even downright ugly, there's no examination into what works and what doesn't. I would have liked to have seen more balance here, and it would seem that Gehry himself would be open to the criticism. (Mainly I'd like to know why he went forward with his hideous design for Seattle's Experience Music Project - not discussed in the film, simply shot in abstract close-up as if ignoring the fact that, as a whole, the building's an eyesore.) Still, for fans of Gehry and his work, this doc does provide some insight into his creative process and whimsically reveals that the man behind some of the world's wildest, most exotic buildings is basically a teddy bear.