The Top Five Movies of 2008

(This is a reader's choice Top Five...)

5 - Milk

4 - Iron Man

3 - Slumdog Millionaire

2 - Wall-E

1 - The Dark Knight

We have our own thoughts on the best movies of the year, but because we encourage/discourage you from seeing certain films and you're not lemmings, we decided to let your voice be heard, albeit as a collective.

So we took votes for The Top Five Movies of 2008, and probably three of the choices are no real surprise. How did we determine where they'd fall? Simple: For every first place vote, a movie received five points, for every fifth place vote, one point. The Dark Knight won easily, in large part because it received so many solo votes. People would send in e-mails that just said Dark Knight and had no other choices. Otherwise, it was a pretty tight race.

The Top Five Worst Video Game Movies

5 - Double Dragon

4 - Bloodrayne

3 - Alone in the Dark

2 - Wing Commander

1 - Super Mario Bros.

            Robert Patrick, clearly shameless, in Double Dragon

There have been a whole lot of really, really bad video game movies, at least if you're talking percentages. It's still not as big a commodity as comic book movies, but even comic book movies weren't prevalent until they started making good ones on a consistent basis. Seriously, when Tomb Raider is one of your genre's defining moments, you have a lot of work left to do.

But narrowing the worst of the video game movies down to five takes some diligence, probably more than was shown when the films were being made. You can, of course, go the easy route and list a bunch of Uwe Boll movies. We have two, and that gets the point across. One reason these movies are dreadful more often than not is that studios don't use a lot of resources on them. Look at the writers and directors; not a lot of Oscar nominations in that pool.

Double Dragon is a perfect example of those limited resources. For one thing, the movie came out about five years after the popularity of the game, and there's no real story, because the game had no real story, at least not by today's standards. Plus, it has Vanna White as a news anchor. Who would ever believe that?

Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark are our Uwe Boll contributions. He's generally regarded as the world's worst director. Even Brian Robbins and Raja Gosnell roll their eyes at his movies. I think that these two flicks could be better in the hands of someone competent. They probably wouldn't be great, but they'd rise to the level of the second Resident Evil movie, maybe.

I remember seeing Wing Commander and not knowing it was based on a video game. Then when I found out it was a game, I had a hard time rationalizing how it ever became popular enough to get a movie spin-off. Also, Freddie Prinze, Jr. That's all I have to say, isn't it?

But Super Mario Bros. is clearly the worst pick, in my book, and in fact, it's one of the worst movies ever made. Amazingly, the video box actually contains the quote, "Hilarious and exciting...a cross between Indiana Jones, Blade Runner, and Star Wars." I have a hunch that's the studio's handiwork. Either that, or the blurbster responsible has never seen Indiana Jones, Blade Runner, or Star Wars.

There are some elements of the other four films that are at least OK, whether it's the costumes, or a funny scene, or even a cool stunt or two. I'm not asking for much. But Super Mario is a total failure. It was in 1993, and it hasn't improved since. To quote Bob Hoskins, who played Mario Mario: "The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Bros."

Movie Review - 'A Previous Engagement'

A Previous Engagement Starring Juliet Stevenson, Daniel Stern, and Tcheky Karyo Directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin Not Rated

Behold, the power of cheese! There's a reason I've never read a romance novel, and I doubt I have to spell it out for you. But I will anyway. The bottom line is that romances in literature tend to shake the firmament. They're either instant all-timers that you can never walk away from (Nights in Rodanthe), or they're tragedies where love is lost forever (Nights in Rodanthe). They don't deal with reality very well. Movies about star-crossed lovers don't inspire much confidence, either. They don't have any degree of plausibility to them: People meet while walking dogs on the beach and three days later they're madly in love. Doesn't happen. Because that's not what love is. Love can't be that.Now, that's not to say that people can't feel some innate attraction almost immediately and then it develops into love, but movies spare us the developments, which are a hell of a lot more interesting than the beginning and the end, and I can only imagine that books with Fabio grooming horses on the cover might do the same thing.In the face of all this venom aimed at the goldmine of romantic tripe that lures in housewife after housewife, you might understandably ask, "Don't some people take Star Trek too seriously?" Yes, they do. And we laugh at them. A Previous Engagement feels exactly like my perception of romance novels. A woman trapped in a dead-end marriage (Juliet Stevenson) remembers the summer when she fell in love with a revolutionary on the Isle of Malta, naturally. Alex (Tcheky Karyo) was French, of course, and though their love could not exist in their pasts, they both looked forward to a future together. That's right: They vowed to meet again 25 years after the fact. And if there's one thing the lust of a summer infatuation teaches us, it's how unimportant looks are a quarter-century later. Yeah.Beyond the looks, though, there are the changes that happen to everybody. You can't even control those things that change who you are, let alone some French revolutionary you met in Malta back in the dangerous early 1980s.To mask to obnoxious story, writer-director Joan Carr-Wiggin has weighed A Previous Engagement down with page after page of regrettable dialogue. But alas, poor writing can only hide worse writing for so long.Nothing in this movie could ever happen, and if there's not even a starting point for a romantic fantasy, how the hell could you ever dream of the idiotic conclusion? Bad movies are fairly commonplace. A lot of times, they're just misguided or the pieces don't match the idea. In this case, there was no hope from jump. The idea is schmaltzy, the characters derivative and bland, the dialogue unreasonably artificial, and the payoff tired and ineffective.

The Top Five Ridley Scott Movies

5 - Gladiator

4 - Thelma and Louise

3 - Black Hawk Down

2 - Blade Runner

1 - Alien

Thanks to everyone who participated in our most recent Top Five list and let me start by asking a question: Who knew Ridley Scott made so many bad movies? Last week, I announced this list by adding, "Man, what a career" or some such nonsense. Turns out he's been wrong more than he's been right.

Seriously, he's made about 20 movies and well over half of them are not films you would've wanted to direct yourself. We have 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which I may have walked out of, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year, I'll throw Legend on that heap (I know I walked out of that, and I was 13). But when he's on, there's no doubt about it. The top three films on our list were nominated almost unanimously, and I suspect that's because nearly all film fans can agree on two of them.

We didn't get as many Gladiator votes as I would've thought, and more Matchstick Men, though it's tough to knock a Best Picture winner that much (even though Gladiator is a bad Best Picture choice). But Gladiator is an important film for Scott personally, which is why I have it listed here. His career was failing miserably for about a decade when he made the epic action movie, and if not for that film, we probably wouldn't have had Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, American Gangster, or the new Body of Lies. So it's a milestone.

Thelma & Louise probably seems like a trifle, but somehow Scott managed to make it more than the unofficial introduction of Brad Pitt and a double-X chromosome version of Butch & Sundance. The chemistry between Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon is marvelous, and once again, it came along at a good time for Ridley, who was in danger of becoming the Nic Cage of directors in 1991.

Black Hawk Down isn't the best war movie ever and it doesn't have the most action, but it's gripping, features some great performances, and there hasn't been a movie about a recent American war that can really compare to it. It also lets Scott toy with effects and explosions, which he's always been good at.

If you were to make a list of the most underrated movies ever made, Blade Runner would probably be in the top 20. The theatrical version is good but messy; unfortunately, that's the version a lot of people know. Scott's director's cut, released many years later, is flawless. It's a completely new twist on classic film noir, the universe it creates is totally original, and holds up. You can't say that about too many science fiction films from the early 1980s. They teach this one in classrooms for a reason.

So why is Alien at the top of the list? If you think I need to answer that question, you haven't seen Alien. And if that's true, don't you have better things to do? Like watch Alien, perhaps?

The Top Five Jeff Bridges Performances

5 - The Contender

4 - Starman

3 - The Last Picture Show

2 - The Fisher King

1 - The Big Lebowski

I was heartened by the response to our most recent Top Five, because it tells me that people do pay attention to character actors. Jeff Bridges has been the star of many movies, but he's not a "movie star." He isn't John Travolta or Will Smith. But he has been very reliable for going on 40 years now, and I think we've got a pretty representative list, so thanks for remembering The Last Picture Show in your voting.

There were only a couple performances I felt really could've made this list that didn't, Fearless and Tron. But his also-rans are highlights on most other resumes: The Door in the Floor, Wild Bill, Fat City, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Seabiscuit, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Iron Man, Arlington Road, Blown Away, The Vanishing, Jagged Edge, The Morning After, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and The Iceman Cometh.

Our list begins with The Contender, in which he's playing a kind of fictionalized Bill Clinton. Now, he looks more like a Clinton-Bush hybrid. Bridges has always played comedy well, and this is one of the better examples, in a movie that's way too damn serious for its own good.

Starman is probably the least heralded title here, even though it's the only Oscar-nominated performance to ever come from a John Carpenter movie. The truth is, the movie doesn't hold up around his performance very well. It's clearly a one-man show, but in terms of his command performances, it might be fourth on that list.

The Last Picture Show is the role that signaled Bridges' true arrival in Hollywood at the age of 21. All of a sudden, he wasn't just Lloyd Bridges kid, anymore. I like the book more than the movie, but I thought Bridges and Oscar winner Cloris Leachman were quite good in the film, as was Ben Johnson, who beat Bridges for the Best Supporting Actor award that year. 

But how Bridges missed getting a nomination for The Fisher King is beyond me. Robin Williams and Mercedes Reuhl received envelopes for their work, but in a Best Actor field that included Hannibal Lecter, Bugsy Malone, De Niro from Cape Fear, and regrettably, Nick Nolte from The Prince of Tides, there just wasn't enough room for both Bridges and Williams. I think the Academy would switch Fisher King nominees now if they could.

Personally, it's my favorite Bridges performance, though I understand why The Dude tops our list. He also didn't get nominated for Lebowski or Fearless, and you figure one of those should've been in the mix. He has four nominations to date, but he probably deserved at least two more.

Finally, there's The Dude. Why? Because he's The Dude.

For next week, we have a big ol' grab bag of movie passes and DVDs. Here's the way this works, as always. If you're a local - meaning, if you live in or around Phoenix - we'll hook you up with movie passes, either to The Express or to Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie.

As for the DVDs, we've got a bunch of one-offs, so if you're interested, let me know and I'll send you a list after you win.

To get in the running, you just need to help us with next week's Top Five List, which should be as good as this week's: The Top Five Ridley Scott Movies.

Talk about a career. Man, I can think of some hall-of-famers right off the top of my head.

Help us out and win. Shoot us an e-mail with your votes, and please include your mailing address, and you'll have until Thursday night October 9th at 10pm Pacific to get us your lists (Monday night the 6th if you want to see The Express). Please remember to include your mailing address.

The Top Five Spike Lee Joints

5 - 25th Hour

4 - Inside Man

3 - Malcolm X

2 - When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

1 - Do The Right Thing

I believe this is the first time in Top Five history that we've allowed a TV movie into the list. Upon further review, everyone who suggested Lee's Emmy- and Peabody-winning When the Levees Broke is right; that is one of his best films, and it also points to Spike's versatility as a filmmaker.

And because HBO has helped so many great pieces of filmmaking come to television, it's easy to make the case that without HBO, there would be no John Adams or When the Levees Broke at all, so we'll make an exception in this case.

Outside of 25th Hour, the other theatrical releases are well known to almost everyone, if only by reputation. People know Spike Lee directed Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing, even if they've never seen them, and for a director who plays so far out of the mainstream so often, that's a credit to him, as well.

Why do we have them in the order we do? Why isn't Malcolm X on top? I think Do The Right Thing so succinctly introduces what Lee's entire career has been about, and did so in dramatic fashion (and only a miniscule budget), that it's his purest film. It's not as polished as Inside Man, certainly, which is one of the best bank heist movies in a long time, but it's political, vibrant, confrontational, and thought-provoking.

Malcolm X feels like Lee's open letter to Hollywood; it's a big bio-pic, it stars Denzel, and it's "important." It's also a great film, no question. But I think it's ever so slightly compromised by commercialism. And I think if you look at a lot of Spike's films in the 20 years since, you can see he's tried hard the majority of the time to steer clear of conventions (movies like Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, and even Clockers).

There's nothing particularly commercial about 25th Hour, and in a weird sense, it's the best of his two worlds; it courts contemporary issues and concerns in the wake of 9/11, has a less-than-specific narrative, but it does those things with a cast of recognizable faces like Edward Norton and Rosario Dawson.

The Top Five Worst Movies Named After Song Titles

5 - What a Girl Wants

4 - Fools Rush In

3 - Addicted to Love

2 -  Jumpin' Jack Flash

1 - The Sweetest Thing

Once you know about this little theory, it's hard to look at certain movies the same way. It's true, though: If a movie shares its name with a popular song, the chances are it's not very good. There are some exceptions, as there are with everything, but the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence suggests that if you use a popular song title for a movie title, the movie's bad.

Why is that? It probably has more to do with the screenplay sucking out loud and the title being changed so that it has some built-in warm fuzzy with the audience. The rules are different if you're talking Against All Odds because, obviously, the song wasn't a hit before the movie came out. But movies that reach back, even a couple of years, and glom onto something else that's popular have very little chance for success.

Among the other movies that received votes this week were Fly Me to the Moon, Drive Me Crazy, the Reese Witherspoon tandem of Sweet Home Alabama and Just Like Heaven, My Girl, One Fine Day, Simply Irresistible, Can't Buy Me Love and its remake Love Don't Cost a Thing, Problem Child, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (an excellent pick), Save the Last Dance, Love Potion #9, Unforgettable, and Feeling Minnesota, which isn't a song title but rather a lyric from Soundgarden's "Outshined."

Movie Review - 'I Served the King of England'

I Served the King of England

Starring Ivan Barnev and Oldrich Kaiser
Directed by Jiri Menzel
Rated R

If you're a student of history, you've probably read a thing or two about European decadence in the years before World War II. It's presented in I Served the King of England from a dual perspective, both that of a bemused disbelief and of a fond nostalgia. The film takes place over several years in the life of young waiter named Jan Dite, and over several months in the same man's life after he is released from prison in Czechoslovakia many years after the war. "I was given a sentence of 15 years," explains Dite as the film opens. "Due to amnesty, I only served 14 years, 9 months." As this man well into his 50s tries to rebuild himself and his life in a dilapidated shack on the Czech border, he reflects on his youth, about how he wanted nothing more than to be a millionaire, in a time when the wealthiest of men were squandering all they had because they could. The film jumps back and forth between Dite as a waiter and Dite as a man who's waiting. In those scenes prior to the war, Dite (Ivan Barnev) is a Chaplinesque character, full of life and bounding around recklessly from one stroke of good fortune to the next. After he's released from prison, this same man (now played with remarkable restraint and earnestness by Oldrich Kaiser) describes his former life as a novel written by someone else; clearly, it can't be his own story. Czechoslovakia struggled mightily during its 74-year existence, being bound by Nazi rule and then just a few years later by Communist rule, which lasted four over four decades. To see the juxtaposition from a free democracy where nothing appeared to be off limits, especially in excess, with a world where the same people have nothing but their memories is a tough thing to pull off in a movie. Consider, too, that the memories worth keeping are of a time that was barely even real. But director Jiri Menzel has managed to keep these worlds as separate in his film as they must've felt to Czech citizens who managed to live through it all. I Served the King of England (the film gets its name from the boast of one of Dite's superiors while serving as a waiter in a posh hotel) could easily drop the ball, but the two lead performances are each captivating, and the production design, those little stitches we need to see that transport us to a time in the past we've only read about, are flawless. The movie looks great, it sounds great, it's funny, well-acted, and has an equal amount of hope and desperation.

The Top Five De Niro or Pacino Performances

5 - Cape Fear (De Niro)

4 - Serpico (Pacino)

3 - The Godfather Part II (Pacino)

2 - Taxi Driver (De Niro)

1 - Raging Bull (De Niro)

It's no surprise that most of the films in this week's Top Five are from the 1970s (OK, so Raging Bull is 1980, but still). De Niro and Pacino, along with Dustin Hoffman, really helped chart a new course for leading men in the movies during this time, and they influenced a couple of generations of actors that have followed them.

It's also not surprising that their autumn years really aren't in our list, nor did any of their performances after 1995 get any nominations; they simply weren't at the head of the class any longer. It doesn't mean they were worse actors after a certain age, just that the roles they took didn't have as much to offer. However, I thought Pacino was damn good in The Insider, which might be the most underrated movie of the past decade, and he was terrific in Insomnia, as well.

De Niro has not given anything resembling his best work in a decade. Going backwards, Jackie Brown is the last valuable contribution he's given, but after 1997, there's nothing. I don't even think you can make an argument for anything after that when you consider that we left Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, and The Deer Hunter off our list.

This is one of the rare lists that doesn't need much explanation. You might substitute something else for Cape Fear, but I'd ask you to watch Cape Fear again, in that case. Maybe you're not a fan of Serpico and think that should be Scarface. To me, Scarface is the beginning of Pacino's ladled on queso, the affectations that make Frank Caliendo's impression so good. He stopped acting around that time and just amped up the crazy. That's why I prefer Serpico. It's also just a better movie.

Movie Review - 'Netherbeast Incorporated'

Netherbeast, Incorporated

Starring Darrell Hammond, Steve Burns, and Judd Nelson
Directed by Dean Ronalds
Not Rated

I’m a big believer in turning a time-honored character or literary motif on its ear. Vampire movies have, over the course of 100 years, sucked the genre dry, if you’ll pardon the expression. So when a movie like Russia’s Night Watch blitzes us with incredible visuals and a unique universe not found elsewhere in vampire literature, it’s doubly exciting. The Ronalds Brothers’ feature debut, Netherbeast Incorporated, follows that logic and gives bloodsuckers a fresh new reality. For example, did you know that vampires live and walk among us everyday, hold down jobs in corporate America and can count President James A. Garfield among their ranks? It’s true. Berm-Tech Industries is more or less a front for a sect of vampires the world would’ve otherwise forgotten. But they’ve kept themselves going through a communal approach; they work together and all live in the same building to make sure their numbers, which certainly aren’t growing in the 21^st Century, at least don’t diminish. There’s a wonderful bit of backstory, in the vein of a corporate training video, used to explain what Berm-Tech is and how it began. It also demystifies some of what you think you know about vampires (i.e. they don’t turn into bats). But the wind in Netherbeast’s sails is the implied satire that corporate America really is a kind of bloodsucking scene of likeminded beasts that never see the sun and feeds off unsuspecting humans. Credit writer Bruce Dellis for the clever script (based on his short film, Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries) and the team of Brian and Dean Ronalds for finding ways to keep the obvious corporate comparisons subtle and the particular circumstances and characters of Netherbeast front and center. Though the project is a joyously independent affair, there are plenty of familiar faces, featuring Darrell Hammond, Dave Foley, Jason Mewes, Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues, and Judd Nelson. I won’t spoil the fun of spotting Robert Wagner. The film is not perfect, struggling with those things sub-million-dollar projects always seem to. An extra ten days to shoot or $20,000 more in the hopper would probably go miles on a project like this. But Netherbeast Incorporated is clearly its own film. It has a refreshing perspective on a genre gone flat, a foreboding sense of humor, if such a thing exists.

Movie Review - 'Bangkok Dangerous'

Bangkok Dangerous

Starring Nicolas Cage and Shahkrit Yamnarm
Directed by Danny and Oxide Pang
Rated R

You hear all the time that sex and violence in movies and television has desensitized our society, and dangerously so. We're warned about letting our children play Grand Theft Auto, meanwhile their grandparents sang along as Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Sex and violence is around us all the time and it always has been, intertwined in a way that it probably shouldn't be. Of course, Jack the Ripper never downloaded porn or watched a slasher movie, so what set him off? On the surface, Bangkok Dangerous brings to mind those images of sex and violence, not separate but rushing together. Bangkok, as you probably know, has one of the world's most liberal sex trades - you want it, you got it. Dangerous, at least when the movie poster shows Nicolas Cage pointing a gun, means violence. Strangely enough, though, this movie didn't have enough of either, or at least not enough of one or the other. Cage plays a hitman named Joe, who, as movie hitmen do, moves from city to city killing high profile targets for untold riches. He lives very well, again, as movie hitmen almost always do. He's called to Bangkok to eliminate four targets and Joe considers in the last job. There's a reason crime movies employ the last job device so frequently: It's an instant character arc. If the criminal gets out of that life, he's reformed, and the screenwriter has therefore done the minimum amount required by the story. Joe tells us the rules of being an effective hitman (although you'd think by blabbing about it, he'd be less effective): 1) Don't ask questions 2) Don't get attached 3) Erase all traces 4) Know when to get out. I wonder, if a hitman is in a house on fire, as Cage is at one point in Bangkok Dangerous, does he go through his checklist before stop, drop, and roll, or would that practical advice trump his rules of engagement? You have to admit, seven steps is a lot to remember. Maybe that's why he makes so much money. The problem with Bangkok Dangerous is that it doesn't just want to be a hitman movie, and it doesn't want to trade in just sex and violence. But it's a violent world we're watching that just so happens to be on assignment in the sex capital of the world. That's what we should be seeing, frankly. Instead, directors Danny and Oxide Pang want this remake of their own 1999 film to incorporate the teacher-student storyline and the lovers in a dangerous time storyline. Perhaps this film would've been fine with one of those, but it snaps under the weight of both.

Movie Review - 'Jake's Corner'

Jake's Corner

Starring Richard Tyson, Colton Rodgers, and Danny Trejo
Directed by Jeff Santo
Rated PG

Low-budget, locally made films are tricky for a number of reasons. These movies don't have a lot of resources at their disposal, and watching them, you do need to remember that. In many cases, just getting a finished product is sometimes a tremendous hurdle to overcome. Without a lot of money and time, and without some of the necessary experience that studios bring to the table dozens of times a year for their own projects, the independent filmmaker - the true independent filmmaker - deserves some recognition for even being in this position.A few years ago, director Jeff Santo made a very good documentary called This Old Cub about his father, Chicago Cubs legend Ron Santo. The elder Santo was a player and is now a broadcaster for the Cubs, and his courageous lifelong battle against diabetes was kept a secret while he was a player, but it has certainly taken its toll on him in the past few decades.I enjoyed This Old Cub a great deal, which is the good news; the bad news, at least for Santo's new film Jake's Corner, is that it can't measure up to that very personal documentary.Things are different this time around for Santo, who is working on a dramatic film rather than a documentary. As such, there's a lot more reliance on the writing than there is in a non-fiction film. And here's where we go back to having limited resources: I'd say I was fine with maybe 65% of the performances (and all of the principals except one), but the screenplay is just not up to snuff. And ultimately, in a movie of this size, that's the one major element that has to shine. Casting will almost always suffer because you don't have every actor in Hollywood at your disposal, and there will be some technical things that aren't very smooth, so your story and dialogue has to be crisp, entertaining, and thoughtful. I just didn't think Jake's Corner gave us enough of that. It's the story of a college football star (a Heisman winner, no less) who turns his back on the NFL to run a biker bar in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. Johnny Dunn (Richard Tyson) was great at running on the field, but he was probably better at running off of it, which is how he wound up here in Jake's Corner without a care in the world. Tragedy strikes his family, though, and Johnny has to become the guardian for his nephew, Spence (Colton Rodgers). It's their story that should be growing deeper and more compelling throughout the movie, but the script seems to want to avoid it, throwing a lot more characters at us than we need, and a lot of scenes between those characters that add color but not any real depth. There's something here, though. Santo can direct drama pretty well, and I thought Richard Tyson was actually quite good. I wish he'd had more to do in the middle of the film. You can tell that the cinematography was a chief concern for the director, and it passes that test. But the script needs work or an extra set of eyes. I would be surprised if this is the last we see of Jeff Santo, though, a filmmaker who appears to be learning valuable lessons each time he comes up to bat. I guess we know where he gets that.

Movie Review - 'Elegy'

Elegy

Starring Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, and Dennis Hopper
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Rated R

Without looking, I'd say that love stories are probably the most common types of movies. That's because they can be disguised as any number of things, from musicals to murder mysteries. So to see one - a smart one, no less - that has no other pretense but to be an investigation of how a relationship works or doesn't work is a bit like walking a high wire without a net. I mean, Transformers has a love story in it. Elegy is, for better or worse, about two people who fall in love while not meaning to. David (Sir Ben Kingsley) is a professor and art and literature critic. He was married once when he was a young man, left his wife and child because that life was not for him, and has never been in a deep relationship since.He enjoys intellectual conversations with his friend (Dennis Hopper), and sex with women. That's his world. Consuela (Penelope Cruz) is a beautiful student of David's who, as you can imagine, has had some unfulfilling relationships because her looks open her up to not being taken seriously. David wants to take her seriously, or should I say, he seriously wants to take her to bed. But their relationship grows roots; she's more in tune with his view on things than David would have ever thought and David is a better lover and companion than she could've dreamed. David, though, is so unaccustomed to being in this situation and being the object of affection of someone so lovely, that he believes from the very beginning that the relationship is doomed to fail. She'll find someone younger, she'll get bored, etc. The irony is, that's not the talk of a man looking for causal encounters, now is it? Elegy is based on the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, and though it's not saying much, this is the best adaptation of the writer's work. Cruz gives her best English-speaking performance to date, and I can trace a lot of that to her being more comfortable with the language. Anyone who has seen her in the Almodovar films knows she can act, but English, I think, has really hurt her self-confidence. It doesn't show here or in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Ben Kingsley is a tough one to figure. Just look at his work in the past twelve months: As an alcoholic hitman in You Kill Me, as Merlin in The Last Legion, another evildoer in Transsiberian, as a pothead analyst in The Wackness, and now a brooding, self-centered 60-year-old sex fiend. They aren't all home runs, but as an actor, he has a pretty high batting average. And it's the breadth of roles he takes now; Kingsley truly is getting better at his craft by allowing himself to pursue areas of the human experience we've never seen him explore. You can probably date this back to Sexy Beast, if you're trying to find an obvious starting point, but that hunger was there long before that. And because we see love stories of every stripe, it's daring to ask a movie about two characters and nothing else to play out naturally. Elegy does so quietly and quite well.

Disaster Movie

Starring Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, and Crista Flanagan
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Rated PG-13

As a critic, sometimes you can treat a movie more harshly than it probably deserves. That's not possible with Disaster Movie. I may have a hard time describing how unmistakably and unrelentingly bad this motion picture is. In a weird way, I've been waiting for Disaster Movie for years. I can say without hesitation that it is one of the very worst movies I've ever seen, and the worst example of the medium I've reviewed since Swept Away back in 2002. It's probably worse than that film, in fact, because while Swept Away had terrible acting, a script that went nowhere, and a very questionable morality, at least it seems to be unaware of how bad it really is. Disaster Movie, on the other hand, comes across as almost proud of its lack of entertainment value and original thought. I do not share its pride. Spoofs have fallen off in recent years. When you look at the best comedies ever, three of them are outright genre spoofs - Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Airplane! This generation is stuck with the Movie movies, a collection of lowest common denominator efforts like Epic Movie and Date Movie that send up particular films in their chosen genres and take aim at the fragile nature of tabloid celebrity to fill the gaps. But Disaster Movie isn't about disaster movies. The first "disaster" happens 25 minutes into a 90 minute film. (That is, if you don't count the existence of this movie as a disaster on its own.) Instead, we're...uh...treated (?) to a parade of unfunny movie and pop culture references, with everyone from Amy Winehouse to the Sex and the City girls being lampooned. Iron Man, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, and Indiana Jones get pie in the face, too, none of which, of course, has anything to do with the story. To be fair, there's no story to have anything to do with. Hannah Montana falls victim to this movie's dulled wit. Why 32-year-old Crista Flanagan is playing a 15-year-old is a reasonable question; couldn't the casting director find an affordable teenage actress to read those insipid lines? Elsewhere, Flava Flav, Jessica Simpson, and Dr. Phil are dressed down, and you know it's Dr. Phil because the actor providing the really awful impression of the TV counselor introduces himself as "your old friend, Dr. Phil." A tip for young comedians out there: If you have to introduce your impression, try selling real estate or something instead.There's no effort to weave these celebrity appearances into the story; they're simply being piled on top of one another, I guess, so you can see that this movie reads The National Enquirer and watches movie trailers. Somehow, that's a methodology. It's embarrassing that Lionsgate chooses to release these films. Do they feel good about it? I can't imagine anything but a very cynical production meeting in which it is decided to keep churning these things out every four months because someone with a corner office is reminded of the P.T. Barnum quote about a fool being born every minute. This is a movie made for idiots. Smart people won't enjoy it. They couldn't possibly. How can it be that something is this unfunny, this anti-entertaining? It's almost as if the filmmakers are purposely removing better material in favor of the kind of longwinded, outdated, imbecilic garbage served up in Disaster Movie. Vote with your wallet; don't see this damn movie. You'll regret it and you'll only help Lionsgate steal more money down the line.

Movie Review - 'College'

College

Starring Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, and Kevin Covais
Directed by Deb Hagan
Rated R

There are two things that stand out about the new comedy College:

1) Most movies about the college experience have roughly the same sense of humor, although their execution varies wildly.

2) There are a lot more breasts than I expected.

Since the days of Animal House, the rules of college flicks really haven't changed all that much. There's debauchery, pranks, drunkenness (separate from the debauchery), skewered authority figures, arrogant frat boys who can neither spell nor adequately prepare for comeuppance, heroic geeky figures, and women.

There's never been a college comedy since Animal House to do it as well, but they still try. College's attempt is slightly different, but only in the smallest detail. You see, instead of college students experiencing the endless kegger, we have high school students on a college campus. It's a genius little variation when you think about it: What group wants to score beer and score with chicks more than horny college guys? Horny high school guys.

And that's pretty much the movie.

College is no better or worse than some of the rest. They all kind of blend together after a while. And because the stories are practically identical, it's kind of hard to know where to judge these movies. I guess I'll begin with the high school kids, who look and talk like the first drafts of the high school kids from Superbad (who, incidentally, wanted alcohol and sex, too).

Their interaction is fun to watch; there's the everyman (Drake Bell), the fat guy (Andrew Caldwell), and the geek (Kevin Covais). And for you pop culture aficionados, that is the same Kevin Covais who appeared on American Idol a few seasons back. Unlike Jennifer Hudson, though, he won't be winning an Oscar for his supporting role here.

There is a ceiling for these frat party movies, and it's really their own fault. Every decade or so, we'll get a Revenge of the Nerds or Old School that offers enough things that are different while adhering to the basic premise. The rest of the time, we get two or three versions of PCU every year. College doesn't make any major modifications, offers zero surprises, and just a few really big laughs.

Better luck next time, I guess.