Cynical Cinema

In Bruges (10/10):  Violent, hilarious, totally politically-incorrect.  This is a little movie, a smart movie, and very nearly a perfect movie.  Rent it now.

Drillbit Taylor (2/10):  The little chubby kid has some seriously great lines and moments, but that’s all there is to recommend this movie.  The rest of it absolutely sucks.

Meet The Browns:  Tyler Perry is still making movies…this is another one.  Stars Sofia Vergara and Angela Bassett, but it may just not be worthwhile anyway.

City of Men (8/10):  A reasonably good follow-up to the all time classic City of God, this is a spin-off of the TV show in Brazil which was a spin-off of the original movie.

Mad Men Season One:  1960s New York ad agency.  A well-respected, highly regarded TV series that gets it’s DVD release today.

Vantage Point (2/10):  A presidential murder told from several different viewpoints, a la Rashomon.  From all critical viewpoints, however, this movie is dreadful.

Days of Darkness:  A man lives a double life - one life is a fantasy life, the other is real.  In real life he’s a loser.  In his fantasy life, he’s a knight in shining armour, irresistable ladies’ man.  Could go either way.  Denys Arcand directed this French Canadian film, so that’s something on the plus side.

Asterix Et Obelix Contre Cesar (5/10):  The famous French comic books are brought to life in this 1999 film starring Gerard Depardieu and Roberto Benigni.  A little too much reliance on the comic books themselves, but all in all a decent way for kids to learn French.

Asterix Et Obelix:  Mission Cleopatre (6/10):  An even better movie than Contre Cesar, simply because Monica Bellucci is ridiculously hot as Cleopatra.  Ridiculously hot.  Neither of these two films has English subtitles or English dubbing available.

Walker:  Texas Ranger, Season Five (4/10):  If you watch with a developed sense of irony, you may well enjoy this.  But boy, you really can’t take it seriously, or you might have brain failure.

Streets of San Francisco, Season Two Volume One (7/10):  Karl Malden and Michael Douglas are the stars of this series.  One of the best casts for a TV series, and the San Francisco streets are amazing as well.

Also out:

100 Million B.C.
Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd:  Out of Control
Shotgun Stories
X-Files:  Revelations
Time Bomb

Next week:

The Ruins (3/10)
Superhero Movie (2/10)
Funny Games
The Tracey Fragments (4/10)
Stop-Loss (8/10)
Charlie Bartlett (6/10)
Batman:  Gotham Knight
Romulus My Father (4/10)
Blind Eye
Dungeon Girl
Impact Point
Towards Darkness
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue Vol. 2
Bella
Bonneville
Heavy Metal in Baghdad (8/10)
Late Fragment
Stories of Lost Souls
Backyardigans:  The Mighty Match-Up!

The first 20 minutes of In Bruges are absolutely hilarious. Minutes 20 through 25 are heartbreaking and suddenly, crazily brutal. And the last 82 minutes are hilarious and brutal. And all 107 minutes of this movie are joyously, darkly, utterly fantastic. In Bruges has got to be an early candidate for best movie of 2008. It’s beginning to end fantastic, it never stops being side-splittingly funny, and at no point does it ever half-ass anything, shy away from offensive subject matter, or compromise itself in any way. And this movie could well be considered offensive. To everyone. Blacks, whites, natives, Irishmen, Americans, Belgians, and especially the Vietnamese. Fat people, pregnant people, Christians, tourists and especially midgets and dwarves. And boy, is it ever funny.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as Ray and Ken, two Irish hitmen who have just carried out an assignment in London that has gone horribly wrong. Their employer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) has sent them to lay low in Belgium, in a tiny town called Bruges. Bruges is actually a real town in Belgium, one of the prominent “World Heritage Sites” of UNESCO. It’s a famous town because most of the buildings and structures from the medieval era remain intact, and because, like Venice, it is one of the few canal-based cities in the world. There are roads and plazas, but for the most part people get around on the canals. Bruges features dozens of museums, concert halls, festivals, theatres, and sightseeing locations. And that makes the town an absolutely wonderful place to set a movie filled with such coarse language, gratuitous drug use and graphic violence.

Brendan Gleeson gives an absolutely mesmerizing performance as Ken, the hit man who is completely enamored with this quaint little antique town. His glee at seeing the sights is as charming as Bruges itself. Farrell, on the other hand, absolutely hates the place. He hates the tourists, he hates the sights, he hates the quaintness and the charm. And he has never been funnier in his life. On top of his hatred of Bruges, he has an obsession with midgets, (and their tendency to commit suicide in disproportionate numbers), abuses many substances, and is himself suicidal. There is real pathos in his character, and through all the jokes and the ridiculous situations and the violence, he manages to convey a real sense of pain, loss, and heartbreak in his character.

There is certainly violence in this film, but it’s all first-rate violence. And by that I mean that it’s violence played for laughs, then violence done to tear-jerking effect, then violence for the sake of violence, and then violence for the sake of emotional effect. And it’s all letter-perfect. In fact, just about everything in this movie is done to perfection. The recurring themes - suicide, dwarves, honour - could have seemed very contrived in lesser hands. But in this case, every theme fits perfectly into the scope and tone of the movie. A tone which is sometimes dry, sometimes ironic, sometimes totally insane, and always, always, totally ballsy. This movie does not hesitate to break any taboos, to push any limits, to test any outrage the audience might feel.

Gleeson and Farrell are amazing together. They have the sort of relationship Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega had in Pulp Fiction. And many parts of this movie - especially the dialogue and the drug use and the violence - are very reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. And these two Irish hitmen are every bit as funny and interesting as Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta. And then - Ralph Fiennes shows up! Fiennes, one of the great actors in movies, is playing a psychopathic character that is unlike any other he has played in his career. And yet, he is perfectly cast for the role. While his arrival on the scene seems to forecast a darker, less humourous turn to the movie as it reaches it’s bloody peak. And it certainly does get even darker once Fiennes enters the picture, but amazingly, it actually gets funnier too!

In Bruges is that rarest of movies that manages to be dark, comedic, dramatic, violent, charming, sweet, bad-ass, action-packed and clever all at the same time. It even throws in a little romance. This is the first great movie of 2008, opening in limited theatrical release in February. It made a total of 8 million dollars in North America, 21 million worldwide. The Love Guru, which by all accounts is an absolute pile of crap, made 14 million in it’s first weekend. But then, how many people watch the great films at the box office? In Bruges was the film debut for writer and director Martin McDonagh, who is one of the great talents to watch in movies. Some day, In Bruges will be remembered the same way people remember Reservoir Dogs. As the brilliant first film that launched a brilliant career. And you can pick up this wonderful movie today, July 1st, thanks to Alliance Films.

Seth Rogen was clearly the fat kid in high school. The funny fat kid, mind you, but also the one who was picked on a little. Which is why, in every movie he writes, the fat kid gets all the best lines. It worked amazingly well in Superbad with Jonah Hill, and it works almost as well in Drillbit Taylor, out tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment. The fat kid in Drillbit Taylor is played by Troy Gentile, who is almost as good as Hill in Superbad. It’s too bad the rest of the film doesn’t live up to that promise.

Because really, Drillbit Taylor is nothing but a “prequel” to Superbad. The same characters are there - the geeky best friends, one fat one mild-mannered and skinny. Their third friend who is far geekier than either. And the fat kid is still actively trying to get rid of the even-nerdier kid, because he will bring them down in the eyes of the “cool kids”. So - the kids from Superbad, four years earlier. Seth Rogen co-wrote the script for this film with Kristofor Brown, and Judd Apatow produced the movie, so the pieces were in place to make something on the level of Superbad, if not Knocked Up or 40 Year Old Virgin. But…this movie sucks.

It’s not Owen Wilson’s fault. He plays his standard, overly-sincere loser character. But the movie isn’t written to fit his style, his style isn’t adjusted to fit the movie, and he feels miscast because every scene he’s in is worse than every scene where it’s just the kids on their own. And Wilson is in almost every scene. He plays a homeless man who poses as a bodyguard to get hired by some kids to protect them from the high school bully. In order to do this, he poses as a substitute teacher at the school. Making him a homeless guy posing as a bodyguard posing as a teacher. Why is he homeless? He doesn’t have a substance abuse problem or a mental problem. And he seems to be more than willing to work for money - in fact, he’s going WAY out of his way to fake his way into this job…it doesn’t make sense.

Also fairly strange is the school bully. I don’t remember school having bullies like this, ever. Bullying in schools usually involved the threat of force and the teasing and the shoving, but never punching kids and beating them and attacking them on a daily basis. These bullies are implausible, but then if they weren’t so mean and violent, the little kids wouldn’t need a bodyguard. I guess. And the young kids are bullied their first day of school in grade nine by some kids who are 18 years old and clearly, at least, in grade twelve. So…how come they’re in the same classes? Are we to believe that the bullies have failed every single year they’ve spent in high school? Or just that nobody bothered to think that through?

In the end, these are the minor problems with Drillbit Taylor. The major problem, amazingly enough, is the script. Other than some truly memorable lines from Troy Gentile, there is nothing funny about the rest of the movie. At all. Owen Wilson is not funny. His character is not funny. His sexual conquest of another teacher at the school is not funny. The other two kids are not funny. The bully is not funny. And the concept, while kind of interesting on the surface, is never explored at all. This ends up being exactly like every other overcoming a high school bully movie, and might actually be the most predictable movie in years. The second we meet Owen Wilson, as Drillbit Taylor, we know exactly what will happen, in every scene, for the entire rest of the movie.

Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow have managed to turn standard movie arcs and plots into true gold. Superbad was so funny and smart that you forgot very fast that you had seen this exact movie many times before. Just never that funny. Knocked Up was a movie many others have made in the past - but writing it from the guy’s perspective was something the fifty-five movies like it had never thought to do. And it was so funny and smart that you forgot you’d seen it before. But Drillbit Taylor is not one of these movies.

I think the success of their oeuvre has made Apatow and Rogen such sought-after commodities that studios and producers will purchase absolutely anything they do. And if that includes a throwaway script that they wrote in high school and never edited and forgot about for fifteen years, then so be it. Which is, I think, what happened in the case of Drillbit Taylor. This movie is a total waste of time.

In 2002, City Of God rocked the movie world with what can be considered one of the greatest movies ever made. Fernando Meirelles directed this masterpiece, a sweeping saga of poverty, crime, and conscience in the slums of Rio De Janeiro. The film became an international sensation, and in his native Brazil, Meirelles sort of spun the movie off into a TV series called City of Men. Douglas Silva was one of the stars of City of God, playing the staggeringly scary and powerfully psychotic Lil’ Dice. He became the star of City of Men, the TV show, and he is the star of City of Men, the movie, which is a movie version of the TV version of City of God. Make sense so far? His character in this movie, however, is far removed from his violent psychopath character in the first film.

City of Men is a little more light-hearted than City of God, in that there is a little bit of humour. Silva plays Acerola (Ace), a young man who is struggling with fatherhood. Barely 18, he works at a watch-post to support his wife and infant son. We learn fairly fast that he is too young and unprepared for being a father, as he forgets his son at the beach, where he is rescued by the local gang crew, led by a charismatic leader named Midnight. The gang, while being a group of drug dealing, murderous thugs, is still fairly friendly with the community around it, and there is never a problem as Ace’s son gets returned to him through several sources. And we learn that Ace, while not being a part of the violence or the gang in any way, is still content to co-exist with them in the particular slum in which they live. Ace’s wife Cris, also a youngster herself, is threatening to move to Sao Paolo, where she can make a much better living than she can in the slum.

Ace’s best friend, the kid who has been closest to him since childhood, is more a brother than a buddy. Laranjinha is also struggling with fatherhood, but from the other side. He has never known his father, or even who he is. As his 18th birthday approaches, Laranjinha is desperately trying to find and meet his own dad. Ace is right at his side the whole time, helping him to discover who the man is and where he lives. When Laranjinha finally does find his father, however, the neighbourhood has gone up in smoke. Midnight’s second-in-command, Fasto, has decided to take over the gang for himself. Through a series of events too complicated to detail here, the new gang that installs itself at the top in the slums, and they believe that Ace has somehow been complicit in Midnight’s activities, warning him of the impending coup. Fasto’s gang is driving everyone related to Midnight out of the slums, which includes Laranjinha, Midnight’s cousin.

So now, even though neither of the kids has participated in any of the gang violence, and both have done everything they can to steer clear of the criminal world, they are involved whether they like it or not. Laranjinha goes to live with his new-found father, and Ace is forced to flee. With nowhere to turn, he ends up living with Midnight in another Brazilian slum, as Midnight prepares to retake his hill. As the movie works up to the inevitable, violent confrontation, the two kids at the centre of the story are swept up in something they can’t control. It all boils down to a question of whether their relationship is stronger than their violent surroundings. And I’m not going to give away the ending here.

City of Men works, but it suffers for being associated with City of God, which was an absolute masterwork. There is a reason there has never been a Casablanca II: The Rise of Captain Renaud, or a Citizen Kane II detailing the construction of Xanadu. Some films just stand alone, and City of God is one of them. Which is not to say that City of Men doesn’t work, or that it’s a poor film, it’s just not nearly as powerful as one could hope. The first film used mostly non-actors from Rio, which gave it an air of immediacy and brutal reality. This new film features actual actors, who do a great job, but some of that visceral feeling of the streets is lost. A fine movie, and even a very good one, City of Men has really one failing, and that is that it isn’t City of God. It comes out today, July 1st, courtesy of Alliance Films.

When I was a kid, I loved Asterix and Obelix. I would go to the library and borrow every single one of those giant, hardcover, oversized comic books. In fact, most of the reason I still have the ability to speak and understand French today is thanks to Asterix et Obelix, Gaston La Gaffe, Lucky Luke, and a host of other French-language comic books aimed directly at very young children. In 1999, this comic book, beloved in France, was turned into a massive live action movie starring some of the biggest names in French films, including Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar comes to DVD in North America today, July 1st, from Alliance Films. It has no English subtitles, and no English dubbing, so unless you speak French, steer clear.

For those of you (and I’m sure there are a few) who are unfamiliar with the story of Asterix and Obelix, they are Gauls, who live in a little village in the heart of the Roman Empire. The Romans have managed to conquer the rest of the known world, but for some reason this little village continues to resist their rule. It’s all thanks to the “magic potion” brewed by the village’s resident druid, Panoramix. This potion gives anyone who drinks it superhuman strength, and the village has been using it to fend off the Romans for years. Asterix is the leader of the Gaul warriors, a clever and cunning fellow, and Obelix is his stupid best friend. Obelix, as a child, fell into the magic potion, and became permanently super-strong. He is the only one in the village who does not have to drink the potion to beat up Romans. And the rest of the comic book involves Romans attacking in columns and phalanxes, the Gauls punching them, words like BAFFE pop up, and the Romans land far away with their clothes off. No one ever seems to die, but there is a constant threat of being thrown to the lions. (Or, if they’re in Egypt, the crocodiles.)

Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar remains true to the comics. Very true. In fact, much too true. Everything from the comic book is thrown in to a giant pot and stirred around with a giant paddle. In fact, they kept certain objects intact from the comic books, like the giant pot and giant paddle they use for the potion. In the film, the Romans want to destroy the one little holdout village that hasn’t succumbed to Roman rule. Also, there is some plot that involves a thief who comes to the Gaul village and steals the gold the Romans have collected in taxes. But the thief goes away quickly, the gold goes away quickly, and nothing really comes of that. Also odd is the sub-plot that involves Laetitia Casta, a French supermodel making her film debut here, as the gorgeous woman who shows up just so Obelix can fall in love with her. She’s no actress, but she sure is hot enough to moon over.

And that’s the biggest problem with this film. Obelix has a crush on the girl, so he moons over her - just like in the comic book. Obelix eats a lot - just like in the comic book. In fact, come to think of it, Obelix (Depardieu) is basically Marmaduke. He’s either eating a lot, or he’s trying to be like people. He keeps trying to drink the magic potion, even though he doesn’t need it - just like in the comic book. The Romans crush Asterix and Obelix with giant rocks, and the rocks just push them down into a hole in the earth. Just like the comic book. The Romans attack in wave after wave, just to be punched out of their clothes. Just like in the comic book.

All of this made for some very entertaining comics, but not so much entertaining film. A lot of the humour here is visual, and the director has done a pretty good job in recreating the exact visual effects from the comics themselves. But that’s the stuff that just doesn’t work after a while. Now, I watched with my two step-kids, and they really liked the visual humour. But they don’t speak much French at all, so they missed the jokes that are actually funny. Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar contains quite a bit of Monty Python type humour. There are also dozens of references to classic films, most notably Star Wars. Roberto Benigni shows up to do a memorable turn as the villain Detritus, and with his poor French accent, he really stands out. If you understand French.

And that’s the best thing about these movies for our kids. (Another one, Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatre, comes out the same day, July 1st.) Not only is the French very simple, and easy to understand, the films are also so wild and cartoonish that you really don’t need the dialogue to explain everything. The kids enjoyed both, even though their command of the language is suspect at best. The film is not great. It’s only sort-of good. But it’s simple, the kids will like it, it will help them with their French, and Laetitia Casta is hot and there are lots of big jugs. So it’s worth your while in some way.

These Asterix et Obelix movies are impressive films. A massive cast, some of the most well-known actors in the world, and a seemingly limitless budget for what are, in many ways, modest movies. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatre is no exception. In fact, this movie is the most expensive movie ever made in France. Gerard Depardieu and Christian Clavier return as the titular heroes, and Monica Bellucci shows up as the titular heroine. I think I can safely make this proclamation right now. Never, in the history of children’s movies, has there been a sexier, hotter, more ridiculously smoldering character. France is a little different than North America, you see. In North America, you can show explosions and violence and fighting and killing in kids’ movies, but kissing? That’s kind of a stretch…

In France, however, they make movies like this one. Monica Bellucci, possibly the most magnificent, gorgeous specimen on movie screens the world over, is Cleopatra. She wears different, opulent, clothes in every scene. Sometimes those clothes are see-through. Other times, they manage to reveal everything but nipple. And still other times, there are gratuitous (but welcome) shots of the top of her ass crack. How often do you get to see something so glorious in a kids’ movie? In my memory, never. In fact, not only is Monica Bellucci the hottest women ever to appear in a kids’ movie, she is also the hottest Cleopatra of all time. Elizabeth Taylor was awfully close in 1963, but in 1963 she wasn’t wearing anything like this.

Once again, with this film, there are no English subtitles or English dubbing, which means that unless you speak French there will be a significant language barrier. However, the actions and plot are so cartoonish that you may be able to figure it out anyway. Jamel Debbouze plays Numerobis, an Egyptian architect, who has been commissioned by Cleopatra to build a palace in Egypt for Julius Caesar. This is all the result of some silly bet between Caesar and Cleopatra, which makes virtually no sense at all, but at least it sets up the plot. Numerobis has three months in which to build this gigantic palace, and of course can’t possibly finish it in that time. So he visits Asterix and Obelix in Gaul to persuade them to help him finish on time, with their magical potion. Soon, all the workers in Egypt are sipping the magic potion and gaining superhuman strength, and the palace is going up quickly. (This involves some Monty Python-esque dialogue between the labourers, who explain that they are not slaves, and then go on strike to reduce their days to 18 hours and to get fewer whippings.)

But, of course, there has to be a villain in the movie. In this case, it is the “official” Egyptian architect, Amonbofis, played by Gerard Darmon. We suppose that his main reason for attempting to sabotage the construction of this palace is that his feelings have been hurt, in that he was not the architect chosen to build the place. Other than that, there seems to be no reason for him to be angry. He conspires with Caesar, who wants to destroy the palace that is being built FOR him, so he can win a bet…all of this is tied together with loose connections and plot holes and leaps in logic that are so comic booky in nature that keeping it all straight would require a PhD in idiocy.

And once again, the biggest failing in the film is the adherence to the comic books themselves. The boars they eat are gigantic. They bring Cleopatra a cake that is as big as a person. No one questions these things, because it’s a comic book. But they just don’t work on the big screen. You wonder why, when the fighting between the Gauls and the Roman army is going to be so cartoonish, would they bother amassing such a gigantic number of actors to play soldiers. And then, the whole movie closes with a song by Snoop Dogg. Bizarre. However, at the end, one question was answered for me. I wondered why, in the first movie, Caesar was played by Gottfried John, and in this film he’s played by the director, Alain Chabat. Well, he gets to seriously make out with Monica Bellucci. I think I may have cast myself as Caesar were I the director in this case as well. It turns out that this is the plum role in the film.

Once again, just like Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar, this is a film that is great for kids in the sense that it will help them with their French and they will want to watch it even though they don’t understand every word. And you will want to watch it for Monica Bellucci. Which makes it very worthwhile, while still being not very good. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatre comes out along with Asterix et Obelix Contre Cesar today, July 1st, from Alliance Films.

In preparation for watching Walker, Texas Ranger: Season Five, out tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment, I googled “Chuck Norris”. Three of the first five websites were those Chuck Norris Facts that became an initially funny, then subsequently irritating, internet phenomenon a few years ago. Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because he recognizes only the element of surprise. Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep, he waits. Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. He bites frost. And so on and so forth. Many of these really are funny, and that humour is derived from the fact that Chuck Norris is ridiculous. His movies are ridiculous, his TV show is ridiculous, and he, himself, is ridiculous. It could possibly have worked with Steven Seagal as well, but Chuck Norris is the very essence of what this internet stuff is about.

My first thought, when I saw Walker, Texas Ranger: Season Five in my mailbox was: What the hell? There were FIVE seasons of this? My second thought, after googling and wading through the jokes about roundhouse kicks and fists in the beard, was: what the hell? There were EIGHT seasons of this? Yes. Walker, Texas Ranger lasted EIGHT full seasons. Each one much the same as the last. Norris is Walker, the toughest, meanest, smartest, coolest, strongest, awesomest ranger in all of Texas. Think David Caruso in CSI Miami, only with a cowboy hat. And terrific karate chops. If only Caruso had karate chops! Caruso is a reasonable comparison, too, because he and Norris have similar acting chops.

Chuck Norris has the ability to smile and seem friendly to little kids (like Haley Joel Osment, that kid from The Sixth Sense, in two amusingly saccharine episodes about a young dying boy). And he has the ability to stare down bad guys and let them know he’s tough and means business. After that, he has the ability to…roundhouse kick? I guess? Every bad guy showdown ends with Norris roundhouse kicking someone in the head. That bad guy then falls out a window or off a roof, usually into a pile of straw. There are lots of flashbacks, often to Walker’s childhood. In fact, there are a few episodes in Season Five that are entirely flashbacks. The most irritating being two episodes called Last Of The Breed where Norris tells the story of an old-school wild west bounty hunter named Hayes Cooper. Of course, played by Norris also. There is nothing more irritating than a pointless flashback in an episode, unless it’s an entire two-episodes told in flashback style.

But then, this is the joy one can derive from Walker: Texas Ranger. The sheer irritating idiocy of it all. Most episodes are interchangeable, and those that are different are much worse. Every character, good OR bad, wears a cowboy hat. Perhaps this is how it really is in Texas. Bad guys wear suits and cowboy hats, good guys wear big buckles and cowboy hats. Wigtips - bad. Boots - good. It’s a simple world out there for Walker. And that theme song! That glorious, cheesy, over-the-top theme song! “The eyes of the Ranger are upon you/any wrong you do he’s gonna see/when you’re in Texas look behind you/’cause that’s where the Ranger’s gonna be”. Come ON! Is he a cop or Santa Claus? What does this even mean? Well, it’s just a convenient country-sounding tune to play while Chuck Norris stands tall with a trenchcoat and a shotgun.

You’ve got to take it all with a grain of salt. If you want to truly enjoy this show, you have to love the lack of effort put into each story. You have to love the unnecessary karate moves and the cartoon, interchangeable bad guys. And you have to love Chuck Norris. Here’s a man who built a solid, substantial career, as well as a show that spanned an amazing eight years (I still can’t get over that), solely on his ability to kick people in the face. It’s amazing. Walker Texas Ranger is amazing. Chuck Norris is amazing. Chuck Norris doesn’t act. He really is a Texas Ranger, and this show is all just a documentary of his day-to-day life. They just call him Walker, because he runs for no man.

I have always been a big fan of Karl Malden. I think he is one of the all-time under-rated actors in all of cinema. His performance in Patton is almost on a par with that of George C. Scott. And he holds his own with Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront. But Malden gets forgotten quickly, because Scott in Patton and Brando in Waterfront are two of the most incredible, towering performances in the history of movies. But Karl Malden managed to forge an incredible career, both in movies and in television. One of the few brilliant actors to wind down his career on the small screen, Malden was the star of The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 - 1977. He continued to work in the 80s and 90s, with small roles and TV movies and so forth, but The Streets of San Francisco was really the last great thing he did.

When it comes to Michael Douglas, I am of two minds. At times, I find him to be an absolutely brilliant actor (Wall Street, Falling Down), and at other times I find him tolerable in small doses only (A Perfect Murder, Basic Instinct, Disclosure). Thankfully, Streets of San Francisco gives us Michael Douglas in small doses only. What with it being an hour-long program. But for the most part, this show is the good Michael Douglas. Very few TV shows in history have had two actors of this caliber working together for such a long time - six full seasons. Volume One of the second season comes out on DVD tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

The best thing about the show, other than the two lead actors, is the location filming. It’s actually filmed IN the streets of San Francisco, setting for such classic films and car chases as the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt. And those movies (and TV shows) become classic because the streets of San Fran lend themselves very much to the ol’ car chase. And there are certainly some cool car chases in this show. As far as police procedurals go, this one is pretty tight, and pretty quick, and it seems like they put a lot of thought into not just the settings but the procedure as well. It’s a little more logical and well-thought-out than other police shows of the era, and each actor, including the guest stars and the extras, knows exactly what he or she is doing in every scene.

And that is really my only, minor, complaint about the show. With talents like Malden and Douglas, there was a little more leeway to let them do their own thing, I would think. But Malden gets a little typecast as the crotchety ornery older cop. And every time we start to forget that he’s sour, they throw him a line so he can make the point again. The relationship between the two, while it’s generally solid, is constantly being pigeonholed into a father-son dynamic, even when it’s kind of unnecessary. And Malden’s insistence on constantly calling Douglas “buddy boy” really dates things. It all makes the show feel focus-grouped. But it’s “1970s” focus-grouped, so it isn’t all that bad. Like, it isn’t Tila Tequila or anything.

Season Two, Volume One, features some impressive guest stars, like James Wainwright, several episodes with Leslie Nielsen, and one with Martin Sheen as a bank robber. This was the first time Sheen and Malden appeared on screen together - the second time was twenty-seven years later when Malden did a guest spot as Father Cavanaugh on The West Wing in 2000. I don’t know if anyone will care about that. But I researched it because I cared, so I figured I may as well write it down. This is no good reason to watch Streets of San Francisco. But there are many other reasons. Malden, Douglas, and that incredible city with it’s incredible streets that lead to some incredible car chases.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley is one of the most unfortunately-named movies in recent memory.  It conveys some sort of sweeping romantic epic that will likely involve intricate costumes and poems read to a lady from over a hedge of some kind.  And, in a way, it actually is.  But it’s an epic love affair between Irishmen and their country.  It’s actually the story of the beginnings of the IRA, as the British government holds Ireland in a grip of terror.  The British soldiers are beating Irish citizens, enforcing apartheid-type laws against the citizens of the country.  And the Irish have had enough.  They form a group to fight back against the British military. 

Cillian Murphy is terrific as Damien O’Donovan, a doctor who gets caught up in the resistance along with his brother Teddy, the de-facto leader of the resistance movement.  Orla Fitzgerald is wonderful as Damien’s love interest, and the rest of the cast is fantastic as well.  The movie is long - more than two hours - but it has a lot of story to tell.  The Irish resistance finds guns and weapons to drive out the British, but once they start becoming successful, they begin fighting amongst themselves, over political and territorial issues.  The IRA is split into two basic factions, the one that is willing to accept a compromise with the British and become a free state of the British Empire, and the one that will accept nothing less than total freedom from Great Britain.

The tension between the brothers, the warring factions, the passion of the resistance fighters and the palpable love of their country are all themes and moments that are expertly handled by the director, Ken Loach.  As the movie draws to an end, we see the issues that not only divided the IRA at the beginning, but also divided the country itself.  A fascinating and powerful look at the nascent years of one of the most famous (and infamous) fighting forces in the world, as well as the politics that divided Ireland, The Wind That Shakes The Barley is an epic, beautifully filmed tale of struggle, triumph and tragedy.

After watching Samuel L. Jackson half-ass his way through S.W.A.T. and Jumper, I got a hankering for some good Jackson stuff.  And I grabbed a film I picked up a while ago but never got around to watching.  Home of the Brave is a movie with an ambitious concept but a very un-ambitious delivery.  It involves several soldiers who return from Iraq, and have difficulty re-adjusting to regular life.  The type of idea that often leads to some brilliant work, like The Deer Hunter.  The Deer Hunter this is not.  Jackson delivers an excellent performance as a doctor who returns to his practice, but starts to drink heavily and behave erratically as he can’t get over his wartime experiences.  And Brian Presley is good as Tommy Yates, a young man who tries to keep it together after his best friend is killed in front of him in the desert.  But the rest of the cast is weak at best.

Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, is wooden and irritating as a guy who comes back from Iraq unable to control his rage, and unable to deal with the fact that he killed an innocent woman and threw out his back jumping over a wall.  Which pains him more, it’s tough to tell.  Jessica Biel, who’s still not a great actress, loses a hand to a roadside bomb, but discovers that when you’re a female Iraq war veteran, all you need to make things OK is the love of the right man.  Men have it tough - just finding a great woman doesn’t fix their heads, but for a woman, I suppose it’s just that easy.  Or so this movie would have you believe.  And Christina Ricci, a fine actress, has what amounts to a brief, useless cameo appearance in the film.

There is just no depth to what ought to be a very in-depth character study of these four people.  But you have to think that when they were casting the movie, they were looking for names that would bring in money - 50 Cent will bring in the rap fans, they figure.  Jessica Biel will bring in the Maxim readers.  And if that’s the kind of thinking that went into the casting, they can’t really have cared too much about the concept.  What could have been a very heartfelt and engaging movie ends up being a glossy star-fest with a lack of star power.  It’s too bad.