If we critics fall victim to any one pitfall, it's that simplest of traps: judging a book by its cover. I first saw the career-defining First Blood earlier this year and was taken aback by its decidedly non-shoot 'em up story and execution, in much the same way that my then 9-year-old mind was completely blown away on first encounter with The Terminator, another classic film whose unique moral qualities and humane inquiries are routinely usurped by its popularity within - and subsequently caricatured pigeonholing by - pop movie culture. Of course, it's easy to become cynical without being deliberately so, and though I've yet to see either Rambo: First Blood Part II or Rambo III (is this the most inconsistently titled movie series of all time or what?), I wasn't exactly holding high expectations for the fourth entry, titled simply Rambo. Of course, that whole concept of expectations is something I'd like to banish not simply from critical approaches and exercises, but from the vast majority of human experiences altogether. How many of life's downs are merely unrecognized ups, tainted by our predetermined desires as opposed to being purely discovered by our senses? If one sets their expectations too high, then what's to be enjoyed? Too low, and then no standards apply whatsoever. Best to let everything come as it may, coexisting and conflicted, perhaps, but such is the case not only with all sorts of independently created works, but life as well. May as well get used to it. I, for one, can't get enough of it.

Now, back to Rambo...

Consider this newest entry in the franchise, if you will, the latest in mainstream cinema's implicit responses to our current political moment, as all films reflect their times, though these troublesome ones seemingly encourage our artists to do so more explicitly. Stallone uses his iconic character here to explore the necessary evils of violence through a brutal pop lens, recalling his own role in fashioning 80's cinematic actioners and how those films have influenced not only subsequent works of the genre, but an entire generation of moviegoers weaned on them. Approaching his subject matter with a matter-of-fact, workman-like artistry, Stallone's Rambo purports nothing more than it shows, sweaty and bloody and matter-of-fact in both its ideas and attitudes. The rejected American soldier now resides in the jungles of Burma, where genocide is an everyday reality as entire villages of underdeveloped farmers are subjected to the vicious whims of a greedy military colonel. Audiences may snicker at Stallone's age but such befits the bone-wearing wisdom of his character's place in life, having long fought for justice with little to nothing in the way of long-lasting success. Worldly systems too great and vast to permanently disrupt are in place that only perpetuate violence against the innocent, and when a band of Christian missionaries looks to him for help in aiding the oppressed, he tells them matter of factly: "Live your life, cause you've got a good one." Rambo doesn't quite say that it's impossible to fix the world, but it knows in its bones that it takes more than a few rebels working together to do the trick.

I'm as bleeding heart as they come, but infuriating to me as well is the often-legitimate insinuation that all liberals are whiny tree huggers who'd rather turn tail than fight back in the midst of a terrorist attack. Though it goes without saying that Rambo isn't in the same ball park, league, or sport as Steven Spielberg's morally challenging meta-work Munich (which complicates the issue with the downward spiral of revenge), I'm glad to see a relatively mainstream film boldly and appropriately establishing the need for violence in a violent world, even if Stallone chooses not to delve into the widely-differing set of morals required when functioning in wartime versus diplomacy off the battlefield. Neoconservatives would have us think that there exist no worthwhile politics that can't be handled with shock and awe style carpet bombing, but equally important is the fact that sometimes there's no other choice but to shoot back. Threatened by a boatload of pirates eager to rape his lone female passenger after killing off the men, John Rambo shoots first Han Solo style, necessarily and unapologetically, kill or be killed. By the end of the film, even the whiny Christian who tells John that "taking a life is never right" has beaten a few thugs' skulls in with a stone. Rambo's emphasis on violence, then, isn't an exercise in wanton catharsis but an admission to unpleasant necessities - only a sick person would actually enjoy the onslaught of exploding heads and severed limbs as featured here, which are shot plain and ugly, without fanfare. First Blood remains the ultimate Rambo film because it asks us, what are our leaders doing to fix the situation while our brave men and women do what is asked of them? In a post-9/11 world, guns aren't a solution, merely a temporary fix. Eventually, they'll run out of ammo.

Not being a paid critic, that is. Though there's something intrinsically depressing about the profession's slow approach to extinction, the endangerment of the print critic has yielded more opportunities for the online enthusiast to have their voice be heard. Weary of his pummeling though I am, I can agree with Armond White on the problems inherent when amateurs (something I absolutely recognize myself as) are granted the authority of experts, but this is another arena entirely and one whose many causes (and effects) are probably best viewed from an external perspective, or at least a pluralized one. Still, I think it invaluable to be able to do something out of pure want and desire as opposed to securing the next paycheck; let's face it, some of the professionals are more hackey than even the most inane of we bloggers (Rex Reed's review of Speed Racer was as painful to mine eyes as he proclaims said film to have been to his).

Especially in college, I felt it my duty to see as much as possible, no matter how minute or likely awful a film it was. Though I still think it important to see a lot (and by that I mean that, should I see less than 300 first-time films in any given year, I've failed in my mission), it's a virtue to be selective, and though this is something I've known and practiced for some time, it's an approach that has been given new meaning by my part-time position as a video store clerk (expect a long, detailed, strongly worded tirade against all things Blockbuster at some point in the future...), where everything held dear by anyone who loves film gets turned upside down in a debacle of advertisements, artless appreciations, and reductive anti-thought processes. For any wage worker, it's hell, but for a movie lover, it's a punishment akin to what many Christians believe Judas deserving of.

I'll never criticize a movie I haven't seen, though I may speak poorly of my impressions of it based on the evil advertisements inseparable from the cinema's distinction as an industry-bound art form. Judging worth by previews is, to say the least, an inexact science. Hence, we keep our ears to the ground and we do our best to see all that is worth our precious time on this earth. This is where critics are most valuable; only an idiot will read Critic X and decide what to see based literally on the assigned star ratings. Rather, one can familiarize themselves with specific tastes and attitudes, and can judge from there whether a specific title is worth both time and the price of admission. Had my friend Keith Uhlich not lauded such films as Revolver and Youth Without Youth, I'd have passed up two of my now-favorite films of last year, based on their otherwise near-unanimous derision by just about everyone else (including other favorites such as Nick Schager and Roger Ebert). And so it goes. It's unavoidable that some films with smell from a mile away, and though a hidden gem may lie amidst the rubble from time to time (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry being an example I would argue for to the ends of the earth), we can hardly be blamed for skimming over that which triggers our gag reflex.

Thus, even in cases where I'm all but convinced that a movie is absolutely, positively and inarguably not worth my time, I've developed a new rule: if the opportunity presents itself, give the movie a shot until the moment you realize that you aren't benefiting from it. Good or bad, a worthwhile movie fulfills my soul, and I've found almost all films to be fairly consistent in this department (having almost unlimited access to free rentals helps, too, though let's not pretend that downloading isn't a very real option at almost every one of our fingertips). It's unfortunate when we're committed, for whatever reason, to see a movie that we just don't want to, as there have been more than a few assignments for Slant Magazine that I've emerged from feeling bruised, beaten, and a little depressed (Shutter being the most recent offender). Yet all is not naught: these soul-sucking voids make the goodness of cinema that much more appreciable when we come to it.

And so it is with joy that I can say that, rather than having wasted nearly four hours of my life watching two of the latest (and, pathetically, most popular) DVD releases - National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets and Mad Money - I instead wasted somewhere around 20 minutes. Altogether. The former - another lame regurgitation of whitewashed history blind to its own idiocies - was shut off somewhere around the 10-minute mark, and the latter - a breaking-at-the-seams wish-fulfillment fantasy for middle-to-lower class Sex and the City adherents - around 7. Figure another 1 ½ minutes each for DVD insertion/ejection and navigation, and there you go. On to better things, like Rambo (I'm serious), which I hope to pen some thoughts on in the near future. If you find these entertaining, by all means, as I too have found great enjoyment in more than a few works to suffer broad critical lambasting in the past few years (the Matrix sequels, Pirates 3). But why finish an experience that starts off bad and gets worse? I've found plenty of surprises by giving a chance to titles with dismal pedigrees, but when the weight of mortality sets in and the plot (a point of measure I'd like banned from the critical lexicon) hasn't even taken full swing yet, I'm out.

So there you go, Mr. Manager. I watched some of your pathetic movies - enough to say that I'm better off having not endured them in their entirety. If I've missed some sort of a hidden masterpiece, please, let me know. Otherwise, treasures await me elsewhere. Let's go exploring.

...meesa thinkin' we havin' us another Lucas debacle here.

Seriously. Let me say, first, that I didn't hate the film - in fact, I think I quite liked it, but a lot of reflection and at least another viewing will be necessary to really put things together. I enjoyed watching it and I appreciate the hell out of Spielberg for throwing us such an unexpected curve ball, and, like the past two films, is one I need to familiarize myself with more.

However, even if I end up being in the neutral to slightly negative position on the movie, I sense that I'll be among its supporters and apologists, comparatively. The showing I attended tonight started off disasterously, per se, when Harold and Kumar 2 started playing instead of Indiana Fucking Jones (as one patron so put it, inadvertently suggesting a surprisingly honest porno title in stead of Harrison Ford's hero), but such was an amazing sight to see given the fervent nature of the packed crowd.

In a way, though, it was a taste of things to come: groups to the left of my friend Kyle (top dude and long-time viewing partner) and the right of myself described the film as "the most disappointing" and "one of the worst" they had ever seen, respectively. The film's IMDb forum is currently a madhouse worth avoiding like the plague. I imagine the film will divide audiences pretty evenly between those who h-a-t-e it and those who remain ambivalent or slightly positive; those in love with the film will likely be a minority. I don't much care, as general consensus is as often right as wrong and my personal opinion has long stopped investing itself in the mass opinions of others. But it's interesting to see how expectations play into responses in such cases like this, and Spielberg's career is one I hope to follow every step of the way.

Kyle and I discussed and argued on the way home more than usual, hitting off on structural components and the use of CG in the film (my verdict: I can't tell, because in-theater digital projection sucks), and the thoughts are already multiplying in my own head. I'd hate to be someone writing a review of this with an impending deadline, and since I can't see myself really touching on it without another viewing (or two), here are my thoughts at this juncture, immediately post-viewing (spoilers aplenty, you have been warned).

Though I could probably tell you the exact location and circumstances under which I first saw some 90% of the films I’ve yet under my belt, Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the those works with which my first encounter eludes the span of my memory. Admittedly, I may have first seen it at such a young age – say, five or younger – that any such remembrance would be unlikely for anyone. Whatever the reasons, it is one of the few films whose presence has always felt all-encompassing to these eyes – the kind of landmark that one has a hard time imagining to have ever not existed, like the central point on a timeline by which all other events regard themselves.

This speaks to the importance and popularity of Raiders, for sure, but it also is, quite ironically, the biggest single impediment to my ability to enjoy the film to its fullest extent, and one all the more aggravating given my awareness of it. Intrinsic to any cinematic experience – scratch that, to any experience – is that first-time unveiling: of chance and doubt rolled up into one singular event as time unfolds and anything could yet happen. Movies often wax on repeat, and I’ve generally found that multiple viewings are necessary to fully enjoy the possibilities therein – in some cases, I can remember which specific viewing of a film was the most rewarding, or that which provided the sought-after emotional breakthrough (Miami Vice - #2; There Will Be Blood - #5, Inland Empire - #3). But there’s nothing like that first dip, and Raiders is a work I feel thoroughly deprived of in the loss-of-virginity department.

Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the film immensely, though my relationship with it has been a tad rocky over the years. In some of my early efforts at criticism (on a now-defunct Geocities page), I remember granting the film four stars in a review that wasn’t so much my own reflections as it was an attempt to judge the film based on my perceived notions of what was correct for a film – a sterile analysis of plot, acting, and various technical elements that probably could have been written by anyone regardless of their own personal viewing experience, not so much an artistic reflection but a summary of its respective ingredients. Upon realizing this (and who knows how many other factors), my take on the film took a downturn – more a knee-jerk response in hopes of improving my own viewing methods than a response to the film itself. Freed from the shackles of criticism as objective journalism (surely we cannot overcome our biases – hence opinions – but we can recognize them and contextualize them), the film’s impeccable structure now strikes me less (which is to say, not at all) as soul-deprived form than as a tightly-wound experiment in genre construction, a distillation of its stylistic predecessors into a singular, deliberately iconic whole.

I still can’t hold it nearly as high as the likes of Jaws or E.T. (or more recent far like War of the Worlds and Munich – all works as personally felt as they are artistically accomplished), but it remains one heluva spectacle, to say the least, balancing the swashbuckler spirit of its source material (late in the film, Indy admits to making his plans up as he goes along) with plotting so effortless that Spielberg’s all-encompassing presence feels strangely invisible amidst the spectacle at hand. A friend tells me I need to see the film projected in order to grasp the fullness of its effect, and I don’t doubt his assurance for a second. There are a number of films I’d all but kill to experience again for the first time, and though it is unlikely that I’d ever be able to wipe my mind clean of every death-defying stunt and twisting plot development of Raiders, I sense that enlarging the image by 100x in the darkened annals of the cinema would be about as close to seeing the film with new eyes as one could possibly achieve.

My first impressions of Temple of Doom exist more clearly in my mind, having first seen it around age 9 or 10 and having disliked it quite immediately (along with Jurassic Park, my younger self had a rather vitriolic response to Spielberg’s more violent tendencies), with images of eyeball soup, lava pits and bugs amuck remaining potent from that viewing experience. These attempts at making the second entry darker (ushering in the now tepid PG-13 rating, along with that year’s Gremlins) still stick out to me like a sore thumb, though, warts and all, I quite dug Speilberg’s second entry upon revisiting it, some 12 or so years later. The opening musical rendition of “Anything Goes” (effectively detailed here by Matt Zoller Seitz – read all three pieces while you’re at it, they're more than worthwhile) says it all, in that Spielberg isn’t out so much to recreate the effect of Raiders (a fruitless effort, really, since Indiana’s debut stands pretty close to perfection) as he is to have a good time bucking convention. Such scoffing at expectations is made even more immediately apparent in the presentation of the film’s title. As the unlikely heroine Willie, Kate Capshaw – soon to be the second Mrs. Spielberg – has already begun her surreal nightclub routine by the time the title comes up, only for it to appear behind her swaying form. Thus, even the film’s status as the second in a franchise has taken backseat to whatever whims may or may not cross Steven’s mind.

All this and more I dug upon my recent and long-delayed second viewing, though I may never get over the perpetual annoyance that is Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan) or the squeamish and nature-phobic antics of the aforementioned Willie. I’m holding out any sort of long-lasting judgment, however, because Temple of Doom is a film I know I want to revisit again, probably several times over, if only for how pivotal a place it seems to hold in Spielberg’s canon. His first major disappointment as regards critical and audience responses, its as enthralling and daring as it is lopsided and awkward – from the death-defying free fall in a life raft to the creepy crawlies turned up to eleven. I can look past these, though, given the film’s strengths, from the awesome mine cart chase (probably the visceral highlight of the first three films, literally redefining the blockbuster as a roller coaster ride of excitement) to the numerous sequences in which the characters maintain completely isolated in their perspectives as regards the events at hand; Indy and Willie’s bait-and-tease mating ritual remains one of the most humorously erotic sequences I can recall having seen.

And then there’s The Last Crusade, unseen by me until last year and, at this juncture, the entry I most enjoy out of the original trilogy. Consider the jury out, then, until some much-needed second, third, and umpteenth viewings have taken place, but what speaks to me most about the third film is the very noticeably personal qualities interwoven by Spielberg, charting Indy’s legacy as one of personal exploration and fulfillment indebted to history, both as a physical entity and as family bloodline. Filmmaking wise, it may be the least accomplished of Spielberg’s efforts here, but greatness and perfection needn’t go hand in hand, and Steven’s canvas is one I’ll happily indulge in any day (and it's no small accomplishment that the film features what is quite possibly the funniest Hitler gag since The Producers, if not more so). I’ll be doing so in about an hour when The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull debuts at midnight, and more so in the near future, as I hope to tackle the entirety of his catalogue, from Duel to Munich and back to Crystal Skill for a second go-around late in its theatrical run.

Nature seems to have instilled in me a perpetual sense of doubt - thoughts run like mice through my head, forever chasing the notion of an ultimate truth, as if I were searching for the lowest turtle upon which the pyramid of the universe rests upon. Damn her, and damn the movies I love for being so conflicted and layered, so full of enjoyment, meaning, and interpretation, like an ever-changing puzzle, continually daring you to solve it. They are like consciousness itself: a blessing, and a curse. And it's not like we have to talk about the latest Criterion release to get into such issues of complexity - even the most seemingly simpleton of films can yield greatness, or at least worth enough to investigate beyond first glance. And despite my obsession with positivity, I know in my heart of hears that, above all else, consistency is overrated. How our opinions change is indicative of how we grow and learn, and sometimes but a week's worth of life experiences is enough to give your entire world view a 360 spin, let alone whether the last movie you saw was a bad okay or a good okay.

Which is a long way of saying that, yes, sometimes a critic will change their mind, if they are good (by which I mean honest) and if they are willing to grant a particular work an audience more than once. Had I not taken a second plunge into Michael Mann's Miami Vice (derided from day one of production simply because it was an adaptation of a television show, a cynical attitude that carried over into early reviews, much like the recently-bombed Speed Racer), I'd have been deprived of what is, in hindsight, the year's greatest achievement. Such as my it was, an enjoyable experience on opening night turned into one of radiant bliss a few weeks later. Maybe it was the packed crowd and the pockets of chatting voices that upset my first experience. Maybe it was something internal. Fact is, good or bad, I like to know Exactly. How. I. Feel. Not just that a movie is good or bad, but how, and why, and with cited points and explanations therein. It can be difficult to communicate these things in print, and it's damn hard enough keeping it all sorted out in the upstairs filing cabinets.

And so it is that I often find myself revisiting my cinematic experiences, though I must admit an almost compulsive fascination with returning to the most abysmal and/or disappointing, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which I now quite enjoy) to Land of the Dead (ditto) to Fantastic Four (still a flaming pile). Clearly, I want to give everything its due credit, though I have learned to trust my own instincts more (it helps, too, that I've simply gotten better at watching movies) and to only revisit the things I truly want to, as opposed to those that I feel I should. The two most recent to be granted second viewings - watched in a mini-marathon last night with the brother - lie somewhere between confirmation and a U-turn. No longer the clumpy turds I once regarded them as, they proved distinctly watchable fare, skillfully made in their separate ways, to varying degrees and levels of worth (from here on out, it's spoilers like whoa).

My first contact with Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure was not unlike having lemon juice squirted in one's face after having shaved with a rusty blade sans cream. I didn't just dislike the film - I'd have shot venom onto the screen had I the necessary organs and expectorating capabilities to do so (though I did break down a few weeks later and throw actual popcorn at the screen during a showing of Catwoman, though I cleaned up the mess afterwards). Returning to this all-too-eager crowd-pleaser, then, was like revisiting a disease after a much-needed inoculation. Time has shown me more of cinema's horrifying depths, and so this little contraption proved far less agonizing in its effects, even as it failed in almost equal proportions to impress me as it has many others (who annoyingly told me to watch it again and thus have put me where I am at this moment; that's strike one).

Contrived character motivations remain a primary gripe of mine with this soulless thing, particularly in that it is the first-act instance of completely unjustified backstabbing upon which nearly the entire dramatic conflict is meant to pivot, an emotional void returned to time and again as the plot requires, like a farmer to an arid well. The dots connect but the characters are to broadly established to instill the unfolding conflict with anything resembling urgency or meaning, instead settling for cheap thrills whereas superior works (like Raiders of the Lost Ark, from which Treasure shamelessly cribs) fuse their characters and stories with flair and style. Treasure assumes to much, and you know where that sort of attitude takes you.

Built like a theme park ride designed to elevate the mundane into the heroic, National Treasure remains bound by its own straight-faced attitude. Nicholas Cage and company go through the cat-and-mouse action movie motions like good sports, but they also grasp the tongue-in-cheek nuttiness their story requires, somehow giving even the lamest of one-liners both weight and flair whilst Turteltaub misguidedly directs as if overcompensating for the implicitly silly nature of the plot. From blowing up the most unlikely of items (and old, old wooden ship, or "Diversity", in the lexicon of Ron Burgundy) within the first fifteen minutes to the egregiously excitable Trevor Rabin score (which treats such heart-pounding endeavors as the digging of snow with the same fervor as the climax to Raiders), National Treasure is scared shitless at the prospect of boring the audience, and it is precisely this kind of out-of-the-gate overreaching that tends to put me to sleep faster than a pair of mojitos on a summer night.

Once Cage and company are on their way to steal the Declaration of Independence (so as to protect it from the real bad guys, 'cuz that's what our rebellious founding fathers would have wanted), things are considerably easier going, but this is a film that remains entirely content with itself until the very end. It's not so much a movie as it is a factory-example blockbuster that never becomes more than a series of nuts-and-bolts setpieces and moralistic homilies as compact and precise as the film's merciful running time, which runs just short enough to fail in alerting everyone in the audience that there isn't a ghost to be found in this hull of a machine. Experientially, the movie is painless, but its non-effect also deadening. Some would call that okay, and that is my biggest problem with it. It's so completely okay it hurts. It would make a perfect screensaver.

I'm happy to say, then, that a second viewing of the original Narnia film proved a more positive example of opinion-building, it being not only less painful than before, but completely in defiance of my originally negative experience. I will admit to having originally reviewed the film based on a pan-and-scan screening, and though I cannot say for sure whether a proper presentation would have changed my perspectives, newly apparent this time was the film's almost breathtaking utilization of the widescreen frame. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is readily identifiable as Disney fare aimed at general audiences, but director Andrew Adamson - in contrast to the manufactured cynicism of his hideous Shrek films - captures these images with the personal flair of an artist's touch, always suggesting more than is shown, both literally and emotionally.

Though Adamson ably depicts the world created by C.S. Lewis as a fable-esque paradise of unspoken Christian folklore (the Liam Neeson-voiced lion Aslan may be the most officially unofficial Christ figure in both literature and film), his Narnia cannot help but stand in the shadow of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth, and it was this distinction that perhaps upset my initial viewing more than any other factor. Whereas the world of The Lord of the Rings is one wearily lived in - rustic, worn, and scarred - the more deliberately moralistic Narnia feels downright indefatigable, an appropriate touch given its more deliberately allegorical nature (unlike Lewis, Tolkien never intended his work to have specific real-world parallels, religious or otherwise), and one not lacking in its own brand of subtleties.

The majority of my criticisms, then, are relative. Though not much different from anything in the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings lexicon, it's a bit disheartening to see animal-based representations of good and evil so obvious and blatant in their nature when such choices could have more fully expressed the complexities of the film's moral truths. No example is more freakish than a sacrificial ceremony in which every sort of clawed, winged, disproportionately sized, bug-eyed and buck-toothed humanoid figure one can imagine partakes in a ritualistic, orgy-like chant (no surprise, then, that the good guys are almost exclusively cute and fuzzy, particularly the scene-stealing Beaver), temporarily giving Mel Gibson a run for his money in the Disturbing Imagery department. More understated, then, is Tilda Swinton's antagonistic performance (a role worth at least one viewing in itself), her titanic lack of emotions contrasted with the operatic excess of her wardrobe in a role so meaty one almost hates to see her vanquished by Neeson's relatively bland Christ lion.

Narnia could use a little fat trimming, but appreciable is its willingness to tantalize with slow reveals, thus allowing its otherwise obvious religious readings to imbue themselves more fully into the unfolding narrative - philosophy ripe with context rather than forced meaning. I may be one of about four people in my age bracket to have never once read anything from the original Narnia books, but this is an adaptation I can get behind, its emotions bold but genuine and its morals rooted in genuine examinations of good and evil, love and sacrifice. It's a fulfilling work but it invites more, hopefully working to bridge the audiences of the page and the screen - parties too often at odds when the reality is that room exists for both mediums. Surely, one couldn't achieve inadvertent camp as well in the former as the latter, epitomized in Narnia by Swinton's miniature slave Ginarrbrik (Kiran Shah), whose bat-in-a-cage voice and devilish mannerisms achieve heretofore unknown heights of blink-and-you'll-miss-it delirium. When he dies, so did I - just in a completely different manner of speaking.

The results of it can be seen in the recent slaughtering of Speed Racer by the likes of a majority vote at Rotten Tomatoes (and many others aside), while the start of it, I think, can be seen in the kind of slandering going on right now at The House Next Door as regards the recently announced remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, directed by Werner Herzog (!) and starring Nicholas Cage (!$%@). I assure you, I mean no bad word against anyone posting or commenting over at the mega-movie blog - only that this is a trend I see repeated time and time again by critics and moviegoers, ones both pleasant and vulgar in their nature.

This is a simple pitfall but its devastation is one muted in its effects, as we tend to mistake it for legitimate thought, uncritical of our own mental processes. More often than even we are able to realize, I think, we judge our movies before we see them, this being a practice we perpetuate even when we're not in the theater: we expect things in life because we're told they're meant to be, we expect rewards because they're promised to us. It's a small line between ignorance and awareness, a subtle piece of exertion to ensure we're always thinking, questioning, judging, and soaking up all the pleasures of the world, as the great philosophers tell us to do. Simple stuff, really, all the more amazing how we manage to fuck it up so often without reason.

And so we continue leaning on our crutches as we sit down in the middle of the auditorium about twice as far back from the screen as the screen is tall (that's how I do it, anyway). Having been immersed in the hype and chat and talk and predictions about X movie before sitting down, you're now there for one of two reasons: to confirm what you're already sure of, or be (a) surprised that they actually pulled it off or (b) shocked at by how far they missed the mark (the nature of the mark decided by the viewer often regardless of the movie itself). Think of recent films with big followings anticipating their arrival. The Star Wars prequels and Matrix sequels saw mostly venom, the unforgiving kind like in the Alien films (speaking of bad sequels...), eating away at the ship, damaging the infrastructure. Lord of the Rings soared, ditto Iron Man. Many fans think Spider-Man 2 the greatest superhero movie ever made, whereas part three, in failing to match its predecessor, was the worst (I think the film would have been poorly received regardless, but it seems common for a downgrade to catch more sting than initial mediocrity). And poor Hulk, which boldly (if imperfectly) defied not only comic book conventions but narrative form altogether, and has been paying for it in the form of snide commentary ever since (more soon on Ang Lee's angry green giant).

Surely, there are exceptions: response to Superman Returns was positively mixed and some, like Batman Begins, inspire genuinely divided groups of thought. Nevertheless, whether in groups or solo, we seem to respond to movies largely without range or depth: it's great or it sucks (even the zero-to-four span of traditional star ratings isn't wide enough to encompass the full bandwidth of aesthetic and entertainment worth), and the respective holders of said attitudes often go at each other's necks in hopes of declaring their opinion the one true path (and it isn't just typically derided fanboys; don't forget the recent feuding between fans of Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard over their respective and almost-equally excellent Best Actress-nominated performances, or virtually every review written by Armond White over the past few years). A good movie can have bad parts, and a bad movie can have good parts, in as many ways and combinations as is possible. One of the flaws of much criticism that I've attempted to free myself from is the notion that the bad parts of a film must somehow cancel out the good ones, somehow by necessity. Cinema isn't about perfection, but the co-existence of imperfections (thus reflecting both maker and consumer). There are many a staples I've yet to see, but this is one of the virtues of the art form that drew me to it in the first place. No surprise, then, that the critics I'm drawn to are those who relish in these messy details and encourage similar engagement, even if it yields varying viewpoints.

Looking at Speed Racer, then, I see another accomplished, if unconventional and challenging work being torn to shreds mostly for not being whatever people think it should have been to begin with. Dennis Cozzalio helped to light the fuse of my thoughts with his mega-article on the Wachowski's latest critical slaying. Perusing the many vindictive adjectives being lobbed at the anime adaptation, he notes (quite accurately, in my experience), that the majority of the reviews seem purely reactionary/pre-meditated, such as how Los Angeles Times reporter Carina Chocano "comes at the movie from the perspective I think many reviewers did, one not lacking in preconceived notions but instead waiting to confirm the received wisdom about the movie built on poor reactions to the trailer and other specious, Internet-generated buzz." Whether inhabited by movie hounds or the public at large, the Web - seeping into every aspect of our lives, already something of a chord-less Matrix (do I smell a Cronenberg movie?) - seems a ripe place for popular opinion to fester, spawn, and consume, a fascist presence that finds sustenance in its own existence. I can hardly glance at those message boards without feeling the death of free thought, and as someone who hates The Usual Suspects and The Shawshank Redemption but loves The Blair Witch Project and War of the Worlds, it's particularly tough going. It's message boarding as World of Warcraft, without the option of declining a fight.

And so it is in the haranguing of Cage/Herzog that I sense another potential case of undeserved, advance pigeonholing. Though I completely understand the generally WTF nature of the project, a few moments thought led me to realize that this is exactly the kind of out-of-the-way scenario that Herzog has been finding and turning into amazing films ever since he picked up a camera. Several of my colleagues and friends hold less than glowing opinions of his work, some of it described as exploitative or racist, other times simplistic and/or outright boring (nevertheless, the derisive name Rescue Yawn is an unforgivable attempt at wit that should result in a temporary loss of speaking privileges). I've heard/read the arguments and they're perfectly fine even though I disagree almost completely: I can only hope time and an increased vernacular helps me to catch these demons running through my head, but let it be clear that something about Herzog's camera is at once entrancing and revealing. I can watch a film he's made and know that something greater exists (some would call it God).

Stanley Kubrick has the distinction of being my favorite director (the man could have made Bad Boys II and it would still not upset the immaculate perfection of 2001; mid-keystroke thought - a Stanley Kubrick-directed Bad Boys sequel? If only...), but Herzog has made masterpieces more consistently than any other filmmaker I am yet familiar with. My first introduction was with his remake of Nosferatu, a film that is still among my favorite horror films and strikes me as one of the penultimate examples of a worthwhile remake. I know I'd hit the roof if, for example, remakes of 2001 or Dr. Strangelove were announced; I can only hope I'd have the state of mind to give them their due chance, as remaking something - i.e., imitation - is more often a form of flattery than derision. Cronenberg's The Fly made a masterpiece out of the kernel of an enjoyable sci-fi excursion, while the presence of many remakes eludes us simply because they don't profess their recycled ideas so loudly (The Departed, William Wyler's Ben-Hur, even James Whale's Frankenstein was the third version of that story to be told on celluloid). Reviewing based on pedigree isn't criticism, it's a marketing assessment. Let's get back to our posts, shall we?

Fitzcarraldo saw an actual ship towed over a mountain versus the sane alternative of doing such a feat with special effects, and it is this bug-eyed boldness that has kept Herzog's track record to be one of the most memorable and successful in cinematic history. From real-life documentaries about a man obsessed with bears (Grizzly Man) to the death of a researcher in the jungle (The White Diamond), to imaged realities involving alien planets and space travel constructed entirely from stock footage (the undervalued Wild Blue Yonder), his is a cinema that stretches and tears at the fabric of the image, as warm and inviting as it is earthy and repulsive. I'll be damned if I didn't feel separated from my very body after I saw Aguirre: The Wrath of God for the first time (and the second, and the third, and the fourth and fifth).

And so, you can see, the very idea of Herzog remaking a somewhat-highly regarded masterwork from a completely non-mainstream director with the very mainstream star of the National Treasure films in the title role makes perfect sense, because it doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe it'll be crap; who can tell, before it unrolls on opening night? We can assume all we want, but we can never know for sure, and any bit of information taken out of context should be discarded from the record. How can we be expected to be fair and balanced citizens whilst on jury duty when we can't even give a movie its due chance in the spotlight? Commit, or don't commit. Or, as the Aqua Teens say, "You came here, watch it." (just forget that part about running over your offspring in the parking lot after the show). I, for one, am excited to see Nicholas Cage weeping in the nude doing God knows what kind of drugs. Just keep away the bees, the bears, and the bikes that need stepping away from.

More on that later, I suppose, assuming the aforementioned Internet outcry doesn't distinguish the project before it even gets off the ground. Now it's about me, and I do apologize for the narcissism. I've made a conscious decision to stop trying to box in my thoughts and ideas when it comes to this space, as I've learned - if nothing else - that my writing style is one best done completely spontaneous, ridden to tangents and cul-de-sacs. I admit, this can often be totally disorienting, and often have to edit my ideas into more coherent forms. The flow, however, always begins from the spark of thought, and every review that I've attempted to structure or plan out has always proven one unsatisfying in retrospect (Youth Without Youth almost came down an hour after it was up, but I resisted the urge).

I do enjoy stand-alone reviews, for sure, but think that the attempts at categorizing and labeling everything have totally impeded the mental and creative processes that need wide-open room to work effective. Surely, specific pieces can be made and planned out, but that requires a different kind of thought than stripping down stream-of-consciousness into an unsuitable package. Best to build the house with the occupants in mind, and it is in this way that I think this blog will become a more explicit effort to keep a diary, albeit one containing the occasional review, dvd coverage, or concentrated topic of interest. Maybe I'll rate things with stars, maybe letters. Fuck the format, and let content rule. Without it, I am nothing (damned beasts are we, mostly unto ourselves).

Coming around to Speed Racer again, let me profess my growing appreciation of this kid-in-the-candy-store movie, as it is also "movie of the year for me so far," as was stated by Dennis Cozzalio at the end of his article. Funny how my article, designed to be a purely textual piece, ended up with a "B" rating posted with the title, upgraded from the original "B-" my admittedly jaded mind initially assigned it. Now I'm thinking B+, or maybe A-. Hell, in it's own way, the movie is perfect (no Nashville or Chinatown, mind you, but a completely undistilled vision of someone's ideas about the world; that, for me, is what makes a great film). I'm already itching to see it again, especially in theaters. According to Stephanie Zacharek, that means I have irredeemably low standards. I'd like to think that she'd take that statement back should we ever talk over lunch and coffee.

Something I failed to mention in my appreciation of Speed Racer is the manner in which the film invents its own cinematic rules. In its own way, it seems to come from something totally alien to our sensibilities, as if the groundwork laid by Griffith, Eisenstein and Welles were giving way to a wholly different philosophy of style and content (and let's face it: filmmaking styles, like religions, are something in desperate need of increased diversity). I hope to detail my unconditional love for the visual design of Hulk in a future publication, and in some of the same ways to I enjoy the vertical wipes, turbulent camera movements and unabashedly synthetic compositions of Speed Racer. In terms of adding to the vocabulary of cinema, the Wachowski's may have already given us the 2008 Film of the Year, a possibility that only time will tell. It's certainly one for the ages.

On a final note, today I discovered just how joyous the unlikely Internet phenomenon I Can Has Cheezburger? actually is. This is my favorite so far.

Though I lack much in experience, it seems wholly true to me that anyone truly, madly, deeply in love with film must know that it is not a medium one goes to for articulation of thought, but for expression of feelings - often indefinable (though we may try), and thus encapsulating the maddening difficulty of attempting to capture that which cannot be. As everything from plot-driven storytelling to the popular upsurge of documentaries would tell us, there is room enough for the relatively literate within the medium, but it remains at its core one of emotional equations, the feelings evoked as one image unfolds to the next with whatever sights and sounds they carry with them. And though I'm unavoidably biased in this specific case - a masterpiece from a master director, almost universally reviled by those long awaiting his return - the fact remains that reading most film critics feels not so different from listening to a librarian. You want a story? Look at the front page of your local paper. I'm here for the picture show.

Francis Ford Coppola's experimental mood piece Youth Without Youth strikes these chords of intangibility in both form and content, it being literally "about" a man of brilliance attempting to finish his monumental life's work, while also reflecting the its creator's prolonged efforts to do the same. From Apocalypse Now to Bram Stoker's Dracula to now, Coppola has continually stretched the narrative form to its breaking points, churning through styles and methods with a vigor that can only be described as artistic initiative, strictly defiant of logic as it pries through the depths of our humanity. To submit to it is like flowing with some divine current, navigating the bowels of some heavenly palate (even the nightmarish hijinks of Apocalypse Now are guided by a deeply spiritual hand), and to do such is a choice we often make in that we either watch (detached, passive) or experience (navigate, explore) our movies. Tim Roth's Dominic Matei says that he continues his consumption of life during sleep. The dreamlike qualities of projected images allow us to do the same.

It would be easy to say that Youth Without Youth is many things at once, but bolder and truer to say that it is about everything and nothing, at all times. The burden of existence weighs down heavily on Coppola/Dominic, the cold montage opening the film an impressionistic collage of poor Yorick skulls, cryptic scrawling and time pieces set to the incessantly ticking mechanisms that serve to remind us of our imminent mortality. A stylistic throwback to classic 50's cinema as much as it is an operatic tragi-romance imbued with a kind of labyrinthine Lynchian madness, the film involves pseudo-science, religious overtones, split personalities, time travel devices, and Nazi-coveted superpowers, and that's just off the top of my head. Past romances, future possibilities, and the dogged desire to know where we come from all play into the experiences of Dominic, whose old-aged attempt at suicide is thwarted when he is struck by lightning, only to fully heal and become half his age in appearance.

Armond White calls the film a "brainy debacle" but I see no need for intellectualism here, and nor do I think that's what Coppola has us aiming for. Incidental to our friendship, I'm more in league with Keith Uhlich, who offers this: "Allow the constant play of words, ideas, images and sounds to wash over you in an aural/visual continuum and it becomes suddenly, brilliantly illuminating." Indeed, there is little logic to be found in the construction of Coppola's film, and nor does the architecture of the heart require stability in such ways as we tend to take for granted as being the only means available to us. Segueing from espionage thrills to a reclusive romance with super-spiritual overtones to an oblique meditation on death, Youth Without Youth requires us to abandon traditional cinematic devices in favor of base stimuli response, a language established by the frontal surrealism of the pre-credit opening sequence (how one reacts to this scene may very well determine the entire film to follow), and one rewarded endlessly in its multi-layered compositions and rhythms seemingly weathered by the sands of time. Overwhelmed by the vortex-like first viewing, I can't begin to expound on the rolling layers of profundity the film relishes in, from infinite sorrow to redemption and back again. It is the soul itself, born witness to.

A second Harold & Kumar should have been, by all means, that typical second film that proves backwards and stale in every way its predecessor proved surprisingly otherwise. Key, then, is this sequel's sly self-awareness, indicative in its actualized satire and constant need to one-up itself, as if countering its own semi-pointlessness and pedantic plotline. Picking up immediately after the semi open-ended conclusion of the original, part two starts the self-reflexive irony out thick with some flowery, Louis Armstrong-accompanied credits, its effectiveness not coming from the choice but by the protracted execution. The credits allow the subtitle Escape from Guantanamo Bay to appear separately, thus upsetting the "What a Wonderful World" context more subversively than an abrupt soundtrack change would have. Only halfway into establishing the next scene, then, does the film go lewd and crude, cutting to Kal Penn's White Castle-inspired bouts of diarrhea, laying on the linguolabial trills (aka farting noises; George Carlin incorrectly referred to such as a bilabial fricative in the opening act of his single greatest work) and expectorated bodily fluids as thick physically as they are metaphorically. It is in such a way that the appropriately titled film is carried out, and it is similarly appropriate, then, that the subtitle refers not to a stated goal in this case, but (practically) a starting point.

A spur-of-the-moment trip to Amsterdam goes awry when the impatient Kumar decides to smoke on the flight there, confusing an old woman into thinking them terrorists - beard, turban and all. "Bong" sounds like "bomb", and in many similar acts of confusion does government agent Ron Fox (a perfectly hateable Rob Corddry) idiotically suppose our two heroes to be jihadists bent on the death of innocent civilians (in a moment of soul-crushingly spot-on mockery, Fox questions a subordinate's loyalty to America by asking him if he likes to see little Caucasian girls getting raped). White Castle so perfectly established its characters as a gadflyish presence in our society that it can only deviate to the routine of newly introduced characters, providing our protagonists with an inferred backstory beginning with Kumar's college love interest, who is now preparing to marry the same Republican big shot who linked Harold up with his unsatisfying job. Things go far more smoothly than that last sentence, though, and it isn't long before H&K escape the titular prison back to Florida, having just evaded the task of giving head only to find themselves at a "Bottomless" party (to change the pace from the more popular means of breast exposure). And then a very atypical backwoods trailer. And then at a Ku Klux rally. And so on, upward, until Neil Patrick Harris is back with a unicorn and Dubya tells of his love for New Jersey weed (and his fear of Dick Cheney).

Quite wisely, the movie doesn't even attempt to recapture the singularity of the original, and its go for broke, scattershot silliness isn't always as hilarious as it is incessantly amusing, skewering the persistently self-imposed ignorance of racial and cultural stereotypes with a revealing and scathingly obvious bite (insert mandatory rip on Paul Haggis and/or Crash here). Ron Fox constantly bemuses (he attempts to "torture" two Jews and a black man by pouring coins and grape soda out of a can in front of them, respectively), but it is the Commander in Chief that proves most hilarious, an incredible imitation by James Adomian made all the more so by the simple virtue of featuring the indelible image of Dubya passing the joint with two "terrorizers". Guantanamo Bay avoids the offensive negation of potentially trivializing its subject matter by keeping things, no matter how ridiculous, rooted in the long-term reality of its lead characters (future job/life prospects, the links of a long-term friendship), while also dishing out the laughs on the people responsible for such horrors (the War in Iraq, the titular location, etc.) rather than those unjustly suffering their consequences. As before, Harold and Kumar come out of it all a little wiser and no worse for wear. After two films of their joyous irresponsibility and hedonistic pleasures, I can say with confidence that I wouldn't want to live in a world without them.

Speed Racer may very well give your brain diabetes, and I state that as compliment. Digital to the extreme, this adaptation of the popular 70's cartoon is sure to give detractors of the Star Wars prequels a whole new ball game to play at, as it doesn't so much utilize its glossy, computerized sheen as it fully embraces it - like a child with a new set of toys, exploring the seemingly endless possibilities at hand. The aesthetic worth of Speed Racer will only be truly ascertainable in retrospect, but for now it can be appreciated (if for nothing else) as a bold experiment in delirious pop art, an orgasm of exploding rainbows that defies all physical and visual conventions in its no-holds-barred extravagance. One example: when the less fortunate of the film's racing automobiles crash and explode, the plumes of flame and dust could be any one of the colors of the rainbow, as if Andy Warhol was back from the dead, psyched as ever. By comparison, 300 may as well have been directed by Lars Von Trier.

Plots and themes aside, the Wachowski Brothers have always been readily identifiable as a distinctly auteuristic presence. From the delectable sexuality of Bound through the flawed ambition of The Matrix sequels, theirs is a style keyed into what makes us human (even as it resides within special effects-driven spectacles and familiar genre trappings), evoking telling subtleties with their impeccable, almost Kubrickian framing schemes, positioning men and women, leaders and masses, the rulers and the ruled with and against each other, utilizing space in ways traditionally overlooking in supposed popcorn fare. Speed Racer may very well find them shunning more deliberately meaningful filmmaking in favor of youthful nostalgia; having never seen the original Speed Racer and caring too little to do so, I'm in no position to comment on whether or not this is just another commercial ploy to remind middle-aged ticket buyers of the Good Old Days. Nevertheless, such is a gimmick I think beneath these boys, who - for all of their shortcomings and bad decisions - have never given out to profitability when doing such would impede on the essence of their vision.

Speed Racer is, at its heart, a family film, even if it isn't inappropriate to recommend watching it on LSD. I can only wonder about the future bootlegs being sold at comic book conventions, pairing the film up with various Pink Floyd Reeves as songs that somehow match up with its totally bonkers imagery. The storyline remains one modestly grounded in simple themes and virtues: of David versus Goliath, of remaining true to oneself, of being there for friends at the end of the day. Performers notwithstanding, you can expect the usual Wachowski-directed performances: overly mannered and deliberate but also awkward, flawed, and revealing (the casting of Keanu Reeves as Neo remains one of the most unlikely and brilliant marriages of talent - or, as some would say, lack thereof - and content, in recent cinematic history), deliberately shaped to fit within the peg holes carved out amidst the landscape of flashing sights and sounds.

Such technical stimuli require nothing short of a leap of faith in this case; hold on, hang tight, and try to not look outside the ride lest the contrasting speeds give you motion sickness. Speed Racer is batshit crazy, constantly refocusing, zooming, panning, cutting, swiping, spinning, and bullet-timing, the equivalent of letting 1,000 hummingbirds loose in a McDonald's ball pit with sugar water in constant supply. The viewer is perpetually in the position of being overwhelmed, and though that's a deliberate effect, there were times (in between the moments in which I attempted to recalibrate my senses) that I wished they'd held back the extravagant editing only just, so as to appreciate the spectacle a little less from the purported perspective the racers (truly, they take the catchphrase "Go, Speed Racer, go!" to the ultimate extreme) and more so from the cheering spectators. No matter how fast their gadget spins, however, it stays decidedly on track, not unlike its titular character, whipping around hairpin turns designed precisely for drivers who know how to drive while hydroplaning. In a just world, the editing work in Speed Racer would be recognized in place of the idiot chaos that is The Bourne Ultimatum.

A review generally involves a discussion of the story and drama in the film, but you know the story here. You always have. That's the point, and Speed Racer delights in its archetypal strands of fathers and sons, sons and mothers, younger and older brothers, corrupt bad guys and sidekicks who always step in at the right moment. Christina Ricci, Emile Hirsch, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon all nail this storybook genre, although Paulie Litt is particularly special as Speed Racer's younger brother Spritle, quite possibly the most curmudgeony ten-year-old ever put on a movie screen (in the film's penultimate moment of what-the-fuck, candy-colored bliss, he and his pet chimpanzee Chim Chim race around an upscale car factory, jamming out to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird"). If the film's style - both narratively and visually - is any limitation in the end, it's a deliberate one, as Speed Racer aspires not to reinvent, but to reinvigorate.

This Friday sees two equally interesting NY-released films covered by yours truly: Bloodline, which stands as something of a stylistic and intellectual flipside to the inane The Da Vinci Code, and Poultrygeist, a film I could have very well loved but one whose proudly perverted sense of humor I found impossible to approach, let alone enjoy. Troma Entertainment has its fans and they can consider my review to be a verifiable thumbs up, but in terms of it being worthwhile entertainment, I respectfully disagree. A review of Speed Racer may also appear this weekend, as I hope to squeeze in a viewing of the Wachowski Brothers' latest effort tomorrow night.

Bloodline (Slant Magazine)
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (Slant Magazine)

With the impending DVD release of The Hottie & the Nottie, I once again considered watching this monstrosity-of-an-idea movie, if only to (as we critics - or at least I - sometimes do) rip it to pieces. More specifically, my hope was that my ripping of the film to pieces would provide the basis on which I could similarly give its headlining star a verbal lashing. At that point, I went ahead and used that wonderful gift of a brain and thought twice, realizing that no cinematic experience is necessary to confirm my notions about Ms. Hilton (and, more specifically, the cultural allure and estate that surrounds her).

She's fucking ugly, and on many levels.

Granted, maybe my standards are too high in some cases, but sometimes we just can't help it. I, as a heterosexual male, am made by society to feel that I should like/dislike certain things, a kind of widespread peer pressure that I've long since learned to ignore but am still able to recognize and, if nothing else, be irritated by. When it comes to Ms. Hilton, irritation is a relatively nice word to use. I look upon this wiry, bony, plasticined-to-shit form of a human being with the personality of a discount suitcase, and then I look at about 95% of my fellow males - drooling incessantly, erections throbbing, and wallets emptied out in the name of her grade-Z sex video - and only a single cliché come to mind: What the fuck is going on?

Don't get me wrong: though I may herald personality and character just as much as physical beauty, there are those occasions were the mind slips into prurient carnality (even if she were a terrible actress in my mind, Scarlett Johansson would still hold sway over me like a cat with string). Paris, on the other hand, evokes nothing but flashing red signals, on every level and in every conceivable nook and niche. Traditional Barbie doll beauty has never been my thing, but even that would be fine by comparison. To paraphrase Matt Damon in Saving Private Ryan, it looks as though she climbed to the top of the ugly tree and jumped off, hitting every branch on the way down. I like to think of myself as a genuinely empathetic human being in all ways, but looking at her, I see only a soulless void. In terms of warm-n-fuzzy snuggle-ability, I'd rank her just below Dick Cheney.

It's one thing that I find her to be physically repulsive and, as a result, was forced to question the sanity of my floor mates in freshman year of college when they pooled together their funds to buy sex tape. From what I've (unfortunately) seen of it, comparisons beg to be made with Wayne Kramer's Running Scared - both are like rolling around in broken glass. All that aside, however, I can hardly comprehend the fact that someone like her is able to live, breath, and show themselves in public on a regular basis without bringing down the collective wrath of society. Simply put: how the fuck did honest, hard-working citizens living paycheck to paycheck watch her on The Simple Life without putting two and two together, two being "she has everything money can buy and does absolutely nothing to earn it", two more being "I slave away Monday through Friday to just get by", and four being the blood running through the streets as Karl Marx's dreams came true? The fact is, I know the answer to that question. I try not to think about it that much. If I did, all the money I spend on DVDs would end up going towards alcohol instead.

I feel compelled to mention the absurdity of her little prison stint, namely, the public sympathy that shit garnered, if only temporarily. For real? Lock that bitch up solitary - it would do her some good. You only need to look at her for about five minutes to wonder if she has any cognizant awareness of her surroundings, aside from a robotic impulse to place the nearest/largest cock into the most lubricated orifice of her body at that given moment. Hell, I'm afraid to go near her, lest my dick rot and fall off. Hear that? It's the sound of my little head retracting, like a frightened turtle.

Only one circumstance could possibly exist under which I would "tap" that, that being if she and I were the last two human beings on earth and the survival of the species depended on our rutting. In such a case, however, I'd do my best to render her permanently unconscious, at which point I would deposit my seed into her by artificial means, nurture the gestating fetus as best as I could externally, and raise the child on my own. Lather, rinse, repeat, and pretty soon the mine shaft will be back to optimal population levels.

As for her prominent role in today's DVD release today, I feel confident in stating that it's a film I never intend on seeing, and one that is of such nature that, anyone who genuinely likes the film as it is seemingly intended to be liked, is someone that I doubt my ability to hold a conversation with for more than 30 seconds (whether because such an act would be downright impossible, or because I would leave the room within that time period in the first place). Fuck Paris Hilton. Fuck this movie. My recommendation: watch this shit only if you want to experience genocide taking place on your eyeballs. The title alone could be used as an almost-sufficient argument for nuclear holocaust.

A somehow tastefully modernized version of "Also sprach Zarathustra" plays over the climactic scene of the appropriately titled Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, an effective touch given the manner in which this sleeper hit epitomizes stoner yearning for munchies as a miniature odyssey unto itself. Knowingly and effectively pedestrian in its visual style and focus (or rather, lack thereof) on continuity, Danny Leiner's film disregards detail work in favor of focusing on a singular narrative thread, a path from which it cannot veer no matter what distractions lie outside its stated primary objectives. Utilizing visually straightforward framing devices and unabashedly cheap special effects work (most apparent in its deliberately unpolished blue screen compositions), Harold and Kumar is not unlike its toked-out protagonists and their "White Castle or bust" attitude when it comes to their Friday night cravings, unwaveringly intent on getting the job done, even if a little messiness is unavoidable in the process.

Such is a quality that provides numerous Plan 9-esque laughs, such as when night transitions abruptly to daytime or when fake blood moves or disappears altogether from one shot to the next as our protagonists are attacked by an obviously fake, puppet raccoon. Realism and technical astuteness are small change compared to timing and carefully moderated physical gestures, and John Cho and Kal Penn's (Harold and Kumar, respectively) ability to underplay absurdity often comes within arm's reach of perfection (the latter's forehead alone is an immense comedic weapon, wielded here with silent ferocity). Effectively feigning pothead motivation, Harold and Kumar knows what it wants and will let no obstacle stand in its way; no moment may be more in tune with stoner rational than Kumar's decision not to return to his apartment for his cell phone, the thirty foot walk being "too far" a distance to go back. By containing their premise to such a small scale, screenwriters Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg render the titular journey almost profound.

Less noted but equally (if not more so) important is the manner in which Harold and Kumar upends racial subjugation within the traditions of the raunchy American teen comedy, not only correcting the destructive stereotypes its protagonists have long occupied in such films but allowing their respective minority groups to finally claim their own, long deserved piece of the American dream, complete with illegal substances and poontang (when Kumar states that their journey to White Castle is about more than just the acquisition of hamburgers, he speaks for the film itself). The passive racism of many sex comedies was effectively skewered by the original preview, which billed the film as starring "that Asian guy from American Pie and that Indian guy from Van Wilder", literally restating what the majority of its viewers had muttered to themselves not moments beforehand. Harold and Kumar trades not into stereotypes, however, but delightful caricatures, sending up the absurdities of racism (such as when a precinct of white power policemen arrest and beat a black man soon as look at him) with both wit and gravitas, the levelheaded comedic equivalent to Paul Haggis' hysterically obtuse morality plays.

Harold and Kumar juxtaposes this reductive sense of race to everyday (and not-so-everyday) experiences of American minorities, its many 420-inspired scenarios no worse for wear as its protagonists mount the obstacles imposed by the often insane and idiotic Caucasians around them. Road rage, declarations of arson, wild cheetahs, redneck orgies, hang gliding and Neil Patrick Harris all figure into the mix before the night is over, and though the humor is routinely evoked from subverted expectations that go well beyond reason, its most effective sequences - such as Harold's worst-case-scenario elevator encounter with the girl of his dreams - are those that keep the steams of anxiety bubbling throughout. Too bad, then, that Harold and Kumar sporadically finds itself slacking off, slipping into a lazy stoner groove when it should be rigorously imitating one instead, thus illustrating the worlds-apart difference between being stupid and acting stupid. Sometimes-maddening inconsistencies notwithstanding, however, the film has already established itself as a deserving, albeit minor classic, if only for being so bold as to describe Katie Holmes' breasts as being "the exact opposite" of the Holocaust.

Solid and funk-free, Iron Man lovingly tosses American ego about like a cat with string, mixing things up just enough to remind us that, when we get down to what's really important, there isn't that much separating traditional red state muscle from blue state radicalism (among other factors, least of which are the deceivers and thieves among us). All within the space of a traditional nuts-and-bolts studio summer picture, that is - the area in which Jon Favreau's very-capable Marvel adaptation succeeds most broadly, its barely-hidden subtext deliberately de-politicized in favor of more a more universally guided moral compass.

As pop entertainment, Iron Man has equal parts brain, brawn, and balls, but what it doesn't want you to know is that it has an equally bleeding heart. Titular superhero creator and billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (not so much played as executed by a bullwhip-like Robert Downey, Jr.) finds himself held captive by nomadic troops in Afghanistan, intent on using him as their latest tool in the War on Terror. If you've seen the preview (all but 12 of you), you know he breaks out of this prison, suited up and armed to the teeth like a prehistoric Frankenstein monster (the real Caveman Robot, on the other hand, can go fuck himself). What could have easily been just another dumb exercise in "nuke 'em all" idiocy becomes complex, then, when an escaped Stark declares his weapons factory closed in favor of more effective weapons of peace. Nearly blown to bits by his own shrapnel, he recognizes the dubious nature of war, its morals, and its victims: when the weapon system of his futuristic superhero suit distinguishes, with ease, between a group of terrorists and the Afghan women and children they're holding hostage, he may well be the most kick-ass Boy Scout ever to grace the silver screen.

Fitting, then, that the titular superhero character was first created in the early 60's as an all-around good guy patriot defending the world (first against communists, then more widely against evil) while furthering the advances of technology. He is U.S. industrialism's mechanical heart, one well satisfied with his role as king but one first and foremost intent on equality and order. If the final scene is any indication, Iron Man acknowledges this without hesitation, in a way serving to correct the knee-jerk boot in your ass superiority that evoked so many anti-American feelings post-9/11. With a virtually neverending supply of quips at his disposal, Downey almost brilliantly conveys this humbled elitism with equal levels charm, ego, and admission, his incredible downplaying scoring most of the laughs and his many stumbles reminding us that even our biggest of heroes had their days off. There's always room for improvement.

So then, temporarily switching out of cultural commentator mode, how does Iron Man stack up in the "entertainment" department? If I say it's entertaining and attention-grabbing, that's enough to convince many people that, yes, it's what I'm expecting from the previews and I feel confident having already decided to pay $8-$11 for it this weekend; I humbly state, then, that I require more from a film than it merely passing the time without my noticing. Nevertheless, props are due for the how the accomplished CG gets its due time in the spotlight without cramping more cardinal elements from moving forward (unlike the horrendous would-be spectacle of X-Men: The Last Stand), and in many such ways does the film exhibit learned craft and intuition in acknowledging what is most important, and when. Iron Man is fine entertainment indeed, an almost perfectly structured machine only sporadically and minimally undone by adherence to dramatic form (Stark's relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow's assistant Miss Potts, though bubbling with romance, is a weak link), which it executes with precise - if a bit roughly-hewn - skill.

Even speaking in just those terms, it's one impressive in its exhibited respect for the audience; it doesn't attempt pontification, but nor was I inclined to feel like a toddler as I do during just about any Marc Forster film. Yet whether we view things through specific "political" terms (a habit I'm glad to be mostly out of) or a more broadly social lens (i.e. how does this relate to real people now/always?), it can be stated that all good films are genuinely about something - not just plot points of who stole what money when or will they guy get the girl back this time, but themes and ideas greater than their isolated instances. This has always been the buried life support of genre films, those that knew how to inject an at-first-glance simple story with loaded emotional signifiers and passively explicit morality tales. Personality extends, then, to the film's hardware, from the all-but-fetishized Iron Man suit to Stark's penchant for an active (in more ways than one) lifestyle, equal parts wish fulfillment and emotional illuminator.

It is here that Iron Man nestles comfortably, far from the lofty reaches of Assault on Precinct 13 (one of the greatest action films ever made) but similarly empowering in its self-reflection, re-articulating American angst as altruism gone astray. As with Die Hard's faux-terrorists, Iron Man wages not against the politically oppressed (thus avoiding ideological quagmires likely beyond the reach of its genre tropes) but the purely treacherous and selfish, a milkshake-drinking legion well dispersed throughout the lands, including our own. By acknowledging that fact, Iron Man hardly makes the troops look bad (to use a term made odious in its excessive and inappropriate usage) - it ditches the bad apples and gets things accomplished without fronting its vices in the process.