More Than Meets The Eye

When I was a kid and still believed in Santa Claus, I asked one year for a Transformer, one of those cool toys that turned from car to robot and back again. This was the 1980s, and I, like many other kids, was enthralled by Optimus Prime, Megatron and the whole Autobot/Decepticon drama.

I guess I was a good boy because that Christmas, my wish was granted. I had a small yellow sports car that doubled as a mean fighting robot.

More than 20 years later, Michael Bay, king of attention-span-shortening action movies such as Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon, brings us Transformers.

Sam, played by Shia Lebouf, is a nerdy kid trying to get the hot girl. He pays $4,000 for a rusty-looking Camaro that seems to love schlocky pop music. Boy, do his eyes pop wide open when he finds out that his car is actually an alien robot named Bumblebee.

And he has a few friends named Jazz, Ratchett and Ironhide. And let's not forget Mr. Massive Truck, otherwise known as Optimus Prime.

For those who didn't grow up on the Transformers, here's the deal. The Autobots and the Decepticons once lived on this planet far, far, way far away called Cybertron. Megatron, the baddie here, decided to be a real pain and cause all this war and suffering. Oh, and there's this Cube thing that could ruin a planet or two if it got in the wrong hands. Well, the Cube ends up on earth, and the Transformers follow.

Bay has never been an artsy director. He goes for the big bangs and the quick-cutting to pump things up, and sometimes it works and oftentimes, it gives the viewer a headache.

He does tone it down some, and Lebouf is just a likable actor who pulls off funny one-liners as he deals with a weird car and a beautiful girl all at the same time.

But for all the anticpation and anxiety Transformers have had about a live-action movie, this movie is simply okay. I wasn't blown away at all and I felt a bit of numbness from all the over-the-top action.

Plus, the dialogue that the Transformers are given is just atrocious. As a friend of mine pointed out, Optimus Prime wouldn't say "My bad," as he does at one point in the movie.

As I sat for the two-hour-plus movie, I kept wanting more than what I was seeing on the screen. Some magic, the kind of magic you can't get out of throwing CGI effects here and there.

This, unfortunately, comes close to the predictable, empty and way-too commercial summer blockbusters we've grown accustomed. Product-placement becomes more important than logical plot lines and character development.

And that's a shame. One of my favorite cartoons deserved better.

Yippee-ki-yay

John McClane was the tough-talking, authority-ignoring, pain-in-the-ass New Jersey cop with the estranged wife in 1988's Diehard, an action movie that sets the standards for all action movies that followed.

As played by Willis, McClane was just a regular guy, never one to be the hero, but who manned up and got the job done anyhow. He was no muscle-bound machine-like superhero like the ones Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Swartzneggar played. He was scared out of his mind and flawed and bloodied, a man caught in an impossible situation. Maybe we couldn't relate to all the bullets flying, but we could relate and root for McClane. He had soul.

And he still does, as evidenced by Live Free or Die Hard. Sequels, by and large, suck, never living up to the spirit of the original. But this one comes awfully close.

It helps that McClane's luck hasn't changed much. His marriage is over, he still clashes with authority, and he and his now-grown daughter don't quite get along.

He's back in New Jersey, spying on his daughter and her not-quite-respectful date, when he's called to pick up a hacker named Matthew Farrell, played by Justin Long. Before long, McClane is shooting and cursing as things blow up around him, and Farrell is running after him.

Turns out a former Homeland Security employer Thomas Gabriel is still upset that his warnings about security problems went ignored. All he got for his troubles was his reputation ripped to shreds. Best thing he can do, he figures, is shut down the country's whole electronic infrastructure, knocking out cell phones, traffic lights, computers, the whole nine yards.

McClane, of course, has to stop him, and he's the perfect guy. He hates cell phones.

Len Wiseman, director of those weird Underworld movies starring his wife, Kate Beckinsale, punches up the action with eye-popping action sequences, like the one where a car flies through the air and slices through a helicopter. And the nice thing is he doesn't use a lot of fancy CGI effects. This is old-school, and it's cool.

I wish the dialogue was better, but what's there is pretty good. Long is a likable actor and he gets plenty of funny lines. Willis, at 52, still makes a believable action star, even if all the action isn't quite believable (yeah, the thing about the car slicing through the helicopter. Don't think that would happen in real life).

But this is an action movie. You have to suspend disbelief and just go for the ride.

And Live Free or Die Hard is one of the best rides out this summer.

Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC rips Paris report

Okay, maybe poor Mika went a little overboard, all with paper shredding and playing with a lighter. But aren't we all just a little cazy over Paris. She spends three weeks in jail and we're outraged, just outraged, about her whining, her celebrity, her outrageous actions, her hard-to-believe repentence.
Who cares? We care because Paris entertains us, allows us to laugh at somebody else, to feel a bit superior. We snark and wonder how she could be so famous for essentially being dumb, blonde and rich. We snark and we're outraged at such a circumstance.
The truth is, however, that we made her who she is. We decided that we had to pay attention. So, really, are we outraged at her or at ourselves for playing a part in creating the Paris we so adore and abhor at the same time.

1408

I remember the first time I was truly scared. It was after watching The Exorcist II: The Heretic. Seeing all those locusts swirling around Linda Blair, while this eerie music played in the background, freaked me out. And though it may sound nonsensical, I somehow equated that music with the theme from Flashdance, the one that goes "She's a maniac, maniac..."
Years later, I've come to realize what everyone else knew: The Exorcist II: The Heretic was awful and stupid and could only make sense if you were drunk, really drunk.
It takes much to scare me or freak me out. See, I get a thrill out of watching gorefests and get a kick out of a nice horror flick.
But not too many movies these days leave you with the creepy chill in your bones after you walk out of the theater.
Then there's 1408, a crisply-told tale of sheer terror. Based on a Stephen King short story, the movie tells the story of Mike Enslin, a debunker of ghost tales who recently lost his daughter. He gets a post card about 1408, a room at The Dublin, a hotel in New York. He goes to check it out, despite the protests of the general manager, played ably by Samuel L. Jackson.
Enslin, played by John Cusack, is a morose, sarcastic fellow, not given to easy scares. But then the alarm clock starts ticking off 60 minutes, and his hand gets slammed by the window, and he starts seeing ghostly figures jump out of the window.
Pretty soon, his skepticism dissipates and is replaced by screams and crying and just plain panic.
Mikael Hafstrom, who directed the sleazy and forgettable Derailed, keeps the scares coming, all the while mixing in the backstory of Enslin's masked grief.
That's not difficult, considering Stephen King wrote the story. King has never neglected his characters, making them authentically human. You actually care whether they live or die.
The scares weren't get-under-the-seat kind of scares. They were the kind that sink in deep long after the movie is over.
I might just have to make sure that the next hotel I stay in doesn't have a 1408. You never know.

Killing Me Softly

Heather Graham. Joseph Fiennes. How could you go wrong?

Really wrong, as I found out when I watched Killing Me Softly. It is a shame but sometimes good actors find themselves in horrid movies.

In this one, Graham plays a young American working as a website designer in London. She has a good life with a boyfriend who adores her. But apparently he doesn't adore her enough, for after one look at Adam, a celebrity mountain climber played by Fiennes, she's at his pad having wild, furious and freakish sex with the guy. And she can't get enough, spending her lunch break with Adam.

At times, you think this is trying for the depth of Unfaithful, a much-better movie starring Diane Lane as a woman who has a torrid affair with a stranger. Really, this is just an excuse to see Graham naked a bunch of times.

Then the movie starts becoming a male version of Fatal Attraction, with Fiennes as the obsessed lover.

Luckily, no rabbits are cooked.

They might as well have been, as silly as this movie becomes. And of course, there's a maddeningly nutjob of a twist at the end involving family secrets.

By this time, even with two good actors, you just throw up your hands. What a waste of talent.

Bug

Ashley Judd is one fearless actress.

That's the only good thing that comes out of Bug, a nutty, conspiracy-obsessed wack-job of a movie directed by William Friedkin, whose last hit was the horrific The Exorcist more than 30 years ago.

Bug is about bugs. But it's not a horror movie. This is more of a pschological study of two lovebirds driven to pure madness.

Judd plays Agnes, a waitress at a lesbian bar in town who has been literally beat down by life. Her son disappeared almost 10 years ago, and her ex-husband, played by Harry Connick Jr., terrorizes her. Agnes numbs her pain with booze and cocaine in a seedy motel room.

A bright spot of hope comes in the form of Peter, played by Michael Shannon, a quiet, unassuming man introduced to her by one of her friends.

Agnes and Peter inexplicably become lovers, and soon after, Peter reveals himself to be certifiably looney, a victim of nonsensical conspiracy theories about the government implanting bugs, aphids to be exact, in his bloodstream.

Agnes, so desperate to be loved, believes him and gets sucked into Peter's paranoia, eventually covering her motel room in alumninum foil and scratching her skin bloody.

Believe it or not, this mess of a movie was based on a play by Tracy Letts. Hopefully, this plays better on the stage because on the screen, the plot falls flat.

As Agnes and Peter dive deeper into madness, the movie becomes laughable. This is a love story, strange as it may seem.

But we have no room for compassion here. Peter spins convoluted conspiracy theories so unhinged that we stop caring about what he's trying to say. And we stop caring why Agnes is stupid enough to fall for his raving, bug-eyed (sorry, couldn't resist) rants.

The only saving grace in this movie is Ashley Judd. She strips herself naked, both literally and emotionally. She is Agnes, desperately in love with a nutcase. And you believe that love, no matter how illogical it is, no matter what depraved depths her love goes.

It is a courageous move for Judd, an actress who has shown in most of her roles an intelligence and a willingness to just go there.

But a performance can't save this movie. It is too weird, too wacky, too freaky, to even care when the credits roll.

28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later, is just as horrific as the first, full of red-eyed raging zombies spewing blood and chomping on human flesh. Exactly what you expect from a zombie movie, right?

And so much more.

In the tradition of George Romero, this film is really a documentation of what happens when a civilization devolves into madness, when powerful men lose all sense of proportion on how to use their power. Zombies aren't the ones we're frightened of. It's the humans.

The movie picks up 28 weeks after the first movie ended. The zombies have starved themsevles to death, and the rage virus seems to have gone away. A U.S.-led NATO team arrives in Britain and sets up a quarantine for the survivors.

Don, played by Robert Carlyle, is one of them. At the movie's adrenaline-pulsing beginning, Don turns out to be a coward, leaving behind his wife and others to die. He's soon reunited with his two children, who happened to have been out of the country when the rage virus broke out.

All seems good. But this is a zombie movie, so the mushy happy-moments turn into nasty, flesh-eating moments. The virus returns, and Don pays for his cowardice in unexpected ways.

In what some might liken as a commentary on the ongoing Iraq War, the military reacts to the virus outbreak in ways similar to dropping a bomb when a bullet would have sufficed.

There's havoc and chaos and lots of blood. Humans become targets. Right and wrong blur. And civilization collapse.

We are jump in our seats at those fast-moving zombies, and the shaky-camera technique is effective in putting us right where the action is, though it's a bit overused.

But the true terror is in seeing what happens when order vanishes and bullets become indiscriminate in whose skin they pierce.

This is about life not mattering as much anymore. It's about becoming numb to suffering because you're too busy saving your own neck. It's about what happens when violence begets violence and the room for compassion shrinks.

This is not a perfect movie. The first had more oomph. The characters felt more real, especially the one played by Cillian Murphy.

Yet, this, like the first one, while not terribly deep, leaves you with a chill in your bones that doesn't come just from the sight of really scary zombies. It comes from seeing man's inhumanity to his fellow man.

Spiderman 3

Sequels are tricky, particularly when you're talking about the second sequel in a blockbuster franchise such as Spiderman.

I mean, can there be any art to such a money machine? Well, Sam Raimi, who has helmed the first two Spidey adventures, seems to think so.

Here, in Spiderman 3, is a delicate balance between art and commerce, between heartwarming story and eyes-dazzling special effects.

At the heart of the last two Spiderman movies is Peter Parker, played by Tobey Mcguire. Parker is the nerdy kid in high school who got picked on all time. That is until he gets bit by a radioactive spider and starts climbing the walls and swinging in skin-tight suits. The first film captured how a scrawny little kid becomes a hero.

The second film was how he balanced being Spidey and being Petey. And this latest film, well, it's all about Parker growing up and becoming a man.

When the film starts, Peter has it good. He has the girl, Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst. He has a good job and everyone loves Spidey. He has swagger. He's confident.

Of course, not everyone likes Spidey, including his former best friend, Harry Osborne, who believes Peter killed his father, i.e. the Green Goblin. And there's Venom and Sandman. Plus, there's Peter, who becomes his worst enemy after some icky black stuff gets on him and brings out his aggressive, jerky side.

As with most sequels, the special effects are bigger and better than ever, but Raimi makes sure things don't go overboard. Raimi also is juggling a lot of balls in the air, and unfortunately, the movie suffers a bit for it.

Venom, Sandman, the Green Goblin -- there's too many villains. It would be nice to have Spidey fight just one villain, as he did in Spiderman 2, with Doc Ock.

No, he has to fight three. And he has to battle himself.

Somehow, though, Raimi manages to keep reign over things for most of the movie, and the humanity of Peter Parker isn't ignored in the grand sweep of the movie. You feel his struggle. You root for Peter and Mary Jane to work things out. See, this movie is all about forgiveness and redemption and finding the hero in yourself.

It's just prettied up by all the fancy action sequences and web-swinging. There's a story here and not just a thin plot disguised by cool special effects.

Even at more than two hours, the movie breezes by almost effortlessly. My only advice to Raimi is for him to resist the temptation to make another sequel.

Just ignore that little black substance in Hollywood that's called greed.

Grindhouse

I wanted to see it again.

That's what I thought immediately after seeing Grindhouse, a three-hour ode to gushing blood, gratuitous nudity and eye-popping action. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino co-directed.

They wanted to give homage to the movies they grew up watching, those double-features that circulated through theaters so much that the film was scratchy and reels of the film, the parts that contained much of the sex, ended up missing.

Rodriguez directs Planet Terror, a silly rambunctious romp about zombies and a hot go-go dancer, played by the sexy Rose McGowan, with a machine gun for a leg. Freddy Rodriguez is the gun-slinging hero, El Wray. And from the first frame to the last, the screen is splashed with either zombies chewing on flesh or our heroes blasting them away with bloody gusto. This movie is not for the faint of heart.

It's a virtual rollercoaster ride of rollicking action where logic, plot and dialogue matter little. This is simply pure stupid fun.

And it sets everything up for Quentin Tarantino's feature, Death Proof. Kurt Russell is Stuntman Mike (yes, he's a stuntman), a psychotic who has death-proofed his car, meaning he can crash into anything and won't get killed. The people he rams his car into aren't so lucky. Nor are the people who are unfortunate to ride with him.

As in all Tarantino movies, there's a lot of talk. Lots of talk between women, very strong and sexual women who don't take crap from anyone.

One thing Tarantino has always prided himself on is his ability to write dialogue. He has reason to pride himself. Anyone who has seen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or Jackie Brown knows that the best part of those films is the cool interaction between characters. He uses dialogue as a way to reveal character and just to have people say cool things. The characters become, in a sense, real.

And he's just flat-out funny.

Lucky for us that the dialogue is also leading somewhere. And that somewhere happens to be out on the road for one of the most thrilling car chases of all time. Tracie Thoms, alone, is worth seeing this movie. She gets the best lines. And she plays a far-different character than the last time we saw her on the big screen, as the lawyer in the movie adaptation of the play, Rent.

This time, she's balls-to-the-walls tough.

Russell is good as well, cool and smooth, giving a performance reminiscent of his infamous Snake Plissken role in Escape from New York.

And the ending was the most satisfying one I have seen in quite a long time. I walked out of the theater pumped. It was a true movie experience, the kind any action junkie craves.

I wanted to see it again.

Pride

You have seen this before, dozens of times before. It is a well-worn movie formula, this tale of young knuckleheads whipped into shape by a hard-driving but caring coach. You know the story so well you can almost see that slow-motion climax when the struggling basketball/football/whatever sport you want team comes from behind and wins the championship.
Cheers go up, girlfriends hug their boyfriends and maybe, the coach sheds a tear. And then the credits roll.
So when you go see Pride, expect nothing different. Except for the fact that the action happens in the water instead of out on the field.
What lulls you into this mostly by-the-books movie is Terrence Howard's portrayal of Jim Ellis, the real-life coach who started a swim team at a Pennsylvania recreation center that was about to be torn down.
Howard, as he has shown in so many other roles, has an undeniable charisma and presence on screen. He's hard to ignore.
As the movie starts, Ellis is struggling to find a job. His attempts to teach at a prep school fail, and he ends up cleaning up Marcus Foster Recreation Center, which the city has deemed unfit to remain open. Outside, young men shoot hoops, and when those hoops come down, Ellis invites them to swim in the pool inside.
Slowly, he transforms them from clowns to serious swimmers, and in the process, teaches them about responsibility and yes, pride.
All of this could conceivably become corny and cliched and downright mushy, if it weren't for Howard's performance. He brings some dark shadings to a character that could have easily been way too saintly. He shares a comfortable chemistry with Kimberly Elise, who shines as a councilwoman who initially supports tearing down the center.
And Bernie Mac brings a softness to his portrayal as the hard-edged maintenance man.
There's more depth in this movie than you would expect. And unlike other movies, the emotion doesn't seem contrived. The tears that come feel well-earned.
You have seen this before, but this time, you don't mind seeing it again.

Reign Over Me

The first shot of Adam Sandler in Reign Over Me is of him breezing through the streets of New York on a scooter, his grizzled face frozen in childlike wonderment and his Bob Dylan-like gray hair seemingly undisturbed by the wind.
Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, a former dentist reduced to an almost autistic state of grief over the loss of his wife and three children in the Sept. 11 attack.
One day, his college roommate, Alan Johnson, played here by the always wonderful Don Cheadle, bumps into him on the street, but Charlie doesn't recognize him.
Alan's a dentist with a loving wife and two adorable daughters. His life appears perfect, but Alan is bored and longs for the freedom he sees in Charlie's carefree existence.
Alan slowly becomes a part of Charlie's life, and the movie is about the connection two people have and how they help bring each other back to life.
This is Sandler's stab at being a serious actor, after years of comedies.
And the risk almost pays off. Sandler makes Charlie endearing and charismatic and funny. And the direction from Mike Binder helps Sandler or the film from becoming too maudlin.
Yet, there's still a one-noteness about Sandler's acting. Either he's telling dirty jokes or he's throwing a temper tantrum.
Unlike Robin Williams or other comedians-turned-actors, Sandler can't get the nuances; he only finds the extremes, making his performances a bit over the top.
What does make Sandler's performance work is the underlying sweetness he finds in the most hard-to-like characters he plays. That comes shining through here.
It is what makes him consistently watchable here, as Charlie slowly, slowly gets back in touch with his soul.

Hip-Hop Is Dead

Hip-Hop Is Dead, or so says Nas on his latest CD. And it seems many agree with him.
Rap sales slid 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to a recent Associated Press story. But this is beyond just rap sales or just criticism from old folks who don't like what their sons and daughter and nieces and nephews listen to.
I admit that my ears shut down and my eyes glazed over whenever I heard the likes of Stanley Crouch or the late C. Dolores Tucker decry the misogny and violence in mainstream rap music. I would retort that that they needed to listen to A Tribe Called Quest or C.L. Smooth and Pete Rock or Public Enemy. They needed to listen to the totality of hip-hop and not just rip one small segment of it.
But back then there was some semblance of balance in the music, but my 34-year-old ears don't detect that same balance today.
This isn't a new argument. Rap music reflects the society it thrives in, and our society loves sex and violence. It loves to degrade and objectify women. We were never as high-brow as we would like ourselves to be; we always loved to dwell, for a time, in the gutter.
But though I am far from becoming a Stanley Crouch, I find myself nodding my head more to his arguments and less to the rap I listen to on the radio. I can say to myself all I want to that there's more to hip-hop than Lil' Jon, Ying Yang Twins and Nelly. We have Talib Kweli, Mos Def, The Roots and Common.
Yeah, that's nice to say and nice to believe, but the fact is that Nelly sells and Mos Def doesn't. Ain't no club playing Little Brother. We would rather hear Yung Joc.
When I turn on BET, I see too much booty-shaking. I see too much tough-guy "I've been shot 9 times" talk. Too much money flying around and too much icy watches being displayed.
That's all our young people see or hear. That's all I hear when I turn on the radio.
And I can't pretend that it doesn't affect me. Curses flow too easily out of my mouth these days because when I review a CD, all I hear half the time are curses. I fight constantly to maintain a humanistic view of women against the barrage of music videos that show nothing but jiggling flesh.
I figure that if all of this stuff is affecting me, then it most definitely is affecting people who aren't oftentimes exposed to Lupe Fiascos of the world.
I am torn, and I think many people feel the same way. We both love and hate the music that we sweated to on dance floors. We reminisce about what drew us to hip-hop and cringe at where hip-hop is.
We hold tight to our old-school rap and come close to sounding like our mothers and fathers who used to tell us to shut that crap off when we were young. We don't want to be like those old fogies who just hate whatever the young people love.
But there are times when I feel like I am becoming that. I fear for the day when I might just give up all hope in hip-hop, declare it dead just like Nas.
I'm not there yet, though. Mos Def said hip-hop is us. If hip-hop dies, then we die. And we have to choose to live.
The first step in that choice is recognizing the awfully negative direction hip-hop seems to be going. We don't have to be Stanley Crouch, forever trashing the art form. We also don't have to be Russell Simmons, who turns a blind eye to hip-hop's problems.
What we do have to have is a honest dialogue. We have to talk about the violence, the sex and the misogny in the music and what kind of effect it has on us and our children.
We have to take it upon ourselves to resurrect hip-hop, to let it live, not only for us but for our childrens' children.

Oscar: The Week After

So Alan Arkin, who played the dirty old grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, won best supporting actor.
It was a nice surprise. Okay, maybe it wasn't a nice surprise for Eddie Murphy. Some say that Murphy putting out the awful Norbit doomed his chances. Who knows? Maybe it just wasn't his time. What I do hope is that his loss doesn't prompt Murphy from going after more challenging fare. His performance in Dreamgirls proved that he is capable of much more than what he puts out.
There were no surprise when Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker won best supporting actress and best actor, respectively.
J. Hud was gracious and humble and thanked God a lot. I wish her all the success in the world, but the reality is that she has a mighty hill to climb not to be typecast for Effie White-like roles from now on. Hers was such a breakout, powerhouse role that many directors might not be able to see her in anything else.
Forest Whitaker, by far, gave the most heartfelt speech of the night. He comes across as a gentle man that it is a testamont to his acting abilities that he credibly portrayed such a frightening dictator as Idi Amin.
He deserved that award for what I would call a couragious performance, one that sought to find the humanity in a monster.
The highlight of the night, of course, had to have been the long-begged for win by Martin Scorsese for The Departed. He should have napped the award years ago for much better films than The Departed, which also won best picture. A colleague of mine said the movie was really just about a bunch of thugs.
And to a point, I agree. There's really nothing deep about The Departed. It's a cat-and-mouse thriller, with tough-guy dialogue and bloody violence. The performances by Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio make this film work.
The time was just right to honor the guy, and I'm glad he finally won some recognition for his years of hard work.
Now, the next cat who needs to win an Oscar is Spike Lee. Anybody out there listening?

Oscar Night

Predictions are always tricky and none are trickier than figuring out who's going home with the golden statue.
Nominations are all over the place, and the picture with the most nominations, Dreamgirls, didn't even get a best picture nod.
Here are my predictions, though slightly ill-informed since I didn't see all of the movies nominated this year.
Some, of course, are easy. Helen Mirren is going to win best actress. Jennifer Hudson is going to win best supporting actress. And hardly anyone would argue that they don't deserve the accolades they've gotten.
I haven't seen The Queen but I have seen Helen Mirren's work in other movies and she is good. She embodies completely every role she takes on, and from I have heard, she does no different in The Queen.
Hudson was great as Effie White in Dreamgirls. She not only tackles that gut-busting anthem "And I Am Telling You," with the same power that Jennifer Holiday had when she sang it more than 20 years ago on Broadway. Hudson brings both a sassiness and vulnerablility to White's downward turn over the course of the movie.
Eddie Murphy will get best supporting actor. I wasn't blown away by his performance but he did bring a pathos to James "Thunder" Early that went beyond a simplistic James Brown impersonation. He dug deep. Let's hope Oscar voters forgive him for the literally bloated Norbit that just came out.
As for best actor, some say Peter O'Toole, giving him the award he should have gotten years ago. But I'll say Forest Whitaker. He captured all the complexities of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Whitaker was able to create a full-drawn character and make him breathe and seem real. Any other actor might have played over the top and turned Amin into a caricature. Whitaker makes him human.
The best picture and best director are harder to call this year. I love The Departed. Gritty with a twisted sense of humor. It was Martin Scorsese at his best and he deserves to win best director.
I'm predicting Babel will win best picture. Sad to say that I haven't seen Babel nor Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. But I'd bet on Babel -- essentially this year's Crash.
And Mr. Dirty Harry, a fine director, has certainly by this time won enough awards, as grand achievement as his two movies about World War II was.
Well, there you go. Love 'em or leave 'em, those are my picks.

Daddy's Little Girls

There's no secret to Tyler Perry's success. His formula is simple, and people who go see his films know what to expect: Broad comedy, gut-wrenching drama and gospel-soaked happy endings.
His latest film, Daddy's Little Girls, is no different.
Idris Elba, best known for his role as Stringer Bell in The Wire, plays Monte, a mechanic struggling to fulfill his dreams and raise his three daughters.
It's not long before his path crosses that of Julia, played by the oh-so fine Gabrielle Union, who is a high-powered, ambitious attorney. She works hard and is frustrated with the fact that she can't seem to find a good man.
Monte becomes her driver, and their relationship, as typical in most romantic comedies, has a really rough beginning. But soon, Julia finds herself pulled into Monte's increasing drama with Jennifer, his children's mother, an unbelievably cruel witch played by Tasha Smith. And before you know, Monte is in family court fighting for custody with Julia as his pro-bono attorney.
Jennifer wants full custody of the children with her drug-dealer boyfriend, Joseph.
In Tyler Perry's world, the good people are really good and the bad people are really, truly evil. But Perry isn't necessarily interested in sophisticated art. He wants to entertain.
And in that, he is a true genius.
Union and Elba have a nice chemistry and bring depth to characters that might have been tired cliches with less-talented actors. Louis Gossett Jr. also elevates often trite material as Willie, the owner of the auto shop where Monte works.
The performances are so good you almost can look past the many script problems the film has. Only after you leave the theater do you start poking the large plot holes in the script. Here's just one example: Julia finds out a secret about Monte's past that proves critical in the custody battle. Yet, if Julia is Monte's attorney, surely, she would have done enough homework on Monte's past that she wouldn't get blindsided in court.
And the happy ending, the one where Monte and Julia are reunited and Monte gets his kids back, just doesn't wash.
Yet, the movie works because it has heart and the message that Perry is trying to send is a good one. It's about taking back one's community; it's about having faith when things seem bleak; it's about changing the negative perceptions of black men.
It's about celebrating parents who do their very best to raise their children.
Perry does what he does best -- he makes you laugh and makes you think at the same time.

Notes on a Scandal

Friendship is a tricky thing, especially when one is based on manipulation, deceit and utter desperation. That's the case in Notes on a Scandal.
Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a sad, lonely teacher who writes pithy observations in her diary and pines for love and companionship.
Soon, she meets Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, the new art teacher at the school. At first, Barbara finds her frumpy and snobby but eventually becomes consumed with infatuation.
Sheba is in a passionless marriage, stuck in the routine of taking care of her children, one of whom has down syndrome. She longs for more and she finds it in one of her promising art students, Steven Connelly.
She begins a torrid affair with Steven, and Barbara finds out and uses that information against Sheba.
Barbara discovers the very thing that will keep Sheba close: the promise of friendship tinged with the threat of revealing a secret. It is a tension that drives the movie, as Barbara digs her needy claws into every aspect of Sheba's life, demanding Sheba's attention at even the most inopportune times.
Dench is a masterful actress, a hard-to-ignore presence in every scene, playing Barbara as a woman obsessed only because she feels trapped by her loneliness.
And Blanchett does well in the awfully hard role of a woman who risks her marriage and her career to have sex with a teenager. Yet, Blanchett makes Sheba utterly human, and you see the desperation and sadness she has that her life hasn't turned out quite the way she would have dreamed.
The chemistry between Dench and Blanchett is electric in every scene, and it is that electricity that keeps the audience invested in the movie, even when things go a little over the top at the end.
The word that kept coming to mind to describe this movie is delicious. Yummy. Delectable. The movie isn't all that deep. Instead, it is a sweet, sweet treat, down to the very last taste.

The Last King of Scotland

Idi Amin was a monster, evil incarnate, the Ugandan ruler responsible for the deaths of 300,000 of his own people during his horrific reign in the 1970s.
Amin is also human. That humanity oozes out of the powerful performance of Golden Globe winner Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.
The movie, based on the novel of the same name, centers on the odd relationship between Amin and Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scot who arrives in Uganda looking for adventure.
He gets more than what he bargains for when Amin, after a chance encounter, hires Garrigan as his personal doctor.
As played by Whitaker, Amin swings from childlike charm to paranoid delusion. He is a man who sees enemies all around and embraces Garrigan as one of the few he can trust.
Garrigan finds himself lulled into the heady early days of Amin's regime, and we experience with him what it must have felt like to see the optimism and joy found in an independent African nation.
But slowly, the veil falls away, and Garrigan begins to see the cracks in Amin's empire and the bloody mess of Amin's madness.
Whitaker grabs hold of all the complexities that made up Amin's psyche. He scares and fascinates at the same time.
James McAvoy's portrayal of Garrigan is good, showing a naive, reckless young man blinded by the pleasures of being close to such power.
But this is Whitaker's movie, a terrifying tour-de-force full of heart. Never has evil looked so good.

Freedom Writers

I rolled my eyes the first time I saw the preview for Freedom Writers, the new movie starring Hilary Swank.
This is just a retread of Dangerous Minds, which starred Michelle Pfieffer and featured that song by Coolio that jacked a sample from Stevie Wonder, I thought. Oh, god, must we once again see another movie about some white saint of a teacher who goes into the inner-city and saves all the poor black, Latino and Asian kids.
But this movie, though predictable, does manage to avoid many of the cliches and add some freshness to a tired concept.
The film takes place just after the L.A. riots in the 1990s. Swank is Erin Gruwell, an idealistic young teacher just starting out. She is put in charge of one of the roughest group of students at the school. On her first day, she's dressed in a red dress with pearls, a look that doesn't impress the students.
Time, however, changes everything, and soon, she fully engages the students by making them write journals about their experiences.
Through the journals, we hear the students' voices. We get to know them beyond the simple stereotypes often thrashed about in such movies. They become fully-realized human beings.
That gives the movie depth. Not much depth but some is better than nothing.
And that depth helps propel the movie through the predictability that still creeps in, the will-she-leave-or-won't-she-leave theatrics in the last half of the movie.
April Lee Hernandez, who plays Eva, gives a heart-wrenching performance as a student in a gang who must make a choice, one that may alienate her from her family. She alone makes the movie worth watching.
Swank thankfully portrays Erin as a complex human being. Her incredible dedication to her students hurts her marriage. She has a wonderful scene with Patrick Dempsy (otherwise known as Dr. McDreamy) as her husband. It feels real and raw and helps cut away all the saintliness of Swank's character.
So yes, this is like Dangerous Minds, but in so many ways, it isn't.

We're Your Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls establishes one thing and one thing only, with no debate: American Idol-reject Jennifer Hudson can sang. And her rendition of And I Am Telling You rivals Jennifer Holliday's performance of that signature song in the Broadway version, filling it with the power and soul that this power ballad deserves.
Jennifer Hudson's portrayal of Effie White, the diva deemed too bold and black and heavy-voiced by manager Curtis Taylor to be lead singer, is the heart of this movie, and Hudson imbues White with a sultry sensuality as well as a break-your-heart vulnerability.
But the rest of the movie, driven as it is by strong performances by nearly everyone, just doesn't have that spark.
Unlike the jazzy Chicago, for which director Bill Condon wrote the script, Dreamgirls wilts its way from stage to screen. The freshness that marked the Broadway show seems outdated some 20 years later.
Its strengths, however, are still evident in the film version. The issues surrounding black music are just as relevant now as they were when the play premiered Dec. 20, 1981. Curtis Taylor has big dreams and makes bold and controversial moves to put a black all-girl group on the pop charts (i.e. making Deena (played by Beyonce Knowles) the lead singer instead of Effie White. And going pop also means diluting the gospel-tinged sound that the group initially had.
In the background, you see bits and pieces of the times in which Dreamgirls is set. You see a record of Martin Luther King's iconic I Have A Dream speech being pressed. Riots rage throughout the country after King is assassinated. And the cold-hard reality of what it takes to make it big and all the compromises that entails are ever-present.
After all, this is a movie about dreams and about the choices we make to make those dreams possible. And it is about pain, when those dreams begin to turn into harsh nightmares.
That pain is etched into the performance of Eddie Murphy as James "Thunder" Early, a James Brown-like singer. Thunder's wild and crazy performances enliven the film, and you'll get a kick out of seeing Murphy sing something other than "Party All The Time." But it is in the moments when Early begins to realize that his time in the spotlight is rapidly fading that you see a depth in Murphy that you haven't seen before.
It's not a performance that knocks you over, and much of what you see in this film is not too much different than what Murphy has done in the past. But it is nice to see Murphy tackle a challenging role like this.
By far, the most disappointing performance in the movie comes from Beyonce Knowles. Much has been written about how she lost weight and worked on this character. But the end result is just as vacant and wooden as anything she has done before this film. You never get an idea of what's going on inside Deena. Beyonce tries to act with her eyes, which would be fine if her eyes weren't open so wide all the time.
The only time we get some goosebumps is when she sings "Listen."
As for the film, Condon moves the action along pretty quickly, a major achievement for a movie that runs more than two hours. The musical set pieces are well done, and there are some nice moments. Jamie Foxx gives Curtis Taylor a nice snake-oily charm and shows good chemistry with Hudson's Effie White.
But none of this is enough to elevate Dreamgirls from being a good movie to being a great one.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Chris Gardner's life was all about pursuit of happiness, that little phrase found in the Declaration of Independence. There was never any guarantee that he was going to get happiness, but he sure went after it with all he had.
Gardner's pursuit is at the center of the new movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, with Will Smith starring as the real-life Gardner. Jaden Smith, Will's son, plays Gardner's son in the movie.
This is a Horatio Algiers-type story, a tale of the great lengths a man will go to achieve greatness.
And though we know what the end result will be, the story is in the journey. And what a journey it is.
As played by Smith, Gardner is a bright man who makes boneheaded decisions, like the one where he puts his family's savings into selling a bone-density scanner that doctors actually don't need. The IRS is after him, he's two months behind on rent and his car is towed away for unpaid parking tickets. Plus, his wife, played by Thandie Newton, is about to leave him.
Could things get any worse? Yes, they do. But the silver lining is an intership at Dean Witter, where Gardner hopes to become a stockbroker.
Obstacle after obstacle falls in his path. Gardner loses his wife and his home and he's working as an unpaid intern, so no money is coming in. The burden of raising his son amid all of his failures as a man is seen through Smith's nearly crumbling face.
This is by far one of Smith's most serious roles. His charm and good looks do him no good here. Smith gives a powerful performance as a man who struggles to make a better life for himself and his son.
Smith disappears into his role, though glimpses of what has made Smith such a likable star over the years can be gleaned. Jaden Smith is a natural on the screen, effortless in his performance.
The ending.... well, we all know that Gardner's pursuit is not in vain, but that beautiful moment of tear-filled joy feels well-earned.

Bloody Diamonds

Some might say diamonds are a girl's best friend, but after watching the brutally violent Blood Diamond, the new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Haunsou, you might start thinking otherwise.
DiCaprio is DannyArcher, a diamond smuggler from Zimbabwe. Haunsou is Solomon Vandy, a man who is forced to work in the mines after his family is taken by rebels. One day, Vandy finds a large pink diamond, which becomes his only bargaining chip once he finds out his son has been taken to become a soldier in the rebel army.
Director Ed Zwick, who has made a reputation for making politically-conscious movies, tackles the issue of conflict diamonds.
Conflict diamonds are diamonds that are mined in areas controlled by rebel groups trying to overthrow a government. Those diamonds illegally find their way into the marketplace, and the money from the trade goes toward buying arms and other things that help keep a civil war going.
Archer cares about getting paid and he doesn't much care, at least not initially, that the diamonds he smuggles are funding wars. Maddie Brown, played by Jennifer Connelly, does care and pricks at Archer's conscience and charms him in helping her to expose the whole mess.
Vandy, however, is at the center of it all, with his pink diamond and his all-consuming search for his family.
As with all things, the personal is the political, and it is through the prisms of these three people that Zwick peels back the carnage and exploitation created by conflict diamonds.
The movie's title is a literal one. Blood is spilled from the first frame to nearly the last. The most disturbing part of the movie is seeing children brainwashed by rebels into becoming cold-blooded killers. Their innocence is sucked out of them bit by bit and replaced with a horrifying numbness to murder.
DiCaprio gives one hell of a performance, proving once and for all that he is no longer that fresh-faced kid in Titanic. He is a grown-ass man, rough and reckless and ultimately decent.
Hansou is both strong and vulnerable, risking his life and that of others as he goes to the heights of sheer nuttiness to save his son. And Connelly's Brown is passionate and headstrong with just enough tenderness to make you still care.
Zwick keeps a quick pace throughout, which is remarkable for a movie that is over two hours long. He would have, however, done well to shave off maybe a half-hour instead of having such a corny ending.
But that's a minor complaint to a movie that delivers a truly powerful story about the price we pay for the sparkles on our fingers and around our necks.

Casino Royale

Bond, James Bond.
Those words are the trademark phrase of debonair secret service agent James Bond, played over the years by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and now blond-haired Daniel Craig.
Consternation ensued when Craig was chosen as the next James Bond. Forget his intense ocean-blue eyes. Critics, instead, focused on his blonde hair and less-than-smooth look.
Could this be the James Bond of the 21st century? Indeed, he could be, as Craig ably shows in Casino Royale.
As directed by Martin Campbell, this movie reimagines James Bond, strips away the boring invincibility and replaces it with a skin-scrapped vulnerability.
This Bond is much darker and more human than we have ever seen him. He gets tortured; he gets his heart broken; and he fouls up big time.
We see a man primed to kill slowly and painfully learn the sophisticated art of being a British spy.
Eva Green is the love interest and she is no mere Bond girl. Green bristles with intelligence, and the chemistry between her and Craig is hot and more importantly, believable.
And unlike other Bond movies, their relationship is the emotional core of the film.
What Campbell has done is ground Bond in a bit more reality. No huge special effects are found here, thankfully.
And they are not needed. The action sequences are well-done, Campbell putting enough suspense to keep interest.
But it is Craig's Bond that you can't take your eyes off, a refreshingly darker Bond who we see just finding his fit in a tuxedo.

Stranger Than Fiction

I love Will Ferrell. I never saw much of him on Saturday Night Live but in his movies, he has this lovably sweet innocence. And it doesn't matter that he might be running naked, as he famously did in Old School. You forgive him and laugh right along with him because he just seems like a nice guy.
That helps him a great deal in his new movie, Stranger Than Fiction. Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent who lives his life by the numbers. He gets up at the same time every morning and goes to bed the same time every night. He even times his coffee breaks.
He is alone and he just so happens to be a character in somebody's book. That someone is Karen Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson. Eiffel is a reclusive author plagued by writer's block.
Her problem: She can't figure out how to kill Crick. And Crick can't seem to get Eiffel's eloquent narration out of his head.
Yes, this is all rather odd, and the movie never seeks to explain how Crick could be a character in Eiffel's novel.
But the good thing is Crick is a fully-fleshed character. Ferrell restrains himself. No wilding-out antics here.
Instead, Ferrell brings a certain level of pathos to the character. Here's a guy who suddenly has to confront his own death and he finally decides he really wants to live. Plus, he has love in his life.
Thompson just literally sinks into her character. She has a gaunt and desperate look about her throughout the whole movie, her character driven almost to the point of insanity with writer's block.
Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal all bring their enormous talents to bear as supporting actors.
Yes, the ending is corny but somehow you don't mind, especially when the journey has been such a fun ride.

Sawing through another sequel

I turned away from the screen more than watched it when I went to see Saw III today. Here's the man chained to the walls of a small room with hooks piercing his arms, legs, ankles, sides and chin. A bomb will blow in a minute and some change and he must rip those hooks off to get out in time.
A woman trapped in a contraption hooked into her ribcage must dip her hand into acid to retrieve a rapidly dissolving key at the bottom.
And a naked woman is chained in an ice room as freezing water is sprayed on her. And all of this is the work of our villain played ably by Tobin Bell.
The first movie had one hell of a devilish twist, and Saw II boasted a nice performance by Danny Walhberg, but the third, while at times clever, shows that this series may have run its course.
After all, you know what you're going to get: a series of nasty little tests that end with somebody's head crushed or arm twisted almost clear off. And though it might be fun to think what you might do in any of those crappy situations where you have to decide between screaming your head off or smashing your foot in to get out of an ankle chain, you don't want to keep seeing the same thing over and over again.
Bottom line: for all of its twists and turns, Saw III is horrifying only in its predictability. The graphic violence is not meant to scare but to shock.
Nowhere is there any sense of tension. Nowhere is there any investment in character. Nowhere is there much good acting, unless you count Tobin Bell's skin-crawlingly creepy performance.
A co-worker couldn't believe I liked Hostel. She thought it was close to pornography with all the gratuitous nudity. And yes, there is gratuitous nudity.
But I will argue that the movie's second half is thick with suspense, and the first time I saw it, I didn't know what was going to happen. I squirmed, I jumped and I was completely undone by the movie's final beyond-intense 15 minutes.
From Saw III, all I got was a tease for another sequel. I think it's time to put an end to this franchise. Please. This can't go on like Friday the 13th.

The Departed

Martin Scorsese doesn't make movies easy to watch. You squirm in your seat, but just like a car wreck on the road, you can't turn your eyes away. In fact, you slow your car just to get a better look.
And Scorsese's new movie, The Departed, is that way. In many ways, this is vintage Scorsese, a movie that delves into the grittiness of life and finds poetry.
The Departed is actually a remake, or better yet a reimagining, of a Hong Kong movie called Infernal Affairs.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who has appeared in Scorsese's past two movies, is Billy Costigan, a kid from South Boston whose family upbringing wasn't the best. Nevertheless, he wants to become a cop and ends up going undercover to infiltrate mob boss's Frank Costello's inner circle.
Matt Damon is Colin Sullivan, another ambitious cop who is also a rat for Costello, played with eye-brow raising bluster by Jack Nicholson.
Costigan and Sullivan have never met but their lives are destined to collide, as Costigan borrows deeper into the Costello and Sullivan is entrusted to find the undercover cop Costello suspects is working against him.
This is a movie about corruption that runs deep and wide and rips apart everyone in its path, even those who try to do the right thing.
The performances are raw and the language vibrant, tought talk masking vulnerability.
And Jack Nicholson, as he always does, is hilarious and sinister all in the same time, snarling out his lines with gusto.
No, there is no happy ending in this movie, but with most Scorsese movies, there rarely is.
But the journey is one well worth taking because with Scorsese, the beauty lurks in the ugly.

No Flavor in Love

I try not to watch Flavor of Love. But I can't help it. Same thing with The Bachelor. Both shows have pretend-to-be ladies nearly falling out of their dresses (okay, on Flavor of Love, the women most times have barely anything on in the first place) for some guy.
Now on The Bachelor, the guy is reasonably good looking.
On Flavor of Love, the guy is Flavor Flav, once the best hype man any politically conscious rap group like Public Enemy can have. Now, the 47-year-old recovering drug addict is an enemy to himself, a has-been who has morphed into a caricature.
But who cares what the guy looks like. This is reality television and viewers are lulled into believing romance is women acting like fools for some guy they just met, that soulmates will be found when relationships from these reality television shows wither the moment the cameras vanish.
Of course, this is a guy's fantasy, to have dozens of women clamoring for the chance to be his bride forever, or at least for the moment. And we in our living rooms have great fun laughing at the women snipe and bitch and claw at each other like dogs fighting over the last chicken bone.
And I wonder as I look at all of this what these shows say about women. Of course, some will argue that these women choose to go on this show, for whatever reason. It could be that they really dig the guy (hard to believe, I'm sorry to say, about Flavor Flav). Some hope this will be their big break. Or they think this will be something to tell the grandkids when they're older.
Regardless, the fact is that these women are in a sense degrading themselves. Yes, that's a strong statement but what else can you call it.
What woman, in her right mind, would voluntarily give away all the power in the dating situation that she has in real life?
See, in real life, the guy is supposed to ask the girl. He's supposed to brush off that nagging fear of rejection and talk to that girl in the bar, the bookstore, wherever, talk to her and get her number and call her later and ask her out and try to kiss her, knowing all the while that the woman has the right and the power to say no. And the guy has to pick his ego off the floor when "no" in whatever polite way the woman says it comes from her lips and he has to move on to the next woman and the next woman until he gets that "yes."
I mean, that's what real life is. Real life isn't a man having a pick of 25 women and he gets to eliminate half the first night and the remaining 11 have to smile, bat their eyes, shake their behind, and laugh at bland jokes until they get their man. What crap.
A female friend of mine nagged a boyfriend by being a real bitch. She ignored him ruthlessly for weeks and when she finally did give the guy a chance, she wouldn't let him kiss her for a long time.
Okay, maybe that's a bit too far but you get the idea.
I want a woman who I feel comfortable approaching but I also want a woman who leaves me wanting more. So sorry, the girl who has her breasts falling out so much you can see nipple or who has the tip of her thong hanging out of her too-tight pants ain't going to get any play. Smells desperate.

United 93: A Journey into pain and heroism

On Sept. 10, I finally sat down to watch United 93, a raw journey into the confusion and surrealism of Sept. 11.
Paul Greengrass, in almost documentary style, paints a portrait of those moments before the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and it is a chilling one.
What hits you is how normal everything is. You see people yapping on the phones as they wait to board the plane. And while on the plane, you see them eating, working on their laptops and talking with each other. You see the two pilots, one who hopes to see his children and wife soon and another who can't wait for an upcoming vacation.
These were people who, like many of us on Sept. 11, were going about their day, never knowing that this would be the day that they died.
And as the plane finally takes off, you also see the news of the attacks come into focus slowly. One plane and then another suddenly veer off course, and you can hear someone saying something about a hijacking, but the message is garbled.
You see the disbelief in people's eyes as they see first one plane and then another crash into the Twin Towers.
You see the news begin, in bits, to make its way to the passengers on United 93, who have already watched four hijackers kill the pilots and take over the plane.
And as you watch, you wonder what you would do if you knew that the plane you were on was going to crash on purpose as part of some terrorist act. You wonder who you would call and what you would say in those last moments before your life ended.
You wonder if you would have the courage to do something to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their plans, even if you knew that doing so would result in your death.
Greengrass is not interested in political sloganeering in this movie. What he does do is immerse you in the confounding reality of that day, where you couldn't quite believe what was happenening, when you were trying desperately to dig out of this tragedy some greater meaning.
This is a difficult movie to watch, precisely because it only happened five years ago. You still remember where you were and what you were doing when you learned about the attacks.
United 93 is a vivid reminder, a tale of both pain and awe-inspiring herorism.

Idlewild is indeed wild

Andre 3000 and Big Boi, who make up the rap duo OutKast, have always lived up to their group name, stretching what we consider hip-hop to far-out extremes. And here's the thing: they manage to sell millions of record by predictably being unpredictable.
Which brings us to their new movie, Idlewild, a brilliant mess of a movie.
Andre is Percival, a piano player who is a mortician by day, slaving away for his dad, played by an underused Ben Vereen. Big Boi plays his friend, Rooster, who spends his nights running "Church," the local jukejoint, cheating on his wife and drinking way too much hooch.
Into all this enters Trumpy played by the always mesmerizing and menacing Terrence Howard (a friend wondered how he is so good at playing bad) who is the film's villain.
Percival and Rooster now have to figure out how to keep from getting killed.
Now, all of this is set in the 1930s Prohibition era, though you may have a hard time believing that with all the rapping Big Boi does in the movie. Yes, there's rapping but again what else would you expect from an OutKast movie.
Horns blast, Big Boi raps, Andre gets drenched in rain and men and women jitterbug all over the place. And somehow, this movie works, with visual treats provided by first-time movie director Bryan Barber, who infuses his debut with all the tricks of the trade he learned while making music videos.
As my friend and I walked out of the theater, we had a hard time describing exactly what we saw. But we liked it. We were never bored.
Again, what else would you expect of OutKast?

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane was and is one of most hyped movies ever and even better, the movie actually lives up to the hype.
Of course with a movie in which the plot is summed up perfectly in the title, how could the movie not exceed expectations.
This is not Shakespeare -- not even close.
Snakes on a Plane is good, squirm-in-your-seat fun, the kind of movie made for screaming at the sceen while eating buttery popcorn.
Samuel L. Jackson does what he does best: exude cool. He's certain to be the coolest 57-year-old in the world who is blessed with the jealousy-inducing ability to say a particular profanity with a potent eloquence, one honed by years of practice.
The movie is cheesy, no doubt, with at least one scene of gratutuitous nudity and lots of gore and sight gags.
Yet, the movie works, mixing in humor with suspense.
And judging by the audience I saw the movie with recently, the fans loved every minute of the movie. They cheered when Samuel Jackson said that line everyone had waited with baited breath throughouth the movie: I've had enough of these mother(bleep) snakes on this mother(bleep) plane. That line, thanks to the power of the Internet, has become a cult classic long before the movie even came out.
Is this the future of moviemaking, where fans have the power to shape a movie? Don't know. But Snakes on a Plane works and it works well.

Descending into Vice

Miami Vice, the series, epitomized style. You may not remember the story lines but the pastel suits that Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas wore on this 1980s series were unforgettable.
Thankfully, Michael Mann, the mind behind that series, decided to do something too many directors don't do: He went about as far from remaking the series for the big screen as he could.
The movie of the same name might bear some outlines of similarity but that's about it.
Instead, Mann has created a dark world in which good and evil blur, where doing your job and living your life has little to separate them from each other.
A few critics have blasted the movie, but I found myself drawn into the world Mann is creating here.
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx don't do much here, and you wish Naomie Harris, so good in Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest, had more time on screen. But the minimalism works, and the action set pieces have the power and the ability to shock you out of your senses.
And the mix of music and gorgeous cinematography puts you into the queasy underbelly of undercover police work, the compromises and sacrifices you make to get the job done.
It is a compelling piece of work, one I want to revisit soon.
And then there's The Descent, your basic horror flick. But it is also something more, thank goodness.
Here, we follow six women into the mountains after one has suffered a tragic loss. They go spelunking into the caves and find themselves trapped, squeezing themselves through small passageways as they look for a way out.
One by one, they fall victim to blind flesh-eating monsters.
Yet, as the movie slowly sets up in the beginning, the women are victim to much more than monsters. They have little pent-up demons of their own, secrets they have that will devastate them more than the monsters will.
And the slow beginning sets up for a psychologically tense finale, one you don't often seen in slasher flicks such as this.
What a sweet surprise.

Lady in the Water

M. Night Shyamalan is mystique personified, or at least that is what the acclaimed director sees himself as. His first major movie, The Sixth Sense, was a near masterpiece with one mind-bogging twist of an ending. And his second film, Unbreakable, contained a quiet, controlled beauty that revealed a director who had confidence in the narrative and didn't resort to little tricks of the Hollywood blockbuster trade.
This was a director who had vision and stuck stubbornly close to that vision at whatever costs. He never felt the need to condescend to his audience, who he felt was intelligent enough to get what he was trying to convey.
But soon, as Signs and The Village showed, Night became a slave to convention, even if he told himself he wasn't. Audiences came expecting the twist, and his latter movies lost a little bit of that magic found in his first.
He tries to capture some of that magic back with his latest offering, Lady in the Water, a movie based on a bedtime story he told his children.
Thankfully, there's no twist here, even if you do find yourself out of habit waiting for one.
But the problem this movie has is Night is trying to be too fanciful, too trusting in his audience to simply suspend belief.
In this movie, Paul Giamatti, who is always a dependable character actor, plays a superintendent of an apartment complex who finds a young woman swimming nude in the apartment pool. Turns out the woman, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is a narf from the Blue World who has come to find a writer, who happens to be played by the director in the largest role he has carved out for himself in one of his movies. This writer is composing something that has the potential to change the world.
That's pretty heady stuff, right? And guess what, Giamatti's character and everyone else buys the whole story by Story, the name of the narf.
This is a little too easy, because even though there have always been supernatural elements in Night's movies, Night has always made way for some of that natural skepticism to creep in before the audience gives over to believing the unbelievable.
Not this time. We're expected to take the big leap of faith in the whole story, and though this is a fairy tale, there's no grounding for the audience.
The characters are barely fleshed out, though Giamatti does give a powerful performance. Howard hardly says a word; she just stares with those big beautiful eyes of hers as if that's acting.
Night doesn't give the audience anything to invest in, so we just don't care.
He does, however, gives us some good scares (those scrunts are just darn creepy with those red eyes and gnashing teeth), and there is a nice scene with the film critic played by Bob Balaban.
Yet, in the end, the movie just didn't deliver. It didn't move me; it didn't make me feel anything, not like that last scene in The Sixth Sense, with Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette, where I admittedly choked up just a bit.
Instead, I left the movie theater hoping that Night comes back with something a lot better than this tepid fairy tale.

Pirates of the Caribbean

The sole reason a female co-worker wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was Johnny Depp. She wanted to wallow in the sheer irresistable hotness of Depp.
Now, I may not share in her drooling admiration of Johnny Depp but I will say this: The only reason to see this over-the-top sequel is to witness the nutty and brilliant performance of Mr. Depp, an actor known for his odd but critically acclaimed choices.
Many a critic has made note that Depp is not one to star in such an obvious summer blockbuster as this movie, with eye-popping special effects, swashbuckling action and the photogenic Orlando Bloom and the stunning Keira Knightley.
No, Depp has always zigged while others have zagged. And this movie, as surprising a move as it may appear, may be Depp's own way of zigging.
His performance is an uncompromising one. He switches with a feminine swagger and speaks with a drunken slur, his eyes a little crazed and a little sane all at the same time.
And it is his performance that saves this sequel from totally sucking, for whenever Depp is on the screen, the movie feels a bit fresher than the cog in the Hollywood machine that it really is.
That's truly an achievement.
And let's be honest. It's nice to see Depp kick loose and have fun as Jack Sparrow, throwing all notions of what a pirate should or should not be out of the proverbial window.
Okay, I'll say it. Johnny Depp is pretty hot.

Superman Returns

For me, Christopher Reeve will always be Superman, his chest bearing the "S," that nice piece of curly hair fronting his forehead.
But more than 20 years later, Brandon Routh wears the blue and red suit, flying around saving the world in Superman Returns.
Routh is no Christopher Reeve, and you miss the chemistry Reeve had with Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane.
But Routh and Kate Bosworth, who has taken over as Lane, has none of the flirty fun Reeve and Kidder had in the original.
However, that's more than made up for in the eye-popping special effects and the bravura performance by Kevin Spacey, who portrays villain Lex Luthor.
This Lex Luthor is darker, more maniacal than the one Gene Hackman played. Luthor still has wit, but Spacey gives Luthor an edge, a cruel streak that is oblivious to having a conscience.
In a sense this is a movie that overall is darker, stripped away from the innocence of the 1978 version. We are not innocents anymore in a post-911 America, and the story picks up where Superman II left off, with the caped crusader disappearing for five years and returning to find Lois Lane with a five-year-old son and a fiancee who has won a Pulitzer for an editorial entitled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman."
Here, the Superman as Christ-figure motif is impossible to miss, from the late Marlon Brando as Jor-El speaking of sending his son to save mankind to the crucifixion-like beating he gets near the end by Luthor's goons after he has been exposed to Kryptonite.
Sometimes, Bryan Singer, the director, lays that Christ symbolism on too thick, and the movie suffers for it, sucking the fun out of what Superman has always been.
And the movie is way too long for your typical action blockbuster, as if Singer doesn't know when to end.
But somehow, despite those flaws, you get caught up in the Superman saves the world wonder of it all, and you can see why people might want Superman to return...for real.

Do The Right Thing

Most films don't matter much beyond the first viewing. Instead, they begin to fade soon after the ending credits start.
But two films I saw this past weekend are as relevant today as they were when they opened more than a decade ago: Do The Right Thing and Boyz In Da Hood.
Both established the careers, resepectively, of Spike Lee and John Singleton. Singleton earned Oscar nominations for best director and best original screenplay, notable achievements considering Singleton was in his early '20s when the movie came out in 1991.
And no one ignored Lee's third film, Do The Right Thing, a searing exploration into race relations on a sweaty-hot summer day on a street corner in Bed-Stuy.
Each movie was a well-textured look at an aspect of black life full of unforgettable characters and poignant moments. Each also was a launching pad for a number of actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morris Chestnutt, Nia Long and of course, Ice Cube.
To see the trajectory of these people's career since these movies reveals what the eye for talent Singleton and Lee had.
Even more important, Lee and Singleton made Hollywood take notice and widened the doors for black people in the movie business.

The Break-Up

Hate the romantic comedy where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boys gets on his knees and begs for girl's forgiveness, and boy and girl kiss at the end?
The Break-Up, thankfully, isn't that romantic comedy.
And for a movie that centers on the aftermath of a couple ending their relationship, there's not much romance.
This might not be an easy date movie. The chemistry between Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn is there. The movie is funny most of the times. But it is also unbearably painful.
No one likes to see two good people spend most of their time yelling at each other or doing awfully hurtful things to each other.
Here you laugh to keep from crying because oh boy, Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn declare war, with Jennifer walking around nude as a way of getting Vince back, and Vince acting like a man and pretending he doesn't care.
Yes, it is juvenile, but sometimes, love, or the loss of it, causes us to revert back to children. We forget how to be mature because we don't want to be mature. We're just mad because so and so doesn't want to be with us anymore.
This is what this movie explores in a fairly realistic way. There's no magic moment at the end where all is forgiven because life doesn't work that way.
Sometimes, a relationship is too broken to repair, and this movie is not just about the pain of losing someone you love; it's also about the strength it takes to truly walk away and let go.
Yeah, breaking up is hard to do.

The Last Stand

The first movie my friend, Camille, and I saw was X-Men, so it was only fitting that we see X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
As we nestled in our seats, we ate buttery popcorn flavored by multi-colored M&M's. My friend has done this for years but, this was a taste adventure for me, one well worth having.
The movie: I gave it three stars out of four. I had worried that Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner would ruin this franchise. Bryan Singer had done such a good job with the first and second one that I didn't want Ratner to mess things up.
And to my pleasant surprise, Ratner didn't.
All your favorite characters are here: Wolverine, Jean Gray, Charles Xavier and Magneto (played deliciously by Ian MacKellan).
In this film, a mutant "cure" is introduced. So mutants have the choice of whether to keep their powers and continue to be discriminated against or lose their powers and live normal. As in the previous movies, this one raises some questions applicable to debates swirling around now on issues such as race and homosexuality.
Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, sees the cure as a way to exterminate mutants and rallies other mutants against it.
But there are some who more than think about it. Rogue, who has the power to absorb the life force out of anyone she touches, is one of them. After all, she can't make out with her boyfriend, and to be a teenage girl who can't get it on with her man has to be a real bummer.
Also, Jean Gray, who supposedly died in the last film, is back, only this time she's as nice. In fact, she can be downright destructive when her "Phoenix" personality takes over.
The action is cool and much more violent than the last two. And the film is darker, with some major characters getting killed off (you'll have to see the movie to find out).
Afterward, my friend and I debated whether this would really be the last stand. Considering how well the movie did at the box office and how Hollywood operates, I doubt it. I'm sure plans are being made for an X-Men 4, 5 and 6 in the near future.

Tsotsi

With a friend, I ventured to see Tsotsi, not quite knowing what to expect. The movie, based on a novel by Athol Fugard, won an Oscar, and I had heard good things about Fugard from my friend, who had recently seen a play of his.
What I saw was a textured film about a young man finding humanity within himself and within others.
Tsotsi means thug, and in the film, the name is tied to a young man growing up in South Africa.
He roams the streets with a group of young men. Their existence is bleak and their moral code is corrupt. Their mode of survival is from taking, often brutally, from others.
That fact is established quickly in the first few minutes of the movie as we witness a simple mugging turn violent and bloody.
Then in a later scene, we see Tsotsi shoot a woman and steal her car. At that point, I wasn't sure whether I would ever sympathize with Tsotsi. I feared him to be a monster.
But behind even monsters is a human being, and slowly, Tsotsi's past of abandonment becomes clear. No one truly cared about him so he learned not to care about anyone else.
His world is changed, however, when he discovers that the backseat of the car he stole is not empty. It contains an infant. He ends up taking the infant home, struggling to figure out how to take care of someone so small.
His burgeoning relationship with the child transforms him. He begins to care. He begins to see another way.
And before you know it, you become invested in Tsotsi. You start to root for him to do the right thing, to be the man he was never taught to be.
The ending is a mixture of hope and bleakness, as is the rest of the movie. You don't quite know what might happen to Tsotsi after this experience. All you know is that he is not the same person you met at the beginning, and maybe there's hope in that.

Tom Cruise: Mission Impossible Action Star

Tom Cruise isn't getting much love lately. He deserves it. From public spats with Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields to his overexposed love affair with Katie Holmes, Cruise has had a rocky ride with his fans the past year.
And the opening box-office take for Mission Impossible III doesn't bode well for his future movie star career.
So when I saw the movie recently, I had low expectations for how good the movie is. How pleased I was to find that during the course of the two-hour plus movie, I forgot about TomKat.
That is not necessarily due to Cruise. J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost, layers the non-stop action with some emotion. This movie felt more visceral and personal than the previous incarnations of Mission Impossible.
Granted, the story is a little cliched. Good guy's woman is in peril.
But, here's the thing. The set-up works.
With so many frenetic action sequences intermingled with lovey-dovey kiss-kiss scenes between Ethan Hunt and his beautiful girlfriend, you don't have much time to think about Tom Cruise and his troubled year.
Even more wonderful is the presence of Laurence Fishburne as the head guy. He's smart, menacing, the kind of guy you don't want to mess with. The dialogue is sharp and witty, and the pacing now slacks.
So, in a sense, the real mission impossible, forgetting Tom Cruise, ends up being accomplished in a very winning way.

United 93

9/11 was barely five years ago, but here we have United 93.
I haven't seen it. There are movies where you have to be in the right mood to see it.
Or maybe that's an excuse not to go through the emotions that will likely come from watching it.
United 93 is not going to be one of those romantic comedies where the two love birds kiss at the end.
In this movie, the heroes and the villains die at the end because that's what happened in real life when flight United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.
I wonder how long you wait until you dramatize a tragic event such as 9/11 on the big screen. Is this too soon, or is it just the right time, if you approach everything with a seriousness and respect.
I feel I have to see this movie. I just wonder if I will get anything beyond the sadness organically comes from seeing the worst day in our country's history on the movie screen.

Akeelah and the Bee

This movie, Akeelah and the Bee, is a must-see.
Not just because Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett are in the movie, though that could be reason enough.
It's because this simple tale of a young black girl competing in the National Spelling Bee is a wonderfully different slice of black life than what we are used to seeing on the screen.
Rare is the movie in which the protagonist is a smart black girl. Her struggle and what I would presume eventual triumph are the core of this picture.
I haven't seen this movie yet, but what makes it compelling for me is that it appears that the movie recognizes that black life is richly complex and full of nuance.
The problem with movies about the lives of black people is the frustrating narrowness in which Hollywood sees us. We're either good or bad, black or white (metaphorically speaking).
But the truth is that we are human, that we come against not only the subtle pressures of race but also the every day pains of living life.
We are more than what Hollywood says we are, more than what some of us say we are (i.e. Soul Plane).
Movies such as Akeelah and the Bee and Eve's Bayou reveal that black people aren't here just to make white people laugh. And the problem with movies such as Soul Plane is that there aren't enough movies like Akeelah and the Bee to balance things out, to show the full range of black life in all its different forms and features.
The truth is we are flesh, and I want to see more of that flesh on screen.

No Brokeback in Prison

This is like manna from heaven for comedians and late night talk show hosts. But seriously, if punishment is what is needed for these Massachussetts prisoners, show "Showgirls" by all means. Paul Verhoever sought to push the boundaries of how much sexual content you could throw on the screen and call it art. He ended up making a movie in which seeing Elizabeth Berkley naked became yawn-inducing. Who would have thunk?

Sharon Stone's Basic Instinct

Sharon Stone's most famous performance was as Catherine Trammell in 1992's Basic Instinct, where she played a sociopathic bisexual novelist who was handy with an icepick. And of course, there's that interrogation scene.
Now, maybe we can assume Sharon Stone's basic instinct is getting paid. Why else would she reprise her role in a trashy sequel of a movie that didn't have much going for it to begin with?
Basic Instinct 2 is better than I thought, given the low expectations I had for it.
The plot is just an excuse for Sharon Stone to romp her way through a movie. Catherine Trammell is a woman Sharon Stone was born to play: a highly intelligent woman who manipulates men through the not-so-subtle art of seduction. Her sexuality is her weapon, and she uses it with a boldness and confidence that leaves men weak and confounded.
Trammell knows her power, and she walks with a swagger that leaves men such as the psychiatrist played by David Morrissey spellbound.
Unfortunatley, long stretches of this movie drag. You wonder where the movie is going, and as much as Stone talked in interviews about how she has no problem with nudity, Stone stays clothed through much of the movie. It is as if director Michael Caton-Jones pulled back instead of diving head on into the sheer trashiness and absurdity of the material.
If there is a sequel that really didn't need to be made, it is this one. Basic Instinct was a movie for its time, and this one doesn't add anything new.
Well, there's one thing. You can say what you want about Sharon Stone but for someone who's 48, she still looks good.

Spike is Back

"Spike is back," my friend said as the credits to Inside Man came up.
Indeed, he was.
This is one of Lee's most commercial movies in years, one about a bank robbery heist in the spirit of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon.
But it still retails that Spike Lee edge, those little touches that Lee sprinkles throughout his movie.
The movie draws you in from the beginning when we are introduced to Dalton Russell, played by Clive Owen. Russell introduces himself and says he is pulling off the perfect bank robbery.
And from there, you spend the rest of the movie figuring out how Russell does that. Denzel Washington plays a detective facing an Internal Affairs investigation and Jodie Foster is a powerful woman who specializes in "fixing" things, in this case the bank president played by Christopher Plummer who has a secret hiding in the bank vaults.
There's a lot of waiting around in this movie, but Lee never lets the pace slacken. Instead, he shows off multi-ethnic New York, and the dialogue is sharp and funny. Seeing Denzel Washington work is a treasure in itself.
And the payoff in the end is satisfying. Your face breaks into a smile as you discover the nice treats that Inside Man offers.
Is there a message? Isn't there always one in a Spike Lee Joint? But Lee doesn't let his need to make a point get in the way of telling a good story.
As my friend said, this film comes across as the work of a veteran director, as if all the lessons he has learned over his more than two decades of work came together on this movie.
Spike Lee is back. Thank God.

Take The Lead, or Just Follow

Take The Lead, which made its premiere Friday night at the RiverRun International Film Festival, is an entertaining piece of crap.
Sounds harsh for a movie that was such a crowd pleaser. But Hollywood trots this treacle every few years, the often-told tale of an idealistic teacher who goes to the inner-city school determined to inspire the students and change things for the better.
Well, I saw that movie. It was called Lean on Me, starring Morgan Freeman. And there was that other movie of whose title I can't remember that starred Michelle Pfieffer and featured that Coolio song.
What bothers me is there's a condescending "oh, those poor ghetto kids" white liberal sentiment that runs through those movies. And unfortunately, this movie suffers from it.
The characters are flat, and you never understand the motivations of Antonio Banderas' ballroom dance teacher Pierre Dulane. You just assume he decided one day he wanted to teach the waltz and the tango to a bunch of inner-city kids.
I know, this is based on a true story, and I'm sure the true story is much more interesting and complex than what's portrayed in this movie.
And that's the problem. You could figure everything out before the first credits to the movie end.
There aren't any surprises, and you hardly learn anything about Banderas' character, just that his wife died five years ago and he may possibly have had a rough life.
As for the kids, well, you have the tough but sensitive girl (played convincingly enough by YaYa, who some may remember for America's Next Top Model) and the hard-headed punk who really is trying to do the right thing.
Oh, there's also the white guy who wants to be black, and the awkward white girl from the suburb who feels more comfortable with the ghetto kids than the stuck up rich kids from her ballroom dancing class.
Now, I know this movie will make money. There's dancing. There's Antonio Banderas. But Take The Lead is simplistic and lacks soul.

Pimping Ain't Easy

For the past week, the Oscar win of rap group Three 6 Mafia for its song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" has been praised and panned. Praised because the win was a historic moment for hip-hop, the first all-black rap group to perform at the usually unhip Academy Awards and to win the golden statue.
Panned because some were embarrased that a song about pimping (i.e. the sexual exploitation of women by men) was rewarded.
Part of me did cringe when the winner was announced. Too much of mainstream rap music glorifies pimping; the music videos are filled with booty flesh and the lyrics are full of sexual boasting at the expense of women.
But another part of me was thrilled. It was a genuine surprise and an indication that hip-hop has truly entered the mainstream. The culture cannot be dismissed or ignored anymore.
That says to me a couple of things. Hip-hop has been and continues to be a powerful force in the world. And hip-hop artists have a responsibility to bring balance to the music.
See, I don't expect every song that comes out to be self-righteous and consciousness-raising. Not every rock-and-roll song is that all the time. Never has been.
What I do demand is that rap music doesn't become bogged down in monotony. Spoken-word artist Saul Williams said it best when he said he simply wants to hear something different. Enough with the ice and the women and the guns and the beef.
Rap about something real. Rap about you, not what the corporate suits think is you or what they think the public will buy.
But in the end, what Three 6 Mafia won is an award. That's all it is. Cuba Gooding Jr. won one of those golden statues for his performance in Jerry Maguire. What the hell happened to his career?
Adrien Brody won for The Pianist. You see he didn't get any nominations for his recent turn in King Kong.
Awards don't change anything. People do.
And one final thought. The song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," fit the movie, Hustle & Flow. The movie is predictable, your basic Rocky formula, except that Rocky is a pimp. But Terrence Howard's performance elevated the movie a bit, made DJay human, complex and real when he could have easily turned that role into caricature.
Howard may not be a pimp in real life, but let's just say he really pimped that role, and it wasn't easy.

Capote and Freedomland

Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves an Oscar. That was evident after seeing Capote recently.
The movie follows Truman Capote as he insinuates himself into the lives of people in a small town in Kansas to report on the brutal murder of a family of four in 1959.
Capote has a whiny voice but a big ego, and he sees his literary breakthrough in telling this sordid tale.
Hoffman shows a man who ever so slowly builds a trust between him and one of the convicted murderers over a number of years and who grows to care about him. But he never lets that get in the way of his ultimate ambition. He's using this man as a way to catapult himself into the success he has always pursued.
It's this tension between ambition and compassion that drives the movie as Hoffman peels away the layers of Capote, making you cringe in one instance and sad in another.
The performance also make Freedomland, a searing mediation on race based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Richard Price.
The book is better but the movie does a good job of getting the book's message across.
Julianne Moore plays Brenda, a mother who stumbles into a hospital with bloody hands. She says she has been carjacked. Det. Lorenzo Council, played by Samuel Jackson, waltzes in to interview her.
Only then does she allow that her 4-year-old son is in the backseat of that car.
Brenda is white. The neighborhood she says her son was kidnapped in is black.
Those facts set off a chain reaction, as the largely white police force of Gannon, a neighboring town, descends onto the predominantly black neighborhood of Armstrong.
Residents there are mistreated. Anger grows. And Council becomes increasingly doubtful about Brenda's story.
The script could have been better, but the chemistry between Jackson and Moore is palpable, and Edie Falco, as a parent of a missing child, gives a solid performance.
And the final few scenes with Moore are amazing. It's a performance that keeps your allegiances at bay, for you don't know whether to care for her or to hate her. But you always feel her. What better compliment is there?

Something New

Today I, a 33-year-old black man, walked into a movie theater full of black women who had come to watch Sanaa Lathan fall in love with a white guy in the new movie, Something New.
Considering what a wonder Sanaa Lathan is to behold, it was tough watching her and a white guy get it on. I can say this: Simon Baker is much more handsome than Billy Bob Thorton, with whom the luscious Halle Berry got it on in "Monster's Ball."
But going beyond that superficial stuff, I found Sanaa Hamri's debut a delight to watch, a movie that celebrated love but also took into account the challenges of an interracial romance.
There's a nicely done scene in the middle of the movie in which Lathan's Kenya lashes into Baker's Brian. Brian had a hard day and he doesn't want to hear Kenya complain about the white client who cannot take her seriously because she's black.
Kenya counters that she can't take a break from being black. It's a heart-wrenching and uncomfortable scene but one that feels real.
Also real is the struggle that some single black women have in finding the so-called IBM (Ideal Black Man). One startling statistic that starts off the movie is that 42.4 percent of black women have never been married.
It is a reality that Kenya, as a successful black woman, is acutely aware of, and the introduction of Brian into her life forces her to examine her deeply-held dreams and beliefs (such as her preference for black men).
What happens when what we want in life is changed and challenged by our circumstances. What if what we want limits what we could have, ostensibly love.
The weakness in the movie, however, comes in the late introduction of the Ideal Black Man, as portrayed by Blair Underwood. It's the movie's attempt at a fair balance to show that Kenya does have viable options. But it's clear from the get-go that Blair's character is not the right man for her; Brian is.
Near the end is when the movie devolves into the predictability of romance comedies, where our hero or heroine realizes that he or she has made a horrible mistake. Kenya finally realizes that Brian is her man.
And everyone lives happily ever after.
But the journey to that cliched moment is worth taking. Chemistry, smart dialogue and an often funny and intelligent script.
Yeah, it's something new.