This year I actually got to talk to Harry and he was about to tell me WHY I was chosen when he was distracted by a shiny object. DAMMIT!!! I need to know so I’ll know to do it again every year!!

Anyway, whatever the reason, I had my butt in a seat at the Alamo for 26 1/2 hours watching some awesome movies. Here’s how the night went:

We had to start off with the annual torture of one of the Alamo friends. Tim always tells him that he’s going to show Teen Wolf during BNAT and, every year, something “fucks up” and he doesn’t get to show it. This year he had a Dolby “representative” (actually Scott Weinberg in a Dolby shirt) guarantee that the screening would go off without a hitch because of their brand new digital system.

Of course, hitches happen and Scott gave Tim a check for $15,000 “on behalf of Thomas Dolby.”

Many yuks were had by all. Then the movies really started.

FAUST (1926)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: FW Murnau
Written by: Gerhart Hauptmann/Hans Kyser
Based on play by: Johann Wolfgang Goethe

FW Murnau’s Faust has always been pointed to as one of the more amazing achievements in silent cinema. The special effects are still pretty awesome to this day.

If you don’t know the story, you’ve probably been living under a cultural rock, but I’ll explain a little bit here. God and the Devil are hanging out and make a bet. God says that Faust (Gosta Ekman), a genuinely good man, can’t be corrupted. The Devil (Emil Jannings), however, thinks that he can, and he sets out to prove it. He comes to Earth as a man called Mephisto and gives Faust back his youth, helping a beautiful young woman fall in love with him.

Faust shuns him at first, but then decides to allow Mephisto to give him a trial run of a day. When that’s not long enough, Mephisto has him and it’s all over.

In its day, it was one of the biggest spectacles that audiences had ever seen. It’s still pretty spectacular, although it’s easier to see how they did all of it now. And Jannings is perfect as the slimy and underhanded Mephisto. He vamps it up and is generally evil in all the right ways.

The organ accompaniment was pretty perfect, too. I wish I could remember the guy’s name, but it’s been a few days. Anyway, he was great.

If you ever get a chance to see this movie, go. And, in going, be amazed.

THE LOVELY BONES (2009)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on book by: Alice Sebold

Peter Jackson can probably do no wrong in Hollywood right now. Sure, King Kong didn’t do was well as everyone wanted it to do, but he directed and produced fucking Lord Of The Rings! Give that man anything he wants!

So they did. He wanted to do a small story this time out, so he chose Alice Sebold’s novel about a young girl named Susie (Saoirse Ronan from Atonement) who was killed by a neighbor in the early 70s. She narrates the story from a place called The In Between. Not quite Heaven, but definitely not Hell. More like a fantasy land that is almost like Earth, but much more surreal.

Meanwhile, her family tries to go on. Her dad (Mark Wahlberg) is obesessed with finding her killer. Her mom (Rachel Weisz) can’t seem to move on, but can’t stand what her husband is doing. Her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) is a bit of a drunkard who tells everyone that she’s 35. Her younger sister and brother are doing their best, but it’s hard when their parents can’t seem to cope.

Meanwhile still, the investigation is almost going nowhere under Len Fenerman (Michael Imperioli) doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The killer (Stanely Tucci) is still at large and still living about 100 feet from Susie’s family.

I gotta tell you, two movies into BNAT this year and I was emotionally drained. The Lovely Bones was something that I usually don’t go in for: a beautiful movie. Not only was the story beautiful (Susie’s journey from needing to have revenge on her killer to just wanting her family to cope), but the In Between was beautiful, too. Surreal, dreamlike and heartwrenching at times.

I loved this movie. It’s long, but I don’t expect much less from Mr. Jackson. He knows exactly what to leave in and wheat to cut out, and he knows how to pull the heartstrings without making us feel like we’ve been duped into crying.

Maybe it’s not the best film out there, but it didn’t matter while I was watching it. And it still doesn’t matter to me. I kinda want to see it again. I don’t necessarily believe in any kind of afterlife, but goddamn, this movie gave me hope for kids who die like Susie.

GIRL CRAZY (1943)

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Norman Taurog/Busby Berkeley
Written by: Fred F. Finklehoffe/Dorothy Kingsley/William Ludwig/Sid Silvers
Based on play by: Guy Bolton/Jack McGowan

After Lovely Bones, we were all pretty much beaten down. As Harry said, though, what better to bring a room back up than a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musical?

Well, I can think of a LOT of things, but this’ll do.

Mickey is a rich playboy who is sent out West by his father to learn a lesson in life. Unfortunately for Mickey, the place he’s sent is an all boys school. No girls at all! What’s a girl crazy boy to do?!?!

Well, he doesn’t have to worry too much. This small town has one girl: Judy. And he instantly falls for her, even if she doesn’t fall for him so easily.

Of course, her grandfather is the dean of the school. And, of course, there’s a guy who she’s pretty much paired with. And, of course, hardly any of the other guys like Mickey. And, of course, the school is threatened with closure unless they can come up with money/applicants.

Car wash!!

Ok, no. No car wash. But there is a rodea, which they pronounce like Rodeo Drive in Hollywood, as opposed to an actual rodeo.

Hollywood. Psh.

It’s a pretty fun little flick, but I’m not rushing out to rent the rest of Mickey and Judy’s collaborations. There was, however, a pretty good Busby Berkeley number at the end. Busby was supposed to direct the whole movie, but he was fired after they filmed this one scene. Too bad, because the movie could have used some of Busby’s flair.

Of course, the script did have some gems like “The things you see when you don’t have a gun!” and “Money is just like women and popcorn: The more you get, the more you want.” I still don’t understand the gun line. The fuck was Judy saying?!

THE RED SHOES (1948)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Written by: Emeric Pressburger/Michael Powell/Keith Winter
Based on fairy tale by: Hans Christian Andersen

This is one of those movies that I’ve always heard about, but never seen. It’s a ballet movie and I have very little (if any) interest in ballet. Why would I care?

Well, it turns out that…um…I was right. This was the movie that I had the least fun watching at BNAT this year. But Harry didn’t program it. I’ll get to that later, though.

The Red Shoes is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young dancer who wants to be the best dancer in the world. She buys some shoes from a shoemaker that make her dance perfectly…but then she can’t take them off and she can’t stop dancing.

But that’s not what the movie is about. The movie is about a young woman (Moira Shearer, who was really a ballet dancer) who is chosen to be the lead character in a new ballet based on The Red Shoes written by a young writer (Marius Goring). The two start to fall in love, much to the chagrin of the leader of the dance troupe (Anton Walbrook). He is emotionless and feels that his dancers should be, too.

The movie was really good, but I hated the two men. They were both jackasses. And the girl really wasn’t a whole lot better. Add to that a lot of scenes of ballet (which, I guess, were great) and I was just kind of uninterested.

The best thing about the movie (besides Moira being a beautiful redhead) was seeing how amazing the print was! Martin Scorsese’s film restoration crew have really outdone themselves on this one. It looked like it was made last year. The Technicolor was beautiful and made me miss that process a lot.

I’m glad I saw it, but I probably won’t revisit it.

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Laeta Kalogridis
Based on book by: Dennis Lehane

Now we get to the guy who actually programmed The Red Shoes. Harry originally wanted to lead in to Shutter Island with Sam Fuller’s asylum masterpiece Shock Corridor. He wasn’t even sure if he would get Shutter Island when he got that print. He had to write a letter to Scorsese to see if he could show it and to explain what BNAT is.

Well, Marty wrote him back saying what an amazing idea BNAT is and how he wished that he could join us. But there’s just one thing: don’t lead in with Shock Corridor. Lead in with The Red Shoes. Here’s a print.

How do you say no?

There is actually a very direct link between the two movies, so I can see it. But I would have rather seen Shock Corridor.

Shutter Island, on the other hand, was pretty great. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Boston US Marshall in the 50s sent to a local criminal asylum to investigate a missing patient. His new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), was brought in from Seattle to help Teddy out. Why is it that it almost seems like the missing patient never existed? What is Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) hiding? Is Dr. Jeremiah Naerhing (Max von Sydow) a Nazi doing crazy experiments? And why can’t Teddy let go of his dead wife (Michelle Williams)?

It took me a little while to really get into this movie, mostly because the editing seems to be really awful in the beginning. Eventually, though, I realized what was going on and it all worked out. The movie is a mind-fuck of the highest order and it made me want to red the Dennis Lehane novel that it was based on in a way that Mystic River did not.

It may not seem like the most Scorsese-iest of movies, but he’s done well again. Keep up the streak, Marty. We like you being back.

LE MAGNIFIQUE (1973)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Philippe de Broca
Written by: Philippe de Broca/Vittorio Caprioli/Jean-Paul Rappeneau/Francis Veber

I wonder how much John Candy’s Delerious borrowed from this movie.

Bob Sanit-Clair (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is the world’s most famous secret agent. He shoots randomly into trees, hitting hitmen before they even know that they are hitmen. He sees through every disguise. And he always gets the girl (Jacqueline Bisset).

He’s also being written by Francois Merlin (also Belmondo), a writer who just knows that he can do something besides these crappy pulp spy novels. But they make him money to live off of and they’re very easy for him to write.

On the other side of his aparetment building is Christine (Bissett again), the young lady he’s slightly obsessed with. Can he win her over by letting her read his awful books?

The movie is way funnier than it sounds like it should be. It opens with the spy story and looks like the Zuker brothers and Jim Abrahams had decided to make a spy movie. (Oh wait…they did. It was Top Secret. But this is funnier!) It’s full of great slapstick and some awful puns that make you cringe and laugh at the same time. Add to that the Merlin side of the story that makes you feel for this guy and you’ve got a movie that even French haters can love.

Harry has been trying to show this movie for seven years. I’m glad that he finally got to. It was worth the wait.

MICMACS (2009)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Written by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Guillaume Laurant

I had no idea that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was even working on a new film, much less that he had one in the can! I would have been MUCH more excited if I had known.

Bazil’s (Dany Boon) dad was killed by a land mine when Bazil was very young. Thirty years later, Dany is shot in the head and survives. The doctors can’t take the bullet out without possibly making Bazil a vegetable.

Eventually Bazil falls in with a group of homeless folks who collect junk and make it into amazing things. He also finds out that the weapons companies that made the land mine and the bullet are right across the street from each other. The rest of the movie is a Rube Goldbergian plot to bring down both companies…and yet so much more.

If you’ve ever loved Jeunet’s films before, you’ll love this one, too. He brings his usual sense of humor and (shudder…I hate this word) whimsy to the screen and makes us fall in love with this ragtag bunch of geniuses, which includes his old standby, Dominique Pinon.

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Adam Green
Written by: Adam Green

Adam Gren has a lot of enemies in the horror world, and I’m not really sure why. Hatchet was a fun flick that didn’t try to be anything more and Spiral, while not brilliant, showed us all that he had some talent for something besides gore.

Now he mixes those two things to bring us something like Open Water on a ski lift. (On the fake lineup that Harry always posts, this slot was filled by Lifeboat. I can see why.)

Three college kids (Emma Bell, Kevin Zegers and Shawn Ashmore) are on a weekend ski trip. It’s Sunday and they want one more time down the mountain. They talk the lift guy into letting them go up one more time, but through a chain of events, they end up stuck on the lift. And the resort doesn’t open again until the next Friday. Now, how do they et down? And are those wolves they’re hearing?

That little premise holds a lot more fear than it seems like it should. Not only is there plenty of suspense, but there’s more emotion than you would think of coming from Adam. The two guys have been best friends since grade school and the girl is dating one of them. You can see where that’s going.

Not an amazing film by any means, but absolutely worth checking out. One of my friends who hates Adam said that this is absolutely his best film. He liked it quite a bit. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

THE CENTIPEDE HORROR (1984)

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Keith Li
Written by: Amy Chan Suet-Ming

Hong Kong isn’t really known for thier horror movies…and there’s kind of a reason for that. Most of them are pretty silly. I mean, Mr. Vampire is a great movie, but it’s silly as hell.

The Centipede Horror really won’t win any converts for HK horror. In fact, it will probably make people run from the genre.

The movie was introduced to us as being horribly vile and banned in many countries. I don’t really understand what the hell Tim and Zack were talking about. Yeah, there were a couple of gross-out moments, but it really wasn’t any worse than most Hollywood movies now. Vomiting centipedes (real ones!) is gross, but it’s not as squirm enducing as they made it out to be.

A couple of young girls go from HK to SE Asia (they talk about it like it’s a country) for a quick vacation. They’ve been warned to never go there, but they go anyway and, of course, one of them DIES!!!! She’s killed by centipedes, which apparently have a bite so strange that no doctor knows what one looks like.

Her brother comes to SE Asia to find out what happened and gets trapped in a plot by an evil wizard who hates the guy’s grandfather. He’s cursing everyone in the man’s family to be killed by centipedes.

What’s really interesting about this movie is how quickly everyone is ready to jump on the “maybe it’s something supernatural” bandwagon. Someone trips and their friend says, “Maybe an evil wizard cursed you!”

It’s a pretty awful movie, but it’s funny in its awfulness. Possibly the worst movie of the day, but it was enough fun that I was able to enjoy it. If you’re a fan of bad, weird Asian cinema, see if you can find it. And watch for the broiled zombie chickens.

THE CANDY SNATCHERS (1973)

** (2/5)

Directed by: Guerdon Trueblood
Written by: Bryan Gindoff

The fake lineup movie for this one was The Lovely Bones. Heh.

Candy (Susan Sennett) is a 16 year old daughter of a jewel store manager. She gets kidnapped by three inept criminals who want a bag full of diamonds from her dad. What they don’t realize is that daddy isn’t too hip to getting Candy back.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this one. It’s an exploitation film that I don’t think made a really big impression on anyone except for the weird relationship that Candy developes with one of the kidnappers. It’s not supposed to be sexual, but it’s still a little bit creepy.

And then there’s the ending with the mute kid and his annoying mom. She’s SUPER-annoying. But her kid isn’t much better, really, and he’s suppoed to be sort of a hero of the movie…kind of.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER

This was the only clip we had all night! I was a little surprised. It started out as an E! True Hollywood Story style bit about Harry with Jon Favreau, JJ Abrams and Michael Fucking Bay talking about how Harry nearly ruined their careers. Then Jon comes back and introduces the trailer. It looks pretty awesome, although I agree with one reviewer: Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash looks like he’s more of a danger to himself than to Iron Man. We’ll see, though. I’ll be there. You know it.

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Matthew Vaughan
Written by: Matthew Vaughan/Jane Goldman
Based on comic by: Mark Millar

I kind of can’t believe that they allowed a movie to be called Kick-Ass, but that’s really the only way that I could describe the movie, to be perfectly honest.

Dave (Aaron Johnson) is a geek. He’s a little bit obsessed with comic books and spends most of his time with his two buddies at a local coffee shop/comic book store. (Why hasn’t someone opened one of these up in Austin?!)

That’s where he gets the idea. The idea that will change his life forever. How come no one has ever become a superhero? So that’s just what he does. He goes out and buys a wet suit and walks around town until he finds some crime to fight…and gets his ass beat.

Kick-Ass didn’t have a very auspicious beginning, but he soon finds out that there are other people doing it…and they’re much better at it than he is.

Damon Macready (Nicolas Cage and his moustache) is a devoted father to Mindy (Chloe Moretz from (500) Days Of Summer and Hammer’s upcoming remake of Let The Right One In). So devoted, in fact, that he has taught her to kick some major ass…and he helps her steal the movie from everyone else.

Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong from Rocknrolla) is a gangster. He’s also a family man. His son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), goes to school with Dave, but he’s never able to make friends with anyone. Too many bodyguards. All he wants to do is fit in at school. And, of course, be just like his dad.

The movie wasn’t quite finished, but DAMN was it good! It never let up! The action only stops long enough to let some more comedy in. And there’s more than enough story and character to go around. It’s surprising to me that this was based on a comic book by the same guy who created Wanted.

I’m not really sure how this movie is going to find an audience, though. It’s a pretty hard R what with all of the violence and cursing being perpetrated by small children. (Mindy says things that would make a grown-ass man blush.) But I really hope that it’s a hit.

Kick-Ass comes out in April with a few CGI tweaks and a slightly different soundtrack. The soundtrack was a major source of consternation amongst the audience. It was fucking perfect the way it was! But Warner Brothers won’t let them use the Batman and Superman themes. That’s really too bad, because they’re used in scenes that are perfect with those themes.

Speaking of the soundtrack, there’s one scene where the audience burst out into applause and then started clapping along to the score. I’ve been to a LOT of movies in my life and that is something that I’ve never witnessed.

Yeah. We all loved this movie. It was my favorite of the day. Go see it in April.

Director Matthew Vaughan was at the screening and talked a bit about the casting process. Apparently, there’s a mother out there who was very upset with the fact that there was a masturbation reference on page three. She thought that it would give her 16 year old son bad ideas. Lady! Your 16 year old son had those ideas at LEAST three years ago! And he’s had those same ideas a LOT! Stop worrying about it!

Before I go, one more plea:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET MATTHEW VAUGHAN USE THE BATMAN AND SUPERMAN THEMES!!!!

GodDAMN, I can’t wait to see this movie again!

Ok. I’m done. On to the next movie

Visuals: ***** (5/5) Story: ***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron

I really wish that Harry had ended the day with Kick-Ass, but whatever. The day ended the way it needed to, not the way we wanted it to.

We all know what Avatar is by now: James Cameron’s new half-billion dollar movie about aliens, environmentalism and 3-D.

But we don’t all know what it’s like. I do. I’ll tell you.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a Marine who is now paralyzed. His twin brother was part of the Avatar project, which allows humans to go out onto a hostile planet without dying from the atmosphere. They are basically able to project their minds into artificial bodies of the local inhabitants. This also means that they can (sort of) blend in with the aliens.

The Marines are there to take a certain element from the planet, no matter what the inhabitants say. The unfortunate thing for all involved is the fact that the biggest deposit is right under the giant tree that the inhabitants live in.

The other unfortunate thing is that Jake is actually a little bit sensitive. While he’s in his brother’s avatar, he falls in love with one of the natives (Zoe Saldana) and decides that they deserve to live their lives the way they want to.

SHOCK!!

The other side of things involves Sigourney Weaver as a scientist who feels the same way as Jake and Giovanni Ribisi as an engineer (maybe?) who thinks that these “savages” need to get the hell out of the way of Earthling’s progress.

It’s Dances With Ferngully! Add in some comments about how “we ARE the terrorists” and you’ve got a modern fable about America and how selfish we are.

I dunno. The movie is decent as far as the story is concerned. Nothing special, though.

No one cares about the story, though. Not really. They’re going for the spectacle. And that spectacle is fucking amazing! The CGI is nearly perfect. (Still a bit cartoony for my taste, but that’s to be expected…kinda.) The 3-D is amazing. The world that Cameron and his crew created is beautiful. It’s absolutely worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D. Probably even on the IMAX.

I just really wish that he had attached a better story to those visuals.

Well, maybe next time…ten years from now.

That’s it from BNAT! It was actually a pretty amazing day. Harry fully admits that the last couple of years have been a little bit on the lame side. Not terrible at all, but not really want BNAT is all about. He’s remembered now and, hopefully, his mojo is back. We’ll see next year.

See you in the theatre. I’ll be right behind you.

Also, none of them are particularly upbeat films. There are two with semi-happy endings, but they tend to come at great costs to the protagonists. And as much of a happy sort of premise as Slumdog has, any movie that involves serious torture by electricity can’t really be considered a romp.

Alright, enough of that. How about some movies?

MILK

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Written by: Dustin Lance Black

Harvey Milk (Sean Penn in, of course, an amazing performance) was America’s (perhaps the world’s?) first openly gay man who won a political position. He won, after three or four tries, the seat of a Supervisor of one of the sections of San Francisco. Then he was unceremoniously assassinated (along with the mayor) by one of his co-workers. The really interesting thing is that, according to the movie, he was not assassinated because he was gay, but because he would not vote with the co-worker.

Gus van Sant, of course, has somewhat of an agenda with making this film. He made it pretty conventional as opposed to how he makes most of his more personal projects. There’s no 10-minute scene of a character walking through a hall saying hello to everyone he passes. It’s not a film about two young men lost in the desert of life. And it doesn’t involve half an hour of pulling the camera out and then back in while someone practices their guitar behind a closed window so that we can’t even see them. This is conventional filmmaking at its finest.

Why is that? Because he wants this film to appeal to as many people as possible. He wants it to play in Peoria. And why shouldn’t he? This is a very important part of American history that Peoria doesn’t know shit about. What the hell do they want to know about a gay guy who won an office?

Maybe a movie like this will make them see those “queers down the street” as human beings. If you show Spicoli and Harry Osborn (James Franco plays Harvey’s long suffering lover, Scott) kissing each other in a normal, passionate way, then maybe these guys become a bit more human than they once were.

And the best thing about the movie is that Harvey WAS human. He was deeply flawed. He had all of these grand ideas about winning rights for gays, but he did this at the cost of his own relationship and was a bit maniacal about it. He did flaunt his gayness quite a bit, more for effect than anything, but it was still there. (He was a member of the much more showy gay community that had built up in his area of San Francisco.) And there was at least one point where I knew that the other gay politicians were absolutely right. They showed Harvey a flier showing all of the rights that were being taken away from people, but it never mentioned the word “gay.” Harvey went off on them because “They have to know who it’s being done to!”

But the people the flier was being handed to didn’t want to know that it was being done to gay people. It was much more effective the way it was worded, as if it was being done to everyone. But Harvey had to have the word “gay” on it and a “picture of an old queen” right in the middle.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Harvey Milk was a hero to the gay movement and to oppressed people everywhere. And this film shows him for the flawed human being that he was. And it shows us what a tragedy it is that we will never know where his life may have taken him.

The cast are all up to Penn’s excellence. Franco, Josh Brolin (who is up for Supporting Actor), Emile Hirsch (who is in a role originally intended for River Phoenix when Van Sant was trying to make this film in the early 90s), Diego Luna…all of them were pretty much perfect in their roles. (And, DAMN, was Diego’s character annoying! He’s right up there with Sharon Stone in Casino for Most Annoying Bitch Ever.)

Look for this one to take Best Picture and Best Actor tonight, possibly more.

THE READER

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Stephen Daldry
Written by: David Hare
Based on book by: Bernhard Schlink

From a movie where some people are compared to Nazis to a movie with Nazis…and a lot more boy ass than I expected.

Hanna (Kate Winslet) isn’t really looking for anything when she helps a young boy named Michael (David Kross…Ralph Feinnes plays him as a grown-up). What she ends up finding is a young lover to teach the ways of sex. What Michael ends up finding is a love that will, strangely, last his whole life.

That’s because, years after the affair has ended and Hanna has disappeared from his life, she re-enters it when he is a law student. It appears that she was a member of the SS and a guard at Auschwitz who was involved in the murder of at least 300 Jews. Will he ever love again?

Ok, that’s not the important question in this movie. The really important question is, “What is evil?” Is Hanna evil because she was involved in the murders? Or was she just following orders? And why did she always have people read books to her? Did she actually know what she was doing?

All of the questions raised are what make this movie more interesting than a typical February-December romance. Sure, statutory relationships are all fun and games, but when a Nazi is involved, that makes for Oscar nominated fun. AND this is one of the first American/British movies that takes place in another country where everyone doesn’t have English accents! They all do German accents! It’s amazing!

It appears that director Stephen Daldry is about to start an adaptation of one of my favorite books, The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay. If he can make a film this bold and interesting out of something that has been done 100 times before, then I’m all for him adapting this rather complex book. Although, I’m not so sure about his project after that: My Fair Lady. Really? We need another one?! Wasn’t She’s All That enough?

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Eric Roth/Robin Swicord
Based on short story by: F Scott Fitzgerald

Of course, this is the one that I had already seen and have already written a review of. But I will say this: it’s still a very affecting romance, even if it is the weakest of the five films up for Best Picture. And I noticed that Queenie’s daughter just kind of disappears. She’s born, then shows up again when Ben comes back and she’s about 12. Then she’s running the home (I think it’s her) when Ben shows up for the last time. There’s absolutely no conflict of “He’s not MY brother!” at all. She’s just kind of mentioned and barely shown.

Weird. But it’s still a very good movie.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Danny Boyle/Loveleen Tandan
Written by: Simon Beaufoy
Based on book by: Vikas Swarup

Probably the most re-watchable of the five films if only because of its semi-happy ending. And remember that I said, “semi.”

Jamal (Dev Patal) is about to win the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. But before he can answer the last question, he is kidnapped by the cops and interrogated (read: tortured) until he confesses to his method of cheating. Funny thing is, he isn’t cheating. How does a “slumdog” know all the answers? Because of his hard-knock life, of course!

The rest of the movie is Jamal telling the story of how he knew each answer and how he keeps finding and losing his one true love and how his older brother got caught up in a gangster’s life. It’s a pretty typical story of a slum kid doing his best to escape, but it’s told in such a novel way that it makes the old story new again. While not nearly as lighthearted as I was led to believe at first, it is the happiest of the films and was probably my favorite just on a personal level. What could have been a heartbreaking tale of orphans living in the poorest part of India ends up being a pretty life-affirming story.

Then again, I’ll watch pretty much anything Danny Boyle does. And stick around for the credits.

FROST/NIXON

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Ron Howard
Written by: Peter Morgan
Based on play by: Peter Morgan

This movie, like The Insider before it, never really seemed like it would be that interesting. How do you make a series of interviews into compelling drama?

Well, first off, make that series of interviews be with the most controversial president in recent history (barring the most recent ex-president) just after he resigned and did not apologize for his transgressions. And make the interviewer a showman whose career is on its last legs, who has never done an interview like this and who doesn’t really see its massive importance.

Then you add in an author (Sam Rockwell) who hates Nixon for what he’s done and a tv producer (Oliver Platt) who has just left public radio for ABC and is trying to make a name for himself. In the other corner, we have a secret service agent (Kevin Bacon) who seems to be in love with Nixon and an incredibly shifty publicity manager (Toby Jones) named Swifty.

From beginning to end, this movie had me enthralled. I’m not sure how writer Peter Morgan and director Ron Howard managed it, but these interviews and their story are made into high drama. I really want to check out the actual interview footage now, although I’m not sure that it could be much better than Frank Langella and Michael Sheen sparring and trying to get the better of each other. And I’m not sure that the actual footage could make you almost…um….feel sorry for Richard Nixon. Almost. And Langella found an amazing depth in a near-monster.

Overall, it seems to have been a good year for Oscar. All five of these movies are very good and deserve to be here. We’ll see how that turns out here in a few hours. But my vote goes to Milk and Sean Penn.

But it’s all in good fun and it’s always great to see so many movies back to back like this…even if I end up sleeping through some of them. (Sigh.)

The themes hardly ever count for anything except MAYBE the number of BNAT that it is. So, this being the tenth BNAT, it was only fitting that the theme was The Ten Commandments. Little did Harry know that those Commandments would be coming to him. One of his writers, Cargill, managed to get ahold of two of the actual tablets used in Cecil B DeMille’s Biblical classic! A group of geeks here in Austin bought the best preserved set at an auction recently and loaned them to Cargill for the festival.

And that’s pretty fucking amazing. Not only were the a pair that were actually used in the movie…but, according to DeMille, they were the ACTUAL TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Uh…sure, Cecil. But they were the ones used in the previews where he explained the purpose of the film. So that’s really cool. Throughout the night, Harry got a few other gifts that were pretty awesome, but none as amazing as this bit of film history.

Then we were ready to start the show. Time League got onstage to introduce the first movie, which was finally going to make a little boy’s dreams come true. He had a special guest waiting backstage who was going to usher in a new era of Universal horror movie monsters, but he would only come out if we all made a lot of noise. So, of course, we yelled and screamed and stomped on the ground and blah, blah, blah. And TEEN WOLF CAME OUT!!!

Ok, so it was Lars dressed as Teen Wolf, but it was a pretty convincing costume. He brought the guy up who, for some reason, loves the shit out of that movie and keeps wanting it to be played at the festival, signed a ball, hugged him and then we started the movie.

And then it broke…again.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

The first real movie indulged Harry’s Fay Wray fetish.

VIVA VILLA! (1934)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Jack Conway/Howard Hawks (uncredited)/William Wellman (uncredited)
Written by: Ben Hecht/Howard Hawks (uncredited)/James Kevin McGuinness (uncredited)/Howard Emmett Rogers (uncredited)
Based on book by: Edgecumb Pinchon/OB Stade

Fay was just off her double shot of King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game when she had a smallish role in this fictionalized bio-pic of Pancho Villa, starring Wallace Beery as a rather stereotyped Villa. He was big, broad and violent, but had an innocence about him that made you realize that he was really just a big kid.

The movie goes pretty much all the way through Villa’s life from the time that he saw his father whipped to death, through the Mexican Revolution and all the way to his own death. As far as entertainment is concerned, it’s pretty great. The battle scenes were pretty good for a fairly low-budget flick of the time and he and Wray had a really strange S&M type scene right in the middle.

Historically, though, it’s pretty much complete bullshit. And, even though it’s all about Villa and supposed to be glorifying his exploits (however violent they were), it really seems to be a eulogy for the short-time president of Mexico just after the Revolution, Francisco Madero (Henry B Walthall). His peaceful ideas are at the heart of the film.

It’s kind of hard to say how I really felt about the portrayal of Villa. He is one of the few heroes that Mexicans really have and he is portrayed as kind of a violent buffoon here. He’s lovable to an extent and his military expertise is shown pretty well, but he’s also extremely violent and will kill anyone at the drop of a hat seemingly for no reason. He accidentally robs a bank at one point not knowing that he is doing so. He thinks that he’s just taking his own money! Seriously?!

Well, that’s how movies were in 1934. Anyone who wasn’t white was a) played by a white man (there were very few actual Hispanic folk in the film) and b) was portrayed in a not always so sympathetic light.

Other than that, it’s a very good movie. Check it out if you can.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Eric Roth/Robin Swicord
Based on short story by: F Scott Fitzgerald

I knew that I would like this movie, but I wasn’t sure that I would love it. Luckily, I did. A lot.

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is getting younger. He was born at around 80 or 90 and has been getting younger every day. His mother dies in child birth and his father is so horrified by the tiny old person that he leaves him on the doorstep of an old folks home, just hoping that they would be able to take care of him. Queenie (Taraji P Henson), the caretaker at the home, adopts him as her own and becomes his mother.

Benjamin grows up and leaves home to work on a tugboat. But not before falling head over heels in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the granddaughter of one of the ladies at the home.

From then on, the film becomes a love story against time. And, with all of its Forrest Gump-like qualities, it works really well, becoming the kind of timeless film that Hollywood has sometimes forgotten how to make. David Fincher, directing against type here, has used a premise from the F Scott Fitzgerald short story to tell a story about how time sometimes works against us. And how sometimes to show how much we love something, we have to say goodbye.

This ended up being my favorite movie of the day. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to take my mom to go see it. So, there you go. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

CORALINE CLIPS

After about two and a half hours of Benjamin getting younger, it was time to see something a bit lighter. Harry showed us clips of the new film from Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James And The Giant Peach. This time, he is mining the work of Neil Gaiman. It’s the story of a young girl who wakes up in a dream world where everyone has button eyes and are all controlled by her mother. Everything may be beautiful, but there’s a danger behind the beauty.

The animation was, of course, great and the 3D effects were pretty amazing. (This was the first of three 3D presentations we saw throughout the day.) But I felt like there was something missing. There didn’t seem to be any emotion behind any of it. And that may change with a change of music and the rest of the story filled in. But these clips, while making me want to see the rest of the film just to know where it goes, didn’t make me put it at the top of my list.

Nightmare Before Christmas it ain’t. But we’ll see. It could end up being great.

SAHARA (1943)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Zoltan Korda
Written by: Philip MacDonald/John Howard Lawson/Zoltan Korda/James O’Hanlon/Sidney Buchman (uncredited)
Based on photoplay by: Iosif Prut/Mikhail Romm

Somewhere in the middle of World War II, America wasn’t doing so well. Moral was low and the war efforts just weren’t going where everyone thought they should be going. So the military called on Hollywood to help out. They financed a film that would rally the folks on the homefront and, in doing that, hopefully rally the troops. They got an international cast along with one of the most popular actors of the time, Humphrey Bogart.

Sahara is the story of three Army boys trying to get out of the Sahara desert with their old, beat-up tank, Lulubelle. Along the way, they pick up some British, Australian and French soldiers. They also manage to find an African soldier with an Italian prisoner. Then they’re attacked by a German pilot and pick him up. Finally, they get a change of orders and have to hole up in a fort with no water and 100 German soldiers coming after them.

It’s a great war adventure that pulls out all the stops to try to get people on our side. It shows American soldiers to be good-natured and righteous (even when they don’t really want to be), French soldiers to be brave, Brits to be intelligent and thoughtful, Italians to be basically good people who are led by a weak-willed fool and Germans to be the Devil. Yes, there’s no such thing as a good German in this film. The one that they pick up is a tricky, back-stabbing asshole who can’t be trusted at all.

This was the first point that I actually fell asleep for a little bit. I think I missed about 10 minutes of the movie. And it was still early! But those 15 hour work days didn’t help me much.

VALKYRIE

***½ (3.5/5)

Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie/Nathan Alexander

Just to keep with the WWII theme, Harry decided to show us some good Germans.

Throughout WWII, there were quite a few plots to assassinate Hitler. Of course, none actually worked, but one came pretty damn close. Bryan Singer wanted to tell that story.

Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) was fed up with the way things were working in his beloved homeland. He hated seeing millions of people killed for no reason other than their religion and he hated Hitler and everything he stood for. He knew that he could fight either for Germany or for Hitler, not for both. So he and a small group of people did something about it.

And these weren’t just lowly privates and such. These people were high ranking Nazi officials. Generals, colonels…people like that. People who had Hitler’s ear. (Of course, some denied their involvement.)

With an amazing cast including Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard and Thomas Kretschmann, how could Singer go wrong?

Well, he didn’t really. The movie is actually very good, if not really great. His main flaw is Tom Cruise, who seems to be back to his old self after doing so well in his last few films. I wish that I could say that I forgot that it was Tom again, but I just can’t. He was Tom and there was no getting around that this time. (One thing I’ll give Tommy, though: The movie started with him speaking German and, as far as I could tell, he was doing a VERY good job of it. Maybe he should always act in German…with a bald cap and a fat suit.)

But I really did like the movie and it’s an important part of history that not a lot of people know about. Stauffenberg is seen as a great hero in Germany and has many tributes and memorials around the country. I’m glad that someone in Hollywood finally decided to tell his story. (It doesn’t hurt that it’s a really talented filmmaker and his old writing partner, Christopher McQuarrie getting back together.)

Watch for Carice van Houten from Black Book as Stauffenberg’s wife.

Apparently some people are giving Singer shit about letting everyone use their own accents in the film instead of speaking with German accents. This is, of course, pure bullshit. Who the fuck cares?! I actually noticed it for about five seconds before thinking, “That totally makes sense.” It’s just less distracting than hearing Tom Cruise try a German accent…or a British accent, as they usually do in films like this.

Fuck people.

UP FOOTAGE

Pixar is everybody’s favorite animation studio these days. (And, in many cases, everybody’s favorite studio in general.) So, the news of a new film is always welcome for any thinking human being. I saw the teaser for this one on the WALL-E disc and wondered what the hell it could be about.

Up is, at its heart, about love and dreams and the things we do for them. Carl (Ed Asner) lost his beloved wife, Ellie, a few years ago and is about to lose their home. But if he could find a way to get it to the place that Ellie wanted to move it to, he could save it and his memories. Of course, that place is in the middle of South America. (“It’s just like America…but it’s south!”)

He just happens to find a way, but a young Wilderness Scout tags along for the ride. And they meet some new friends along the way.

Director Pete Doctor (Monsters, Inc.) and producer Jonas Rivera could only show us 45 minutes of the film, so it was pretty frustrating, but amazing at the same time. The movie is nowhere near finished and a lot of the footage was animated storyboards and flat CGI animation. The voice work is basically done, though and it’s on track for its May release. I can’t wait to see what happens to Carl and Russell. “SQUIRREL!!”

METROPOLIS (1927/1984)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Fritz Lang/Giorgio Moroder
Written by: Thea von Harbou/Fritz Lang (uncredited)

We’ve all seen this one and how amazing it. It’s even more amazing with a live orchestra. I’ve reviewed it that way before, but this version was a bit different. This is the version released in 1984 with a Giorgio Moroder score and songs by Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler and Adam Ant among other 80s near-icons.

And, you know, as cheesy as the music sometimes is (ok…always), it kinda works for the movie. It has that same retro-future feel that the movie has. It may not be the best way to see the movie, but I think this is a pretty good way to see it. As Harry said, this is the way to party while seeing it.

This version is pretty short and has a lot of stills and drawings supplementing footage that was believed lost. (All of this is explained at the beginning in title cards.) Moroder also added some color and new visual effects to the film to update the visuals along with the sound.

But wait! Just recently, a full print of the entire film was found in South America (?!) and it is being restored right now, if it hasn’t been already. Harry really wanted to get a copy of that print to show us, but he just couldn’t. Instead, he showed us the version that many of us saw in our film history class at UT.

And that’s ok. I really like this version. Maybe it’s not as amazing to see as newly found footage, but that’s ok. I’ll settle for Freddie Mercury.

MONSTERS VS. ALIENS CLIPS

Dreamworks has come a long way since their early animation movies like Prince Of Egypt. While that one was visually pretty amazing, the screenplay and voice acting sometimes left something to be desired.

Now, with movies like Shrek and Madagascar, they are pretty much the only competition that Pixar has. But they haven’t quite reached the peaks that the boys at near-Disney reached even with their first feature, Toy Story.

Monsters Vs. Aliens comes from a love of the old horror and sci-fi classics of the 50s and 60s. The Earth is under attack from aliens. We know nothing about them except that they seem to be indestructible. And the President (Steven Colbert) is useless. The Secretary Of War, WR Monger (Keifer Sutherland), however, has an idea. His crew have been collecting monsters since the 50s and it may be time to let them go kick some ass.

We got to see a clip of the first contact and a clip of the first monster/alien battle. It looks like some pretty fun stuff, if lacking the Pixar heart that a lot of Dreamworks films are missing. But it certainly looks funny enough and I’m all for it. The 3D worked really well, too.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Written by: Todd Farmer/Zane Smith
Based on 1981 screenplay by: John Beaird/Stephen Miller

Speaking of 3D, this is the only feature we saw in 3D today. It’s a remake of and old 80s slasher flick that I’ve never seen. It is apparently a lot of peoples’ favorite slasher movie, so I might have to check it out.

If the plot matters, it’s about a group of “friends” who survive the attack of a miner who was the only survivor of a cave-in. He killed the other five survivors and was put into a coma. Then, when he woke up, he went on a rampage on Valentine’s Day. He slaughtered a bunch of kids and was thought to be killed in the mine.

Ten years later, one of the survivors is sheriff. When one of the other survivors shows up after a 10 year absence, the murders start again. Is the killer back? Or is this prodigal son responsible? Or is it the asshole sheriff?

But the plot really didn’t matter at all. And, in fact, the script and acting didn’t matter at all. There’s nary a good actor in the bunch except for maybe Jaime King (maybe) and the old folks, who are just as much of victims as the younger folks.

The only really good thing about this movie is the gore. It’s pretty amazing. And, while the 3D effects are a bit blatant for my taste (eyeballs popping towards the audience, a pickax being thrown at us, bullets shot as us), it worked well and, I guess, added something to the experience.

Director Patrick Lussier (Dracula 2000 and its sequels and White Noise 2) said that the gore was much worse and the sex scene about three minutes longer when the MPAA saw it. While I would love to see that version, they actually got the cut that they wanted because all of that extra was filmed specifically for the MPAA so that they would cut what the filmmakers didn’t want and the MPAA would think that they were taking their cuts seriously.

Awesome.

I wish that I could recommend this movie to people besides gore-hounds. But, really, this is a pretty terrible movie with great grue. Nothing more, nothing less.

I LOVE YOU, MAN

**** (4/5)

Directed by: John Hamburg
Written by: John Hamburg/Larry Levin

Paul Rudd can do no wrong at this point in his career. It seems that all of the movies that he’s been in lately, even if they’re not really hits, they’re pretty damn funny.

I Love You, Man continues the trend. He plays a man who has never had buddies. He’s always had girlfriends and put all of his time and effort into those relationships. Now he’s getting married and has no best man. His fiancee wants him to go out and find some friends, but he just doesn’t know how to.

That’s when he meets Jason Segel. Jason is brash and introspective all at the same time. And he’s a dude.

This is pretty much the definition of the term “bromance.” Paul and Jason (whose character names I don’t remember and they’re not on IMDb yet) basically fall in love with each other at first sight, but in a totally non-gay way. They want to hang out all the time.

The best thing about the movie is that, while the impending marriage has a slight rift at one point, it’s never in any danger at all. And it’s almost a side-story to what’s going on with the two guys and how much they grow to love and trust each other. And it’s funny as hell. It’s not an amazing movie and maybe not as good as some of Rudd’s other movies recently, but it’s definitely really good and a lot of fun.

The supporting cast is just as good as the two leads. Jon Favreau plays the husband of Paul’s fiancee’s best friend, Jaime Pressly. He’s hilarious as the asshole who just never really likes Paul. Thomas Lennon is a guy who doesn’t quite get what Paul wants out of his man-dates. Jane Curtain and JK Simmons are Paul’s parents. Andy Samberg is his gay brother. And Lou Ferrigno is Lou Ferrigno.

I loved it, man.

WHITE DOG (1982)

*** (3/5)

Directed by: Samuel Fuller
Written by: Samuel Fuller/Curtis Hanson
Based on book by: Romain Gary

Samuel Fuller is one of those filmmakers that every film geek knows, but most of us have really only seen one of his films. And that film does not tend to be White Dog. (We BNATateers have seen at least one. Pickup On South Street played last year.)

Apparently, this is the film that pretty much killed Sam’s career. It was never released theatrically in the US and had to rely on HBO for any kind of real viewing. Why is that?

Because it’s about a dog that was trained to attack black people.

Wait…really? Is that why it wasn’t released? That seems pretty flimsy. I think someone didn’t like Sam, so they buried the movie.

It stars Kristy McNichol (why the hell do I know her? I’ve never seen anything she’s been in, but I know who she is…weird) as a young actress who hits a dog one night while driving home. She takes it to the vet, puts fliers around and ends up falling in love. Her boyfriend, Jameson Parker, tells her that she needs to keep the dog for safety. What neither of them know is that the dog was trained to kill black folks. When she figures it out, she takes him to two animal trainers, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives. (Of course…why wouldn’t The Snowman be an animal trainer?)

Criterion has recently picked this movie up for a nice DVD transfer and special edition. My question is…why? It’s really not that great of a movie! In fact, it’s kind of movie-of-the-week-ish. The acting is ok, but it just seems kind hokey, even by 1982 standards.

It did, however, bring up a subject that not many people even know is a subject. It doesn’t happen so often anymore, but it was once often enough to make a movie about. Pretty interesting stuff, but not Fuller’s best by any means. Check it out if you’re a completest.

PUSH CLIPS

This movie kind of reminds me of Jumper. We saw two clips of it and I’m a little bit underwhelmed. It stars Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans as two kids who can…do…um…just about anything? They push things around, control guns and bullets with their minds and, apparently, control people…or something. I dunno. They just kind of seem all powerful. They also seem like they’re just now coming to terms with it.

Like Jumper, it’s one that I’ll think about seeing, but then skipping until video. And then I probably won’t see it for a long time.

KNOWING CLIPS

Nic Cage is at it again. This time he’s opened up a time capsule put together by kids 50 years ago. They wrote about what they thought the future would be like. When it was opened up, there was one page that was just a bunch of numbers. When the numbers were deciphered, things look pretty grim for the human race.

We saw a clip where Nic chased some dude onto a subway thinking that he was a terrorist. Turns out that he was a pirate and the terrorists had already put a train onto the same track coming towards them…or something like that.

Again, I might see it, but only after everything else is played out.

OBSERVE AND REPORT PREVIEW

Seth Rogen as a security guard who wants to be a cop. It’s been done, but never with Seth. I’m for it. Absolutely.

TERMINATOR: SALVATION FOOTAGE

McG may be a joke to some, but he does really seem to have a passion for film. When he showed up in his bezippered leather jacket, I thought, “Oh god. He really is a douche.” Turns out that he’s a rather well-spoken and eloquent douche. I gained a little bit of respect for him. Not that I hated him before or anything. I think he’s a competent director. I just think he has a funny name and the second Charlie’s Angels movie sucked balls.

It looks like he might do something pretty good with the Terminator franchise. I’ll see it. The extended preview with rough footage didn’t make my pants sticky or anything, but it was some pretty fun stuff.

And, about his name, he said, “Oh, yeah. And fuck you all for giving me so much shit about my name. I’ve been called McG since 4th grade. It’s short for McGinty. Now shut up about it.” Yeah, a little douchy, but also pretty funny.

WATCHMEN FOOTAGE

This was when Harry brought out the movie that we all really wanted to see…unfortunately, he only brought out 22 minutes of it! FUCK!!!

Apparently the movie just isn’t finished yet…which is funny since everyone in Hollywood seems to have already seen it. Kevin Smith said it was better than Dark Knight.

Jackie Earle Haley was there to talk about the footage and said that this was the first time he had seen anything from the film. What the fuck?! How is it that Kevin Smith has seen it, but the star hasn’t? I don’t understand? (People were saying that Star Trek wasn’t finished, either, but Kevin has seen that, too. Who is he?!)

Well, whatever. The first 22 minutes of the movie were pretty amazing, even if they pretty much consist of the murder of the Comedian and a long scene of Rorschach and Nite Owl talking about it.

Cock tease.

CHE

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Peter Buchman/Benjamin A van der Veen
Based on book by: Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Harry is usually pretty good at scheduling, but lately he’s kinda lost his touch. The last film needs to be something to keep people awake. Something to send them home with a bang. Something to hold them to their seats. V For Vendetta did it. The Lord Of The Rings movies did it. Hell, even Passion Of The Christ kind of did it…in a way.

So, this year he programmed a four hour, subtitled bio-pic of Che Guevara. That’s right. This isn’t the version that is going to be released everywhere. This is the roadshow version, complete with program and 15 minute intermission. From the opening moments, we knew that this was going to be a LOOOOOOONG four hours. It starts with a map of Cuba, very slowly showing the different subdivisions of the small country. Then it very slowly shows the big cities. Veeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyy slowly.

Here’s the deal: I really don’t think that I’m very qualified to even review this movie. Pretty much the entire audience and I were all asleep through at least the first half of the film. By the second half we were trying to kind of gear up for the end and the drive back home. But this movie was fucking brutal to watch after 20 hours of movies. It was beautifully shot and well-acted. I guess it may have been well written, but it was hard to tell from all the snoring.

I do seem to remember Benicio del Toro doing a very good job (as usual) and Lou Diamond Phillips actually being pretty good. What’s that all about?! But Franka Potente was in it? Really?! Yeah. Not remembering her in it at all.

Even if this was the best movie in the world, it was a terrible way to end BNAT. But I did get a pretty cool program out of it. It kind of looks like an old copy of Life Magazine.

So, there you go. BNAT in a rather large nutshell. There were some great films and some that weren’t so great, but no real groaners, honestly. Even the “just plain wrong” movie wasn’t that wrong. White Dog, for all its supposed shock value, just wasn’t Teenage Mother or Toys Are Not For Children.

It was a fun time and the theme almost held up for the first time ever. I just wish that he hadn’t ended the night with a four hour epic that didn’t involve orcs and talking trees.

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Chris Weitz
Written by: Chris Weitz
Based on book by: Philip Pullman

A couple of years ago, some friends of mine introduced me to a trilogy of books that I instantly fell in love with. After reading it I just KNEW that Hollywood would NEVER make a movie of it. It would be too controversial and bring up FAR too many questions that parents just aren’t ready to answer.

So, of course, here’s the movie.

But first, some previews.

SPEED RACER–I was never a fan of the show. I like Emile Hirsch, but I don’t have to see everything he’s in. The Wachowski’s have disappointed me. So why the FUCK was I so enthralled with this trailer? What made me unable to take my eyes off of it? It’s full of CGI trickery and John Goodman. And a nearly unrecognizable Christina Ricci. Maybe that’s it. But it just looks so freakin’ cool that I really, really want to see it! I think it’s made of crack!

THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP–Speaking of not being able to take your eyes off of something, I wanted to sleep through this trailer. It just doesn’t hold much interest for me. Maybe it’s that great big “Walden Media” at the beginning. I dunno. Luckily, they’ve seen fit to put the entire movie into the trailer, so I never have to see the movie. See also, trailer for The Eye. On second thought, if you have ANY interest in seeing the movie DON’T see the trailer. Moving on.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES–Still want to see this. Although I think Freddie Highmore is not so good at hiding his British accent, no matter which brother he’s playing. Whoops.

SEMI-PRO–Uh…what’s this trailer doing here? It’s a crappy Will Ferrell sports movie that’s going to be PG-13 no matter what they cut. I’m sure kids who are here will like it, but it’s not supposed to be marketed to them. Even if Woody Harrelson and Andre Benjamin are in it. (Heh.) Apparently, Woody can’t stay away from sports movies, either.

I don’t think I laughed once during the trailer except at the fact that Andre was in it. Otherwise, screw it.

INKHEART–From the director of Backbeat! (Yeah. I thought the same thing you’re thinking.) If you’re looking for another Harry Potter…um. Well, keep looking. But this might do it for a little while. One of my young tyke friends loves the hell out of these books, so maybe they’re good. Something about a girl and her dad (Brendan Fraser not even trying a British accent although his daughter is British) who can bring books to life by reading them aloud. And they read the wrong book bringing a real bad guy to life. Could be interesting. Could be a remake of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Just push him out the holodeck door and it’s all over.

HORTON HEARS A WHO–Sigh. Will they never get it right? At least this one is CGI and not live-action. Jim Carrey and Steve Carrel I have no problem with, but this just isn’t funny. At all. Not even the sight of a giant elephant thinking he’s lighter then air when he blows up his trunk is very funny. Another one for Dr. Suess fans to ignore.

That’s a lot of trailers, but I guess the studio figured that there would be a LOT of kids in the audience saying, “I wanna see Brendan Fraser!!!”

That was not to be. I was the ONLY person in the theatre today. That’s never happened to me before. Usually at least one other person shows up to ruin my fun. But today, nothin’. Not a sausage.

Here’s the question: was it because of the protests (of which there have been very few, actually) or because word got out that, well, the movie’s just not all that good?

A brief rundown of what’s up with this story:

Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) is a young girl in another world. It’s a world where people wear their souls on their sleeves, literally. Their souls are animals that follow them everywhere. In fact, if they get too far from the daemons (as they’re called here), they feel sick and could die.

Lyra has lived on a college campus basically her entire life with her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), being her guardian. One day, with Asriel away, she meets Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful woman with a golden monkey as her daemon. Mrs. Coulter wants to take Lyra away to The North to be her assistant. Unfortunately, she also has OTHER plans for Lyra. Plans that involve a mysterious organization called the Magisterium and the removal of daemons from young children.

You see, this is a fight for the lives of children. Asriel believes that everyone should have the choice to do whatever they want. The Magisterium believes that they should be able to control everyone. The Authority says that this must be so, so it must be so. He is the one who pulls all of the strings. Asriel does not feel this way. He is on his way north to find out what this mysterious “dust” is that seems to actually be what binds people and their daemons together. The Magisterium does not want people to know about dust.

Do you see where this is going? We have a college, a place for learning. There people believe that we are in charge of our own destinies. On the other side we have the Magisterium, a mysterious group of people who want to suppress the knowledge that they actually know to be true. And they will do anything (including doing things to children that are worse than death) to get their way.

Philip Pullman is an atheist. His books (the His Dark Materials trilogy) have his beliefs (or lack thereof) all over them…just as CS Lewis’ books have his all over them.

And that, my friends, is why this movie has been protested…a bit. I think that once the church figured out that no one was going to see the movie anyway, they kind of shut up about it. Maybe they’ve learned their lesson. But I doubt it. They probably just got lazy.

The books are amazing adventure novels with characters that you can grow to love. The first book is not quite as good as the second two, but it’s still quite good. And with characters like Iorek Byrnison (an armored polar bear voiced by Ian McKellen) and Lee Scoresby (a Texas balloonist played by Sam Elliott), how can you go wrong? I recommend the books to anyone with an open mind. Even Christians! Just try not to read shit into them and you’ll be swept away by the great story just like atheists can be swept away by the Narnia books.

Unfortunately, as written and directed by Chris Weitz (About A Boy), Pullman’s world becomes a bit…stale. The characters come and go and you barely notice them. Even the great Iorek, such a force of nature in the books, is little more than really cool window dressing here. Lyra has about as much character as anyone and I was a little bit unmoved by her.

The casting is nearly perfect all across the board, though. Nicole should be perfect as the conniving Mrs. Coulter. (Was her name a coincidence?) Daniel Craig should be great in his limited scenes as the seemingly heroic Lord Asriel. Eva Green plays the beautiful and mysterious witch, Sarafina Pekkala, and is perfect for the part…but she’s only in two VERY brief scenes. And McKellen should have a great voice for Iorek, regal and tough, just like the bear himself.

But it seems that the only person who truly got it right was Sam Elliott. Every time he was on screen the story lit up and everything came together. The man is awesome and Sam was born to play him. Or the character was born to be played by him. Whatever. Either way, it was perfect.

I could nitpick the differences in the book and the movie all night long (the strangest thing is that one character makes it through the whole movie who died near the end of the book, basically making the next two movies, if they make them, not work the same way), but I won’t do that. Film and print are two completely different medium and should be reviewed as such.

But it’s hard not to be disappointed in the movie. There’s a sense of magic in the book that just wasn’t quite there on screen. And, unfortunately, the movie has done so badly that I’m not so sure that they’ll get a chance to make up for it with The Subtle Knife.

There are some decent sequences. The bear fight is pretty awesome. And almost as gruesome as it was in the book. And the CGI world was absolutely beautiful. (I want one of those cars!) But, overall, the movie was lacking a passion and was a bit dumbed down. (They tell us a LOT through narration at the beginning of the movie that was told within the story in the book.) Read the books instead.

This year the theme was Big Trouble In Little China…although the theme means nothing to anyone. Except when we saw the opening of the movie with Harry inserted into Kurt Russell’s place. Funny what you can do when you have friends in high places.

The day opened with the usual slew of old previews including…STUNT ROCK!!!

You know, after actually seeing this movie, I’m really over the trailer. It was so fucking boring that the trailer just lost all of its impact on me. But Tim League, owner and manager of the Alamo Downtown, made it fun again! Near the end when the wizard comes onstage, he came onto the Alamo’s stage dressed as the wizard and had explosions and shit! It was actually pretty awesome. Especially when he had to apologize to Lucy In Disguise for breaking their staff.

The first movie that Harry had for us this year was Preston Sturges’ first movie.

THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Preston Sturges
Written by: Preston Sturges

It’s the story of Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) and his rise and fall from grace. He was a bum on the streets until he met a gangster. Then, the longer he worked for him, the higher he rose until he finally became governor of the state. But now he’s a bartender telling his story to a poor sap who tried to kill himself in the bathroom.

I haven’t seen a whole lot of Sturges’ films (in fact, I think I’ve only seen The Lady Eve and it was a LONG time ago), so when Harry said that this wasn’t his best film I didn’t really know what that meant. Fortunately, when you say something isn’t Preston Sturges’ best film, it still means that it’s better than a lot of peoples’ best films. This was very funny with some great characters. It maybe had a few slow bits and the relationship between McGinty and his wife was a bit stilted, but it still ranks pretty far up there on the classic comedy list.

And I LOVE the suit that got him.

From a guy who had political power and lost it to a guy who gained lots of political power and then wondered why.

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (2007)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Mike Nichols
Written by: Aaron Sorkin
Based on book by: George Crile

Back in the late 70s Afghanistan was losing their war with the Soviet Union. Constant bombings and technical disadvantages kept them from being able to do anything against their aggressors.

That’s where Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) comes in. He was a Texas senator whose only real concerns at the time were getting laid and being drunk. He would occasionally do some work, but his position afforded him a LOT of pussy. So why not take advantage?

When he happened to see a news story about the war in Afghanistan, he decided that it was time to do something. But what really changed his mind was a trip to Pakistan where thousands of refugees were living. He visited their camp and saw what the war was doing to them. This and his ties to Houston rich bitch Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) make him get involved in a big way.

Charlie starts to petition other Washington types to figure out what’s going on and why we weren’t helping the Afghanis in their war against our only true enemy. He finally started getting help from nearly-failed FBI man Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Director Mike Nichols has handled this sort of political territory before with Primary Colors. This time, though, he has the help of Aaron Sorkin writing the screenplay. And his dialogue is, of course, great. The man has a way with witty dialogue and interesting characters. Which, of course, is why hardly any of his tv shows make it.

The acting is pretty brilliant all the way across. Hell, even Julia is really good here. But Hoffman is the man here, stealing all of his scenes.

Charlie Wilson is an interesting character. He helped to end the Cold War, but he was still a good ol’ boy who just wanted to get laid. He surrounded himself with beautiful young women in his office (one of which he calls “Jailbait”) and hardly ever doesn’t have a drink in his hand. And then, just as he’s actually getting somewhere, he is stopped.

And that’s what makes this film so relevant today. Everything that’s going on in the Middle East now was pretty much started by Charlie Wilson…but that’s not what he meant to happen. He wanted to help more, but the government wouldn’t allow him to. So, here we sit with a mess over there.

Oh well. That’s the way the government works. Do a little good and then pull back and watch it all go to shit.

This is a very good movie. Check it out.

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: Samuel Fuller
Written by: Samuel Fuller/Dwight Taylor

Samuel Fuller was a man’s director. His films tended towards war, westerns and gangsters and the men in them were Men. And the women, very often, were kind of window dressing.

That’s certainly the case with Pickup On South Street, a latter-day film noir about a pickpocket named Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) who picked the wrong pocket. It was the pocket of Candy (Jean Peters), who was carrying a microfilm with military secrets on it to some Communist sympathizers. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she was being followed by US spies.

Of course, things get complicated for both of them. And, of course, they fall in some form of love. Although it’s a Samuel Fuller kind of love that consists mainly of kissing, pushing away and slapping.

This has to be Fuller’s male fantasy on screen. Candy is the kind of female character that would be protested today. She seems strong at times, but she’s actually kind of weak-willed. She falls for Skip almost at first sight and then is never the same. He kisses her just to get information then pushes her away, yelling at her for kissing him. And it makes her love him all the more.

It was pretty hard for me to believe her character, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie. In fact, I thought it was great. Widmark is cool as hell and Thelma Ritter plays a great stoolie. And one character has one of the best death scenes ever put on film.

Next up were some clips from movies that Harry really wanted to show us, but they’re just not finished yet.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN trailer and montage

Same cast. Same director. Same writers. Totally different movie.

They showed us a new trailer and a pretty long clip show from the new Narnia movie and it made me really want to see it. I liked the first one alright, but there was something missing from it. Maybe a certain life that should have been there. But this one looks darker and more interesting.

Of course, that seems about right. The book is darker and more interesting. It’s my favorite of the series and the character of Prince Caspian is awesome.

Here’s my problem with the casting: Caspian is too old! He’s about 26! He looks like early 20s, but that’s STILL too old. He’s supposed to be about the same age as Peter, maybe even between Peter and Edmond’s ages. Making him older than all of them kind of defeats the purpose a bit.

Oh well. They didn’t consult me. I’ll go see the movie and see how it turns out. The trailer didn’t give me the shivers that the first movie’s trailer did, but that’s probably because my expectations have gone down quite a bit.

RAMBO scenes

Speaking of no expectations.

I’ll get this out in the open right now: I hate Rambo. I think all three movies were pretty awful with almost no redeeming qualities at all. I’m all for mindless action, but make it at least a LITTLE bit plausible. And make the lead character at least a LITTLE bit interesting and intelligible. As it is, John Rambo is a dude bent on revenge for something that ‘those damn liberals” did to him.

Ok. So he never actually says that. (I don’t think. You can’t understand a damn word he says in that last speech.) But the Rambo movies are the height of right-wing, kill-em all and ask questions later propaganda. And, even as a teenager I was just plain bored with them.

This looks kind of like more of the same. Rambo is helping a bunch of bleeding hearts go through a river in Vietnam to help out some refugees. But he has to teach them that killing is right. In the scene we saw he dispatches six pirate seemingly with one bullet. Or he shoots six bullets in a split second. Either way, fuck that.

In the written intro that Sly wrote for us BNATateers, he said that if we don’t like it, “John Rambo will come into our houses at night and lovingly cut our throats.”

I guess I should prepare myself.

MONGOL (2007)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Sergey Bodrov
Written by: Sergey Bodrov/Arif Aliyev

Ready for another Russian epic trilogy? Well, you’d better be.

This one tells the story of a young Mongolian warrior named Temudjin who became a slave. Then he became Genghis Kahn.

The story is long and complex, but revolves around two relationships: Temudjin and his brother, Jamukha and Temudjin and his wife, Borte.

Jamukha believes that all Mongols should be free to begin wars with whomever they want to and be in separate tribes whereas Temudjin knows that Mongolia will be stronger if they band together and become one nation. In this way, Temudjin, who is actually just a modest farm boy who has greatness thrust upon him, is kind of the Abraham Lincoln of Mongolia. He wants to unite the tribes into an actual country and help the people. All of which was pretty confusing considering the fact that Genghis Kahn has always been portrayed as a ruthless murderer who conquered half the world in bloody battles and was unconcerned with human life. It was really interesting to see a more human side to him.

The other relationship was less strained, but almost less happy. Temudjin and Borte spent very little time together. She was always being carted off by someone else and impregnated by her captors or he was being enslaved for years in tiny boxes. Their love always shined through, but it was very hard to see them constantly be torn apart by awful circumstances. I think they probably spent about one in every five years together.

I have no clue how historically accurate the film is or how well the actors were speaking Mongolian. According to one guy on IMDb, it wasn’t and they couldn’t. It was as if a Mexican who could hardly speak English was playing Lincoln and they added the 9/11 attacks into the story. From an outsider’s point of view, though, it was a very good movie with epic battles and real characters. Maybe a bit long (it seemed longer than the two hours that IMDb gives it), but definitely worth checking out in June when it finally comes out.

This is supposed to be the first part of a trilogy, so we’ll see if the others ever come out. This is something that I probably never would have watched otherwise and now I can’t wait to see the next two installments.

WALL-E scenes

When Pixar makes a new movie, it’s a time for celebration. Even their failures (Cars is about the only one I can think of) are pretty good and fun to watch. So, even though it’s not finished and they couldn’t show us the whole thing, Pixar decided to send a couple of producers of WALL-E down here to show us some slightly unfinished clips.

And, omigod, they were awesome. I want to see this movie SO badly now. WALL-E may be the best character they’ve ever created and he doesn’t even really speak! (They say it’s not a silent film because the characters talk, just not in any way we can understand. Although you could understand EVE a little bit.)

I won’t say too much about the clips except that we met three characters that everyone fell in love with. And one of them is a roach. So that’s really saying something.

I already love this movie and I haven’t even seen it yet.

THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Robert Fuest
Written by: James Whiton/William Goldstein

This is a lot of peoples’ favorite Vincent Price movie. Some people even claim that it’s their favorite horror movie.

Sigh. I can’t say that I can see why, honestly.

Dr. Phibes (Price) is a bit of a freak. He was supposedly killed in a car accident four years before, but now he is killing doctors using the Ten Plagues as his guide. And who else but Joseph Cotton is on his death list!

But the movie almost seems to not be about the killings. What it’s really about is Dr. Phibes and his weird/hot assistant, Vulnavia (the beautiful Virginia North who was never heard from again after this movie), skulking about and dancing to music made by Dr. Phibes’ Clockwork Orchestra.

The sets are pretty amazing, especially Dr. Phibes’ lair. It’s full of psychedelic stage drops (literally, Vulnavia drops them from the ceiling) and a huge organ that Phibes plays pretty constantly.

The cops are completely inept as they run around London trying to catch the deadly doctor, often times getting there just after the person is murdered. (In one hilarious case, they get there just before.)

Vincent Price is actually probably at his best here. Dr. Phibes is a strange creature who can’t speak unless he is hooked up to a phonograph machine. then he speaks without moving his lips. And he is pretty creepy with the strange makeup and costumes. It’s campy as hell and Vincent gets to do a lot of BIG acting…even if he doesn’t actually get to speak.

Some of the deaths are pretty nice, too. I especially liked the Plague Of Locusts.

What Joseph Cotton is doing here, I don’t know.

It’s still a pretty enjoyable movie, especially with an audience like this. I don’t think it would have the same effect on video, though.

Harry said that he’s sure that someone at some point will insist on remaking this. I don’t really see why, though. The whole point is the psychedelia and that won’t fly these days. And we’ve seen this kind of story so many times just in the last ten years that doing it again would seem completely redundant. But Hollywood has been dumber, so we’ll see.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: John Logan/Christopher Bond
Based on musical by: Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler

Tim Burton was born to direct this movie, I think. The musical was already Goth, dark, funny and bloody. Burton just needed a push to do it.

For those of you who don’t know the story of the Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) is a man bent on revenge. He was once Benjamin Barker. He was in love (“and she was beautiful”) and had a perfect life. (“And he was naive.”) Then a judge (Alan Rickman) came along who wanted what Todd had. So he sent Barker to prison on false charges and took the life that he wanted so badly.

Now, 15 years later, Barker is back. He’s changed his name and has no more remorse. He wants to kill the judge and his creepy little assistant (Timothy Spall who is SO FREAKIN’ GOOD at being creepy). He just needs the means to do it.

Enter Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter), the maker of the worst meat pies in London.

Now, how can they make his urge to kill pay off with her meat pies? Hmmm.

Yes, this is an incredibly bloody affair. No, they didn’t cut out all of the cannibalism. Yes, it’s pretty faithful to the play (although, it’s shorter…the play is apparently about three hours long). And, yes, everyone is a fairly decent singer. Fairly. I wouldn’t run out and buy a Johnny Depp album or anything, but he’s not horrible. Rickman was probably the worst and even he was passable.

Not surprisingly, the main cast is amazing. Johnny is at his best with Burton and vice versa, as is Helena. And I don’t think Rickman has put in a bad performance in years.

The supporting cast is less pronounced, but decent. Sacha Baron Cohen seems to be doing an Opera Man impression, but he’s funny, so it works. Jayne Wisener as Todd’s young daughter, Johanna, doesn’t have a lot to do. In fact, I almost didn’t notice her (except that her boobs are a bit big for a 15 year old) until the end. And Jamie Campbell Bower as the young sailor that Johanna has fallen for is…well, androgynous. I really didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl for a while. He’s alright, though.

The kid who plays Toby, Ed Sanders, was quite good, though. He gets a few songs here and there and becomes the sympathetic center of the story. And he carries it well.

This was probably my favorite new film of the day (although there were surprisingly few of them this year). I know it’s my favorite musical that I’ve seen at BNAT and Burton’s best since Big Fish.

Go see it. It’s a great way to kill some Christmas time.

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)

***** (5/5)

Directed by: David Miller
Written by: Dalton Trumbo
Based on book by: Edward Abbey

Harry said that this one was supposed to be played right after we saw the Rambo clips because the character of Rambo was so heavily influenced by this film.

Honestly, I don’t see it. Except for the whole “man out of time” thing, the two films are nothing alike. The first difference, of course, being that Lonely Are The Brave is good. Very good.

Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) is the last cowboy. So “last” that the first scene is a shot of him laying in a desert field. He looks up and sees jets flying. “Well, Whiskey. I guess it’s time for us to be going, too.”

He goes to visit an old friend, Jerry Bondi (Gena Rowlands looking hotter than I ever knew she was) and finds out that her husband, Paul (Michael Kane), is in jail for four years just for helping Mexicans who had already made it across the border. Jack decides that he has to get thrown into jail so that he can help Paul break out. Unfortunately for him, Paul doesn’t want to break out. He’s “grown up.”

So, of course, Jack breaks out of jail and the rest of the film consists of the cops chasing Jack up a mountain, led by Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau channeling Andy Taylor) and Harry (William Schallert channeling Barney Fife).

Carroll O’Connor and George Kennedy also show up in small but pivotal roles. And George looks bigger than he EVER did later. He looks like he could actually kick some ass. Watch for Bill Raisch, the one-armed man from “The Fugitive.” Oh, and Bill Bixby is one of the guys in the helicopter.

This is one of those movies that it makes absolutely no sense why it’s so hard to find. It’s a great film (and Kirk’s favorite that he made) and pretty much is a high point in the careers of both Douglas and screenwriter Douglas Trumbo.

Speaking of Trumbo, this is the last film that he and Douglas worked on together (the first two being Spartacus and The Last Sunset) and you can tell that Trumbo was still writing about his stint on the Hollywood blacklist. And, to me, that’s when he was at his best.

I loved this film and its depiction of the end of the West. Everything just came together beautifully and formed a film that should not be forgotten. Start petitioning Universal for some kind of release of this film.

THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES (2007)

** (2/5)

Directed by: John Erick Dowdle
Written by: John Erick Dowdle/Drew Dowdle

And this is where things start to go downhill.

A killer stalks people in Jersey and Pennsylvania. He basically has no MO. Every murder is completely different from the last. When the cops finally start to track him down, they find hundreds of video tapes of the murders and events leading to the murders. Many of them show one girl who the killer turned into his slave, Cheryl Dempsey.

In the intro, Moriarty from Ain’t It Cool said that this was one of the creepiest documentaries that he had ever seen and that’s why it’s playing BNAT. Of course, one of my friends is on the selection committee for SXSW and knew that it was actually a mockumentary.

Then again, just watching the movie tells you that. Most of the FBI agents are clueless and unprofessional. (One of them said that he took a tape home and his wife watched it. “She wouldn’t touch me for a year.”) The killer’s tapes go from hilarious (a girl bouncing on a balloon constantly saying, “Like this?”) to creepy (“I don’t think either of us want you alive for what I’m going to do to you.”) and back to hilarious (the killer dressed like an old French bird-like character trying his best to be scary, but just failing). It just kind of seemed like the movie didn’t know where it wanted to go or how it wanted us to feel.

A disappointment the whole way because there is so much potential in the idea.

FANBOYS clip

This movie is never going to come out. We’ve been seeing clips from it for two years now and they keep saying that it’s coming…and then it never does. Apparently, the only reason they couldn’t show it today was because they were refilming the “Harry Knowles scene.”

HURRY UP, DAMMIT!!!

So, instead of showing us the whole movie, they showed us one scene that won’t be in the movie. Fun, huh?

The scene was kind of funny. It was set up like the scene where Lando betrayed our heroes, but this time with one of Lucas’ security guards being Vader. He got each of the kids in the room alone to question them to find out just how deep their fandom goes. He ended each interrogation with a question about sex. Of course, the girl was the only one who could answer it. There are a lot of references to obscure (and, most likely, made up) sexual positions.

Like I said, kind of funny, but nothing to write home about. I’ll still see the movie, though.

The next movie, we were told, was going to be Phantom Menace, because that’s what the Fanboys were going to see in the movie. Perfect double feature, right?

Heh. LIES! ALL LIES!!!

Instead, Tim said that he was going to make amends for screwing his buddy out of watching Teen Wolf last year. He had intentionally burned his own copy of Teen Wolf just to pull a joke on this guy and now he felt sorry about it. So, we were going to watch Teen Wolf.

The movie started exactly where we stopped watching the year before, got about two minutes in and then burned again.

“Oh no! Man! I’m so sorry! What?! We can’t watch it? Ok. Well, we’ll keep trying. And I have a copy of Teen Wolf, Too up there, too. We should get to that at BNAT 64. Let’s watch the backup backup, then.”

“Fuck you, Tim!”

TEEN LUST (1979)

[Rating:.5/5]

Directed by: James Hong
Written by: anonymous (go figure)

And somewhere in the middle of this movie, we were all saying that very same thing.

Teen Lust is about a bunch of kids trying to get laid. For some reason, the girls are all in some program that allows them to ride along with the cops and actually participate in the breaking up of crime. (Hence, the alternate title Police Academy Girls.) The boys are all stereotypical high school boys. They want it from anyone they can get it from. “DeeDee, no! I love Carol!” And then they try to fuck. There’s a drunk-ass mom who is screwing the plumber and a dad who may or may not be a virgin.

There’s no story here at all. None. There’s just one stupid scene after another with the occasional boob thrown in for good measure. And those didn’t come often enough to save this one.

For those of us out there who are Friday The 13th fans, Kristen Baker is in this one playing Carol, the main girl. (She’s in Friday II.)

Otherwise, this is the movie Better Off Dead would have been if Better Off Dead had sucked horribly. Maybe Savage Steve Holland saw this and figured out that all it needed to save it was John Cusack and a dancing hamburger.

STAR TREK: CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER (1967)

****½ (4.5/5)

Directed by: Joseph Pevney
Written by: Harlan Ellison/others who meddled

Harry said that there were two reasons why we were watching this episode. The first was because the new Star Trek movie that is being released sometime this next year supposedly has something to do with it. And, in order to gear up all of his fellow BNATateers for JJ Abrams’ opus, he would show it.

(Harry kind of hinted that the new movie may be at next year’s BNAT. I can only hope.)

The other reason is because, according to him, seeing Star Trek in HD blown up to movie screen proportions is pretty amazing.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about here (which about a third of the people in the theatre had never seen this episode, which is fuckin’ weird), this is the best episode of the original series. It’s one of the few that doesn’t have very many accidentally laughable moments.

Basically, Bones accidentally injects himself with too much of some miracle drug and goes insane. He beams himself down to a planet and a landing party follows him. They get there and find a giant ring that is a machine and a living being. It’s The Guardian and it tells them that it controls all of time. Bones runs through it and Spock and Kirk follow to fix what Bones apparently messed up.

Where they end up is Depression era New York City. They meet Edith Keeler (Joan Collins looking amazing), who helps homeless people and advocates peace. Kirk falls in love and Spock finds out that Edith may in fact be the deciding factor. Bones either saved her or killed her and it changed the history of the Earth.

Written by sci-fi legend, er, sorry…”fantasist” Harlan Ellison, this is one of the staples of sci-fi television. It does everything a good sci-fi story is supposed to do. It is relevant for its time. (Peace was hard to come by in the 60s, but were we ready?) It has interesting characters. (Edith is one of the best side characters of the entire franchise.) And it expands on thoughts that we have all had. (If you could go back in time and do one thing, would it be a good thing in the long run? Or did time unravel as it was supposed to?)

It’s hard for me to say enough good things about City On The Edge Of Forever. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, then go find a copy of it and watch it today. Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, this is just great sci-fi.

As for the digital transfer…well, I guess this is the “new version” that has been a bit Lucased. They’ve gone through and replaced all of the old planets with new digital planets and redone the opening credits sequence with all new digital effects. And they’re decent, I guess. What’s weird is that all of the diagonal lines are blocky. I don’t know if that was the projector or the player or if they were supposed to be that way. I’m guessing that they probably weren’t supposed to look like that, but I can’t be completely sure. And besides that the Enterprise looked VERY digital. Could they not afford a real special effects guy? This looks like something that some Apple employee did on his days off. I mean, it’s not bad, but it’s not great, either.

I’m not running out to buy the new HD transfer of Star Trek anytime soon. Not that I’m buying ANY Star Trek seasons anytime soon. I can’t fucking afford them. Paramount charges WAY too much for one season of this show. Yeah, it’s great. We get it. But it’s not worth nearly $100 per season. Fuck that.

FEELS SO GOOD (2007, short)

Matt Dentler introduced the next short to us with the director. This guy had a short in SXSW a couple of years ago and Matt wanted to help him out by programing his new one at BNAT. They chatted a little bit before it started.

What was strange was that a buddy of mine said that he had seen Matt and the director standing outside talking about the Q&A that they were going to do. The guy was telling Matt exactly what to say and what he was going to say to him. The whole thing was scripted.

Weird. Why would they do that?

Well, as soon as the guy said that Feels So Good was kind of like the birthing of a new director and that he was glad that we were all here to witness that birth…well, I was a little bit afraid.

Sure enough, this was an old video of someone colonoscopy set to Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.”

Fuck you, Matt Dentler. Fuck you.

FAREWELL UNCLE TOM (1971)

[Rating:.5/5]

Directed by: Gualtiero Jacopetti/Franco Prosperi
Written by: Gualtiero Jacopetti/Franco Prosperi

Now, after THAT debacle comes another one.

Back in the 60s, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi were known around the world as the creators of Mondo Movies. These were “documentaries” with no real plot, just images of something shocking. The first film, Mondo Cane (1962), traveled around the world looking for random shocking footage. Most of it is pretty tame by today’s standards, but audiences at the time were absolutely astounded.

Years went by and their films got more and more gruesome to shock an increasingly jaded audience. Their final feature was this, their nadir.

The title actually pretty much tells it all. This is about the slave trade. Not just any slave trade, but the American slave trade before the Civil War. The directors “go back in time” to show us the horrors of slavery and how brutal it really was.

I’m sure they were trying to show us the error of our ancestor’s ways. Show us the truth about slavery. Show us that black people were treated like animals being sold on auction blocks. And what better way to do that than to treat black people like animals being sold on auction blocks?

Maybe Jacopetti and Prosperi were actually trying to make a humanitarian documentary. Maybe they actually did feel for the black experience in America. This could all very well be true. But what they ended up making was a horribly exploitive movie that just showed white people beating on and sexually abusing black people. There were scenes with a slave auctioneer greasing up female slaves before an auction. He was rubbing their breasts like a champ. And all of the scenes of the black dudes walking around naked with shit all over them? Yeah, that’s really helping the plight of the black man.

What these guys actually made is probably the most racist film ever made. It not only exploits slavery, but it insults the fuck out of every black person on Earth. Even the final scene (which was shown to us on video because it was cut out of the film version we were watching) was pure exploitation. It showed a modern black man reading The Confessions Of Nat Turner and getting really pissed off about all of the obnoxious white people on the beach with him. He daydreams about killing them. At one point he picks up a baby and bashes it against a wall, leaving a huge red blood stain.

Farewell Uncle Tom was hard to watch even from a grindhouse type point of view. Hell, even the folks on The Deuce were walking out on this one when it was shown in NYC back in the day. That’s how bad it is. Fight For Your Life was NOTHING compared to this.

If you want to see how bad a film can get in its depiction of racism through the ages, check this out. I think the DVD is heavily edited, though. The version we saw was an American version, so it was pretty heavily edited, but I think the new DVD is a “director’s cut” where they tried their best to clean up their original vision.

Heh. I guess even they were repulsed by themselves after a while.

TRICK ‘R TREAT (2007)

**½ (2.5/5)

Directed by: Michael Dougherty
Written by: Michael Dougherty

And now it’s time for the Big Finale. The one that we’ll all remember after leaving the theatre from a long 24 hours of sitting with smelly geeks.

And, honestly, I hardly remember it.

I think I had heard of this movie before, but I wasn’t very interested in seeing it. And, to be honest, I was glad to hear that it was a slasher type movie only because I knew it would be pretty short.

It’s an anthology film with four stories intertwined to tell about one Halloween night in a small New England town. One story is about a group of young girls (one of which is Anna Paquin) who seem to just want to get laid. Another is about a group of kids who are collecting Jack-o-lanterns for a scavenger hunt. Or are they? One is about a man (Dylan Baker) who seems to despise children. And the last one is about an old man (Brian Cox) who is tormented by a small ghost in a creepy costume.

The movie actually opens with a pretty good scene. Two people (Leslie Bibb and Tahmoh Penikett) get home from a Halloween party and the woman starts to take down all of the decorations because she hates Halloween. The guy goes inside and “puts on the tape” ifyaknowhatimean. Unfortunately, someone doesn’t want the woman to take anything down because Halloween isn’t over yet. The scene is suspenseful and kind of gory. So, in other words, pretty good!

The impish little sprite who does some of the killing is also pretty cool. His name is Sam. He’s a little boy in dirty footed pajamas and a burlap bag over his HUGE head. He’s almost cute in a creepy sort of way. Unfortunately, they make the mistake of unmasking him in the Brian Cox sequence and he just looks silly under there.

The rest of the stories just never moved me. They were almost clever, but never clever enough to engage. And certainly never scary enough to make me think anything but, “THIS is our last movie?! What the fuck?!”

And then there’s just the mean-spiritedness of it. Say what you will about movies like Hostel, but they never kill little kids. This one does…quite a few of them, too. And don’t try to tell me, “Well, only the bad ones died!” ‘Cause they didn’t. Some of them were actually pretty sympathetic. I would actually say that this is the most mean-spirited “light” horror movie to come out in a LONG time.

Writer/director Michael Dougherty (co-writer of X-Men 2 and Superman Returns) was in attendance and talked to us a little bit after the movie. But, by that time, I had no interest in what he was going to say. This is his directorial debut and it’s been pushed back for a LONG time. It’s done now and, in fact, I think it was done THIS Halloween. But it’s not being released until next Halloween. I can’t imagine why.

After this it was all over but the cryin’. Harry had told us at the beginning of the day that we were all walking out of there with free HD DVD players. I kind of felt like he was trying his best to be Oprah for a second. Kind of a larger, slightly less annoying Oprah. Everybody screamed for about five minutes.

They even did a demo for us using the 300 and Miami Vice discs. 300 looked fucking amazing. There’s a feature on there where you can watch the movie with a picture in picture of how it was actually shot, green screen and all. Awesome.

The Miami Vice disc on the other hand, was just stupid. You can click on something to tell you exactly why drug runners use this specific kind of plane, the shortest route from whatever island they were on to Miami and the entire history of the mojito. At that point I thought, “Wow. They’ve jumped the shark. I no longer care about these special features.

But everyone cheered the demo, too.

What they didn’t realize is that we were given these for a reason. You see, HD DVD is most likely the loser in the format wars. This is one last ditch effort to get the geek vote. Bluray has most of the titles and studios. Only two of them are going pure HD and that’s because HD paid them. So, if we do buy any HD discs, we’re throwing money down a well.

I think a few people are selling theirs. I might keep mine to rent some movies and check out the possibilities of the more condensed format. But even my buddy who has had his HD for a long time is kind of losing faith.

Maybe if HD had latched onto some video game platform like Bluray did it would still be a contender. As it is, it looks as if it may be joining 8-track, Beta and Laserdisc in the great media heap in the sky.

Thus endeth BNAT 9. It was kind of a disappointing year, actually. But still a lot of fun. I’m glad I went and I will, of course, continue to go. But the ratio of great : terrible wasn’t as good this year. The only “foregone conclusion” movie on the list was Sweeney Todd. Other than that there were NO movies that anyone probably put on their “What do you want to see this year” list. I don’t think anyone could have guessed that we were seeing Trick ‘r Treat or The Poughkeepsie Tapes, but that’s only because no one had ever heard of the fuckin’ movies. And I don’t think anyone really cared to hear about them after they saw them.

Next year will be kick ass, though. I can feel it. Right?

Right?!

One thing I haven’t mentioned is the new Alamo. This was the first time I had ever stepped foot in it.

And I gotta say, it’s fuckin’ beautiful. The lobby is small, but elegant and the theatre itself is pretty nice. It looks a lot like the South Lamar theatres, but it feels a bit more grindhousy if only because of its location.

But I could still hear the club next door. Sorry, Tim.

Can’t wait to go back, though.

**** (4/5)

Directed by: Ridley Scott
Written by: Steven Zaillian
Based on article by: Mark Jacobson

Harlem’s a motherfucker. But first…

PRIDE AND GLORY–Edward Norton as a cop who has to investigate his brother (Colin Farrell) who is implicated in the death of four cops. Yep. I’m there. Just about anything with Edward in it has my vote.

WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS–Who told Martin Lawrence to be in another movie? This looks so awful. (James Earl Jones, who did you piss off?) In fact, my first thought after the preview was over was, “No. Why the bloody hell….?” I couldn’t even finish my sarcastic thought. That’s how bad it…

Ok, now on to the new gangster epic.

At one point, Harlem was owned by white people. Sure, black people lived there, but it was run and owned by white people. Ok, maybe not the legit businesses, but the gangsters had to pay white folk for the “privilege” to sell drugs on their own streets.

Around 1969 all that changed. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) single-handedly brought black gangsters into a place of prominence in the American lexicon, for better or worse. Instead of buying drugs from the Italians so that he could sell on his streets, he went straight to the source: Vietnam. He took a few trips over there, made some friends and came back with a lot of connections and ways to get pure heroin over here.

Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) had other plans for him, though. He was one of the few honest cops in New Jersey or New York. His private life was a shambles, but he tried like hell at his job. And when he was made the head of a secret agency to rid Jersey of drugs, he was on it.

I really liked this movie a lot. I think it could be sort of like a Godfather for black gangsters. I’m not putting it on that pedestal, but really what other really good black gangster films are there? (And I’m not talking about gangstas. That’s different.)

Here’s the thing about it, though: it’s over an hour before Richie even knows who the fuck Frank Lucas is. We see every aspect of both of their lives from Frank’s marriage to Eva (the beautiful and talented Lymari Nadal–can’t wait to see her in more stuff) to Richie’s divorce. (And his affairs. “Richie, fuck me like a cop, not a lawyer!”) Maybe it’s a bit much, but I think it works. It makes us know exactly where these guys are coming from and why they do what they do. Richie is going to law school, so he wants to be as law-abiding as possible. Frank comes from a poor South Carolina family, so he wants to give them everything they couldn’t have before. (Ruby Dee is, of course, amazing as Frank’s mother.)

And speaking of Frank’s mom, this movie does something that ALL gangster movies does, but it shows a side that maybe we don’t normally see: Family is number one to these guys. Especially the maternal bond. A wife may not always mean a lot (just look at Sonny Corleone), but a mother is a fucking goddess and should NEVER be crossed. There’s a scene here, though, where Frank almost does. And Ruby puts him in his place. She’s turned a blind eye to things that he’s done, not asking where he got his money. Not because she didn’t want to know. She knew. But she didn’t want him to lie to her. That would be the absolute last straw. It’s one of the best and most telling scenes in the film.

The cast is pretty much perfect all around. Denzel and Russell are their usual brand of amazing. Have either of these guys ever been truly bad? Sure, they’ve been in bad films, but even when it’s apparent that they don’t care too much about the material, they’re still very good. All of the supporting actors are great, too. And there are a LOT of them. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carla Gugino (playing Richie’s wife), Cuba Gooding, Jr. (remember what he did before he started making dog movies? He’s back at it here.), Armand Assante, RZA, Joe Morton, Jon Polito, Ted Levine (“Could you help me get this gangster in my van?”), Josh Brolin (in a very creepy turn as a crooked cop)…it’s hard to name all of them, but they all deserve mention. (Watch for Fab 5 Freddie in Frank’s club, Smalls. And, I SWEAR Garrett Morris was his attorney at the end.

And, for once in his life, the great Ridley Scott has made a movie without a lot of fog in it! I guess he hasn’t really had that problem in a while, but I’m kind of glad it stopped. I love Ridley and this is one of his best films in a while.

I noticed that Nicholas Pileggi was one of the producers on this one. Does this guy ever do anything but gangster movies? I was surprised that he didn’t write the book it was based on. (Actually, it was an article by Mark Jacobson who wrote The Believer, but who’s counting?) The amazing screenplay, by the way, was written by Steve Zaillian, who hasn’t written a great screenplay since Schindler’s List and Searching For Bobby Fischer back in 1993. Good on him.

But first, a few previews:

BREACH–I’m sure I’ve previewed this one before, but I just can’t get over the fact that people are still giving Ryan Phillippe good roles. It just pisses me off. This looks like an awesome movie, but there’s Phillippe, just waiting to suck.

Blech.

EPIC MOVIE–Ok, this was on Black Christmas, but it’s another stinker. It’s a parody film that parodies every single film ever made. And it looks terrrrrrrrible. There’s just nothing funny about this preview. Fuck it. Next movie.

ZODIAC–Not a typical David Fincher movie even though he’s been here before. It’s, of course, about the Zodiac killer in the 70s (who was also the basis for the killer in Dirty Harry), which Fincher mined in Seven. But this doesn’t look as crazy as his other work. Of course, I may be mainly going off of Fight Club since it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Seven.

With Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards and Ione Skye, there’s a great cast involved. I can’t wait for this one. A lot of people didn’t like Panic Room (I thought it was alright), so maybe he can redeem himself with this one.

Ok, on to Bobby’s dream project.

What does it take to protect the most powerful nation in the world? Apparently, it takes lots and lots of sacrifice.

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) was the first (semi-fictional) member of the CIA. He was approached while he was still in college in the late 30s and remained in the Agency well into the 60s. He was in Europe throughout World War II and tried to keep the Soviet Union out of Cuba in the 60s.

All the while, he had a wife (Angelina Jolie) and kid back home who didn’t really know him. He was pulled away from her a week after their shotgun wedding and didn’t meet his little boy until the war was over.

And things never really got better for the Wilsons.

This is an incredibly long movie. At nearly 3 hours and about 50 characters to keep track of, it’s one that needs about 5 viewings before you really catch onto what’s going on. And, considering the fact that it was slow and I was tired, I got a little nap in somewhere in the middle. I accidentally closed my eyes when Edward was in Europe and woke up when he was in bed with a strange woman. Things change in the prolonged blink of an eye.

But what I saw (which was most of it. I think I was only asleep for about 10-15 minutes) was very well made and acted. DeNiro has shown that he’s a very good director before with A Bronx Tale and I’m glad he decided to go back behind the camera. And the fact that he did it with a prequel to Meet The Parents makes it all the better!

Actually, this is a mafia film with CIA spooks instead of gangsters. Everyone is connected and no one can be trusted. You never know who has allegiances to whom, which makes for hard, but interesting viewing.

And with this cast, it’s hard to go wrong. Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, DeNiro, William Hurt, Michael Gambon, Timothy Hutton, John Turrturro (in a role exactly the opposite of his Miller’s Crossing role) and John Sessions (popping up for the first time in years that I know of). It’s a dream cast for a movie like this. And Matt is gaining a patent on the quiet, stoic, nearly creepy guy who could kill you at the drop of a hat. He’s very good at being the guy that you know is doing what he thinks is right, but is kind of going about it all the wrong way.

The story of the birth of the CIA is a very interesting one and it deserves an amazing film. It’s especially interesting at this point in history. And The Good Shepherd is a very good film, but it’s not as great as it could have been. I want to see it again just to try to piece everything together, but it will have to wait until video.

The year was 1976 and all of these factors were well in place. That was the year of this humongous epic.

1900 is the story of two Italian men from birth to age 44. Both were born on the day that composer Verdi died in 1901. It was also a year of great upheaval in the Italian government. The Fascists and the Communists were constantly fighting to gain control of the country and the people were divided. Alfredo Berlinghieri (DeNiro) was born to a rich landowner and Olmo Dalco (Depardieu) was the bastard son of one of the women who worked the farm. The boys’ grandfathers (Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden (General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove) respectively) were old friends but have had a rift between their friendship ever since one became rich and the other poor. Alfredo and Olmo, although they are completely different, become very close friends. At a very young age they find out that their families have different political views. The Berlinghieris, since they are rich, seem to want the Fascists out of power, but they don’t want to rock the boat in order to stop them. The Dalcos are more rebellious. They’ll strike, fight or die for their cause. The boys are no different from their families.

After Olmo comes back from the war, things have changed even more. Atilla (Donald Sutherland) has taken over as foreman of the farm and is pretty much Alfredo’s father’s hand man. He’s cruel, ruthless and pretty much pure evil. Everyone sees it, but no one has the guts to say anything about it but Olmo and he is kept quiet by everyone else. The father really isn’t much better. He has no compassion for his workers and forces them to rebel.

Olmo and Alfredo go to the city, meet women, fall in love and continue to see the differences in themselves. Olmo becomes more interested in socialist/communistic causes and Alfredo becomes more and more tyrannical and weak. He doesn’t like what Fascist Atilla is doing to his people and claims to be a Socialist, but he doesn’t think that he can do anything. He drives his wife, Ada (Dominique Sanda) to drinking, but she was annoying before that. Even his loving uncle has left him behind.

The story reminded me of a cross between the Godfather Trilogy, Casino and Raging Bull. A young man becomes his father, which is exactly what he didn’t want to do. His wife hates what he’s become and is driven to alcoholism. The young man accuses his best friend of having an affair with his wife. (DeNiro doesn’t have the famous line in this one, though. Woulda been funnier if he had, though.)

Bertolucci is amazing as always at capturing time and place with his camera. It’s a beautiful film even if the scenery is very dirty. He’s also a master at catching the feelings of his characters. We felt the pain of every one of them.

One thing that surprised me was the fact that he was able to keep a good pace throughout this five hour eleven minute magnum opus. (Yes, I sat through a five hour movie–with intermission. I am a loser.) Most of Bertolucci’s films are long, ponderous and don’t make a whole lot of sense. This one and The Last Emperor are different, though. They don’t drag at all and the stories are amazingly interesting. 1900 went on at a great clip until about the last 20 or 30 minutes. That was when the five hour time frame felt like 1900 in real time. (The film wraps around on itself starting and ending with DeNiro looking a bit like You Bet Your Life-era Groucho and Donald getting pitchforks in all extremities.) Bertolucci seemed to want to show everything at the end so that we knew exactly what happened to each character no matter how minor. There’s even an anti-Schindler’s List part to the proceedings. This is when things get really self-indulgent. It’s almost as if he couldn’t decide on one ending, so he put all of them on. And then there’s a bit with Olmo and Alfredo as old men fighting. It’s laughable until the very last image.

Like almost all Bertolucci films this one is very sexually explicit. This version (the 1991 restored director’s cut) has all of the naughty bits added back in and I think they go even further than Last Tango even dreamed of. As the guy who introduced the film says, we got to know DeNiro like only his ex-wives and doctors know him. Definitely some images I never thought I would see, like DeNiro and Depardieu being masturbated at the same time by a prostitute and two young boys checking out their penises. (Looks like Olmo shrank as he got older. Hmm.) That’s something I probably could have done without, but it made sense in the story, so I guess it wasn’t totally exploitive. Funny what they can get away with in Italy.

It’s a lot more violent than most of Bernardo’s films. I can’t remember any violence (unless it’s sexual violence in Last Tango) in any of the ones I’ve seen. This one, however, has some of the most disturbing violence ever put on film, most of it from Sutherland’s character. Between killing a little boy (the one scene that makes this movie deserve its NC-17 re-rating) and head-butting a cat he runs the gamut of despicable acts. He’s one of the screen’s most evil men since Henry Fonda’s character in Once Upon A Time In The West (which Mr. Bertolucci did some camera work on).

The performances from everyone else are pretty amazing, too. Gerard has finally shown me that, at least at one time, he could act. What happened? Why do movies like My Father The Hero and Green Card when you could still be doing good movies. And what was up with his guest shot in Kenneth Brannagh’s otherwise brilliant version of Hamlet? I couldn’t understand a word he said. This shows why he’s one of the most important actors to come out of France. Through most of the movie he seemed to be fighting alone for his cause and you could see the pain and anger even when he was happy. Always a brooding bit of hatred underneath.

And DeNiro shows us what he used to be able to do. Now that he’s acting with cartoons it’s hard to imagine that this guy was once considered one of the greatest actors alive. He and Brando had the market cornered on crazy anti-heroes. Here, though he’s playing the polar opposite: a weak man who believes one thing in his heart, but doesn’t think he’s allowed to act it out. Then he ends up nearly believing what he never wanted to. A very layered job from a national treasure that has kind of forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing. (Really. Think of one truly great performance he’s put in since Goodfellas. Flawless is about the only one I can think of that comes anywhere near what he could do.) Unfortunately this is kind of a lost DeNiro movie much like Once Upon A Time In America, another epic that needs to have a big re-release.

The supporting cast is equally good even if it’s a little hard to see Burt Lancaster, one of the most American actors ever in my opinion, as an Italian pervert. (Nice enough guy, but in the end he’s basically a perv.) The only problem I had with the cast was Dominique Sanda as Alfredo’s wife Ada. She was beautiful at first, but then she spoke. She has a voice slightly more manly than mine…and it’s not sexy on her. Kathleen Turner can get away with it, but she can’t. Then she started acting like a complete idiot. (Just one more comparison to Casino. I hated Sharon Stone’s character in that movie.) There’s a scene where they all go to a party thrown by Olmo’s people. She starts to act like she’s blind and runs into people screaming about how blind she is. Then, when the jig is up, she runs around apologizing to everyone, running into them again. Even when they’re all running towards a fire trying to put it out she still can’t stand to not be the center of attention. “Why are you going?! I was only joking! I am not blind! Come back!” I wanted DeNiro to bring out Joe Pesci and whack her right in front of everyone.

This is, unfortunately, a movie that has gone unnoticed for a long time. Not a lot of people have heard of it and those who have don’t want to sit through the whole thing. (Even the “short” version is four hours long.) It’s worth it, though. Everyone is in their peak form and, except for the very end, it’s totally engaging and goes by faster than most three hour epics made these days. If you can, find the director’s cut. I’ve never seen the original American release, but I hear that it doesn’t make very much sense because of all of the cuts. As long as you can stomach some of the more shocking scenes this is a great movie. It’s a story that doesn’t get a lot of recognition, too. Not in film, anyway. It’s worth the five hours just for that.

Somehow David Lean got a movie deal out of that. And somehow the movie turned out to be one of the greatest films ever made. I just saw this movie for the second time, this time on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen. Every shot is a classic. Every scene seems like it should go on forever. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this movie. Not even the length.

Peter O’Toole, in his first big role (the credits say “introducing,” but he had three roles before this–no one remembers them, though), plays T.E. Lawrence, a British soldier during World War I who is sent to North Africa to “appreciate the situation.” There, he meets Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), the leader of one of the Arab tribal armies, Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), the second in command of Feisal’s army and Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), the leader of one of the other tribal armies who end up joining forces with Feisal’s army.

Before being sent we learn a lot about Lawrence’s character. He has great self control (shown in a scene where he puts a match out very slowly with his fingers–”The trick is to not mind that it hurts.”) and he doesn’t really deal with authority very well (“It’s my manner, sir. It seems insubordinate, but it doesn’t mean to be”). Somehow he still gets sent on his mission.

His first guide is killed by Ali because he is from the wrong tribe. This, of course, angers Lawrence–go figure. (“My name is for my friends, none of which is a murderer.”) He finally makes it, on his own, to Prince Feisal and becomes a nearly reluctant leader to the army. As he makes plans for the army he starts to like the control. He even finds out that he enjoys killing a little more than he would like to admit. The thing is that he’s a natural leader. He’s charismatic. He’s intelligent. He’s got a God complex. (“They could only kill me with a golden bullet.”) He goes on a crusade against the Turks who are oppressing the Arabs. At one point he crosses the Sanai with two kids who have taken it upon themselves to be his servants. “Are you crossing the Sanai?” “Moses did!” “With children?!” “Moses did!”

After severe humiliation at the hands of the Turks he decides to go back to being a British soldier again. Unfortunately for him someone talks him into going back. This causes his complex to get even more complex. He starts blowing up Turkish trains (some of which were the actual trains that the real Lawrence blew up). The reporter who is following him takes some heroic pictures of him here. (The shots of him walking across the top of one of the trains is an indelible vision. Even his shadow is ethereal.) After one battle, though, Lawrence and the reporter both realize that things have gone too far. (“You dirty, filthy man. Let me take your dirty, filthy picture for the dirty, filthy papers.”)

I may have already given away too much, but the point of this movie isn’t really the story (although that’s pretty amazing, too), it’s the spectacle. It’s the cinematography. It’s Peter O’Toole and David Lean. Only once in a great while do roles like this come along for actors. This is the best role Peter O’Toole will ever have (unless he can break himself out of the Phantoms mode). All of his other great performances (Becket, Lion In Winter, The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year, The Last Emperor, The Stunt Man, Supergirl)–they’re all child’s play to this one. There’s so much going on with this character that you can’t keep up with it all. He’s at once heroic and sick, amazing and sad, life giving and destruction making. It’s a wonder that Peter ever got out of the character.

Then there’s all the other performances. All those decidedly non-Arab guys playing Arabs did a great job. It was hard to realize that Alec Guinness wasn’t an Arab. And Anthony Quinn? He may as well have been born in the sands of Egypt. Omar Sharif? He should have…oh wait…I guess he is Egyptian. Actually, being the age I am and the kind of person I am, it was hard for me to not think that Sir Alec would whip out his light saber and do some damage. “Orince? That boy was our last hope.” And what was with Anthony’s nose? I really don’t remember it being that big in any other part. And why is it lighter than the rest of his face?

Anyway, the film is amazing. Lawrence stands alone. There’s really not much else to say. If you get a chance, see it on the big screen. If not, then get the widescreen version (the only version I know of in existence) and see it on a big tv. There’s really no other way to see it. I did see it for the first time on a little 12 inch screen, but now I’ve seen what I was missing. Try not to do that. There’s too much lost. You don’t quite get the majesty of that two minutes of sunrise from the first scene in the desert. (Bet you didn’t know the desert could be this beautiful, huh?)

Since Lean is dead (Never say that! Never say he’s dead! Say he’s unavailable.) we’ll probably never get another movie like this. But we can watch his other epics like Doctor Zhivago, The Bridge On The River Kwai and A Passage To India (the only one I haven’t seen).

David Lean/Alec Guinness count=6 (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Bridge, Lawrence, Zhivago, Passage)

Lean/Omar Sharif count=2 (Lawrence, Zhivago)

Lean/Pauly Shore=000000000000000

Lean film Oscar nomination count=38 (9 for Lawrence)

wins=23 (7 for Lawrence)

These are both ballpark figures–I looked through a book that doesn’t give all the nominations in little categories, only winners.

Lean AFI 100 count=3 (Bridge, Lawrence and Zhivago–although I don’t know if they count as American movies–I thought they were British)

I’ll stop counting now. I was never good at math. Just thought I’d bore some people with useless facts…like I always do.