Square Eyes

The Incredibles

First -  you don't have to wait through the credits.  There's nothing there.

Second - the included short is called Boundin', and it's awfully cute.  Not much of a story, but very well done.  Makes you forget the computers entirely.

Third - it's better than you think.  This is true even if you think it's gonna be good.  Brad Bird has really outdone himself here. His Edna alone is worth the price of admission. The action is brisk and exciting, the pathos is real and touching and the visuals are nothing short of breathtaking. 

I hate when i drool on and on about the good ones, so I'm gonna stop. See it.

(Big ups to Sarah Vowell for her voice work - gotta love a public radio sister gettin' some of that fat hollywood paper.  I hope it finances a lifetime of trips to obscure historical sites.) 

Kinsey

Saw Kinsey this weekend at a small screening in Seattle.  The writer/director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, the immortal Candyman II) was there and did a lengthy Q&A afterwards.  The Q&A was especially interesting because the audience was seeded with a lot of real live sex researchers from the local university.  All of them are decrying the same sort of puritanical funding cuts that plague the Kinsey institute throughout the movie and the same difficulty of having their scholarly work taken seriously as Kinsey had in the 40s.  Ain't nothin' changed but the weather.

I'm not generally a fan of biopics.  I don't like how sugary they usually turn out, and I really don't like the feeling of human lives being "resolved" and having a "point" that fits into a neat 90 minute narrative - it doesn't fit with my experience of the actual messy and irreducable lives of the people I know.

That said, this movie is well constructed, if a little pat.  It tells the story of Kinsey's life as a boy whose spirit is nearly crushed by the dad from Footloose.  Seriously, Lithgow is playing that same character.  It tells the story of his borderline O/C bug collection as a zoologist and the strange turns that lead him into the field of sex research.  This is the most interesting part of the film and I think that Condon rightly spends a great deal more time here than many directors would have.  The almost touchingly pedestrian desire to achieve greatness through the mundane act of collecting more of a particular bug than anoyone else transitions nicely into an explanation of why and how Kinsey obsessively and guilelessly collected those hundreds of thousands of sexual histories as if they were so many wasps.

The performances were uniformly strong, save Lithgow's retread.  Laura Linney continues to be as likable an actress as God ever made and the supporting actors are great, right down to the stage actors brought in to read snippets of case history.

I really only had a problem with the third act, and the sort of reductive way everything is brought to a close.  In this time of "values voters" and backlash against homosexuality and every other form of supposed "deviance" it's useful and instructive to be reminded how great the delta is between what we say we do and what we do - between what we are in the light and what we are in the dark.  Kinsey's work has been both embraced and decried for the same reason - his biologist's instincts seem to portray man as like any other animal.  What people forget is that he did not believe this made us less divine.

For what it's worth, Condon said his next project is a musical - Dreamgirls, to be precise.

Orca

This movie is terrible.  Not quite terrible enough to be good, but terrible enough to be an amusing rainy weekend rental.

Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling are the stars, i guess proving only that British actors will do anything to avoid returning to the stage.  Richard plays a thoughtful, yet stupid fisherman intent on catching big seagoing game for aquariums and such.  Charlotte is some kind of academic who has a borderline inappropriate affection for Orcas. 

I am not kidding when I say that for good measure, they even threw in a random and unexplained Native American for guidance.  You know, like in "The Doors." 

Richard kills an Orca female while aiming for the male.  Horrors - the female was with, um.. child.  The Orca male witnesses the whole thing - and goes Chuck Bronson on everyone.  There's even the standard issue crane shot of the hero screaming NOOOOOOOOO!!! as their lover/partner/dry cleaner is killed to set up the revenge plot.  Of course the widower in this case is a giant spotty dolphin, so it's harder to make out the words.

From this point on the whale literally schemes and plots to get Richard's character alone on the high seas and wreak his terrible vengeance.  Mostly this is stupid, but sometimes this is hilarious.  Mr. Orca sinks boats, sets fires and bites off Bo Derek's leg.

I won't tell you how it ends, but I will tell you that the final scene involves some of that awesome Orca soccer you can watch on PBS, and that almost redeemed this whole travesty for me.

saw

This is mostly a bad Nine Inch Nails video.  There's a lot of industrial-sounding music, a lot of grungy, mucky decor and lots of noveau-gothic torture contraptions.

Unfortunately for filmgoers, it is weaker than your average NIN video in a couple of very important ways.  First, NIN videos end in three or four minutes.  This means if they suck, it's ok - they're almost over.  Second, in NIN videos, no one talks.

In this one the subjects talk - and what the writer makes them say will horrify you far more than the clunky plot. The script is terrible and the "clever" villain is not only stupid, but boring.  I kept thinking they must at least have some really high-end/gory/cool surprise for the ending.  They did not, and that was really the only suspense this movie provided.

I wouldn't saw off my own foot to avoid the movie, but 80 minutes in that kind of thing sounds way less crazy than it did when I bought the ticket.

i heart huckabees

Sometimes things happen in popular entertainment that just leave me slackjawed with wonder.

From the same doltish town that is currently offering you a fifth Chucky movie comes a movie about an existential detective agency. Seriously. An existential detective agency.

Someone with budget authority allowed David O Russell to make a movie expressly and entirely about philosophy. It's a comedy to be sure, but a comedy so heady that I have to assume the people greenlighting it didn't read the script.

I don't mean it's all French or anything. It has the requisite amounts of pretty people, quick American-style pacing and enough lowbrow laughs to keep it interesting to people who came to see Jude Law. What impressed me is that it manages to score a lot of laughs ona higher level as well.

You should see it, if only to remind yourself what used to be so cool about Lily Tomlin. You should see it because it's the best thing Jude Law is doing this year (and he's doing everything.) You should see it because if people see it, maybe other directors will get to make comedies that don't require you to check your brain at the door. Cast your nine dollar vote against Chucky 5.

David O Russell can do whatever he wants now. I'm a fan for life.

Primer

This is a very smart, lo-fi sci-fi flick, and it succeeds by attempting very little.

There are no effects. There are no name actors. There is no ending, at least not one you'll be satisfied by.

I found it talky but interesting, and probably worth your video rental, if you're an Outer Limits kind of person. Just don't expect lots of stuff to happen.

Ray

People are going to tell you this is a great film. They are wrong.

It is at best a competent film.

I know everybody loves Brother Ray - he's a force of nature and deserves the word genius as much as anyone who makes popular music. The problem is that he, like all of us, is vain, and his intimate involvement with the film turns it into mass-market schlock.

With the exception of an inconvenient smack addiction and some photogenic infidelity, the movie presents Ray's life as an unbroken string of triumphs and off-hand, almost magical musical creation. A tacked-on eulogy at the end of the film only heightens this effect.

Jamie Foxx does a good enough job impersonating Ray, but isn't given a script that lets us feel he's inhabiting the man. The women in his life fare even worse, given stupid lines to say and no reason to exist outside of Ray.

This movie means well, but hamstrings itself out of loyalty and wastes a powerful subject. Someday, someone will tell the groundbreaking story of Ray Charles on film - but it will be much better when Ray's publicits don't get to help.