Knowing Me, Knowing You

My favorite response to the 2009 movie Knowing came from an anonymous movie-goer here in Dallas who said, "Jesus, please don't send your crazy alien angels to save us."

Personally, I must admit that I liked this story better when it was titled "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes".

As for the religious angle, I'm surprised that a certain film critic of Scandinavian descent didn't even try to equate the "Adam and Eve" figures at the end with the Norse entities Lif and Lifthrasir. Come to think of it, those pagans used to come up with a lot of nasty theories about how the world would end with little if any input from the Left Behind set. But I am sure that was just a coincidence.

For that matter, I could not help viewing the ending of this movie without thinking of the old Neil Young song "After the Gold Rush". Which probably was not the screenwriters' intention...

In any event, there had been at least one effort on the Internet to compare this movie by director Alex Proyas to a famous science fiction short story written by Robert Heinlein which was called "The Year of the Jackpot". The short story in question had no angels, no children, and took place near Los Angeles around the year 1952. However, like the movie, it had a mathematically talented man who stumbled upon a statistical way to see bad things coming, a correlation with ancient prophecy, a young twentysomething woman who was caught up by events, a road trip that was made against incredible odds, and a last-day revelation that the sun is about to explode... Of course, I had actually read that same short story as a teenager and I still did not make the connection. Perhaps because Heinlein and Proyas had such different attitudes towards their material. Heinlein treated the whole end of the world thing as some sort of surprise ending while Proyas dwelt on it and dwelt on it. Plus there was a certain matter-of-fact tone to Heinlein's story that Knowing could have used in place of its more melodramatic attitude. And considering the fact that Heinlein's short story essentially argued that a large group of women removing their clothes in public was a sign of impending doom, that's saying something.

However, to each his own.

Look on That Ending, Ye Mighty, and Despair!: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Now that I'm finally the last person in America -- apart from my mother and my youngest sibling -- to have seen last year's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom:

It didn't seem all that bad. Predictable, yes, but I have seen worse -- including the third movie in this series.

It did seem to go all over the place for a dinosaur movie: here's a scene for The Purge fans, here's a scene for people who like old horror films, here's some characters for Millennials and nonwhite fans to identify with, here's a scene for disaster movie buffs...

Granted, Steven Spielberg used to do the same a-little-something-for-everybody routine in his movies but the director of this movie ain't Spielberg. (Of course, after seeing a small glimpse of Ready Player One on cable recently -- a movie I ultimately found to be unwatchable -- I'm not sure that even Spielberg is still Spielberg nowadays.)

I must admit that I would have liked to have seen more of Zia Rodriguez the Latina dinovet (played by actress Daniella Pineda). (Yay, representation!) For that matter, I would have liked to have seen Bryce Dallas Howard's "first time I saw a dinosaur" speech delivered by someone like Laura Dern or Julianne Moore. And I still rather not see Chris Pratt in anything that doesn't have Aubrey Plaza in it. (Apparently having two Latina actresses in a movie like this would have broken the universe or something.)

However, in the end, I liked what I saw better than what I didn't see -- although I must admit that I don't know what to make of the -- ahem -- pro-life ending. Seriously, was that supposed to be a happy ending? Or else the director's subtle metaphor for global climate change?

A Brief Philosophical Comment About Rampage

This movie's "of course the wolf flies" line will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the great philosophical quotes of our era, ranking right next to such classic quotes as Indiana Jones' "Snakes? Why does there have to be snakes?" and St. Patrick of Ireland's "I'm tired of all these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plain."

Of course, there are some conservative grumps who would argue that the only philosophical lesson to be learned from this movie is "When in doubt, let George do it." But they're probably just Creationists anyway.

Wondering About Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The more biopics I see, the more I find myself wanting to classify them as "alternative history." Unfortunately, the 2017 movie Professor Marston and the Wonder Women was no exception.

Well, I liked it better than director Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S. -- which isn't saying much since D.E.B.S. was basically an one-joke comedy which proved to be surprisingly mediocre once it revealed its one big twist. Of course, compared to godawful movies like Rough Night, D.E.B.S. didn't seem that bad but that might just be nostalgia talking.

Anyway, Professor Marston... did give me some hope for the upcoming Strangers in Paradise film which is supposedly director Angela Robinson's next project. But as a movie, well...

I wanted to like it more than I did but given the fact that it basically glorified William Moulton Marston, a man who seemed to be more than a little bit of a schmuck -- and this from a guy who loved the recent Wonder Woman movie (yes, I'm aware of the irony) -- I was lucky that I liked it as much as I did. I did like the way it gave the Rebecca Hall character Elizabeth (Marston's wife) her due. Indeed, I felt more sympathy for her character than for any other character in the movie. And I was a bit amused by how much a movie about a polyamorous relationship seemed to make a better case for same-sex marriage than for polyamory.

However, the moment I was asked to take seriously sentiments like "you always hurt the one you love," it became obvious that this was never going to be my type of movie. Which is just as well since this movie obviously wasn't made for me.

I am not sure whom it was made for but I hope whomever it was enjoyed it more than me.

I did appreciate the irony of the movie showing a man who was all about submitting to strong female authority figures being confronted by -- you guessed it -- a strong female authority figure. But I can't help but wonder how much of that irony was intended.

It's Hard to be a Gentleman and Still Prefer Atomic Blonde

It's tempting to say that I liked the 2017 movie Atomic Blonde movie much better when it was called No Way Out but then I remember that many of the things I most hated about that 1987 movie -- the arbitrary death of a female character, the pointless twist ending, etc, -- were the same things I hated about this movie.

It did not help that I saw Salt soon after I saw this flick. As tempted as I was to quibble about various plot points in that movie, I still liked that movie better than Atomic Blonde -- and for good reason. It was the "Cold War" thriller that Atomic Blonde should have been but wasn't.

Anyway, I can see why so many critics were so disappointed in this movie. I expected more from it myself -- and now I feel foolish for doing so. Oh, well.

Charlize Theron put on a game performance but in the end, the movie didn't exactly go through new territory. When it was not borrowing from No Way Out, it was borrowing from movies like The World Was Not Enough. The most novel part of the movie was the revelation that Ms. Theron's character was bisexual. Yet it said something about this movie that as nice as the scenes between Theron and her female lover were, it did not change the fact that the rest of the movie was all too predictable. (And as other critics have noted, the fate of Theron's lover was one of those things that was all too predictable.)

I know that perhaps I should not be so quick to pass judgment on this movie -- after all, Ms. Theron did appear to be trying her best to be a convincing female James Bond -- but darn it! Salt faced many of the same problems and dealt with them in an interesting manner. Atomic Blonde did not. I could watch Salt over and over again. Atomic Blonde, by comparison, seemed hard enough to sit through once. It was not really a bad movie but in the end, it was a disappointing movie.

Rough Night Was Rough, All Right -- Especially for the Audience

This just in: women can be rough and crude too.

At least that's the impression I got from the 2017 movie Rough Night, a gender-reversed imagining of the dark comedy Very Bad Things that managed to be more tasteless than the original but unfortunately, not all that funny. (To be fair, I didn't find Very Bad Things to be all that funny either though there are some critics who liked it better than me.) The highlight of Rough Night appeared to be Scarlett Johansson's Hilaryesque haircut though Kate McKinnon's MarySueish foreigner earned points from me for simply being one of the few characters who dared to act like a likable human being.

Of course, the main problem with the movie is that most of the actresses in Rough Night weren't playing characters; they were playing types: the fat girl, the lesbian, the lesbian of color, the foreigner, and so on. Worse yet, they were not even playing relatively entertaining types. My eyes started glazing over after the umpteenth crude joke and considering that the screenwriters managed to include almost every possible joke involving vibrators, adult diapers and fratboy humor that one could possibly put in a movie, the movie proved to be remarkably dull. Scarlett Johansson initially showed promise as a female politician based loosely upon a former Secretary of State but then she got overwhelmed by a formulaic plot that seemed to have little purpose save to make audience members my age really hate all the main characters in this movie.Even McKinnon's attempt to parody the end of Chicago did not quite work. However, the movie did succeed in making me feel sorry for Demi Moore, who had the thankless role of a bored neighbor who liked to experiment with bisexuality.

The only reason I saw this movie was because a friend wanted to see it. And I would like to think that the very fact that I went to see this flick with her says something more profound about the true nature of friendship than anything you're likely to find in this movie.

A Second Look at High Tension

Warning: Here Be Spoilers

I can think of a thousand things wrong with High Tension and I still stand by my original review but there is something about the way the ending of High Tension sticks in my mind that makes it hard to forget.



Perhaps it was the way the director took a standard image usually associated with happy endings -- in this case, a young girl eagerly turning in the direction of her current object of affection and then reaching out in that direction as if to give her a hug -- and then made it seem -- well -- creepy. The sad part is that I couldn't help sensing that Alex -- the objection of the young girl's affection -- still felt sorry for Marie -- the young girl in the mental hospital. Yet it was fairly obvious that any chance of a serious relationship between the two of them ended when Marie killed Alex's family. And that Alex had ample reason to hate Marie after everything Marie had put her through. Indeed, it could be that Alex's feeling in that final scene was not so much pity but relief that Marie was in a cell and not likely to bother her again.

Yet Marie somehow sensed that Alex was watching her even though she could not see her and turned in her direction with a facial expression that most people reserve for their deities. (Indeed, it did not seem like that much of a coincidence that the way Marie was muttering those words at the beginning of that scene made it almost sound as if Marie was praying.) Alex obviously no longer loved Marie and never did love her in the way that Marie wanted her to. But Marie still loved Alex -- and probably will continue to do so till the day she dies -- even though her violent actions have ended any realistic hope she ever had of ever being loved back.

Some people would consider that last part a happy ending and separated from the rest of the movie, one might even be fooled into thinking that it was. In context, though, it seemed far more scarier than the ending of any conventional final girl thriller.

Most Thrillers Nowadays Actually Could Use a Grain of Salt...

If you were to mention the phrase "Russian conspiracy involving the U.S. President" today, it's a safe bet that most Americans would not think of the scenario mentioned in the 2010 movie Salt...

Nevertheless, for such a "dated" movie, it seemed surprisingly watchable. Indeed, I enjoyed the last half of this movie more than I did the last Mission: Impossible movie. (I knew I was in trouble with that one because while it wasn't really a bad movie, the plot was predictable enough that I actually started missing such sparkling dialogue like "the package is on the plane" -- which, of course, is a line from yet another Mission: Impossible movie. But I digress.)

Anyway, as tempted as I am to crack jokes about poor Angelina Jolie doing the Sydney Bristow routine and going all Alias on us, I actually liked this movie. Of course, due to my ethnic background, I could not help but find something ironic about a movie that basically asked us the audience to root for an accused woman who was actually guilty of the crime of which she was accused. Granted, she eventually redeemed herself by saving the world and proving herself to have been a good person all along -- if that is the correct terminology to use in regard to someone who showed no mercy in killing so many people -- but still...

In any event, Tom Cruise was originally supposed to play the title role in this movie and it's only after he backed out that Angelie Jolie took over. In a way, it's a good thing. The scene where she watched the villain through a glass window and tried to speak to him with her eyes and her facial expressions just wouldn't have worked with an actor like Mr. Cruise. And Ms. Jolie has played enough tough characters that she was more convincing in the role despite her size than I would have ordinarily thought possible -- even when she was being thrown around by someone who was so much bigger than she was. (Then again fights with the Great Big Guy are almost obligatory in this type of thriller.)

I suppose I should wrap up by commenting on the irony of an American action movie in which the native-born Yankees do little save sit around while a dang foreigner does all the real work involving in preventing World War III. Then again, isn't that the same premise you find in most James Bond movies? And look how popular they are with the Yanks!

And You All Thought Hill House Was A Bad Place: Crimson Peak

It's tempting to call Crimson Peak a classic example of splatterpunk gothic but that would probably create the impression that the movie was a lot gorier than it actually was.

As it is, the movie was a lot gorier than the typical gothic movies that I remember seeing when I was growing up but it still had plenty of old-fashioned horror thrills as well as a plot twist that I certainly did not see coming. If nothing else, it was hard to hate a movie that managed to work in allusions to both Jane Austen and Mary Shelley in its dialogue and it didn't hurt that the heroine Edith Cushing* (who was played by actress Mia Wasikowska) was smarter than your average damsel in distress.

If all of Guillermo del Toro's movies were this good, I'd be a lot more optimistic about his future projects.

* An obvious reference to that Cushing!

Was This Movie Really Necessary?: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

Most decent movie sequels make me feel bad if I never got a chance to see the first movie in the series. This isn't one of them.

It managed to take almost every element of a successful comic book movie and make it annoying. Then it had the nerve to wrap everything up with a shamelessly contrived -- and not quite believable -- pro-family message. Even the presence of Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame and the obligatory rip-off -- er -- homage to Hitchcock's North by Northwest couldn't save this film from being amazingly unwatchable. Any indication that it might prove otherwise was dashed to pieces by the opening sequence which managed to make what could have been an exciting action piece seem dull -- and don't get me started on the merits of any casting director who would have Michelle Yeoh play second fiddle to the likes of Chris Pratt. Add to that dialogue that made the Three Stooges sound like refugees from the Algonquin Round Table and you had one real stinker of a movie.

And if you're tempted to watch it because of the talking raccoon, go rent Over the Hedge. It's a lot more funnier and more entertaining and it won't make you feel like a sucker for watching it.

A Series of Dickensian Events

It's the 175th anniversary of Charles Dickens' famous novella A Christmas Carol so naturally it seems the ideal time to review two of the most recent movies to be inspired by that classic tale.

First off there's Robert Zemeckis's 2009 animated film A Christmas Carol, which basically stars Jim Carrey in a multitude of roles (including the starring role of Ebenezer Scrooge). As far as Dickensian remakes go, I've seen better and I've seen worse. (I'm looking at you, An American Carol, when I say "worse", by the way.) For the most part, I found it relatively pain-free as long as it stuck to the original dialogue of the Dickens book. However, the moment Zemeckis tried to improve on it, the results were not that great. (For example, did we really need to see a mouse-sized Scrooge?)

On the plus side, the animation was good -- though surprisingly bright for what after all is a Christmas ghost story to end all Christmas ghost stories. And it didn't hurt that Zemeckis's version was one of the few versions of A Christmas Carol I can remember that mentioned both Scrooge's sister Fan and his ex-girlfriend Belle. (Granted, Dickens himself didn't give them much space in the original book but all too many versions of A Christmas Carol leave them out altogether.)

Much of the movie was predictable -- and not just because it was based on a book almost everyone had to read in school. (For example, anyone not acquainted with the novel who couldn't guess the obvious connection between the fate of Scrooge's only sibling and his dislike of his sole nephew either hadn't seen a lot of movies or else wasn't really trying.) Moreover, online complaints about how dark the movie was for a children's movie seemed odd to me, if for no other reason that the various versions of A Christmas Carol that I've seen over the years -- most of which were aimed at children as well -- have always been dark. And I first became acquainted with this story when I was still in grade school.

That said, I can think of many animated versions of A Christmas Carol that I like far better -- though I will give Zemeckis and Carrey credit for giving us the first version I've ever seen in which the Ghost of Christmas Past spoke with an Irish accent.

I'm not sure how literally to take the title of the 2017 movie The Man Who Invented Christmas and it's probably just as well I didn't. Like all too many movies based on the lives of famous people, this movie was perhaps best viewed as alternative history.

If screenwriter Susan Coyne and director Bharat Nalluri had anything original to say about Dickens and his famous novella, it certainly didn't show up on screen. But what they did put up there proved to be watchable as long as you don't mistake it for a documentary.

Part of the problem with the movie was that anyone who knew enough about Dickens to get more than half the jokes also knew enough to predict the ending -- including the obligatory surprise plot twist. Moreover, some characters seemed more contrived than others. Granted, I still have a soft spot for Tara the Imaginary Irish Maid whose obvious purpose was to inspire Dickens to write his famous novella and give him advice along the way to its completion -- no doubt playing her part in the old Irish literary tradition of inspiring other writers. But I would have liked it better if she had not seemed to be such an obviously fictional character.

Oh, well. They obviously didn't make this movie for me. But in the wake of Great Depression II, it would have been nice if they had made it for someone who wasn't nostalgic for the days of good old Queen Vic.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Even More Zombies

Hey, it's an allegory about Brexit. No, it's a horror film. No, it's a comedy. No, it's...

Well, that was the problem with the 2016 movie, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It didn't know what it was.

Ironically, if this film were to be released today, its climax would be seen as a metaphor for Brexit. Of course, that still would not improve the plot -- which seemed deliberately designed to frustrate both Jane Austen fans and action flick aficionados -- but it would probably give the critics something to talk about.

Apart from that, I was glad that this movie gave me another chance to see actor Matt Smith of Doctor Who fame, even if he seemed to be one of the few cast members who had any idea what type of movie this was supposed to be. For that matter, I was glad to see actress Lena Headey though I did feel a bit sorry that her character was so wasted. Apart from posing for a portrait that seemed inspired by a nineteenth century version of S. M. Stirling's Draka novels, she really didn't have a whole lot to do in this flick apart from teasing the audience with the possibility that the whole thing might not turn out to be an unwatchable mess after all.

As it was, the only thing that really intrigued me about the rest of the movie was ironically the very last scene. As much as I hate to admit it, there was a part of me that wanted to know what happened next -- a thing I found quite odd because up until then, I didn't really care that much what happened.

Oh, well. Any sequel that was longer than ten minutes would have been a waste of time, anyway.

Don't Go Overboard Trying to See This Movie

It's a tale almost as old as time -- the rich young aristocrat who finds himself at the mercy of a bunch of paupers, who eventually learns to love the common life with all the enthusiasm of a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. As you might guess, it's hard not to be more than a little skeptical about the 2018 movie Overboard -- a remake of an old 1987 comedy with the same name -- once you understand its rather dubious premise. And it doesn't help matters that the filmmakers attempt to "modernize" the storyline by switching genders and having the rich person turn out to be a Mexican. Which means we get a lot of bilingual jokes but alas, nothing truly memorable or unpredictable.

On one hand, it's nice to see Anna Faris on the big screen again. On the other, it would have nice if she had actually held out for a project that was good. For that matter, I can't help but wonder if it was an act of charity that former TV star Eva Longoria was so unrecognizable in this movie. It was nice to see her on the big screen, too, but still.

In Heaven, There Is No Corn



Easy enough to see why the 2007 movie Tortilla Heaven did not get much publicity. On one hand, it was not really a bad movie but on the other, it was not very memorable. The whole plot took place in a small New Mexican town full of eccentric characters -- though, ironically, the most eccentric of them was a transplanted English nudist (played by Olivia Hussey) -- that turned out to be the same town where a miraculous tortilla was discovered. The tortilla created a controversy that in turn attracted tourists and then next thing you know, the Devil himself showed up. No, seriously.

In light of the recent scandals involving the Catholic church, it seemed downright nostalgic to see a movie in which the local priest's worst sin was a rather childlike fascination with religious statues. But apart from that, there was not a whole lot about this movie I can recommend. On one hand, I did find it refreshing to see so many law-abiding Latino characters in one movie; on the other hand, well, I did mention that the Devil himself was played by a Latino, right?

Ms. Deschanel Sole Success in Failure to Launch

Halfway through the 2006 movie Failure to Launch, Zooey Deschanel had a scene in this movie where she was walking around in a department store at which point she casually picked up the entire movie and placed it in her pocket. Not that was a whole lot of movie to steal at that point. The plot was boring, the characters -- apart from Ms. Deschanel's, of course -- were less than charming and it became blatantly obvious that even someone as attractive as Sarah Jessica Parker couldn't carry a romcom in which neither half of the main romantic couple seemed all that interesting. Pretty soon I stopped wishing for her to succeed and instead chose to spend my time waiting for Ms. Deschanel to return.

Not that Ms. Deschanel didn't have her share of bad material to contend with -- especially toward the end when the script kept expecting her to do Moe Howard imitations. But she did have her moments and unlike Ms. Parker, I actually wanted to see more of her character even though the movie was not about her (a fact made obvious by the fact that she was not pictured on the above movie poster). Indeed, Ms. Deschanel was the sole reason that Failure to Launch did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. Too bad for her that her TV series New Girl was never all that funny. For a while there, Ms. Deschanel had a lot of potential and for all I know, she might still have.

I Wonder, Wonder Who, Who-oo-ooh, Who (Who Wrote the Book of Life)

I wanted to like The Book of Life a lot more than I did but I could not help having quite a few reservations. For example, there is a scene in the early part of the film in which a group of schoolchildren encountered a mysterious blonde museum guide. Despite my being the type of person who was once accused by a Hispanic co-worker of waving the Mexican flag, I could not help but find some of the comments this guide made about Mexico in this scene to be a bit over the top. (For that matter, I found it a bit odd that the guide was voiced by the same actress who played Kelly Bundy, but that's a topic for another day.)

It didn't help that we're never told where that scene took place or whether those children the museum guide talked to were supposed to be American or Mexican. Plus some of the story elements (the affection the kids had for Lady Death or the apelike image of one of the Mexican hero's ancestors) seemed deliberately calculated to raise an eyebrow or two.

That said, I liked it more than I expected to and my inner Percy Jackson fan especially liked the fact that the old Mexican folklore tale that allegedly inspired this movie was in fact an old Greek myth. (What? You don't think Hispanics can be familiar with Greek mythology? Please think again.)

Of course, the Ray Bradbury reference at the end was also a nice touch.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see how this movie compares to Coco. Especially since most of the TV ads for that movie make it seem like The Book of Life II.

The Good Boyfriend: Adam



Author Stephen King once wrote a short story about a person who had the power to know exactly what his potential love interest wanted -- a power which hypothetically should have made him the ideal boyfriend. However, it did not make him a good person. And eventually his would-be girlfriend caught on to that.

That said...

I was surprised to admit I liked the 2009 movie Adam. After seeing the rather cartoonish way Asperger's syndrome was depicted on Boston Legal -- the show initially showed its sufferer in a sympathetic light and then gradually began more and more to play his affliction for laughs -- I found this movie and its more realistic approach to be a bit of fresh air.

There was a scene in it where it threatened to turn into a bad Lifetime movie -- or worse yet, a bad remake of Happy-Go-Lucky. The ending was disappointing but at least it was more believable than a more audience-pleasing finale would have been.

I must confess that for the longest time I could not help seeing this movie as just one long variation on the old joke about how all women pick up on things instinctively and all men have to have stuff explained to them. After all, we've all seen bad sitcoms in which that same joke is repeated over and over again. And the movie was at its best when it stayed away from that territory.

The Longest Ride Not Quite That Long -- Nor That Bad

Surprise! Surprise!

Actor Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame is still making movies!

It would be nice if they were great movies but then even in his prime, most of Mr. Alda's movies tended to be acquired tastes as far as I'm concerned. That said, I could not help finding it a bit sad that Mr. Alda is now too old to be playing romantic leads and is now reduced to elderly supporting characters. Granted, the two lead cast members in his latest movie The Longest Ride -- namely, actress Britt Robertson and actor Scott Eastwood -- aren't bad to look at but neither one for all their efforts was as memorable as Mr. Alda was in his prime.

Then again my mother enjoyed this movie and I suspect women of her generation would appreciate this movie far more than me. Nor does it hurt if you like cowboys. The movie does try to have it both ways when it comes to art: on one hand, bashing modern art at every opportunity while at the same time praising the Britt Robertson character for her insight into -- well -- art. Yet more proof that it takes all kinds to make a world -- and a movie. (Did I mention that my mother liked this movie?)

The Muse and the Murderer: Art School Confidential

You really captured my otherness.
--Sophia Myles, Art School Confidential (2006)

I must admit that I really like this quote. It comes from the original screenplay for the 2006 film Art School Confidential yet it never appears in the actual movie, director Terry Zwigoff instead choosing to go with a less verbal approach.

For that matter, I also like this quote:

You know, nobody ever gives the model any credit, but in a way, they're just as important as the artist. It's really much more of a collaboration than people think.
--Max Minghella, Art School Confidential (2006)

However, I can see why Zwigoff also left that quote out of the actual movie.

That said, there was not much else to say about this movie. On one hand, it had some amusing visuals in the opening segment as well as a great parody of the nude scene from Titanic. On the other hand, it seemed to spend a lot of time beating what most people outside the artistic community -- and no doubt, many within it --would consider to be a dead horse. After all, it was not like the pompousness of modern artists has never been ridiculed in pop culture before.

Anyway, just because many real-life artists have a well-deserved reputation for being arrogant and pretentious does not mean that it seems very sporting to devote a whole movie to pointing that out. Especially when we live in a country when all too many artists are stranded in obscurity.

If we lived in a country where artists had more power and more prestige, then they would be more of a valid target. But unfortunately, we don't.

The movie itself was best appreciated as a character study. The protagonist was a young art student (played by Max Minghella) who wished to become a famous artist, only to become derailed on his journey when he developed a crush on a beautiful artist's model (played by Sophia Myles). There was a brief subplot involving a series of murders involving local residents but Zwigoff seemed to be not as interested in the resolution of that subplot as he was in showing repeated images of ridiculous artwork. He did manage to include a few nice scenes as well -- for example, the way the artist's model winced when kissed by an ex-lover said more about the character than a more vocal reaction would have -- and it was also nice to see Anjelica Huston appear once briefly as a sympathetic art teacher even though she was not given a lot to do.

Ironically, the movie's climax made our hero look less sympathetic than he was at the beginning of the movie. On one hand, he was accused of a crime of which he was obviously innocent. On the other hand, it seemed obvious that the artist in question was guilty of an even bigger crime for which he was never punished. And of course, said crime went unmentioned at the movie's end even though it led to a loss of life. Of course, it could be argued that the artist's crime was unintentional and that it ultimately punished a murderer who might have otherwise got away scotfree. But I suspect the filmmaker would rather have us concentrate on his film's final image -- one that is ultimately more attractive than the moral issues one might otherwise think about.

Los Ricos También Mueren aka The Rich Also Die

I must admit that I liked this movie far better when it was called The Most Dangerous Game. After all, the original Richard Connell short story by that name still manages to grip me in a way that its more recent remakes do not. Anyway, if you are going to dedicate a whole movie to the idea of people hunting people, why not call it The Most Dangerous Game?

Of course, writer/director James DeMonaco is not just interested in borrowing a gimmick from an old short story. He is out to make some serious social commentary -- which might explain why the working title for this movie was actually Vigilandia, a rather cool title which implies a similarity to the word Gringolandia, a not too flattering synonym for the USA which is rarely found outside of Frida Kahlo biographies. Unfortunately, it is a cooler title than the movie deserves which might be why the powers that be chose to change its name to the current title -- The Purge -- which sounds like the name of a documentary about Soviet Russia. Of course, a more accurate title might be Look at All the Scary White People, if not Stuff Scary White People Do. But the producers of this movie are not interested in accuracy or even believability, and it shows.

Thus the director spends more than a few minutes establishing that the nice neighborhood that male lead character James Sandin and his family live in is also a multiracial neighborhood, only to pile on a ton of stuff about scary black people later on in the film. He tries to establish one group of villains as the scariest folk since the Super Posse that pursued the title characters of the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, only to have them dispatched with surprising ease. And of course, he devotes the entirety of the movie to an implied message about the evils of wealth without one real glimpse of what life is like in the poor neighborhoods.

For what it is worth, the movie does manage to come up with some creepy images. Then again if one aims at a camera at a bunch of mask-wearing individuals carrying knives and guns, one would have to be a pretty bad cameraman not to capture any creepy images.

Besides, there is something shamelessly self-congratulatory about this movie which makes it hard to dismiss as just another B-movie with intellectual delusions of grandeur. Most people who have told me horror stories about their fellow men don't live in rich neighborhoods but in poor neighborhoods. Yet most American horror movies about home invasions inevitably focus on the rich so-and-so who doesn't deserve such a fate -- and not the poor so-and-so who encounters far worse trouble with little help from society. And although DeMonaco attempts to subvert this theme by making Sandin a rich salesman for security devices who ultimately witnesses the failure of the very devices which have previously proven to be his bread and butter, he shows as little interest in the fate of the poorer people with whom he supposedly identifies as his movie's villains do. The only difference, of course, is that the villains are more honest about it.