The beginning of Season 6 of 24 is the best thing since the invention of Hot Pockets

And believe me, I love me a hot pocket. **Spoilers**

For God's sake, they nuked Los Angeles.

This is the first time I've ever watched 24, aside from the occasional passing-by on Fox or A&E. I've always thought it was stupid on paper, that Jack Bauer was like Superman without the kryptonite. That being said, I'm a changed man after miraculously finding the first four episodes of season six on DVD. Bauer has such a character arc, having not much to live for but still being the most important person in the president's phone book.

And yeah, it's intense. This is maybe the best television I've ever seen, right up there with LOST and THE WIRE. Anyone who would watch shlock like HEROES over this on Mondays deserves to be donkey punched.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.

What a dream of a film ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is. It drifts in and out of reality, much like writer Charlie Kaufman’s first film, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH did, but this is better. It’s deeper, funnier, more moving, works more creatively, and has the one element that sets it above MALKOVICH, love at its core.

Dissatisfied with her life and wanting to move on after a long relationship ended sloppily, a young woman named Clementine undergoes a new procedure in which she has her memory of her ex-boyfriend completely erased. The boyfriend, Joel, feels the same way when he hears about her erasing, so he undergoes the procedure. Love’s a bitch, so why think about it when it hurts, right?

Herein lies the problem, and the message that ETERNAL SUNSHINE speaks of: Should love be erased? Joel and Clementine are brought to fervent life by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, and these are the deepest characters either have ever played. Their love is reluctant, because they aren't really compatible people. They struggle, but they really are in love. It's frustrating, but real. And after all is said and done, is it best to throw it away to avoid pain?

Director Michel Gondry brings everything together. He weaves the intricate, complicated screenplay with the two phenomenal lead performances, understated but wondrous visual effects, and a sense of permeating melancholia. As the memory-erasing team (a surprisingly fleshed out team of characters played by Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Wilkonson) burns through every thought Joel has about Clementine, the film takes off. As the 'erasers' dig deeper into his psyche, Joel realizes he doesn't want to lose the best, even if they're bittersweet, moments of his life.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE hits on every field. Subtle but undeniably moving performances by a quiet Jim Carrey and lively Kate Winslet reflect one of the basic themes of the movie: erase the dark memories or leave them in the light? It is an exceptional romance at the core of an exceptional fantasy, one where the special effects are impressive but subtle and don't ever take over the viewer's attention.

What a ride. Great performances. True love that refuses to be split up even when memory is gone. An extraordinary script that gets better the farther from the constraints of reality. ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a masterpiece. Anyone who has experienced hard losses or been in love should see this.

A+

CHILDREN OF MEN

"As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd, what happens in a world without children's voices."

The definitive movie epic of 2006 has arrived, ladies and gentlemen.

CHILDREN OF MEN is a miraculously great movie, a film that triumphs on every conceivable level and reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place. It touches on every emotion I've ever experienced in a theater; excitement, dread, fear, laughter, emotional connection, romantic bliss, and awe. It didn't just make me scared, it made me clutch my seat. It didn't just make me sad, it made me shed a tear (believe me, I never cry during movies). It didn't just surprise me, it made me jump out of my seat and my jaw drop. It didn't just make me laugh or force a message on me, it made me genuinely happy.


Taking place in 2027 Britain, director Alfonso Cuarón presents a world that is in ruins and is becoming exponentially worse and worse every day. Why, you ask? Women are infertile. Nobody really knows why, but there hasn't been a birth in over eighteen years. The film opens with a boom as the news headlines read that the youngest person in the world, 'Baby Diego', eighteen years and change, has been stabbed. It is in the coffee shop we are introduced to Theo, a world-weary nobody who has been de-sensitized to pretty much everything, who doesn't care about the youngest and most famous person on the planet being murdered, and who skips out of work to get stoned with his hippy friend Jasper. The two are played by Clive Owen and Michael Caine, in mesmerizing performances (although Caine doesn't get much screentime).


Theo is not the only lasting thing the audience gets from the opening scene in the coffee shop. As soon as he walks out, the shop explodes. Not only does it explode, but it does so in one continuous take, from the opening frame of the film to Theo's reaction, spilling his coffee and clutching his ears. This image shakes the audience and gets us into the mindset of the film: intense, to the point, and viscerally amazing. Cuarón moves his camera unlike any other director in any other film I have ever seen. Altman and Scorsese know how to move through a scene, but they have never orchestrated the controlled chaos the obviously gifted Mexican director displays here. One scene, a battle between the British army and a group of insurgents (reflecting the times in Iraq, quite clearly), moves through blocks, with debris falling and exploding, for seven entire minutes, without a single cut. The audience isn't just watching it, they're practically living it.


I've gotten carried away. The story moves quickly, and Theo soon finds himself caught up in a very important assignment. An ex-flame, now considered a terrorist (Julianne Moore) asks him to get fake transit papers for a girl (Claire-Hope Ashitey) named Kee that she needs to have leave the country. The British government is cracking down on illegal immigrants hard though, and the girl is one. Theo's world is turned upside down when it turns out the girl is actually the first mother in almost two decades. Not only is she pregnant, but she is wanted.


Here is where Clive Owen's acting chops are put to the test. He begins as a disheartened, disillusioned man who really doesn't care about anything anymore. What's the point? Everything is going to be gone in fifty years to him. He is thrust into a situation he didn't want to be in and at first tries to opt out of. The essentialness of it dawns on him quickly, and he realizes that this young black woman and her baby are the most important people the world has ever known. The interaction between Theo and Kee is extraordinary and original; there isn't really a romantic bond between them, nor a paternal one, but there is definitely a co-dependency between them.
As the world falls apart around them, Theo and Kee trek onward on their impossible journey to the coast of England. When I say the world is falling apart, I mean it. Trash lines the most public city streets, and violence and chaos engulf the nation. It is never really said whether or not the world has succumbed to nuclear fallout, but an early news commercial reads of how New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Bangladesh, and other major cities have fallen over the world. Meanwhile, Britain 'soldiers on'. Cuarón and his team have crafted the most elaborate future Earth in any movie I have ever seen, with amazing attention to detail. Where most films' dystopian outlooks are dominated by special effects, Cuarón, Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezky, and Production Designer Jim Clay have made and shot a devastatingly real future, corroding on the inside and the outside. It is as well-photographed as any film in the last decade, and the impossibly long shots are extraordinarily authentic. No scene is there for filler, nor are there characters who are out of place or cliché-driven. This is a masterpiece, as haunting as it is beautiful, as bleak as it is ultimately hopeful, and as authentic as it is surreal.

A+

JARHEAD

Part Six in My Examination of War in Film

"Fuck politics. We're here. All the rest is bullshit."

In retrospect, JARHEAD isn't exactly the extraordinary masterpiece I thought it was last year. It took the top spot on my "Best of 2005" last fall for a while, but it really isn't the film I thought it was after another trip on DVD. That being said, a film can be damn good without being a masterpiece. JARHEAD is.

There are two ways to look at JARHEAD in my mind. On one hand, it is a spectacularly realistic look through American soldiers' eyes in the Iraq/Kuwait conflict in which boredom was the real enemy. On the other hand it is a look at how one a man becomes a soldier, he is a soldier forever. "A man fires a rifle for many years. and he goes to war. And afterwards he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life - build a house, love a woman, change his son's diaper - he will always remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying, they will always be me. We are still in the desert."

The film opens with a sequence reminiscent of FULL METAL JACKET, in which PFC Anthony Swafford, played intensely by Jake Gyllenhaal, fulfills his life duty by joining the Marines in 1990. Young, dumb, and ideal, Swafford begins to realize that his time in the Corps may not turn out exactly what he thought it would be like. His father served before him in Vietnam, but only talked about his experience once. Maybe this aura and level of secrecy made him hunger to be a soldier even more, the audience never finds out. What Swafford finds out is that he will not be charging into battles with guns blazing. He will snipe, waiting silently without moving, for days, praying that no one will see him and that he will be able to take a single shot.

His partner is PFC Troy, an inward, quiet, troubled young man. Peter Sarsgaard plays him, offering the film's best performance. He is a man who has chosen the Marines because he has nowhere else no go; a no-nonsense man who hopes that he will be in the Corps the rest of his life, even though he doesn't want to be, or think that he will be there. His frustration is affecting and visible as he begins to emotionally break down towards the climax of the film. This could be his only tour of duty. How can he live it without even firing his rifle?

While these two characters are fleshed out and authentic, the supporting cast is really a bunch of clichés. Jamie Foxx is solid as the drill sergeant who believes his job is 'the best in the world and really brings some relish to the role, but the rest of the supporting chaaracters are re-hashes of older, better ones: the hick, the dork, the horn dog, etc. etc.

Towards the end of the film, especially in its final sequence, there is an abandonement of the realistic account of the soldiers' war in order for a 'message' to be instilled. I don't know whether this was written in Swafford's memoir, which the film is adapted from, but the ending is preachy, shoving it in the face that a man who fights in a war will always be a soldier, no matter what he does. Sprinkled throughout the film are conjectures that argue that maybe a soldier's experience will always stay with him and even shape who he becomes, but the ending shoves it down the audience's throat.

That being said, JARHEAD is a very, very good film. A near-masterpiece, even. It is certainly entertaining, and the middle passages are involving even though little goes on in the lives of the soldiers. I haven't been on a battlefield myself, but this seemed to be an accurate portrayal of how fighting, or a lack of fighting, can mess a man's mind up. It is a transcendent film for much of its running time, and I can still almost feel the heat and the lack of women or entertainment in my mind.

A-

I love the new Oscar Poster

Simple. Poignant. Entertaining, if only for a minute. The quotes are pretty great as well. I'm betting this will be one of the best things the Academy does this year (My gut is telling me that THE DEPARTED is going to be shut out for the more Oscar bait-ish LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA).

Yes, You Can Enjoy THE DEPARTED Online

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gWxoBbE7JQ

If for some lame reason you didn't see THE DEPARTED in the theaters, and you're too happy in the pants to wait until DVD to see it (February 13th, mark your calendars), you can see the entire thing on YouTube. The quality sucks, but at least watch the opening sequence (Jack, you're one cool motherfuckin cat).

The Saddam Video...

Is fucked up.

Believe me, I'm glad the bastard is dead. He's the reason why we're in a fucking war right now, with nineteen-year-old American women coming home without legs or missing a nose from a mortar shell hitting their convoy. He's the reason hundreds of thousands of people are dead in the middle east. Not just dead, savagely murdered, I should point out. He deserved to die, and there's no way around it in my mind.

It's just kind of amazing, in a cold, distant way, to see a man die. BOOM. He was alive one second, dead the next. To hear his neck snap in two, with a sound similar to a gunshot, is creepy. I would obviously feel a bit more sympathetic if he wasn't the biggest piece of hate the world has seen in a ruler since the fall of Stalin, but still it's a man's life ending.

On lighter note, how did they film the whole two and a half minutes the execution took? Seriously, fifteen seconds of video on my phone is like, twenty percent of the battery.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

-"We Catholics got the church. The Irish got their pubs. Hell, even the niggers got their music. What do you got?"
-"I've got The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting."

It is no coincidence that THE GOOD SHEPHERD and THE GODFATHER PART II share so much in common in terms of themes and structure. The latter made Robert De Niro a star in the mid-70s, earning him an Oscar and establishing him as one of the best method actors of all-time. The film is about the implosive nature of a man (Al Pacino's Michael Corleone) who watches his dreams and his family's innocence crumble before him, all because of his job.

In THE GOOD SHEPHERD, De Niro's second film as a director, Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson. Wilson is recruited by Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin) and General Bill Sullivan (De Niro) out of Yale during WWII to work for them in a new foreign intelligence service, what would later become the CIA. De Niro and Baldwin's characters are really bit parts, but they are interesting and leave a lasting impression. Both have at least given up their bodies for their duties, Murach from smoking (it keeps the stress of the job away for at least a second) and a wound that Allen received during the line of duty restricts him to a wheelchair, his feet corroding.

Early on, Wilson falls hard and fast for a deaf colleague named Laura (Tammy Blanchard) from Yale, who understands and can relate to him being a man of action, not words. To his dismay though, a seductress sister of a friend (Angelina Jolie) overpowers him one night at a work-related party, and he impregnates her, only weeks before heading out to what will turn out to be a six-year tour in Europe. Again, he sacrifices what he loves and believes in for his country (this example may be a stretch, but I felt it was still realistic).

As complex as the film is, it isn't too difficult to keep up with, unlike Damon's 2005 film SYRIANA, which deconstructed the oil industry. This is a fascinating and absorbing look into the cold world of spying, where double-crossings are normal and no one is trustable. The more and more Wilson is exposed to and in control of the violence and dark dealings of the information industry, the more of his soul he sacrifices.

One of the most interesting relationships of the film is that between Wilson and his son Edward Jr., played by Eddie Redmayne as a young adult and as a child by Tommy Nelson. Edward returns from Europe when his child is six years old, seeing him for the first time. He returns an even more bitter, cold, and implosive man than before. He is only in his mid-twenties, too. He has seen death, corruption, and has cheated on his wife he barely knows. He doesn't really have much to live for, but doesn't really have anyone to tell who will listen. Edward Jr. represents a light at the end of the tunnel for him, an uncorrupted boy who still has a world of options. It is a tragedy to Edward Sr. and the audience that the son chooses to follow the same road his father did, a road toward spydom, and eventual self-torture.

If I were to describe THE GOOD SHEPHERD in one word, it would be "deep". It is a moving account of a troubled man. De Niro directs it with solemn respect, usually a negative term. Believe me when I say it, I mean it positively here. This is a tragic film about a tragic, cold character, yet it is always absorbing throughout its 160-minute running time. It also plays as a complex film about the in-and-outs of the early days of the CIA, and is filled with terrific performances (woah, Joe Pesci!) and superb cinematography, evoking a dark period in world history.

A

LITTLE CHILDREN

"It's the hunger, the hunger for an alternative, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness."

Ever since Sam Mendes’s AMERICAN BEAUTY won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1999, there has been a wave of ‘suburbia’ films, all of which haven’t dealt with the topic as well as Mendes’s masterpiece did. The closest any film came to matching the subtle drama and razor-sharp wit of AMERICAN BEAUTY was first-time director Todd Field’s 2001 film IN THE BEDROOM, which was good, but a little overbearing.

His newest film (and still only his second) is LITTLE CHILDREN. The film has been under the radar every since its October limited release, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why Miramax hasn’t pushed harder for it. It is a challenging, thought-provoking film headlined by an Oscar-worthy turn by Kate Winslet. She is middle-aged housewife Sarah, who finds herself in a rut; a stay-at-home mom who has absolutely no excitement in her life. Her husband masturbates to pornography and always works, and every day she takes her daughter to the same park to waqtch her play the same games, while listening to the same women talk the same gossip.

Her life is turned upside down when a new man enters her life. He is played by Patrick Wilson, and is Brad, just another man stuck in a rut. A stay-at-home dad (even more degrading to him) who also takes care of his child during the day. He is going for the bar exam for the third time, but never feels the urge to study. He is in a constant daze, similar to SarahThey aren’t necessarily unhappy with their lives. They’re just bored.

The two slowly begin an heated affair. Winslet exposes all, twelve (yes, twelve) times in various sex scenes. There is an intimate and exciting electricity between the two adulterous spouses, who view this as the first action in years. This is not the only action in the film though. There is a steady growing of energy and tension as events take place in a way that strangely brought DO THE RIGHT THING to my mind. An unnamed narrator injects feeling and thoughtfulness into an already teeming story. Located near a train station, the suburban setting's tension escalates as the film progresses, with such conflicts as a convicted child offender moving in taking center stage.

I have forgotten to mention two of the film's best performances, shame on me. Jackie Earle Haley plays the child molester, a socially disabled pervert who still is not naturally a bad person. "Just because you've done a bad thing doesn't make you bad," says his mother, who takes care of him. The character is twisted and complex, at times innocent, at other times pathetic, likeable, or despicable. Haley taps all of these emotions masterfully. The underrated character actor Noah Emmerich plays against type, as an aggressive ex-cop with a dark past (darker than the convicted child molester's, maybe) who takes his anger and frustrations with life out on the man locked in his mother's home. Both of these are great characters, and Haley and Emmerich go for broke.

At its heart, LITTLE CHILDREN is about wanting to be more. Not only do Sarah and Brad have a passionate affair, but Sarah buys a new bathing suit and Brad joins a football team. Looking good means feeling good, right? At the end, Sarah, Brad, and the two sociopaths have all reached a peace within themselves, in different ways. This is a mini-masterpiece, and deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

A

2007 Viewing Log

Trying to catch up on a month off, and I think I'll keep this as a sort of 'sticky post', one I'll update every time I see/review a movie, to the best of my ability. I'll write a sentence or two here, then post the link to the review once I get it up. And without further adieu, the films I've seen in 2007 (to the extent that I can remember).

001. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) A+
002. Jarhead (Sam Mendes, 2005) A-
003. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) A+
004. The Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006) A-
005. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) A
006. 21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, 2003) A+
007. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965) A+
008. The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987) B+
009. Crank (Mark Neveldine, 2006) B+
010. The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973) B
011. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003) A+
012. The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald, 2006) A-
013. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977) A
014. Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007) D
015. The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006) C-
016. Flags of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood, 2006) C-
017. Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, 2006) B
018. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) A+
019. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) A-
020. 300 (Zack Snyder, 2007) BEST MOVIE EVER
021. Music & Lyrics (Marc Lawrence, 2007) B
022. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) A-
023. Blades of Glory (Josh Gordon and Will Speck, 2007) B
024. Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932) A-
025. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick, 2006) B
026. Jackass: Number 2 (Jeff Tremaine) A
027. The Lookout (Scott Frank, 2007) B
028. Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2007) A
029. Hollywoodland (Allen Coulter, 2006) B
030. Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006) A-
031. American Beauty [4th] (Sam Mendes, 1999) A+
032. Facing the Giants (Alex Kendrick, 2006) B-
033. The Secret (Mike Beriot, 2006) A+
034. Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007) A-
035. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006) A
036. 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007) B
037. Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) A
038. Smokin' Aces (Joe Carnahan, 2007) B
039. The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006) A-
040. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007) A-
041. Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro, 2006) B
042. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) A+
043. Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) A+
044. 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2003) A
045. Ocean's Thirteen (Steven Soderbergh, 2007) A
046. Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001) [15th time?] A+
047. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Tim Story, 2007) B-
048. Oldboy (Chan-woo Park, 2003) A
049. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002) A
050. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007) A+
051. Bridge to Terabithia (Gabor Csupo, 2007) B
052. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006) B+
053. Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) A
054. 1408 (Mikael Haefstrom, 2007) B
055. Live Free or Die Hard (Len Wiseman, 2007) A
056. Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) B+
057. Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990) B

Stuff

TALLADEGA NIGHTS isn't as funny as ANCHORMAN. It's a good example of media oversaturation: I had seen all the funny parts without even seeing the movie. C+

OVER THE HEDGE is better than SHARK TALE and MADAGASCAR, but not in the same league as SHREK or CARS, another recent movie about finding the truly important things in life, basically family. It's entertaining, but not as deep or as visually amazing as CARS. B

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is completely different from what I thought it would be. It's raunchy and pretty funny, but it's sweet. It's about a kid whose new next door neighbor is miraculously a pornstar. It turns out she is out of the business though, and really doesn't want to get back in it. The kid and the girl fall in love, which is pretty implausible, but I really fell for the movie. Elisha Cuthbert is gorgeous, innocent, and fragile, and her performance is really terrific. B+

Gerald Ford, Saddam Hussein, and James Brown all died within a week of each other. It's a conspiracy. Kyle is probably behind it.

Vinny Testaverde came in to the Pats game yesterday afternoon in the fourth quarter and threw a touchdown. He's now thrown one in every year for the past twenty years. That's pretty amazing. He had a great career and is a good guy, and maybe the Hall will recognize him.

It's 2007, in case you missed the party. Carson Daly is a sucky host. Get Terry Bradshaw.

I've seen way too many movies over break. Happy to say though that the good far outweighed the bad.

Happy new year, boys and girls.