DVD Views: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

The Mysteries of Pittsburg **
Directed By: Rawson Marshall Thurber.
Written By: Rawson Marshall Thurber based on the book by Michael Chabon.
Starring: Jon Foster (Art Bechstein), Sienna Miller (Jane Bellwether), Peter Sarsgaard (Cleveland Arning), Mena Suvari (Phlox Lombardi), Nick Nolte (Joseph Bechstein), Omid Abtahi (Momo).

Michael Chabon is one of the best authors working right now, but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is not one of his best books. Written in university for an assignment, the book is a fine, little novel about the coming of age of a young man during the summer right after he graduates university. Over the course of the summer, he will work through his sexual confusion, try and distance himself from his father, get involved with some people he probably shouldn’t, and essentially grows up. It is a good little novel, but nothing you have not read a thousand times before. With the vast majority of Chabon’s great work still waiting to be turned into a movie, it strikes me as sort of strange that someone would want to turn The Mysteries of Pittsburgh into a movie. It strikes me as even stranger that in doing so, the filmmakers would eliminate the novel’s best character.

But a book is a book and a movie is a movie, and they have to each work on their own terms. Unfortunately for the film adaptation of Chabon’s book, it simply does not work. What was in the book a quietly touching exploration of a sensitive, confused young man’s coming of age comes across on screen as the inane, pretentious ramblings of a whiner. And because we do not like the main character, Art Bechstein (Jon Foster), the rest of the cast's strange attraction to him seems odd. We never get involved in these characters lives, and honestly, we do not much care what happens to them. That is death for a character based movie like this. I must admit that the other characters fare better than the lead does, but because he is such a whiner and is at the heart of the movie, we do wonder why everyone else in the film seems to gravitate towards him.

The film is about Art in the summer after he graduated from university with a degree in economics. His father (Nick Nolte) is a gangster, but he does not want Art involved in that part of his life. He has used his contacts to get Art a good job starting in September. Art just has to make it three months until then. He decides to use “the last summer of my life” to essentially do nothing. He takes a job at the Book Barn, starts sleeping with his boss (Mena Suvari), and essentially hanging out and getting drunk a lot. This is how he meets Jane (Sienna Miller), who he immediately falls for, and her boyfriend Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard), a low level gangster himself, who is an irresponsible mess of a person. He and Jane essentially spend all of their time either arguing or fucking. Art likes both of them, but cannot decide which one he likes more. He wants to fuck both of them himself.

The movie moves at the slow, languid pace of summer, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The film is essentially made up of one conversation after another, all involving Art, and normally just one of the other characters in the movie. My problem with the movie is that most of the characters are fairly well defined, with the exception of Art. We, like Art, are drawn to Jane’s beauty and intelligence. We like Cleveland, in spite of ourselves, much like Art does. We feel bad for Suvari’s character, because she obviously took their relationship much more seriously than Art did, and when he inevitably breaks her heart, it’s painful. We even get to understand Nolte’s gangster, if not really like him. He is a hard man, but he really does have the best interest of his kid at heart. This is the type of role that Nolte can play in his sleep, but here he doesn’t. He gives the gangster a quiet authority, that can be quite scary, even if he really is not saying anything all that mean, and he never raises his voice. When Art makes the decision he does at the end of the movie (and the book for that matter), I had a hard time excepting it. His father may not be a great man, but he deserves better than what he gets.

But I keep coming back to the same problem with the movie, and that is that Art is such a thoroughly boring, uninteresting character, that it feels like the movie has a gaping hole in the center of it. The problem is a combination of Foster’s way too mild performance, and writing that does nothing to make us care for him. The writer/director of the movie is Rawson Thurber Marshall, who made the hilarious Dodgeball a few years ago. He probably wanted to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker, so he decided to tackle this project. But he never really finds his way into the movie. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is not a terrible movie, but it is one that I found unsatisfying. There is good stuff around the edges, but the core of the movie just is not very good.

DVD Views: Obsessed

Obsessed **
Directed By: Steve Shill.
Written By: David Loughery.
Starring: Idris Elba (Derek), Beyoncé Knowles (Sharon Charles), Ali Larter (Lisa), Jerry O'Connell (Ben), Bonnie Perlman (Marge), Christine Lahti (Reese), Nathan Myers (Kyle Charles), Nicolas Myers (Kyle Charles), Matthew Humphreys (Patrick), Scout Taylor-Compton (Samantha).

Obsessed wants nothing more to be a modern day Fatal Attraction. It follows the formula of that movie so closely, that I think the writer of that movie should demand some royalties on this one. When it opened in 1987, Fatal Attraction became one of the biggest hits of the year, and somewhere along the way the film picked up several Oscar nominations, and gained classic status. Don’t ask me why. While I think it’s a fine little thriller, it is hardly a great film. Director Adrian Lyne has done much better films than that one (Jacob’s Ladder, Lolita and Unfaithful to name but three). But even if Fatal Attraction is not a great movie, Obsessed still cannot quite measure up to it. As good as they are, Idris Elba is no Michael Douglas, Beyonce Knowles is no Anne Archer and Ali Larter is certainly no Glenn Close. Fatal Attraction was not exactly a very original movie when it came out 22 years ago, and Obsessed seems even staler all these years later. But my biggest problem with the movie, is that filmmakers seem to want to make everything even more one dimensional in this film than they were in 1987.

The movie is about Elba’s Derek, a rich businessman (they make vague references to deals, but I have no idea what he is actually supposed to be doing), who is married to Sharon (Beyonce), and has a young son, Kyle, who he adores. They seem like the perfect family. One day Lisa (Larter) shows up at his office as a temp. She makes some deals, and ends up working as Derek’s secretary, something that displeases Lisa, as at one point she was Derek’s secretary, and knows what could happen. Derek and Lisa do some innocent flirting in the office, but nothing that out of line. Derek thinks he’s just trying to be nice, but Lisa takes it way too seriously. At the Christmas party, she tries to seduce him, and fails, and later, she will show up in his car with no clothes on, to try again. Again, she fails. But she does not give up. She is obsessed (it’s the title, get it?) with Derek, and thinks that he is in love with her, and plans to leave his wife. He wants none of these things, but it does not stop Lisa from coming back again and again to try and get what she wants.

I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime in the past few decades, studio executives decided that audiences want everything in their movies to be black and white. If you remember Fatal Attraction, you will remember that Douglas does actually sleep with Close at the beginning of the film. His wife is away, and he takes advantage of the freedom to have what he thinks is a fun one night stand, only to end up getting far more than he bargained for (Close actually ends up pregnant with Douglas’s child if you remember correctly). By making Derek in this movie completely innocent of any real wrong doing – just the object of obsession of a crazy woman, it removes some of the complexity of the story, and to be honest, much of the interest. Close may be deranged in that film, but she certainly does have reason to be angry with Douglas. In this film, Lisa is just a nutcase from beginning to end, and somehow that just is not nearly as interesting.

The performances in the movie are probably about as good as you could expect. Elba has always projected a kind of quiet, stern dignity, and he does so again here, and it serves him well. Beyonce is not really given all that much to do, except get angry a lot (it strikes me as odd that she is one of the producers of the film. Does she not realize that the role she wants is Larter’s?). Larter, even if she can never hope to match Glenn Close, does do a very convincing job of being a nutcase. I was hoping at some point the fact that Derek and Sharon are African American, and Larter is white, would come up, but everyone seems to ignore it in the film. Once again, an opportunity to add some complexity to the movie is lost. The filmmakers are simply interested in making a straight ahead thriller. There’s nothing wrong with that really, except for the fact that Obsessed is not all that thrilling. Yes, it held my interest, and I never really was bored by the film, but I continually wondered what the point of it all was. Why did anyone decide that this film should be made? I honestly have no clue. Obsessed could have been a lot better had anyone involved in making the film showed any ambition. Because they didn’t, the film is what it is, and nothing more. Pity.

Movie Review: Cold Souls

Cold Souls ***
Directed By: Sophie Barthes.
Written By: Sophie Barthes.
Starring: Paul Giamatti (Paul), Dina Korzun (Nina), Emily Watson (Claire), David Strathairn (Dr. Flintstein), Katheryn Winnick (Sveta), Lauren Ambrose (Stephanie), Boris Kievsky (Oleg), Oksana Lada (Sasha), Natalia Zvereva (Anastasia), Rebecca Brooksher (Yelena).

Paul Giamatti is struggling with finding the heart of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, a role he will be playing on Broadway soon. Afraid that he will make a fool of himself, he thinks he may be able to connect better with Vanya if he can take himself out of the equation. When he reads an article in the New Yorker about a new procedure where he can have his soul removed, and stored in safety, he reluctantly decides to do it. But while he is now disconnected with himself, without a soul he finds he cannot connect with Vanya either. So he returns to the office and “rents” a soul of a Russian poet. While this helps his performance in Vanya, the soul is too big for him. He just wants his old soul back. But when he returns for the third time, he discovers that his soul is missing. Apparently, it has been smuggled out of the controller by a “soul mule” Nina (Dina Korzun), where it has been implanted into Russian soap star Sveta (Katheryn Winnick), who thinks she is getting the soul of Al Pacino.

Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls would like nothing more than to be this year’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That film after all was another one where a new technology that is meant to make human life easier, but all it really does it take away an essential part of what it means a human being. But Cold Souls is not nearly as good as Eternal Sunshine was. For one thing, this film is not as deliriously visually inventive, or quite as intelligently written as the other film, and for another with the exception of Paul Giamatti, the rest of the characters are not nearly as well defined. For another, it is impossible not to think of the previous film during pretty much every scene in this one. But considering this is Barthes’ first film, it is remarkable just how ambition she shows, and how good most of the film is.

Barthes lucked out by getting Giamatti for the lead role. Like John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich, he plays himself, but I suspect that both of these actors do not bare all that much resemblance to the versions of themselves that they play. But it hardly matters. Giamatti brilliantly plays off his own image as that actor that everyone knows, but no one can name. He plays himself as a flustered loser, who stutters and stammers his way through pretty much every scene in the movie. It is a brilliant performance, and considering that he is at the center of pretty much every scene in the film, it makes the film worthwhile. Also wonderful is David Straithairn as Dr. Flintstein, the man behind the Soul Storage place, who is part doctor, part New Age healer and part car salesman. Dina Korzun, an actress I did not know before this movie, does a very good job as the soul mule, who starts to feel for Giamatti, even though she no longer has a soul of her own. I do have to wonder however what talented actresses like Emily Watson and Lauren Ambrose saw in their cookie cutter roles in this film.

Overall, Cold Souls is an uncommonly intelligent movie. If it at times a little to subdued, it makes up for it by mining one interesting idea after another. The ending of the film is ambiguous, and at the same time heartbreaking. If Barthes does not quite succeed in accomplishing everything she set out to do in her debut film, he accomplishes enough to show that at some point in her career, she most likely will.

Movie Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ** ½
Directed By: Stephen Sommers.
Written By: Stuart Beattie and David Elliot & Paul Lovett and Michael Gordon & Stephen Sommers.
Starring: Channing Tatum (Duke), Sienna Miller (Ana/Baroness), Marlon Wayans (Ripcord), Dennis Quaid (General Hawk), Christopher Eccleston (McCullen/Destro), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Doctor/Rex), Byung-hun Lee (Storm Shadow), Rachel Nichols (Shana 'Scarlett' O'Hara), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Heavy Duty), Saïd Taghmaoui (Breaker), Ray Park (Snake Eyes), Jonathan Pryce (U.S. President), Arnold Vosloo (Zartan).

No one is going to accuse GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra of being an intelligent movie. It is in effect one of the stupidest movies of the year. It is a film that really does not have a brain in its head, with its strange pseudo science, ridiculous plot and characters that are all one dimensional at best. And yet, I have to admit that I certainly did not dislike the movie as much as say the most recent Transformers movie. Yes, the movie is silly. But it is also fun to a certain extent. So while I cannot actually recommend the movie, I cannot say that it’s bad either.

The plot revolves around a new warhead developed by MARS, the world’s leading Weapons Company. The warhead utilizes nano-technology, essentially sending millions of small, robot bugs that eat can eat through anything. Once the bugs are unleashed, they cannot be stopped for any reason without hitting the “kill switch”. Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are assigned to head up the team to deliver the warheads to NATO. They are attacked by a highly organized, villainous group, headed up by Ana (Sienna Miller), Duke’s old fiancée. The only thing that stops Ana and her team from getting the warhead is that an elite task force known as G.I. Joe shows up and stops them. But Ana is not easily deterred. It turns out that McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), the head of MARS wants to steal his warheads back. It is part of his plan for; you guessed it, world domination. His team includes the brilliant Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose evil inventions have helped MARS become the dominant player in the arms race that they are.

Duke and Ripcord end up part of the GI Joe team, headed up by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), which is a multi-national effort made up of the best of the best. Also on the team is Shana “Scarlett” O’Hara (Rachel Nichols), a brilliant, but overly analytical woman, Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), whose specializes in what appears to be brute force, Breaker (Said Taghmaoui)), a computer genius and Snake Eyes (Ray Park), a kung fu expert, whose dark past includes a rivalry with Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), the kung fu expert who works for MARS.

The film is essentially made up of scenes of where the Joes have the fight to people from MARS using such advanced technology as Accelerator suits, which essentially make the wearer invincible, underwater submarines that handle like the space ships from Star Wars and planes that can fly from Moscow to Washington in approximately 15 minutes. So yes, the action sequences are utterly ridiculous, and the already perfunctory dialogue becomes downright ridiculous in these scenes, but director Stephen Sommers (the first two Mummy films and Van Helsing) really does know how to stage these action sequences in a fun way.

The actors in the movie do what they can in their roles, but they are expected to deliver some inane dialogue, and hold back secrets from their past for now reason other than that the movies plot would fall apart if they reveal anything too soon. Yet, for the most part, I did enjoy the actors. Dennis Quaid seems bored in the film, but he does project the necessary authority to play a General. Channing Tatum really only has one expression as an actor, but it serves him well in this movie. Marlon Wayans has way too much fun playing Ripcord, the overly cocky guy, who falls for Nichols’ Scarlett, who is essentially playing a poor man’s Bones (the wonderful Emily Deschanel from the TV show of the same name for those who didn’t get the reference). Eccelson’s Scottish accent is a little distracting at times, but he does spit out his venomous dialogue with delight. But the two best performances belong to Sienna Miller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Miller does a wonderful job playing the femme fatale Ana. She is smart and sexy, even without taking her clothes off (this may be the first film I have seen her in where she does not disrobe at some point). Gordon-Levitt is even better as the demented doctor, who has the marked disadvantage of having his voice changed, and most of his face covered, but his mad eyes are fascinating. He is always great, and even when given a seemingly nothing role like this, he is wonderful.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is not really a good movie. It is a movie that certainly not intelligent in any sense of the word. It is an incredibly stupid, silly movie. But I think that perhaps the film makers knew just how dumb this movie was, and decided to embrace that stupidity for all it was worth. They never take the film too seriously. It is certainly not a good movie. But damned if it is not entertaining in fits and starts. G.I. Joe is a guilty pleasure, in the best sense of the word.

Movie Review: Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia ***
Directed By: Nora Ephron.

Written By: Nora Ephron based on the books by Julie Powell and Julia Child.

Starring: Meryl Streep (Julia Child), Amy Adams (Julie Powell), Stanley Tucci (Paul Child), Chris Messina (Eric Powell), Linda Emond (Simone Beck), Helen Carey (Louisette Bertholle), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Sarah), Jane Lynch (Dorothy McWilliams).

Everyone knows who Julia Child is. She became an American icon during the 1960s for her cookbooks and her television show, teaching ordinary housewives how to cook. She was essentially Martha Stewart decades before Martha Stewart was. My guess is that most people have no idea who Julie Powell is. In the summer of 2002, she was an office drone, whose job essentially consisted of answering the phone and taking complaints from anyone who had an opinion on 9/11, and what they were planning on doing with Ground Zero. She is miserable, until she decides that what she needs to do is cook her way through Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, and record her experiences on her blog. She becomes a minor celebrity in her own right. The movie Julie and Julia tells both of their stories, when they are struggling to make their dreams come true.

If that sounds cheesy, well, that’s because the movie is a little cheesy. Yet it is also entertaining. It succeeds in not only telling one story, but separate ones, and tying them together in an interesting way. I know that many reviewers seem to enjoy Child’s story more than Powell’s, but I actually both equally entertaining. Meryl Streep does a wonderful job, not just impersonating Child - which she does do with aplomb and skill - but also making the icon into a real person who we care about. Stanley Tucci, who plays her beloved husband Paul, certainly helps. Their chemistry together makes this seem like a real couple. But Amy Adams may have the more difficult role as Julie Powell. Unlike Streep, she does not have the benefit of playing someone who everyone in the audience would recognize, but instead has to make us care about a character that on the surface is a little whiny and self involved. Chris Messina plays her husband Eric, and like Tucci does with Streep, he helps to humanize Powell, making her more sympathetic and human. We like Powell just as much as we like Child.

The performances are really the reason to watch the film. It was written and directed by Nora Ephron, who specializes in chick flicks like this. She is slightly more intelligent than most of the filmmakers who work in this genre. Instead of the typical formula where the lead actress (or in this case actresses) meet their husbands, and fall in love, this is a film about two women who are already in love and married when the movie opens. The film deals honestly with the reality of relationships - they are not always easy, but the couples get through it because they love and support each other, even if their spouse drives them crazy sometimes.

The film also has another going for it - the food. Here is a movie in which practically every scene in the film involves cooking of some sort, and the food looks amazing. This is not a movie that you see on an empty stomach. Instead, it is a film you see than go out with friends for a good meal afterwards. The healing power of food is something that this film certainly believes in - and makes you believe in it as well.

The film does have its problems, the biggest one being that the film is overlong. It has at least two endings too many. As the film winds down, I started to grow a little restless. From the beginning, we know how these two stories are going to end, and at a certain point, I got a little tired of waiting for the film to catch up to me.

But for a film as full of joy as this one is, it is a minor complaint. Here is a movie that makes you care about its characters, their trials and tribulations. We genuinely want to see things work out for both of the women in this film, and even though we know from the outset that they will, it is still a joyous feeling when both women get what they want. Julie and Julia may not be a great film, but it certainly is an entertaining one.

Movie Review: Thirst

Thirst *** 1/2
Directed By: Chan-wook Park.
Written By: Chan-wook Park and Seo-Gyeong Jeong based on the novel by Emile Zola.
Starring: Kang-ho Song (Priest Sang-hyeon), Ok-vin Kim (Tae-joo), Hae-sook Kim (Lady Ra), Ha-kyun Shin (Kang-woo), In-hwan Park (Priest Noh), Dal-su Oh (Yeong-doo), Young-chang Song (Seung-dae), Mercedes Cabral (Evelyn), Eriq Ebouaney (Immanuel).

I wonder if Chan-wook Park has read the Twilight books. I wonder this because Thirst, his new film, bares some striking similarities to Stephanie Meyer’s books. It is a tale of obsessive love between a reluctant vampire and a human. The vampire here is a Priest, Sang-hyeon (the great Kang-ho Song) who with the best of intentions travels to Africa to take part in a test of a vaccine for a deadly new virus. All the other test patients die, but Sang does not. This is because one of the blood transfusions he receives is from a vampire, and that powerful blood fights off the disease. He becomes a sort of folk hero - the Bandaged Saint - and people want him to pray for their sick loved ones. What they do not know is in order to keep the disease in his blood in check, he needs to drink human blood. Since he works in a hospital, he has access to it. He takes blood from a coma patient he was friendly with. It does not hurt the patient, and it saves Sang from having to kill. It’s win-win.

That is until Sang reconnects with an old friend Kang-woo (Ha-kyun Shin), who now has cancer. Miraculously, after he prays from him, the cancer disappears. Sang is adopted into the family, where he starts spending more and more time. He does not much like Kang-woo - he is a weak, whiny little man - or his mother, Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim), who is a cruel, spiteful lady. But he is drawn to Kang-woo’s wife Tae-joo (Ok-win Kim), a sad young woman. Like himself, she was abandoned by her family at a young age, when Lady Ra took her in. She has spent most of her life as essentially a slave for the family, and forced into a marriage that she never wanted. Sang cannot keep his eyes off of her, and when they meet on the street late one night, they share a connection. They immediately want each other, but Sang is stricken with guilt over his feelings. Whenever he gets an erection, he beats his himself with his flute. But much like his thirst for human blood, he can only control his sexual feelings for so long before he cannot take it anymore, and gives into his baser desires.

It is around this point where the focus of the movie shifts from Sang to Tae-joo, who is one of the most complex, fascinating female characters of the year. We feel sympathy for her almost immediately, as she after all has spent almost her entire life as a slave to this family. She does all the housework, the cooking and takes care of Kang-woo’s needs. When she takes out a pair of shears, and mimes killing her husband, we understand that urge. When she runs out on the street night after night, we get that to. She is drawn to Sang because as a Priest he is supposed to be unattainable. When he reveals his secret to her, she is at first horrified, but quickly gets over it. She is turned on even more by the idea of having sex with a vampire than she was by having sex with a priest. But soon having sex with him is not enough. She starts manipulating him to try and get out of her situation. And then she decides that maybe being a vampire might be fun. She does not have the control that Sang has though.

I mentioned Twilight off the top of the review, and it was something that I came back to time and again while watching Thirst. Twilight has a romantic view of being in love with a vampire. The erotic thrill, the self restraint and deprivation (Edward and Bella of course wait until after they are married before the have sex - and of course when they do it is mind blowing). But Thirst takes a much darker look. Sang, like Edward, falls in love with a woman, and is willing to give up everything for her. But unlike Bella, Tae-joo is not worth it. The kinky thrill becomes too much for her. The power she has over Sang, and then over everyone else when she becomes a vampire is too much for her. She feels invincible, and she goes at it full bore. Newcomer Ok-vin Kim gives one of the most mesmerizing performances of the year, alternating between sadness, glee, lust and sadistic pleasure. It is the type of performance that never gets nominated at the Oscars - but should.

Chan-wook Park has made a name for himself with extreme films like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance - his loosely related “revenge trilogy”, which were all brutally violent to the point where no matter how acclaimed they were (and Oldboy was hugely acclaimed), no major studios would pick them up for distribution. Thirst, while just as bloody as the other films, is also a little more over the top than his other films. There is gallons of blood spilled in the film, but when it happens it is a strange mixture of erotic, comic and horrific - no where more so than in the scene where Sang turns Tae-joo into a vampire, as he forces her to suck blood from his wrist, while at the same time sucking blood from her. Or a scene where Tae-joo throws up an impossible amount of blood in a pure, white room. The sex scenes are equally over the top. While they do not require the acrobatics that say the scenes in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution did, they are not really realistic either. All these scenes are meant to shock, horrify and titillate the audience - and they succeed brilliantly.

Thirst is an odd film, but one that is never less than completely fascinating and involving. From one scene to the next, I honestly had no idea what was going to happen. While it may sound like a criticism to say that Thirst is a horror movie that is not really scary, in this case it isn’t. Thirst isn’t meant to be scary. It’s got much bigger issues on its mind.

DVD Releases: August 4, 2009

It’s been a hectic week, so I got behind on this. Luckily, there were not many DVD releases this week, so I was able to get this one off by the end of the week. I missed both Obsessed and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in theaters (but I rented them, so I should have reviews up next week) along with Race to Witch Mountain, which honestly, I still think I’m going to skip. But there were two great releases on DVD this week, as well as another film that may play better on DVD then it did when I saw it in the theaters a few months ago. There was nothing of note that I had seen in terms of older releases, so this week is short – just three.

Che ****
Now that both halves of Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant Che are on DVD, I feel safe to recommend it. Separately, both films are wonderful, but together they are so much better. The first film, The Argentine, tells Che’s story from the time he is drawn into the movement throughout the Cuban Revolution, culminating in his trip to the UN in the mid-1960s. This is the more standard biopic of the two films, cutting back and forth in time, and showing the high point of Che’s life. The second film, Guerilla, is much more narrowly focused, concentrating solely on Che’s failed attempt to duplicate the success of the Cuban revolution in Bolivia. The first film, shot in widescreen, shows Che surrounded by friends and wide open spaces. The second film has a much narrower aspect ratio, as the sides of the screen seem to be closing in on him, much like the Bolivian army. This film did not get the recognition it deserved when it was released late last year. It is a great one. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/02/movie-review-che.html

Gommorah ****
Matteo Garone’s Gomorrah is one of the best modern mob movies ever made. It has the feel of an epic, as it cuts between five different stories set in Naples, where the Commora hold sway over just about everything. They run things much more like a business than a criminal enterprise, although when punishment needs to be dealt out, it is swift, violent and severe. Having just come back from Italy, where I spent a day in Naples, the movie has been swimming in my mind ever since. This is a great film, and it is a shame that the conservative Academy overlooked it for the Foreign Language Oscar last year. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/03/movie-review-gomorrah.html

The Soloist ** ½
In my mind, Robert Downey Jr. can do no wrong. He is pretty much the only reason to see Joe Wright’s (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement) true life drama about a reporter (Downey) who befriends an autistic musical genius (Jamie Foxx). Downey makes the overly sentimental and manipulative movie watchable – and at times even enjoyable. Foxx also does a fine job, but in a less difficult role. The movie is not terrible, but it should have, and could have, been better. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/04/movie-review-solosit.html