300 Words About: Stevie

As Steve James' excellent The Interrupters made its way around theaters this summer, I caught up recently with Stevie, his deeply personal documentary from 2002 (and only his second documentary at the time, the first being of course Hoop Dreams). Stevie is the worst possible testimonial for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America youth mentoring program that you might ever see. It's also a perfect example of why programs like it are so important.

Steve James was a Big Brother to Stevie Fielding in the mid-1980's. At the time, little Stevie was an awkward preteen living with his grandparents in rural Southern Illinois - he was a little odd and had a troubled family history, but was generally harmless. James had a relatively normal mentor-mentee relationship with Stevie for a few years, and then returned in the mid-90's (perhaps encouraged by the recent success of Hoop Dreams) to see what Stevie was up to as an adult. What he found was troubling: Stevie was well on his way down a self-destructive path, with an extensive criminal record and no clear direction in his life. Devastated by Stevie's situation and perhaps feeling guilty for not keeping closer tabs on his "little brother", James recommitted himself to helping Stevie at least stay out of legal trouble, if not actually become a contributing member of society.

And this is where Stevie lays bare the profound challenge facing mentors in a program like Big Brother Big Sisters, or for that matter parents, teachers, or any adult nobly attempting to better a young person's life. I felt pangs of guilt for past students that I had "let go" during my teaching years, or for that matter anyone in my life with whom I've had a mentoring-type relationship. Were there too many other opposing factors and influences to outweigh my efforts? Did I do as much as I could to make a difference? Did it even matter?

Stevie is not meant to be an examination of guilt or regret, and, refreshingly, James does not frame it as a naive "agenda" documentary or bookend it with tidy steps that can be followed to make the world a better place. He instead asks raw, honest, heartbreaking questions - and doesn't provide any easy answers - about what happens when the best intentions are left unrealized. And the horror doesn't end on the screen, either, as Stevie's current situation is as disturbing as anything from the film's footage, which is now more than a decade old.

They say "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", and critics of mentoring programs for troubled youth could use Stevie as Exhibit A in their case against program efficacy. But to watch Stevie is to understand a different reason why these programs exist: not to "save lives", but to connect lives that wouldn't otherwise be connected. To strip away the social barriers that keep us apart and put us (the privileged) face-to-face with the experience of the marginalized majority around us. The reason I appreciate James so much as a filmmaker is because he doesn't wield his camera as a weapon of scrutiny and all-knowing judgment. Instead he uses it as a mirror, reflecting back on us images of ourselves that we can't or don't want to see. What happens after that is for us to figure out.

Careful What You Win For: Lucky

Now what?

I've often thought that if I won the lottery (if I ever played it), I'd give away all of the winnings - every dime. A righteously charitable fantasy to be sure, but my thinking has been that despite my debts and bills, I'm generally not struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. There are many, many more people who "need" extra money due to various circumstances and long-term financial hardships. People like multimillionaire lottery winners, as it turns out.

Jeffrey Blitz's compelling new documentary, Lucky (out today on DVD), explores the lives of a half dozen or so individuals and families who have been awarded those giant cardboard checks. Winning millions of dollars not surprisingly had a huge effect on their lives, but not quite in the way I would have expected, and definitely not in the way many of them hoped.

300 Words About: Mississippi Damned

Taking its name from the provocative Nina Simone song, Tina Mabry's Mississippi Damned reveals itself as, in essence, an adaptation of the downbeat lyrics:"Lord have mercy on this land of mine/We all gonna get it in due time/I don't belong here/I don't belong there/I've even stopped believing in prayer...Oh but this whole country is full of lies/You're all gonna die and die like flies."

Yeah, this one ain't for the kids.

Written and directed by Mabry (recent recipient of a prestigious United States Artists grant) and based on her own family history, the film is a generation-spanning tale of physical and sexual abuse, poor choices, missed opportunities, poverty and strife, and even sickness and disease. It's all of Shakespeare's tragedies wrapped up in one story, updated and set in the American South. The plot, such as it is, doesn't require much explanation: three sisters and their families live and then relive some truly awful experiences, with only young Kari keeping hope alive that one day she will escape the cycle.

The production values and acting are very impressive for an independently produced film, particularly considering there is more action, movement, and variety of setting than most small films would dare attempt. And, although seemingly every other scene presents itself as ripe for some scene-chewing, Mabry keeps the cast on an even keel. The actors are comfortable in their characters and the scenes mostly develop naturally, lending authentic emotion to the story. Ironically, the overwhelming bleakness that exists as the film's greatest flaw is also the central reason it's so affecting.

Bittersweet: The Dark Side of Chocolate

If you're alone (or with other single friends) this Valentine's Day and are seeking the perfect downer for the occasion, look no further than The Dark Side of Chocolate. While millions of couples will express their love for each other with extravagantly wrapped boxes of candied cocoa of unknown origin, you can rest easy that you're not supporting what amounts to slave labor in regions of West Africa.

To be sure, for most people The Dark Side of Chocolate will be more personal and thus more disturbing than a documentary about the ugly underbelly of, say, the dried fruit industry. After all, chocolate is a globally traded commodity (or rather, cocoa is), a $50 billion/year worldwide business, and a veritable drug for women everywhere - and a few men, too, including me.

Concerned and curious about rumors of child labor on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, intrepid Danish journalist Miki Mistrati set off with a hidden camera and a bag full of questions about the source of the precious cocoa used by the world's leading chocolate manufacturers (The Hershey Company, Mars, Cadbury, Nestlé, and others). What he would find, tragically, is that children as young as seven years old are clearly being trafficked from neighboring countries to work in cocoa plantations for little to no pay. If the lack of an actual war prevents your favorite confection from being considered "conflict" chocolate, you should still feel conflicted about eating it.

300 Words About: Waste Land

Topically similar to Garbage Dreams but thematically similar to Born into Brothels, Lucy Walker's endearing Waste Land is a humble, tender tribute to the millions of people we walk by daily but avoid looking in the eye. In the U.S., as in Brazil and maybe every other developed nation, an undercurrent of classism wreaks havoc on the social fabric. We marginalize and generalize about the groups below us on the social ladder, never considering to recognize the ambitions and talents of the individuals who comprise those groups. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Vik Muniz' portraits of workers in the world's largest landfill (Jardim Gramacho, outside Rio de Janeiro) tell a timeless story of human ambition, cooperation, innovation, beauty, and creativity.

That's pretty flowery language applied to a film set amongst mountains of rotting garbage, but it's there if you look for it - and you don't have to look too hard. These portraits, which are photos of garbage arranged to represent photos (you might have to see it to understand it), are astounding artistic achievements even without considering the subjects of the photos, the team of people involved in constructing the portraits, or the materials from which they are composed. When all of that is evaluated as well, it's not surprising to learn that the "Pictures of Garbage" (double entendre intended) collection broke attendance records at modern art museums around the world.

On the surface, the motive behind Muniz' project (to "change lives") appeared naive, even foolish. This is partly because he had the complete wrong impression of the people who worked at Jardim Gramacho, and partly because no good deed goes unpunished, and whatever sacrifices Muniz was willing to make (in this case, his marriage) were not necessarily going to guarantee a better life for the civil servants who provide what amounts to indentured labor in picking recycled materials out of the landfill.

But Muniz was successful, and director Lucy Walker was successful (for the second time in two years), because both of them realized that often the most effective way to lift someone up is to embrace who they are, where they are, before finding a way to tap into the positive aspects of their individual character. It's probably not a coincidence that the subjects chosen by Muniz for this particular project are quite attractive by most standards, but if he has shown anything, it's that even beautiful people might not recognize their beauty until someone shows it to them.

300 Words About: Howl

Hmm...people had a hard time understanding my poetry...how will they understand this film?

To be perfectly honest, I went into Howl at a distinct disadvantage: I've never connected much with the Beat Generation, and I find a lot of poetry just plain bewildering. Put it to music or use imagery that I understand and I'm good, but meditate on "peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns", as Allen Ginsberg does in his infamous poem, "Howl", and I'm lost.

Call me culturally illiterate, but I'm afraid that while I understand the social significance of the poem in its time (both as a cathartic statement and as a legal precedent), it just has no emotional resonance for me at all. Should this have affected my viewing of Howl? Probably, but since much of the film is animated I didn't have to do much heavy lifting anyway. The metaphors and raw passion were brought to life for me, so all I had to do was try and understand, which I did with infrequent success.

In theory I love the idea of bringing poetry to cinematic life for the very reasons I've mentioned: it helps me make some sense of the underlying meaning. But "Howl", with its huge cultural and historic significance, may not have been the best poem to explore in this way. The entire film should have been animated, or the entire film should have been a legal drama about obscenity and censorship in the 1950's, or the entire film should have been a biopic of Ginsberg (heck, maybe it just should have been a documentary).

Instead, Howl is all three, and suffers because of it (even if I admire the fact that none of the dialogue was scripted). I was tossed around from the courtroom to a living room to a coffeehouse to an animated nightmare. It was disorienting and, apart from James Franco's committed performance, it made disappointingly little use of a terrific cast featuring Jeff Daniels, Jon Hamm, and David Strathairn.

The end of the film is much tidier than the rest of it, and underscores, at least to me, that directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were more interested in telling the story of the poem than exploring the poem in the story, as if the meaning of the lines in "Howl" should be obvious to anyone who reads them (in a Q & A after the screening I attended, the directors talked almost exclusively about the technical aspects of making the film). Well, consider this viewer a little more enlightened about why "Howl" received so much attention, but still pretty much in the dark about what half of it actually means.

300 Words About: Dirt! The Movie

Dirt - a surprisingly fertile subject for a documentary

In writing about the best documentaries of the last decade recently, I made a comment that the 2000's ushered in a new era of documentary filmmaking. These days anyone, seemingly anywhere, can get funding to choose any subject and claim to be the "first" one to fully explore an issue, historical event, person, animal, or what have you. What this has led to, of course, is a great number of television documentary series ("Ice Road Truckers"?!) and feature-length documentaries (The Real Cancun) about rather inane subjects. I thought dirt might be one of those inane subjects. I was wrong.

I can't claim that Dirt! The Movie kept me riveted for all 86 minutes of its running time, but I can't claim it's ever boring, either. On the contrary, it's so subject-dense at times that it can be disorienting. Who knew dirt was such a complicated matter? Or rather, who knew dirt could be used as a jumping-off point to talk about complicated matters (e.g., agriculture, religion, politics, history, science, biology, world cultures)?

300 Words About: Green Zone

"Look, man, we had to know this would flop after DiCaprio couldn't even carry Body of Lies. At least we got paid up front, right?"

Green Zone is like Glenn Beck, or Keith Olbermann, or even Jon Stewart. It's incredibly loud, incredibly loose-tongued, and incredibly lacking in moderation or nuance of any kind. Incredibly, Universal Pictures wagered $100+ million that cash-strapped audiences would want to see cable news-styled hysterics within the context of one of the most unpopular film genres of our time: the Iraq War movie (remember that The Hurt Locker is the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in history).

Granted, Universal did have the "Bourne in Baghdad" angle to lure audiences (how has no one made a mash-up trailer yet?), and Paul Greengrass previously directed United 93, one of the best films of the last decade. But as much as Green Zone had on its side in terms of star power, nothing can make up for an extremely dated and painfully retread screenplay by Brian Helgeland - one that overflows with Big Grand Statements, both said and unsaid by its caricatures.

I figured something was wrong when Universal kept pushing the release date for Green Zone later and later (eventually past the 12/31/09 Oscar eligibility deadline), but wow, I haven't been this disappointed since about 10 minutes ago, when I saw that Brian Helgeland also wrote the upcoming Robin Hood reboot starring Russell Crowe.

300 Words About: The Yes Men Fix the World

Meet ExxonMobil's most enthusiastic executives...

If Sacha Baron Cohen and Michael Moore teamed up to make a documentary, the result would be The Yes Men Fix the World, the new documentary about Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno's pranks on corporate America. These two guys created the film, of course, so to say it's one-sided would be a massive understatement. It's nothing more than a calling card for them to move on to something bigger and better (say, a TV show), but they are hilarious actors and despite the silliness of their pranks, their commitment to activism does seem pretty genuine.

Here's the set-up: Bichlbaum and Bonanno, leaders of an activist group known as "The Yes Men", worm their way into corporate meetings and conventions and pose as top executives for high-profile American businesses (Dow, Exxon, Halliburton, to name a few) - and sometimes even the American government. That they are able to actually get stage time and do interviews with the press using completely fake identities is not even the most impressive part.

Now on DVD: The People Speak

Watching The People Speak, a performance documentary based on the writings of the late historian Howard Zinn (he passed away almost exactly a month ago), is a little like the experience Marty McFly has in Back to the Future II when he goes back to the alterna-1985.

Listening to the diary entries and recorded quotes of several dozen American citizens (vividly brought to life by a talented cast of A-list Hollywood actors) describe the reality of the country around them, you can't help but consider how many different histories this country has (and really every country has). The history you learn from a textbook, the history you learn from your family, and of the course the history you don't hear at all. This is the American history you haven't heard.

300 Words About: Diary of a Times Square Thief

 

Modern day archaeology = digging on Ebay...

Imagine that you've recorded your innermost secrets, ideas, personal philosophies, and confessions from the last few years in a composition book. If somebody found it in 2035, what would impression would they have of you - and how would you feel if they attempted to find you by contacting all of the people you've been writing about?

This reunion with the past is the essence of Dutch filmmaker Klaas Bense's intriguing documentary, Diary of a Times Square Thief, which was recently nominated (in the company of Food, Inc., Anvil! The Story of Anvil, and Afghan Star) in the Best Feature category of the 2009 International Documentary Association awards. 

It is a brief film (60 min.) packed with fascinatingly bizarre interviews with a diverse group of New Yorkers whose names were found in a personal diary that Bense purchased on Ebay. The only details he could find in the diary about the author were that his name was John and he worked as a receptionist at a dilapidated flophouse (the infamous Times Square Hotel, now the largest permanent supportive housing project in the country) during the crime-plagued mid-80's. Armed only with these clues, and curious about what John might be doing today, Bense set off for New York City.

300 Words About: New York, I Love You

"Listen, Hayden, let me tell you a little something about being boring on screen"...

Easily one of the most disappointing films of 2009, New York, I Love You makes the largest and most culturally diverse city in the United States appear bland, lily-white, and generally lifeless. It's like Des Moines on a Sunday morning.

To be fair I'm not a New Yorker and have never lived in the city, but in all the times I've ever visited I've never left with an impression as dull and tasteless as I did walking out of this movie. The locations are pedestrian, the stories inconsequential and insipid, the chain-smoking characters severely lacking in charisma, and the acting hit or miss (like, broad-side-of-the-barn miss). Aside from two or three of the 11 short stories, the highlight of New York, I Love You is the music playing over the closing credits.

300 Words About: We Live in Public

"Our business is in programming people's lives", says Josh Harris in Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize last January. He's talking both literally and figuratively, as a social "artist" (his word, not mine) and a cultural prophet - one of the most influential of the last generation. As his brother says in confused wonder, "Everything that he does is a precursor to something that is going to happen to all of us."

You've probably never heard of Harris, but if you're reading this you're living in his world, as he's left an indelible mark on the internet, including web browsers and social media and yes, even blogs. When he completed his biggest social experiment ten years ago, "Quiet: We Live in Public", he was already way ahead of the cultural curve. As he knew then, and as we can see now from the influence of the internet, "People want 15 minutes of fame - every day."

300 Words About: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

Jazz just sounds cooler when it's backing a black and white scene, doesn't it? Gives it an organic, refreshing sound, almost a palpable texture. Jazz under neon blue lights and nightclub smoke makes for a great atmosphere, too, but that's sultry and mysterious and can be too confined by its own setting.

The reason I point this out is because Damien Chazelle's Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (which made waves at Tribeca in April but is still seeking financing for a theatrical release) gives jazz a shot in the arm that not only gets your toe tapping, but your spirit soaring. You're not seduced by the riffs so much as you're invigorated by them.

It's a verite-style romantic musical dramedy that defies categorization precisely because it fits so many descriptions: indie, docudrama, mumblecore, to name a few. At different times it reminded of new cinema (In Search of a Midnight Kiss and Medicine for Melancholy) and classic cinema (the dancing scene from Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders), and it won't work for everyone if only because it's so peculiarly surreal. But I think that's why I loved it, aside from the fact that it was shot on the Boston and Cambridge streets that hold a special nostalgia for me.

300 Words About: Afghan Star

[Afghan Star was scheduled to open this Friday, September 11, at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema. It has just been dropped from the booking schedule and I have no idea if/when it will actually arrive.]

I don't know why I've never warmed to "American Idol" at any time during the last decade (can you believe it's been nine years?), but I think part of the reason is because it's always seemed to be less like a singing competition and more like a pop-friendly talent show. This is exactly what it is supposed to be, of course, but my point is that it's not really about well these people can sing. It's about how good they look as pop stars.

You need look no further than Susan Boyle, who became an overnight celebrity, literally a household name, not because she could sing well (she couldn't), but because she didn't look like she could sing well. Maybe it says something about Western influence in Afghanistan that "Afghan Star", the equivalent of "Idol", appears to be just as image-obsessed as its American predecessor. But that's where the similarities end.

If you lose in the final rounds of "American Idol" you can still count on a good five year career as a singer. If you lose in "Afghan Star" it can mean a return to the daily struggle in a war-torn country, which is not so bad when compared with the death threats contestants (particularly female contestants) encounter if they simply present the wrong image of themselves on the show. These people are playing for keeps, which makes Afghan Star, the documentary about four finalists in the third season of the show, a compelling cultural study. And also 88 minutes of sweet relief from Ryan Seacrest.

I won't spoil the movie by revealing who wins the competition, but if you really want to remain in suspense, stop reading now. I'll only say that I expected some dramatic twists - maybe even extremely dramatic twists - that never materialized. It's certainly for the best as far as the subjects are concerned, but based on the synopsis and poster (of course I didn't watch the trailer until after the movie), I thought I was in for something much more disturbing.

Not that I would have liked to see that, but as it happens the only real weakness of Afghan Star is that these disturbing issues aren't fully explored. We learn that dancing on stage is bad, women have completely lost their identities under Taliban rule, and contestants represent each of Afghanistan's ethnic groups. I guess I just wanted a little more depth, a few more voices.

Nevertheless, I think I'd much rather watch Afghan Star (or "Afghan Star", the actual show) than "American Idol" because the stakes are real. Even the host of the season of "Afghan Star" that's profiled in the movie is desperate to cash in on the show's success: having arrived in the U.S. for the first time earlier this year to promote the film at the Sundance Film Festival, he skipped out on his flight back home.

300 Words About: Ponyo

As a stand-alone painting this is beautiful, as a feature-length film it's incredible...

I probably should have kept my mouth shut a few months ago when I whined, " I fear we're going to lose the human element to animation". I knew both Ponyo and The Princess and The Frog were still on the way, but it seemed as if Coraline and Sita Sings the Blues were swift hammer strikes on the nails in the coffin of hand-drawn animation. After recently seeing Ponyo, I glad to have a renewed hope that someone, somewhere will continue to do this kind of work, and hopefully, Hayao Miyazaki will be one of those someones.

Honestly, I didn't really care for the Little Mermaid-inspired story of Ponyo (it seemed a little flat), but the nice thing about animated films, especially those from Miyazaki, is that the story can take a back seat to the storyboards. In this case, more than 100,000 vibrantly colorful, delicately hand-drawn storyboards. The resulting movements are so engrossing that you wish you could watch some sequences in slow-motion, or at the very least display some of the frames in art galleries.

For me, watercolor backgrounds and landscapes provide a nostalgic aura of fantasy and imagination, the sense of a place that that looks fuzzy on the screen but is perceived in your mind to be vividly clear and full of life. The sharp edges and modern flourishes of Pixar films are dazzlingly realistic, to be sure, but it's only in the hand-drawn style of Ponyo and older Disney films that my mind reverts back to childlike wonder. Both are enjoyable experiences, but the hand-drawn style has much more of a comfort food/warm blanket effect on me.

Which is why it will be sad if Ponyo doesn't do well at the box office here (it's already been another smash hit for Miyazaki in Japan), despite the voice talents of Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson and Cate Blanchett. American children are missing out on the experience of seeing something that doesn't resemble a video game; it draws them further into the story and, in my opinion, probably does more to bring out their own artistic interests. After all, all of those Pixar people grew up watching hand-drawn Disney movies.

If you haven't seen a Miyazaki film and you're curious about what to expect, feast your eyes on this:

300 Words About: In the Loop

The charming face of international diplomacy...

Every time I go to Washington, D.C., I find myself increasingly noticing the ugliness of the place. Of course the city is not physically ugly (I love the National Mall), or culturally ugly (quite the opposite), but I'm picking up more and more on the undercurrent of a competitive, cutthroat, ugly attitude that exists in the federal government and the think tanks and the agencies inside the Beltway. It's all happening In the Loop, as it were, and based on anecdotes from my D.C.-based friends and the razor-sharp satire in this terrific comedy, I'm frankly glad that I'm operating outside of the loop.

Granted, half of In the Loop takes place in London, but things are no better over there, the only difference being the flavor of expletive used in any given conversation. Directed by British TV veteran Armando Ianucci, In the Loop shows us a side of international relations that's just too bizarre to be fake, because really, given the nasty dynamic of the health care debate at the moment, and the 25-hour news cycle, and the sheer size of the circuitous bureaucracy that is our federal government, there's every reason to believe hijinks like this take place with some frequency. After all, the government is comprised of us - "we the people" - and the ratio of good apples to bad apples is the same on Main Street as it is on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Calling Ianucci's directly style "breezy" would be an understatement. Tornadoes of dialogue whoosh through most scenes, and with the number of accents and the number of voices speaking at the same time (e.g., the elevator scene), you're likely to be scratching your head as much as you are laughing. But I like that, because it rewards paying attention and it means that you're laughing at a different joke than your neighbor, simply because they probably didn't catch the one you did. The few moments that don't feature dialogue are filled in by deadpan comedic acting, with so many scowls and smirks that it would appear it's a competition as to who can do the best impression of Dick Cheney/Karl Rove (the winner is David Rasche). Or in the case of the impossibly sarcastic Chad (Zach Woods), who can do the best impression of Kristen Wiig.

If there's one thing I didn't care for in this otherwise wickedly amusing film, it was the use of handheld cameras and quick zooming during completely static scenes (people sitting in cubicles), which at this point is so prevalent in every movie, commercial, and TV show, that I'm left wondering who will be the first director to just have their actors throw the camera back and forth to each other during scenes of casual conversation. Fortunately, there are no scenes of casual conversation in In the Loop, so for the most part the crazy camera work simply enhances the sense of chaos, or at the very least makes the film resemble a documentary. Which it isn't - I hope.

300 Words About: Moon

[Moon opens this Friday at the Landmark Uptown Cinema. These thoughts follow the preview I wrote after seeing Moon at MSPIFF, followed by a Q & A with writer-director Duncan Jones.]

Like driving in Minnesota in January...

As I mentioned in that meme thing a while ago, one of the things I love about movies set in the future is that the imagination can run completely wild. Even when this blank slate leads to perhaps overly ambitious ideas, it's still fun to consider the possible delights. Or in the case of a movie like Moon, consider the possible horrors. It's not a frightening movie to watch, but the core elements of the story are enough to keep any technophobe up at night, possibly terrified of impending developments in biomedical engineering and astrophysics.

Based on its production budget alone (if not also your ticket price), Moon is likely the biggest bang for the buck you'll see all year. Working with a paltry $5 million, writer-director Duncan Jones constructed an astonishingly impressive lunar surface by using the ancient technique of scaled models. I'm of the opinion that for the most part, bigger budgets and bigger CGI developments have led to less impressive and less realistic effects, and I'm even tempted, for example, to argue that the effects in the original Star Wars trilogy are better than the prequels. But I refuse to spending enough time watching the prequels to find that evidence. Anyway, in addition to appreciating the story potential and the high production values of Moon, I was bowled over by the elegant, haunting piano score by Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain).

Unfortunately, what Moon boasts in technical achievements it lacks in emotional depth. Our protagonist is Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell, a personal friend of Jones for whom the part was specifically written), a contract employee of Lunar Industries who is finishing a 3 year-term living alone on the moon - that is, aside from the a sentient computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). His work mining Helium-3 from the lunar surface is monotonous and isolating, and as he begins to prepare for his trip back home to his wife and child, Sam makes a highly disturbing discovery.

While Rockwell does his best to bear the emotional burden of his character, there was something missing at a deeper level of the story for me. Maybe Jones felt that more involvement from Gerty, for example, would make Moon more of a knock-off of 2001 than it already is. Whatever happened, Moon ultimately didn't horrify or disturb me nearly as much as I expected, or, to be honest, as much as I hoped.

Jones is next directing Mute, "about a woman whose disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. When she disappears, he has to go up against the city’s gangsters." He has $25 million to work with this time, and considering he made Moon look so good for so little, I hope he invests more resources this time in somehow developing a little more emotional "oomph" from another promising premise.

300 Words About: Drag Me to Hell

(Drag Me to Hell opens wide this Friday, May 29)

"You said I would get a free checking account if I refinanced my mortgage!"...

As if the economy and housing market weren't already frightening enough, along comes Drag Me to Hell, a wickedly rendered depiction of what could happen if we lowly bank customers sought vengeance on the hand-wringing loan officers who have lured us into this mess. Of course, brothers and co-writers Ivan and Sam Raimi didn't have the mortgage-anchored recession in mind when they wrote this film in the early 90's, but it's still an ironically amusing set-up to their new horror comedy.

Comedy being the operative word, because I'm not sure why the advance word on this was that it lacked laughs. They come in spades, and the frustrating thing is that the Raimis make it look so easy - why can't others get this formula down? A bare-bones story (young loan officer tries to escape a demonic curse unleashed on her by the old woman whose loan extension she denied) featuring sassy dialogue, goofy gags and responsibly restrained special effects. Sam Raimi must be used to a massive production budget from his work on the Spider-Man trilogy, and it's nice that he avoided the temptation to over-CGI the stunts here. While there's only so many times an old lady's shrieking face can actually spook you, it's such a confident production that you can forgive some repetition from a director having fun at the top of his form.

Not quite as impressive are a few typical annoyances (the climactic finale is ruined by an easy tell, and again we have twenty-somethings with a million-dollar view of downtown L.A. from their Echo Park bedroom window), and some blah acting from Alison Lohman and Justin Long. The Raimis probably just followed horror film dogma to make the female character the protagonist, but I almost think Long might have added more spark to the role if he'd been cursed instead, similar to his jumpy breakout role in Jeepers Creepers. In any event, Lohman is essentially just on screen to receive nasty punishments and cue the audience on when to scream, so you can't fault her for not filling out an already empty character.

In the end, Drag Me to Hell succeeded for me mostly because I didn't feel like Sam Raimi was trying to brutalize me with graphic torture, gore and violence. While other directors appear to get some sinister satisfaction from their unnecessary attempts to send us a "message", Raimi understands that horror, in its most marketable (see: PG-13) form, should simply be a rousing ride for the audience. Drag Me to Hell is just that - a refreshingly boisterous, nostalgically freaky flick, like the haunted house tours at your local amusement park that left you giggling as you gripped your friend's arm in giddy terror. Yes, thankfully and despite a disturbing rise in bloodlust from movie-goers over the past decade, Raimi has bucked the trend and delivered chills and thrills instead of kills and drills.

300 Words About: Terminator Salvation

If you look really closely, you just might recognize some elements of James Cameron's creation...

There are a few things that don't belong in Terminator movies: little kids, huge talking heads on screens explaining the plot, celebrity cameos, inexplicable romance that threatens to overtake scenes, and talking dogs. The guy who insists on referring to himself by his childhood nickname has haphazardly inserted the first four of those elements into Terminator Salvation, and in all likelihood we can look forward to the fifth one in the upcoming sequel.

What bothers me about the utterly mediocre Terminator Salvation is not simply the fact that it was made. I'm not necessarily a Cameron purist and I actually liked Jonathon Mostow's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, even if was significantly inferior to Cameron's first two. No, what bothered me about Terminator Salvation is that despite, or maybe because of, the frequent references it made to the quotes and action elements from the earlier movies, it severely lacked vision, terror, originality and confidence. Worse, the guy who insists on referring to himself by his childhood nickname thought that he could actually adapt or update or otherwise modify this story for a new generation by adding "fresh" ideas that simply leaving you scratching your head.

For example, what in the world is a mute child doing as an important character in a Terminator movie? Where were the typically heavy - and heavily intriguing - dialogues/monologues about the war and Judgment Day? In the future, shouldn't the aiming accuracy of both the humans and machines' weapons be far more advanced, not worse than ever before? And why was Common given any face time in a completely worthless role? (And don't think I'll let slide the fact that he was wearing stylish aviator sunglasses during the climactic nighttime assault.)

I imagine the guy who insists on referring to himself by his childhood nickname would explain these bizarre decisions by saying he was trying to bring his own style to Cameron's vision, but it almost seems from Terminator Salvation that he didn't even see the first two movies, but just heard about them and picked up on the popular catch phrases. After this movie, well I'm tempted to say we'd be lucky if Judgment Day actually arrives before his tentative sequel comes out in 2011.