Kiss of Death (1947)

Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947) Another of Henry Hathaway's neo-realist film noir's that aped the post-war Italian film penchant for shooting dark themes in real locations without glamour and emphasizing the grit.  This one, about the rise and fall and rise of heist-criminal Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), starts out in the sky-scrapers, jail-houses, and police offices that reverberate with the realistic sound that you can't acquire in a sound-baffled soundstage, but once the mayhem starts, the film scurries back to the safety of studio sets.  It's rough in the mean streets of noir.  Safer to make your own.

Bianco is an ex-con who can't find a job, and with a wife and two kids to support, he decides to make his own work—robbing a jewelry business in downtown Manhattan.  The job goes South and he ends up on the street with a police bullet in his leg and a stretch awaiting him at the gray-bar hotel.  He's offered a chance by assistant D.A. Louis D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy) to supply evidence on his cronies, but Bianco sticks to the criminal code—he won't squeal, sing, or rat, even when D'Angelo offers him an early parole so he can see his kids.  But Bianco won't bend.  His family is being "taken care of" by his sheister of a lawyer (Taylor Holmes), who visits him in prison to keep tabs on Bianco's loyalty.

But, in prison, Bianco gets wind that things aren't going so well.  And a visit to the prison library newspaper galleys tells him his wife has committed suicide, his kids are now orphans, and his silence has bought him nothing.

Hathaway's direction is no-nonsense throughout, but stylistic, anyway, and the scenes in the initial robbery, in the D.A.'s office and the lock-up have a drab, utilitarian look to them—the robbery has a nice touch in it, as the crooks' target is on the 44th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, and the post stick-up elevator ride (with plenty of stops) provides a particularly teasing kind of tension.  Mature is fine, Donlevy's abilities aren't taken advantage of, and there are bit parts by Karl Malden and one of my character actors, the short-lived Millard Mitchell (who played Gene Kelly's producer buddy in Singin' in the Rain).

But Kiss of Death is also the feature debut of Richard Widmark, who plays the cheap gangster killer Tommy Udo.  You don't see him kill too many people, but one of them is indelible in its cruelty and vicious enthusiasm.  Widmark's performance is amazing, looking like a wire-thin Dan Duryea, with Cagney's ability to hold the eye in every scene he's in.  His dialogue isn't the greatest (even though the script is by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer) and limited, and repeated over and over, but Widmark punctuates it with a goonish laugh that implies a sarcastic inner amusement that he knows he's stringing you along.  Hathaway, knowing what he was getting from the young actor, pulled out all the stops for his performance.  There's one scene where someone's waiting for udo, who's holding court in a curtained-off restaurant back-room.  Hathaway holds on the curtain, elongating the wait, then cuts to a close shot of the part in the curtains, where all you can see is the glint in Udo's eye before he gets up and makes his way to the camera,  It's an amazing shot and one that shows the director's confidence in his young actor's ability to hold an audience's attention, even when he isn't actually seen.

It's curtains for Widmark's Tommy Udo

The Kingdom

This week, we're re-publishing some reviews of the films from the post 9-11 environment.

Cries and Whispers

On the American military compound in Rhiyadh, two terrorists command a security vehicle and open up machine gun fire on a family softball game leaving carnage before they are killed. But like the WTC attacks, it's a two-pronged assault, the first wave of terror providing the means for a devastating explosion during the rescue efforts. For four FBI investigators it becomes a personal duty to investigate the scene and find out what happened and who was responsible. They only have five days. They're under constant surveillance by the local police. Their movements are restricted, their presence resented and the attack zone compromised in the clean-up efforts. The only thing they do have is an Exit Strategy, which has been formulated before their arrival, and things have a way of changing. But it's personal, and they have to find a way, doing an impossible task, in an unfamiliar and hostile area, without leaving a trace because it's not exactly sanctioned by the U.S. government. Yeah, good luck with that.

The Kingdom is directed by Peter Berg, whose previous film was Friday Night Lights, a film I greatly admire. Berg shepherded that film over to a fascinating series on NBC, and unlike his previous series "Wonderland," has made it all the way to a second season. He started out as an actor-- was the slightly lump-headed first seduction of Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, and he starred for several seasons on "Chicago Hope," where he first started directing. Berg is a genuine find--an intelligent director who communicates everything-- gives you all you need to know, keeps things logistically decipherable, and lenses with an oblique eye that takes everything in but doesn't beat you over the head with it. An action-director who gives his audience credit for intelligence and propels the film along, trusting that the audience will keep up.

Berg has a flashy cast for "CSI: Rhiyadh" (scripter Matthew Carnehan describes it as "Imagine a murder investigation on Mars") in Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman (as well as Danny Huston, Frances Fisher, and Jeremy Piven--who basically plays his "Entourage" character working for the State department). Everyone's performance is tamped down, but the fact is they're all stars--well, Bateman is there for comedy relief--and unlike the cast of "Friday Night Lights," they stand out like sore thumbs, which actually serves the film well. But the stand-out performance is by Ashraf Barhom, whose Col. Faris Al Ghazi takes his job of providing protection for the team so seriously that he hampers their efforts at every turn. And given that his job is to stand in for the entire Arab world (almost every other local is a bit of a cypher), he carries off the role with a subtlety that doesn't betray the heavy lifting.

Berg has stated that he didn't want to make a "message" film, saying that the ratio for a film to make a point and make an audience is "98% action, and 2% message." That may be overstating the case, as there's a lot more message in the film hidden between the frames. But...though the film does put a face to the Arab world, though it does reflect the heavy-handed presence of America there, though it may bring into sharp focus the folly of having a formalized military presence in a guerilla situation and the dangers that that presence can provide in escalating the conflict--though it may say all these things that point to the folly of invading Iraq, that 98% action still has the effect of having the audience jingo-cheer on the Americans (even with Arab back-up) in a fire-fight in a hotel building. You have to have your message and the action that belies it. That's troubling. But while one contemplates that, the film moves on and delivers a spoken coda that says that, really, we're all not so different after all.

Boo-yah.

"The Kingdom" is a cheap Matinee

The Brightest Noir or the Anti-Life Equation

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955) Kiss Me Deadly might be the greatest film noir film of all time.  You know the genre—"When the streets are dark with something more than night"—implying that the lack of light goes far beyond foot-candles and is radiated by a void in the soul...or the permeating Evil in the World.  Oh, there'd always been detective movies—but, they were usually played in a cocktail party environment, gussied up and prettified for the ladies...and there always had to be a pet.  But, in the late 30's, with Hitler bringing real evil to our headlines and minds, that world changed, became darker, the booze cheaper, and the dames less dependable.  After the war, we'd lost our innocence enough that the tarnished golden age of noir happened, its authors became legit, movie deals followed, and the resulting rougher, because we could take it.  Combined with what Hollywood saw coming out of the European neo-realist movement, things got grittier, less polished and the gangsters came out of the dark cracks of the wood-work to walk amongst us and make the lives of decent folk miserable, while in the mind's eye loomed the existence of mushroom clouds that could turn all of us, any of us, into ash and dust.  By the time the 50's sneaked up on us, promising a better life (if we followed the rules), paranoia walked the streets, the board-rooms and halls of government, setting the stage for Robert Aldrich's über-noir. 

Mickey Spillane, author of "Kiss Me Deadly" in all its popular crudeness, didn't like the film version.  It slapped his book around for its tough-guy attitude that puffed up its chest in the face of truly nihilistic forces that could wipe the sneer off its mug and dared to question the sexist-macho attitude of its protagonist.  The script is by one of the better novelist-scriptwriter vagabonds, A.I. Bezzerides (whose novels were turned into the films They Drive By Night and Thieves' Highway).  "I was having fun!" Bezzerides said of his adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly, and, indeed, it is a lot of fun in a savage, even cruel way, that has no truck with the merits of its source-book, and boils it down into a Maltese Falcon-ish quest of thugs for a "great whats-it," that, as is ultimately revealed is not riches, but power—at the time the most dangerous form of power extant.

Our savior—the point-man walking down these mean streets—is a private dick in all senses of the term, the not-subtly named Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), the bluntest of instruments, and where that other tool of the trade, Sam Spade, beat up bad-guys and gunsels, Hammer makes no character distinctions, he's as indiscriminate as a force of Nature, turning people, places and prized possessions into disaster areas so he can sort through the rubble.

The caper doesn't start very subtley—it doesn't come to him, knocking politely on the door of his offices—he nearly runs it over on the highway.  A damsel in distress (Cloris Leachman—yes, her—in her film debut) is running down the street in a panic and only a trench-coat.  She might have escaped from a mental institution, but Hammer, at her request, tries to take her to the nearest bus stop.  

"Get me to that bus stop and forget you ever saw me. If we don't make that bus stop…"  "We will," says Hammer dismissively, confidently.  "If we don’t," she pointedly says, "Remember me."

They never make it. 

Details aside, Hammer wakes up in a hospital bed, remembering—the girl is dead, tortured, and he has two motivations: revenge and to find the people who tried to kill him and succeeded with her.  Hammer strikes out, becoming the bull with Los Angeles as his personal china shop, getting closer to the responsible parties but not many answers.  A detective without a clue, things usually have to be spelled out for him with a constant litany of "you just don't get it, do you's."  His informants and victims dance around the answers, talking circumspectly, while Hammer just scowls, wondering if there's a way to beat the answers out of them.

It's the way things have to be, because almost everyone is corrupt, no matter what their position of the intelligence scale, and that includes the guy behind the whole operation, Dr. G.E. Soberin (Albert Dekker), the type of character Sydney Greenstreet might play in earlier mysteries: brilliant, erudite, but not smart enough to be brought down by baser instincts than his own.  And, once he's gone, any hope of containing the evil about to be unleashed goes with him.

The opening of "The Great 'Whats-it:" a "Pandora's Box" that would "inspire"
filmmakers Alex Cox, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino.

There are two endings to the film: in the first, Hammer and his sexy secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) manage to escape from the traditionally burning building (burning quite nontraditionally) and seek refuge in the surf.  But, somewhere along the way, the film was streamlined, so their fate is undecided and, indeed, the film screams "The End" in the middle of a growing apocalyptic nuclear conflagration.  Does it ever end, or does Los Angeles go up with it, the match being struck the sociopath who sold her soul for power.

It's the ending I first saw when I encountered the film and it's the ending I prefer: Kiss Me Deadly presents a world so far done the jungle path that even a thug like Mike Hammer can be considered a hero.  Man has de-evolved so far but still managed to harness the power of God, that the inevitable happens.  The film asks nihilistically, given how bad the world is, why not let the whole rotten system crash (sound familiar?).  The quest for power has gone nuclear.  Let 'em get what they deserve. 

Given the view of the film Kiss Me Deadly, if the world is so corrupt, maybe the justice should be dealt in an uncontained fusion, where the shadows are permanently burned into the landscape.  And so the world ends—not with a bang, but a high keening shriek, echoing the many screams that have occurred throughout the film.

Even in the glare of nuclear light, you can't get more dark than that.

Kaboom

"What Kind of Guy Are You?"
or
"Madeleine O'Hara, What Do You Know About the Animal-Mask Men?"

I was trying to concoct some bogus review for a non-existent movie to play as an April Fool's Prank, but Gregg Araki's Kaboom will do just as well.

A farcical paranoid comedy/sex-romp,* it revolves around two 18 year old college students, Smith (Thomas Dekker) and his "partner-in-crime," "'vag-itarian' best friend" Stella (Haley Bennett), who are both experiencing odd disruptions in their sex-lives.  Smith is "undeclared" sexually, attracted to all sexes, but right now, specifically, to his meat-head surfer roommate Thor ("Like the comic ... shyeah!"), and Stella is gay (even if her attitude is anything but).  Both are majoring in go-nowhere subjects (she in Art and he in Cinema Studies), which is alright as a) Stella wryly (as per usual) says "college is just a pit-stop between High School and the rest of your life," and b) what they're learning outside of class is far more relevant, if not entirely explainable. 

At one particular mixer, Stella hooks up with Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida) who claims to have "special powers"—she's a witch and not a nice one (of course, witches can become clingy and domineering, they're witches!)—while Smith falls victim to a hallucinogenic appetizer and a one night stand with London (Juno Temple)—they have a lot in common, such as both losing their fathers early, being fascinated with each other, and being amateur sleuths to all the odd occurrences happening on campus.**  "Strange seems to be the new normal," says Smith, as he copes with flashes of dreams involving people he hasn't met (yet), and the suspicion that while in his drugged state he was witness to a brutal cult-murder.  Smith has a hard time deciding whether he's in reality or fantasy-mode, something that will stand him in good stead for the adventure to come.

Kaboom is fast, cheap, and out-of-control (but good-naturedly so), fairly well-acted (which is surprising, although "slacker" isn't the toughest acting challenge to pull off), the comedy is fresh, funny, nicely played in a Buster Keaton-ish dead-pan and comes from very unexpected places.  Araki's direction, meanwhile, whirls around and gets in the faces of his "'Friends' with benefits," wheeling between blinking-in-your face close-ups, and disorienting fever-dreams.  Every few minutes there's a flash of weirdness that has nothing to do with sex--which is all very casual, as opposed to more hung-up directors who like to set it up, telegraph it, and underline it with high-lighter.***

It almost feels like a bizzarro "Scooby-Doo" episode, with no dog and where everybody has the convoluted "friends share" sexual history of Fleetwood Mac.  Even the last movie-ending scene has a whiff of "if it wasn't for those darny nosey kids" to it.

Not everbody's recipe for a fresh time at the movies, but a good, goofy, twisted diversion.

Kaboom is a Rental.

* One place calls it "Sci-Fi," but I don't see it.  It's much more in the "innocent caught in the intrigue" sub-category of Mystery-Thrillers.

** What can I say, it's set at a California college, all sci-fi architecture of open-air teutonic concrete.  Great place for a mystery.

** All the better to make their own chapters on the DVD menu...anyway, Araki makes no big deal of it.  Sex happens.  And in California, so do cult-murders.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010) Searingly sordid film noir that only reinforces what film noir truly is, rather than merely high-contrast photography and light bleeding through venetian blinds.  Film noir is evil breaking the rules of polite society...any rules... and The Killer Inside Me goes beyond it to even breaking the rules of film noir—nothing is sacred, not even that all-consuming reson d'etre that makes up the twisted spine of plots and double-crosses of film noir—love in the wolf's clothing as lust.  True merciless Sociopathy—the psychopathic disregard of everything—knows no boundaries, has no sweethearts, and at the end, may have no reason at the heart of it. 

Because there is no heart.

Deputy Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is assigned a bull-shit job in the department: the scion of a big construction contractor is seeing a prostitute on the edge of town, and Daddy wants her gone.  Lou should pay her a visit, be polite, but suggest that her presence is not appreciated and she should look to relocating her cottage-industry.  Doesn't go that way, though.  When Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) opens the door, sparks fly.  And they're not good sparks.  He's attracted to her but he's got a job to do.  She's attracted to him but she's got a job to do.  He insists.  She deflects.  Then she starts throwing punches.

It's love at first fight.  And before the story ends, Ford will follow a twisted path to revenge with maximum collateral damage, culminating in the type of eruptive fulmination that has precedence in such noir films as White Heat and Kiss Me Deadly.  It's not the "safe" bad manners of the vast majority of noir films but treads along the (hopefully) abandoned railroad tracks at the edge of the worst of human behavior and, without a thought, crosses over—the type of evil that noir wanna-bes like Frank Miller's Sin City only aspire to, but can only reach by rathcheting up the carnage.  Body counts don't count, not if you want to reach the tortured, torturing depths of a writer like Jim Thompson, the author of "The Killer Inside Me."

Thompson was a pulp-writer who used a typewriter as a blunt instrument, and his style so direct that Stanley Kubrick regularly hired him in his early directing career (working on The Killing and Paths of Glory), probably for that quality that Stephen King describes: "Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."  Such naked lack of self-censorship is at the nuclear core of Thompson's writing—a brave, maybe fool-hardy ability to go there.

So, The Killer Inside Me, with killer instincts towards thoughtless violence (against men...and—especially—women, who, traditionally in noirs, are dispatched with a single, sanitarily unseen gun-shot) will not be everyone's cup of razor blades.*  It's shocking, unholy, and (hopefully) repulsive to the viewer.  But, it plumbs the depths of the abyss to see just how black noir can be. 




* I spent the end of last year waiting for it to make it to theaters.  Never did.  Instead, I first encountered it on the shelf at Blockbuster.  The film is just too rough and dark to make a profit in a theater-run.

Knight and Day

"Planes, Trains and Automobiles on Cruise-Control"
or
"Every Man His 007 (And Every Woman, Too)"

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is going through a life-transition and doesn't even know it.  She's getting on a plane to Boston to be a brides-maid (never a bride) at her little sister's wedding, and letting go of the past by putting the finishing touches on her father's dream-project, restoring a pre-70's GTO, and giving it to her sister as a wedding present.


But, she's keeps running into this "guy," literally—the last time at the airport before she boards her plane, and finds that...sorry, the flight is full-up.  The "guy," Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) enigmatically says, "Some times things happen for a reason" and boards the plane.

Truer words.  Before you can say "Non-res" she's on the plane and chatting up Miller, who's personable, quiet, and (when she's not looking) scoping out the plane.  It's the first instance of her not registering what's happening to her, but it won't be the last.  Don't be too hard on her.  She's a "newbie" at counter-espionage.

It starts tracking like a Hitchcock film—the "innocent" caught up in the intrigue—but it ends up morphing into Hitchcock's bastard love-child, the James Bond series.  Cruise has always wanted to play Bond (incorrigibly American and too short, despite Daniel Craig's height issues—and some of the sets are low-ceilinged to disguise Cruise's short stature), hence the "Mission: Impossible" series that turned a team-effort into a one-man show.  But, this is as close as he'll come, and he and the film do well by it, with the typical derring-do, a lot of homages to Bonds of the past, and doing one thing that the Bond's have never done:  this is a "Bond" film for women.

With all the variations on the theme the Bond producers have explored over the years, there's one thing they haven't done: looked at the adventure from the woman's perspective.  As Kim Basinger said about "Never Say Never Again," her part didn't amount to much because "it's all about Bond, anyway."  Deft analysis.  It is always from Bond's perspective, and the women dragged into the scenarios, with or against their wills, are just chaff blown about in the fire-storm (or the "Thunderball"), accoutrements like his cuff-links and his wristwatch, though usually less functional.  Bond walks into their world, blows it up, and the best they can do is end up in the boat with him, ahead of the shock-wave.  Even the most important and dynamic of the Bond-girls, Natalya Simonova from "Goldeneye"—she's the one who saves the world at the end—is along for the ride in all of the instantly disposable vehicles.  Appropriate, as they're instantly disposable, too, the inevitable break-up happening between films never to be seen again in the series.  Even the original books' author, Ian Fleming, tinkered with the idea, making "The Spy Who Loved Me," entirely from "the girl's" perspective.

And that's what this is, too.  We're focussed more on June and her "learning the ropes," frequently knocked out and dragged from one exotic location to another, by good guys and bad guys alike, a pawn in this battle of knights, Alice in "Thunderland." 

The great thing about "Knight and Day" is that it doesn't have the "Bond cache" where he's always in charge, and stretches the formula to resolve a lot of the women's issues about control and taking charge in a satisfying, and complete, manner.

Of course, the "big" issue with a Tom Cruise movie is...how is Cruise?  He's always been the eager-beaver, and sometimes (as we'll show in this Sunday's "Don't Make a Scene"), most times, in an effort to fill the void of the camera-frame, he'll take things so far as to be ludicrously over-the-top, practically mugging in an effort to create a character that registers.  He's learning.  He's antic and funny in this, especially in the action scenes ("Alright, nobody move, or I shoot myself, and then the girl!"), sure, and sometimes frustratingly practical when the bullets are flying ("promiscuously" as they say in "The Wind and The Lion") at him on the roof of car.  But, in the quieter moments, he's relaxed and subtle, and emitting a mega-wattage star-power—somewhat less than Cary Grant, but certainly in the Christopher Reeve/Pierce Brosnan range, where he knows less is more.  The camera loves him, and he accepts that love, without having to push it.  He's GOOD in this, and Diaz, as ditzy as she can be, manages to make her "every-girl" sympathetic and identifiable.

This is the Bond movie that the wife/girl-friend won't sit in frustration during, as it's been nicely laser-etched with a "chick flick" by James Mangold, (and a bevy of screen-writers, starting with Patrick O'Neill and also passing though the PC of the great Scott Frank) with a cast rounded out by good actors like Paul Dano, Peter Saarsgaard, and Oscar nominee Viola Davis (Good to see HER again!).  "Knight and Day," you are the one.

"Knight and Day" is a Matinee.

King Solomon's Mines (1950)

"King Solomon's Mines" (Compton Bennett and Andrew Morton, 1950) The classic H. Rider Haggard novel, the first in the adventures of Allan Quatermain* has been filmed several times,** but this one is the best known, earning several Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and inspiring all sorts of African set adventures throughout the '50's.

This version boasts dazzling Technicolor cinematography as well as a vast array of wild-life photography including an impressive stampede of zebras, gazelles, even giraffes that threaten to trample the explorers mid-way through their travels to find the husband of Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) who has been lost in unexplored Africa (unexplored by whites, that is). It also featured Stewart Granger (he was known as James Stewart in Britain, but changed it so as not to be confused with the American actor) as Quatermain, who's a bit of a stiff, but still manages to be a commanding presence, as he's always the "smartest guy on the veldt."

But, for all the talk of the mines, there is very little time spent in them, as it is used (as in the book) as a trap to contain the colonialists while royal political struggles are going on outside. Where in the novel the Brits are trapped for days, they almost escape immediately in the film (some trap—but a lot of time-compression goes on in the film as a daunting trek seems to take no time at all, with not much wear on the explorers—nobody so much as rips a shirt).

Another worrisome aspect is the sense of a time; there is none. Despite the presence of pith helmets and stabs at period dress, there is no indication that the film is going on in the 19th rather than the 20th century. In fact, Haggard's novel and Quatermain's character are a bit more advanced than the film is willing to go, taking out any references to an interracial romance in the party and Quatermain's expression, though condescending, of admiration for some natives over Europeans. ***

This one is for the exotic locales and for the testy romance that occurs between Curtis and Quatermain (Curtis is a man looking for his brother in Haggard's novel and needless to say there isn't any romance!). But it would be interesting to revisit the story, make it truer to the source—and that includes not making it an "Indiana Jones" ride as in the 1985 film. I'd also like to see a film of Haggard's combining of his two great creations, "She and Allan." One would hope that they'd be better than this.


* That's how you spell it, though not necessarily how you pronounce it. Among other egregious liberties taken with the character, the film adaptation of Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" featured the character (played by Sean Connery) and a mis-spelling of his name as "Quartermain."

** Including the heinous two-part version done for laughs by the Golan-Globus studios that featured Richard Chamberlain as an Indiana Jones re-write of the character, and Sharon Stone moments before she would become a star.

*** One other good thing about it (as revealed in an IMDB thread written by a native Kenyan) is that the languages are accuracte swahili and kikuyu—spoken well by Granger—and that members of the indigenous tribes were used for the African parts.

Knowing

"Knowing" (Alex Proyas, 2009) The director's last film was the "in-name-only" bastardization of Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot," with its rule-breaking chrome figure-models that couldn't take apart a car convincingly. The movie benefited from Proyas' dark imagery and sense of imagination, but in the end it was another sci-fi film that finished with a fist-fight among the art direction. How....uh, "retro." The best thing about it was it gives somebody another chance to do Asimov right.

One walks in to "Knowing," with the same kind of dread—another apocalypse movie, oh joy—only to come away impressed. More than that, you come away thinking thoughts that maybe Proyas knows science fiction better than most film-makers today, because "Knowing" does what really good science fiction does—show us an aspect of "now" that we don't consider and "us" that we finally recognize.

Forget the details, it's all hooey. They're just levels of Hell in Proyas' "Inferno," a means for John Koestler, college professor (Nicolas Cage) to drop the "Doubting Thomas" act, and "find religion." He's a man of science, after all, and doesn't believe in pre-determination...unless, of course, he unlocks, scientifically, the battle plan himself. Then, he believes, Lawd A'mighty.

But, once he reaches his cross-roads (and Proyas points it out with all the subtlety of a pick-up truck) that's when the certainty arrives and the movie reveals itself to be something different: a metaphor for Death.

And that's where the title comes in: we go through out lives sure of our mortality, and aware of the clock ticking in our chest, but we ignore it—we don't face it. It's pencilled into the Day-Planner like that trip to France, but we never firm it up, we just delay it a day at a time. Some day, not today. Manana. There's no "drop-dead" deadline.

Until there is. And then, you have to face it and walk the Kubler-Ross steps, knowing (knowing) time's a-wastin.' And the priorities and everyday details knock over like those endless arrangements of dominoes, revealing what needs to be done right here, right now. You can rant, you can rave, you can find God (Hint: He's always the last place you look), you can put your affairs in order, have your last meal and cigarette and say your good-byes at the door. That's just all delaying the inevitable.

But the first thing is, it's all out of your hands.

This isn't about "you." It's about what "you" leave.

And that's what knowing (and "knowledge" is what the word "science" means) and "Knowing" is all about.

There's a reason Roger Ebert was the one critic in the country who didn't just dismiss this movie. He's been to the cross-roads. He's on the other side, waving and smiling at us.

And laughing.

That's the thing about smarter people. They're so "elitist."

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda (Osborne and Stevenson, 2008)

Yes, it is another vehicle for Jack Black to play the hapless hero who blunders his way to success in as crass a way as possible in a plot line that has been recycled more times than the air in a Boeing 747 but leave that all aside, for King Fu Panda is a visual feast that will have you rolling in the aisles like a drunken flight attendant. The opening credits are enough of a treat in themselves but the movie is well done enough to make you laugh out loud and to suffer through the oh so obvious story arc which is delivered pretty much with tongue firmly lodged in cheek anyway.

For me, it is the best Dreamworks Animation movie since Shrek*.

The voice talents include:

Dustin Hoffman
Angelina Jolie
Jackie Chan
David Cross
Ian McShane
Seth Rogen
Lucy Liu
Randall Duk Kim
James Hong

Kung Fu Panda is a eye-pleasing, side-splitting full price ticket.

*Like Shrek, it has its share of parodies, references and gags aimed at the parents in the audience.

Kinsey

"Kinsey" (Bill Condon, 2004) Bill Condon's film of the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, whose scientific study of sexuality in America was the literary equivalent of playing "Doctor" in the '50's ("I'll read yours, if you'll read mine") is a cogent little gloss of the subject which still manages to tell an intriguing and controversial story, while addressing something Kinsey and his researches never did--that of morality, and "feelings." Treating sex as a clinical study wasn't so easy a proposition, as Kinsey, his wife, co-workers and the Rockefeller Foundation that funded him, found out. Condon films the movie in a series of boxes--safe little containers to hold the forbidden fruit. It's when Kinsey is outdoors that he feels the most free. Put him in a rotunda, he's in trouble. What started out as a cold and clinical study by his group soon affects the lives of his researchers, and, when the results are published, the rest of the country. Condon (who wrote the screenplay) starts the movie as a training exercise, grilling his survey-takers (Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton and Chris O'Donnell--great cast, with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, playing Kinsey and wife, being very fine) on their approach, their manner, and their reactions to answers as a test subject--neatly introducing the back-story. There's one box that Kinsey won't consider--Pandora's--and he and his staff are only too willing to dive into it--experimentally, of course, in the name of Science--only to find the damage that it can cause. The libido and the psyche are two compoletely different things, and the film almost makes a case for restraint in sexual matters, for all the damage it can do. An interesting consideration, that. One wonders how amused Kinsey would be by the irony.

The other thing that's interesting is that when writing a review of the film, there's no way that you can write it without filling it with unintended double entendres (said the Actress to the Bishop).

The Kingdom

Cries and Whispers

On the American military compound in Rhiyadh, two terrorists command a security vehicle and open up machine gun fire on a family softball game leaving carnage before they are killed. But like the WTC attacks, it's a two-pronged assault, the first wave of terror providing the means for a devastating explosion during the rescue efforts. For four FBI investigators it becomes a personal duty to investigate the scene and find out what happened and who was responsible. They only have five days. They're under constant surveillance by the local police. Their movements are restricted, their presence resented and the attack zone compromised in the clean-up efforts. The only thing they do have is an Exit Strategy, which has been formulated before their arrival, and things have a way of changing. But it's personal, and they have to find a way, doing an impossible task, in an unfamiliar and hostile area, without leaving a trace because it's not exactly sanctioned by the U.S. government. Yeah, good luck with that.

"The Kingdom" is directed by Peter Berg, whose previous film was "Friday Night Lights," a film I greatly admire. Berg shepherded that film over to a fascinating series on NBC, and unlike his previous series "Wonderland," has made it all the way to a second season. He started out as an actor-- was the slightly lump-headed first seduction of Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction," and he starred for several seasons on "Chicago Hope," where he first started directing. Berg is a genuine find--an intelligent director who communicates everything-- gives you all you need to know, keeps things logistically decipherable, and lenses with an oblique eye that takes everything in but doesn't beat you over the head with it. An action-director who gives his audience credit for intelligence and propels the film along, trusting that the audience will keep up.

Berg has a flashy cast for "CSI: Rhiyadh" (scripter Matthew Carnehan describes it as "Imagine a murder investigation on Mars") in Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman (as well as Danny Huston, Frances Fisher, and Jeremy Piven--who basically plays his "Entourage" character working for the State department). Everyone's performance is tamped down, but the fact is they're all stars--well, Bateman is there for comedy relief--and unlike the cast of "Friday Night Lights," they stand out like sore thumbs, which actually serves the film well. But the stand-out performance is by Ashraf Barhom, whose Col. Faris Al Ghazi takes his job of providing protection for the team so seriously that he hampers their efforts at every turn. And given that his job is to stand in for the entire Arab world (almost every other local is a bit of a cypher), he carries off the role with a subtlety that doesn't betray the heavy lifting.

Berg has stated that he didn't want to make a "message" film, saying that the ratio for a film to make a point and make an audience is "98% action, and 2% message." That may be overstating the case, as there's a lot more message in the film hidden between the frames. But...though the film does put a face to the Arab world, though it does reflect the heavy-handed presence of America there, though it may bring into sharp focus the folly of having a formalized military presence in a guerilla situation and the dangers that that presence can provide in escalating the conflict--though it may say all these things that point to the folly of invading Iraq, that 98% action still has the effect of having the audience jingo-cheer on the Americans (even with Arab back-up) in a fire-fight in a hotel building. You have to have your message and the action that belies it. That's troubling. But while one contemplates that, the film moves on and delivers a spoken coda that says that, really, we're all not so different after all.

Boo-yah.

"The Kingdom" is a cheap matinee