Double feature at the drive-in

© 2004-2008 by John Varley; all rights reserved

April 21, 2008 - First Feature Nim's Island (2008) Somebody at IMDb said this was like Indiana Jones for little girls. Maybe, but I think the better parallel is Romancing the Stone, that wonderful, unlikely match of adventure and humor that was such a big hit in the ‘80s. Both stories involve a female novelist who writes adventures and ends up having an adventure herself. In this one, though, the novelist is Alexandra Roper (Jodie Foster), who under her pen name Alex is widely believed to be a male. She has one small problem, a slight case of agoraphobia (“What’s slight about it?” her alter ego, Alex, asks her). She hasn’t left her apartment in a long time. But she gets involved by email with Nim, who lives with her father on a remote, secret island. Her father has been caught in a storm and is having a great deal of trouble getting back home. Nim, who is 11, is all alone. Alex decides she has to go to the South Pacific and help out, accompanied by her imaginary hero friend. Nim is actually far better suited to take care of herself. She is plucky and smart, and she has animal friends—a sea lion, a lizard, and a pelican—who she talks to (they don’t talk back, thank god; that would have been a little too much), and who display far more than the usual animal intelligence. It’s an odd blend of reality and fantasy, a hard balancing act to maintain, but they do a good job of it. We both enjoyed it. Jodie Foster is quite good in a comic part, something she doesn’t usually do. And Abigail Breslin, of the wonderful Little Miss Sunshine, shines again. IMDb.com

Second Feature Horton Hears a Who! (2008) First reaction: Why does everything have to be so friggin’ huge these days? The great Chuck Jones did this in 1970, staying exactly with the Dr. Seuss story, narrated by the great Hans Conried, and it is a classic. But it’s 2008, this is CGI animation, and it has megastars Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell. Naturally, it’s all over the place, full of frantic action, cute references, new characters, new sub-plots, and many, many changes from the original.

March 4, 2008 - First Feature The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) I wanted to like this but, try as I might, I just couldn’t get into it. It’s based on a series of children’s books, and I might check one out, but faeries and goblins are not really my thing. It didn’t give me time to get into its world; before I knew it I was being overwhelmed by CGI critters that weren’t all that interesting. (Nick Nolte as the Big Bad Goblin might have been scarier if they’d animated his drunk-driving booking photo that’s had such exposure on the Net.) For me, but apparently not for today’s audiences, just shoveling more effects into the hopper and grinding out some more CGI-animated sausage is not the formula for a good movie. And I have to be honest here, more and more I’m finding movie children, from ages about 8 to 16, to be a real pain in the ass. Is this just because I’m an old fart now, and can’t abide their problems? This is entirely possible, I admit it. These days the chances that kids are from what we used to call a “broken home” are about 50/50. They have “issues,” and they aren’t shy about expressing them … and I get real tired of it as a story device. Call me insensitive, I don’t care. Lee and I were bored. IMDb.com

Second Feature Cloverfield (2008) What an odd little movie. We had been warned that sitting close has actually caused cases of vertigo, due to it being filmed entirely with hand-held cameras. It’s a point-of-view movie, but it’s not The Lady in the Lake. I didn’t figure that, being at the drive-in, this would be a problem, and it wasn’t. The problem was that it was too dark for outdoor viewing. Half the time—more than half the time—I had only a vague to non-existent idea of what was going on. And here’s the odd thing … it didn’t matter! The whole idea of the movie was to show Godzilla not from the point of view of the people who were actually fighting it (Raymond Burr, or the president, or the generals in the Pentagon), but from the poor schlubs who were just trying to get the fuck out of Dodge. They had no idea what was going on except some big critter was eating cars, buildings, soldiers, and their friends.

Dodge City is, of course, New York, and more specifically Southern Manhattan. It ties skillfully (some said cynically) into all our nightmares of 9/11, with the Woolworth Building collapsing. We are set up with 15 or 20 minutes of stuff that looks just like what a New York yuppie might actually film at a going-away party for a friend of his. Characters are introduced and we have to infer a lot, which is okay, these guys aren’t going to be around long enough to get too attached to. Affairs are happening, people are getting pissed off at each other, the guy with the camera is trying to make time with a girl who’s having none of it. Then, bam! Earthquake … or something very much like it. Up to the roof, where chaos reigns. Something huge is eating the city!

(What a rush this would have been in a media-less world, where we all hadn’t already been clued in via the expert use of viral videos as to what was really going on. Just about at the point where I’d have been ready to fling my Coke and popcorn at these assholes on the screen, we discover this movie isn’t about relationships at all, it’s about how quickly your life can go from routine to … fuck, I’m about to die! One second, and everything changes!)

I’m really going to have to see this again, on DVD. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know some of what I missed, and I’d like to look for these things when I can freeze-fame and get a longer look. For instance, there is apparently a big back story that they may use for the sequel (and at over 100 million worldwide, there will be a sequel). And the crablike critters our heroes have to fight are parasites on the big mother. We get only one good, long look at the creature, at the very end, and that’s fine with me, on the invariable principle (promulgated by me) that what you don’t see is far scarier than what you do see. And it seems that in the last shot, on a Ferris wheel at Coney Island (don’t ask why that’s in here with all the disaster; it actually makes sense) something falls into the ocean in the background, and at the very end of the credits there is a tiny clue to what may come next.

Cultural aside: The entire premise of this movie, the hand-held camera, just makes me stop to wonder. When I was young not many people had movie cameras, and they were only good for about 5-10 minutes per reel of film, and fairly expensive. Most of what people shot was crap. Now everybody has either a video camera or a video cell phone or both. Most of what they shoot is still crap, but my, do they shoot! It’s entirely plausible that, if the head of the Statue of Liberty came tumbling down their street, followed by Godzilla, many of this generation would stand there with their cell phones in the air, watching the whole thing on the tiny screen. And that, even when pursued by rabid crabs the size of German shepherds, they would hang on to their vidcams and continue to shoot as their girlfriend bled from the nose, ears, eyes, and mouth, and exploded from an alien virus. I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Do you? IMDb.com

January 22, 2008 - First Feature The Bucket List (2007) Starts off better than I’d expected. You know from the previews that these guys are dying, and out to have some fun before that happens, and I expected it to be a lark from the beginning. Not so. It’s pretty grim. But then after the list of things to do was made it began to lose its way. I thought it was overboard to have Jack Nicholson be so damn bloody rich that they could do anything, at the snap of a finger. Mightn’t it have been more fun if they had to figure ways to do these things other than just have Jack put it on the endless tab? If I was Morgan Freeman, that would have made me very uncomfortable. I never quite understood why Morgan was doing this. Sure, he’d missed a lot of opportunities, but a whirlwind tour of the Himalayas and the Taj Mahal wasn’t going to make up for that. I didn’t believe for a second that, given a chance to drive a Mustang Shelby 350, he’d treat it like a bumper car. Jack was way too big a lifelong asshole to have turned all gooey inside from what I saw happening on the screen. And the end was pretty shameless at jerking the tear ducts. Not a complete waste of time, but not very good, either. IMDb.com

December 28, 2007 - First Feature Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) I guess I’d have to call this one intermittently funny. It sets out to spoof all those musical biopics, in particular Walk the Line, Ray, and even La vie en rose, to name a few more recent ones, and does a pretty good job of including all the clichés, hammering a little hard on them to be sure you get the joke. You have noticed that just about all the superstars of music have followed pretty much the same career arc, haven’t you? Start poor, get some success, get messed up with drugs, and then either die or make a comeback, it hardly matters in story terms. Dewey Cox does both: he dies three minutes after his comeback. In fact, he does everything that anyone in pop music did, from the early ‘50s to the ‘80s. He is sort of a musical Zelig. Remember that Woody Allen film about the guy who was the human chameleon? Put him in a group of people and he instantly became just like them. John C. Reilly is actually one hell of a singer, and he gets to do Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and John Denver, among others. Whatever the musical vogue of the moment is, that’s what he is. His one stumble is when he invents punk rock … in about 1960. Nobody’s ready for it yet. This all works best when Dewey is on stage, making music. The back story with his family is a little over the top, and sort of clashes with the other stuff, which is quite well done. IMDb.com

Second Feature American Gangster (2007) I guess my main complaint about this is stylistic. How dark and murky can a movie get before you don’t have any idea what’s going on? Many directors have been exploring this question in recent years, and here Ridley Scott, who’s always been dark, almost achieves nirvana in some scenes: a completely black screen. In every indoor scene where it is possible, he shoots into the light. People are framed against picture windows, with all the interior light behind them, walking into buildings with the open doors behind them … like that. Every scene! Outside, New York is almost as dark as the Los Angeles of Blade Runner, or the London of Sweeney Todd. Not quite, but almost. The movie might as well be in black and white. And since so many of the characters are dark-skinned people, their features are almost impossible to see in these situations. You’re going to say this is 21st Century film noir, but if it is, you can fucking have it. Those old noir directors of the ‘40s and ‘50s shot dark, sure, but they knew how to place the lights so you saw what you needed to see, what they wanted you to see, and left the backgrounds shadowy. Here, the backgrounds are visible and the characters are in the dark, almost all the time. It really sucks, my friends. They might as well make a movie in Braille.

Now that that’s out of the way, what about the content, as opposed to the presentation? Well, it’s very well-written and well-acted, and the story is good, and all in all I’d have to say it’s a good movie. I’m glad I saw it. But as I watched, I kept thinking, “What’s the point?” Do we really need to see this story again? If you’ve seen The French Connection, and maybe 100 cops vs. dope dealers movies since then, this movie could not possibly have anything new to say to you. TFC is even referenced specifically, several times, and there is a scene that is a direct steal. Remember Frog One dining in a fine restaurant, and through the window Popeye Doyle is freezing his butt off, sipping awful coffee? Here, the big dope dealer, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), sits down to a lavish Thanksgiving dinner with his loving family, while Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) chows down on a pressed turkey sandwich. Yeah, I get it, the doper is rolling in dough, and the honest cop is almost eligible for welfare. And the crooked cop drives a Shelby Mustang. And yeah, at the end we learn that 75% of the NYC drug detail was indicted for various crimes in the early ‘70s, and it’s plain that the other 25% just got lucky. Seventy-five percent! And are you surprised? And do you think anything is any different today? As Frank Lucas says in the movie, the NYPD lived for years on that French Connection dope, swiping a bit here and a bit there, selling it back on the streets. And the day after they shut down that operation, do you think heroin was any harder to get on the streets? And the day after this operation was shut down …

Are we ever going to get it? One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing again and again and expect different results. That describes our long-running, eternal, and totally hopeless War on Drugs perfectly. Why not declare war on water, or oxygen? It’s just as likely to get results. And I’ll guarantee you this, there would be water and oxygen gangs and cartels, getting filthy rich and paying off cops, corrupting the system, killing each other, selling adulterated water and watered-down oxygen cut with radon. We would be passing laws that violate our civil liberties, confiscating the property of anyone caught in possession of oxygen (or ozone, O3, a “precursor” of oxygen), handing down lower penalties for deuterium oxide (heavy water), the preferred drug of rich folks, and heavier sentences for possession of regular water, which only black people use because it’s cheaper.

Drugs are not the scourge! The war on drugs is the scourge! IMDb.com

December 18, 2007 - First Feature The Golden Compass (2007) This was supposed to be the next fantasy franchise, like Shrek, Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia. ‘Fraid not. The books, which I haven’t read, were popular, and apparently thought-provoking. I may even read them myself, as it seems they strongly attack organized religion, which is always worthwhile, in my opinion. But the problem here is simply too much story and not enough time. There was so much going on, which needed so much explaining, that I never had enough time to develop a real rooting interest in any of the myriad sides, and often didn’t know which side was which, especially in the murky final battle. Visually, it is way beyond stunning … but what isn’t, these days? Much imagination went into the set and creature design. In particular, every character in every scene has an animal “daemon” accompanying him or her, and that is a daunting task. I can’t say I disliked the movie, but it never really caught fire for me. IMDb.com

Second Feature Beowulf (2007) I don’t know why they chose this title. It’s really the story of a poor, abused young man and his mother. We don’t get a lot of his back story, but from appearances he was horribly burned at some point. He seems to be profoundly retarded. He has no genitals, and not much is left of his face. His body is twisted, whether from deformity or mutilation it’s hard to say. (I wouldn’t be surprised if he was brutally beaten, possibly by his classmates, for his ugliness. You know Vikings, not a race noted for gentleness and compassion.) He lives in a cave with his devoted mom, and they both mind their own business.

November 12, 2007 - First Feature Fred Claus (2007) What’s that? The sound of jingle bells, this early November? That must mean it’s time for Hollywood to start dropping its latest bunch of reindeer turds marketed as “Christmas movies.” We’ve been getting them regular as vegan bowel movements for many years now, sometimes only one, sometimes, in a year when the creative laxative is really working, as many as two or three. Mostly I haven’t seen them. According to rumor they reached the bottom of the toilet bowl a few years back with Christmas With the Kranks. I wouldn’t know. I understand Jingle All the Way was pretty bad, too; in fact, if a few more people had actually seen it we might not have Arnold for governor here in Cahleefornia. Whatever … they would have to have been really stunningly awful to out-awful this one, which is about as funny as shoving a really big holly wreath up your ass. Not a single joke works. Lee nodded off. Luckily, being in the car, nobody but me could hear her snore. (Kidding. I handle the snoring for both of us, and most of the rest of LA County, too.)

Second Feature Michael Clayton (2007) Here is the first directing effort by Tony Gilroy, who wrote the very smart scripts for all three Bourne movies, and this one is super-sharp, too. Aside from one moment when a man gets out of a car at a moment that turns out to have been a very lucky one for him, without any reasonable motivation that I can see, it all hangs together. How nice to see a movie with a mind now and then. I thought it should have been a bigger hit than it was, and all I can figure out they did wrong was the title, and the advertising … which are pretty big things, come to think of it. I mean, take a look at the poster. Have you ever seen anything so uninteresting? As for the title, I don’t have a better one to suggest, and it is certainly possible to have a big hit with a movie named after the main character (Jerry McGuire), this one doesn’t resonate with me, and is actually about issues much broader than just one man. But forget all that, go see this. George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and even more so, Tilda Swinton, are outstanding, as is every member of the supporting cast, so critical to the success of a realistic movie. IMDb.com

First Feature We Own the Night (2007) Well-written, well-acted, well-photographed (minimal use of shaky-cam, hurray!) … and ultimately just a bit disappointing. I don’t know who to blame it on, except to say that it’s territory that I guess I’ve grown a little tired of. New York City, 1988, and the motto of the NYPD was “We Own the Night.” I don’t know exactly what that little bit of bravado was meant to translate as (certainly not something as bald and awful as “Giuliani Time!”), but never mind. The cops are fighting drugs, which is a useless fight, in my opinion—they should be a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem—so right there I’m a bit less than engaged. We got a cop family, with Robert Duvall a chief, his son Mark Wahlberg a new Captain, and the black sheep, Joaquin Phoenix, operating a trendy club. Drugs are bought and sold and used there, but Phoenix is not involved in that, at least not directly. You can easily see where this is going. Lee predicted that Wahlberg would be shot as a means to galvanize his ne’er-do-well brother to Do The Right Thing. We were both a little surprised that he survived the assassination attempt … but it was easy to figure who would be the next to go. I won’t tell you, but I’m sure you can figure it out. I have to give them points for avoiding some of the worst cop-action movie clichés—the bad guy, hit with one shotgun blast, does not get up and fight some more—and it was a better-than-usual night at the movies, but I know that in a year I’ll have trouble remembering what it was all about, just like right now I can barely recall anything about the highly-touted The Depahted. IMDb.com

Second Feature The Kingdom (2007) Let me say it right up front: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a seriously sick society. They are by no means the only one, but as they are our “allies” in the “War on Terror,” it makes me hate them all the more. If there were a button here on my desk that, when pushed, would cause every male adherent of the Wahabi sect of Islam to vanish (whether to Paradise or to Hell, I don’t really care; either way they wouldn’t trouble Planet Earth anymore), I’d press it in an instant. If there were a second button that would kill every male member of the House of Saud, raze every one of their incredibly decadent palaces right down to the sand, sow the grounds with radioactive salts, and cause a million pigs to piss on the smoking ruins, I’d push that button, too. As for Islam itself, “The Religion of Peace” … well, that’s enough buttons for today, and if I pushed that one I’d have to point out that I’d also want a button for Jerry Falwell and his tribe, Mormons, Catholics, Hindus, Scientologists … the list is long.

This movie gets off to a good start, with an awful scene of carnage as a truck bomb is detonated at a softball game at an American compound in Riyadh (actually Dubai, and Arizona). Hundreds are killed. Back in DC, the FBI wants to investigate, but is up against the usual wall of isolation imposed by the Desert Kingdom of Camel-fuckers. Four of them eventually get in, led by Jamie Foxx. (Among them is Jennifer Garner, who should have known better than to wear that t-shirt in sexually perverted SA.) They are making no progress, bureaucratic and religious obstacles cropping up everywhere they turn, until they finally convince a Saudi prince that finding the killers might actually be a good thing, and make friends with a true Saudi patriot in the police force. Then it turns into CSI: Riyadh for a while, which gives Chris Cooper a chance to wallow around in a mudhole and act macho. Soon the four are hot on the trail, so naturally they are attacked, leading to a huge, long car chase and shoot-out.

Now, I’ll admit to the no-longer-so-guilty pleasures of seeing men in robes and red-and-white-checkered keffiyehs getting blown up, riddled with bullets, dying horribly. Who could really resist it? But the plot takes some awkward leaps here at the end, as movies so often do, and I was left unsatisfied. Surely there is something to say about this situation a little deeper than the conclusion here, where Foxx and a little Arab boy both repeat the same mantra: Kill ‘em all. That’s emotionally satisfying, but as Israel has learned to its sorrow over 60 years, it doesn’t work in the end.

TECHNICAL NOTE: The shaky-cam operator really should be paid overtime for practicing his craft in slow, static scenes as well as action-packed ones. Paid … and then I’d cheerfully break both his arms. I’m thinking of starting a shaky-cam Hall of Shame, and inducting directors who overuse this most dreadful of “edgy” techniques when it is strictly un-called for. A permanent life member would be Jerry Bruckheimer, and I’d also add the director of Friday Night Lights … and goddam it if I didn’t just look him up, to find that he is none other than Peter Berg, who directed this palsied effort! Buy a tripod, Mr. Berg! IMDb.com

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October 16, 2007 - First Feature The Heartbreak Kid (2007) A young man who is having an affair with an older, married woman falls in love with her daughter. Not a very nice thing to do, I think we’d all agree. Hideously inappropriate behavior. But we like Benjamin in The Graduate, because though he’s not man enough (he’s 18) to own up to it with the daughter, he struggles with it. He knows he’s behaved badly. We like him. We wish him well. And hey, at least all the men in the audience know there was no way in hell an 18-year-old could have resisted Mrs. Robinson’s advances. I know I couldn’t have.

Now, flash forward 40 years. (40 years!!! My, how time flies.) An older man who has commitment problems has second thoughts about his marriage and is strongly attracted to another woman … while on his honeymoon! Not a very nice thing to do. Hideously inappropriate behavior … and I detest this asshole, because his only solution to the problem is to lie, lie, lie. There is not an ounce of moral fiber in him. This is all played for laughs, of course, and I imagine it all could have worked (I never saw the Bruce Jay Friedman, Neil Simon, Elaine May original, but I wouldn’t be surprised it Simon and May could have pulled it off) … but not in the hands of the Farrelly Brothers. Don’t get me wrong, these dudes are very good at things like Dumb and Dumber and Shallow Hal and Stuck on You. There’s Something About Mary transcended its silliness and delivered some of the best comic moments ever, and they were even better when they made Fever Pitch, one of our favorite recent romantic comedies. But their next project is The Three Stooges, and that’s the level this one operates at. It takes a genius like Buck Henry to write about a situation we’d normally condemn, and make us like it. This script doesn’t have an ounce of that sort of genius.

I will admit, I laughed some during the first half. Maybe that’s where we should have left, only at the drive-in there’s the second feature, which is what we came to see, and that was … IMDb.com

Second Feature The Brave One (2007) I don’t understand the title. I guess it’s brave to come out of your apartment after a brutal mugging that leaves you near death and your fiancée dead, when you’re having panic attacks the moment you reach for the doorknob … but having a gun helps a lot. There’s really nothing brave about putting a gun in the face of a worthless piece of shit and pulling the trigger. Satisfying, sure, but not brave.

Most of us think about revenge. (I’d say all, but there are people who really believe in turning the other cheek. I’m not one of them.) You’d like to think it would be satisfying, and it certainly can be, but probably not if it involves killing someone, no matter how richly they deserve it. Unless you’re a certain kind of person who is not bothered by killing, and I have to think they’re fairly rare. I don’t believe they are all psychopaths, but many of them are, or at least they’re people who are incapable of feeling empathy. Charles Bronson, in Death Wish, seemed to suffer no qualms at all about cleaning up New York City, and Bernard Goetz was apparently bothered only by the lifelong hassle he incurred by plugging those assholes on the subway. Death Wish was probably a dishonest movie … but damn, it was a lot of fun. I remember getting a visceral delight in seeing these monsters blown away. Naturally, to get that delight, the screenwriters have to make the monsters into the absolute worst, most despicable, sub-human creatures who ever lived, the sort of people most of us would no more miss than metal rabbits in a shooting gallery. In this movie Jodie Foster tries for more honesty, showing the price a formerly peaceful vigilante pays for her clean-up campaign. But of course her final targets are the very murderers who killed her fiancée … and stole her dog, too! And that seems unlikely. Even more unlikely is the ending, as Terence Howard (who is a man to watch; he’s very, very good) does something … well, that’s a spoiler.

And damn it, bottom line, it would be a lot more fun if she enjoyed it more. Yeah, I know, she probably wouldn’t … but she has one great Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry line. She’s just hit this scumbag with a crowbar, undoing thousands of dollars of dental work, and the guy sputters through his blood: “Are you a cop?” And she snorts, and says, “You wish.” Meaning, a cop couldn’t do what I’m about to do to you. Loved it. IMDb.com

August 21, 2007 - First Feature The Invasion (2007) Review pending upon the completion of our Great Body Snatcher Film Festival! Four reviews for the price of one! (I’ll bet you didn’t know there were four versions of this story.) IMDb.com

Second Feature Hot Rod (2007) Some films are so bad you almost hate to attack them. It’s like making fun of a retarded person. This one is produced by Lorne Michaels, who ought to be ashamed of himself, not only for insulting me with this drivel, but for keeping that walking corpse, “Saturday Night Live,” shuffling along, belching and farting and making messes on the carpet, for twenty years after it stopped being very funny. It was given three stars by Roger Ebert, who also ought to be ashamed of himself. It scored an inexplicable 43 at Metacritic, when they should have been exploring the possibility of negative numbers. And it stars something called Andy Samberg, who displays not a trace of talent in comedy or … oh, god, the horror, the horror! … acting. I doubt that this Samberg thing is capable of being ashamed of himself. I have learned that he is all set to become the first Internet film star, having made his rep with short videos filmed with a couple of buddies who seem to have spent their lives stoned out of their minds on Dr. Pepper and Cheetos. I once asked myself, while watching the first part of an Adam Sandler movie (I didn’t finish it), “Could comedy possibly ever get any worse than this?” This movie provides the sorry answer. I’d almost be ready to destroy the Internet entirely if it keeps spawning IQ-lowering garbage like this. We fled after the obligatory 20 minutes I’ll give any film, feeling as if we were being pursued by the brainless undead zombies from the previous movie, The Invasion. Was that laughter we heard from the people in the next car? They’re coming, they’re coming! The pod people! IMDb.com

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August 6, 2007 - First Feature The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) This is without question the smartest, snappiest, most satisfying series of movies now in production. The audience has built over the years, and this one opened very, very big and had excellent reviews, so even though there are only three Robert Ludlum books about Jason Bourne and this one really seems to wrap up the story … when a series keeps raking in the dough like that you can never say it is over. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fourth. And I’m not sure it would be a good idea, but money talks. We’ll see.

This one is as smart and challenging as the first two. It makes you work to keep up with it. The scenes where the CIA is trying to track Bourne through Waterloo Station with dozens of agents, computers, and CCTV cameras, and his tricks to avoid them, really crackle with intelligence. Like the first two, there are no fancy made-up James Bond gadgets, everything is off the shelf, everything is plausible. In fact, the whole plot is set in motion by an NSA computer picking one word out of the almost unimaginable babble of cell phone communications … which is something they can do! Jason Bourne is almost as relentless as the Terminator, he’s got no snide remarks, no clever lines as he’s killing someone, no smirk. (Oh, he does have one clever line, but it is so good that it makes you burst out laughing in admiration.)

Now, I called this film “plausible.” There’s no way you can call it “realistic,” though it has a feel of realism that almost no other action/thriller these days manages to accomplish. After all, though any one of Bourne’s escape might work, it’s simply not possible that, no matter how good he is, he could escape time after time after time. But this falls under the heading of “Hey, it’s a thriller, you gotta suspend your disbelief.” It’s a fine line, but these movies seldom cross it. Bourne outruns no explosions, for instance. He does absorb more punches with fists and feet than a human being really can do, and an explosion, and a fall in a car from about three or four stories up, and a bad wreck … and doesn’t seem too hurt when in fact he would be crippled for weeks by any of these things … but again, it’s a thriller, and I have come to be grateful for what I can get in that department, so long as it isn’t comic-book level.

It must be said, however, that in the matter of quick editing, it does put its foot over the line a few times, to the point where you’re not sure just what the hell is going on. That’s too bad, but I forgive it because most of the time, it stays just on the right side of the jerky-camera motion-sickness partially-obscured “edginess” that sink all too many action films for me. And there is no CGI over-the-top crap, which I have begun to regard as the refuge of the talentless. It’s all good old-timey stunt action. IMDb.com

Second Feature I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) Sometimes a second feature at the drive-in is a bonus, sometimes it’s a cross you have to bear … but only for 30 minutes or so, until the screen has been stunk up so bad that you flee in terror. This one was a 15-minute stinker. IMDb.com

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July 18, 2007 - First Feature Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) I just re-read my comments on the first four films, and there’s a funny thing. I rated #4 the best of the lot … and I can’t really remember much about it. I’ve been a fan of both the books and the movies, and I’m waiting along with everybody else for HP and the Deathly Hallows. (I don’t think Harry will die, do you?) So … why didn’t this one excite me more?

I scanned some other reviews, and the ones who had a bone to pick mostly didn’t like that this one was so dark. (In both the figurative and literal senses; I had a hard time seeing what was going on a lot of the time.) Of course, the book was dark. The whole series is getting darker as it goes along, as it should. The first one was nothing but fun, in spite of the dangers involved. These were kids, they were studying magic, everything was delightfully wonderful. What’s not to like? Wouldn’t you like to go to Hogwarts, even if an evil mastermind was out to kill you? Sign me up, I’ll take my chances.

Now the kids are growing up, almost grown, and if we want to get metaphoric—which Rowling isn’t shoving down our throats, but I think it’s entered her mind—this is a tough time even if you’re not engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Prince of Darkness. Hell, struggling with your own hormones is scary enough. As we move from childhood, many things become a lot less fun, and that may be sad, but it’s a fact. It is entirely right and proper that as her initial audience of 10 to 14-year-olds mature, the books should grow more adult along with them. It was inevitable that, as Harry was never intended to remain young forever, like Nancy Drew or Tom Swift, and the author intended all along that he would grow into a man’s estate, the mood would get more serious.

But I miss something, and I guess it’s just the sense of fun. I know that’s unfair, and how many jokes can you make about any-flavored-jellybeans? How many times can you re-capture the wonderful whimsy of owls delivering the mail? The answer is: Not forever. And it’s sad, as I guess all lost innocence is sad.

I didn’t love this movie. It’s not bad by any means, but I didn’t gasp in delight.

Something else: We saw this at the drive-in, and a couple of times I looked around at the three other screens to see the tiny, far-away action playing out there. Transformers. Live Free or Die Hard. The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. How did we come to this? Okay, it’s summer, it’s a drive-in, what did I expect, okay, okay, okay. But special effects used to be in aid of the plot. When did we tip over the edge to the point that the SFX now drive the plot? Are the only reason for the existence of the plot? I’ve given up railing about making movies out of comic books (or “graphic novels,” as their apologists sometimes call them), but when did we start making movies about toys, fer chrissake? What’s next? Attack of the Lego Creatures? Erector Set: The Movie?

Bigger is no longer better, at least not in my book. For a while, that worked. What new CGI creations do you have to show me, Hollywood? Oh, boy, that was snazzy, I’ve never seen that before! Now … yawn. Been there, done that. There is nothing new you can show me, Hollywood, nothing at all. You’ve reached the limits of CGI. I’ve fucking seen it all. I am not even tempted to see Transformers. So they change shape and fight a lot. Big deal. Now how about giving me a story that means something?

The Harry Potter series is still delivering on the story, but it’s also getting caught up in its own dazzle. It happened with Star Wars. The first was sheer WOW!!!! The second, gee whiz. By the time Return of the Jedi came around, I was feeling dissatisfied and wasn’t sure why. Now I know. I’m bored!! Oh, right, here it comes, another goddam stinkin’ light saber duel. Five minutes of screen time, the CGI people can do it in their sleep now, they can phone it in. Time for a snooze, wake me when it’s over. And you know what? One more scene of wizards hurling light at each other from the tips of their wands and shouting “Expectorate!” is just a goddam stinkin’ light saber duel, too. It’s too bad that it’s the dramatic climax of this film, because I was … bored. Spitless. IMDb.com

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June 20, 2007 - First Feature Ocean's 13 (2007) When Ocean’s 12 came out I posted a short review, and a facetious review of Ocean’s 13: Don’t press your luck, Steve, referring to Steven Soderbergh, who usually goes in for much edgier stuff than this, but has done an adequate job on these frothy caper movies. He does it again in 13. It is very complex, and you don’t believe a frame of it for a minute, but you’re not supposed to. There are a few details I still haven’t figured out, but I don’t need to go see it again to get them straight. I recommend it, but only if you like this sort of stuff. IMDb.com

Second Feature Knocked Up (2006) Judd Apatow was the writer/director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I thought was dandy, and this one is, too. There are no plot surprises, it goes pretty much as you would expect it to go, but the way it gets there is all the charm. Apatow seems to like nerds—we heard him interviewed on NPR and he seems a bit of a nerd himself—and he likes the nerd to get the girl. Lee had a bit of trouble believing this particular slacker man-boy would ever attract a woman like this one, and I think that’s probably true, and a problem a lot of women would have with the story. Several female reviewers did.  But most cut the movie some slack, because after all, we’ve all seen odd couples, wondered “What do they see in each other?” It can happen, is all I’m saying, and it’s a harmless fantasy of guys like me who have never had women falling all over them to think that they could win the love of a smart and gorgeous woman like Katherine Heigl … and the key word is earn. She likes him at first—he’s funny, though pudgy and an obvious loser—but they both know he’s got a lot of growing up to do. He doesn’t know how, but the impetus of an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy gives him the needed shove. Will this marriage last? Who knows? I wouldn’t take odds on it. But lasting is not what the movie’s about. That’s another movie. IMDb.com

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June 1, 2007 - Only Feature Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Read my reviews of #1 and #2 (it won’t take you long), add a lot of dittos, especially the part about not remembering much about brainless action pictures I saw 4 years and 1 year ago, respectively. Do any of you actually recall the plots of those movies, unless you’ve seen them multiple times? We sure didn’t. I had no idea what the black pearl was, who half these people were, what the curse was, why that guy was stuck in the ship’s timbers … the list could be very long. The only thing I remembered clearly about #2 was the great action sequence involving the big wheel rolling down the hill. Does that make me a bad person? Add in that this was way, way, too long, bloated with superfluous plot (I know, I complain about action pictures that have almost no plot at all, but this was excessive) … and then, sadly, that Jack Sparrow has overstayed his welcome. He’s just silly here. And the screenwriters seem to believe that if one JS is good, 100 will be even better. The scenes in Davy Jones’s Locker are boring and pointless. Anything good to say about it? The SFX were titanic, overwhelming, dizzying, mind-blowing … yo-ho-ho-ho-hum. That doesn’t sell a movie to me anymore. The depressing thing is that it’s guaranteed there will be a fourth in this tired old franchise. Yo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hum … and a bottle of rum. IMDb.com

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May 23, 2007 - First Feature Shrek the Third (2007) The reviews were not good, which is good ... I mean, in the sense that my expectations were lowered. They needn't have been. I liked it. True, nothing is going to beat the originality of the first one, and it wasn't even as good as the second, but when you start off from a point as high as Shrek, you can come down considerably and still be worth watching. Faint praise? I guess, but I still enjoyed myself. I am not thrilled to learn, however, that there will be a fourth. But with box office numbers like this, I don't suppose anyone could resist. Making it, that is. I might resist seeing it.

Several reviewers thought the story line wouldn't appeal to young children, since it has to do with life choices instead of battling dragons. I spit on those critics. They are always whining that kids' movies are dumb, and yet they consistently undervalue a child's ability to respond to emotions other than anger and revenge and fear ... mindless action movies, in other words. Shrek was always a fish out of water, and he is here, too, and simply wants to return to his swamp. Going home is a theme that appeals to all ages ... and there is plenty of action and movement, nobody's going to get bored from the lack of that, and there are still the adult references that were what made the original movie appeal to such a wide audience. I'll say it again: Not as good as the first, but not bad. IMDb.com

Second Feature Blades of Glory (2007) Will Ferrell is a hit or miss guy. I gave up watching "Saturday Night Live" a long time ago, so I don't know much about his work there, but the clips I've seen are good. I first noticed him in Elf, which I  liked a lot except for the ending. I liked him in Melinda and Melinda, The Producers, and Stranger Than Fiction. Didn't like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, didn't even finish it. I skipped Bewitched and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, though both are on my list of "Possibles to See When I'm Desperate."

This is one of the good ones. I laughed a lot. Very, very silly, but most of it worked. Figure skating is pretty silly anyway, when you look at it dispassionately. I happen to enjoy it, but won't argue with people who can't understand what all the fuss is about. And it raises an interesting question: Why not have two guys, or two girls, skating together? One day soon a gay couple is going to come out of the icebox and demand to do this very thing. (As one "man on the street" says here: "As if figure skating wasn't gay enough already.") What are the snooty poobahs who run big-time Olympic sports gonna do? Resist, probably, but they always lose these things in the end. Right? They resisted blacks and they resisted women, and who are the big stars now? I'm looking forward to the day.

One of the more delightful things was how many real skaters were willing to participate in a film that they had to know poked fun at their sport. The announcers are Jim Lampley, who is channeling Fred Willard in Best in Show with his idiotic comments, and gold medalist Scott Hamilton, who also does this in real life. And sitting on the panel that disqualifies these two bozos for life for their outrage on the medal stand are Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano, Nancy Kerrigan (Look out! Is that Tanya Harding creeping up behind her with a billy club?) and Dorothy Hamill. They all seem to be having fun. So did I. IMDb.com

May 2, 2007 - First Feature Next (2007) Will the plundering of the works of Philip K Dick never cease? What's the deal here, are the stories in the public domain? I mean, they're good stories, but no other SF author has had nearly as many big, expensive, stupid movies made from his works. It began 25 years ago with the gorgeous but overwrought and illogical Blade Runner (from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Then we got the vacuous Total Recall (short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"), Screamers (1995) (short story "Second Variety"), Impostor (2002) (short story), Minority Report (2002) (short story), Paycheck (2003) (short story), and the horrible-looking rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly. There are even two truly obscure adaptations: Confessions d'un Barjo (1992), (novel Confessions of a Crap Artist), and Abre los ojos (1997) (novel Ubik). Now we get Next, based on the novel The Golden Man.

Actually, it's not nearly as bad as I feared. At least the first part.

But what's the deal with Nicolas Cage? He seems to have decided to alternate: One serious to fairly-serious movie (like this one), and one piece of total crap. Does he need the paychecks? Is he script-deaf? (This is an affliction that some actors have. Sandra Bullock comes to mind.) Whatever, his name used to be one I'd count on for a good picture. Not anymore.

SPOILER WARNING!

The gimmick here is a good one. Dude can see two minutes into the future ... but that soon is abandoned, for reasons never really explained. By the middle of the film he's seeing hours ahead, and by the end, days. Now, that could have been an easy fix, and you still could have preserved the basic complications. What we gradually realize is that, at any moment, what we thought was the story line can turn out to have been merely his visions of possible futures. And here's a dilemma. This is man who is truly invincible. In one well-done scene, we see him appear to split in two, then three, then there are dozens of him exploring your obligatory Big Dark Space with lots of Places to Hide. We understand that this is merely threads of possible futures, and he's picking the only good one. It gives us a glimpse of his world. We've already seen him win many a fight simply by knowing where punches are going to be thrown, where bullets are going to hit, where booby traps are planted. Nobody can touch him. Then we go down a long, long trail of probabilities, half an hour or more of screen time ... and then things go fatally wrong ... and he wakes up, much earlier, and we see it was all just a thread of possibility. He gets to start over and make different choices this time. No one could possibly, ever, stand a chance against this man. No prison could hold him, short of a perpetual straitjacket and drugs, and then what use would he be? And this all sort of obviates the plot tension. All that hullabaloo over the atomic bomb was phony. It never could have gone off. It never will go off. If he could only see two minutes forward, we've got a plot, but the moment the writer decided he could see much farther into the future, everything from that point forward becomes a cheat.

Not to say it wasn't amusing. I enjoyed it about ¾ of the way, then it slid into the usual orgy of chases and shooting, and then the cheating ending. I'm not saying the ending wasn't logical, given the rules they had already broken by then ...  but it was still a cheat. IMDb.com

Second Feature Disturbia (2007) Poor LB Jefferies. All he had was a telephone (dial-up!), a pair of binoculars, and a camera with a long lens. (Oh, and Grace Kelly to keep him company now and then.) Don't remember old Jeff? He was the guy with the broken leg in Rear Window, which is the obvious inspiration for this film. The guy in this one is a teenager, naturally, and bored out of his mind because he's under electronic house arrest, confined to home and yard. After firmly establishing his credentials as a spoiled little asshole, after his mom cuts off his X-box, his MySpace, and his wide-screen plasma TV—all of which will probably be included in the new Geneva Conventions against torture when this generation gets around to amending them—he's left with only his laptop, his digital videocam, several cell phones, high speed download ... you get the picture. (Oh, and the voyeuristic pleasure of watching his neighbor, the delectable Sarah Roemer.) This is going to be a high-tech variant of Hitchcock. But he finally begins to get engaged in watching the world around him, and this is where the movie gets pretty good. Of course his neighbor is creepy (David Morse), and we wonder if things are what they seem. The tension builds nicely, though this is a long way from Hitchcock caliber ... and then ... without revealing any real surprises, then the movie degenerates into a gross-out in the dark with people behaving stupidly. Too bad. It had me going there for a while. IMDb.com

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First Feature Grindhouse (2007) Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, like a lot of movie buffs, love bad movies. The difference, I think, is that they don't think they're bad. They like them for themselves, not for the campy pleasure of seeing how awful they are. They like Hong Kong chop-socky, Japanese let's-stomp-Tokyo, and those awful sexploitation grinders from the early '60s. But when they set out to make this double-feature homage, they did so with 21^st Century technology that none of the producers of this sort of dreck could have afforded even if it had been available.

But the reviews were pretty good, and Tarantino is always fascinating, even when I don't like the movie, and it Grindhouse is the quintessential drive-in movie, and we were at the drive-in ... so ... bad idea. Very bad idea. IMDb.com

Planet Terror. This is Rodriguez, and I was interested for about the first half hour. It felt like a spoof, which worked pretty well. Solemn, nonsensical dialogue, shambling zombies, buckets of blood. Then ... it just went on too long, and though it never lost its over-the-top stupidity, after a while it was just ... over the top. They must have bought fake blood by the supertanker load. After a while, exploding bodies and a one-legged girl with a machine gun instead of a pegleg just didn't hack it anymore. No one except the queasiest could possible take the oceans of blood and gore seriously, and I sure didn't, but after a while it's just a yawn. After a while it's just not funny. If you want to see a funny "shambling zombie" movie, go see Shaun of the Dead.

Both films have "missing reels" (We apologize for the inconvenience!), and a lot of surface scratching and film burn-throughs and other stuff to make them look old, which doesn't quite work since they are both set in the present day. I wondered it if might have worked better if some reels were shown out of order, you could play little Pulp Fiction games with that ... but I don't think anything could really have saved them. I totally hated this movie!!!

This double comes complete with 4 trailers for coming attractions in the same vein: Thanksgiving (like Halloween, with turkeys), Werewolf Women of the SS, Machete, and Don't, all done by pals of QT and RR. The sad thing is, all four of them were better and funnier than the actual features, probably because they were so short.

Death Proof. Whatever else you say, Tarantino is one of the best ever at writing dialogue. His ear is unerring for the rhythms of speech, and for the startling reversal, and the new take on the old situation. This film basically breaks down into 4 parts: A long scene in a bar with several women and a lot of conversation; a short violent scene to set up the rest of the movie and establish the bad guy; another long conversation with 4 women; and a long car chase. The conversations work best. This was inspired by car-chase movies like Vanishing Point, Duel, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and maybe Thelma and Louise. The most fascinating thing about it, which I learned later, is that the character of Zoe, the one who is strapped to the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger (the same car used in Vanishing Point, which the characters refer to), is playing herself, Zoe Bell, one of the premier stuntwomen in the business, and she really is out there on that hood, she's her own stunt double. But all in all, this is a dud, though not nearly the mega-dud that the first one is.

Second Feature The Hills Have Eyes II (2007) Cannibalistic mutant films are never high on my list of must-sees. I never saw the first one and never felt the loss. By the time Grindhouse ended we were so tired of this shit we didn't even stay around for the opening credits. IMDb.com

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March 20, 2007 - Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, like a lot of movie buffs, love bad movies. The difference, I think, is that they don't think they're bad.

First Feature Meet the Robinsons (2007) I have seen the future of animated features, and it's not good. This overblown monstrosity is apparently based on an inoffensive little children's book titled A Day With Wilbur Robinson. It tells of a boy who goes to visit his friend, whose family is a collection of eccentrics. And that's about it. Disney Studios tacked on an elaborate plot involving time travel and an orphan, which I guess would be okay, but they've done nothing with it but add a lot of noise and SFX. Like Robots, it is endlessly visually inventive. Like all of these new CGI animations, I guess, though I have largely stopped going to them unless they're by Pixar. Boy, they know the technical side now, and it's easy to blow you away, visually. And the people who do the designing and drawing are first-rate, no question about it. But story is often minimal, as here, and the pace has gone way beyond frenetic to something you might call amphetaminic. These movies are made for people with an attention span measured in milliseconds; if you don't smack them in the eyeballs twice per second, you lose them. Dialogue is almost non-stop, so fast you don't have time to laugh before you're whisked to the next visual joke. Most shots here last two seconds or even less. There's no time to savor anything. When we arrive in the future and meet this family, we spend about one minute with each, and the distinct impression is that the visitor from the past has been taken to an insane asylum. Nothing here is funny, it's just weird, and not in a nice way. The whole thing was very creepy. I'm sad to see the Disney logo on this shit.

Second Feature Wild Hogs (2007) We usually approach the second feature with a lot of trepidation, but my mom and sister liked this, so ... and what do you know? It's funny! Silly and predictable, sure, and far from a classic, but it earns its laughs as long as all you expect is a competent entertainment. Lord knows those are rare enough these days. IMDb.com

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March 29, 2007 - This was our first time at the Mission Tiki Drive-in, in Montclair. It's 40 miles from our apartment in Hollywood, which is an hour on I-10 if the traffic is good, longer if it's bad. More like 2 hours if we go surface streets. So we may not be going back frequently. Too bad. It's not a bad place. It's South Pacific themed, with Tiki gods and such, and the snack bar is lined with bamboo on the walls. Clean, well-maintained, there's a swap meet here on the weekends.

First Feature Shooter (2007) A pretty good drive-in movie. I judge flicks a little differently when I'm sitting in the front seat of my car. I don't cut them so much slack that I'd enjoy some of the brainless shit that comes along, but still, a C movie in the theater might be experienced as a B+ at the drive-in. This is a B+. It has its moments, and it has its gaping plot holes and lingering questions you don't really want to look into too deeply. Such as, where did they get the money to buy all the stuff they use? Such as, how did they get to the top of that snowy mountain before the helicopters did? Such as, how did they drive from Eastern Virginia to Montana and get there in about 12 hours? Now, that's driving! Google maps tells me this is about 2200 miles, which is 180 mph average, so wear your astronaut diapers and carry a big gas tank, 'cause you ain't stopping.

Ignore all that if you can, and it's a pretty good shoot-'em-up. It's based on a story by Stephen Hunter, who is a hell of a good novelist, and also reviews movies for the Washington Post. (Be fun if he reviewed this one!) He and I would probably not get along, as he is a conservative, and a gun nut. Okay, maybe an "enthusiast." He likes guns, and knows everything about them. His books are about the retired sniper Bob Lee Swagger, an Arkansas boy, and his father, who died when Bob Lee was young. The reason I like him is that I treasure expertise about any field, even if I don't give a damn about it in real life (Dick Francis and horses), or actively hate it, as with guns. Hunter's books revel in the fine points of shooting, and the stories are great, and almost believable, which is all I ask of any good thriller. This movie preserves a lot of the gun lore from this book Point of Impact, and keeps the main plot device of a man framed for an assassination, but changes almost everything else, for the worse. The best thing about it is the in-your-face acknowledgment that our government lies to us and we believe it, and it all but names Donald Rumsfeld as one of the chief liars. I don't think this proposition would have sold very well 6 years ago, but now it's easy to accept. "Weapons of mass destruction? Peace and freedom in Iraq? Shit, boy, it's all about oil, and we'll do anything to get it." This from a US Senator before Bob Lee blows him away. Which is a nice touch. One down, 99 to go. But don't neglect the Executive Branch, Bob Lee!

Mark Wahlberg was all wrong for this part. Should have gotten Scott Glenn, and we could have still had him be a Vietnam vet. IMDb.com

Second Feature Ghost Rider (2007) We try to make sure the probable 2 hours of crap is the second feature when we go to the drive-in, that way we can drive away if the second feature is Jackass, Part II. Forgot that principle once and had to sit through Alien Vs. Predator, and I'm still not completely recovered. Nicolas Cage works a lot (he's got no less than 5 projects listed for 2008), and seems to alternate between serious stuff and complete, total crap. This is one of the turds. We lasted 30 minutes, could have easily left in 10. IMDb.com

October 10, 2006. A serious bummer in the Drive-in-land. The Vineland, which is the closest to our apartment, is a 4plex. All summer long they've been showing dreck that we wouldn't stoop to even at the drive-in, or maybe a movie we sorta kinda marginally might want to see ... but paired up with something so witless it would sour the experience. I mean, first feature Beerfest, second feature World Trade Center? What were they thinking?

Also, we've seen movies on the southwest screen once (or was it twice?), and it was perfectly adequate. But we've been to another screen, the northeast, twice, and the FM radio signal is atrocious. We would drive around and it would get a little better. Others were driving around, too, so it's not our radio. You can't find out which movie is playing on what screen because all you get is a recording telling you what is playing with what. It has become very frustrating.

As if that wasn't enough, as Lee complained after the first movie was over, they make so many movies so dark these days that, while they might be viewable in an indoor theater (though it can be a problem even there) they're hard to see on a drive-in movie screen. Add that to the scratchy sound and this was a less-than-wonderful movie experience. I'll try not to let that affect my reviews. So here goes ...

First Feature The Depahted (2006) Well, that's how they pronounce it in this movie, set in Bahstin. Everybody tahks like that. We've all seen stories about cops infiltrating the mob—the Irish mob in this case—but you add a level of complexity when you also have a mole in the police depahtment. It makes for some amazing twists and turns in the plot. Matt Damon and Leonahdo DiCaprio ah the twin rats, and their superiahs ah Mahtin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mahk Wahlberg, and Jack Nicholson. All do