The Fighter

It’s the relentlessness of boxing that makes it so difficult to watch. It’s not enough to make your opponent bleed, to break bones in his or her face, knock teeth or knock your opponent to the ground. A boxer must do all of these things, repeatedly, and may lose perspective on the damage being done – and thus the referee must stay in the ring with the fighters, often pulling them apart, trying to gauge when the pummeled has had enough. And yet, at least the sport has that to offer, a referee. If only families used one.

Today, the Ecklund-Ward household would star in their own reality series. A Greek chorus of seven interchangeable daughters and two nearly-famous sons, the adult family feels more like a polygamist nightmare than someplace to call home. Older brother Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale at his wiry, cocaine-addicted, tortured best,) is the prodigal son with a drug problem, ever trying to avoid admitting his faults while reminding everyone that he is the “Pride of Lowell.” Micky (the brilliantly understated Mark Wahlberg) adores his older brother, and calmly navigates the rough family tides. Matriarch Alice Ward still exerts tremendous influence over her grown children, though her show-mother-den-mother identity seems to overpower any practical considerations. The manipulation that gets Micky to go along with his mother’s and brother’s choices – the indoctrination to choose allegiance to family over one’s best interest is overt and frightening. You would think that a boxer would have some instinct for self-preservation, but no, these boys have yet to learn.

Thus we arrive at the title. Slowly, but with great force, Dicky and Micky begin to understand that some of their choices have been self-sabotage and each is willing to fight for his life. Then again, a prison sentence or finding love can help you turn your life around (or so one would like to believe). It’s something of a relief to see Dicky imprisoned and Micky come out of his shell as he falls in love with new-in-town bartender Charlene (a surprisingly plain Amy Adams). If you’re like me, arguments among loved ones drive you to wonder why we can’t all just get along. Compromise, right? At least when things to come to a cinematic close, it’s an earned resolution. These are characters (and people) who have worked to achieve their version of a happy family.

If you had any doubts as to the truth behind the story, not only are there traditional end tags with epilogues for each of the major players, but some interview footage of Dick Ecklund and Micky Ward is shown as the credits begin. It’s clear to see how Bale and Wahlberg were chosen, or if not chosen, at least the inspiration for their performances.

Pandorum

You know it’s true. There are certain films that you see only because one actor you like is in it. In fact, entire franchises have been built on less than that. Pandorum, for me, was one such film.

Anyone who saw the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma knows that the most riveting performer in the movie was Ben Foster. His unflinchingly loyal Charlie Prince was a man of contradictions, and easily commanded the most interest. Foster has done well for himself, having graduated from Disney’s FlashForward and established himself as an intensely focused and talented actor, garnering praise from supporting roles in Alpha Dog, Hostage, X-Men 3, and his powerful lead in The Messenger. Thus, on a very chilly January evening I sat down to sate my anticipation of Foster’s forthcoming The Mechanic with Pandorum.

In fact, Foster is one of the first people we meet on the spaceship Elysium – we watch him rediscover himself and his world as he wakes up from hypersleep. As Corporal Bower, he seems to be the only one conscious and possibly the last one alive. Soon he is joined by Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid), who resumes the command. Together, they determine that they are part of a flight team and that while they cannot recall their mission, it is up to Bower to restore power to the ship and enable navigation, and furthermore, their survival. Bower’s journey to the ship’s reactor aligns him with space ninjas (abandoned passengers who have learned to defend themselves) and pits him against cannibalistic Hunters (a humanoid species that feeds on the blood and flesh of other humans). Along the way, he discovers that Elysium was en route to a distant Earth-like planet when something went wrong. Bower must endure the danger and violence he encounters while trying to hold on to his sanity. The slightest shake or bloody nose may indicate the onset of ‘pandorum’ – a kind of insanity caused by severe psychological trauma and long periods of hypersleep. An astronaut giving in to pandorum will likely hallucinate, becoming paranoid and violent.

Invented by the filmmakers Travis Milloy and Christian Alvart, ‘pandorum’ is a fictional illness, the word itself combining the connotations of Pandora’s Box and the evil released into the world, and pandemonium, which certainly ensues. Now by and large, I do not like scary movies. I have seen very few of them, but one of them was a spelunking nightmare called The Descent. Whereas The Descent sets six women against subterranean humanoid creatures that have evolved to life in the underground caves, Pandorum is The Descent in space. Somewhere between the Crawlers of The Descent and the Reavers of Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity series lie the Hunters of Pandorum. (Coincidentally, Ben Foster’s costar from FlashForward was the mechanic for Serenity – Jewel Staite.)

That being said, Production Designer Richard Bridgland has done a fantastic job with his futuristic reality. The ship’s design was likely influenced by pop culture’s icons of science fiction: from Star Trek to the original Star Wars, The Fifth Element to Apollo 13, Firefly and Serenity. A good spaceship will always strike a balance between being able to see the underlying mechanical elements and the advanced technology that develops as I write. The coolest and most unexpected piece of technology is featured for a moment in the first ten minutes of the film when Bower shaves with a laser-razor – of course, my personal fear of sharp objects usually makes scenes that involve shaving difficult to watch.

I had no problem watching Pandorum, though I found some of the savagery nauseating. Despite a fairly satisfying conclusion, Pandorum left me feeling rather “eh.” While dividing the major conflicts between Bower – who mainly fought the Hunters – and Payton – who struggled with pandorum – was an effective way to cover a lot of interesting concepts, I don’t think I ever fully invested in either of them. Cam Gigandet as fellow survivor Corporal Gallo was ill-used, nevermind the boring struggle among Gallo, Payton, and pandorum. Or maybe Payton’s struggle was less effective for being left to Quaid to tackle; I have to wonder if Foster wouldn’t have been more interesting in that role. Then again, I’m biased.

Black Swan

“As filmmakers, we can show where a person’s mind goes, as opposed to theater,
which is more to sit back and watch it.” – Darren Aronofsky

Black Swan does what all of my favorite films do: it makes the most of its medium to express what could scarcely be communicated. It is excellent, a psychological thriller en pointe. It’s about art, ballet, acting, performance, competition, jealousy, suffering, perfection, transcendence, and invention. As professional ballerina Nina Sayers, Natalie Portman channels Audrey Hepburn. When the director of the ballet company decides to replace his prima ballerina for the new season, Nina is the very embodiment of the devastatingly delicate Princess in Swan Lake. But can she dance the seductive Black Swan as well?

Every artist knows the struggle of being true to one’s self while responding to the demands of the art. For Nina, her determination to inhabit both swans is also a struggle for her own identity – her ambitions, independence from her possessive mother, her sexuality. As the pressure to be perfect compounds and Nina sheds her former self, she breaks with reality, becoming increasingly paranoid, possibly schizophrenic, and dangerous. A woman passes Nina on the street; is it Lily? Or Nina’s double? Part of Aronofsky’s genius lies in his ability to show that life and art are intertwined, the one influencing the other and changing it. In The Fountain, he explored the interplay between our present and our history. The careful placement of images to craft a perception rather than a reality is extraordinary, like a dream in which our subconscious plays tricks on us. We may be more certain than Nina of what has been seen, but we are unsettled all the same.

The background elements are equally well crafted, enhancing the story, and turning Portman’s Sayers into a rat in a maze. At work and at home, Nina is surrounded by reflections and repeated patterns. Mirrors line the studios in which she dances, they decorate the walls of her home, she sees herself in her mother, in new company member Lily, and in the former prima ballerina Beth. She is haunted by echoes, the reflection of sound. There’s something deliciously creepy in Aronofsky’s representation of New York City as labyrinthine, unknowable, dirty, and suspect. No matter how well we may know these things to be true, setting our fragile ballerina against this rough-and-tumble backdrop is immensely effective. If some of the costume or make-up choices seem a little obvious, it’s because the symbolism behind them works. It is the lesson of the Swan Princess – why struggle against the inevitable? Regardless, the film is beautiful and it already has my (uncounted) support for Best Sound Design.

The Fall

Filmmaker Tarsem Singh spent his own considerable fortune to create The Fall. Based on a Bulgarian film, a young girl in a hospital (her arm having broken while picking oranges) forms an unexpected friendship with a wounded stuntman (whose fall from a train trestle caused him to break both of his legs). On the day they meet, Roy tells Alexandria that he will tell her a great story, set in India, when she returns to visit the next day. What follows is an extraordinary journey of visual splendor and heartrending significance.

Understanding the stylization of certain aspects of the film is key to fully enjoying it. Most viewers can appreciate the decision to limit the color palette for the 1920s sequences while saturating the story of the Masked Bandit. It speaks directly to The Wizard of Oz – and in fact, the films are very similar. In each, a young girl uses the figures she knows as faces in an imagined story that parallels her life. But it’s easy to take color for granted in contemporary cinema, so it’s up to Tarsem’s exceptional creativity and courage to pull out all the stops for his magical world. The editorial craft of manipulating dozens of exquisite locations without the use of a green screen is its own magic, seamless in creating a dreamlike realm that grows more beautiful at every turn and consistent within its own reality.

I have friends who were unable to appreciate the story sequences because of what they called “bad acting.” I tell them they are mistaken, that the performances in the fantasy are heightened – stylized – so that we never forget we are in the imagination of a six year old girl. It’s impossible to deny the effectiveness of Tarsem’s leading young lady, Catinca Untaru. Her genuine performance is what drives the film; we fall in love with her and come to want Roy’s epic as much as she does. It is through her imagination and the familiar elements of her world that the fantastical story within The Fall is told. So when Roy tells her of the Indian, she envisions a scene in India, making no effort to accommodate the squaw hidden in a wigwam. Unfamiliar with Roy’s use of Native American terminology, and expecting a tale set in the East, she interprets the story as best she can. It’s this subtle touch that contributes to making the visual story uniquely hers.

There are critics who have condemned the film, proposing that an affection for it condones the manipulation of children for selfish purposes. I can’t speak for the process between director and actress, and I won’t scorn Roy’s influence over Alexandria. The “strange pair” have a need for the story they spin. Their needs differ at times, but they exist nonetheless. On the contrary, my sole qualm with the film lies with Nurse Evelyn. While I believe she was intended as a substitute maternal figure, I never saw her in a positive light. When she betrays Alexandria, it is Catinca’s depiction of heartbreak that sells it, nothing less.

I write my review now because The Fall is a film of note – regardless of its release date. It took four years for the film to find David Fincher and Spike Jonze, whose willingness to support the film helped get it to theaters at all. Luckily we the people have DVDs – high quality DVDs and televisions – that come close to recapturing the magic of a movie theater. If any of The Fall’s considerable magic is lost on your first viewing, consider sitting closer, and imagining the grandeur of it on a big screen. If you find yourself soaring like I did, you’ll know the biggest fall is coming back to earth after the movie is over.

Kick-Ass

Good things come in the smallest packages; at least they do in Kick-Ass. In a film dedicated to comic book geeks and everywhere invisible teenage boys, young Chloë Moretz is the standout performer and my hero of the film, although even this could not have been accomplished without the success of the film’s other elements.

One of the things I most respect and appreciate about Kick-Ass (or perhaps director Matthew Vaughn) is the tone and speed with which it sets up our story. I don’t want to say that establishing elements or backstory are glossed over – it is information that comes quickly, clearly, and without asking us to accept the cliché as original. The production design and cinematography is largely helpful in this, as Russell De Rozario and Ben Davis succeed in creating a world infused with the imagery and framing of a comic book. And in a story as self-aware as this one, it’s more appropriate to tell us that Dave is our Peter Parker than it is to merely give him a similar story. In fact, the direct parallels to Spiderman belong in the film as an integral part of how Dave sees the world. It would not be the same without them. Even Big Daddy and Hit Girl maintain the art of the comic book within their secret existence, as the form in which their backstory is revealed.

However, when there are unexplained or unreferenced similarities to other films or stories, something does seem to be missing. As I write this, I realize that my biggest qualms with the film lie in the bad guy family. Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s rich kid Chris D’Amico bears an uncanny resemblance to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off rich kid Cameron Frye. Then Red Mist is somehow reminiscent of the villain of The Incredibles: Syndrome. But with someone as recognizable as Mintz-Plasse playing Chris, one has to wonder why Dave doesn’t recognize his classmate as Red Mist. Yancy Butler, as Mrs. D’Amico, makes a few brief appearances looking strikingly like a petite Angelina Jolie. Mark Strong plays yet another villain as Frank D’Amico, but his one comedic scene early in the film in which he plans his trip to the movies, is delightfully entertaining – I only wish there was more of this sensibility to his role in the rest of the film. Instead, I found myself wondering what it would have been like to have Christopher Meloni (of Law and Order: SVU and Wet Hot American Summer) playing the drug boss.

Everybody else though, is believably average and therefore, perfect. Somehow the drug thugs manage to come off as authentic clichés rather than petty Sopranos wannabes. Aaron Johnson is not too good-looking to pass for an awkward teenager, nor does he look too old for high school (refreshing, in Hollywood). Dave’s buddies are every bit as anonymous as he says they are, and his beginning efforts are as painful as they are well intentioned. But if Dave is without superpowers (a la Spiderman), and without a super powerful bank account (a la Batman), where does he get the money for his costume? A mystery.

Also a mystery is where Big Daddy and Hit Girl got their trust fund. Three hundred thousand dollars for a toy of the trade? Fun! But how? It doesn’t matter. They’re the two caped crusaders that we believe are truly superheroes. Nicolas Cage – a polarizing performer at best – acknowledges his character’s similarity to Batman by adopting the specific speech patterns of the most famous Batman of all, Adam West. Being aware of this fact prior to seeing the film helped me to accept his otherwise affected and vacant Big Daddy. When he’s spot on, it works; when he isn’t, it becomes difficult to understand what he is saying.

And then there’s Hit Girl. Now maybe I’m partial to her purple wig (at one point I was going to don one to get through chemotherapy), but Chloë Moretz’s Mindy Macready, a.k.a. Hit Girl, is the glue holding this thing together. She’s the fiercest, most agile, most deadly, and most determined of our heroes – with the best costume, by far. She’s no satire of Spiderman or Batman, and while those who don’t understand the film may complain about her involvement in the bloodshed or her foul and offensive language, she is without a doubt the most interesting character in the film, the most magnetizing on screen, and the most fun to watch. Unlike with Kick-Ass, Red Mist, or Big Daddy, there is no question as to whether we are in a comic book world or a real world in which comic books are featured. We are in Mindy’s world, the only world she knows and lives in, a world in which superheroes are truly super men and women. This is why there is no need to be offended by such a young child speaking such crass dialogue. In Mindy’s world, it’s all for effect. It’s all a part of her superhero persona, and she uses it without relish but to insult and punish those to whom she is speaking. As for the bloodshed – we’re not talking Tarantino here, and Hit Girl isn’t even present for the films goriest moment. When she fights, the stylization of it makes it akin to viewing a comic book or watching a cartoon. Aren’t there any feminists to support Hit Girl’s heroism? What happened to all the viewers wanting to see girls in a role of power? I’m a little sad that young girls – too young for this movie – won’t get to have Hit Girl as a heroine, but at least I do. It’s nice to see a young girl kick some ass now and again.

A Single Man

The trailer for Ford's directorial debut revealed little about the movie's plot, and felt rather reminiscent of an Ingmar Bergman film. From that, plus a director whose day job as a fashion photographer renown for his particularity and perfectionism, one might expect A Single Man to be a far more pretentious film.

Instead, Ford has bypassed the awkward feeling of film school projects or self-appreciating productions with an exquisitely crafted story of love, pain, loss, and coping. There's a surprising amount of sarcasm and humor throughout, extraordinary production design, and every shot is imbued with enough style to balance what might otherwise have been an excess of pathos.

Ford can't claim all the responsibility for the brilliance in A Single Man - the film is buoyed by the brilliant the stellar ensemble. Colin Firth is so profoundly moving as George Falconer, it's no wonder his performance has generated so much buzz. Julianne Moore also shines as George's best friend, Charly. In the hands of a lesser actress, Charly would quickly become a grating cliché - we are grateful to Moore that she does not. Nicholas Hoult, the youngest of the eponymous heroes of About a Boy, has clearly blossomed into his early adulthood. His icy blue eyes are filmed to their best advantage, and he creates a Dorian Gray-like ambiguously sensual persona for George's living ghost. Matthew Goode's screen time is so brief that his effectiveness is remarkable. His connection with Firth is so simple and genuine that George's adoration of Jim is completely believable.

Finding such finely tuned performances in A Single Man is representative of Ford's impeccably refined style. Like all good fashion, A Single Man highlights its strong points and limits its weaknesses. Like all good art, it could use another viewing.

Possession

Perhaps it has to do with the title. At one time, the Sarah Michelle Gellar/Lee Pace suspense flick was titled Addicted. Then the title changed, and everything went south. While the movie would now be titled Possession, it seemed much more like a hot potato. Possession simply could not make its way to theaters. Surely it couldn’t have helped to share a title with an extremely poorly received Gwyneth Paltrow/Aaron Eckhart romance. Then, with the release date constantly being pushed back, the fall of the distribution company, and the DVD delays, there wasn’t even time for the title to be re-associated for a new audience.

Anyone interested in seeing Possession was undoubtedly frustrated at the wait for its availability – if he or she maintained any interest in it at all. Were Lee Pace not in the film, I know Possession would never have made my ‘To See’ list. Gellar’s work has never tempted this reviewer, but so far, a Lee Pace movie has always been worth the wait (see: The Fall). From the trailer for Possession, it was apparent that the story of a felonious brother waking from a coma believing he is the romantic brother and husband of a beautiful young lawyer (Gellar) was either going to be very well done, or very poorly done. There would be no in-between.

I would like to take this moment to praise the trailer editor. The trailer was so enthralling that I became eager to watch the movie and find out how exactly the subject would be handled and resolved. Sadly, it seems that the filmmakers had yet to decide these matters when the film was made. What seems like a good story concept is poorly fleshed out and ill explained. Many unanswered questions and potential suspense moments are sprinkled throughout, though none of them seem to interest the characters or director. Only in the beginning, where cheaply predictable ‘foreshadowing’ elements are combined in the most deliberately shot, formulaic scenes since the videos used in high school Spanish class.

The concept at the core of the film is fascinating. Can one person wake up from a coma, possessing the soul of another? Amnesia is no less mysterious an idea; why not? Especially for the sake of a movie. Were I in Gellar’s character’s situation, I too might do an internet search to figure out what’s going on. But to make the jump from “psychological” phenomena to “possession”… did Buffy grow up to be a lawyer? Who knows. It’s one of many story holes plaguing the film.

Performances are as you would expect. Gellar is the standard suspense-film heroine, Michael Landes serves well as her sweeter-than-pie artist husband, and Pace – I may be a little biased, but Pace does his best with what he is given. His Roman is both dirty and angsty before the accident, then softer and desperate after. Were the answers not handed to you in the beginning of the film, the transformation would be much more engaging.

To the benefit of the viewer’s imagination, the DVD includes a brief featurette and deleted scenes with an alternate ending. The featurette seems to reveal some uncertainty on set about the truth of the story, at least the truth they intend to tell. The extra scenes, significantly different and far more interesting than the ending used in the final cut, suggest that Possession, as the filmmakers abandoned it, would have worked better as a Choose Your Own Adventure DVD. Perhaps we would all have the benefit of a film we could enjoy, instead of an unfortunate corruption of a Japanese thriller. Unless of course, you view the film as a reason to be less afraid of the dark. After all, if there’s a brooding Lee Pace stalking around and in love with me, what’s the problem?

Love Me If You Dare

The thing I love most about this movie – besides Marion Cotillard – is its unapologetic willingness to surpass reality with whimsical imagery or a hyper-existence where the depths of emotion match or surpass the rich hues of the film. Visually stunning special effects and fantasy sequences tug at heartstrings because they show and illustrate the feelings that language is so inept at describing. In an age of self-talk, Dr. Phil, Nicholas Sparks’ novels, and the watered down emotional pandering of the Hollywood romance, Love Me If You Dare is at once bracing and deliciously, wickedly refreshing. Love Me If You Dare forces Sophie and Julien to confront our greatest fears and our dearest wishes… and the truth at the heart of it all: love.

When we first meet Sophie and Julien they are eight-year-old classmates with fractured hearts and matching mischievous tendencies.  From the start, their relationship is built on the desire to give obstructed by the fear of loss. Julien would give his carousel tin to Sophie, but he fears losing it forever, and asks if he may borrow it sometimes. Sophie is quick to anger, but somehow she understands. Why else would she offer to give it back when Julien gives her proof of his affection? And so the game of Dares evolves, progresses, and while the children pass the tin back and forth, they give their hearts as well. Of course, as the years go by, the stakes are raised; new rules, expectations, and complications interfere with their game.

I can’t say I fully understand what defines good child actors, but I believe there are two wonderful ones in this film. At least Yann Samuel was able to cultivate dynamic performances from his young Julien and Sophie, perfectly in sync with their older counterparts. Thibault Verhaeghe is a rambunctious child and proud boy who loves his mother – the same as the man that Guillaume Canet shows him grown up to be. Joséphine Lebas-Joly perfectly depicts an outsider who finds pleasure in control, which begins with grade school misdeeds and grows into the manipulation of men (a beautiful and tortured Marion Cotillard). So brazen are our main characters that their depicted behavior challenges us in our proclamations of love, and dares us to mean it when we say, “I love you,” or “I can’t live without you.”

I’ve heard complaint that the movie features unlikeable, unredeeming characters; I don’t believe any of these critics have seen beyond the surface actions and occasional hurt to the motivations behind them. One reviewer pointed out that Sophie is unable to say “I love you,” a revelation of fact that explains so much of what she says and does (or doesn’t say and doesn’t do). Julien, on the other hand, seems incapable of saying “I’m sorry.” The montage near the end of the film says so much about how Sophie and Julien could benefit from the integration of these two phrases in their lives.

“I’m sorry.”

“I love you.”

 “Cap ou pas cap?”

Green Zone

Pass-Fail: Pass. I liked Green Zone.

Matt Damon plays Roy Miller, a Chief Warrant Officer desperate to save lives by doing his job - finding and deactivating weapons of mass destruction. Damon's innate ability to seem like the smartest guy in the room serves him well in Green Zone, since he's the only person to pick up on the disconnect between the intelligence he's been given and the absence of WMDs. For his perceptiveness he is, of course, approached by the CIA (Brendan Gleeson’s thwarted Martin Brown) and the White House (Greg Kinnear’s unsavory Clark Poundstone). Like the Damon/Greengrass Bourne creation, Miller is above all a pursuer of truth. So he digs. While his team digs for buried WMDs, Miller collaborates with Freddy (Khalid Abdalla - charismatic and remarkably profound), an Iraqi man who shares information about high-ranking Iraqi officials who have been in hiding. They are both brave men in bad situations, men with the best of intentions and a near lack of influence. Still, neither man harbors any illusions about the danger they face.

Katherine Bigelow has proven that war films are no longer just games for men to play, but Paul Greengrass's Green Zone seems to think that war itself is still just a man's game. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the only role for a woman in the script (besides wailing victim) is that which represents the media and its willingness to deliver any message the White House would have sent. Like a wife blind to her husband's affair, or a puppy nipping at her beloved owner's feet, Washington Post reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) pursues her ‘insider source’ Poundstone for whatever more information she can find. An absence of WMDs is an enemy ploy in her eyes and could be nothing else. Miller, with his grand ideas of protecting millions of people, is unwilling to dispel his suspicion, even for the sake of doing his job and getting home safely, as many members of his team aim to do. Leave it to Damon to take on a role in which he is forced to fight at every turn: enemy forces, riotous Iraqi crowds, and even an American Special Forces agent. Asked to take steps against a federal investigation Miller says, "I thought we were on the same side." "Don't be naive," he is told.

Now, I know I'm not the first reviewer, and I confess I read other reviews before writing mine. As Ebert points out, it's refreshing to see America as the duped. And yeah, maybe it's anti-war blah blah tons of hand-held camera blah Bourne blah blah whatever. I know I don't know enough about politics to speak about its truth or accuracy, and I certainly didn't read the book on which it is based (Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran). But I appreciate being shown the unexpected victims of one man's actions. I like seeing clues interpreted and puzzles pieced together. And if Matt Damon's going to look like the smartest guy in the room, I'm glad he is at least one of them. There were a number of little things that gave the film some kick, from a family photo op with a tanker posed just inside the green zone, to the Jason Isaac's dismissive, "have a nice war." I think I've heard it before - maybe in The Hurt Locker, from which Green Zone will draw unavoidable comparison - but as an uninitiated civilian, it stings nonetheless.

A great many people, political organizations, representatives, and Kinnear's Poundstone character would prefer to think that America has won, or is at least in the lead in the middle eastern battles still being forged today. As far as I can tell, Green Zone makes this one point abundantly clear: so long as there is war to be waged, no one will win.

Rachel Getting Married

The cast was full of great performers - Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger - but damn was that movie a downer! Exquisite tragedy and thorough understanding of it - though I felt the timeline was never fully understood by everyone, and never made clear for the audience. The handheld camera got to be a bit much – even Paul Greengrass would have gotten motion sickness - and Jonathan Demme, I should smack you over the head for the stress tension I went through. At the very least, 15 minutes too long, and more than a bit meandering at times. I would like to see Hathaway in dramatic roles more often, though so many viewers claim this to be her award-winning breakthrough role. But Oscar buzz? Settle down. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie didn't see any nominations.

Recipe for Rachel Getitng Married:
½ reel        Big Chill
1 reel         28 Days
1 ½ reel     Rabbit Hole (play by David Lindsay-Abaire, film coming soon, I’m sure)
¾ reel        Life is a House

I recommend Sandra Bullock’s 28 Days or Catherine Keener’s Walking and Talking (if you can find it!) as cures for the hangover you’ll have after this troubled marriage.