The Weather Man
(3 stars out of five)
--Wow, this movie really wants to be the new American Beauty... It tries to mix humor and despair in equal parts, with limited success. In American Beauty, the humor seemed to evolve naturally from the drama around it. Here, it just seems manufactured and forced. The movie is at its best when it grabs hold of a melancholy tone and sticks with it; there's an extended sequence near the end of the movie, in which director Gore Verbinski (the director of The Ring and Pirates of the Caribbean, here in his first "serious" film) does just that, and the attention to detail in the sequence is almost startling. It's a shame that the rest of the film that surrounds this sequence is so poor.

North Country
(4 stars out of five)
-- (review deleted accidentally)

Good Night, and Good Luck.
(4 ½ stars out of five)
--Who would have ever thought, years ago, that we'd be sitting here, talking about a great film directed by George Clooney, of all people? But that's just the case. Clooney, in his second feature, has crafted a picture that has a wonderful sense of tone and pacing - the best I've seen in years. The film - shot by Paul Thomas Anderson's cameraman, Robert Elswit - has a wonderful sense of movement and rhythm, further enhanced by the editing of Stephen Mirrione (the Oscar-winning editor of Traffic). It should also be mentioned that for a film with such serious subject matter, the movie is actually quite humorous and even light in many moments. The screenplay, written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, is full of great lines and memorable scenes. David Strathairn is truly amazing in the lead role, and if the buzz is proven right and he's nominated, it will be well deserved. One of the best movies of the year.

A History of Violence
(4 ½ stars out of five)
--One of the best films of the year. Director David Cronenberg takes the tired genre of "psychological thriller" and turns it on its ear, creating a nicely textured, subtle drama with moments of shocking violence. Now, I must tell you, I'm not a person that usually "jumps" at a sudden shock or scare in a movie. Well, this movie caused me to do so. Twice. Cronenberg draws out his silences so long that when the violent act does occur, it comes literally out of nowhere. The violence in the film is treated almost like an ugly poetry, with very little cutting during the scenes of brutality, showing the killing in all its maliciousnesss. Cronenberg also uses a nice technique of placing the sound over the action a split second before you see it onscreen, keeping you one step behind of everything that's happening. A definite Best Director contender here: from the moment the movie starts, you truly feel as if you are in the hands of a powerful storyteller. No matter how great everything else in the movie is - and there are great things, to be sure - this movie is Cronenberg's, and you can sense it every step of the way. Finally, the fall movie season has begun...

4 Reviews

Elizabethtown
(2 stars out of five)
-- Oh, Cameron Crowe..... Cameron, Cameron, Cameron... What have you done?!
A complete mess in every sense of the word, Elizabethtown is a film in search of a purpose. While nice little moments do exist, there's nothing within the story to hold them together. Characters come into and out of the story with no real development, and no real reason for them being there. A fine cast is wasted, given hardly anything to do in their supporting roles. The movie also has a problem with sudden, dramatic changes in tone. The beginning of the film sets a nice, melancholy, darkly-comic feel to the picture, and then ruins it when Crowe decides he wants the movie to be an out-and-out comedy. The end of the film, however, I must say, is wonderful. The ending is so terrific, that it almost feels as if Crowe came up with it first, and then created everything else around it. It's a pity the ending (which involves the main character on a sort of "musical road trip" - different songs accompany him on his cross-country journey home) couldn't have been in a better film. Kirsten Dunst is quite good in her role, and Orlando Bloom is serviceable (although the limits of his acting ability are seen several times), but the two simply don't have any chemistry together, unfortunately. And finally, the thing we always look forward to in a Cameron Crowe film: the writing. Here he writes a couple great lines, but most of the film just feels false and forced. Granted, lots of the problem comes from Crowe's script, which flails around all over the place, but some of it also comes from Bloom. He just can't sell some of the lines he's given. Some of the classic Crowe lines ("I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen"..."You complete me") wouldn't have had a chance in hell of working if there weren't great actors saying them. It's a frustrating film. There are great little moments, and then Crowe feels the need to go bigger and broader with his humor. Huge disappointment.


Everything Is Illuminated
(2 ½ stars out of five)
--Actor Liev Schreiber (the Scream series) tries his hand at directing. Unfortunately, his characters are too vague to make a connection with the audience. It's beautifully shot, and Schreiber has a director's eye for detail, but the film starts off with an insanely goofy, almost cartoonish tone, and Schreiber asks us about a quarter of the way through the picture to make a sudden tone change to the dramatic. We don't care enough about any of the characters to feel the emotions he wants us to feel, and it doesn't help that a character that we hardly know narrates the film. Schreiber still shows lots of promise, however: the acting is very good, and the camerawork feels fresh and exciting.


Thumbsucker
(3 stars out of five)
--Another one of those films that doesn't develop its supporting characters enough. Lou Taylor Pucci gives an amazing performance as the title character, a 17-year-old who still has a problem with...yeah, you guessed it. The film follows him as he is diagnosed with ADHD, given medication to combat the disorder, and his eventual triumph and downfall because of it. The emotional center to all of this, however, is his relationshipp with his parents. The mother, the more important figure in his life, is more fleshed out...the father remains something of an enigma. First-time director Mike Mills has no problem with throwing in several visually intensive dream sequences, but he doesn't usually have his characters talking about much of anything involving themselves. But the camerawork is great (beautifully filmed in wide 2.35:1), the acting universally spot-on, and Pucci's performance is worth the price of admission alone. An average film with flourishes of greatness sprinkled in.


Oliver Twist
(4 ½ stars out of five)
--Roman Polanski's 2005 version of the classic tale is a wonderful film. Before seeing this, I had never before read the story of Oliver Twist, nor had I seen any of the other film versions. I have since seen the classic David Lean film, and I must say that this movie rivals it, without a doubt. The film is just over two hours long, but it feels like an epic tale, although, for some reason, the film itself doesn't feel overlong at all. Polanski takes time with his characters, and immerses the audience in the strange world in which the story takes place. A great film. It accomplishes something which I've always felt is an extremely hard thing to pull off: it makes you feel as if you've actually gone on a journey with the character, as opposed to just watching them make that journey.