Jason F.C. Clarke

Three Kings is a rather strange film. It’s a raucous
blend of style and substance, borrowing from action films, music videos, medical
school educational films, and yes, even the New Testament (just a wee bit). I
think I heard it best described as "subversive." 

The plot, on the surface, seems relatively simple. The Desert
War has just ended, and the American soldiers are celebrating. While bringing in
captured Iraqi soldiers, soldier Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) discovers a map to
a hoard of gold Saddam Hussein stole from Kuwait. After conferring with his
friend, Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), Barlow makes plans to grab a little bit of that
gold himself; they figure, Saddam stole it from Kuwait, why not steal it from
Saddam? But before they can head out, soon-to-retire Special Forces man Archie
Gates (George Clooney) discovers their plan, and threatens his way into their
little group. Along with one of Barlow’s soldiers, a goofy redneck named Conrad
Vig (Spike Jonze), the group heads out to make their fortune.

The gold is discovered rather quickly. But along the way, the
American soldiers become embroiled in the struggle between the Iraqi soldiers
and citizens rebelling against Hussein. It is Clooney’s Gates who is the first
to recognize his duty, even at the expense of avarice, convenience and his own
safety; what was planned as the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme quickly
degenerates into the archetypal flight through the desert, albeit with $23
million in gold tucked away in suitcases.

The performances, for the most part, are nothing spectacular;
nor are they noticeably bad at any point. Clooney still seems to have just one
character that is pulled out of one environment and background and dropped into
another; but it’s a likeable character. Ice Cube’s Elgin is the most religious
of the group, and unfortunately is probably the most static of the three main
characters (well, four actually; Jonze’s Vig is a relatively large part, and he
certainly grows a bit in the course of the film). Wahlberg does a good job as
the soldier just entering manhood as a father, but still young enough to enjoy
partying and to be so unsure as to whether a cease-fire is in effect as to kill
a surrendering Iraqi soldier.

But the plot is indeed subversive. Trying to catch the subtle
nature of the film’s nuances and themes in a single review would be difficult;
it might take something more on the order of an essay. 

Many of the subversive elements come out in the weird style of
the film. Brief theoretical vignettes, including one that graphically shows the
effects of a bullet to the stomach and another showing the bombing of a pleasant
American household,  throw the viewer off; slow-motion is often employed in
a very bizarre and disturbing manner. Greatly funny gags are placed alongside
grim scenes of torture. It’s almost as if there are two films – a military
action movie with a lot of comedy, and a gritty account of a post-war
"Pardoner’s Tale" gone right – and the film firmly chooses an ending
that befits the former, unfortunately causing the viewer to forget about a lot
of the subversive or thought-provoking aspects of the film. 

At the very least, Three Kings is an entertaining film,
and at its best it does a decent and fair job of illustrating how Americans look
to both friends and foes in the Middle East. There is something here to keep
anyone interested, and if you look hard enough, you might find something that
will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater. 

It’s been a long time since I reviewed a film that wasn’t recently released – Blade is the last one, and actually, the only one, to my knowledge. But the experience of watching Lost Highway was so singular that I find I must write something on it, even if it’s not a proper review.

This is my first David Lynch film. I watched it last night with a group of friends. Only one of them – not myself – was not only inclined to view the film with an open mind, but was experienced enough with such artistic films that he actually predicted a major plot twist that I, suffering from the utter pain the film was inflicting upon me, would probably never have seen coming.

I think that perhaps my lengthy experience with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the cinematic fare it showcased caused me to immediately see in Lost Highway all the hallmarks of a film that Tom, Mike and Crow would weep bitterly after being exposed to. There is no linear plot, or even linear subplots, with a few exceptions; the actors are rather second-rate (with all due respect, Mr. Bill Pullman, you will always be Lone Star, unless you find another facial expression or two); and the sex scenes are, quite frankly, out of control. I think Patricia Arquette spends at least half her screen time in this film naked and having sex.

But enough about the story, or lack thereof. I want to comment on the style a moment. Mr. Lynch, why the glacially slow dialogue and protracted silences in the beginning of the film? Why the bizarre (but funny) tailgating incident? Why the constant, gratuitous sex? Are there answers to these questions? Do they all have the same answer?

One commentator, found on the Internet Movie Database, noted that the entire film was like a dream. That is one way I can look at this film – someone’s dream caught on celluloid. But the “Pete” section is too cogent for a dream. However, the random, slow, and often jerky imagery of the half-hour “prologue” is extremely dream-like, and even the switch between the Renee character to the Alison character (or is it vice versa?), both played by Arquette, can be seen with some swevenic logic.

I think the primary reason I felt I should memorialize the occasion of watching Lost Highway with this commentary is that I actually went to th Internet afterwards and read reviews and interviews in an effort to make sense of the film. I failed, miserably. Lynch will reveal nothing, leaving this miasma of random images and microscopic plots to the personal interpretation of the viewer. I have come away with a sense that I have either a.) missed the point entirely due to my inability (from a lack of either intelligence or savvy) to “get” the film; or b.) been severely cheated by watching the cinematic equivalent of a Modernist novel without the heart or soul buried within. Lynch expressly called the film a “story,” but to appreciate a story, humans need characters that they care about (in some way, good or bad) and some kind of strong emotional or logical thread throughout the work (and if it is fear of intimacy, as some have suggested, then it is nearly immolated by imagery and randomness). Everything else is just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what happens to stick.

The 13th Warrior was completed over a year ago, with a
budget rumored to have broken the $100 million mark. Directed by John McTiernan
and produced by McTiernan and Michael Crichton, who wrote the novel the film is
based on, the film is a mediocre medieval action film that could have been much,
much more.

Based on Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead (a much more
provocative title), the film is about an Arab ambassador to the Tartars who gets
mixed up with a bunch of Vikings. Crichton began the novel by translating the
parts of the historical narrative of Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan related to the Vikings;
he then left the boundaries of non-fiction by extrapolating a tale loosely based
on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.  Actually, Crichton had an
intriguing idea – provide a historical basis for the epic poem, like the
historical Trojan War that inspired Homer’s romanticized Iliad. And Beowulf
is indeed steeped in as much Scandinavian tradition as Anglo-Saxon.
Unfortunately, the film does not explore this idea very much, particularly since
the audience is distracted by the superfluous presence of Fahdlan (Antonio
Banderas). In the end, the film seems more the story of Fahdlan than Buliwyf
(Vladimir Kulich), the "Beowulf" of the story; which would be fine, if
the film didn’t suffer from schizophrenia between the two roles for most of the
movie.

The plot is relatively simple. While journeying to Asia, Fahdlan
and his servant, Melchisidek (Omar Sharif in a well-performed cameo), come
across a group of Vikings. They take some time to relax with the huge men from
the North, giving Fahdlan a chance to be disgusted by their hygenic habits. Then
another Viking vessel arrives, telling their king, Buliwyf, that an ancient evil
is menacing the kingdom of King Hrothgar (a name identical to that of the king
menaced by the monster Grendel in Beowulf). A Norse soothsayer says that
13 warriors must go to fight this menace; but the last must be a foreigner.
Looking rather diminutive against the huge Vikings, Fahdlan reluctantly agrees
to join them.

The rest of the film consists mostly of bloody medieval combat,
with the occasional clever moment of culture shock, such as when Banderas finds
himself unable to wield a gigantic Norse broadsword. He shaves the blade down
into a scimitar, and after displaying his prowess with the weapon, a bemused
Viking asks him, "When you die, can I give that to my daughter?"

 Overall, however, the film seems rather scattershot, and
there are lots of area that could use work, both in production and plot. There
are breathtaking scenes of mountains and valleys in the bright sun which shift
abruptly to deep-orange hues that color the entire scene. There are night and
cavern scenes so dark it’s often difficult to discern what’s going on – who was
killed, who killed them, etc. Fahdlan teaches Buliwyf to write "There is
one God, and Muhammad is his prophet," but Buliwyf makes not comment on
this monotheistic statement, quite different from his own religion’s tenets.
King Hrothgar’s son, a disgruntled prince, tromps about with a seeming intention
to gum up Buliwyf’s efforts, but after the other Vikings teach him a lesson by
killing one of his lackeys, he disappears from the plot. 

In terms of acting, the performances are adequate, though not
outstanding. Banderas doesn’t seem to have as much fun with this role as he has
with other action films – but the sense of seriousness, of a pseudo-historical
epic, that pervades the film may be partly responsible. Kulich, in the only
other role of note as Buliwyf, is decent, but doesn’t seem a strong enough actor
(at least not yet) to anchor a major blockbuster – which causes a problem when
the plot focuses on him rather than Banderas’ Fahdlan.

But is the film entertaining? Yes and no. Whenever Fahdlan is
trying to deal with the strangeness of Viking society, the film has a light tone
that works well with Banderas. But when the Vikings grimly theorize about their
enemies and how to deal with them, the plot drags. Plus, at least two of the
three major battle scenes of the film take place in pitch-black darkness, making
them nothing but a confusing jumble of shadows to the viewer.

Finally, there’s the main question: is Banderas convincing as an
Arab? Not particularly, since he’s barely managed to eliminate the Spanish
accent out of his English. Now he’s trying to speak English with an Arabian
accent. Add the fact that his good looks just aren’t at all Arabian, and you’ve
simply got to suspend your disbelief. It would be forgivable if Sharif wasn’t so
excellent by comparison.

Overall, The 13th Warrior was an intriguing concept gone
rather wrong. While entertaining at points, it’s not something that must be seen
at the theater. If you’re into Vikings or Beowulf, rent it in a few
months.

The Sixth Sense is a summer blockbuster that has restored
my faith in films. After a rather disappointing crop of studio hits – the
plot-less Phantom Menace, the clever but re-treading Austin Powers 2,
the stylish but unsubstantial Blair Witch Project, the annoying Matrix,
the botched 13th Warrior – along comes The Sixth Sense with an
excellent plot, good acting, and best of all, a sense of pace that is nearly a
lost art in films today.

The film stars Bruce Willis. The Sixth Sense overcomes
this hurdle through its sheer excellence of script and the acting of Haley Joel
Osment, most recently seen as a boy dying of cancer on an episode of Ally
McBeal. As a child actor, Osment is simply remarkable in his role as the
"gifted" boy who, as all the ads remind you, can "see dead
people."

The plot revolves around the efforts of Willis’ child
psychiatrist, Malcolm Crowe, to help the Osment’s Cole Sear. Cole, who keeps his
special ability a secret from everyone, including his mother Lynn (Toni Collette)
and Crowe for more than half the film, doesn’t think that Crowe can help him.
But Crowe has a special drive to succeed with Cole; at the beginning of the
film, he is confronted by a former patient (Donnie Wahlberg) who claims that
Crowe failed with him, and after shooting Crowe, the patient kills himself. A
year later, a haunted Crowe latches on to Cole’s case, determined not to fail
again.

To be fair, Willis’ performance is fine, though it requires
little interaction with anyone except Osment, who shines so brightly in his role
that he almost eclipses anyone else in the scene. Though it doesn’t show in the
more cheesy roles, such as the Ally McBeal episode, Osment has a gift for
acting that should make him one of the greats, if he survives the switch from
child actor to adult. Regardless of the future, however, Osment deserves to be
nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this film.

 Also excellent is Collette as Osment’s harried,
end-of-her-rope single mother. Though exasperated with her son’s mysterious
behavior, Lynn is always loving and determined to do her best. 

One other thing…yes, the film has an excellent ending, as I’m
sure anyone who’s seen the film has mentioned to you. Perhaps they even goofed
and told it to you. Well, don’t let the deter you from seeing the film. The
ending is just the icing on the cake; actually, it’s just the roses on the cake
icing. 

Credit for the script and the directing goes to 28-year-old M.
Night Shyamalan, whose work I will look for in the future (Shyamalan himself can
be seen in a cameo as a doctor who mistakenly suspects Lynn may be abusing
Cole). Also deserving credit is film editor Andrew Mondshein for helping with
the marvelous pacing of the film, which adds to the creepy, eloquent feel of the
film. One of my favorite touches is the opening credits, which fade in and out,
ghostly against the black background, before a single shot is seen. It gives a
sense of dramatic suspense as well as building anticipation for a good film.
Remember when all films used to be so reserved? Me neither.

 I walked into the theater to see Mystery Men secure
in the knowledge that, owing to both mixed critic reviews and its admittedly low
opening weekend take, it was not a particularly good film. I admit, now and
forever, that, in my opinion, I was wrong.

Mystery Men, while not a laugh-out-loud comedy, is
nonetheless an amusing trip through superhero-land. Based on a comic book from
Dark Horse Comics, Mystery Men is a parody of superhero films as well
as the comics. Taking a lot from Batman and Superman, especially
in its depiction of the neo-retro Champion City, the film is fun and has heart.

The film begins with three superheroes attempting to make it in
the big city: the fork-hurling Blue Rajah (Hank Azaria), the shovel-wielding, er,
Shoveler (William H. Macy) and the oft-raging Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller). It’s
pretty clear that they’re small potatoes next to Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear),
who’s not only managed to jail nearly every supervillain in Champion City, but
also nab every endorsement known to man.

It’s that very lack of an arch-nemesis that’s causing Amazing to
lose some of his sponsors. This leads the superhero, in his alter-ego as "Lance", to free Casanova von Frankenstein
(Geoffrey Rush), one of his old foes. But the plan
backfires; within hours, Frankenstein captures Amazing and locks him away, with
the very clear intention of killing him at some later date.

Thus, it’s up to Mr. Furious, the Shoveler and Blue Rajah (who,
as his compatriots constantly remind him, has not a shred of blue clothing on
him) to stop Frankenstein. But they need more help; and they find it in the
Spleen (Paul Ruebens, of Pee-Wee Herman fame), Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell, of Keenan
and Kel fame) and the
Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), not to mention the proverb-spouting Sphinx (Wes Studi). 

The rest of the film centers around this super team attempting
to save Captain Amazing. Watching them deal with their admittedly weak or
situation-specific powers is amusing, especially whenever Mr. Furious gets mad,
thrusting out his fists in a Shatner-like expression of rage before nearly
breaking his arms trying to do any real damage. Of them all, the Bowler seems
the obvious choice for the most powerful; but even her powers are undermined by
the fact that her super-powered ball is controlled entirely by the ghost of her
dead father, whose skull is encased inside the ball.

The entire cast is strong, and give good performances. Stiller
does an excellent job with the average shmo trying to pass himself off as a
superhero, clearly trained entirely from comic books and movies; Macy is the
sensitive hero, with a wife and family, doing what he does from a sense of civic
duty; Azaria’s Blue Rajah has moments with his estranged mother that are also
wonderful; and Garofalo’s Bowler, who argues with her ball-trapped father even
while giving the Blue Rajah advice about his relationship with his mother,
rounds out the group perfectly.

Tom Waits’s crusty old gizmo genius is also worth mentioning;
and Ruebens’s Spleen is appropriately disgusting. Claire Forlani, as Stiller’s
love interest, doesn’t have much to do besides look good, but the character does
a good job playing off Mr. Furious’s blustering false machismo.

The plot is rather predictable, and has been played out in
dozens of comic book films and television shows, but the strength of the cast
overshadows it. The effects are top-notch, as is to be expected in this day and
age. All in all, Mystery Men is a great popcorn movie, and having so many
characters keeps you interested, whereas films like Austin Powers 2

dragged in places. Now, I have only one question: where’s my Mr. Furious action
figure? 

When my friends suggested we go see Drop Dead Gorgeous, I
agreed only due to the fact that I had a gift certificate and therefore was not
actually paying to see the film. Unfortunately, the Theater Nazis said my gift
certificate could not be used on movies that just opened. Why this is a policy
is beyond me. I could go to the same film with the same certificate a week
later. Where’s the logic?

In any event, I realize that being so biased against a film
ill-suits a self-titled ‘reviewer.’ Therefore, I will assure the reader that I
had no innate bias against the film; I simply was looking more toward
seeing Inspector Gadget or Deep Blue Sea. 

Drop Dead Gorgeous was curiously similar to Election,
which came out earlier this year. Both are about competition, and both have
heroines with high aspirations and cutthroat tactics. But where Election
combined both the ambition and the ruthlessness into a single character, Drop
Dead Gorgeous divides it between Denise Richards’s spoiled rich girl and
Kirsten Dunst’s sweet girl next door.

The film is in the format of a documentary, which seemed to me
an odd choice for this film. The documentary is about an annual beauty pageant
in Mount Rose, a small town in Minnesota and apparently the ‘oldest beauty
pageant in America.’ The only entrants are members of the town, and the pageant
is run by former pageant winner Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley), whose own
daughter Becky (Richards) is in the pageant this year. Becky’s major rival is
Amber Atkins (Dunst) a poor trailer-park denizen whose mother Annette (Ellen
Barkin) can’t seem to stay away from the bottle (does it mean anything that I
saw the film two nights ago, yet had to go look up all the film names on IMDb?).

The old tradition of ‘bizarre quirky small-town behavior’ is in
full swing here, as Amber practices her tap dancing while working at her
after-school job, putting make-up on corpses at the local funeral
parlor.  Becky, on the other hand, just practices being pretty – and
using her handgun at the school gun club, where she’s vice-president. The
president is yet another pageant candidate, and when she is the victim of an
unfortunate tractor accident – it explodes – the film begins its main plot.
While it’s not difficult to figure out the culprit behind the quenched beauty
queens, there is more than enough for the audience to do in is figuring out who
the next victim will be.

While the performances are fine, none of them are particularly
outstanding. Kirstie Alley does fine as the fading beauty queen using her
daughter to fulfill her dreams, but she never truly rounds out the villainous
feel of the role. Richards has nothing to do in the film except look
disturbingly perfect and happy, though she ends up with one of the funniest (and
twisted) scenes in the film. 

The star is Dunst, who comes across endearingly as the ambitious
girl who seems too nice to push to achieve her dreams, but they end up being
fulfilled anyway. Dunst portrays Amber with as a sweet, intelligent and nice
girl who gets exactly what she deserves.

And so does everyone else. In fact, pretty much everyone in Drop
Dead Gorgeous ends up with what they deserve. It’s a refreshing film with a
refreshing (if naive) message – everything comes out in the wash. 

Deep Blue Sea is a JAWS rip-off. Of course, you
might be one to say that about any film with monster sharks eating humans – I
certainly would. But that’s because I’m a big JAWS fan. However, bias
aside, Deep Blue Sea is not shy about letting you know it’s a JAWS

rip-off. It not only acknowledges it, but it plays with it. And guess what? It
pays off in an entertaining, if not original, movie.

The film stars no one except Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a
millionaire entrepreneur financing the whole ‘cure Alzheimer’s disease with
shark brain goo’ project, and LL Cool J, who plays a chef/preacher/alcoholic.
The rest of the main characters are played by actors I’ve never heard of who do
an adequate job of being victims.

What this film will become famous for is the utterly surprising
killing of one of the main characters at a completely surprising moment. No
amount of preparedness can save you from the abrupt chomp on this poor
victim. 

There’s not much to say about the plot. Basically, scientist Susan
McAlester (Saffron Burrows) lost a relative to Alzheimer’s disease, so she
believes that she can cure it with some sort of chemical found in mako shark
brains. So off she goes into an underwater lab once used to build submarines,
with a fleet of computers and a tough-guy shark wrangler (Thomas Jane).
Unfortunately, to get enough liquid to do the job, McAlester had to increase the
brain mass of the shark by at least five times  – making for
super-intelligent sharks. Oddly enough, this also requires that the sharks get
nearly five times larger than your average mako shark.

Anyway, the usual Jurassic Park-style storm shows up,
knocking everything haywire just when the super-makos decide to rebel. Then, we
switch to Alien, with the sharks hunting the humans down the flooded
halls of the complex. Then it’s chomp chomp, chomp chomp, only a few survivors
are left. And lots of homages to JAWS sprinkled about.

As a thriller, however, the film works. The filmmakers get a lot
of mileage out of how hard it is to see a shark in when you’re on the surface
and it’s in the water (although when it’s a 20-foot shark in a 30-foot room, I
have a hard time believing you wouldn’t see it, but anyway). 

LL Cool J’s character is fun, and Jackson is his typical cool
self, but otherwise the actors are just there as fish food. But it’s fun to
watch them fight the sharks or, ultimately, lose the battle. Either way, there
are indeed thrills and chills here, it’s just that we’ve seen them before. 

My first taste of The Blair Witch Project came from Newsweek,

who ran a combined article on American Pie and Blair Witch. But
where American Pie was standard Hollywood fare – better than much that
comes out of Hollywood, but Hollywood fluff nonetheless – The Blair Witch
Project is one of the most frightening, elemental, and powerful films I have
ever seen.

First, I must provide the essential premise of the film, as it has
been shown all over the media:

In 1994, three student filmmakers vanished in the woods while
filming a documentary. A year later, their footage was found.

Those words adorn the very beginning of the film. From there on,
everything you see will be tainted by the realization that there can (probably)
be no happing ending to this footage. 

Once the film begins, we are entirely within the world of the
camera, much more tightly than we ever have been before. This is raw footage,
(seemingly) uncut, with a definite sense of someone on the other side of it. Due
to its format, The Blair Witch Project has a sense of realism almost
unheard of in modern cinema.

Back when movies were first made, black-and-white classics like Frankenstein
and Dracula, and especially the very early Nosferatu, were scary
to its audiences because cinema was so new. To those audiences, there was a
realism in seeing people moving on a screen, of seeing an unearthly white
vampire moving toward someone, that is unheard of in our postmodern, jaded
society. That’s why Blair Witch works; we all make films on our own
little videocameras, and they look just like what we see in Blair Witch.
So when the weird noises start in the woods, when the strange voodoo objects
appear, the effect is much more real than – oh, I don’t know, say a
computer-generated cherub opening its eyes and looking at you in the
multi-million dollar special effects extravaganza The Haunting, which
opened last week? 

While Blair Witch does ultimately become very scary, it is
mostly a ‘creepy’ scary, a sense of something being not quite right, of
impossible things actually occurring. The sense of realism is so strong that
innately, we find it hard to believe that these strange sounds and voodoo
objects are really there; such things don’t actually happen in real life.
And of course, in the back of our mind we know it’s simply a fictional motion
picture; regardless, the creepiness remains. There are also scary parts in the
tried and true tradition of modern horror, but they’re wisely spread out through
the film.

One caveat: as the above implies, if you’re going in hoping for
another Scream, don’t even bother going. Much of the film is devoted
simply to the teens being lost in the woods, and in fact, The Blair Witch
Project is almost as effective a dramatic film about being lost in the woods
as it is a horror film. Also, these are real kids out in the woods without a
script, and half the time they’re a lot funnier than their scripted blockbuster
counterparts.

The film will, of course, become a cult classic, sharing a place
with such preeminent horror as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original Friday
the 13th, and The Evil Dead. As of right now (the weekend of July
30th), Blair Witch – which was bought by its distributor for $1 million

– has been making more per theater per day than it cost to make
($30,000-$60,000, I’m not sure of the exact figure). For a film shot entire with a standard video camera and a Super 8, I
would definitely label that an accomplishment.

In any event, The Blair Witch Project is a very frightening
film, but the key element is imagination. An unimaginative person would not be
scared of strange noises in the night; they’d assume it was an animal, or some
other easily explainable occurrence. But, to quote a character Thomas Harris’s
novel Red Dragon: ‘Fear comes with imagination, it’s the penalty, it’s
the price of imagination.’ When it comes to a film like The Blair Witch
Project, this is one of the truest statements ever made.

Arlington Road stars Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. Jeff
Bridges is the guy from Arachnophobia, not the guy from Dumb &

Dumber. That guy, who’s also in Gettysburg, is Jeff Daniels. I just
want to get that straight, because I spent half my time during this movie trying
to remember who was in Dumb & Dumber, since it clearly wasn’t Jeff
Bridges.

But on to the film. How is it? The answer is, pretty good. I admit
that this film suffered from what I call "Traileritis." That’s when
the trailer for the film basically gives away the entire plot. In case you
haven’t seen the trailer for the film, I won’t give away too much about the
plot.

Jeff Bridges is Michael Faraday, a university professor who
teaches a course in domestic terrorism. He’s the single father of Grant; his
wife, an FBI agent, was slain in a botched FBI raid. When the film opens, he is
living comfortably in suburban Virginia with Grant and his new girlfriend,
Brooke.

Thanks to a graphic and disturbing (but effective) opening scene,
Bridges meets his neighbors, Oliver Lang (Robbins) and his wife Cheryl (the
wonderfully quirky Joan Cusack). The screenwriter of this film seems to think
ordinary names are boring; how many other films can you name with an Oliver, a
Grant, a Brooke, and a Brady (Oliver’s son)?

Anyway, Faraday and Lang become fast friends. But then Faraday
mistakenly receives a piece of mail for Lang from a Pennsylvania University,
though Lang had told Faraday he had gone to college in Kansas (got that?).
Faraday becomes quite suspicious of this, without any clear reason other than
being paranoid. Faraday then begins his own investigation into his mysterious
neighbors.

I won’t go into too much more detail, other
than to say that Robbins does an excellent job at being both congenial and
chilling, and Bridges is convincing as a man consumed by his own paranoia.
Cusack, as Robbins’s loving wife, is even more chilling than Robbins, with her
easy smile and caring nature.

The ending is where the film falls apart. It’s
the kind of ending that forces you to rethink the entire plot of the film; and
while it explains a few seemingly implausible instances, it creates more than it
explains. Consider, can things like the outcome of a car crash be predictable?
Can you be sure that the driver won’t be killed? And if you want to clear
out a building, the obvious thing to do is to call in a bomb threat of your own.
Don’t call and claim that someone else is putting a bomb there;
call it in yourself! Like the scene in Die Hard: With a Vengeance where
Bruce Willis is trapped in traffic, so he sends out a report of an officer down
and then follows the ambulance.

The end of Arlington Road also places it into a certain
category for me. It’s abbreviated by TBGW. Once you’ve seen the movie, you may
be able to figure the acronym out; if not, feel free to send me an e-mail.
Anyway, this is a moderate thriller, with a few intense moments, but you can
definitely wait to rent it.

Disney has been somewhat in a slump the last few years with their films. They abandoned their traditional format of using fairy tales for their primary animated fodder after the Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast, and the result has been a series of hits and misses, from the botched Pocahontas to the hilarious Aladdin.

When Disney works from novels, such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Woman Warrior (a book by Maxine Hong Kingston and the inspiration for Mulan), the filmmakers have to try and stuff the story into two hours. When they work from a fairy tale, they usually have to spread it out–and that’s where the room for their classic songs come from. What’s more, the songs make more sense in the fairy tale setting, whereas Victor Hugo certainly didn’t write any songs for The Hunchback (at least, not to my knowledge).

Tarzan is a film that is true to the Disney formula with the fun and adventure that was lacking Hunchback and Pocahontas. Phil Collins’ soundtrack is refreshingly subdued, and except for one clever and entertaining song (“Trash the Camp”), not a single note issues from the characters’ mouths.

Actually, there’s a distinct lack of dialogue in much of this film – but that’s not a bad thing necessarily. Tarzan is a part of the natural world, and as such he often communicates through movement rather than his voice. But what movement! This is one of the most energetic Disney films I’ve ever seen. Tarzan slips, slides and swings through the forest with dynamics that would be nearly impossible to capture in live action. Finally, a Disney film with animation that rivals their Japanese counterparts.

The plot is familiar–indeed, it’s embedded in Western cultural tradition. A Victorian family is stranded on a desert island; the parents are killed by a panther, and the boy is raised in the wild by gorillas, who name him Tarzan (voiced by Tony Goldwyn).

The animated film succeeds in many areas all the previous live-action films could not. Tarzan’s gorilla parents, the loving Kala (Glenn Close) and the belligerent Kerchak (Lance Henriksen, an unusual choice for Disney) could never have the same personality and humanity in a live-action film without segueing into comedy (see George of the Jungle). Close and Henriksen succeed in giving their characters depth. Goldwyn’s Tarzan has a deep, resonant voice, the kind that easily attracts Jane, played by Minnie Driver.

All in all, Tarzan is a visual feast. The African jungle has never looked more gorgeous, or more interesting as it speeds by you as Tarzan slides from branch to branch. The story is fun, the characters are interesting, and the plot, while predictable, plays itself out to a satisfying end.