Cynical Cinema

The first actor we see in The Spiderwick Chronicles (out June 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment) is David Stratharin. He is writing a book about creatures in our midst, beings that exist among us always, that we can’t see because they choose to remain hidden. Through his book, we catch glimpses of drawings of these creatures, but we don’t see enough of them to know what’s coming. Strathairn, you see, is Arthur Spiderwick, the man who discovered this realm existing in tandem with our own. And he recorded all the secrets of this realm in a giant book, the Spiderwick Chronicles. We learn fairly fast that this book was never meant to be read by anyone, ever, because reading it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Of course, someone is clearly going to come by and read it anyway.

That someone is Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who actually appears as twins in the film. The two have very distinct personalities, and Highmore does an excellent job making sure that we always know which twin is which. Simon is a bookish, nerdy pacifist. His twin brother Jared, however, is the trouble-maker. The bad apple. The one kid the family doesn’t understand. Right away, we know Jared will be the star of the movie, because it’s always that kid who ends up being the star. The bookish intellectual is nowhere near as interesting as the angry rebel, we suppose. Jared’s anger seems to stem from several sources, like an absentee father, a sudden move to a new town and a new house. It must be summer, because the kids don’t have a new school or anything, and are allowed to roam about the giant house alone while their mom’s off at work.

Pretty soon, of course, Jared finds this book. And he opens it and reads it and unwittingly brings forces of evil down on his house and his family. His older sister is a fencer, which comes in handy when she has to slash up some goblins. His mother is never home during the film, so she is going to be in for a big surprise when she gets there. Simon rarely leaves the house, and when he discovers this world of goblins and evil-doers that exists right outside the door, he sets his brain to work devising defenses against the bad creatures. And Jared hits things, yells at his mom, hates the world and fights with his siblings, even in the middle of the most dire circumstances. Which becomes kind of annoying. Jared, through a lot of this movie, despite being the hero, is not very likeable. Highmore does a terrific job with the character, but he’s written in such a cliche’d “where’s may father? I HATE you” sort of way that it’s a little distracting.

Also irritating is the fact that the creatures have names we have already heard. We already know about goblins. We’ve heard of elves and griffins. We may well be familiar with those things. So why include things like that, and then make up three or four creatures of your own? I think the answer to that may well lie within the books. My youngest step-son tells me that the books are FAR different. I think what he means (if I understand correctly) is that the movie leaves out a lot of what is in the books in terms of detail. But then, what kids’ movie doesn’t? Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, even How To Eat Fried Worms. They are all forced to skip large chunks of the story because of time constraints, and the challenge is keeping the story intact and understandable while trimming it to that hour-and-a-half running time.

And for the most part, the director, Mark Waters, does a good job of this. Not only does he get a high-calibre performance out of Freddie Highmore, he manages to craft a terrific alternate universe with charming and interesting characters, and he keeps the pace moving along briskly. The only time the movie slows down is when Jared has one of his distracting temper outbursts. It’s nice to see David Strathairn in a kids movie like this, his presence adds a certain amount of credibility to the whole proceeding. Also cool is the presence of Martin Short and Seth Rogen as the voices of two of the friendly creatures, and the very brief but very bizarre cameo from Nick Nolte. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the better movies aimed at kids around ten years old. It’s no classic, but it’s above-average. And when it comes to kids’ movies these days, that is certainly good enough.

Guillermo Del Toro has made some of the best films of recent years.  Dark, brooding, beautifully filmed movies like Blade II, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth.  And he must have an eye for other great directores, because as a producer he has achieved a great succes with The Orphanage.  Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, The Orphanage is not really a horror movie, although it was marketed as such.  There are definitely some creepy scenes and scary moments, but it’s the atmosphere that tells the story as much as the scares and the characters themselves.  Belen Rueda plays the main character, Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she was raised in order to build it up again, and take in some more kids.  She lives there with her husband and her own son, seven-year-old Simon.  But when Simon begins to talk to a series of imaginary friends, and soon goes missing, Laura tears her life apart to find him, and that means unearthing some long-dormant secrets and spirits in the orphanage.

The movie may be reminiscent of several others.  Hallowe’en, Poltergeist, Final Destination, any number of Peter Pan movies, and Del Toro’s own The Devil’s Backbone.  But it’s the Peter Pan theme that holds the key to The Orphanage.  Suppose the Peter Pan story was, instead of being a kids’ tale, the work of some deviously evil murderous freak show?  I know, I know, I’m describing the Neverland Ranch.  But Michael Jackson aside, only Bayona has managed to make the Peter Pan story this creepy.  Rueda, as Laura, undergoes a transformation that is part obsession and part a growing belief in the spirits that surround her in the house, and it is a remarkable acting performance.  There are red herrings, but not too many.  There are many characters that come in and out of the movie with varying degrees of effectiveness.  The best is the old lady who gets dispatched in a fairly memorable and gory fashion.

 The Orphanage is a good, creepy, evocative flim, with terrific camera work and a genuinely gothic sense of foreboding.  The direction is first-rate, the acting is for the most part excellent, and the film is very much worth watching.  A few quibbles prevent it from being a truly great movie, like the pacing and the length, which I think is a little unnecessary.  But all in all, a quality movie experience.  Oh, but it has subtitles.  So it isn’t for those who hate to read.

Death of a President is an interesting movie. It came out in 2006, and tells the (obviously ficticious) story of the assassination of George W. Bush through newsreel footage, manipulated computer images and faux-documentary style actors. Unfortunately, that’s all it is, is interesting. There was a time where this was the most controversial movie in the world, but that controversy (as so often happens) existed only before anyone actually saw the film. The movie is very well done and very convincingly shot. Dick Cheney’s press conferences have been expertly manipulated to show him delivering eulogies and talking about the death of Bush. The actors are all good. The story follows up on the assassination as Cheney adds more teeth to the Patriot Act (’cause that’s what it needs), and a young man appears to be falsely convicted of the murder, and he is quickly executed.

The thing the movie fails to do, which I was hoping for, is have an opinion either way on Bush and Cheney and anti-Bush protesters and any other party that might be involved in a scenario such as this one. The reason it caused such controversy was that it imagined the assassination of a real man, the sitting president at the time of the movie’s release. Much like the documentaries of Michael Moore, the right wing jumped all over this as blasphemous before they had even seen it, and in most cases they stated unequivocally that they would never watch it. They assumed it would be filled with anti-Bush, anti-neocon rhetoric, and come out wholly on the side of those who would muder the president. But it doesn’t. And it doesn’t attack them either. The movie doesn’t seem to be squarely on any side, nor does it create any truly provacative ideas. And that is the problem. It ends up just being a bunch of stuff that happens.

While Death Of A President is very watchable, and certainly interesting, and resonably insighful, there is nothing new here, and when it’s over the film had been unable to make me feel one way or another about this imagined assassination. If Gabriel Range had really wanted to make a controversial movie that would be remembered for years to come, he would have made sure that he took a stance on one side of Bush or the other. As it stands, the controversy came and went, as will this movie.

As a film nerd, there are certain movies people assume I have seen. They will quote these movies to me as though I will automatically know what they are talking about. “You know the guy who plays Bob Slydell in Office Space”…or “remember that scene in Pink Flamingos…” and nine times out of ten, I have indeed seen the movie. However, I am still missing out on a few. One of those films is Trainspotting. Oh, I have had opportunities. In fact, I actually own a copy, but ever since I got it I just haven’t had a chance to watch it, or haven’t been in a mood to see it. And I know I should, and I know it will be good, and I love the rest of Danny Boyle’s stuff. He is the same guy who directed 28 Days Later, one of the most original zombie movies in twenty years, and now Sunshine, a movie I can describe only as breathtaking. It is available on Blu-Ray, and although I just watched it on regular DVD, I must say that if ever a film was created for Blu-Ray and HD, it is Sunshine (or maybe that Planet Earth box set).

As I watched Sunshine, two movies came almost immediately to mind. Event Horizon (although Sunshine was much better) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (although Sunshine wasn’t nearly that good). The main reason was that the first half plays very close to 2001. The talking computer that guides the ship, the incredible visuals of outer space, and the tense moments on spacewalks outside the ship itself. Then there is a moment that ranks up there with that “open the pod bay doors, HAL” moment in 2001. “There is enough oxygen on the ship for four people, right?” I won’t explain it. Those of you who have seen the movie will understand, those of you who have not ought to see the film. From that turning point on, the end of the film is very reminiscent of Event Horizon, again because of the visuals and because of the chaotic way in which it is filmed.

This is the only truly weak point of Sunshine, the chaotic nature of the ending. It is not bizarre in the same way the ending to, say, a Bergman film is bizarre. There IS a conclusion, it DOES make some sort of sense, but it is not that well thought out. If you pay close attention, and watch a few more times, then you end up with more questions than you had before. If you don’t pay close attention, and you just let the visuals overwhelm you until the credits roll, you won’t understand what’s happening at all. But this is a minor quibble, since the visuals are the main reason to watch. Cillian Murphy is terrific, as usual. He and Danny Boyle are one of those actor-director duos who are springing up everywhere now. (Cronenberg and Mortensen, Tarantino and Thurman, Lynch and Dern, Burton and Depp, etc…) And they do their best work together.

For a list of the best actor-director tandems of all time, check out this blog, I think it’s pretty good:
http://www.bestweekever.tv/2007/11/02/top-10-actor-director-tandems-in-movie-history/

Sunshine is a brilliant movie, and if you don’t mind a little bit of abstract art, you will thoroughly enjoy it. And if you have Blu-Ray, that also is a must when you’re renting.

Martian Child is coming out Tuesday on DVD from Alliance Atlantis. It’s worth watching with your kids, if your kids are having a tough time adjusting at school, or if they are just plain really weird. But as an adult, it is just plain not worth watching. It starts out with a laudable premise, and then degenerates into the sort of movie sentimentality that would make John Wayne beat the living crap out of Hugh Grant and John Cusack were he still alive, God rest his violent macho soul. I now feel confident that this review will break new ground, as it is sure to be the only review of Martian Child that mentions The Duke. So, on with the review. Martian Child is a movie along very similar lines to K-Pax, the Kevin Spacey movie where Spacey plays a man who may or may not be from outer space. Although K-Pax was not that good, it is still far better than Martian Child. John Cusack is a single father (a fantasy writer) who adopts a boy who believes he comes from Mars. This movie obviously wants us to wonder, at least for a time…is he? Isn’t he? Where does he come from? Maybe, just maybe, he is from Mars.
K-Pax did the same thing. And not that either plot is within the realm of likelihood or believability. But if you want to make the case that someone is from outer space, possibly an alien being, then choose K-Pax. Not Mars. We have heard of Mars. We know where it is. We can see it with our naked eyes on certain days. It is the most familiar planet to all of us. We know that there is no life on Mars, and certainly no small-child-shaped life. Pictures like the one above notwithstanding. Therefore, we know the answer right away, and even if we were to suspend our disbelief for the sake of the story, we would have a hard time buying in. There are scenes that try to convince us otherwise. A baseball scene, a traffic light scene, a scene with some M&Ms, that are basically red herrings in a movie that cries out for no red herrings.
In the end, the movie is about John Cusack’s relationship with his adopted son, and it gets this mostly right. When he adpots the boy, he believes very strongly that he is from Mars. (The boy does. Not John Cusack. Or us.) The kid is extremely weird, and Cusack tries to cope as best he can, using sappy talk like never, never, never, never, ever give up and such like. Their relationship seems to hit a breakthrough, and the kid goes (extremely suddenly) from barely ever speaking to laughing and joking and having a good time. We believe that Cusack cares, we believe the boy likes him, and then the Children’s Aid people show up. These people have just given the child to Cusack. They know he believes he is from Mars. And now they want to review his case, because they may have to take the child away. There has to be some kind of huge problem like this at this point in every movie. The review is taking place maybe six weeks after Cusack gets the boy to begin with. And if he still believes he is from Mars, he will be removed from the home. OK…here’s a kid with obvious problems, serious social and mental issues, and if you, the foster parent, can’t cure him of those problems completely within six weeks, he’s gone.
There may well be some super-parent out there who could have effected this change that quickly. But I have not met that super-parent, nor, I wager, has anyone else. But, that is the conflict that must arise at the one hour and ten minute mark of the movie, so arise it does. Other characters populate the movie, including Olvier Platt, who is obnoxious, Joan Cusack, who is in every John Cusack movie so that she gets work playing - go figure - his sister, who is irritating and looks as though she went on the no-food-plus-lots-of-heroin diet to weigh in at a feisty 49 pounds, and Anjelica Huston. Huston plays Cusack’s publisher and delivers the one, painful line that drops this movie off the cliff of heartwarming into the sludge of Hollywood sentimentality and schmaltz: “Why can’t you just be what we want you to be?” COME ON! This leads, inexorably and annoyingly, to a final scene straight out of the worst Hitchcock imitator’s reject pile, a chase and a confrontation on top of an observatory.
John Cusack is a very likeable guy. It is tough not to LIKE his character in this movie. When the kid finally comes out of his Martian shell a little bit, it is tough not to like him as well. But there isn’t one other character in the film that is easy to like, and whatever points the movie scores with us in terms of a connection between the man and the boy are destroyed and wasted as soon as Anjelica Huston says “why can’t you be what we want you to be” and Cusack has an epiphany and runs home from his big gala event to tell the boy that all is forgiven and…whatever. A movie with high ideals such as this one can’t be crammed into that Hollywood cookie-cutter of “this happens here. This sets off that”. It’s like you’re Rembrandt. And you have this great idea for a painting called Belshazzar’s Feast. And you start to paint it, but your boss tells you that paintings have only three people in them, tops, and crowns don’t go on top of Turbans, and you’ll have to make that writing on the wall English so the people reading it can understand. Would you still paint the picture? I’m guessing not.

I am giving Beowulf the benefit of the doubt here. It is a movie that relies mainly on visuals, and the only TV I have where I can actually see the picture and hear the full sound is in the shop. I guess when I bought it, it had a faulty screen, and the warranty does indeed cover it. I sent it into this shop a week and a half ago. I called them yesterday to find out when I could have it back, and they said they thought perhaps, with some good luck, they might just have the parts they need to fix it within a month. Good thing I have that Blu-Ray player and pay for those HD cable channels. So, I had to watch Beowulf on a TV with a shaky, tiny screen and only one channel of sound. Which means that I will give the movie the benefit of the doubt and assume that the visuals ARE amazing and that the sound is impressive. Hey - anyone who has seen this film - can you tell me something? Angelina Jolie comes out of the water naked in the middle of the film, right? And she is all metallic or something, and there is no definition and no nipples. But at the end when she comes out of the water, there are nipples. Right? I couldn’t really tell.

But the animation seems strange to me. This movie is done sort of like 300, where it is live action actors which then have animation done over them. This worked with A Scanner Darkly, because it was constantly obvious. Right now, I’m not terribly certain why these movies are doing this. At least in 300, you forget the technique about halfway through the film. And then you just let the mindless entertainment wash over you. With Beowulf, it seems to come and go. Sometimes the actors look like real-life actors, and other times they look like computer animations from a kids’ movie. Which is bizarre. It also means that those computer-generated characters walk like the characters in Shrek. Shouldn’t they walk like, well, real people? Because they ARE real people? Again, I will assume that I thought this simply because of the lousy TV. Although I doubt it.

There are some cool scenes in the film, and it is fairly easy to make some decent entertainment out of the story. Not, of course, by following the original classic story line, but simply by pitting a mythic hero, Beowulf, against an indestructible monster, Grendel. After that, I guess people assume they can just do whatever they like. Much like 300, this involves a lot of yelling and flexing. The giant Grendel shows up first, and rips people apart in a Dansih banquet hall. As far as monsters go, he is more reminiscent of The Elephant Man or that kid in Mask than he is of any truly frightening creature. We watch him slink back to his lair to be comforted by his mother after his rampages, and I guess we’re supposed to feel some kind of sympathy for him? I guess. Then Beowulf shows up. For about half an hour after his arrival, I was expecting the punchline. I mean, this guy couldn’t possibly be for real, or played straight. He kicks open every door, flexes, screams “Beowulf!” at people…he’s like that kid on your high school football team who has permanently screwed up his brain with steroids, and can’t control the volume of his own voice, and the only word he really has command over is his own name. So he yells his own name over and over to get pumped up for that big football game. Then gets ejected for fighting on the first play. Don’t do ‘roids, kids. I’ve actually known this guy. He is now in prison.

Beowulf decides that since Grendel is unarmed and has no armour, that in order to make things fair, he will have to face him completely naked. This leads to an incredibly comical series of camera shots that cover up his wang with various objects, a la Austin Powers. I really don’t think it is meant to be funny. I think it is meant to suggest that Beowulf is hung like a telephone pole. The objects obscuring his junk are a sword, a spear, a mace…anything mean-looking and long. God, I hope it was done for comedic effect. Otherwise, it was the dumbest thing in the whole movie. So the woman looks at his wang and almost faints, he lies down naked among his men while they drink and carouse, and he waits for the monster. Then defeats Grendel, rather easily, while still being naked and still having those crotch-obscuring shots. Which makes the fight rather implausible. Grendel could possibly have won the fight had he not spent so much time putting his arms and legs in the right places so we can’t see Ray Winstone’s computer-generated penis. Poor Grendel. And I’m still waiting for the punchline.

Then we have naked Angelina Jolie. Only, she’s a cartoon. A very obvious cartoon. And there are no nipples or any kind of definition whatsoever, because that allowed Beowulf to keep it’s PG-13 rating. You see, in movies such as this one, all kinds of blood and gore are OK, because it is basically a cartoon. (In Kill Bill, Tarantino changed some scenes to black-and-white, and others to anime cartoons, so that the film would still be R-rated and not NC-17.) So you can show Grendel ripping guys in half, drinking their blood, chewing off their heads, and it is still PG-13. However, if you put nipples into the mix, this film would have been slapped with an R. So Angelina Jolie looks like the T-1000 from Terminator 2. Well, in it’s metal form, not it’s Robert Patrick form. Completely smooth, with no features at all, except for her face, which is a cartoon, and therefore not nearly as hot as she ought to be. And that’s the scene everyone seemed to be raving about.

There are many scenes that made me laugh out loud because they really did look like a set-up to a punchline. Ray Winstone’s Beowulf is a character begging to be mocked, yelling his own name at anyone who will listen, bragging about himself at every turn - this is the guy who, in any other movie, would be exposed for the fraud he is, and would receive his comeuppance. But in this movie, it just means he’s that much more heroic. If this was all it took to be a hero, Terrell Owens would be Superman. TERRELL! And while his performance is consistently laughable, so too is the monster Grendel. He rips a body in half, and then he cries, he drinks some blood and then covers his ears because the shrieks drive him nuts…apparently he was “played” in the film by Crispin Glover, but he’s just a giant computer-generated freak, and as such could have been “played” by me, my grandmother, a six-year-old, or Terrell Owens. And during the final, climactic battle scene, there is a dragon incinerating the world. It gets to the Danish castle where Beowulf’s wife and young concubine are hiding, for some reason, on a bridge. When the dragon appears, it pops it’s head up over the bridge in the same manner one would use to attempt to scare one’s younger sister by thrusting a sock puppet up from behind the couch upon which she’s asleep. Boo! It then tilts it’s head comically for some reason, before burning up the place with it’s fire-breath.

And John Malkovich is there too, apparently to provide some kind of human face to evil. He is set up, through the whole movie, as the dastardly back-room dealer who will usurp the king and take power himself through some kind of unscrupulous deed. But then he and Beowulf have a very laughable confrontation, he admits Beowulf’s superiority, and they bond. But we’re still given the feeling that this show of good faith is insidious and devious on Malkovich’s part, that he doesn’t mean a word of it. And then…he just keeps showing up through the movie, and nothing happens. He still looks and talks evil, and in this cartoon world of characters that must obviously mean he IS evil…but he stops doing stuff. Maybe his talk with Beowulf convinced him? Or maybe the film crew forgot he was evil. My money is on the latter. Based on what I saw, Beowulf gets 3 stars out of ten. but I’m giving it an extra two assuming that it would be far more visually brilliant were I to have my good TV back. If I could truly believe that the intention of Robert Zemeckis and his people was to make us laugh, that the intent of the movie was satirical, it would get 7 stars. Which means it’s campy enough for the bad-movie fans out there to really enjoy it.

Anthony Hopkins should feel good about his new movie Slipstream. He directed the film, as well as starring in it, and I am going to go ahead and assume that it turned out exactly the way he wanted it to turn out. That is, weird. I respect the fact that as long as his movie fit his vision, he didn’t care at all whether the rest of us got it or not, and even may not have cared if we enjoyed it or not. Slipstream seems to be about a movie script-writer whose mind is going, and who lives half in reality, half in his mind. Somehow, when I watched the trailers, I got the sense that this movie was about time travel. Maybe it was supposed to be about time travel, and I just didn’t get it. Hey, for all I know, this film could have been about a rabbit and a butterfly. Frankly, there’s no good way to tell. I have the sense that if I watched this film five or six times, I would be able to figure out what’s going on. But I don’t feel like doing that. Frankly, I don’t feel like watching it twice. I also have the sense that if David Lynch was allowed to make an entire movie while on PCP, it would look something like this one.

It’s OK to make a movie that doesn’t make perfect sense. Look at Lynch - Mulholland Drive, for example. And some of the greatest films are almost as bonkers as this one. Like, Weekend, for example, or Fellini’s stuff. But you have to either go all out, or wrap things up in some way. Slipstream starts out with a bunch of scenes that don’t fit together, a series of weird moments, one after another, slight changes in scenes that seem to indicate there is something bigger going on…and all of a sudden we’ve hit the 40 minute mark. And we still have no idea what’s happening. At all. Then things start making a little more sense. But by then, no one cares. We’ve completely given up on trying to make sense of anything, and when stuff sort of starts coming together, we just want it to wrap up and the movie be over. And this one never really comes together at all. Individually, each scene is likely compelling. Hopkins is quite good at creating a memorable image, or phrase, or moment. But taken collectively, this is just too much for your average viewer. Or your sub-par viewer, or your above-average, gifted viewer. Any viewer.

There are some great performances in here. Hopkins is terrific, and John Turturro is awesome fun as a maniac movie producer. The film also stars Camryn Manheim, Christian Slater, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jeffrey Tambor, and in the most bizarre cameo of the year, Kevin McCarthy as himself. For some reason, Slipstream continually refers to the 1956 classic horror film Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers. And Kevin McCarthy, who was the star of that film, shows up as himself, now at age 84, in order to sit in a car with Hopkins. Since the movie ended, I have been trying very hard to understand the references to Bodysnatchers, but I have yet to figure it out. And I’m not willing to watch it again to help me understand. Slipstream is a ballsy film to make, it’s as experimental and avant-garde (if that’s even a real term) as anything made this year, but it doesn’t work. When it was over, I suspected that it was a movie designed specifically to confuse me, rather than to make me think. It’s like having one of those magic-eye pictures, the ones you stare at for a long time until you see a sailboat or a tiger or whatever. Only, this one has no underlying picture. So you can stare at it for as long as you like, but you’ll never see anything. And you will be frustrated and angry.

Ryan Reynolds has saved some tragically bad movies from being…well…tragically bad. Most notably Van Wilder and Waiting, where his sense of comedic timing and his fantastic delivery elevate those two movies from the level of “awful” to the level of “not awful”. Since then, Reynolds seems to be attempting to distance himself from the funny-guy roles, like Van Wilder, and he seems to be willing to take just about any movie that won’t force him to smirk and say clever cute things to clever cute girls. The latest movie is called The Nines, and it is weird. Reynolds plays three different characters. One is a David Caruso-type actor who plays a cop on TV. Another is a writer for TV shows, and the third is a video game programmer. But still, somehow, all three characters are part of the same guy, and…well, you’ll have to see the whole movie to understand. Melissa McCarthy also plays three characters, including herself. Hope Davis appears as three people, as does Elle Fanning, the younger sister of Dakota Fanning. Sometimes she’s a mute little girl, sometimes she isn’t…although imdb and allmovie.com don’t have this listed, I’m convinced she was the little girl in the overalls in Kindergarten Cop.

This movie really does keep you guessing right up until the end, but it’s the end that sinks it. It won’t make you feel cheated, like the end of Perfect Stranger (which I just finished watching and which made me very angry, so I thought I’d mention it), but it certainly isn’t the big bang you would hope for and expect from a movie this complex and layered. There are some great moments in the film. When the Caruso-cop character has a Robert Downey type meltdown, tries to buy crack, hires a hooker to show him how to use crack, and then starts imagining his other personalities, it’s hilarious and a lot of fun. Another scene where the TV writer attacks his network executive, it is also a lot of fun. Hope Davis is good, although she keeps playing a woman who is supposed to be incredibly hot. And while she is certainly attractive, she is an eight, not a ten. Melissa McCarthy (Gilmore Girls) is terrific as a woman who figures in Reynolds’ life in the biggest possible way in each of the three scenarios.

The Nines is well worth your while if you are into the supernatural side of life and you don’t mind a fairly boring ending. Or, if you are desperated to find out what happened to the little girl in the overalls from Kindergarten Cop. Otherwise, it’s just kinda neat for a while.

I like Dustin Hoffman. We all do. Dustin Hoffman is likeable, and one of the greatest actors of the past 50 years. However, late in his career he has had some trouble choosing good movies. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is one of them. Visually, this movie is very impressive. Hoffman plays Mr. Magorium, the proprietor of a magical toy store where kids congregate every day to experience wonder. And there certainly is wonder aplenty in the ol’ Emporium. Dinosaur skeletons that play fetch with frisbees, slinkies that are too nervous to come off the table, magical balls that never stop bouncing, and dozens of other really neat toys. The store itself appears to be alive, some kind of entity unto itself, and it is a very impressive beginning to the movie. But then, when the movie needs to rely on characters and a plot to move things forward, it stalls. In fact, it pretty much comes to a dead stop.

It isn’t Hoffman’s fault. He is obviously having a lot of fun playing the titular character, and he enjoys himself thoroughly in a role that’s more reminiscent of watered-down Marx Brothers schtick than Willy Wonka. The dialogue in his scenes is delightfully inane and whimsical, and the kids loved it. It isn’t Natalie Portman’s fault either - she is perfectly cast as the girl who works at the counter of the store, who has magic in her heart…and Zach Mills is terrific as a young boy named Eric, who appears to be some kind of child genius with no friends, who serves on the de facto board of governors for the Emporium. Mills is a great surprise. His face is so expressive, and he handles his adult lines with great dexterity and real charm. But all of this fills up ten minutes of screen time. Then Jason Bateman shows up. He is stiff as a board and very unconvincing as an accountant brought into the store to put the store’s papers in order. This leads to a few great scenes with Hoffman, but it also leads to that most-obnoxious of movie questions - will he learn to loosen up and take life less seriously? All that would take would be one game of checkers…

And therein lies the biggest problem with Mr. Magorium. All it takes for Bateman to see the light and embrace the magic and lose the suit-attitude is to put on a hat with the kid. Natalie Portman yearns for something more than her job as a clerk in a toy store. An amazing toy store, to be sure, but she is still in retail when she dreams of being a concert pianist. And the prevailing thought here is that this sadness she feels can be resolved if she takes over the store from Magorium and becomes the owner. Umm…sure. So, she wants to be a concert pianist, and not work at the toy store any more, so the way to make her pleased with her life is to - tie her to that same store for the rest of her life? This is the sort of idea the movie is quite pleased to trot out at the right moment in the plot. None of it is cohesive, none of it rings true, and in the end the “wonder” of the story is dulled by the predictability of the characters and their actions. Even the kids, who just wanted to watch the cool toys do cool things, got pretty bored toward the end. I don’t blame them. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium was done at the fifteen minute mark.

Neverwas is a movie in the tradition of Hook and Bridge to Terabithia, where fantasy and reality intersect in some bizarre way. It stars Aaron Eckhardt, Brittany Murphy and Ian McKellan. This film was made in 2005, never hit the theatres, and finally gets it’s first release, courtesy of Alliance Films, on DVD. It’s the story of an imagined land called Neverwas. Like Narnia or Oz or Middle Earth, Neverwas exists only in a children’s book written by Nick Nolte. The star of this book is Zachary, Nolte’s son. While writing the book, Nolte is losing his mind, and gets sent to a mental institution. For the next few years, he made life very difficult for his family before dying a strange and unpleasant death. The movie picks up about thirty years later. The book is now a worldwide classic, and Nolte’s son is a grown man (Eckhardt). He is now a psychiatrist, who takes a job at the institute that once housed his father.

There are some other big names here. Notably Vera Farminga, who starred as the psychiatrist in The Departed and has become one of the most respected actresses in the business. But then, this film was made in 2005, before she was famous. And although the credits use her name, she has one line in the movie and maybe six seconds of screen time. Which indicates something about the film. Neverwas was made three years ago, but released only now. And they put a famous name in the credits, even though that person had very little to do with the movie. Maybe they are trying to compensate for something? Hide something? Like the fact that this movie is not very good? Well, it isn’t. In fact, it would be quite terrible without one key ingredient. Ian McKellan.

I like Brittany Murphy, she has a very charming and childlike innocence about her, which works well in this film. She plays a reporter who is doing a story on the phenomenon of Neverwas and the enigma that was it’s author. I also like Aaron Eckhardt, who has the sort of cocky arrogance that works in Thank You For Smoking, but not here. The two are supposed to be some kind of meant-for-each-other couple, but does that ever feel flat, and leads to a painfully contrived oh-my-god-she’s-really-a-reporter-and-I’m-furious scene. Then there’s a maudlin, staggeringly stupid scene where Eckhardt reveals that he BLAMES himself for his father’s DEATH! But thankfully, right when each of these terrible scenes gets so obnoxious that you want to give up on the movie altogether, here comes Ian McKellan again, and things pick right back up.
McKellan plays a patient at the mental hospital who believes that he is the king of the actual land of Neverwas. He is magnificently looney, a wonderfully deranged old man but…is he maybe telling the truth? Is Neverwas…actually real? I won’t reveal the details there, but the journey to that point is terrific. Without McKellan, this movie would be incredibly awful. But whenever he’s on the screen, the film has a certain electricity which is well worth watching. McKellan is one of the greatest actors working today, and although he will likely be remembered for playing Magneto more than any other character, he has done wonderful work in many fine films. And some otherwise horrible ones, like Neverwas.

It’s clear why this didn’t get a theatrical release. It’s too old for kids and too young for adults and too cheesy for cynical teenagers. And what happens to good movies that are too old for kids and too young for everyone else? They go direct to DVD. Apparently, so too do the bad ones.