Review: Body of Lies

"If only Ridley had cast me instead of Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven, it might have been worth watching."

Body of Lies
4/5

I was excited about Body of Lies more than a year ago, when it was an IMDb page with a different title. The combination of one of my favorite directors, Ridley Scott, with his man-muse Russell Crowe, was enough to get excited about. Throw in a newly-excellent Leonardo Dicaprio, a script by William Monahan (writer of The Departed), and hefty doses of violence, and you've basically got the perfect movie.

Well, Body of Lies is far from perfect, but I certainly enjoyed it very much. I thought last year's American Gangster was more Scott's movie than Crowe's or Washington's; the movie was so chopped up and quick-edited (something I loved) that neither of those actors had extensive chances to dig into their roles. But this movie is undeniably DiCaprio's. Leo plays Roger Ferris, a CIA field agent who risks his life in Iraq at the behest of bureaucrat Ed Hoffman (Crowe). Hoffman is moving up, and he takes Ferris with him, making him acting station chief of the bureau in Amman, Jordan. Hoffman is a blowhard asshole, but he knows talent, and thus Ferris is soon barking orders at and reprimanding agency oldtimers with complete immunity.

Although complex camera work and complex CIA machinations are on full display here, the movie really revolves around the ideology conflicts of three men: Ferris, Hoffman, and Hani, the head of Jordanian intelligence. All of them want the terrorist Al-Saleem, but can't agree on how to go about it. Hoffman is a blatant ugly American stereotype, an overweight suburbanite who thinks he can run the world while taking his kids to school. He gives Ferris unprecedented powers in Jordan, then issues orders behind his back. Hani is his aristocratic opposite; he bestows both favors and torture with an urbane sense of entitlement. Ferris, most comfortable on the streets doing the work personally, seems sharper than either of them, but is also constantly caught between them. Every time Hoffman tries to browbeat Hani, or Hani tries to outwit Hoffman, Ferris ends up paying a price.

There's also a surprisingly cliched and surprisingly still effective love story thrown into the whole bargain, as Ferris romances a nurse he met in a Jordan clinic. The film (like The Departed) goes to great lengths to draw parallels between DiCaprio's potential life with a woman on the periphery of a world of violence, and that world itself. This is actually one of the weakest parts of the movie; although we get a strong sense of Ferris' sensitivity and integrity (something both Hoffman and Hani are lacking in), we never quite understand either his connection to the nurse or to the war on terror. This is the crucial ingredient; although we're viscerally connected to Ferris, we never quite understand how he's connected to anyone else.

As everyone who has written about this film has noted, it contains a strong critique of American foreign policy (at times, Crowe seems to be channeling president Bush for his portrait of Hoffman). But it actually has more in common with the Bourne movies or Spy Game or any Clancy thriller than it does with something like Redacted or Syriana or Lions for Lambs. This is a spy movie with a strong anti-War on Terror undercurrent, but first and foremost, it's a spy movie. It's not a bad one, either.

Review: Burn After Reading

If you find vicious axe murders hilarious, you'll love this movie!

Burn After Reading
4/5

When I heard that the Coen Brothers were making a spy comedy as a follow up to No Country for Old Men, I was expecting a comical antidote to the nihilism of that uniquely bleak movie. Well, Burn After Reading is funny (although maybe not as funny as No Country*), but it's not an antidote to the nihilism of No Country. In fact, Burn After Reading is in fact probably more nihilistic.

I would not have thought that was possible. But No Country for Old Men, as bleak as it was, treated life as a vibrant and valuable thing. Ultimately, there may have been no solution to the murderous Anton Chigurh, but his violence was a terrible thing. Every time he took a life, even if it was a character we didn't know, we cringed. The loss of life was a loss that mattered.

Burn After Reading takes the exact opposite approach. A group of idiots (a personal trainer, a federal marshal, an ex-CIA analyst, the CIA analyst's frigid wife, and a lonely woman) are running around, sleeping with and killing each other, after the CIA analyst's memoirs go missing and the personal trainer and the lonely woman try to blackmail him for its return. As expected, things go wrong, people die, and laughs are had. Frequently, those last two are simultaneous.

That's why I regard this film as bleaker than No Country. The external observer in No Country was Tommy Lee Jones. Every death weighed on him; he was never directly involved in the chase for the mad killer, but we saw the true cost of those murders in Jones' eyes. The observers in this movie are a pair of disengaged CIA higher ups. Like Jones, they don't know what's going on, but unlike him they're unmoved by loss of life. When some of the characters die, when another commits murder, when another is in a coma, their only concern is that the agency come out looking ok. They, like the Coens and the audience, are completely divorced from some truly gory and vicious acts. These deaths are mined for comedy, and it's pretty clear that the characters deserve them, for adding to the world's surplus stupidity.

Which is not to say that this movie isn't funny; hell, death is frequently funny on film, especially in the hands of the Coens (Wheezy Joe, anyone)? But outside of some inspired silliness by Brad Pitt as the personal trainer, this movie is never fun. Clooney, Malkovich, and McDormand are also very funny; only Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins are saddled with nothing to do. But even the funniest of Malkovich's rants or Clooney's narcissistic acts or McDormand's cluelessness are anchored by a deep and abiding desperation.

I do recommend this movie. I admired the skill that went into it, and all of the Coens' skills are on full display here: quirky characters, perfect dialogue, inspired deaths, and an attention to detail in all facets of filmmaking. But it's not a fun movie. It's not a happy movie. And it's certainly not an antidote to No Country for Old Men. Rather, it's its more cynical counterpart, in which the devaluation of human life is no longer a tragedy, but a farce. Because of all the laughs, no one will probably condemn it for its nihilism, as they some condemned both No Country and The Dark Knight. But if you ask me, those who are in the business of condemning nihilism should consider this Exhibit A.

This is pretty much what I looked like when I walked out of the theatre.

*Like The Departed, except way bleaker, I found No Country to be a nihilistic tragedy/comedy. All of Woody Harrelson's lines? Brolin's mother-in-law? Tommy Lee Jones' blatantly made up story about the conflict between man and steer? All hilarious.

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
4/5

I instantly loathed Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Sure, it showcased beautiful people in a beautiful city, beautifully photographed. But it seemed unbelievably facile. For starters, it is possessed of one of the worst, no, scratch that, the absolute worst voiceover of all time. The bland, uninteresting voiceover works like captions in pre-modern comics: it describes the things that you can see happening on the screen. The voiceover tells us that our two heroines are arriving at the hotel and checking into a different room than that of their Spanish suitor...and we see them arrive at the hotel and check into separate rooms. Mind-blowing. Furthermore, the voiceover also tells us about the characteristics and emotions of the two women, which is one of the most bizarre developments in recent filmmaking: everyone knows that Woody Allen's characters display their emotions via copious buckets of confessional dialouge. A voiceover, in lieu of this process, just felt wrong.

Of course, I reconsidered this stance when Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) started explaining their feelings via dialogue. As Johansson has demonstrated several times, and as Hall demonstrated throughout this film, neither of them can handle Allen's hyper-literate dialogue. The worst voiceover of all-time suddenly seemed sophisticated and nuanced, compared to Hall and Johansson's clumsy butcherings of the English language.

But a number of things happened to defuse my loathing and ultimately transform it into pleasure. Most importantly, the newly-minted international superstar Javier Bardem arrived. Just as in No Country for Old Men, Bardem is palpably charismatic, although this time out he kills considerably fewer people. He plays Juan Antonio, a Spanish painter interested in both Vicky and Cristina. Vicky is an engaged Type A personality who is certainly not his type; Cristina is an aimless psuedo-artist who certainly is. And yet both of them are interested enough in Juan Antonio to travel with him to Oviedo to look at some sculpture.

The person on the right speaks demonstrably better English than the two on the left.

Beyond the sheer magnificence of Bardem, this film's greatest strength is its deceptive complexity. The film's trailer and opening quarter make it appear hopelessly schematic: Cristina is an artistic free spirit, Vicky is hard-nosed realist, Juan Antonio is a suave lady killer, Juan Antonio's crazy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) is a violent wacko, and Vicky's fiance is a boring Wall Street douche bag. But after allowing us all of these illusions, Allen slowly twists them. The film's only truly sympathetic character is the fiance, who turns out to be a genuinely nice guy with a romantic streak. Cruz is in fact a better artist than Juan Antonio, and is a more efficient ladykiller. Juan Antonio's ladykilling is not so much calculated as hopelessly romantic. And most importantly, both Vicky and Cristina are revealed to be characters of problematic depth, with complex and contradictory desires. Luckily for us, they have relatively few scenes together after the film's opening moments; for some reason, when they're separate, they seem to handle the dialogue much better. This may be because they aren't stumbling over each other's incompetence, or possibly because Bardem, Cruz, and the girls' mentor Patricia Clarkson are such masters that I failed to notice their incompetence.

You could say that almost any Woody Allen movie is about adultery, and you'd usually be right. But what his movies are really about is the way that desire overcomes the channels it's supposed to run through, and finds new and unexpected ways to express itself. Vicky Cristina Barcelona explores a number of the different ways desire can flow. It problematizes all of them and valorizes none of them, but it also finds room to praise love in all its forms. It may not be Hannah and Her Sisters, but it's as good as we're likely to get from latter-day Allen. I, for one, am grateful.

Review: Stars Wars: The Clone Wars

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (not the 2002 video game Star Wars: The Clone Wars nor the 2003 traditionally animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars nor the forthcoming 2008 CG animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but rather the 2008 CG theatrical feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Maybe they shouldn't have given four different things all the same name?)
1.5/5

Like Citizen Kane, Star Wars: The Clone Wars delivers its exposition via a faux-newsreel voiceover. As you might have guessed, the similarities end there. Clone Wars is one of the most annoying movies I have ever seen. It follows the adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as they try to rescue Jabba the Hut's infant son from Count Dooku's evil clutches. It also introduces Ahsoka Tano as a young padawan of Anakin's, who he insists on calling "Snips" for no clear reason. (People apparently do not have real names in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 CG feature film). "Snips" refers to Anakin as "Skyguy," and they both refer to Jabba's son as "stinky." The fact that no one calls Dooku "Dooky" represents a serious lapse in continuity.)

On a Star Wars scale of character annoyingness, where JarJar is a 10, A New Hope's Obi-Wan is a 0, and Luke Skywalker is a 5 or so (whiny but tolerable), Snips is somewhere in the 9 to 9.5 range. Everything she says is whiny, and her "character growth" with her "mentor" "Skyguy" is as contrived and laughable as anything outside of the Padme-Anakin scenes in Episode 3. Skyguy himself registers an annoyingness rating of about 8.5, which, while intolerable, is a good deal lower than the Hayden Christiensen* Skyguy of episodes 2 and 3 (who I rate at around 9.999).

This story's plot is so simultaneously simplistic and convoluted, and its dialogue so bad, that I have a hard time believing that it wasn't written by George Lucas. Three writers were credited, but I will leave their names out of this review to protect their families; you can look them up if you desire, but I must try to protect the innocent. I've decided to ladle most of the non-Lucas blame on director Dave Filoni. You might remember that I included this movie in my feature about late-summer movies to look forward to. Well, I did so based on the fact that Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the 2003 traditionally animated TV series) was so excellent, and it looked like this movie would effectively translate Genndy Tartakovsky's handdrawn saga of amusingly stylized, plotless, action-driven nonsense to the big screen.

Fail. Of course, part of that has to do with the story; whereas Tartakovsky ignored both plot and character in favor of sheer action-mayhem, this attempt at a coherent and "moving" story is grating. But mostly, the character designs here suck. Or rather, they suck when they try to move. As stills, or in a brief trailer, they seem to be some version of Tartakovsky's visions: charmingly elongated cartoon caricatures of the various bad actors appearing in Episodes 1-3. But in Filoni's hands, they are wooden and awkward creations. They can't cross their arms, or lift a lightsaber, or even speak without appearing to be crude puppets manipulated by drunken sloths. Every bit of movement in this film belies anatomy, tortures animation, and gives Tartakovsky a bad name.

As near as I could tell, the audience I saw this with enjoyed it very much. But my friends and I were the only adults in the theater without children. It seems that, with Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 CG animated theatrical feature film) we've finally come full circle. Lucas feared that the original Star Wars would only appeal to children, and could succeed only through merchandising tie-ins. Almost exactly 30 years later, he's finally produced a film that only a four year-old could love. Which, after all, seems to have been his dream all along.

Having gotten all of that out of the way, there is one bit of this film that deserves unmitigated praise. It turns out that Jabba has an uncle. An uncle who is purple, dresses in feathers, wears makeup, and speaks in a voice that is more than a little reminiscent of Truman Capote's. Yes, the Star Wars universe has its first ever Hut drag queen. Awesome.

*I probably misspelled that name, but I'm not bothering to look it up.

Review: Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder
4.5/5

In this Apatow-dominated world, Tropic Thunder is simultaneously a frat pack triumph and the the final proof that the frat pack is finally, unalterably dead, swallowed by the juggernaut of comedy that is the Apatow brand. The triumph part is easy to explain: for the first time since Apatow and Co burst on to the big screen, the frat pack have a movie in theaters that is superior to the current Apatow offering: Tropic Thunder is better and funnier than Pineapple Express. That's something I didn't think was possible, but it is.

Now for the frat pack's death rattle. Although Stiller is acknowledged as the leader of the frat pack, the film's enormous cast includes: Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr, Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey, Bill Hader, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, and Danny McBride. The leader of the frat pack brings only himself and Black, a marginal packer, to the proceedings. Non-frat packers include Nolte, Downey, Cruse, Coogan, McConaughey, and Jackson. But here's the crucial bit: Baruchel is an Apatow kid, by way of Knocked Up and Undeclared. Hader was in Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Pineapple Express. McBride just hit the public consciousness in Pineapple Express, and was discovered by Adam McKay, who has never made a movie not produced by Judd Apatow. With Vaughn, Ferrell (who's had 3 movies produced by Apatow), and both Wilsons conspicuously absent, Tropic Thunder has Apatow players (3) outnumbering frat packers (1.5).

This film could not be a more fitting elegy for the frat packers' brief (2000-2007) run as the world's premier comedy creators. It's the least elegaic elegy ever. Like all the greatest frat pack movies, it is relentlessly crude, profoundly unsubtle, deeply strenuously, and riotously, gloriously, painfully funny. As a satire of Hollywood filmmaking, this story rings true: a troupe of Hollywood actors who, while filming a Vietnam War movie, get involved in a real military conflict. It smacks of the Hearts of Darkness fantasy that animates so much of our Hollywood dreams: the attempt at art which becomes life, which translates back into perfectly lifelike art. Compared to stories of Apocalypse Now, Stiller's washed up action hack, trying to go legit; Black's Eddie Murphy style prosthetics comic; and Downey's psychologically unstable method actor hardly even seem exaggerated. And they're surrounded by a troop of great actors in roles that fit them perfectly: Nolte as a deranged Vietnam vet, Coogan as a clueless director, McBride as a demolitions madman, Hader as a studio yes-man, Jackson as a rapper/drink spokesman, and Baruchel as a regular guy trying to make it as an actor.

I now write one of the strangest sentences in blogging history: Aside from the sublime Downey, the film's best performances come from McConaughey and Cruise (cue Universe implosion). McConaughey is great because, as a surface-obsessed dick, his turn as a surface-obsessed agent named "Pecker" requires no acting at all. Cruise is brilliant for the opposite reason; although he's a real life douche and studio head, his turn as a foul-mouthed, hairy, balding, giant-handed studio exec makes him into a completely different kind of studio head/douche.

Tropic Thunder (as you might have guessed by now) is not a movie that seems to need a critical evaluation, beyond "it's funny." Well, here it is: it's a very, very funny movie, packed to the gills with funny people doing what they do best or (quite enjoyably) what they do very well even though we had no conception they were capable of it. Every word Downey says is funny, and most of the rest of the movie is too. And Tom Cruise dancing to faux hiphop is possibly worth $10 right there.

Review: Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express
3.5/5

For several decades, Hollywood spoofs followed the Mel Brooks/Abrahams and Zucker format of complete silliness and lack of narrative cohesion. Movies like Space Balls and Airplane take a movie or genre and spoof it into the ground, with no attempt to make it a watchable or enjoyable experience, beyond the spoofing. This has led to all the "Movie" films (Scary, Epic, etc) many of which are by Abrahams and/or the Zuckers, in which gag after gag is piled up, all of which you're simply supposed to laugh at because they remind you of something else.

For the last decade or so, a new brand of movie arrived. Scream, in fact, might be the first of these, but they've really exploded in the last few years: Dodgeball; Shaun of the Dead; Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang; Hot Fuzz; Old School; Galaxy Quest, etc. Each of them is both a parody, satire, or meta-genre picture and an actual example of that genre. Whereas Airplane is only a spoof of a disaster movie, Dodgeball is both a spoof of a sports movie and a sports movie - it lampoons all of the sports movies cliches while simultaneously asking us to enjoy them.

And at last we get to Pineapple Express, the supposed subject of this review. Pineapple Express is the mostly forgettable newest entry to this list: a stoner movie that becomes a meta-action movie. Especially in its latter half, in which the bullets start flying and the Asian assassins become prevalent, Express asks us to both laugh at and enjoy action movie cliches. Unfortunately, in the burgeoning meta-action picture genre (which is about to include Tropic Thunder) Pineapple Express doesn't make much of a mark.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the movie. The story is relatively clever: a process server and his drug dealer go on the run when the process server witnesses a drug-related killing and the two realize the roach he left at the scene of the crime can be traced back to them. James Franco, finally shedding his pretty boy act, is fantastic as the dealer, and Seth Rogen brings his reliable regular guy who just happens to really like smoking weed persona to the server. Their sometime ally and enemy Red is played by Danny McBride, who was not very good in the not very funny Foot Fist Way. McBride shines here; he gets all the good lines, may of which sound like adlibs.

But I consider this movie a failure, after last year's Superbad (written by the same people and starring some of them) was not just the funniest movie of the year but probably the funniest of this century. Many of the jokes and running gags seem forced; even the banter between Franco and Rogen, which should have the relaxed quality of Rogen and Paul Rudd's classic "You know how I know you're gay?" scene, seems to be trying to hard. And the action movie cliches just add to this problem; it's as if the filmmakers are hitting us over the head with the knowledge that they're using cliches. We get it, Seth, Evan, and David. We get it. Try again, and come back when you have something as good as Superbad. Or Knocked Up. Or Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Or 40-Year Old Virgin.

Let's hope Stiller and company offer up something better with Tropic Thunder. Otherwise this summer - probably the best in history - could end quite poorly.

Review: Tell No One

Tell No One
4/5

Tell No One is a tense thriller that owes more than a little to Hitchcock, and probably even more to Frantic, Polanksi's Parisian ode to Hitchcock. Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet) was enjoying a swim with his wife at the lake on his family property when he hears her scream. Going to her aid, someone knocks him unconscious, and when he wakes up, she has been murdered - another victim of the serial killer Serton. Eight years later, Beck is still in mourning, but the seemingly closed case has a break: a government crew laying pipe finds the bodies of two men in the area. Later that day, someone emails Beck to tell him that his wife is still alive, but "they" are watching so he must "Tell No One."

Although Tell No One's everyman protagonist on the run from both police and the dangerous "them" is straight out of Hitchcock, this film is strikingly similar to Michael Clayton in its construction. Godfrey Cheshire identifies Michael Clayton as having a "Jigsaw Puzzle" manner of fragmentation, in which "virtually every scene stands apart from the others, leaving the viewer to discern—or construct—the presumed pattern of meaning that unites them." Tell No One is nowhere near as fragmented as Michael Clayton, but it does partake in the jigsaw puzzle method; event after event occurs, and for the first hour or so it's not clear how they relate to each other. Indeed, quite early in the film it becomes obvious that a major character must have been in on the fake death, but we have nothing to do with this information. It's just another piece of the puzzle that must wait, unused, until we know where to place it.

As Alex, Cluzet is a highly believable everyman, an upper-middle-class pediatrician who displays unsurprising depths of intensity when his world is turned upside down. The entire cast surrounding him, from his gangster client Bruno (who becomes a useful ally in dealing with "them") to his sister to the dogged police inspector who believes he killed his wife, is made up of consummate professionals, who bring a very gallic sophistication to all the roles. All the roles besides Bruno, who is played with appropriate thuggish relish and a keen sense of obligation. But the movie's shining star is Kristin Scott Thomas. When Thomas appeared in 2005's failed black comedy Keeping Mum, my response was: Where has she been? If Tell No One and The Valet are any indication, Paris.

Thomas plays Helene, Alex's sister's wife, a restaurant owner who also appears to be the only human being he speaks to since his wife died. Although she doesn't believe in "them" or the seeming resurrection, Helene is Alex's only ally, facillitating a lawyer and providing financial aid, but above all serving as a friend and confidant. It's one of the film's many mysteries that, while neither Alex nor Helene seem particularly close to his sister, the two share a deep connection.

Perhaps the strongest thing in Tell No One's favor is that, unlike Frantic, Michael Clayton, and even North by Northwest, the dark secret of "them" doesn't turn out to be a matter of national security or national health. This is a more personal drama, eschewing a "thrilling" connection to larger issues for the smaller concerns of Alex and his wife. As such, its ultimate revelations are all the more chilling for being so intimately tied up in their lives.

Review: Encounters at the End of the World

Encounters at the End of the World
4.5/5

Ever since Werner Herzog's first film, Even Dwarfs Started Small, it's been clear that Herzog is something of a crazed individual. Ever since Les Blank's 1980 short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (you can find an excerpt on Youtube), it's been clear that his derangement can be harnessed, not just for making movies, but also within them, and Herzog has capitalized on that over the last 25 years or so by focusing on documentary features that he narrates or appears in. The latest of these efforts, Encounters at the End of the World, is yet another entry into that canon, and I found it absolutely spellbinding.

Herzog has structured this film quite loosely, shaping a sort of picaresque travelogue; there's no plot or overarching thesis, just an insane German traveling to various places in Antarctica and filming the derangement he sees there. The film was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and distributed by the Discovery Channel, and there are certainly sequences in it that would fit beautifully into any nature-as-spectacle film that IMAX theaters show at kids' museums. But Herzog's interest remains, as it always has, not in nature but in the effects of nature on humanity in extreme situations. In fact, he hates McMurdo, the largest settlement on Antarctica, not for being a dirty blight on the Antarctic glory, but for containing such mundanities as yoga and bowling.

Herzog's focus is on the kindred spirits he meets on the ice, those untouched by normalcies like yoga. The forklift operator whose knowledge of philosophy seems boundless. The failed linguist in charge of the greenhouse. The Apache plumber who claims to be descended from Mayan royalty, and has the finger length to prove it. The geologist who instructs him to carefully sidestep flying volcanic bombs. The woman who entertains the camp by having herself zipped into a duffel bag. And most of all Samuel Bowser, the marine biologist whose obsessions most clearly mirror Herzog's own. Bowser imagines a miniature version of himself in the microscopic world he studies, a world so full of savagery that he tells Herzog mankind dragged itself out of the ocean purely to escape it. And in his staff's downtime, Bowser shows them 50s science fiction films that more or less reenact his dream, with giant insects terrifying the populace, and the end of the world always nigh.

Herzog can't let go of the concept of the end of the world. More than one of the people he interviews uses the same metaphor: the South Pole, as the literal end of the world, is a place where people end up when nothing ties them down, or the rope that ties them down has too much slack. And here, at the geographical end of the world, a number of them are obsessed with the end of the human world, predicting - as Herzog often does - that nature will eventually wipe mankind off the face of the Earth. There are not, it seems, any technological optimists on Antarctica, but merely deranged people who have ended up in the South Pole because they lost their way, but found a place that suited their derangement.

It is hard to imagine a place, even the legendary jungle of Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, and Burden of Dreams, that more perfectly suits Herzog's derangement. The film's most touching moments involve a taciturn penguin researcher who no longer regularly associates with humanity, but does his best to answer Herzog's questions. Herzog, insistent that he's not making another March of the Penguins, only wants to know about penguin abnormality. Are there gay penguins? Are there crazy penguins? The answers, when we receive them, are simultaneously awe-inspiring and chilling. In Herzog's hand, the penguin is not an adorable figure or even an animal engaged in a crushing battle for survival. A penguin is instead, like anyone Herzog is interested in, a person near the end of their rope, buffeted by nature and unable to maintain normalcy. In Herzog's hands, penguin derangement is more touching than that of any human subject.

Review: The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight (IMAX)
5/5

Warning: This review sounds hyperbolic. It's not. It's simply accurate.

Following up a masterpiece like Batman Begins is a difficult proposition. To make matters worse, as fantastic as the latter half of Batman Begins is, the first half, which follows Bruce Wayne's evolution into Batman under the influence of three very different mentors, was the more effective of the two. So The Dark Knight was not only handicapped by fan expectations, but also the difficulty of creating an original story that worked without cribbing from the plot of the greatest Batman graphic novel ever written (Frank Miller's Batman: Year One).

Since this review is being published the day after the movie came out, you probably don't need me to tell you that The Dark Knight meets, exceeds, and simply renders irrelevant any previous standards of filmmaking. It - like Wall-E, but in a completely different way - is something entirely new in the realm of filmmaking. For almost two and a half hours, director/co-writer Christopher Nolan and writer Jonathan Nolan do nothing but build and maintain tension. Unintuitively, The Dark Knight builds this tension not through a single, tight plot, but more as a series of Joker-related vignettes, each of which enhances the film's suspense while refusing to adhere to a pattern. If Batman Begins is an Apollonian masterpiece with an Apollonian villain, The Dark Knight's Joker demands a Dionysian story of excess and chaos, and the film delivers.

The Dark Knight sidesteps the problem of topping Batman Begins' character development by mostly ignoring it. Instead, it treats four of the greatest comic book characters ever invented (Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Jim Gordon, Lucius Fox), played by four of the greatest actors the world has ever seen (Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman) like found objects. After Batman Begins, we know who they are and what they stand for, so in this film, all of them - even Bale - are moved to the background. The film's protagonists are the two new characters: Heath Ledger's Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent.

Really, this is the Joker's movie. And Heath Ledger delivers a performance that may be the most charismatic ever caught on celluloid. Even as the Joker orchestrates a deadly serious and vicious series of terrorist attacks all over Gotham City - acts that left the audience stunned - he also had the audience I saw the movie with with laughing. They laughed at his jokes, at his mannerisms, at his murders. Somehow, Ledger created a monster who is not in the least bit sympathetic, whose crimes recall events such as the September 11 attacks, and yet his performance is so compelling that his sadism draws laughs. I can think of no other actor who could have accomplished it, and no other performance to rival it.

With the Joker at its center, The Dark Knight is a sickening story of human depravity that's nevertheless engrossing and, on many levels, quite enjoyable. It's a monumental achievement in all aspects of filmmaking and - particularly as I saw it on an IMAX screen - it boasts the most impressive spectacle of any movie yet created. It is as deep and as dark as the greatest of all Batman stories, and surpasses all of them - and perhaps all stories ever told - for sheer terror and suspense. We'll never know what plans Nolan and Nolan had for Joker had Ledger not been lost to us, but we're left with a document which will stand for as long as films are remembered. Which is to say, forever.

Review: Hellboy II

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
4.5/5

The first Hellboy movie works in a great many ways. Based on Mike Mignola's excellent comics, it's the story of a demon who is summoned to earth by Rasputin (while working for Nazis) but rescued, raised, and employed by the U.S. government. Ron Perlman, "the ugliest man in Hollywood" was the perfect choice for the role; he made Hellboy, like any great pulp hero, as good with a quip as with a punch, and frequently dealing out the two together. "Visionary director" Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Blade II) was the perfect man for the job, and the movie worked as an adventure movie, a love-story, a horror movie, a story of family dysfunction, a buddy-comedy, and, like all of del Toro's movies, as a cinematic treatment of the fantastic rendered in luminous colors.

But it didn't work as an action movie. There wasn't a single high-octane fight in the entire movie.

Consider that rectified. Hellboy II is superior to Hellboy in almost every single way, and it starts with the action. There are at least a dozen great action sequences: elf-prince and troll bodyguard vs. elf soldiers, Hellboy vs. troll bodyguard, Hellboy vs. giant plant-god, elf-prince vs. drunken Hellboy, Hellboy and the Ectoplasmic Johann Krauss vs. the titular golden army. Over and over again, Del Toro delivers the action goods.

Besides that, Hellboy II is more of the same, and that's a good thing. Our hero is still ugly, snarky, hemmed in by a comical bureaucrat (AD's Jeffrey Tambor), ably aided by a fishy sidekick, and in love with a prickly pyrokinetic. It's a recipe for fun, and it is fun - a ride through the world of pulp heroics and mythological evil of Mike Mignola, with the comedy and pyrotechnics delivered by Guillermo del Toro.

I don't want to say that del Toro has topped Pan's Labyrinth here, because both Labyrinth and Hellboy II deliver such otherworldly beauty that I wouldn't want to choose between them. The beauty of Labyrinth is more ethereal and otherworldly; it represents a spirit world which we can dream of, and briefly enter, but never control. The spirit world of Hellboy II, on the other hand, is pissed off and aching to wage war on humanity. It's a rough and tumble world populated by every imaginable monstrosity, from miniature calcium-devouring "tooth fairies" to the giant horde of mechanical monsters that drives the plot. But pretty much the same thing happens to all of them. Our heroic demon punches them in the face.

I think that should have been the tagline for Hellboy II: "It's like Pan's Labyrinth, except a big red demon punches things in the face." Yeah, that just about sums it up.

An exception: The Angel of Death is not punched in the face.

Review: Wanted

Wanted
3/5

Wanted is monumental in its stupidity, infantile in its gratifications, tasteless and insensitive to animals, women, and the unattractive, and condescending to its viewers.

It's also fun, well-paced, and splashily, violently innovative.

Finally: Angelina is onscreen almost constantly and briefly shows us her ass, but doesn't talk all that much. (I'll leave you to decide whether those are demerits or commendations. You know where I stand)

The End

Review: Hancock

Hancock
2.5/5

There's not very much in Hancock that works. And what does work works quite well, but rather than lifting this mediocre superhero picture to something higher, those elements simply throw its mediocrity into sharp relief. And relief is exactly what I felt when the movie ended.

Reportedly, the original script for Hancock followed its boozing asshole of a superhero to some really dark places, including statutory rape. But that particular R-rated picture wasn't made, so we're left instead with this one, a disjointed and confusing mess that switches tone and mood so quickly that it manages to cram 3 or 4 different movies into its brief running time. And if most of them are not very good movies, the final one, brought about by the film's obligatory/unnecessary plot twist, is horrendous.

As I said before, what works works well, and by that I mean the character of Hancock and the casting of his sidekick, PR-guy with a heart of gold, Ray Embrey. The character of Hancock is brilliant, and I find myself hoping that there'll be a comic book prequel or adaptation written by somebody with balls. Hancock is a boozing amnesiac superman who takes off, flies, and lands exactly like you and I would if we were gifted with the power of flight but perpetually hungover: poorly. He does more damage than good, and he's a menace to his city. And although Will Smith is more than adequate as the big guy, after his masterful role in I Am Legend, I was hoping for more.

In comes the PR guy he saves, Ray (Jason Bateman). Ray is a pretty stupid character; he's a PR guy who seems to know nothing about the essentials of PR. All he does is insist that companies make charitable concessions so he can certify them with his "all-heart" brand of charitable approval. But if the character's nonsensical, the only actor alive who could pull him off has been cast. In his best roles, as in Arrested Development and Juno, Bateman has delivered some sort of bizarre combination of smugness and earnestness, something I wouldn't think possible. In his hands, a clean-cut, morally dubious but well-meaning character comes alive on the screen - he's the only thing authentic in this whole picture.

Inauthenticity is what ultimately brings down this whole movie; many things, most powerfully the "twist," ring false. Ray is a PR guy who doesn't have anything resembling a PR plan for anyone he talks to. After he rehabilitates Hancock's image, he still tries to shill his all-heart scheme without ever thinking that he could get Hancock's help. Seriously, not once does this supposed PR guy think that he could use all the good PR he's garnered to help with his charitable project. Not once.

The film abounds with such problems. Hancock's first post-rehabilitation crisis involves a police standoff with bank robbers and hostages. When he arrives, there's a gunfight going down. There's no negotiation. The cops and robbers are just shooting at each other; the cops don't mention the hostages, and the robbers don't threaten them. Eventually, when it's too late and Hancock has got the situation almost completely neutralized, the head baddie mentions C-4 and makes some demands. Why didn't he make the demands before the superhero showed up? Why didn't he kill a few hostages to get the cops to back off? Why? Why? Why?

Historically, pretentious film critics have a phrase for this kind of movie, the kind of movie which resembles the real world only enough that we understand what's blowing up on screen, the kind of movie where every character is just a cardboard cutout, the kind of movie where everyone seems to be not a person, or even a policeman or criminal or PR guy, but only what a 13-year old who'd never done any research on the topic imagines those people to be. The kind of movie that mistakes silly plot twists for intricacy. That phrase, usually used in conjunction with "all the depth of a" or "as stupid as a," is "comic book." Masterpieces like X-Men, Iron Man and Batman Begins have made it clear that "comic book" shouldn't be a critical bad word anymore. Trash like Hancock - which wasn't a comic book to begin with - makes it look like those pretentious critics were right all along.

Review: Mongol

Mongol
4/5

Although Mongol, as the first entry in an epic trilogy, has already been labeled the Mongolian Lord of the Rings, a better description would be Genghis Begins or Khansino Royale (sorry). It's the origin story of Genghis Khan, and as such follows the conqueror, back when he was just called Temudgen, as he seeks power in Mongolia years before his famous conquests. Although the film is far from perfect, it is an impressive example of filmmaking on an epic scale.

Like many epics, the true star of this film is not the title character but the gorgeous landscape and its exquisite rendering in extreme-long shots. Russian director Sergei Bodrov filmed in Kazakhstan and China's Inner Mongolia, and we're treated to beautiful vistas in a vast array of locations: mountains, hills, deserts, and rolling grasslands.

The film's plot more or less follows a love triangle, established in the first half-hour of film, while our principals are children. Temudgen, against his father's wishes, chooses Borte, a girl from a weak tribe, to be his wife. After his father's untimely death, Temudgen - as a threat to the new clan Khan - must flee, and meets and befriends a blood-brother, Jemukha, while on the run. As an adult, Temudgen is pulled in different directions by his brother, who wants him as a second-in-command, and his wife, who dreams of greater things.

Although the opening portion of the film drags, the movie gets going roughly a third of the way through, when we meet our adult actors and both blood and humor start flowing (since we're dealing with Mongols, they frequently flow simultaneously). Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano imbues the tile role with appropriate gravitas, and Khulan Chuulun brings a grave intelligence to role of Borte, who is both Temudgen's long-suffering wife and canny adviser. But Chinese actor Honglei Sun steals the show as Jemukha; he plays the role with a mix of warrior pride, bloodthirstiness, and wicked humor that I found captivating.

Mongol certainly qualifies as classic epic filmmaking, of the kind once practiced by David Lean and driven lately by Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson. Although the film's pace and plot can be spotty, the story is deep and resonant, and the action sequences recall Gladiator with their depiction of gore in jumpy, hand-held camera work. But Mongol is ultimately more than an epic: it is mythic filmmaking. Temudgen is the ur-Mongol, he is the law-giver and order-bringer - he both upholds the old ways and reshapes them to suit his needs. When the time finally comes to strike down his enemies, the heavens themselves open up and offer aid. In short, Genghis Khan is the Mongolian Paul Maud'Dib.

My only reservation is, after I liked and enjoyed the first volume of the Russian Lord of the Rings, Night Watch, the second volume was both lackluster and, unfortunately, not released in theaters in my area. The third volume still hasn't come out yet, as the Russian Peter Jackson was busy making this weekend's Wanted. I can only hope that, in terms of reception and distribution, the Mongolian Lord of the Rings fares better.

Update: The third "Watch" movie, Twilight Watch, might get canceled. Epic trilogy lovers, beware; let's hope Mongol 2 and 3 are immune: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/12664

Review: Wall-E

Wall-E
5/5

To watch Wall-E is to enter into a world of almost pure cinematic pleasure. It is a love story, told through the medium of slapstick, to rival any of those of Charlie Chaplin. It is also a problematic science-fiction parable that rivals anything that Ridley Scott has ever done. And while I found the last two Pixar features underwhelming (Cars for being overlong and occasionally tedious, Ratatouille for imposing a standard and lifeless love story on the whole proceedings), Wall-E is an unqualified triumph of technology, of storytelling, and of love.

Like most kids movies, Wall-E is a post-Apocalyptic tale set 700 years after humanity's consumerist tendencies, led by giant Wal-Mart stand-in Buy'n'Large (BnL), have turned the Earth into a ruined wasteland. When the film opens, there are only two things that move on the surface of Earth: Wall-E, an adorable trash collector who is the last of the robots left behind to cleanup, and his only friend: a cockroach. Wall-E spends his days trying to single-handedly clean up humanity's messes, but along the way he's developed a personality, so he also collects fun bits of trash (Rubik's Cubes, lighters, car keys), converses with his cockroach friend in delightful warbles and animated gestures, and dances along to his battered tape of Hello Dolly.

All of this changes when EVE shows up. EVE is an Earth-probe of unknown function (Directive: Classified!) and as soon as he sets his eyes on her, Wall-E is in love. Together, they traverse the wasteland, as EVE searches for her unknown objective and Wall-E, lovelorn but mostly ignored, tags along (and tries not to take a laser blast from his trigger-happy would-be girlfriend).

Eve is adorable, but you wouldn't like her angry

Eventually, EVE finds what she's looking for and the action moves to outer space, with the lovelorn Wall-E again tagging along. To say more about the plot is unnecessary. But I should tell you that this is the best-looking Pixar movie ever made, which makes it of course the best-looking computer-animated movie ever made; both the vastness of outer space and the bleakness of a ruined Earth have never looked better. It features, especially in the Wall-E/EVE sections, relatively little dialogue beyond the two robots chirping each other's names, but you won't miss the dialogue, although you will enjoy what you get from Fred Willard, who makes an appearance not as a voice but as a video recording of the BnL president - the first such appearance in Pixar history.

Even without many words, even telling the story of a banged-up trash compacter who loves a sleek robotic space explorer, director Andrew Stanton has crafted one of the most heartfelt love stories in the history of cinema. It ranks, not just with Pixar's best like The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc, and Stanton's own Finding Nemo, but among the most emotionally and cinematically beautiful stories ever to reach the silver screen.

Review: Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
1.5/5

When Futurama was on TV, it was one of the best and smartest shows on television. Matt Groening, creator of the The Simpsons, was a scifi geek at heart, and Futurama allowed him to create a scifi version of the Simpsons, set in the 30th Century. Every episode was very funny, many were quite moving, and the very best episodes, like Luck of the Fryrish or the Emmy-winning Roswell that Ends Well, stand among my favorite works of art of all time.

Futurama was reincarnated last year as a series of four made for DVD movies, and while the first of them, Bender's Big Score, wasn't as good as the best of the episodes, it was every bit as good as the average episode. To paraphrase A.O. Scott on The Simpsons Movie, being as good as the average Futurama episode means I would be willing to watch it roughly 30 more times. Above all, the movie was true to the show, with a twisty sci-fi plot, a whole slew of mostly unnecessary but very funny references to the episodes, and a new story about the unrequited love of 20th century everyman Fry for 30th century one-eyed mutant Leela.

In stark contrast, The Beast with a Billion Backs has almost nothing to recommend it. Rather than the complex plot of the best episodes, the plot is an inert, sluggish thing, with two especially pointless subplots involving Bender's search for acceptance and Fry's new girlfriend. At the end of the previous movie, a hole was ripped open in the universe; halfway through this movie, we learn that the other side of the hole contains a giant squid monster - something we learned from both the trailer and the DVD box. A second plot "revelation" is (spoiler alert, kind of) contained in the title.

But the uninteresting plot and subplots - and what seems to have been a general lack of effort in constructing this movie - could be forgiven if it was funny. It's not. This is the most perplexing thing. None of the episodes of Futurama have a plot as uninteresting as Beast, but even the weaker ones are full of funny moments. This movie isn't. Nearly every joke falls flat. Classic characters like Zoidberg, Professor Farnsworth, and Zap Brannigan - who are usually funny on sight - deliver nothing.

So that's the story. The plot is bad and the jokes aren't funny. I could have lived without the character development of the best episodes, although that was something that Bender's Big Score delivered. But when 90 minutes of Futurama goes by and I only chuckle once or twice and check the clock every five minutes, something has gone terribly wrong.





Even Scruffy isn't good in this movie

Review: Summer Palace

Summer Palace
2/5

Summer Palace is a mostly nonsensical examination of a certain time and place that ends up examining neither that time nor place. The time and place are Beijing University in the late 80s, leading up to and following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

The film's director, Lou Yhe, was forbidden to make another film in China for five years after making this film. For the life of me, I don't know why. I certainly didn't notice any politics. In fact, I didn't notice much talking either - things just happened, and nobody ever explained their motivations or desire (this makes a film "arty"). For the first half of the film, a typical sequence is as follows: Yu Wong and Zhu Wei have lots of sex. Wong tells Wei she wants to break up, but they keep having sex anyway. A few fuckfests later, Wong tells Wei she's sleeping with someone else. This upsets Wei and leads to some shoving with another guy, but the fucking continues. Then Wei tells Wong he wants to break up, so Wong tries to kill herself. Go figure.

Eventually, the Tiananmen Square protests occur. Although they finally add both motion and emotion to an otherwise inert film, they're also presented apolitically. There are lots of banners that I couldn't read, but it's unclear why the students are protesting. Eventually, Zhu Wei has sex with Yu Wong's best friend during the protests. Damn, that stings.

After the Tiananment Square protests, 8 years pass via subtitles, and the second half of the movie proceeds, with Zhu Wei living in Germany and Yu Wong fucking everyone in China. I get what I wished for, but it turns out I didn't want it; in this portion of the film. Yu Wong tries to explain her actions. We get this profound examination, while Yu Wong is fucking a married man: "A friend who knows the law told me our affair is not illegal, but immoral. What is morality? Two people together; that is morality." Thanks Nietzsche. I'm glad you cleared that up for me.

From there, the movie slowly crawls to its lack of conclusion. A secondary character dies, which I think I'm supposed to care about. Oops.

Review: The Signal

Foil Hat: A Homemade Defense against The Signal

The Signal
3.5/5

It's hard to imagine a movie which is more firmly a product of the horror movie Zeitgeist than The Signal. Its central premise is straight from a J-Horror movie: a signal of unknown origin is being broadcast on every radio, TV, and cell phone, and bad shit happens. Specifically, people who listen to the signal too long get "the crazy," and start killing everyone around them for no apparent reason and, yes, often torturing them in a manner worthy of Saw, Hostel, et al. It doesn't take long for the city of Terminus, with just a few sane survivors fleeing from their murderous friends, neighbors, and family members, to resemble Dawn of the Dead's Milwaukee or 28 Days Later's London. And yes, The Signal has the same low-budget feel as Cloverfield (in this case, it actually is low-budget) and was written and directed, in three separate pieces, by three separate writer-directors, ala Grindhouse.

The main difference between The Signal and all those other films is that no one has ever heard of it, a somewhat astounding situation given its incredible nowness. Presumably the low-budget didn't include any marketing money, which is a shame because The Signal is actually quite good, especially in its first half. The first third of the film (or "Transmission" in the film's terminology) is the most effective; it introduces us to our three main players: Maya, her lover Ben, and her soon to be murderous husband Lewis. Maya leaves Ben in the first scene to return to Lewis, who's trying to watch the ballgame with some buddies. Needless to say, instead of the ballgame they get the signal, and from there Maya's apartment building deteriorates into an truly gruesome and terrifying orgy of murder. In the film's most brilliant move, even the sane people have to arm themselves and commit murder to survive, so its impossible to tell if anyone has the crazy.

The riveting first transmission gives way to the horror-comedy of the second transmission, in which Lewis ends up in the home of a couple still trying to host their New Year's Eve Party. In the first half of this section, "the crazy" is mostly played for laughs, but it degenerates into torture porn - with one sequence involving Lewis, an exterminator by trade, memorably utilizing his pesticides. The final transmission is perhaps the least satisfying filmically, but provides an effective emotional resolution to the first and second transmissions. It doesn't feature the horror of the first transmission or the humor of the second, but trumps them both for sheer visceral gore - not necessarily the best award to win.

I can only hope that The Signal, as a handcrafted grab bag of many of the best elements from contemporary horror movies, finds the life on DVD it so deserves. The acting is often slightly wooden, with only Lewis (AJ Bowen) standing out, but both David Bruckner of the first transmission and Jacob Gentry of the second offer up segments that mark them as talents to watch. The Signal is undoubtedly superior to Awake or any other terrible recent horror movie starring Jessica Alba, so check it out on DVD - unless you want to see it in theaters in the next week.

Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
4.5/5

American director Julian Schabel's third film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is an adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of locked-in syndrome of the same name. Bauby experiences a stroke and awakens able to only blink one eye. He describes his condition as a binary - the diving bell of his body weighs him to the bottom of the ocean, the butterfly of his mind allows his imagination free reign. The composing of his memoir becomes the ultimate triumph of the butterfly over the diving bell.

Schnabel's adaptation is in many ways highly faithful. The first half of the film is more diving bell than butterfly, and takes place mostly from Bauby's perspective - a relentless series of POV shots in which Bauby's doctors, therapists, relatives, and friends flit in and out of his field of vision. In this portion, the film belongs most strongly to Bauby's innovative speech therapist, whose mixture of sympathy and excitement at the challenge of teaching Bauby to communicate are portrayed beautifully by Marie Josee-Croze. In the second half of the film, as Bauby's butterfly begins to emerge, we are finally rewarded with the blissful escape denied to "Jean-Do" - the camera begins to move about freely, and we get our first good looks at our subject. In this portion, it's Mathieu Almaric who shines as Bauby; strapped down and locked in, Almaric nevertheless conveys a full range of emotions simply by blinking one eyelid and moving one eye.

All of that said, the film, despite Janusz Kaminski's excellent cinematography and an excellent and moving soundtrack (U2, Tom Waits, the Velvet Underground), left me far less emotionally engaged than Bauby's memoir. Perhaps this is because the memoir allowed me to see Bauby's mind working in a way that, as he acknowledges, doesn't actually occur. The film, in which we see that a single sentence of the memoir can take hours to painstakingly blink out, is perhaps not in the position to convey the triumph of the butterfly without shortchanging the diving bell in a way that would have been disingenuous.

One final note: after just observing that I was less moved by the film than the book, I need to say that Max von Sydow's two-scene portrayal of Bauby's shut-in father is perhaps the most moving work of acting I have ever seen. Both of those scenes, the first a flashback when the hale son visits the ailing father, the second a one-sided speaker phone conversation in which the shut-in father calls the locked-in son, left me in tears as Sydow leaped from senile confusion to grief to tenderness, back to confusion. If for no other reason, you should go see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for the 78 year old Sydow, free from a stupid villain role in 2002's Minority Report and a stupider villain role in last year's Rush Hour 3, putting his entire being into an all too brief role.

Review: Sweeney Todd

4.5/5
I just saw Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton's movie musical based on Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical of the same name. Like all Tim Burton movies, Sweeney Todd is, despite its nearly monochromatic color palette, bursting with vibrant visuals, especially when the monochrome is broken by blood. Like most Tim Burton movies, Sweeney Todd stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Like relatively few Tim Burton movies, Sweeney Todd is as affecting and passionate as it is visually striking.

Front and center in the film's emotional success is Sondheim's music. Sweeney Todd is a true musical, with characters breaking into song, accompanied by a full but non-diagetic orchestra, to limn their inner feelings. Sondheim's songs are touching and hilarious by turns, and sometimes simultaneously, and although neither Depp nor Carter have been hiding powerful vocals, they both sing effectively and comfortably.

The cast is a mixture of veterans and mostly nondescript newcomers clearly chosen for their singing abilities. Depp plays the eponymous Sweeney Todd, a barber wrongly convicted and imprisoned by malevolent Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who covets Todd's wife. Todd has escaped and returned to London, to find his wife dead, his daughter Joanna Judge Turpin's ward, and his skills as a barber still unmatched, even as compared to the city's current finest - the Italian charlatan Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen in an all-too brief but viciously comic role). In London, Todd immediately starts scheming for a way to get Judge Turpin into his deadly barber's chair, and begins by impressing the judge's evil sidekick Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall) with his tonsorial ability. He's joined in his quest by Mrs. Lovett (Carter), the meat pie baker who recognizes the barber and whose pies are the worst in London. The barber finda another ally, in a slightly underdeveloped side plot which never strays too far from the main action, in the sailor who rescued him who has since caught a glimpse of Joanna in Judge Turpin's window and wants to rescue her from his clutches. Joanna, the sailor, and Pirelli's young assistant are all played by actors unknown to me, although they can all sing.

Sweeney Todd is not perfect. Mrs. Lovett urges Todd to be patient in taking his revenge, and at times the film's pace was too measured for my taste - some of that early time could have been reserved for its slightly rushed climax. But, in addition to its well-blended visuals, music, and acting, the movie provides a dark combination of comedy and tragedy. The central tale is pure tragedy, and eventually unwinds several plot twists that heighten the pathos of the barber's plight. But, although always dark, it is often funny, particularly in two scenes. In the first, Todd and Mrs. Lovett sing a witty back and forth about the relative flaws and virtues of meat drawn from priests, vicars, poets, fops, and other 19th century London types. In the second, Mrs. Lovett fantasizes about a financially secure future in which she and Todd can live blissfully at the beach. The barber and the baker, whose dark-lidded pallor is perfect for Burton's murky London, look comically out of place at various beach locales, and Depp maintains his vengeful glower even as his character is put into a variety of beach appropriate outfits. Underlying all of this is the certain sense that, whatever the future holds, it is not a life of bliss for these two.

Sweeney Todd is not, like most of the musicals (Moulin Rouge, Dreamgirls, Once, etc) periodically hyped to save the film version of that genre, a post-musical, a post-modern musical, or a real-life musical. What it is is a standard, although dark and darkly comic, Broadway musical lovingly translated into a film, with the perfect director and cast to capture its somber, manic, and comic moods. In other words, it's a Tim Burton film, propelled by Sondheim's music into emotional realms that the intellectual Burton sometimes cannot reach.