If you aren’t aware of the plot, it’s a late, experimental variation on noir, about 2 grifters in the Hustler-Older Woman game. For reasons that seem to make no amount of sense, real life con-artists/lovers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez posed as brother and sister during their scams, their schemes allowing the 200-lb. Beck to accompany Hernandez and their target on ‘dates’ as a chaperone up to and after the ‘wedding’.

It’s an odd film, with primitive camera movements, clumsy direction and stilted dialogue. Conversation and character interaction seem to be second-thought here — almost every line is exposition. describing things that are going on off-screen.

The big question is whether the director, Leonard Kastle intended that the performers ‘externalize’ the performances the way they did. In 1969, it might have been seen as revolutionary, but in 2010 it just seems mannered in an unproductive way. If he had done 10 more films like this, it might have amounted to an interesting style, like a Pinter play or Mamet film. But this was Kastle’s only screen credit and this Kastle can’t boast any relation to the other Castle of B-movie fame.

The story of Beck and Hernandez has been remade twice as ‘Deep Crimson‘ (1996) and ‘Lonely Hearts (2006).

Recommended for fans of David Lynch and John Cassavettes

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Operation Paperclip Nazis working in criminal sanitariums off the coast of Washington State? Mind control? A WWII veteran and widower with PTSD? Visuals by David Lynch.

It’s 1951 in this film and the most unfortunate thing about Shutter Island is that Scorcese and writers Stephen Knight and Laeta Kalogridis decided that it’s okay not to make sense. They decide to just let go. Film is a visual experience and flourishes are flourishes, so why the fuck not? If your local cinemat can affor to spend $750k on a new 3D projection kit, you can sit and watch Martin Scorcese orchestrate some crazy in 2D. On Shutter Island, the Eater Eggs and Red Herrings run thick, wild and free. So wild, that you may want to pause and consider throwing a few back, before deciding which ones you want to take home to eat.

Emily Mortimer is both Rachel Saldano whom Marshals DiCaprio and Ruffalo have been sent  to find, but also a Concentration Camp victim that DiCaprio liberated Dachau back in ’44. Saldano was committed 8 years ago, after she stabbed and drowned her 3 children, but disappeared out of her cell 3 nights ago. DiCaprio and Ruffalo wake up one morning to discover that Saldano has returned.

And then Scorcese lets it all fall away, revealing that DiCaprio is, in fact a Nº 6 and he’s been lured to the island for treatment,  and that he’s apparently murdered his dead wife. It’s a brain teaser.

In the last scenes there’s an uncomfortable acceptance of roles, where DiCaprio and Ruffalo briefly acknowlege the role-playing game they’ve been involved in, before DiCaprio joins the men with the pitforks and shovels (literally!) to take his long walk off a proverbial short pier. Scorcese spares us the pier, but leaves us wondering what kind of mannerist, noir, magic realism thing we’ve just given 137 minutes of our lives to. It’s beautiful and occaisionally sublime to behold, but I somehow suspect Dennis Lahane’s novel makes more sense in print.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Terry Gilliam attempted to bring ‘Watchmen’ to life twice, once in 1989 and a decade later, in 1999. He gave up because he felt that the story couldn’t be adequately covered in 2 hours’ time and that the material might be better dealt with as a miniseries, Though there is no Gilliam ‘Watchmen’, I credit ‘Watchmen’ and it’s alternate-apocalyptic 1985 for the rich visual landscape of thr film that Gilliam went on to produce in the mid-’90′s, ’12 Monkeys’ (1995).

Moore’s ambivalent heroes were a sea-change for comic book industry back in 1985, but Zack Snyder’s 2009 film stops far, far short of of Moore’s moral revisionism and even further from the Watchmen send-up that was Brad Bird’s ‘The Incredibles‘ (2004).

Anyone attempting to translate Moore’s 12-issue, 264 page graphic novel — a would-be 4-1/2 hours in screenplay-time — into filmed entertainment had a daunting enterprise ahead of them.

Snyder’s ‘Watchmen’ fails as an adaptation because the writers failed to adequately adapt the prosaic storyline to suit the 2-hour commercial format. The David Hayter/Alex Tse screenplay, hews too close to the dramatic beats of the original novel. At full length, those beats have their place because they furnish Moore’s 8 protagonists with engaging backstories, however, even at 166 minutes, the 264 page version of the thing fails to be fully satisfied.My other problem with the movie — besides the length — was the writers’ decision to comp so closely to the comic books’ dialogue and Snyder’s tolerance for some very average performances. I often felt as though the actors were reading their lines off of a teleprompter rather than inhabiting their characters. That and 2009 is not 1986 — people like Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca have neither standing or relevance, 23 years later after Chrysler has been bought, sold and is in the ditch once again. I’m certain that 90% of the cherished 16-24 viewing audience drew a complete blank the movie’s reference to Iacoccoca.

As a fanboy, I generally like to see my favorite stories faithfully reproduced for the screen. However, as an audience member, I saw too many rich characters crowding the screen, only to see their potential wasted. Each and every one of Moore’s Minutemen team were not only superheroes, but also tragic figures, trapped in their own peculiar hells. Silk Spctre (Sally Jupiter) is a 2nd-generation hero, having inherited her title from her mother, Sally Juspeczyk. Similarly, Nite Owl aka Daniel Dreiberg wears the costume of a legendary Silver Age hero. But the most formidable dysfunctions are to be found in the older heroes — Dr. Manhattan, the original Silk Spectre, Ozymandias and the Comedian because their idealism and nostallgia poison their daily lives.

Like Oliver North, The Comedian sees himself as a formidable patriot, despite the fact that his marching orders came from questionable quarters. When the one super-powered being, Jon Osterman, transmigrates into Doctor Manhattan, he leaves his humanity behind.

From my writerly perspective, Watchmen ought to have been Rohrshach’s picture — as with ‘Taxi Driver’, we ought to have had a good long taste of Rohrshach’s daily, hard-luck P.O.V., down to stealing Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s beans. The rising action of the Comedian’s death should have allowed Rohrshach to recount his troubled relationship with the man, but deciding to investigate the matter nonetheless.

There was no reason for this movie to run almost 3 hours. If you’ve got 246 pages of comic book script to turn into a movie and only 120 minutes to tell the story, then you’re going to have to cut some pages. Sometimes this happened, but we lost lots of important character development along the way. This is especially tragic because Watchmen is a character-driven piece. Like ‘Rosebud’ in ‘Citizen Kane’ we had an opportunity to see Jon Osterman’s childhood obsession with watches, but that didn’t play out in this film, even though it showed up on ‘Heroes’ (and then, was wasted).

I’m sure that the Snyder’s choices will justify themselves upon the 2nd and 3rd viewing, but the name of the game in moving works of literature into film is adaptation. Though I’m a huge fan of Carla Gugino, they ought to have diminished her role more and given Malin Akerman more space to explore being a 2nd-generation hero and Dr. Manhattan’s forgotten love interest, precisely because the Osterman/Janey Slater subplot doesn’t pay off as well as it does in the book.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Before that damnable show went off the air 6 years ago, all of the major broadcast networks — NBC, ABC and CBS each tried to catch some of Chris Carter’s alt.conspiracy.ufo fire.

Fringe‘s distinction is that the show is hard science-fiction, a rare event for network television — HARD science-fiction, is based on real science, not fantasy, not urban mythology and not old Saturday matinée fare. Though there are plenty of whiz-bang moments in there, most of the spectacle on Fringe is derived from current available technology.

One of Fringe‘s few shortcomings is its superficial resemblance to the X-Files. During the pilot, Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Australian actress Anna Torv) and Special Agent John Scott (Mark Valley) of the FBI are called out to investigate the mysterious circumstances where a plane full of passengers is all evacuated by a flesh-melting virus.

After investigating the plane, the Agents are led to a storage unit rented by one of the passengers thought responsible for the downed plane. Scott is infected by the biological agent and Agent Dunham is required to enlist the assistance of noted ‘Fringe’-scientist, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), who’s been locked-up in an asylum for the past 17 years.

That’s where the X-Files similarities end, because Fringe is not a Mulder/Scully ‘shipper show, but an ensemble show that rounds out with the son of Dr Noble, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), and actors Kirk Acevedo and Blair Brown in supporting roles.

While the X-Files was content to meander into the occult, urban legends and UFO lore, Fringe remains firmly planted in the realm of viable, cutting-edge, so-called fringe-science While I can’t vouch for the ‘Altered States‘-like sensory-deprivation tank, the flesh-eating virus, the gas attacks and the genetically-engineered parasite of subsequent episodes are all currently viable technologies.

That said, Torv, Jackson and Noble are compelling character-actors who fill out an hour’s wort of television in interesting ways — Jackson and Noble have and ongoing Father-Son shtick, while Torv’s character has ongoing encounters with the bits of Scott’s personality that were left behind in her head after the aforementioned isolation-tank experience.

Let’s hope the show maintains it’s strong ratings when the show returns in January ’09.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

While this installment of Batman seems to be the most successful commercial film since James Cameron’s ‘Titanic‘, you’d think that such a movie would have to have a simple storyline to keep selling tickets at such a rapid pace, week after week. Not so, here.

Despite the relatively simple two-villain interplay and some romantic conflict lifted from a drugstore novel, TDK takes what should be a simple, 90-minute flick and turns it into an angsty and operatic 150-minute movie that will challenge your kidneys to make it to the end-credits.

What Nolan, his co-writer and brother, Christopher and David Goyer attempt to do with that extra hour is create a dramatically plausible Batman, capable of transcendin multple genres at once — the Historical Allegory, the science-fiction flick, the comic book flick and the Lifetime movie-of-the-Week, where the Rachel Dawes character is concerned.. Promotional materials for the movie indication Nolan’s interest in creating a film more ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ than Spider-Man in it’s sensibility.

One of the things that Anne-the-filmmaker, my Cineblog partner here complained about was the lack of focus that many of the shots seemed to have. That could be easily chalked-up to the oversized IMAX film-format that Nolan and chose to shoot much of the movie on — a variation on 70mm film-stock that runs at roughly 3x the conventional frame-rate, roughly 60 frames-per-second.

The problem for non-IMAX theaters is that the prints for conventional theaters are shrunk-down and de-resed for the 35mm/24fps resolution of conventional theaters, resulting in a smaller, fuzzier picture.

Story problems begin when they try to fuse Batman’s street-level crime-drama with the international, high-finance aspects, The Joker’s terrorist ambitions and the romantic ambitions of Bruce Wayne’s double-antagonist, Gotham’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent. Like the IMAX film, the whole thing just doesn’t scale well.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the first 15 minutes are thrilling — some unidentified criminals execute a well coordinated heist of a mob bank. As, in the best caper flics, it’s a delight to watch a bunch of characters execute a well-planned heist. But once Nolan finishes that sequence, the whole affair proceeds to become another two or three movies, piled into the same movie screen. For another 140 minutes.

Bruce Wayne is Batman; we know that from Batman Begins. Rachel Dawes, Wayne’s childhood sweetheart in the prior movie — Katie Holmes , there, reprised here by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And then there’s ADA Harvey Dent, competing for Dawes’ affections and that of Gotham’s chief prosecutor. Finally, there’s The Joker, the movie most easily identifiable villain.

Whether or not it was Nolan’s intention to comment upon Human Civilization after 9-11, it’s become apparent that Batman has become too good at his job. Violent crime in Gotham has apparently plummeted some 90%, because Batman has successfully detected and prosecuted all criminal enterprises in Gotham since the end of the first movie. He’s so successful that the police department routinely broadcasts the Bat-signal, simply to discourage criminal activity.

Madman that he is, The Joker sees this detente as a business opportunity. Now that organized crime is hunkered-down around its boardroom tables, The Joker elects to set off random explosions and make off with the criminals’ dirty money.

The Joker describes himself as an agent of chaos. Throughout the film, he repeatedly raises the bar, first by offering a cash reward for Batman’s identity and then, inexplicably, a bounty on a Wayne Corporation employee who may have a line on Batman’s identity

So what’s to like here? More than two and a half hours of bladder-challenging Batman, if that’s your cup of tea. Heeth Ledger’s last performance and Aaron Eckhart’s best ever. The effects might get an Oscar, if only because the media has gushed about the film all summer. Me. I’m waiting for Aranofsky to direct a redacted version of the ‘Hush‘ storyline.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

The other sadness is that Mr. Frank, the award-winning writer of ‘Minority Report‘ (2002), ‘Out of Sight’ (1998) and ‘Dead Again’ (1991) got next to no promotional support for his debut feature. It was budgeted at $16M, took in $4M and slipped quietly beneath the waves 5 weeks later.

Problem is, Mr. Frank’s feature shared it’s opening weekend with last year’s Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature ‘Grindhouse’ (2007) and it was released by the post-Weinstein Miramax and Spyglass Entertainment. So, given a choice between promoting a celebrated screenwriter in an open field against the brand-names Tarantino™ and Rodriguez™, Disney chose to punt. The unfortunate fact is that it’s a pretty good, if over-budgeted film, far more engaging than the two-fer that Wonder Twins Tarantino and Rodriguez produced.

“Over-budgeted”, you ask? Despite the fact that Mr. Frank has been revered as the go-to script-doctor out in Hollywood for more than a decade, his first feature could have/should have been able to do more with less. The cinematography just a bit too assured, the music just a bit too lush for a film that’s essentially a neo-noir set in a midwestern town someplace (really Winnipeg, Manitoba). However, I guess Disney/Miramax wanted to treat Frank well, considering all of the work he’s done for Spielberg, Jodie Foster, Kenneth Branagh, Steven Soderbergh and Sydney Pollack.

From all accounts, the screenplay was finished back in 2002, yet sat on a shelf for 4 years. By all rights, The Lookout should have been an independent film, but what are you gonna do if someone offers you $16M to make your first feature?.

The story is sound here. As other writers have observed, Frank’s main strengths are sharp dialogue and character-driven stories, which is particularly why the film is overproduced: The script is an admirably small-scaled character-driven thing, full of unknowns, save for Jeff Daniels — yet the quality of the production is entirely A-List, nothing that Spielberg or Soderbergh or Pollack wouldn’t be disappointed with.

Early scenes in the film are so beautifully presented that they are at odds with the would-be grittier feel of the story that follows. Frank’s script might have benefitted from a more verité treatment. Of course, those production choices could be Frank’s alone and not that of his DP or production designer; ultimately though, it all falls back upon Frank.

Numerous reviewers have commented that The Lookout seems to be a cross between ‘Memento’ (2000) and ‘Fargo’ (1996) due to its rural small-town location, and the hook of a protagonist with memory problems, but Frank’s most remarkable invention in this film is his use of the amnesiac story-device — writing things down — to create a meta-narrative that speaks to the very heart of screenwriting.

“Ritual, Pattern, Repetition”, mutters our protagonist, Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) , during a session with his occupational therapist. As a result of the events in the film’s teaser episode, he has suffered a traumatic brain injury that denies him a short-term memory, requiring that he write everything down, just to get through his day as a janitor at a local bank. Eventually, this writing serves the story in a central way as Chris plots against his antagonists to rescue his best friend, Lew (Jeff Bridges), from arch-crooks Matthew Goode and Greg Dunham. As his therapist suggests, “Start at the end, and work your way back toward the beginning,” thus, Mr. Frank’s graduate school lessons are made available to us mere-mortals spec-monkeys.

All told, The Lookout is ultimately a noir film, down to it’s femme-fatale, it’s central caper and betrayal.

This one is highly recommended — stick it in your Netflix cue or catch it on cable — whichever comes first.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’d seen the movie and written another review of the movie back in 2002 and wasn’t so impressed with it — I felt that Spielberg had taken the Philip K. Dick material and slicked it up just a bit too much. When Ridley Scott adapted ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep‘ (cf. Blade Runner’ (1982)), he made an exerted attempt to ground his story in a world we’d understand, a polyglot, super-ethnic place that had felt the pre-millenial bleed-in from Hong Kong and other portions of east Asia. Even if Minority Report is set in D.C., it feels as though Spielberg’s future is a bit too squeaky-clean, a Googie architecture for the early 21st century.

That’s not to say that Spielberg and his gang of futurist consultants didn’t present us with a compelling vision of the future, with his mag-lev superhighways and reconfigured cityscape, the world of Minority Report looks more line the year 2554 A.D. rather than the intended 2054. We’re still nowhere near the place where the police are able to use jet-packs as personal accessories.

There are interesting details in MR that I wish I’d paid greater attention to the first time, specifically the Precogs’ relationship to the illegal drugs – neuroin – that Tom Cruise’s John Anderton procures on the ‘back-streets’ of a very shiny, futurist Washington, D.C. Apparently the Precogs are all some 21st c. version of crack-babies that have been rehabilitated enough to make their precognative birth-defect useful to the larger society.

Since production on Minority Report started on March 22, 2001, there’s no way that Spielberg and company could have anticipated 9-11, much less incorporated its effects into Scott Frank’s script.

But the National Security Agency’s Total Information Awareness program seems to be very much the stuff that Spielberg’s Precrime Division of the Justice Department was after — however, rather than use precognitives to divine their subjects, the Bush II Justice Department uses credit information and unlawful wiretaps.

The operative motivation in Information is guilt-by-association — Total Information Awareness — renamed the ‘Terrorism Information Awareness Program’ after Total tested poorly — assembles financial information, telephony and the movement of individuals as a digital surveillance package. In short, there are already computers out there tracking your ‘movement’ when you purchase your lunch with plastic, when and whom you telephone, and who calls you and the movement of your EZ Pass™, when you need to pay tolls, not to mention the alarms that go off if you attempt to transfer more than $10.000 to another entity.

As a former D.A., Sptizer should have known all about anti-money laundering restrictions and the ramifications of asking Ashley Dupré to transport controlled substances across State lines for him. The fact of the matter is that the NSA, the FBI and Homeland Security already use a collection of invasive tools that make Clinton’s partisan problems with FISA seem quaint by comparison.

So, the Bush Administration has invented their own version of a Precrime Division and promoted the NSA officers formerly in charge of it to senior positions at the Pantagon and the CIA. Bravo to those unreasonable searches that the Constitution was supposed to protect us from. Philip K. Dick, a drug-addict and paranoid schizophenic somehow predicted the future. Just sayin’.

But, to return to the matter of the film, it must be said that Tom Cruise’s star-power damages this film somewhat, since the story literally grinds to a stand-still whenever he isn’t on screen.

Besides all of the lavish production values, what’s also to be admired in Minority Report is the always sturdy Neal McDonough and Lothario-in-real-life, Colin Farrell. If any of their gravity could have been injected into the plot-important scenes between Max van Sydow and Kathryn Morris, specifically the Agatha and Anne Lively subplot it would have helped the flagging 3rd act. More energy, enthusiasm or even musical emphasis might have some breathed life into final 30 minutes, which goes flaccid after Farrell’s Witwer is ::SPOILER::.

Even though it’s now 6 years old, Minority Report is well worth watching again.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

We’re going into the 5th week of “Raines” this week and sadly, it’s already half over. “Raines” was brought onto NBC as a mid-season replacement for ER, which was scheduled for a 6-week hiatus as the cast and crew split their 12th season. Several weeks ago, TV.com reported that NBC had already reduced their initial order from 13 to 7, which I’m sure is a disappointment to creator and producer Graham Yost, who’s last NBC show was the celebrated and lamented “Boomtown.”

At first glance, “Raines” looks like another link in the long chain of Mediums, Ghost Whisperers and Afterlifes, but the premise is slightly skewed and a bit more Columbo than might be anticipated. Michael Raines — played by Goldblum — is a detective on the LA who solves his cases through a bit of imaginative role-playing — but then his investigative partner died in a recent shoot out and Raines may have some post-traumatic stress disorder issues to sort out.The first episode, co-starring Alexa Davalos, formerly of Angel and The Chronicles of Riddick and directed by Frank Darabont was both touching and poignant. The second episode, ‘Meet Juan Doe’ reaches the same bar, with the story of a Mexican man murdered while visiting the United States. In interviews, Yost has referred to this show as ‘pro-victim’, which it is, considering that Raines works through each case by intimately empathizing with the victims.Raines is a surprising and thoughtful new show that’s probably not going to be around for long. Catch it while you can.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Barry Pepper plays Ripley as a rock-star – long hair, a close shave and charisma to burn – and the tone of the thing is far lighter than any of the previous incarnations – ‘Purple Noon‘ ,’The American Friend‘, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley‘, ‘Ripley’s Game‘, etc.

Some early reviewers have referred to it as a ‘comedy’, but it’s not, really. Unfortunately, the lighter tone actually hurts the film a bit, because this outing paints Mr. Ripley as less of a predator and sociopath than any of the Ripley films that have preceeded it.

Apparently, this interpretation sprang from a comment that Ms. Highsmith made about the filmed interpretations of her novels. Highsmith apparently felt that previous movie versions missed the humor of her character and the droll wit of her dark plots. But the humor in this effort undermines whatever suspense the film might have held.

Beside having freed Mr. Pepper from the short-haired grunts that he usually plays, the film really allows Alan Cumming and Claire Forlani to shine in ways that they usually aren’t allowed to when they are shoe-horned into American roles and American accents. She is officially excused from having participated in ‘Meet Joe Black’.

It’s a good, but not great film. The delight was seeing Barry Pepper stretch-out in the kind of role he’s seldom given. I typically enjoy the Ripley films and novels for their psychopathy, but this was different enough to be enjoyable. If you come across it on cable or the Shanghai bootleg carrels try not to overlook it.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Starring: Barry Pepper, Jacinda Barrett, Tom Wilkinson, Alan Cumming, Claire Forlani, Ian Hart, Willem Dafoe; Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

“WTF?!”, you say? AMC, the home of endless Charles Bronson repeats and forgettable PG-13 80′s crap?

Yes, THAT AMC.

Hustle stars Adrian Lester (‘Primary Colors‘), Robert Vaughn (‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’) and Marc Warren (‘The Vice’) in a hip, new British caper-show that resembles ‘Mission Impossible’ by way of ‘The Avengers’. In this case though, the protagonists are con-men.

Lester is the ringleader, while Warren and Vaughn provide support and newcomer Jaime Murray provides distraction as resident femme fatale Stacie Monroe.

In many ways Hustle is a throwback to those stealthy policiers of yesteryear, when we’d dally with Mrs. Peel and John Steed as roguish British agents. But unlike the craptacular tv-show remakes of the late ’90′s, Hustle is all about the writing.

Hustle is a BBC show brought to us from KUDOS Entertainment, the same people responsible for A&E’s catch-it-when-you-can spy drama ‘Spooks‘ (known here as ‘MI-5′).

As Albany’s Times-Union says, “Viewers will probably think they’re watching PBS, A&E, BBC America or even Bravo. This hip British series is not American, it’s yet to be a classic and it’s definitely not a movie. AMC has lost its way. Will its audience follow?”. One would hope. As a recovering BBC Americaholic and a ‘Mystery!’ enthusiast, I can only hope.

Last week’s 2-hour premiere repeats this Friday, 01/20 at 7pm and episodes 1 and 2 repeat at some unholy hour (~1am) between now and Friday. Given the current state of American television, you’ll thank me, later, for the sleep that you lost.

Check it out!

(clips available @ Hustle’s BBC web page – see ‘Episodes’.)