WAKING LIFE (US, Richard Linklater)
This film's been getting a lot of praise for its interesting use of animation - taking the age-old technique of rotoscoping (in which live action film is traced over, frame by frame, to create animation that is either cheating or a new art form: Ralph Bakshi made much use of this in the 1970's) and using computers to update and speed up the process so that a small group of people could make an animated feature without spending years or millions of dollars. However, writer/director Linklater deserves little of the credit for the film's intriguing look. That honor goes to art director Bob Sabiston, who not only wrote the software behind the animation, but also chose the film's beautiful color palette and painterly look. (Most of the actual animation was done by untrained amateurs in Linklater's native Austin, Texas.) It's safe to say that if Waking Life wasn't altered from its live action source material, it would never have been released, or even received a stitch of praise. Because it's boring. There is no story, just a string of conversations between random people (some famous, most not) spouting off their unoriginal philosophies about dream theory and free will, most often to the film's central character, Wiley Wiggins, who is stuck in a dream state and can only float around from one long-winded scene to the next. The film would have been more effective and enjoyable if cut up into little chunks spliced between TV shows or movies on cable; taken in one big feature-length gulp, however, it's nothing more than a butt-acher. Like being at a party and having to listen to a couple of potheads you don't know dither on about the meaning of life.

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY (US, Don Hahn)
This thoroughly entertaining documentary about Walt Disney animation between 1984 and 1994, from its low after the Black Cauldron debacle to its absolute peak with The Lion King, is packed with information, colorful characters, and a really startling amount of rare footage. As one should guess, the only way a documentary like this could license all those priceless clips of Disney films and behind-the-scenes antics would be if it were produced by the studio itself. But Waking Sleeping Beauty is hardly a promotional film for the Mouse House; not once does Hahn, a longtime Disney insider, tiptoe around the hard truths of the company during this crucial period, and all the egos, doubts, failures, and tragedies are right up there on the screen along with the good stuff. The story is brought to life not only by interviews with the many larger-than-life personalities involved (including the late Roy E. Disney, last of the old guard, and former Paramount execs Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who were brought in to save the company and did just that), but also with hilarious caricatures of these same people by the crafty, often beleagured animators they oversaw. I may have a stronger connection to this film than some, as it was right in the middle of this period when I attended the animation program at CalArts (a school built with Walt Disney's money), and I was there at a special screening for the students where Katzenberg himself introduced The Little Mermaid, after which we all knew something huge was about to happen, not just for Disney but for commercial animation itself. Still, I'm no cheerleader for the studio, and in fact after shrugging off Beauty and the Beast (unlike the rest of the world), I didn't even see any more of their "Second Golden Age" cartoons. But take it from me: Whether you were raised on these films or avoided them like the plague, Waking Sleeping Beauty is a fascinating account of how a motion picture studio turned itself around, and the players who made it happen. I recommend it to anybody who enjoys a good movie.

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (US, Jake Kasdan)
It's a bit weird that, in the midst of all these major studio films coming out at the same time, vying for Oscars (Sweeney Todd, The Kite Runner, Charlie Wilson's War et al), I'd choose to see the wacky comedy Walk Hard instead. The rationale: My wife works for singer/songwriter Dan Bern, who submitted several of the funnier songs on the Walk Hard soundtrack. His work - and that of the other songwriters, including Mike Viola and Marshall Crenshaw - is great. Funny, authentic and well-crafted. A clever tour through rock history from some very smart recording artists who know their stuff. It's a shame that the quality of the movie itself doesn't quite match that of its soundtrack. Walk Hard is an amiably silly sendup of musician biopic movies in general and the Johnny Cash film Walk the Line specifically. The ever-reliable John C. Reilly - who looks like he's having the time of his life - stars as the titular Cox, a dumb Southern boy who makes it big in the '50s, then suffers through a downward spiral of drugs and infidelity through the '60s and '70s. At just over an hour and a half, the film feels rushed - supposedly, the first cut was two and a half hours long, matching the epic sweep of Walk the Line and Ray - and this severe editing suggests why many of the best songs on the soundtrack are nowhere to be found in the movie itself. (This is definitely one title to catch on DVD, which is sure to be loaded with deleted footage.) There's nothing really bad about Walk Hard. It could just have been funnier, sharper, more surprising. Writer/director Jake Kasdan and his cowriter/producer Judd Apatow have proven, while working both together (the much-loved "Freaks & Geeks" TV series, the underrated feature The TV Set) and separately (Kasdan with Zero Effect, Apatow with The 40-Year-Old Virgin), that they are much better at being smart and honest than they are at being dumb and zany. As a result, the script for Walk Hard feels like it was brought up to a level deemed "adequate enough" by the writers, hoping that the satirical songs, considerable improvisation by the cast and Reilly's enthusiasm would raise it to a point of non-stop hilarity. But even in a generous opening night audience (my wife was really excited to see Dan Bern's work - and you can see him, briefly, as a piano player during the last big song number), the laughter was real but came too sporadically. The jokes just weren't that good. Many comedies feel like they are trying too hard. Walk Hard, on the other hand, feels like it's not trying hard enough: even with its well-earned R rating, thanks to prevalent profanity, nudity, drug use and violence, it doesn't feel at all risky or new. Still, it's a fun time, though probably best experienced at home with your drunken buddies. And the soundtrack really is terrific. Spend your Christmas dollars on that and watch the movie later.

WALK ON WATER (Israel, Eytan Fox)
Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi), a crack agent for Mossad (Israel's secret service), comes home from a successful assassination attempt on a Hamas leader only to find that his wife has committed suicide. His supervisor, fearing that the dry-eyed Eyal may be secretly suffering from the trauma, keeps him off the tough jobs and assigns him a "simple" assignment: word has it that an infamous Nazi is still alive, and that his leftie granddaughter Pia (Caroline Peters) is living in a kibbutz in Israel. Eyal is assigned to pose as a tour guide for Pia's brother Axel (Knut Berger), who is visiting her for a few days, in order to get whatever information he can from the siblings about their notorious grandfather. It's a great setup, something that Graham Greene might come up with, as inevitably Eyal comes to like these two nice people and knows that eventually he will have to choose between betraying his friends and betraying his cause.

Unfortunately, that's not the story that Fox and his cowriter Gal Uchovsky are interested in telling. Walk on Water is really a film about tolerance, namely for the homophobic Eyal - who discovers that Axel is gay about 500 years after the audience does - and, in a looser sense, for the Israelis and their resentment towards both the Nazi legacy and the Palestinians. With a great deal of time spent on reflective dialogue between Eyal and Axel, the suspense slacks off immediately. Which at first isn't a problem: The two actors are appealing, as is the sparse but lovely Israeli scenery. Their talky scenes often drift into heavy-handed territory, but I could accept that, knowing that the dialogue was at least true to the characters. But the script heads downhill fast halfway through the film, when it's finally determined that the Nazi grandfather is alive (barely) and in Germany. Not that the audience didn't expect it. But when Eyal heads up to Berlin to "surprise" Axel - mere days after their falling-out, when Axel sleeps with a young Palestinian (a very interesting sequence where Eyal seems as jealous as he is disgusted) - the film tries somehow to become a thriller, and fails. For the story is chock full of plot holes. In fact, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. Why, for example, is Eyal told to befriend these Germans, when all the information he really learns comes from a bug he planted in Pia's apartment - which he could have done even without meeting these people? And how does he get a gun onto an airplane? And why isn't Axel suspicious when Eyal is suddenly hanging out with him in Berlin? And most of all, how can a top Mossad agent be so dumb that he can't even figure out, after at least a week, that the guy he's been showering with and rubbing suntain oil on is openly gay? Then come the last several minutes of the film, which are practically ludicrous as events turn that are not true to any of the characters at all. Walk on Water is the sort of film I call a "noble failure": There's a lot to recommend about it - the atmosphere, the message, and certainly the performances (Ashkenazi downright oozes star power). But the script ignores far too many important points - both literal and dramatic - for me to forgive it. Fox and Uchovsky set their story up to attack a lot of issues, including racism, loss and guilt, but only give a passing glance to each character's private - and very large - demons, in order to pontificate some more on the idea of acceptance. Harboring a wealth of wasted opportunities, Walk on Water is a film that has its heart in the right place, but not its brain.

WALL-E (US, Andrew Stanton)
I've long been a champion of Pixar's animated output, and I know I'm not alone. Usually a Pixar film will make it into my top 10 for the year. But forgive me if I don't jump on the bandwagon and claim that WALL-E is among Pixar's best. It's hard to badmouth it, because it's a cute little movie with a sweet message, and visually it's a marvel. Like most of Pixar's films, it's packed with unique images and ideas. And it certainly stretches the technical possibilities of computer animation: parts of the flim practically look like live action. So why wasn't I so over the moon about WALL-E? Well, I was surprised at how simplistic and heavy-handed its moral is, and how - though it's definitely a triumph for Stanton and his crew to get an audience to care for two cartoon robots who barely speak and who have minimally expressive features - the love story itself is woefully unoriginal. Of course, Pixar has raised audience standards for animated storytelling so high that few of even their own films may be able to meet it by now. Stanton (who also helmed Finding Nemo) and his cowriter Pete Docter (who directed Monsters, Inc.) are the most kiddie-oriented of the senior Pixar team, so I don't blame them for producing something that, for all its artistry, is much more of a children's movie than I expected. But while I laud its innocence, and found some cleverness in its approach, I think the film lacks Pixar's characteristically sharp wit. I didn't laugh once, and I can't say I've ever not laughed during a Pixar movie. Also, without giving anything away, I was reminded constantly of Mike Judge's live action comedy Idiocracy. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I suspect WALL-E owes a lot to that earlier film, with nods as well to 2001 and even The Matrix. Still, the visuals are gorgeous, Ben Burtt's amazing sound design work is Oscar-worthy, and it's a harmless family movie. But if you don't find yourself drawn in like you were with the rollercoaster plots of The Incredibles or Toy Story 2, don't say I didn't warn you.

WALT & EL GRUPO (US, Theodore Thomas)
Walt Disney the man was having a tough year in 1941. He had fumbled badly with 1940's Pinocchio and Fantasia (hard to believe now, but at the time they were financial and critical disasters), and then many of the employees of his studio, demanding better wages and more fair labor practices, went on strike, an act which deeply hurt "Uncle Walt", who had felt like the king of his company. Demoralized by the strike and losing money quickly, Disney took up President Roosevelt's offer to go down to South America for ten weeks, meeting the locals, doing research, and finally producing a couple of films that showcased the friendship between the two Americas - all financed by the U.S. State Department. (Disney, who became a staunch anti-Communist because of the strike, nevertheless had no problem accepting this government handout.) The goodwill tour was a deliberate political act, for Roosevelt was racing the Nazis for cultural influence over the entire continent.

This back story is, alas, far more interesting than Theodore Thomas's documentary about Walt's tour down south (the "El Grupo" of the title refers to the small group of Disney artists that went with him). Thomas is perhaps too close to his source material: he's the son of Frank Thomas, one of Disney's very top animators, who also accompanied Walt on the journey. He relies too much on the unenlightening letters written home from his father and from some of the other staff members, read on camera by their surviving offspring. There's some compelling color 16mm footage of Walt and the group on location, but Thomas doesn't use enough of it. He also employs a maddening method of introducing each of the dozens of talking heads in the film by placing their name on a black screen as they talk. As a result, it feels like several cumulative minutes of the film are white names over black screens. It gets old fast. Because of Thomas's familiarity with the subject matter, he doesn't do much to explain who these people are and why they're important. (There's a brief segment on fellow traveler Mary Blair, Walt's incredibly talented artist/designer who deserves her own documentary, but Thomas waits until the end credits to inform you that it was Blair who designed the look of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, not to mention the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland.) I may have gotten a little more out of this film than the casual viewer might, as I had recently finished Neal Gabler's fine, fair-minded biography on Walt Disney. Even so, I was bored. This is a true "home movie" produced by the Disney family and directed by a Disney partisan. Those who are not rabid Disney historians will find little here. You are better off tracking down the charming animated featurette Saludos Amigos, the artistic result of Walt's South American trip, instead.

WAR OF THE WORLDS (US, Steven Spielberg)
Are we all in agreement that the best thing about these "aliens invade the earth" movies are the scenes of death and destruction on a massive scale? That's why audiences will always flock to a good disaster movie: because people dig watching things go boom. (Don't tell me that Titanic is the highest-grossing film of all time just because of the romance.) I'm no different, so I was really looking forward to War of the Worlds, despite my reservations about Tom Cruise's acting talents and my waning interest in Steven Spielberg's output. I figured if anybody could make an alien invasion scary and tense, it would be Spielberg - the old boy still has some juice left in him, and special effects being what they are today, some fine visual mayhem would surely be in store. On a visceral level, War of the Worlds doesn't disappoint. There is scene after memorable scene of horror: A speeding train on fire. A human mob as terrifying as anything that could come from outer space. A woman being zapped to dust before our very eyes. The film serves up an affective vision of hell on earth, shrewdly alluding to several familiar real-life disasters, from September 11th to the Titanic to the Holocaust to even 2004's tsunami.

Of course, Spielberg also has to have his usual "broken family in need of repair" storyline, and so you have Tom Cruise as a divorced dad of two who's got the kids for the weekend while his dull wife cavorts with her new husband in Boston (unaware, naturally, of the upcoming devastation). As the kids, ubiquitous child star Dakota Fanning and Cruise dead-ringer Justin Chatwin are appropriately snotty - clearly they can't stand ol' Pops - though I wonder if their surly attitudes may wear thin on audience members. Fanning's character, for instance, has good reason to scream a lot, but it doesn't make the screaming more enjoyable. As for Tom Terrific, I'm happy to report that, with Spielberg perhaps the only living director who can get a restrained, no-B.S. performance out of him, he isn't annoying at all. And I suppose it's very telling that I'm praising this movie just because, for once, Cruise is tolerable and Spielberg is unsentimental. Still, War of the Worlds offers plenty of thrills and freakouts through the bulk of its two hours. It's only afterwards that you realize Spielberg is relying too heavily on Alfred Hitchcock's philosophy that a motion picture should engage the audience's emotions first and foremost, and logic be damned: It didn't take long for me to start counting up the piles of inconsistencies in the story. The aliens, for example, can't quite decide on the best way to kill Earthlings. Vaporize them with their laser beams? Haul them up to feed themselves and/or their giant tripod war machines? Or just blast them into the water and let them float away? More importantly, how does Cruise somehow manage to make the one car out of thousands of lifeless ones run? For that matter, how can other characters operate video cameras when all other electronics - even analog wristwatches - cease to function when the aliens arrive? To bring up any more examples would risk spoiling the plot, but suffice it to say, there are so many, and they're so glaringly obvious, that the more I think about this film, the less I like it. On the upside, it remains a technical triumph: the visual effects are, as expected, near-perfect, but it's the awesome sound design that's the unsung hero here.

WASSUP ROCKERS (US, Larry Clark)
I acknowledge that I'm one of a decreasing number of serious fans of Larry Clark's film work. With disturbing, violent, sexually graphic stories about troubled teenagers (Kids, Bully, the still-unseen-in-America Ken Park), Clark endears himself to few people. I'd like to think a part of this is the discomfort that his leering camera brings out in audiences: perhaps there's a sense of "If I say I like this film, people are going to think I'm a pedophile!" But teens are sexual and that is that. Clark may have mixed motivations behind documenting it, but it's a theme that doesn't need to be brushed under the carpet just because it may make a few adults feel dirty about watching it. Wassup Rockers follows in the spirit of Clark's other films (even as it tones down the nudity and violence), as it follows seven young Latino skateboarders from South Central Los Angeles. In a sense, there are two separate films here: The first half of Wassup Rockers is a laid-back slice of life look at these charming young punks, as they skate, play music, make out with girls, and basically loaf. Then one day they decide to head up to Beverly Hills to go skating, and the film takes a sharp left turn towards the unbelievable. Without giving too much away, the lads encounter one ridiculous Beverly Hills stereotype after the next: impossibly horny girls with besuited preppy boyfriends, a creepy gay photographer, a Charlton Heston-like gun nut and a drunk actress on the wrong side of 40. These caricatures - and what they do with the boys - are so over the top that if you think Clark is trying to be realistic, you're going to hate this film. But if you accept - as I found myself accepting - that this second half of the movie is a sort of teen punk fantasia, the life of the rich and strange as seen from the pleasantly warped vantage point of young Latino outsiders, then you'll buy it. There is an absurdist flavor here that's reminiscent of classic punk films like Repo Man, Rock 'n' Roll High School and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. This isn't a great work of art, but it's enjoyable, and if you can get past the somewhat homoerotic fetishism with which Clark shoots his stars - particularly the main two boys, Jonathan and Kiko (amateur actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves) - then you too might appreciate Wassup Rockers as an authentic punk movie. And even if it plays dumb, it's far more honest about Los Angeles-style racism than the precious, self-congratulatory Crash ever was.

WATCHMEN (US, Zack Snyder)
Poor Zack Snyder. He strikes me as an amiable sort of fellow, maybe a bit of a hack, but a hard-working guy with a great fondness for detail. But he could never win against the legions of fans devoted to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's landmark graphic novel Watchmen. They're up in arms over the few changes to the story in the film. And they're up in arms over Snyder's surprisingly faithful adaptation. "He lacks vision!" they cry. And indeed, perhaps Snyder does lack vision. But with a vision as truly unique and eccentric as the one Moore and Gibbons gave the world back in 1986-87, I think you almost need to have it adapted by someone who's not hell-bent on cramming in his own vision on top of everything else. (It's well-known that Terry Gilliam tried to make this film twice.) In the end, especially for the millions of moviegoers who had not and will not ever read the graphic novel, it's for the best that Snyder delivers a fairly intact version of the story without mucking it up too much. And Alan Moore, who as per tradition has refused to have his name credited or even accept any money(!) for the rights to his property (Gibbons received all the dough), may have the last laugh: the success of this film will likely increase sales of his book by a tremendous amount.

I myself have a weird relationship to this film. My first introduction to the material, after avoiding the graphic novel for two decades (friends tried to get me into it back in 1987, but I associated superheroes with the X-Men comics I stopped reading when I was twelve), was actually the screenplay. Then I read and researched the graphic novel. Then, in January 2009, I saw Snyder's three hour director's cut (actually 3:10, but what I saw didn't have the lengthy end credits yet), in mostly black and white and without final sound effects or music. So seeing Watchmen in the theater yesterday wasn't so much an exercise in comparing the comic to the movie, but in comparing the 3 hour cut to the 2 hour, 30 minute cut. What went missing? Well, hopefully you'll find out on the DVD, which promises the more fulfilling longer cut (and possibly even a rumored 3 hour, 30 minute cut). And watching the film in the theater was actually like watching the film for the second or even third time. I noticed some changes in how I felt about it. Malin Akerman, who plays superheroine Silk Spectre II, has been blasted for her flat, valley-girlish performance, but her work gets a little better on the second viewing. (It's still a cut far below the strong performances of the rest of the cast, especially Jackie Earle Haley as the right-wing vigilante Rorschach.) And there are one or two moments in the film that are genuinely moving. But the dialogue - taken mostly word-for-word from Moore's text - is often pretentious, the song cues are too obvious, and the sudden bursts of gore (where the graphic novel merely had buckets of blood) seem, well, comically gratuitous, like Snyder just couldn't help himself. That said, while I can now claim to be pretty familiar with the graphic novel after being paid to dig deeply into it, I'm not going to praise it as a flawless work. I mean, it's incredibly original, and it was certainly revolutionary at the time. But in my opinion, its last chapter is rather clumsy, Gibbons can't draw women well, and many of its references and inside jokes are more heavy-handed than most fans would admit. In short, it's not unimprovable. I actually prefer the altered ending in the film. I liked seeing human actors breathe real life into the sometimes stiff characters. (Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian is especially effective.) In the end, I'm sure it will be a weird and possibly entertaining experience for Watchmen newbies and a slightly satisfying experience for the Watchmen faithful. But it's not revelatory, it's not groundbreaking, and although it's pretty flashy on the big screen (I even saw it in IMAX), it will be more rewarding to wait for the longer cut on the DVD.

THE WAY OF THE GUN (US, Christopher McQuarrie)
I'm one of the few who didn't care for The Usual Suspects, the popular thriller that made stars out of Kevin Spacey, director Bryan Singer and writer (and Oscar-winner) Christopher McQuarrie. The film's infamous "twist" ending felt like a rip-off; for me, it negated the entire two hours leading up to it. But there was no need to keep this in mind as I went to see this, McQuarrie's directorial debut. One thing I will say about The Way of the Gun: no stupid shaggy dog endings.

Actually, there's very little stupid about this film. What starts out as your basic dunderheaded kidnapping story (crooks Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe nabbing a very pregnant Juliette Lewis) complicates mercilessly as more and more characters - all with near-Dickensian relationships with one another - are added to the fray. In fact, if there's one thing more dizzying than the byzantine plot, it's the interconnections between all these people: the wealthy mobster for whom Lewis is carrying the baby, his hired "bag man" (a terrific James Caan) who has to deliver the ransom, and the various shady sidekicks that come and go. At times I felt a little lost as I struggled to keep up with it. Which, in an era where you can guess plot twists 20 minutes before they happen, is definitely refreshing. And almost every strange bit of character motivation becomes clear enough by story's end, though McQuarrie intentionally leaves several loose ends dangling.

McQuarrie proves to be pretty good at directing action; the title tells all here, as there are more live bullets on display than in anything since John Woo left Hong Kong. (The bullets even feel real. This film has a rare sense of the mechanics of gunplay.) His dialogue feels a bit overwritten towards the beginning, but once the action sets in, most everybody shuts up, which is good. The cast is fine (particularly Del Toro, who comes off as nothing less than a latter-day Humphrey Bogart) and there is a big, dramatic score by Joe Kraemer. Overall, this movie's worth would have been bulldozed over by the great films of 1999, but in 2000 an intelligent film like this (even if it has nothing to say) really stands out.

WENDY AND LUCY (US, Kelly Reichardt)
Wendy (a grubbed-up Michelle Williams in fine form) is a poor, friendless drifter who has stopped in an anonymous Oregon town, having driven from Indiana on her way to the vague hope of a job in Alaska. One minor calamity after another befalls her: her car won't start, she is arrested after shoplifting some dog food, and her dog Lucy disappears while Wendy is having her time wasted at the local police station. Bleak but not sadistic, Wendy and Lucy shows us life on the financial edge, where ruin comes one nickel at a time, and while it's a short, simple film, I must say that it's stayed with me for a long time afterward. Most intriguing is Williams's character: Reichardt and cowriter Jonathan Raymond have created a woman who, on the surface, could be any one of us, which is sort of the point. But they - and Williams, who obviously helped develop the character - also feed us many tantalizing, if unanswerable, hints about who Wendy was back in Indiana and what might have happened to her. For example, one can infer that Wendy did a fair bit of shoplifting from Indiana up to Oregon, even though she has hundreds of dollars of cash on her. As the story unfolds, one can't help but wonder what Wendy is running away from, why so many of her ties have been severed, how she got the money she has. Much has been kept secret; Wendy herself is sexless, humorless, resourceful enough only to be hyperprotective of the cash on her body. She is not living, merely surviving. I couldn't help but put myself in her situation, wondering if I would be able to succeed where she failed if I tried to use charm, wit or better planning. The film may test a person's attitude towards the homeless: though the smug Christian teenager at the supermarket who turns Wendy in for shoplifting sheds light on Reichardt's opinions about who cares for the poor and who doesn't, it still leaves it up to each audience member to decide how much Wendy has dug her own hole. Though Wendy and Lucy is to a small degree a message movie about life in a politically and economically polarized America, at its heart it's a character study, and a haunting one at that.

WHALE RIDER (New Zealand, Niki Caro)
Gentle modern-day fable about Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes), an 11-year-old girl living in a small Maori village on New Zealand's coast, who starts to believe she is the reincarnation of her tribe's fabled savior - much to the chagrin of her tradition-minded grandfather (Rawiri Paratene), who believes the Chosen One can only be a male. In this case, that male was Pai's stillborn twin brother, whose death the old man indirectly blames on his sweet-natured granddaughter. What follows is a soft-spoken family drama sprinkled with some magic realism and a little art house exotica. Castle-Hughes is wonderful in her debut role, with a face that effortlessly communicates strength, depth and sadness. She is matched by a sympathetic Paratene as well as an all-Maori cast who turn in nuanced, underplayed performances. In the end, Whale Rider doesn't amount to too much other than an intelligent, family-friendly diversion, in spirit much like John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish, with rich cinematography and a few eye-popping visuals towards the end. It didn't stay with me that much, but it's certainly a nice way to spend an evening at the movies, and provides a welcome balance to that other notable film about contemporary Maori life, the punishing Once Were Warriors.

WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? (Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang)
When I was in Hong Kong in 1998, I got to sit down with Tsai Ming-Liang and, through an interpreter, talk with him about film. I mentioned my own first film and how it was divided into two stories in two different cities. Whaddaya know - the film he made three years later, What Time Is It There, follows two strangers in separate parts of the globe. I'm not insinuating anything, but hey, Ming-Liang, I didn't see any "Thanks to Mark Kines for the inspiration" in the end credits! Nevertheless, I've always envied Tsai because his films move as slow as molasses, his characters barely speak, and yet after an hour and a half the story goes incredibly far and I wind up emotionally drained from the experience. This isn't uncommon amongst the best of Taiwanese cinema (see the work of Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien), but unlike most of his contemporaries, Tsai doesn't shy away from his characters' sexual kinks: in fact he dives right in, often to startling effect. Once again cast as Tsai's alter ego "Hsiao-Kang" is Lee Kang-Sheng, the star of all of Tsai's films. He plays a lonely watch seller on the streets of Taipei who has to deal with a hysterical mother after the death of his father. After a chance encounter with a pretty young woman (Chen Shiang-Chyi) who insists on buying his father's watch from him before departing to Paris, Hsiao-Kang becomes obsessed with the time difference between Paris and Taipei, and starts setting every clock he comes across to Paris time. This suggests that he has fallen in love with the young woman, though it's never made explicit and they never meet again. Meanwhile, we follow the young woman through the streets of a very cold and unwelcoming Paris, never fully aware of why she decided to go there, though we can guess she was suckered in by its promise of romance. A little wittier than Tsai Ming-Liang's earlier films, What Time Is It There? still achieves a vague profundity, as well as the usual aching sadness and quiet desperation found in his other work. It doesn't top Vive L'Amour but it's a good introduction to his films (and I'm guessing most of you out there still need one).

WHAT WOMEN WANT (US, Nancy Meyers)
You all know what this film is about: Mel Gibson is a womanizing ad exec who, as a friend tells him, can get into a woman's pants but not her head. (Considering all the girls who wind up in bed with him, many men would say he already has a head-start on knowing what women want.) After a freak accident, however, he is suddenly given the ability to hear the innermost thoughts of every female on earth. Before you know it, you're smack dab in the middle of Romantic Comedyland.

As this is a Paramount film, in a year full of Paramount stinkers, I had low expectations as I walked into the free employee screening. And yet... and yet... I found myself enjoying it. As time passes, I become more and more ashamed to say that, because What Women Want is Hollywood manipulation at its worst: pat, predictable, way too cute. If you've even seen the poster you know how it's going to end: Mel will get in touch with his feminine side, stop treating women like dirt, and win the heart of costar Helen Hunt in the process. I guess every once in a while the old formula is strangely welcome, like McDonald's french fries: you know it's bad for you, you know you can do better, yet there's some comfort in the familiarity. All that aside, I'll remember fondly three strong central performances: Ashley Johnson, very real as Gibson's eternally embarrassed teenage daughter; Judy Greer as the lonely assistant in Gibson's firm contemplating suicide; and, surprisingly, Helen Hunt, whom I don't usually like, who finds not only the strengths but the weaknesses of her smart, insecure character. This is more or less the same role that she had in As Good As It Gets, but never mind. The romance between Gibson and Hunt is palatable, too: nice to see a love affair blossom between two mature adults instead of yet more dithering teenagers. As for Mel Gibson? Well, I haven't liked any of his films since he left Australia; for me he comes across as a smug superstar time and again. So I'll dismiss him as being "tolerable" in this film, but really, I didn't need his completely gratuitious dancing scene, where he twirls a hat to Frank Sinatra for the sole purpose of making middle-aged ladies in the audience say to themselves, "That Mel, what a charmer, he can do no wrong." But the movie definitely gets smarter as it goes along (Especially as it starts with a lame and unnecessary opening passage which describes Gibson's character as a child) and if you close your eyes and pretend that Mel and Helen weren't paid millions of dollars to act as though they like each other, you might think you've seen a worthwhile film.

WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE (US, Tom DiCillo)
Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic of Jim Morrison, The Doors, was a silly affair, one of those Hollywood movies you watch and then wish you had just seen an actual documentary starring the real people portrayed in the film. Almost two decades later, Tom DiCillo answers the call with a doc that is a must for fans of The Doors, entertaining for the casual listener, and maybe just a little too reverent towards the work of singer/poet/alcoholic Jim Morrison. I myself am not a major fan of the band, but my West Hollywood house is in the middle of Doors Central: Although the band formed in Venice, California, they played their first gigs at the London Fog and the Whisky a Go Go, just a couple blocks from me. Less than a mile in the opposite direction, Morrison made his home at a cheap motel (where you can still stay in his old room for a bargain price) and The Doors recorded their final album, LA Woman, in what is currently a hip Mexican restaurant. But my hopes of seeing rare footage of my neighborhood back in the day were scuttled; this is about The Doors, not West Hollywood. Still, there is a wealth of fascinating clips of the band on stage and behind the scenes, and although the story isn't much different than Stone's fictionalized version - The Doors were around so briefly, there's not much to say other than they formed, they became huge, Jim Morrison turned into an obnoxious drunk, then he died. When You're Strange is at its best when it shows the pure chaos of a Doors concert, and when it makes clever use of Morrison's unfinished film HWY, in which he stars as a guy driving a car around. Johnny Depp's dry and occasionally pretentious voiceover narration brings to mind Malcolm McDowell's in the 1984 documentary The Compleat Beatles, which might have been what DiCillo (normally a feature director) was aiming for. Nothing revelatory here, but lots of great Doors tunes and plenty of footage of the enigmatic Jim.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (US, Spike Jonze)
The long-awaited adaptation of Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book oozes hipness: writer/director Spike Jonze, cowriter Dave Eggers, a soundtrack co-composed by the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O, a commendable name cast led by child actor Max Records, and of course the beloved source material. And the film is inarguably incredible to look at. Costumes, locations, production design, cinematography, puppetry and animation are all seamlessly integrated to produce one unique and beautiful vision. Yet Where the Wild Things Are is one of those movies that I deeply admire without actually having enjoyed. Those expecting great fun may be disappointed: Jonze and Eggers take Sendak's material and use it to explore the messier side of children's relationships, for the Wild Things, despite their hippie-commune feel, are basically children. Jonze and Eggers have done something extraordinary in capturing the complex, remarkably political friendships between kids. Watching this film brought back long-dormant memories from my youth: not pleasant memories, but honest memories about the difficulties in dealing with so many other new, developing personalities. Of course the Wild Things in this film may also serve as a metaphor for the often childish ways adults treat each other (after all, these grown-up creatures speak with the mature voices of James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Cooper and the like). But in the end, while there is some great emotional truth here, and while I certainly feel that Jonze and company have succeeded in making exactly the movie they set out to make, the story isn't very compelling and there is little real joy to be had amongst these mopey, bickering monsters and the lonely child whose feelings these imaginary beings represent. I'm glad I saw it, and I respect that there are people out there of all ages who will consider this a great film, but personally I found it just a little, well, tedious.

THE WHITE RIBBON (Germany/Austria, Michael Haneke)
Austrian writer/director Haneke's stark, troubling drama about the miserable souls in a small German village in the year before World War I opens with a voiceover by its lead character, the village's soft-spoken teacher, who speaks as an old man, presumably during or after World War II, in which he claims that the story we are about to watch may "clarify some things that happened later in our country." That's the only explicit clue we're given as to what Haneke's ultimate message is, but it lingers throughout the film. In essence, by depicting the disturbing acts of violence that crop up in this idyllic, pastoral setting - the likely culprits being the village's children - Haneke is saying, "Here, then, are the origins of the Nazi generation." It's not a stretch; Germany's 1913 adolescents would indeed grow up to become the leaders and supporters of the Third Reich. And by subtly depicting the physical, sexual and emotional abuse that these children suffered at the hands of their emotionally distant parents, Haneke makes it clear that the fascism that engulfed Germany in the thirties was borne out of this cruelty. So no, The White Ribbon is not exactly a "fun" movie, but neither it is boring or even entirely hopeless. Mostly it is simply engrossing, thanks to a great cast and especially to Christian Berger's stunning black and white cinematography, the best of the year, which places you in early twentieth century Germany so well that the film almost feels like a relic of its time. This is a serious, challenging work by a filmmaker whose output - save, perhaps, his unnecessary English language shot-for-shot remake of his own Funny Games - has become increasingly mature and meaningful.

WILLARD (US, Glen Morgan)
Let me just get this out of the way: I love Crispin Glover. As soon as I heard that there was going to be a remake of the cult 1971 B-movie Willard and that Glover would play the title role, I knew I'd be there. So for Glover fans, you're in for a treat. Our hero delivers a full-throttle performance, uncontrollable screaming and all, as the put-upon Mama's boy who befriends the rats in the cellar of his decaying house, eventually getting them to obey his increasingly violent commands. With obvious nods to both the original film and to Psycho, this Willard is witty, spooky, slightly campy and wholly entertaining. Writer/director Morgan, one of the primary forces behind "The X-Files," directs with relative restraint. Willard's Addams Family-like house and the tons of rats (real rodents, puppets and computer-generated imagery existing seamlessly), not to mention Glover's over-the-top yet surprisingly touching performance, provide all the flash the movie needs. Morgan's visual tricks are mostly seen only in the details (the portrait of Willard's late father is of Bruce Davison, who starred in the 1971 original; a can of nuts that Willard feeds his rats from is labeled "Numm Nuts;" etc.). Shirley Walker's bouncy Danny Elfman-like score is fun (if a bit too big), and the supporting cast (Laura Elena Harring from Mulholland Drive as Willard's sympathetic coworker and R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket as their hateful boss) are perfect fits. The ending looks like it was reshot after audience testing, and as a result it feels out of place, but it's a minor quibble. Glover is the main reason to see this film, and I have a feeling that, while not a box office success, Willard's run on video will, if nothing else, indoctrinate new converts into the Cult of Crispin. This isn't acting, it's performance art, and as such it's one for the ages. Thanks for not letting us down, Crispin.

WINGED MIGRATION (France, Jacques Perrin)
All right, it's ninety minutes of birds flying around. But what makes Winged Migration so much better than your ordinary nature documentary is its painterly cinematography and its jaw-droppingly awesome camerawork. Using a number of remote-controlled cameras, Perrin actually takes the audience right up into the air with migratory birds in flight. The cameras fly along inches from the beaks of geese, pelicans, parrots, penguins, you name it. You only wish you could see it in IMAX. This never-before-tried approach, interspersed with perfectly framed long shots of flocks of birds soaring in front of full moons, Saharan dunes, East European factories, Arctic glaciers and Parisian cityscapes, makes for an intense visual trip, one that never gets old despite the limitations of the material (migration, yipee). Perrin and crew keep finding new things to do as they follow their subjects around, and, with the exception of a French-accented voiceover that pops up every five minutes or so to give us ten seconds of narration, let pleasant new-agey music (and the sounds of the birds themselves - thanks to an amazing sound editing team) provide the sole soundtrack. Winged Migration isn't really educational, nor is it exactly a documentary. It is a work of art, as much as Perrin's previous nature film, Microcosmos, which plunged us into the secretive world of bugs. Insectophobes can breathe easily and should head out, with the rest of you, to catch this film in theatres, where it belongs - not on the Discovery Channel.

WINTER'S BONE (US, Debra Granik)
When I first heard of Winter's Bone, I figured it was one those gloomy Sundance movies that are like homework: watching it would be more of a duty than a pleasure. But then, that's what I thought Frozen River and The Visitor would be like, and so I skipped them when they were theatrically released, only to realize upon seeing them on DVD that they are terrific movies. So after Winter's Bone collected raves and prizes all over the place, I decided not to let this one slip by. As it turns out, my first impression was correct. Bleaker than bleak - well, you should know what to expect from a title like Winter's Bone - this drama is about a 17-year-old rural Missouri girl (Jennifer Lawrence) who is told that, if she can't locate her meth-making father in time for his court date, the police are going to repossess the house and land that she, her sweet younger siblings, and their mentally ill mother live on. So she sets out on a quest to find him, which entails her becoming involved with her frightening extended family of dirtbags. This isn't a bad film, or even a disappointing one, but I just couldn't get into it. From the start, I found the dialogue too honed and formal to match the verite-style filmmaking and effectively grubby casting. And the actors (including Me and You and Everyone We Know's talented John Hawke as Lawrence's haunted uncle and a surprise appearance by an aging Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks) were apparently directed to speak their lines flatly, which for me further underscored the dialogue's stiffness. I couldn't get past that, even as I became involved in the young heroine's dangerous journey. What's worse, when that journey was over, I didn't feel like I was taken very far emotionally. There are moments of quiet, unexpected heroism, and Lawrence's character is impressive in her resolve, but those weren't enough for me to be deeply affected by Winter's Bone. Perhaps you will feel differently.

WINTERSLEEPERS (Germany, Tom Tykwer)
This is an earlier feature by the German director of last year's rocket-fueled international hit Run Lola Run, but those expecting to see the later film's energy, spirit or brief length will be disappointed by Wintersleepers. Which isn't to say that this is a boring or worthless film. However, it is far more meditative and, I think, far more German than its follow-up (take that however you want), and thus doesn't have as much wide-range appeal. In any event, Tykwer certainly is direct with his titles: Run Lola Run was about a woman named Lola who runs a lot, and Wintersleepers is about a bunch of people sleeping, in some sense, in the middle of winter.

The story involves 5 characters whose disparate lives intersect in a small ski resort town in Germany: young nurse Laura, her translator roommate Becky, Becky's jerky ski instructor boyfriend Marco, a strange man named Rene, and an older farmer across town named Theo. In a somewhat contrived plot device at film's beginning, Rene happens across Marco's car and takes it for a joyride. An accident with Theo ensues, which lands Theo's young daughter in a coma. Laura treats the daughter, unaware that she is becoming involved with the man (Rene) who's partly responsible for the accident. The story's main thrust - will Theo track down Rene? - gets sidetracked, as Tykwer spends too much time on the contentious romance between Becky and Marco rather on the more interesting relationship between Rene and Laura.

The elegaic style of Wintersleepers is quite far from Lola territory, and is in fact more reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's films, specifically The Sweet Hereafter, with its snowbound storyline and its focus of a tragic accident bringing out feelings of loss and betrayal amongst the townspeople. Tykwer is clearly a formalist, but it gets him into trouble upon close examination of his film: All the characters are color-coded, giving them the impression of being pieces in a game, but to what end? Laura is narcoleptic; Rene's memory keeps blanking out; Theo's daughter is comatose. Tykwer asks us to take these parallels at face value while also suggesting that it all means something. (Even the bar that everybody frequents is called "Sleepers.") The result is that Tykwer doesn't seem that convinced of what he's trying to say, if anything. However, it is a testament to his humanism that he does sympathize with his characters, which barely rescues the film from a pretentious deep-freeze.

WIN WIN (US, Tom McCarthy)
Writer/director (and sometimes actor) McCarthy's third feature, after indie hits The Station Agent and The Visitor, is another mild-mannered dramedy about unexpected friendships. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike, a down-on-his-luck New Jersey lawyer whose business is struggling almost as much as the high school wrestling team he coaches. After he makes a shady decision to become the "guardian" of a wealthy, elderly client, he gets more than he bargained for when the client's runaway grandson Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer, a perfectly monosyllabic teen) tries to track down the grandfather he never met and discovers that the old man's been moved into a rest home. That Kyle just happens to be an extraordinarily talented wrestler - the answer to Mike's prayers - is a gigantic plot contrivance, to be sure, but McCarthy presents it believably. As with his previous pictures, the strengths of Win Win lie in its thoughtful storyline, well-crafted characters, and fine acting. Amy Ryan, as Giamatti's wife Jackie, is typically effective in the sort of part that would fade into the background in a Ron Howard movie. Kudos to McCarthy for writing strong female characters; Ryan is every bit Giamatti's equal in this film.

There are two problems with Win Win, however: The first is Bobby Cannavale, playing Giamatti's best pal. Essentially rehashing his Station Agent role as an affable motormouth, Cannavale is clearly meant to inject some jocularity into this low-key soap opera, but he mostly just annoys. The second is - surprise! - my old Foreign Correspondents/Claustrophobia star Melanie Lynskey, who suddenly shows up in the third act as Kyle's neglectful, substance-abusing mother. (I'm not spoiling much; she appears in the trailer and her name is in the opening credits.) Her character factors into the plot much as Orson Welles' Harry Lime does in The Third Man: For over an hour you never see or hear this woman, yet the toxic effect she's had on her son dominates the conversation over the first two acts. Kyle, an otherwise cool, easy-going kid, detests his mom, and his hatred spreads amongst Mike and his family as they learn how rotten a person she is. But after all that buildup, when she finally appears, it's just our cute little Mel, with her squeaky voice and baby face. Allowed to emote more than usual, she delivers a capable performance, but this is supposed to be a loathsome character, and frankly Lynskey is just too innately sweet to be convincing in the part. If it seems like I'm being harsh on my former leading lady - some of you may think I have reason to be - I believe I'd be saying the same thing even if I didn't know who she was. (There's no love lost anyway, as I haven't even heard from the actress in over seven years.) It's a lesson in how casting can make or break a story; after all, The Third Man wouldn't have worked without Welles' larger-than-life persona (imagine if Harry Lime turned up and was played by, say, Hume Cronyn). And with Amy Ryan in such close proximity in Win Win, it's hard not to compare Lynskey's wan presence to Ryan's own sensational work in a very similar role in Gone Baby Gone. Anyway, Win Win is a nice little movie, pretty much impossible to dislike. But it just doesn't reach the emotional depths of McCarthy's first two films.

A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP (China, Zhang Yimou)
In 1984, Joel and Ethan Coen made their auspicious debut with the mean, dirty noir Blood Simple, set in rural Texas. Newcomer (and eventual Coen regular/spouse) Frances McDormand plays the abused wife of a rich bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who finds love in the arms of her husband's employee (John Getz). So the husband hires a sleazy private detective (the great M. Emmet Walsh) to do away with the adulterous couple, but the detective has other ideas. It was a gripping film, taut and bloody and filled with nasty little twists. A quarter century later, Zhang Yimou, one of China's leading directors, decided to remake Blood Simple, only setting his version in an isolated noodle shop in the Chinese high desert, somewhere in the distant past (possibly the 1600s). The whole idea is very weird, to be sure, and I can only guess that Zhang adapted the Coens' work because he was dying to make a suspense picture, but didn't have any original ideas. And when A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop works, it's when Zhang concentrates on those tense, wordless scenes. Unfortunately, he pads this story with painfully unfunny comic relief: a bucktoothed fatty and his coworker add little, and Sheng Yang Xiao, in the John Getz role, is insufferable with his over-the-top reactions. Blood Simple worked because of its quiet dread. Zhang's remake gives us characters who gasp and scream and run for cover like rabbits. Only the humorless, nearly mute Honglei Sun, in the M. Emmet Walsh role, rises to the occasion. It's no coincidence that he gets top billing here. Needless to say, those who have not seen Blood Simple will enjoy this movie more. Because I'm quite familiar with the Coens' thriller, watching the remake was more of an intellectual exercise for me, waiting to see if Zhang hits the same key themes and visuals as the Coens did. (He does, for the most part, though he misses out on some crucial story points.) All in all a big disappointment, especially for a filmmaker of Zhang's caliber. He's had a strange career, with a string of subversive, gorgeous tragedies starring his then-girlfriend Gong Li (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) followed by a number of touching, low-budget rural dramas featuring no-name casts (Not One Less, The Road Home, Happy Times), then riding high with big-budget costume dramas featuring marauding armies and martial arts (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower). This latest offering suggests that Zhang is at a crossroads, not knowing which direction to take his career. Let's hope he takes it away from movies like this.

WONDER BOYS (US, Curtis Hanson)
Michael Douglas puts in a very rare sympathetic role as an uninspired, pot-smoking university writing professor who's notable for his acclaimed novel The Arsonist's Daughter. Unfortunately, that novel is 7 years old, and he has yet to follow it up with anything, though he continues to work on a rambling new book that's already hit the 2000-page mark. Meanwhile, he has to contend with the various kooks in his life: his flaky publisher (Robert Downey, Jr., doing his usual glib schtick), his horny student (Katie Holmes, agreeable but barely in the film), his wise but weary mistress (Frances McDormand, also with relatively little screen time, despite her second billing), and mostly with his talented but strange writing student (Tobey Maguire, who I still can't figure out as an actor: does he perform very subtly, or does he simply smirk while his voice cracks?).

There's not really a plot, though things happen - some nonsense about a dead dog, a stolen jacket that belonged to Marilyn Monroe, Michael Douglas having a terrible week, etc. Mostly it's a character study, and a fairly amusing one, though its slack narrative reveals its novelistic source material. I didn't think too much about it afterwards, and the ending is really quite smug, but it's mostly a harmless excursion (though an unexpected follow-up for director Curtis Hanson after his blazing L.A. Confidential). Points to the film for capturing a Pittsburgh winter in all its slushy glory, and also for showing the actual effects that too much marijuana really has on a human being. This isn't Cheech & Chong, it's more like that loser at your work who can't follow simple directions because his synapses no longer connect after consuming too many joints.

THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN (New Zealand, Roger Donaldson)
Outstanding crowd-pleaser about a crusty old character named Burt Munro (played by Anthony Hopkins), a poor tinkerer and motorcycle enthusiast in Invercargill, at the southern tip of New Zealand, who in 1962, at the tender age of 63, made the perilous trek from his small town home to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to participate in the annual Speed Week, where car racers gather to break records. This slightly fictionalized account of Burt's journey plays out like David Lynch's The Straight Story on amphetamines: old-timer, apparently not long for the world, sets out on an epic quest while encountering locals along the way and sharing his wit and wisdom with them. Only instead of a tractor puttering along the highway at three miles per hour, he's got a machine that can go sixty times as fast! The World's Fastest Indian lacks Lynch's distinctive artistry, of course, but for Kiwi director Roger Donaldson, long a competent director of Hollywood programmers, it's clearly a labor of love. The same could be said for Hopkins, too, who is more likable here than he has been in anything he's ever done. It's among his best work. His Burt Munro is passionate yet low-key, single-minded yet effortlessly congenial. The story manages to create suspense over whether old Burt will even make it out of Bonneville alive, much less break any land speed records in his old souped-up motorcycle (a 1920 Indian Scout - hence the title). Yet at the same time, there is a nice ambling quality to the film, with Donaldson taking time to stop and smell the roses, as it were, which we can presume Burt Munro liked to do too. The World's Fastest Indian is the sort of movie you can take your granny to, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy it as much as she will. Only the score, by J. Peter Robinson, pushes the film into mawkishness at times. But Hopkins and Donaldson (who also wrote the script) play it straight, telling a simple, joyous story of a simple, joyous man who above all loved life. This would make a fine double feature with another Down Under "feel good" movie, the similarly under-promoted The Dish.

THE WRESTLER (US, Darren Aronofsky)
Much has been said about Mickey Rourke's "comeback" performance as a battered, aging professional wrestler in this film. Those critics who rave about this have forgotten Rourke's wonderful work in Sin City, the only bit of substance in a movie that was nothing but style. Maybe they think that doesn't count because Rourke was buried under tons of makeup. (What then do they make of John Hurt in The Elephant Man?) Also, I hesitate to call this film a "comeback," not only because Rourke never stopped working, but because I'm not convinced that it will open the doors for more leading roles for the troubled actor, whose face is now a roadmap of bad decisions, ruined either by boxing, plastic surgery, or both. Anyway, it's a terrific performance, both heartfelt and extremely physical. I just wish the film it was in deserved it. I am no fan of director Darren Aronofsky's work. It is nice to see him leaving his hokey pretensions behind, copping a verite style reminiscent of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. But if he worked hard to get a great performance out of Rourke, he stumbled in casting the overacting Evan Rachel Wood as Rourke's hysterically angry daughter. (Marisa Tomei, who is proving more and more willing to get naked for a role as she ages gracefully, contributes typically solid work.) The film itself isn't bad. It's just limp. Rourke's character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, has a heart attack after a cheap bout, and must decide whether to go straight or to risk a potentially fatal repeat if he continues to wrestle. The story's told honestly, and offers a poignant glimpse into the pro wrestling community, but it's all wrapped up with something of a shrug. Rourke, however, is fully dedicated to his character, and for that he deserves all the acclaim he's been getting. He's actually better here than he was in anything he did in the 80s, when he was big (for all of four years).