Red Rock West (Thriller)

...All Roads Lead To Intrigue.
Where nothing is as it seems.
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When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialise in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hitman he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hitman, Lyle.
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"Red Rock West" is a diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy. When I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival a couple of years ago, I assumed it would be arriving in theaters in a few weeks.Instead, it almost missed theatrical release altogether, maybe because it's so hard to categorize. After playing on cable and being released on video, it was booked into the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, whose owner liked it so much he thought it deserved to be seen on the big screen. After breaking the theater's house record for any feature, it is now going into theaters around the country.No wonder. This is a movie like "Blood Simple" (which it somewhat resembles) or the David Lynch movies, constructed out of passion, murder, revenge and a quirky sense of humor. The plot is incredibly complicated. It is also easy to follow and, eventually, makes perfect sense. This kind of lovingly contrived melodrama requires juicy actors, who can luxuriate in the ironies of a scene, and the movie has them: Nicolas Cage, J. T. Walsh, Dennis Hopper and Lara Flynn Boyle. They must have had a lot of fun with this material.The movie stars Cage as a poor but honest drifter who arrives, nearly broke, in the small Western town of Red Rock. He walks into the local saloon, and is mistaken by the owner (Walsh) for the professional killer from Texas that Walsh has hired to murder his wife (Boyle). Cage plays along with the joke, collects an advance on the hit, and goes out to Walsh's ranch to visit the wife. There is, of course, an immediate sexual attraction between them. He thinks it only fair to let her in on the secret. She then offers to pay Cage to murder her husband.So Cage has two offers on the table when a stranger (Dennis Hopper) drives into town. This is, of course, the real hit man from Texas. Walsh is not amused to discover he has paid an advance to the wrong man.OK. So that's the set-up. It's ingenious, but it doesn't even begin to suggest the pleasures of this movie, which depend less on plot than on the reactions of the characters to finding themselves in such a plot. Cage's drifter is especially interesting, because most of the time he's operating without a good idea of the whole situation; he has to keep quiet and look like he knows what the others think he knows.At some fundamental level, all he really wants to do is get out of Red Rock and never come back again, and the movie's running gag is that he keeps leaving town and finding himself returning to it. The "Welcome to Red Rock" sign turns up in the movie like a signpost in a nightmare. And eventually it's clear that Cage, and all of the others, are going to be trapped there until they bring their deadly quadrangle to some sort of a conclusion.J. T. Walsh, whose character has secrets I will not reveal, is one of the most interesting of recent movie villains because he seems so superficially open and honest (one of his first big roles, significantly, was as a Chicago alderman in "Backdraft"). Other villains snarl and bluster. He desperately tries to reason things through, to appeal to logic or to dependable strategies like threats.In a way he's the most confused by the labyrinthine situations he finds himself in, since they don't seem to respond to reasonable strategies.Hopper plays a version of the character he has become famous for: The smiling, charming, cold-blooded killer with a screw loose. All he really wants to do is collect his money and do his job, and he only gets dangerous when he realizes how thoroughly a simple hit has been screwed up. Lara Flynn Boyle, cool under fire, diabolical in her ingenuity, has both Cage and the audience wondering how she really thinks about him; one of the pleasures the movie saves until the very end is a revelation of what she really values, and why."Red Rock West" was directed by John Dahl, who co-wrote it with his brother, Rick. John is 34, Rick is 28, and this is their second feature. It's the kind of movie made by people who love movies, have had some good times at them, and want to celebrate the very texture of old genres like the western and the film noir. In a sense, we've been in Red Rock many times before: It's a town where plots lie in wait for unsuspecting visitors, where hatred runs deep, where love is never enough of a motive for doing anything when cash is available.Download here

Small Soldiers (Action,Adventure,Comedy,Fantasy,Sci-Fi)

Big Movie!
Smart, Funny and Action-Packed
The few, the proud, and the small.
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Alan, son of a Toy Store owner, tries out some new action figures: The Commando Elite vs. The Gorgonites. What he does not know, is that both sets of toys were designed to move, talk and play back. The Commando Elite's purpose is to destroy the Gorgonites. Unfortunately, the toy designer who was responsible for the programming, bought highly intelligent military computer chips that are usually used for steering missiles - and are able to learn. Now, the Commando Elite, led by Major Chip Hazard, is up to destroying the Gorgonites, led by peaceful Archer, who hide in Alan's parent's house. Now, a battle, in which the destructive ability of creative computer chips against creative computer chips with a different attitude comes to light, is about to begin.
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``Small Soldiers'' is a family picture on the outside, and a mean, violent action picture on the inside. Since most of the violence happens to toys, I guess we're supposed to give it a pass, but I dunno: The toys are presented as individuals who can think for themselves, and there are believable heroes and villains among them. For smaller children, this could be a terrifying experience.It's rated PG-13, but if the characters were human the movie would be a hard ``R,'' just for the scene where characters get run over and chewed up by a lawn mower. I was a little amazed, indeed, by the whole concluding sequence, in which fireballs are lobbed, toy helicopters attack, and there's a struggle high in the air between killer toys and the movie's young hero, who are trying to electrocute one another. This is not a sequence a lot of grade schoolers are ready for.The movie's premise is intriguing. A toy company is purchased by a defense manufacturer, and the tough-skinned new owner (Denis Leary) orders his people to make ``Toys that actually do what they do in the commercials.'' Toys with batteries that don't run down, and with minds of their own. His designers take him at his word, and develop lines of toys using the company's X-1000 computer chip, which is also the brains of smart bombs and other military technology.When these toys get into the marketplace, it's war. The toy characters are divided into two camps, the peaceful and zany Gorgonites and the professional killers of the Commando Elite. The problem is with the commandos, who are humorless martinets who strut through the movie looking like mercenaries and making threats like pro wrestlers. They are truly evil, and they throw off the movie's moral balance.A lot of the other stuff in the movie is funny and entertaining, and, to be fair, all of the special effects are top drawer, seamlessly combining live action, models and animation. (Industrial Light and Magic supplied some of them, and the figures were designed by Stan Winston.) The Gorgonites are led by a pensive, thoughtful Yoda figure named Archer (voice of Frank Langella). They include little guys who kind of grow on you, including Ocula, who is basically an eyeball with three limbs. The Commando Elite have names like Chip Hazard and Butch Meathook. One of the inside jokes is that many of their voices were supplied by veterans of ``The Dirty Dozen,'' while the Gorgonites are voiced by actors from ``This Is Spinal Tap.'' The movie's human hero is Alan (Gregory Smith), a kid who inadvertently sets off the toy wars. His new girlfriend is Christy (Kirsten Dunst), who gets a shock when she sees Barbie-type dolls being fitted with X-1000 chips so that they can join the battle, too. Among the adults are Alan's parents, who are taken out of action after the commandos use a mousetrap as a catapult to drop sleeping pills into the their drinks.Part of the inspiration for ``Small Soldiers'' may have come from ``Toy Story,'' where toy soldiers were among the characters. But too much of it may have come from Sid, the human kid in that movie who lived next door, and entertained himself by taking his toys apart and reassembling them in grotesque ways. In ``Small Soldiers,'' toys have unspeakable things happen to them, and many of them end up looking like horror props. Chip Hazard meets an especially gruesome end.What bothered me most about ``Small Soldiers'' is that it didn't tell me where to stand--what attitude to adopt. In movies for adults, I like that quality. But here is a movie being sold to kids, with a lot of toy tie-ins and ads on the children's TV channels. Below a certain age, they like to know what they can count on. When Barbie clones are being sliced and diced by a lawn mower, are they going to understand the satirical purpose? Roy Rogers died the other day, and that reminded me of how gentle and innocent his movies were. Sure, we called them ``shoot-em-ups,'' but Roy spent more time singing than shooting. Kids didn't leave the theater in a state of shock. Now they go to a kiddie movie, and there are scenes where toy characters are disemboweled and vivisected, and body parts crawl around in the street, separated from one another. Then there are other scenes that are perfectly innocent. We get two movies for the price of one. The nice movie would have been enough.Download here

Good Night to Die, A (Action,Comedy,Thriller)

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One day in the life of a hit man, Ronnie, who spends it trying to save the life of fellow hit man, August, who he had brought into the business three years ago. August has become a real problem for some of the bosses around town, and Ronnie will soon find out just what his Frankenstein's monster will cost him.
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Babel (Drama,Thriller)

A global disaster.
A single gunshot heard around the world.
If You Want to be Understood...Listen
One shot, many kills.
Pain is universal... But so is hope.
Tragedy is universal
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Richard and Susan are a couple from San Diego, California who are vacationing in Morocco while their two children are at home with their Mexican housekeeper, Amelia. A rifle finds its way into the hands of a local herdsman's young sons, who recklessly take a shot at a tour bus and hit Susan in the shoulder, causing her severe injury. The distraught Richard calls home to tell Amelia of the situation, who shortly departs for Mexico to attend her son's wedding, with Richard and Susan's children in tow. Disaster thus multiplies, with the situation in Morocco ascribed to terrorists in the media, while Amelia meets with trouble at the Mexican border when she attempts to return to San Diego with Richard and Susan's children. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a widower tied to the rifle in question, a complex shift of ownership to which the audience is privy, attempts to deal with the memories of his recently deceased wife and his strained relationship with his deaf teenage daughter.
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In a year when the Academy Award nominations are more diverse and international than ever before, it's anyone's guess who will win best picture. "Dreamgirls" garnered more nominations than any other movie, but was passed over for both picture and director.



But there are four categories that can be predicted with certainty -- best actress: Helen Mirren; supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson; best actor: Forest Whitaker, and supporting actor: Eddie Murphy. They have won almost every award, including the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Golden Globes. If any one of them doesn't snag the Oscar at the Feb. 25 ceremony, it will be an upset.

BEST ACTOR

The world of the Academy Awards seems universally convinced that Forest Whitaker will take home an Oscar for "The Last King of Scotland." It would be well deserved, not only because Whitaker has a solid body of good acting behind him over the years, but because Oscar voters love it when actors remove themselves from the typecasting game and play a totally original character. Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator in "The Last King of Scotland," is such a character. Whitaker's performance somehow combines Amin's blend of cruelty and jovial good fellowship in the portrait of an extroverted madman.



Whitaker will win the Oscar, although there are strong contenders, including Will Smith in an affecting role as a homeless dad determined to raise his son in "The Pursuit of Happyness"; Ryan Gosling as a crack-smoking but well-meaning junior high school teacher in "Half Nelson," and Leonardo DiCaprio as a mercenary Rhodesian diamond smuggler in "Blood Diamond."



Oh, and I left for last the sentimental favorite: Peter O'Toole in "Venus." What a one-of-a-kind performance from this actor, whose work always finds a new place to start from. Playing an aging, decrepit, broken-down actor relegated to mostly corpse roles, his character stumbles into an unlikely love affair with a troubled young woman, and finds it is too much a test for his frayed libido. In generous close-ups and sad, weary monologues, he shares with her what he knows about life, which he has apparently found mostly in barrooms and Shakespeare. O'Toole is such an interesting actor, who seems to know so much more than he tells, or dares to tell. He got an honorary Oscar in 2003, but has never won a "real" one.



Still, it is Whitaker's performance that will bring home the Oscar gold. I have especially great affection for O'Toole's work here, so I'll split my ballet, with affection on both sides.



Prediction: Forest Whitaker
Preference: Peter O'Toole

SUPPORTING ACTOR

The classic path to a Hollywood comeback is for a fading major star to find a great supporting role and work it for all it's worth. I predict that formula will win an Oscar for Eddie Murphy. Not many years after standing atop the box-office charts, Murphy became the victim of too many ego-generated projects and the enterprises of cronies.



Now, in Bill Condon's "Dreamgirls," Murphy forces Hollywood to take another long look at him. Bursting with what seems like fresh new talent, he plays James "Thunder" Early, a Motown star as a combination of James Brown and Jackie Wilson. Early gives a soul trio (think the Supremes) its start in show biz while fighting to preserve his own career. He's slick, extroverted, brimming with an inner joy (even in the sad scenes) because both he and his character know how good they are.



It would be an upset if anyone else wins this category. Yes, all four are worthy nominees -- (the most fun comes from veteran actor Alan Arkin as the earthy, foul-mouthed grandfather of a dysfunctional family in "Little Miss Sunshine"). Mark Wahlberg is compulsively watchable as a motormouth cop in the Scorsese film "The Departed." Jackie Earle Haley ventures far from earlier roles to play a pedophile in "Little Children" -- one of the least likable characters in recent movies. And Djimon Hounsou's portrayal of a proud, small-town fisherman in "Blood Diamond" is genuinely moving as he fights to regain his son from the reaches of a corrupt regime.



But Eddie Murphy wins the category, deserves to, and will be back in starring roles unless he continues to choose unfunny comedies done just for the money.



Prediction: Eddie Murphy
Preference: Eddie Murphy

BEST ACTRESS

In movies where a famous character is being portrayed, there is always the dramatic "reveal" moment when we see ... why, that's Warren Beatty! This moment will inspire reams of disposable prose about how much the performer playing the famous character does or does not resemble its real-life counterpart. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't, and most of the time it makes no difference to the success of the film."The Queen" is a movie in which Helen Mirren, a British actress of limitless skills, often seen as a very ordinary person, plays the Queen of England. The "reveal" is boldly stunning -- not a coy glance over a shoulder, but a straight-on head shot. She levels a steady gaze at the camera. It contains a vast self-confidence that she truly and deeply takes very seriously her role and responsibilities. It is the best performance by any actress this year and deserves the Academy Award. It embodies all of the ways in which she tells us who this queen is, and why she is so stubborn about holding the line against a state funeral for Princess Diana.There are four other notable nominated performances by actresses this year. Penelope Cruz embodied joy and fancy as a high-spirited woman who inherits the ghost of her own mother in "Volver." Judi Dench always great, doesn't disappoint as the ruthless and sly schoolmistress who discovers a new colleague is having an affair with a young boy -- and uses that information to advance her own erotic ambitions -- in "Notes on a Scandal." Meryl Streep was superb as a fashion editor of great ego and heartless ambition, whose career depends on cutthroat rivalry in "The Devil Wears Prada." And Kate Winslet gives an erotic performance as one of a group of suburbanites whose lives are played out in the playgrounds and bedrooms of their less than satisfied existences in "Little Children."All good movies, powerfully acted. One of the strongest actress categories in years. All deserving of the Oscar. But I will not soon forget Mirren's sober conviction that she and no one else is the Queen of England, and don't you forget it!Prediction: Helen MirrenPreference: Helen Mirren

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

It's not often that a movie audience breaks into spontaneous applause, but you're likely to hear it after Jennifer Hudson's solo in "Dreamgirls," and there's no doubt the audience is sincere. Jamie Foxx plays a music impresario loosely based on Berry Gordy Jr., explaining to Hudson's character, Effie White, why they are breaking up personally and professionally. Effie sees this not as a matter of business but of the heart. "And I'm telling you ... I'm not going!" she sings, in a broadside of talent and feeling and emotion. That moment isn't the only reason she'll win as best supporting actress, but it's a good one.Hudson's story is the kind beloved by movie audiences -- how she was voted off "American Idol" and now seems on the brink of an Oscar. And it's the kind of performance movies like this need to anchor its show-biz familiarities.Also nominated: Cate Blanchett, ethereal in her role of a teacher having an affair with her young student; Abigail Breslin as a smart, irrepressible offspring of a dysfunctional family in "Little Miss Sunshine" (she has her emotional hooks into everybody); Rinko Kikuchi, as a deaf grieving teenager in "Babel" whose life becomes a target in her world, and Adriana Barraza as the Mexican maid who becomes the victim of a border guard while returning from her son's wedding in "Babel." These latter two characters symbolize the way no one in "Babel" really seems to communicate. Hudson's character doesn't communicate very well with the others in her rags-to-riches story of three girls who become overnight singing stars in the 1960s. Maybe that's because she speaks with honesty and openness, and doesn't understand their lingo of ambition and career shortcuts. Not since Barbra Streisand's show-stopper "Don't Rain on My Parade" in "Funny Girl" has an actress brought a movie to a sudden, shuddering halt of emotion and applause. But Hudson does, showing the kind of talent she must have been born with.Prediction: Jennifer HudsonPreference: Jennifer Hudson

BEST FOREIGN FILM

I've seen four of the five foreign film nominations this year and they are so gloriously diverse, hold such promise for the future that you could do worse than starting your Oscar viewing here. I'm predicting that Mexico's submission, Guillermo del Toro's brilliant "Pan's Labyrinth" will win this category -- not least because it is probably the most widely seen. The political fable of a young girl drifting between emotional times at home and a scary forest wonderland amidst the backdrop of Spanish fascism and war, it crosses the visual fancies of comic books, video games and graphic novels, combining them in a work stirred up from the depths of his soul.Consider also the other nominees, including Algeria's "Days of Glory" by Rachid Bouchareb. It involves young North Africans, mostly Algerians, who are required to leave home and family and fight for their French "homeland." After the war, their sacrifice is completely forgotten. Consider, too, Canada's submission, Deepa Mehta's "Water," the heartbreaking story of young brides, already widows, who are expected to live the remainder of their lives in solitude and involuntary labor. And also nominated from Germany is "The Lives of Others" by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Using long-secret files of the Stasi, the East German secret police, it shows lives being methodically destroyed by a sadistic bureaucracy.All four of the films I've seen (I have not seen "After the Wedding" from Denmark) are serious, focused, take their mission seriously. Any of them would be a worthy nominee. To choose one is not to choose against the others. But "Pan's Labyrinth" is fresh and innovative, and was rumored to be in the running for a best picture nomination. It is the one to beat.Prediction: "Pan's Labyrinth"Preference: "Pan's Labyrinth"

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

A dark, scary, visually inventive sleeper named "Monster House" came out of nowhere to become an artistic success. But it has no chance to win the Oscar ahead of "Cars," a bright and cheery story with a little something profound lurking around the edges. This Disney/Pixar production is smart in the way that its 1951 Hudson Hornet manages to look simultaneously like itself and Paul Newman. And I suspect the academy voters will agree with the picture's nostalgic look at the simplicity of the "good old days."Neither will "Monster House" win over another real sleeper, the unexpected "Happy Feet," which audiences loved for its heart and sentiment, not to mention its music and dancing penguins. Nevertheless, I don't predict these little penguins will waddle right up to the Oscar like "March of the Penguins" last year. I predict that the more mellow "Cars" will take home the gold. But I wish more people had seen "Monster House," the story of a group of children mesmerized by a seemingly intelligent haunted house.Prediction: "Cars"Preference: "Monster House"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Screenplays are the mysterious engines that lurk beneath a movie, often much edited, sometimes rewritten beyond recognition. But the general rule is, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the screen. I haven't read one of the actual screenplays of any of the nominees, but how many Oscar voters will have? Nonetheless, that doesn't prevent me from predicting that Guillermo Arriaga's work for "Babel" will win this category. It will win in part because it generated the best movie, and in part because its great complexity and ingenuity takes on a dread fascination.Of the other nominees, isn't it a shame that the Academy Awards make no distinction between drama and comedy? Michael Arndt's work on "Little Miss Sunshine" uses inspired casting and Arndt's rapid-fire dialogue to create a comic gem. It's a story of a dysfunctional family driving cross-country to enter its beloved daughter in a beauty pageant. It has a lot of heart and soul, and is very funny. It deserves to compete in a separate category. Peter Morgan's "The Queen" not so much creates but evokes a convincing Queen Elizabeth. Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" is one of the most original fantasies since Grimm's Fairy Tales. Iris Yamashita's "Letters From Iwo Jima" hauntingly humanizes the Japanese soldiers fighting in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II and shows the chilling realism of that war.But the academy will honor "Babel," not only because of its complex achievement, but also because of the thought and care that went into it.Prediction: "Babel"Preference: "Babel"

BEST DIRECTOR

I reviewed Martin Scorsese's first film in 1968, something I never tire of reminding patient readers. In the review, I predicted, essentially, that he would stand astride the film world in, oh, say, 10 years. And so he did. But where is the recognition? Where is the Oscar after 39 years?America's greatest director has been passed over time and again for the Academy Award. This time, with his popular "The Departed," I have a feeling he will finally win his golden trophy. It is only a feeling, an instinct, but let's see if I'm right. The movie returns to Scorsese's favorite subject, gangsters in America, and once again stars some of the most colorful of American actors, led by Jack Nicholson. And in its story of double identities, it is surprisingly entertaining. I admired all the other nominees, not least Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel." The mercurial young director moves far outside genre to portray a world where terrorism criss-crosses with crime and ordinary lives. I also admired Stephen Frears' "The Queen," with Helen Mirren's haunting portrait of Queen Elizabeth; Paul Greengrass' uncanny realism in "United 93 (which deserved the comparisons with a documentary), and Clint Eastwood's visionary, incredibly ambitious war drama, "Letters From Iwo Jima," which considered the bloody struggle from the Japanese point of view.But Eastwood has won twice in recent years, the others are less familiar to Oscar voters, and Scorsese's time has come around at last. And, to cement this, he recently won the Director's Guild Award. Prediction: Martin ScorsesePreference: For reasons of tact, I prefer not to reveal my preference.

BEST PICTURE

Five films more different in style, subject and form would be hard to imagine, but here they are, the nominees for best picture. The daring, original "Babel" is thought to be the frontrunner, and I think deserves to be, but each of these movies is excellent in its own way. Rumor has it that "Little Miss Sunshine" is poised to be an upset winner, and in fact it won an ensemble SAG Award.Martin Scorsese has made better films than "The Departed," but then he has never made a bad film. The prospect of a great young director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, winning his first Oscar is matched by the possibility that Scorsese will win a much-delayed one. With the loss of Robert Altman, is any active director more senior and better than Clint Eastwood? And what a pure, stark war movie he has made in "Letters From Iwo Jima." His conception is so original -- two movies (the other is "Flags of Our Fathers"), one in English, one in Japanese. Both considering the same battle, both detached, low-key, lacking in action cliches. No movie is harder to make, in a technical sense, than a comedy. But what a priceless one Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris have made in "Little Miss Sunshine." It has this combination of the transgressive and the risk-taking of this particular American genre, with Alan Arkin leading the parade as a vulgar but family-loving grandpa.And what an achievement from Stephen Frears in "The Queen," where Helen Mirren bares everything in an original closeup that asserts she "is" the Queen, not an imitator, but an embodiment.And yet Oscar voters often prefer serious, big-themed subjects of the kind seen in "Babel," a powerful group of international stories in which the secret human connections only gradually unfold. But the big upset could be "Little Miss Sunshine" because it touched something deep in the American psyche, and had people identifying with this odd family who pulls together when it matters the most.Prediction: "Babel"Preference: "Babel"

BONUS CATEGORY: BEST DOCUMENTARY

I have only once in my almost 40 years as a film critic written these words: "You owe it to yourself to see this film." That was the power of Al Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." My review was divorced from politics or political leanings. It reflected the truth as I understood it, that global warming is real, and is partly caused by human activity. That view has just been ratified in a recent meeting of scientists. But aside from the content, the movie is well done cinematically. The other nominees: "Deliver Us From Evil," "Iraq in Fragments," "Jesus Camp" and "My Country, My Country."Download here

Are We There Yet? (Comedy,Family)

24 hours. 350 miles. His girlfriend's kids. What could possibly go wrong?
Coming soon... by plane, by train, by car.
To win over their mother, he's driving them across country. What could possibly go wrong?
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The fledgling romance between Nick, a playboy bachelor, and Suzanne, a divorced mother of two, is threatened by a particularly harrowing New Year's Eve. When Suzanne's work keeps her in Vancouver for the holiday, Nick offers to bring her kids to the city from Portland, Oregon. The kids, who have never liked any of the men their mom has dated, are determined to turn the trip into a nightmare for Nick.
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Final Destination (Fantasy,Horror,Mystery,Thriller)

Are you ready to match wits with the Grim Reaper?
Can You Cheat Death?
Death Doesn't Take No For An Answer.
Death is coming.
Face Your Deepest Fears... Before They Face You.
I'll see you soon.
Most people have dreams. For Alex, this is real.
Next stop, it's you...
No Accidents. No Coincidences. No Escapes. You Can't Cheat Death.
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When a boy starts having a premonition of Flight 180 crashing, he tells his friends before they board that it is a bad idea and to not to take the flight. His friends listen to him and don't go and soon after the plane crashes. Now since his friends didn't get on the plane one by one they are getting killed in mysterious ways.
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"Final Destination 3" is in the relentless tradition of the original Dead Teenager Movies, which existed to kill all the teenagers in the movie except one, who was left alive to star in the sequel, explaining to fresh victims what happened at Camp Crystal Lake, or how we know what you did last summer. In "FD3," the kids learn about their possible fates because one of them heard about the "FD1" case on the news. If the movie were self-aware, like the "Scream" pictures, he would have said "This is just like that movie 'Final Destination.'"



The "FD1" opening formula is repeated. Some viewers may feel cheated by the It's Only a Dream Scene, but fans of the series will understand as a character has a premonition of disaster and watches in horror as her vision comes true. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is with a group of friends at a carnival and refuses to get on the roller coaster because she's convinced it will crash. It does, with many detailed scenes in which teenagers cling desperately to upside-down coaster cars, are beheaded, etc.



Wendy and her friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman) learn that the kids who didn't get on the doomed airplane in "FD1" died anyway, in the same order they were intended to board the plane. Is the same fate in store for the kids who didn't get on the roller coaster? Wendy, who was taking digital photos at the carnival, loads them into her computer and uses them to figure out what the likely order of victims will be. She and Kevin seem doomed along with the others, which is a reason right there not to spend the $79 to upgrade to iPhoto 6.



Do they all die? The point in these movies is not if they die, but how they die, and Fate must stay up nights devising ingenious executions. There is a crushing experience in the takeout lane at Fatburger, a crispy afternoon at a tanning salon, a beheading, a gruesome death by nail gun, an unfortunate fireworks accident, and at the end everyone gets on a train when they should be checking into an emergency room just as a precaution.



Why are teenagers attracted to movies in which teenagers die? Maybe it's related to the basic appeal of all horror films: We sit in the audience and think, There but for the grace of God go we. There is also the reassurance that the movie will not contain a lot of long speeches or deep thought, and there will be few adults in the audience to tell you to get the hell off your cell phone because they paid for their tickets, etc.



There must be dozens of films in this genre. At Sundance 2006 there was at least a positive development in "Wristcutters," when the characters discover that after you kill yourself, the world is pretty much the same as it was before, except grungy, poverty-stricken and depressing. In "Wristcutters 2," they should have a Third World suicide victim who finds the afterlife an improvement and thinks he is in heaven.



The problem with "FD3" is since it is clear to everyone who must die and in what order, the drama is reduced to a formula in which ominous events accumulate while the teenagers remain oblivious. We see oil dripping, trucks rolling out of control, hinges working loose and we realize: The movie is obviously filmed from the POV of Fate itself. We see a nail gun and we start calculating which character is next to be nailed.



"Final Destination 3" is good-looking and made with technical skill. The director is James Wong, who made "FD1" and was once a writer on "The X-Files" and "21 Jump Street." He and the cinematographer, Robert McLachlan, do an especially good job of evoking a creepy sense of menace on a carnival midway. Has there ever been a carnival midway in a movie that didn't look like a sadomasochistic nightmare? The rides look fatal, the sideshows look like portals to hell, and you know that game where you slam down a big hammer to make the weight fly up and hit the bell? One kid pounds so hard, the weight crashes through the bell and flies off into the air. I expected it to land on somebody's head, or maybe on the roller-coaster tracks, and maybe it did and I missed it, because there was a lot going on. But as nearly as I can figure, the weight is still up there somewhere.



Editor's note: Ebert's review was cut short when a weight from a carnival game crashed through the window and wiped out his computer. Dann Gire, president of the Chicago Film Critics' Association, has sent out warnings to the next six reviewers scheduled to write about the film.Download here

Grindhouse (Action,Horror,Sci-Fi,Thriller)

A double feature that'll tear you in two!
A Rodriguez/Tarantino Double Feature
A white-hot juggernaut at 200 miles per hour! (segment "Death Proof")
Fully Loaded. (segment "Planet Terror")
Humanity's last hope... Rests on a high power machine gun (segment "Planet Terror")
On the streets there is only one law, and he is going to deliver justice one shell at a time! ("Hobo With a Shotgun")
See! Two great movies for one low price! Together in one smash explosive show
The sleaze-filled saga of an exploitation double feature.
You might feel a little prick. (segment "Planet Terror")
You'll Come Home for the Holidays... In A Body Bag (segment 'Thanksgiving')
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An homage to exploitation B-movie thrillers that combines two feature-length segments into one double-bill designed to replicate the grind house theatergoing experience of the 70s and 80s. In "Death Proof," a psycho named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) stalks and kills beautiful women with his car. In "Planet Terror," a small-town sheriffs' department has to deal with an outbreak of murderous, infected people called "sickos." A gun-legged woman named Cherry (Rose McGowan) and her martial arts-wielding partner (Freddy Rodriguez) take on the zombie army. The two films will be fused together by fake movie trailers.
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Shot in the Dark, A (Comedy,Crime,Mystery)

... The Picture That Gets Away With Murder!
It's Sellers the Sleuth... and there's nothing he won't do to track down a body -- dead or alive!
Meet the inspector who was always on the job In The Bedroom... In The Nightclub... In The Nudist Colony!
This is a real high calibre comedy!
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When rich M. Ballon's spanish driver is found shot dead, Inspector Jacques Clouseau is the first official on the scene. All evidence suggests Maria Gambrelli, the maid, to be the murderer. But Clouseau, being attracted to the beautiful girl, is convinced that she is hiding something. So, he has her released from jail and tries to follow her secretly. Things do not work out the way the inspector wanted and people keep being murdered, and each time innocent Maria seems to be the killer. But with someone important wanting Clouseau and nobody else to cover this case, his tolerance-challenged boss Charles Dreyfuss is close to losing his mind when casualties keep turning up. And Clouseau keeps on causing trouble without knowing it...
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Millions (Comedy,Crime,Drama,Family)

Hide and Seek (Drama,Horror,Thriller)

Come out come out whatever you are
If you want to know the secret, you have to play the game.
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Hide and Seek revolves around a widower (Robert DeNiro) and his daughter (Dakota Fanning). They move to upstate and Emily (Fanning) soon creates an imaginary friend named Charlie...but this act takes an unexpected and terrifying turn, where her father and doctor (Famke Janssen) start to worry about Emily's gruesome habits.
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A small girl is haunted by fears after her mother's suicide. Her father, a psychiatrist, feels powerless to console her, and thinks perhaps if they move out of the apartment where the death took place, that might help. Since John Polson's "Hide and Seek" is a thriller, he finds the ideal new home: A vast frame summer home, with lots of attics and basements and crannies and staircases, on a lakeside that must be jolly enough in the summertime, but is deserted now in the wintertime. All except for some friendly but peculiar neighbors.



This is a setup for a typical horror film, but for the first hour, at least, "Hide and Seek" feels more like M. Night Shyamalan and less like formula. Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning, as Dr. David Calloway, the father, and Emily, as his pre-adolescent daughter, create characters that seem, within the extremes of their situation, convincing and sympathetic. De Niro's Dr. David Calloway is a patient and reasonable man, who treats his daughter with kindness, but there's something else going on.



Consider, for example, the night when Calloway brings home a neighbor woman, Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue), for dinner. "Did Daddy tell you that my mommy died?" little Emily asks, volunteering: "She killed herself in our bathtub. Slit her wrists with a razor." Calloway gently tells his daughter he doesn't think their guest needs to hear that right now, at dinner, but there is a way Emily has of staring out of her big round eyes and seeming to look into darker spheres than the rest of us can see.



Then there is the matter of her imaginary friend, Charlie. Dr. Calloway knows kids have imaginary friends, and that troubled kids often invent confidants to share their fears. He consults a colleague (Famke Janssen), who specializes in children, meets Emily, and agrees. But then strange things begin to happen. Calloway is awakened in the middle of the night and finds a bloody message written on the bathroom walls. Something unpleasant happens to the family cat. Either Emily is acting out, or ... well, perhaps Charlie is not imaginary at all.



This possibility is enhanced by the presence in the cast of Dylan Baker as the local sheriff, a nosy type who carries the keys to all the summer homes on a big ring on his belt. Baker is so reliable playing clean-cut but creepy types that once, when I saw him in a simply likable role, I was caught off guard. Here he hangs around way too much, and always seems about to ask a question and then deciding not to. There is also some oddness going on with the neighbors.



Up until about that point, the movie has played convincingly, within the terms of its premise. Fanning does an accomplished job of making us wonder what she knows and what she imagines. When she produces those scary drawings, for example, of people dying, are they prescient? Troubled? Or just a form of release?



To find out the answer to these and other more unexpected questions, you will have to see the movie. I found the third act to be a disappointment. There was a point in the movie when suddenly everything clicked, and the Law of Economy of Characters began to apply. That is the law that says no actor is in a movie unless his character is necessary. A corollary is that if a minor actor is set up as a suspect, he's a decoy. I began to suspect I knew the answer to Emily's nightmares and the nature of her imaginary friend, and I was right.



I would have been content, however, if the movie had found a way to make its solution more psychologically probable, or at least less contrived. In the best Shyamalan movies, everything fits, and you can go back and see them again and understand how all the parts worked. With "Hide and Seek," directed by Polson from a screenplay by Ari Schlossberg, you don't get that satisfaction. It's not technically true to say the movie cheats, but let's say it abandons the truth and depth of its earlier scenes.



I'm at Sundance right now, where I just saw Rebecca Miller's "The Ballad of Jack and Rose." Also a movie where the mother is killed. Also a movie where the father and daughter live together in isolation, on the far side of an island. Also a movie where the father brings home a woman for dinner, and the daughter resents her role in her father's life. But the Miller picture is interested in the dramatic developments in the situation -- in character, and how it forms in one situation and tries to adapt to another.



"Hide and Seek" is not really interested in its situation, except as a way to get to the horror ending. I like horror films, but I don't like to feel jerked around by them. They're best when they play straight and don't spring arbitrary surprises. At the beginning of "Hide and Seek," I thought I was going to be interested in the characters all the way to the end, but then the plot went on autopilot. In a movie like "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," the characters keep on living and learning and hurting and hungering, and there's no surprise at the end to let them off the hook.Download here

Way of the Vampire (Horror,Thriller)

The battle between good and evil ends tonight.
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This cheerfully low-budget riff on the Dracula story from directors Sarah Nean Bruce and Eduardo Durao follows Van Helsing, the immortal vampire hunter, as he battles the evil dead throughout the centuries. Asylum Pictures favorite Rhett Giles stars, alongside Paul Logan, Denise Boutte, Brent Falco, and Anthony Turk.
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Tart (Drama)

Sex, Drugs and Study Hall.
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After her only friend is expelled from their private school in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Cat Storm wants to get close to a boy she is attracted to and recreate herself with new friends. But her new friends are unreliable, her boyfriend is troubled, her parents are cold and indifferent, and she increasingly finds herself unloved by anyone.
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First Knight (Adventure,Drama,Romance)

Their greatest battle would be for her love.
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Lancelot lives by the sword. In fact, they're next door neighbours, so teaming up to fight for money comes pretty naturally. Lady Guinevere, on her way to marry King Arthur is ambushed by the evil Sir Malagant. Fortunately Lancelot is lurking nearby and he rescues his future queen. They fall in love, but Guinevere still fancies the idea of wearing a crown, so she honours her promise to Arthur. Can Lady Guinevere remain faithful, or will this Pretty Woman become a lady of the knight?
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It is the misfortune of "First Knight" to open third in the same season that also brought "Rob Roy" and "Braveheart," two better examples of the medieval swordcraft-and-seduction genre. The movie is entertaining enough in its own way, and Sean Connery makes a splendid King Arthur, but compared with the earlier films this one seems thin and unconvincing.The story is yet another retelling of the love triangle of Camelot. It centers on Guinevere (Julia Ormond), Lady of Leonesse, whose lands are under attack from the evil Malagant (Ben Cross). She determines to marry King Arthur, whose Camelot is legend, for two reasons: Because she can love him, and because he can protect Leonesse. But as events are unfolding, she meets the young and footloose Lancelot (Richard Gere), who saves her from a savage attack in the woods, and goes right on saving her, while falling in love with her, throughout the movie.It's an intriguing triangle. Guinevere loves Arthur with her mind and Lancelot with her heart. The two men admire one another. If she chooses Arthur, she also protects all of those she is responsible for. If she chooses Lancelot, love conquers all. This is precisely the same situation that developed in "Casablanca," and the parallel is all the stronger because Julia Ormond, in a certain light, looks so much like Ingrid Bergman, with the apple cheeks; the full lips; the slight overbite; the wide-set, grave eyes, and the generosity of body.The movie plays out its conflict on sets and locations that look, frankly, less than convincing after "Braveheart" and "Rob Roy." At one point, while a town is under siege, a bell tower falls over for no apparent reason except that prop men caused it to do so. At another point, Arthur stands on a hilltop with Guinevere and shows her the glistening city of Camelot at night - with a light sparkling in every window. Either they had lots of candles, or the guys who built the miniature got carried away.Another problem is closer to the crux of the story. In order to identify with Guinevere's dilemma, we must be truly able to believe it. We must be convinced by the attraction she feels for both Arthur and Lancelot. This is hard to do, because Richard Gere plays Lancelot with such insouciance that he doesn't seem serious enough to love. He doesn't have the psychic weight to be worth a kingdom."Casablanca" had something of the same problem in the Paul Heinreid character, who embodied all nobility but never seemed half as magnetic as Humphrey Bogart's Rick. Still, he was a resistance fighter, standing alone against Nazi evil, and so we understood why Ilsa left with him. And why Rick let her."First Knight" handles the choices less well. Guinevere determines to part from Lancelot, and favors him with a farewell kiss, which Arthur happens to see. And he responds very badly, sentencing them both to a public trial for treason, which begins by being less than convincing and only gets worse after Malagant arrives and shouts out (I am not making this up) "Nobody move - or Arthur dies!" Against these problems are some good things, including a nighttime battle sequence with moonlight glinting off helmets and spears, and a touching early scene in which Arthur offers Guinevere protection for Leonesse without the price of marriage, and she chooses marriage because she admires him so. There are some terrific sets by John Box, including a dungeon with a bottomless pit. And I enjoyed John Gielgud, in yet another of the farewell performances we have come to treasure.One crucial scene is undermined by bad lighting. In the conversation between Guinevere and Lancelot leading up to their fatal kiss, Gere is lit and photographed so badly that he looks pudding-faced. It's an interesting scene, illustrating how much of a movie is illusion and artistry - and how much the movies depend on it.Download here

Bodyguard, The (Drama,Music,Romance,Thriller)

Never let her out of your sight. Never let your guard down. Never fall in love.
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A pop singer has been receiving threatening notes, and her manager hires a bodyguard known for his good work. The bodyguard ruffles the singer's feathers and most of her entourage by tightening security more than they feel is necessary. The bodyguard is haunted by the fact that he was on Reagan's secret service staff but wasn't there to prevent the attack by Hinckley. Eventually the bodyguard and the singer start an affair, and she begins to believe his precautions are necessary when the stalker strikes close to home.
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Almost the first thing the samurai sees when he arrives is a dog trotting down the main street with a human hand in its mouth. The town seems deserted until a nervous little busybody darts out and offers to act as an employment service: He'll get the samurai a job as a yojimbo -- a bodyguard. The samurai, a large, dusty man with indifference bordering on insolence, listens and does not commit. He wants sake and something to eat.



So opens "Yojimbo" (1961), Akira Kurosawa's most popular film in Japan. He was deliberately combining the samurai story with the Western, so that the wind-swept main street could be in any frontier town, the samurai (Toshiro Mifune) could be a gunslinger, and the local characters could have been lifted from John Ford's gallery of supporting actors.



Ironic, that having borrowed from the Western, Kurosawa inspired one: Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), with Clint Eastwood, is so similar to "Yojimbo" that homage shades into plagiarism. Even Eastwood's Man With No Name is inspired, perhaps, by the samurai in "Yojimbo." Asked his name, the samurai looks out the window, sees a mulberry field, and replies, "Kuwabatake Sanjuro," which means "30-year-old mulberry field." He is 30, and that is a way of saying he has no name.


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Airplane! (Comedy,Romance)

Thank God it's Only a Motion Picture!
The craziest flight you'll ever take!
The Plane's going to Chicago. The Pilot's going to New York. The Passengers are going to Pieces!
What's slower than a speeding bullet, and able to hit tall buildings at a single bound?
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Ted Striker just got dumped by his long-time girlfriend Elaine Dickinson, who works as a stewardess at Trans American Airlines. In his wish to get her back, he follows her aboard the plane, although he has had a deep aversion against anything winged since he lost several men in the war. During flight, he tries to contact her again and again, but as the crew and many passengers get seriously ill due to a bad fish meal, he has no chance to get to her. In fact, Ted Striker seems to be the only healthy person aboard that has piloting experience. Now, it is up to him to get the bird down in Chicago safely, before the poisoning starts causing casualties. But Ted Striker's aversion really is a serious psychosis, which breaks open and needs to be cured - right now.
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Last Emperor, The (Biography,Drama,History)

He was the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the absolute monarch of China. He was born to rule a world of ancient tradition. Nothing prepared him for our world of change.
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A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
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The boy was 3 when he first sat on the Dragon Throne as emperor of China, and 7 when he abdicated. He had barely reached what in the West is considered the age of reason, and already events beyond his control had shaped his life forever. Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" tells the story of this child, named Pu Yi, in an epic that uses the life of one man as a mirror that reflects China's passage from feudalism through revolution to its current state of relatively peaceful transition.This is a strange epic because it is about an entirely passive character. We are accustomed to epics about heroes who act on their society - Lawrence of Arabia, Gandhi - but Pu Yi was born into a world that allowed him no initiative. The ironic joke was that he was emperor of nothing, for there was no power to go with his title, and throughout the movie he is seen as a pawn and victim, acted upon, exploited for the purposes of others, valued for what he wasn't rather than for what he was.The movie reveals his powerlessness almost at once: Scenes of his childhood in the Forbidden City are intercut with scenes from later in his life, when the Chinese communists had taken power, and he was seized and held in a re-education camp, where a party official spent a decade talking him through a personal transition from emperor to gardener - which was Pu Yi's last, and perhaps happiest, occupation.But the process in the communist jail actually starts many years earlier, in one of the most poignant scenes in the film, when young Pu Yi is given a bicycle and excitedly pedals it around the Forbidden City until he reaches its gates to the outer world, and is stopped by his own guards. He is an emperor who cannot do the one thing any other little boy in China could do, which is to go out of his own house.Bertolucci is able to make Pu Yi's imprisonment seem all the more ironic because this entire film was shot on location inside the People's Republic of China, and he was even given permission to film inside the Forbidden City - a vast, medieval complex covering some 250 acres and containing 9,999 rooms (only heaven, the Chinese believed, had 10,000 rooms). It probably is unforgivably bourgeois to admire a film because of its locations, but in the case of "The Last Emperor" the narrative cannot be separated from the awesome presence of the Forbidden City, and from Bertolucci's astonishing use of locations, authentic costumes and thousands of extras to create the everyday reality of this strange little boy.There is a scene early in the film when Pu Yi, seated on the Dragon Throne, attended by his minders and servants, grows restless, as small boys will do. He leaps impatiently from his seat and runs toward the door of the throne room, where at first a vast, billowing drapery (a yellow one - the color reserved only for the emperor) obstructs the view. Then the curtain is blown aside, and we see an incredible sight: thousands of the emperor's minions, all of them traditionally costumed eunuchs, lined up in geometric precision as far as the eye can see, all of them kowtowing to the boy.After he formally abdicates power in 1912, Pu Yi remains on the throne, a figurehead maintained in luxury for the convenience of the real rulers of China. A Scottish tutor named Reginald Johnston (Peter O'Toole) comes out to instruct him in the ways of Europe, and the youth (played in manhood by John Lone) becomes an anglophile, dreaming of "escaping" to Cambridge. Johnston advises him to escape instead into marriage, and he takes an empress (Joan Chen) and a concubine. In 1924, he is thrown out of the Forbidden City, and moves with his retinue back to his native Manchuria, then controlled by the Japanese. In a scene of great, elegant irony, Bertolucci shows him in Western clothes, a cigarette in hand, leaning on a piano and crooning "Am I Blue?"As World War II grows closer, Pu Yi grows increasingly irrelevant, except to the Japanese, who set him up briefly as their puppet in Manchuria. His wife becomes an opium addict and begins a dalliance with a lesbian Japanese spy; his old tutor returns to England; he gives himself over to a life of depravity and drifting, and then everything changes for him when the communists take control of China and he is captured by Russians, who turn him over to their new allies.We might expect the communists to sentence Pu Yi to death (a fate he confidently expected), but instead there is the re-education process, complicated by the fact that this grown man has never done anything for himself. He does not know how to tie his own shoes or turn off the tap after filling a glass with drinking water. When we see him at the end of the film, he is working as a gardener in Peking, and seems happy, and we assume that for him, at least, re-education was a success because it was essentially education in the first place, for a man whose whole life was directed toward making him impotent and irrelevant.In Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," one of the tycoon's friends says, "I was there before the beginning - and now I'm here, beyond the end." "The Last Emperor" ends with an extraordinary sequence, beyond the end, in which an elderly Pu Yi goes to visit the Forbidden City, which is now open to tourists. He sees a little boy sneak past the velvet rope and climb onto the Dragon Throne. Once that would have been a fatal offense. But the old man who was once the boy on that throne looks on, now, with a complex mixture of emotions. It is an inspired ending for the film, which never makes the mistake of having only one thing to say about the life of a man who embodied all of the contradictions and paradoxes of 20th century China.There aren't a lot of action scenes in "The Last Emperor," and little enough intrigue. (Even the Japanese spy isn't subtle: "I'm a spy, and I don't care who knows it," she tells the empress on their first meeting.) As in "Gandhi," great historical changes take place during "The Last Emperor," but, unlike Gandhi, the emperor has no influence on them. His life is a sad irony, his end is a bittersweet elegy. But it is precisely because so little "happens" in this epic that its vast and expensive production schedule is important. When we see those thousands of servants bowing to a little boy, for example, the image is effective precisely because the kowtowing means nothing to the boy, and the lives of the servants have been dedicated to no useful purpose.Everything involving the life of Pu Yi was a waste. Everything except one thing: the notion that a single human life could have infinite value. In its own way, the Dragon Throne argued that, making an emperor into a god in order to ennoble his subjects. And in its own way, the Chinese revolution argued the same thing, by making him into a gardener.Download here

Fantastic Four (Action,Adventure,Fantasy,Sci-Fi)

Alien (Horror,Sci-Fi,Thriller)

A word of warning...
In space no one can hear you scream.
In space no one can hear you scream... This Halloween in theatres, everyone will hear you scream (Re-Release)
It's Alien, the 8th passenger.
Just one can kill seven.
The scariest movie ever made... just got scarier. (UK 2003 re-release)
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While returning from a deep-space mission, the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo is awakened by a supposed SOS call from a system they are passing through. Descending to the planet's surface, they discover a strange derelict spaceship - the apparent source of the transmission - and one of the crew descends into the hold. What he finds are thousands of strange alien eggs. While examining one of the eggs, it hatches and the parasite inside attacks him. After returning to the Nostromo the crew takes off again to head for Earth. The alien parasite subsequently dies and all seems well again. But what no one knows is that another alien is quietly forming within its host - and when it emerges, the crew finds itself in serious trouble...
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At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.



In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.



Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.



One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").



A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.



Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.



"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."



Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."



Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.



Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.



A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).



The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.



The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).



Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone to Watch Over Me"), it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.



"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.Download here

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Drama,Family,Fantasy,Sci-Fi)

He is afraid. He is alone. He is three million light years from home.
His Adventure On Earth
The mystery. The suspense. The adventure. The call... that started it all.
The Story that Touched the World! (1985 re-release)
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While visiting the Earth at Night, a group of alien botanists is discovered and disturbed by an approaching human task force. Because of the more than hasty take-off, one of the visitors is left behind. The little alien finds himself all alone on a very strange planet. Fortunately, the extra-terrestrial soon finds a friend and emotional companion in 10-year-old Elliot, who discovered him looking for food in his family's garden shed. While E.T. slowly gets acquainted with Elliot's brother Michael, his sister Gertie as well as with Earth customs, members of the task force work day and night to track down the whereabouts of Earth's first visitor from Outer Space. The wish to go home again is strong in E.T., and after being able to communicate with Elliot and the others, E.T. starts building an improvised device to send a message home for his folks to come and pick him up. But before long, E.T. gets seriously sick, and because of his special connection to Elliot, the young boy suffers, too. The situation gets critical when the task force finally intervenes. By then, all help may already be too late, and there's no alien spaceship in sight.
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This movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. "E.T The Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie like "The Wizard of Oz," that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down. It tells a story about friendship and love. Some people are a little baffled when they hear it described: It's about a relationship between a little boy and a creature from outer space that becomes his best friend. That makes it sound like a cross between "The Thing" and "National Velvet." It works as science fiction, it's sometimes as scary as a monster movie, and at the end, when the lights go up, there's not a dry eye in the house.The Great Movies Read Ebert's essay on what makes "E.T." one of the great movies. "E.T." is a movie of surprises, and I will not spoil any of them for you. But I can suggest some of the film's wonders. The movie takes place in and around a big American suburban development. The split-level houses march up and down the curved drives, carved out of hills that turn into forest a few blocks beyond the backyard. In this forest one night, a spaceship lands, and queer-looking little creatures hobble out of it and go snuffling through the night, looking for plant specimens, I guess. Humans arrive-authorities with flashlights and big stomping boots. They close in on the spaceship, and it is forced to take off and abandon one of its crew members. This forlorn little creature, the E.T. of the title, is left behind on Earth--abandoned to a horrendous world of dogs, raccoons, automobile exhausts and curious little boys.The movie's hero is one particular little boy named Elliott. He is played by Henry Thomas in what has to be the best little boy performance I've ever seen in an American film. He doesn't come across as an overcoached professional kid; he's natural, defiant, easily touched, conniving, brave and childlike. He just knows there's something living out there in the backyard, and he sits up all night with his flashlight, trying to coax the creature out of hiding with a nearly irresistible bait: Reese's Pieces. The creature, which looks a little like Snoopy but is very, very wise, approaches the boy. They become friends. The E.T. moves into the house, and the center section of the film is an endless invention on the theme of an extra-terrestrial's introduction to bedrooms, televisions, telephones, refrigerators and six-packs of beer. The creature has the powers of telepathy and telekinesis, and one of the ways it communicates is to share its emotions with Elliott. That's how Elliott knows that the E.T. wants to go home.And from here on out, I'd better not describe what happens. Let me just say that the movie has moments of sheer ingenuity, moments of high comedy, some scary moments and a very sad sequence that has everybody blowing their noses.What is especially wonderful about all of those moments is that Steven Spielberg, who made this film, creates them out of legitimate and fascinating plot developments. At every moment from its beginning to its end, "E.T." is really about something. The story is quite a narrative accomplishment. It reveals facts about the E.T.'s nature; it develops the personalities of Elliott, his mother, brother and sister; it involves the federal space agencies; it touches on extra-terrestrial medicine, biology and communication, and still it inspires genuine laughter and tears.A lot of those achievements rest on the very peculiar shoulders of the E.T. itself. With its odd little walk, its high-pitched squeals of surprise, its tentative imitations of human speech, and its catlike but definitely alien purring, E.T. becomes one of the most intriguing fictional creatures I've ever seen on a screen. The E.T. is a triumph of special effects, certainly; the craftsmen who made this little being have extended the boundaries of their art. But it's also a triumph of imagination, because the filmmakers had to imagine E.T., had to see through its eyes, hear with its ears, and experience this world of ours through its utterly alien experience in order to make a creature so absolutely convincing. The word for what they exercised is empathy."E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" is a reminder of what movies are for. Most movies are not for any one thing, of course. Some are to make us think, some to make us feel, some to take us away from our problems, some to help us examine them. What is enchanting about "E.T." is that, in some measure, it does all of those things.Download here

Kleine Eisbär, Der (Adventure,Animation,Family)

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars (Action,Comedy)

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Clerks II (Comedy)

Always Open.
Leading the War Against "Counter" Terrorism
No Experience Necessary
No Missions, No Mutants, No Man of Steel, No Money, and No Bullshit Catchphrases
Standing For Truth. Standing For Justice. Standing Around.
They Still Don't Like You. In Fact, They Like You Even Less.
With no power comes no responsibility.
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The sequel picks up 10 years later. "It's about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it's time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex," Smith said during an interview at his Hollywood office. "It's: What happened to these dudes?"
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Shakespeare in Love (Comedy,Drama,Romance)

...A Comedy About the Greatest Love Story Almost Never Told...
Love is the only inspiration
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Romantic comedy set in London in the late 16th century: Young playwright William Shakespeare struggles with his latest work "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter". A great fan of Shakespeare's plays is young, wealthy Viola who is about to be married to the cold-hearted Lord Wessex, but constantly dreams of becoming an actress. Women were not allowed to act on stage at that time (female roles were played by men, too), but dressed up as a boy, Viola successfully auditions for the part of Romeo. Soon she and William are caught in a forbidden romance that provides rich inspiration for his play.
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There is a boatman in "Shakespeare in Love" who ferries Shakespeare across the Thames while bragging, "I had Christopher Marlowe in my boat once." As Shakespeare steps ashore, the boatman tries to give him a script to read. The contemporary feel of the humor (like Shakespeare's coffee mug, inscribed "Souvenir of Stratford-Upon-Avon") makes the movie play like a contest between "Masterpiece Theatre" and Mel Brooks. Then the movie stirs in a sweet love story, juicy court intrigue, backstage politics and some lovely moments from "Romeo and Juliet" (Shakespeare's working title: "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter").Is this a movie or an anthology? I didn't care. I was carried along by the wit, the energy and a surprising sweetness. The movie serves as a reminder that Will Shakespeare was once a young playwright on the make, that theater in all times is as much business as show, and that "Romeo and Juliet" must have been written by a man in intimate communication with his libido. The screenplay is by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, whose play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" approached "Hamlet" from the points of view of two minor characters."Shakespeare in Love" is set in late Elizabethan England (the queen, played as a young woman by Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth," is played as an old one here by Judi Dench). Theater in London is booming--when the theaters aren't closed, that is, by plague warnings or bad debts. Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is not as successful as the popular Marlowe (Rupert Everett), but he's a rising star, in demand by the impecunious impresario Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), whose Rose Theater is in hock to a money lender, and Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes), whose Curtain Theater has Marlowe and would like to sign Shakespeare.The film's opening scenes provide a cheerful survey of the business of theater--the buildings, the budgets, the script deadlines, the casting process. Shakespeare, meanwhile, struggles against deadlines and complains in therapy that his quill has broken (his therapist raises a Freudian eyebrow). What does it take to renew his energy? A sight of the beautiful Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a rich man's daughter with the taste to prefer Shakespeare to Marlowe, and the daring to put on men's clothes and audition for a role in Will's new play.Players in drag were of course standard on the Elizabethan stage ("Stage love will never be true love," the dialogue complains, "while the law of the land has our beauties played by pipsqueak boys"). It was conventional not to notice the gender disguises, and "Shakespeare in Love" asks us to grant the same leeway, as Viola first plays a woman auditioning to play a man and later plays a man playing a woman. As the young man auditioning to play Romeo, Viola wears a mustache and trousers and yet somehow inspires stirrings in Will's breeches; later, at a dance, he sees her as a woman and falls instantly in love.Alas, Viola is to be married in two weeks to the odious Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), who will trade his title for her father's cash. Shakespeare nevertheless presses his case, in what turns out to be a real-life rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene, and when it is discovered that he violated Viola's bedchamber, he thinks fast and identifies himself as Marlowe. (This suggests an explanation for Marlowe's mysterious stabbing death at Deptford.) The threads of the story come together nicely on Viola's wedding day, which ends with her stepping into a role she could not possibly have foreseen.The film has been directed by John Madden, who made "Mrs. Brown" (1997) about the affection between Queen Victoria and her horse trainer. Here again he finds a romance that leaps across barriers of wealth, titles and class. The story is ingeniously Shakespearean in its dimensions, including high and low comedy, coincidences, masquerades, jokes about itself, topical references and entrances with screwball timing. At the same time we get a good sense of how the audience was deployed in the theaters, where they stood or sat and what their view was like--and also information about costuming, props and stagecraft.But all of that is handled lightly, as background, while intrigues fill the foreground, and the love story between Shakespeare and Viola slyly takes form. By the closing scene, where Viola breaks the law against women on the stage, we're surprised how much of Shakespeare's original power still resides in lines that now have two or even three additional meanings. There's a quiet realism in the development of the romance, which grows in the shadow of Viola's approaching nuptials: "This is not life, Will," she tells him. "It is a stolen season." And Judi Dench has a wicked scene as Elizabeth, informing Wessex of his bride-to-be, "You're a lordly fool; she's been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you. It takes a woman to know it." Fiennes and Paltrow make a fine romantic couple, high-spirited and fine-featured, and Ben Affleck prances through the center of the film as Ned Alleyn, the cocky actor. I also enjoyed the seasoned Shakespeareans who swelled the progress of a scene or two: Simon Callow as the Master of the Revels; Tom Wilkinson as Fennyman, the usurer; Imelda Staunton as Viola's nurse; Antony Sher as Dr. Moth, the therapist.A movie like this is a reminder of the long thread that connects Shakespeare to the kids opening tonight in a storefront on Lincoln Avenue: You get a theater, you learn the lines, you strut your stuff, you hope there's an audience, you fall in love with another member of the cast, and if sooner or later your revels must be ended, well, at least you reveled.Download here

Love Song for Bobby Long, A (Drama)

The heart is a lonely hunter.
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Upon hearing of her mother's death, jaded teenage loner Purslane Hominy Will returns to New Orleans for the first time in years, ready to reclaim her childhood home. Expecting to find her late mother's house abandoned, Pursy is shocked to discover that it is inhabited by two of her mother's friends: Bobby Long, a former literature professor, and his young protégé, Lawson Pines. These broken men, whose lives took a wrong turn years before, have been firmly rooted in the dilapidated house for years, encouraged only by Lawson's faltering ambitions to write a novel about Bobby Long's life. Having no intention of leaving, Pursy, Bobby Long and Lawson are all forced to live together. Yet as time passes, their tenuous, makeshift arrangement unearths a series of buried personal secrets that challenges their bonds, and reveals just how inextricably their lives are intertwined.
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Big Fish (Adventure,Comedy,Drama,Fantasy)

An adventure as big as life itself.
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The story revolves around a dying father and his son, who is trying to learn more about his dad by piecing together the stories he has gathered over the years. The son winds up re-creating his father's elusive life in a series of legends and myths inspired by the few facts he knows. Through these tales, the son begins to understand his father's great feats and his great failings.
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From his son's point of view, Edward Bloom's timing is off. He spent the years before his son's birth having amazing adventures and meeting unforgettable characters, and the years after the birth, telling his stories to his son, over and over and over again. Albert Finney, who can be the most concise of actors, can also, when required, play a tireless blowhard, and in "Big Fish," his character repeats the same stories so relentlessly you expect the eyeballs of his listeners to roll up into their foreheads and be replaced by tic-tac-toe diagrams, like in the funnies.Some, however, find old Edward heroic and charming, and his wife is one of them. Sandra (Jessica Lange) stands watch in the upper bedroom where her husband is leaving life as lugubriously as he lived it. She summons home their son, Will (Billy Crudup). Will, a journalist working in Paris, knows his father's stories by heart and has one final exasperated request: Could his father now finally tell him the truth? Old Edward harrumphs, shifts some phlegm, and starts recycling again.Tim Burton directed the movie, and we sense his eagerness to plunge into the flashbacks, which show Young Edward (Ewan McGregor) and Young Sandra (Alison Lohman) actually having some of the adventures the old man tirelessly recounts. Those memories involve a witch (Helena Bonham-Carter) whose glass eye reflects the way her visitors will die, and a circus run by Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito), where he makes friends with characters such as Karl the Giant (Matthew McGrory).One day as Edward walks under the Big Top, he becomes mesmerized by his first glimpse of Sandra, and time crawls into slo-mo as he knows immediately this is the woman he is destined to marry.There are other adventures, one involving a catfish as big as a shark, but it would be hard to top the time he parachutes onto the stage of a Red Army talent show in China, and meets Ping and Jing, a conjoined vocal duo sharing two legs. Now surely all these stories are fevered fantasies, right? You will have to see the movie to be sure, although of course there is also the reliable theory that things are true if you believe them to be so; if it worked for Tinker Bell, maybe it will work for you.Because Burton is the director, "Big Fish" of course is a great-looking film, with a fantastical visual style that could be called Felliniesque if Burton had not by now earned the right to the adjective Burtonesque. Yet there is no denying that Will has a point: The old man is a blowhard. There is a point at which his stories stop working as entertainment and segue into sadism. As someone who has been known to tell the same jokes more than once, I find it wise to at least tell them quickly; old Edward, on the other hand, seems to be a member of Bob and Ray's Slow Talkers of America.There's another movie opening right now about a dying blowhard who recycles youthful memories while his loved ones gather around his deathbed. His wife summons home their son from Europe. The son is tired of the old man's stories and just once would like to hear the truth from him. This movie is course is "The Barbarian Invasions" by Denys Arcand, and it is one of the best movies of the year. The two films have the same premise and purpose. They show how, at the end, we depend on the legends of our lives to give them meaning. We have been telling these stories not only to others but to ourselves. There is some truth here.The difference, apart from the wide variation in tone between Arcand's human comedy and Burton's flamboyant ringmastery, is that Arcand uses the past as a way to get to his character, and Burton uses it as a way to get to his special effects. We have the sensation that Burton values old Edward primarily as an entry point into a series of visual fantasies. He is able to show us a remarkable village named Spectre, which has streets paved with grass and may very well be heaven, and has catfish as big as Jumbo, and magicians and tumblers and clowns and haunted houses on and on.In a sense we are also at the bedside of Burton, who, like Old Edward, has been recycling the same skills over and over again and desperately requires someone to walk in and demand that he get to the point. When Burton gives himself the guidance and anchor of a story, he can be quite remarkable ("Ed Wood," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Sleepy Hollow"). When he doesn't, we admire his visual imagination and skillful techniques, but isn't this doodling of a very high order, while he waits for a purpose to reveal itself?Download here

300 (Action,Drama,History,War)

Based on Frank Miller's Graphic Novel
Feel the wrath in IMAX
Pledged to crush!
Prepare for glory!
Spartans, tonight, we dine in hell!
Thirsty for Spartan blood!
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In 480 BC, the Persian king Xerxes sends his massive army to conquer Greece. The Greek city of Sparta houses its finest warriors, and 300 of these soldiers are chosen to meet the Persians at Thermopylae, engaging the soldiers in a narrow canyon where they cannot take full advantage of their numbers. The battle is a suicide mission, meant to buy time for the rest of the Greek forces to prepare for the invasion. However, that doesn't stop the Spartans from throwing their hearts into the fray, determined to take as many Persians as possible with them.
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"Toy Story" creates a universe out of a couple of kid's bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway. Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations. And the result is an visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.



For the kids in the audience, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Older viewers may be even more absorbed, because "Toy Story," the first feature made entirely by computer, achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it. Imagine the spectacular animation of the ballroom sequence in "Beauty and the Beast" at feature length and you'll get the idea. The movie doesn't simply animate characters in front of painted backdrops; it fully animates the characters and the space they occupy, and allows its point of view to move freely around them. Computer animation has grown so skillful that sometimes you don't even notice it (the launching in "Apollo 13" took place largely within a computer). Here, you do notice it, because you're careening through space with a new sense of freedom. Consider for example a scene where Buzz Lightyear, the new space toy, jumps off a bed, bounces off a ball, careens off of the ceiling, spins around on a hanging toy helicopter and zooms into a series of loop-the-loops on a model car race track. Watch Buzz, the background, and the perspective -- which stretches and contracts to manipulate the sense of speed. It's an amazing ride. I learn from the current Wired magazine that the movie occupied the attention of a bank of 300 powerful Sun microprocessors, the fastest models around, which took about 800,000 hours of computing time to achieve this and other scenes -- at 2 to 15 hours per frame. Each frame required as much as 300 MBs of information, which means that on my one-gigabyte hard disk, I have room for about three frames, or an eighth of a second. Of course computers are as dumb as a box of bricks if they're not well-programmed, and director John Lasseter, a pioneer in computer animation, has used offbeat imagination and high energy to program his. But enough of this propeller-head stuff. Let's talk about the movie. Lasseter and his team open the film in a kid's bedroom, where the toys come to life when their owner is absent. Undisputed king of the toys is Woody, a cowboy with a voice by Tom Hanks. His friends include Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles), Slinky Dog (Jim Varney), Hamm the Pig (John Ratzenberger) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts). The playroom ingeniously features famous toys from real life toys (which may be product placement, but who cares), including a spelling slate that does a running commentary on key developments (when Mr. Potato Head finally achieves his dream of Mrs. Potato Head, the message is "Hubba! Hubba!). One day there's a big shakeup in this little world. The toy owner, named Andy, has a birthday. Woody dispatches all of the troops in a Bucket of Soldiers to spy on developments downstairs, and they use a Playskool walkie-talkie to broadcast developments. The most alarming: The arrival on the scene of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), a space ranger. Buzz is the most endearing toy in the movie, because he's not in on the joke. He thinks he's a real space ranger, temporarily marooned during a crucial mission, and he goes desperately to work trying to repair his space ship -- the cardboard box he came in. There's real poignancy later in the film when he sees a TV commercial for himself, and realizes he's only a toy. The plot heats up when the human family decides to move, and Woody and Buzz find themselves marooned in a gas station with no idea how to get home. (It puts a whole new spin on the situation when a toy itself says, "I'm a lost toy!") And later there's a terrifying interlude in the bedroom of Sid, the dreadful boy next door, who takes his toys apart and reassembles them like creatures from a nightmare. (His long suffering sister is forced to hold a tea party for headless dolls.) Seeing "Toy Story," I felt some of the same exhilaration I felt during "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals, and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way. "Toy Story" is not as inventive in its plotting or as clever in its wit as "Rabbit" or such Disney animated films as "Beauty and the Beast"; it's pretty much a buddy movie transplanted to new terrain. Its best pleasures are for the eyes. But what pleasures they are! Watching the film, I felt I was in at the dawn of a new era of movie animation, which draws on the best of cartoons and reality, creating a world somewhere in between, where space not only bends but snaps, crackles and pops.Download here