Once upon a time - 2005 to be a bit more accurate - filmmaker (and self-proclaimed sexual liberator) Jean-Claude Brisseau was arrested and tried for sexually harassing a pair of young actresses who had been persuaded to masturbate while auditioning for parts in his film Secret Things. Cut to barely a year and a half later, and Brisseau has made The Exterminating Angels a film about a director who persuades several young actresses to masturbate for him during auditions for a film. Later he is arrested for harassment of these same said actresses. Call it Brisseau's answer to Catherine Breillat's Sex For Comedy if you will, but it would not be a fair comparison at all. While Breillat's films show eroticism as something much more than skin deep, no matter how hard he tries, Brisseau just cannot.

Perhaps Brisseau's audacity at filming this very subject this closely after his trial (and eventual - and probably rightly so - slap on the proverbial wrist) makes one see this film for more than it really is. After all, it is nothing more than a lurid male-fed lesbian fantasy (Skinamax for the intellectual set if you will) with arbitrary sconces of European art cinema tossed in between all the rubbing and licking and more rubbing. Now don't get me wrong, I, being a red-blooded American boy, certainly have no qualms over girl-on-girl action (let the labias fly I say) but the way Brisseau has structured his film - or not structured it - makes even the cheapest of erotic cinema seem, dare I say, dull. Leave it to the French to intellectualize sex so much that it becomes boring.

In the end though, no matter how Lynchian in both its misogynistic overshadows and its extra-terrestial feel (the buzzing of otherwordly chatter, the recurring ghosts and demons and what have you) or Breillatian in its depiction of unbothered sexual libidinality (albeit it in a much less mature, and much more masculine way ala Maxim takes over at Ms. Magazine), or even hinting at surrealism with its very title (Buñuel too would be bored here), Brisseau pushes his movie along at such a hurried pace as to make us believe he may actually harbour some sort of secret embarrassment at his subject matter - or perhaps even at himself. [06/12/07]

Saying a sequel is better than the original may seem like a compliment at first, but when the original is one of the lamest films of the past five years, and its sequel is no more than mildly better in the first place, well then, compliment gone. This is the (inevitable?) fate of the second in the inexplicably semi-successful Fantastic Four franchise, this time with the ominous subtitle, Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Of course for any fan of Marvel Comics, the even slightest mention of the Silver Surfer brings with it shudders of giddy anticipatory deeeee-light and a whole new rosy outlook on the franchise that pretty much brutally raped and sodomized the beloved flagship title of the Marvel Universe a few years back with the first Tim Story-helmed movie massacre. That giddiness surely goes away once we first catch a glimpse of this hood ornament-looking half-CGI-baked Jar Jar Binks motherfucker astride his silver-dewed surfboard.

Sure, the film may have its (almost too embarrassing to mention) moments of silly frivolity, but with the help of a ridiculous script, hackneyed direction, mediocre acting, the still unbelievably bad casting of beach blanket bimbo Jessica Alba as the strong-shouldered Susan Storm-Richards, product placement that is so gaudy even Steven Spielberg would blush (although I must admit to really wanting to have one of those Dodge Fantasticars) and the aforementioned hood ornament let down of the titular Surfer - not to mention the lamest climactic super-baddy battle since Darth Maul went down in the first round - the second in a (sure-to-be) series of Fantastic Four movies is anything but fantastic. [06/22/07]

One thinks, when first deciding to see Gone Baby Gone (and as a critic that decision was preordained for yours truly here) that they are certainly in for the treat of a lifetime. I mean, Ben Affleck directs! Wow!! First the pleasure of watching him in Gigli and now this!!! Okay, so my sarcasm isn't all that subtle tonight, so sue me. Actually if you are going to sue me (for my vast fortune?) then it should be for this: I actually enjoyed this movie. Seriously, I did (until the end).

Affleck, with his feature debut and in his second attempt at a screenplay (the first won him and Matt Damon an Oscar, but we all know that was probably about 93% Damon, 6% Affleck and 1% more Damon) has pieced together an interesting bit of neo-noir. Starring Ben's little brother Casey (the true talent running in that family) as a runtish private dick with a surprisngly hard nose, a thick Boston accent and the requisite hot assistant/girlfriend in Michelle Monaghan, Gone Baby Gone is the story of a missing little girl, her deadbeat drug addict mother (played with the aplomb of a motherfucking mack truck in overdrive by inevitable Oscar nominee Amy Ryan [ed. note: I was right]) and the one person deadset on finding the little girl and bringing her back to a mother that probably isn't going to love her anyway. We also get the appearances of Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, two very talented actors who are no longer ever used to their full capacity, in a pair of roles they should be so achingly familiar with by now as to be able to phone them in.

Replete with a slew of twists and turns - as any good noir should be - and all the suitable Philip Marlowe-esque screentalk to make Affleck (Casey) seem all the more credible (though his acting chops do that in spades), Gone Baby Gone motors along at just the right speed - not so slow as to cause a traffic jam yet not so fast as to seem reckless - until one of the most ridiculous endings to come out of a movie in recent memory. I realize the moral aspects and ethical conundrumming of what this ending elicits and I get why Affleck (Ben) put it in (I was just joking when I poked fun at Affleck's filmic attributes earlier - at least partly) but it is done in such a hackneyed manner as to make it almost an embarrassment to the rest of this otherwise fine film noir. [10/27/07]

Azazel Jacobs could very well be called heir to the Ken Jacobs throne of avant-garde cinema - though with the exception of a small gaggle of dedicated cinephiles who hang out regularly at New York's Anthology Archives, and possibly a handful of critics as well, it may be rather too Lilliputian a kingdom to even worry about - but here I am anyway, praising the forthright crowning of a new, possibly clown, prince of counter-culture cinema.

A royal chip of the ole block perhaps, but in actuality, the Jacobs fils is less like pop than more. Shying away from the experimental, this piper's son goes instead for the hip, somewhat grungy, indie look and feel for his debut feature about a slacker who is emotionally awakened by a carefree, Max Fleischer-esque heroine. Now with having never been all that enamored with the slacker generation American indie scene (all thos Linklater wannabes) it came as quite a shock when I realized how much I was enjoying this film. With the sub pop integrity of the sire Jacobs and his ilk, Azazel has managed to infuse early Nouvelle Vague aesthetic - complete with seemingly impromptu and equally amateurish dance number - into his film, creating something unusual even by his father's standards. Bravo indeed. [03/03/07]

At once ridiculous and queerly engaging. Verging on both the ludicrous and the oddly sublime. By all accounts, The Hawk is Dying should not be a very good film, and I suppose by all accounts, it really is not, yet there I was, leaving the Cinema Village with the oddest taste in my mouth - and I don't mean stale popcorn. Quite the unique oddity - sort of an art film-cum-perverse melodrama - this little film (which will surely come and go without much of a trace left behind) definately struck interest where really no interest should have been struck.

A rather mundane story, told in a rather mundane manner, with strange-for-strange-sake tossed into the mix with hope of elevating a nowhere-going story. You see, Paul Giamatti is a nebbishy schlub (I know, quite the stretch indeed) who lives with his fat bi-polar seeming sister and her autistic man-child son and he splits his spare time between trying to domesticate wild hawks and fucking a part-time prostitute part-time psych major played with about as much fervor as this film can handle by Michelle Williams. All-in-all, not very well written, although a genuine genius idea may be hidden in there somewhere, one must believe it is the acting of both the lovable loser Giamatti and the always-ou-of-their-league Williams as his psychospiritual protector. I suppose first impressions should be left at the door, yet I still cannot rightly explain why I liked this film as much as I did. [04/27/07]

One might think that the grey areas of a monster movie - those which allow for actual character developement and a real story beyond "aahhhs!" and "ooohs!" and "what the fuck was that!?" - are nothing more than a pipe dream of cineastes across the globe. One might think the only redeeming factor of a monster movie is the pure unadulterated thrillride one gets whilst in the midst of said monster movie. One of course is absolutely correct. It is the thrillride which gets your heart pounding and it is the near-ludicrousness of the whole adventure that gets your spine jingling and it is the boom-boom-booming of the surround sound Dolby stereo that deafens your senses into a cinematic oblivion.

Of course, aside from any of these purely sensory emotions, what The Host gives us more than anything else is an allegory for American stupidity and averice, which is clearly defined in the prelude as an American General orders a Korean lackey to upend a shitload of poison into the Han river only to see it create some sort of giant-sized slimeball-cum-leviathon years later and it is pounded even further into our brains by the ignorant "who cares, we're the fucking USofA!" attitude of later characters (one of which wants to drill a hole into a man's skull just to find out what terror this creature and his associated "virus" plan to inflict on the world. As clearly defined as the A-bomb-tested Godzilla from years past, Bong Joon-ho's mega monster is no less a fixed comeuppance (and rightly so) against American arrogance and imperialism. Not to mention (though I do) a fun, if not somewhat predictable, roller coaster of popcorn-tossing entertainment. [04/24/07]

As bombastic as Bay. As big-headed as Bruckheimer. As bullshit as it wants to be. Edgar Wright, who found fame by spoofing the nearly spoof-unto-itself zombie flick genre in the amusingly delectible Shaun of the Dead, now finds a bit more fame (at least one assumes at the outset) by spoofing yet another spoof-unto-itself kind of movie. This time Wright, along with best buds (and Shaun co-stars) Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, takes on the high action buddy cop genre that has become the loudest damned thing out there with the likes of Bruckheimer and Bay blowing up just about anything that moves, stands still, lies down or takes a piss. And this time, as was certainly the case with Shaun, the result is almost as funny as the very thing they are spoofing.

The story of a London cop (Pegg) who goes so far above and beyond the call that his squad mates want him ousted for making them look bad in turn, so off to a small peaceful little hamlet where the biggest crime to solve is finding a runaway swan, and our intrepid hero is teamed up with the buffoonish bumbling son of the police chief played by Frost. Of course peace is not all this town is cracked up to be and soon our buddies come up against evildoers galore - like the whole freakin' town. Full of take-offs on everything from Bad Boys II to The Wicker Man to Point Blank to the Lethal Weapon series - even Moulin Rouge gets a quick riff - Hot Fuzz perhaps is no more or less funny than the films it spoofs, it is still a mad mad mad mad romp of silly gunfights and even sillier explosions - not to mention that damned swan. [04/21/07]

If anyone out there reading this knows anything about me they are probably about to receive a rather large (and possibly very rude) surprise. I actually liked this movie. Silly. Ridiculous. Childish. Low-brow. Pedestrian to the nth frat boy power, but there it is. I liked this film. I admit it dammit. I liked it. Okay, we may not be talking Wellesian proportions, for it is a shallow enjoyment indeed, but Hot Rod, the latest SNL alumni Frat Pack wannabe pratfall comedy-cum-daredevil wannabe story (this time starring feature debuter Andy "Dick in a Box" Samberg in the part originally written for former graduate Will Farrell), even with a less-than-full plate of gags, is downright funny. Especially an inexplicably hilarious dead-on Footloose homage about midway through. Sorry, but it is funny. Well at least it plays at being funny, which is quite an accomplishment indeed considering its pedigree.

It surely will appeal to all those out there who find Jackass-esque stupidity da bomb, and the film is sort of a blend of what was so annoyingly coy about Napoleon Dynamite and Talledega Nights, but somehow it manages to creep out of the muck of post-SNL miscalculation (although technically Samberg has not yet left the show) and become something more than its meagerly written parts. I must again admit to letting my inner fratboy sneak out of his deep dark hiding place and take over my usually critical (read: pretentious and/or snobbish) mind, albeit for only about 98 minutes or so, but perhaps it is the somewhat redeeming factor of Andy Samberg's sweet unobtrusiveness (his digital shorts, made along with Hot Rod director Schaffer, are consistently hilarious) that goes a long way in making this otherwise typically plebian comedy du jour seem to be more than what immediately meets the eye. Cool beans? [08/02/07]