It's Soft, But It Keeps The Atmosphere, The Chill, The Terror. "Let Me In" Mostly Surprises.

"LET ME IN" ☆☆☆

I was on the fence about this American remake, a noirish horror drama very much in the same style (and faithfully adapted near verbatim) as the original, the 2008 Swedish "Let The Right One In," about troubled kid Owen who befriends odd, nice Abby, the reclusive girl who lives next door to him in the same apartment complex, in a New Mexico winter in 1983. She only comes out at night and barefoot in the snowy complex playground where lonely, distressed Owen retreats and where both him and Abby will eventually meet. The hook, as it is in both versions, is that she is a vampire, with a solemn adult caregiver who pass themselves off as father and daughter.

I wanted to like this film more, and at times like it less. Director/writer Matt Reeves US version "Let Me In" (a US title change I prefer, actually) succeeds at recreating, and mostly staying true to, the chilly atmosphere and tone of that Swedish film, with the intriguing characters, visceral horror, and that effective ever-present bleak undertone that made that first film work so well. And "Let Me In" surprises us from the Swedish version. It works as a good horror movie. Before the lights went down, the theater previewed several upcoming horror/thriller potpourri, and I felt that most of them won't come close to the terror that their trailer might represent. "Let Me In" scares you, and it's probably this fall's ticket to the best horror shocks you'll get in a cinema right now. I had less feeling for movies like "My Soul To Take" or "Paranormal Activity 2" or "Saw 3D."

However, what I was on the fence about is that "Let Me In" often plays it softer than it's predecessor (a beef most critics had, and most who rated the film positively), and why that hits so hard is it does it with Owen and Abby, the two leads who we need to get seeped into. The scenes with them weren't deep enough, or frightening enough, or consequential enough, that it would matter, and in contrast the scenes with Owen and his sadistic school bully, Kenny, are better and work as half of the film's suspenseful punch. Whenever Kenny gave Owen the evil eye (and it was evil), and confronted him in the school locker room, and composer Michael Giacchino cued a deep single brass note every time, I feared for the worst. (SPOILER! And the ending when it seemed that Owen had won over Kenny and his posse, he plans back with vicious and near deadly force in a school indoor pool. Of course, as predicted, Owen is rescued and it doesn't go well for them.) The two adult leads, one played by Richard Jenkins as The Father and the other by Elias Koteas as The Policeman investigating the several murders linked to Abby, don't get as much thought put into them, or have as many scenes as they should. The Father maybe, but he leaves the film way too early, and less so The Policeman, who when he finally exits I didn't really care. (CONTINUED SPOILER 2! To me, both ended up just as more bodies on the mounting pile that Abby rakes.)

And what I liked mostly included that the film was recreated near flawlessly in tone and color palette, often better from the original, of dull blue interior and meek orange exterior (used to extreme in director Guillermo Del Toro's whimsical fantasy/horror mishmashes), and over-coated in absolute bleakness (the DP for this movie is Creig Fraser, who I think mostly imitated the work of DP Hoyte von Hoytema from the original, but while giving this film a crisper look. I liked the lens flares, honestly). And the setting transfers very well here with the original in a Sweden suburban, and here a New Mexico suburb, both snow laden and dismal. I like that you couldn't tell one setting from the other. Or one film from the other! And Hey, if you don't recognize the actors and have the film subtitled you might mistake this for the original! Is it all that bad that it mimics "Let The Right One In" to a fault, scene for scene, line for line, and picture for picture? Nah. Except that maybe why have a remake? Eh, I don't mind. In fact, I would have liked Reeves' film better had he gotten those leads right. He might have wanted to co-write the script or hand it off to someone else, is my thought. (In my defense, why I would have liked this version more is I saw "Let The Right One In" dubbed. It was terrible. I knew it killed it, but I never gave the movie a second chance in Swedish.)

(CONTINUED SPOILER 3! I also want to mention the political transfer now being Reagan's America of "good vs. evil." Reeves made a good choice here, and he makes a lot of good ones in the movie. Actually, my hopes rose in the first ten or so minutes of movie, from the first shots of a snowy, fogged, mountainous New Mexico, with swirling, whining sirens emerging from the distance, to the out of focus inserts of a brutally harmed man in a emergency vehicle hightailing it to the hospital, all the way up to The Policeman's sour visit, with Ronald himself on a TV screen talking it up about the "evil empire" that is the Soviet Union in his famous NAE speech...That meeting took place in March, so it's safe to say, in the dead of winter, that it was actually playing on everyone's TV's the time this movie took place. "Let Me In's" best is in these first ten minutes, after that great, fogged opening wide-shot and the last after this poor man takes a plunging fall out the hospital window to his death. The movie's opening had the kind-of European slow, calculated, terrified pace that the rest of the movie, though shot that way, seemed to lack. Reeves has the right aesthetics, but not the right punch. Those kids! Even though the kid actors, Kodi Smit-McPhee of "The Road," and Chloe Moretz of "Kick-Ass" fame, are two of the hottest young actors around, and they really are terrific here. They just needed to make us feel for them.)

I'll mention the score here: As much as I love Michael Giacchino, he could have killed half the music in this, because it mostly killed the suspense. Silence, at most times, works best. Except for that deep brass note! (CONTINUED SPOILER 4! Another great suspense scene when Owen stands up to Kenny, and the subsequent discovery of yet another body, at a frozen pond, was killer with Michael's music!)

(CONTINUED SPOILER 5! And, I think the one scene, if there was one, that left me more satisfied with "Let Me In" than I was is it's final, which ended the way the original did, too, and which I liked more here. That Owen is now in The Father's position. That it's a sad, viscous circle that maybe Abby can't seem to holt. Owen is damned, but blissfully destined he thinks, to look after Abby for as long as he lives. Or horrifically meet The Father's seemingly eventual deadly fate. )

"Let Me In" works as a genre horror film, and it jolts you and holds you, and never as much with Owen and that bully, (and should have with Owen and Abby) and not near as much as that near final scene in the pool, which was in the original, but was held for so long in this one I feared it would never happen. I was glad, and terrified, it did. (CONTINUED SPOILER 6! Of course Abby was going to save Owen and brutally murder his school enemies. It shows that they were meant to be, and that Owen is doomed to take care of Abby forever.)

Ah, vampire romance. Suck it Edward!

You Don't Get To 500 Million Friends On Facebook Without Being A Complete Ass-Wipe. "The Social Network" Is Smart, Quick, Witty And Dangerous.

"THE SOCIAL NETWORK" ☆☆☆ 1/2

It hit the web faster than it's subject matter. A movie about Facebook was bound to be made. It's a multibillion dollar web company. It's a worldwide craze. It's inception a story about Harvard college kids, guys barely twenty who made something that caused the cool internet-using world youth to bow to their knees. And it's a you-can't-believe all-powerful drama of mania, stardom and thunderous repercussion. A movie to ultimately be considered for Oscar glory, which - maybe before it's release, before the script was written, before anything but a greenlight and a simple, solid title, "The Social Network," were announced - was considered a great movie in the making. It's a no brainer for most. Sadly, I don't think "The Social Network" is a great movie. But it is one hell of a movie.

"The Social Network," David Fincher and Sony's seemingly award's worthy Facebook movie - with playwright/screenwriter-rise-to-fame Aaron Sorkin and a great young cast: Jessie Eisenberg as Facebook's billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) as his partner, soon-to-be cheated out best friend Eduardo Serverin, and Justin Timberlake as cool, savage Napster guy Sean Parker - is the hot, hip, dialogue-savvy and actor-menacing fast ride of the spiteful Harvard undergrad who launched the new fad social network phenomenon known as The Facebook, the youth-induced popularity and relationship status-fueled obsession it created (and soon to be worldwide ground-shaker), and the many equally mean, nasty and pissed-off Harvard smarties who wanted their share of the cut, or wanted blood, or both; including twin gentleman Harvard elites and crew-rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoos (played in double by Armie Hammer) and their meanie business colleague Diyva Narendra (Max Minghella, son of the late director Anthony Minghella), and also Eduardo himself, in two suits against Mark, both wanting large amounts of compensation.

This movie is about business and friendship relationships flaming and crumbling, lost to money, fame, and for Jessie Eisenberg's tragically naive Mark Zuckerberg, his closest relationships, and even his sought after recognition. And that's what's ironic and tragic about Zuckerberg. He doesn't know what he wants. He thinks he wants girls, wants money, wants fame, wants to get even. He doesn't know. We don't know. No one knows. Mark Zuckerberg is the most sadly tragic character of the movies this year. Is he a good guy? An asshole? A good asshole? A guy who tries to be nice, or an asshole? Or doesn't know he's nice or an asshole, or can't even know? Eisenberg does a bang-up job with this character: the fast-talking, juvenile, naive, hoodie-wearing, borderline ass-monger who can't keep any relationship close. And the only one he has to hold, his best buddy Eduardo - the only sane, grounded and nice guy (though not as brilliant as Mark) out of Mark's inanity and the boozy, sniffing party animal/smooth talker, bitch-slapping Napster starter Parker - who ends up suing for half the stake, and who Zuckerberg inadvertently, it seems, pushed out of partnership, and friendship. The movie's first, and best, scene has Zuckerberg trying, and failing like hell, to woo a girl, Erica Albright, in a Harvard pub with his fast-talk and smarts, and even impress her with maybe future credentials as a member in elite, hard-to-get-in fraternity clubs (including the Winklevoos' crew club). This scene brilliantly sets up "The Social Network." It's quick-cuing dialogue, it's bitter feuds, and this girl setting up Mark as an unknown by calling him an asshole. And, after this failed attempt to get laid, Mark's motivation, who thinks FaceMash, a precursor of Facebook, will be enough to get back at Erica for calling him the asshole. Maybe even get an apology. A kiss-and-make-up. It's something we might think is what Mark so obviously wants. In a scene where, in Facebook's early stages, he tries to get that apology from Erica, it just doesn't work. Is this why he took Facebook as far as he did? Why he wanted to get more friends than anyone? Why it so ultimately blew up in his face, where he lost his friends? And when Facebook hit that so sought after, cherished milestone mark of 100 million users, that he could give two shits about it? And why, at the end of the movie, he keeps hitting the refresh button?

This is a movie about the ridiculous rage even college guys can conjure up (if almost how accidental). About the ludicrous, ever-expanding opportunities of the internet. About the absolute insanity that the young (and old) obscenely care about who other people are screwing, who they're with, everyone else's personal preference and personal lives as much as profession, and, of course, the mortal consequences it takes. As smart as this movie is, as fast, witty, well-written and well acted and directed, it gains that as cool as the whole Facebook idea was, as many people joined (millions), and as many dough as it dished out (much more than the amount of users), it doesn't hold to the sardonic tragedy that relationships were lost, and for Mark the most important. That things as big as they are have their retribution. That as fast as something hits the waves, snowballs or grows to unimaginable possibilities, anyone will be ready to sue with a court order and as many accusations as can fit on a bill. Something as big as Facebook doesn't happen without consequence. It's a cool, but dangerous idea. People change in relationships. In relationship status. And in the computer age. Facebook users, beware. Will you think about Facebook, and social networking, the same way again? Will all of Mark Zuckerberg's friends delete him off their profiles, as portrayed as he is here? Will he finally feel the total mockery of having no one? Will this movie be the ironic martyr of Facebook? I don't think so. This move plays it more safe than it boasts. Anyway, all you Harry Potter suing, money hounds eat your hearts out!

David Fincher holds his signature approach for "The Social Network." All of his movies he mostly has a visible hand in it. Like many stylized directors, his camera is all over the place. But he lays back here and lets Sorkin's brilliant dialogue and the cast's terrific, super-quick delivery take over. And Sorkin has written his best script yet, after his great, break-out scrpit with "A Few Good Men," based on his stageplay, back in the 1993 ("You can't handle the truth!"). Sorkin's script for "Network" is just too smart, too witty, and too swift not be taken notice of. His characters, though twisted from their reallife counterparts (but real dialogue was taken from court transcripts!), are whole, and with the cast, ominous. Sorkin deserves an Oscar nod. If anyone in this movie deserves a nod, or a win, and almost all of them do, Sorkin should be the one to walk up to the podium.

As for that ominous cast, Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and the more wowing Justin Timberlake, and Hammer and Minghella are also great, hit the rights notes, cut Sorkin's lines with a sharp edge and read them faster than he put them on the page. It might be them, or Sorkin, or Fincher, who made them so brilliant here than in any other movie they've been in, but either way they were terrific.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's upbeat, suspenseful, sad, techo-crazy score helps comment the fast editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall. And that's commented by Fincher's quick-cutting style, no less. And there's his noticeable touch! Zuckerberg's narration, read super-sly, super-fast by Eisenberg, flies through the movies first twenty minutes (added with that brilliant, somber first scene), as the music jams and the editing jumps, through the launch of FaceMash, after a drunk Zuckerberg recruited his computer programming/hacking buddies to help bring the site viral through Harvard campus, including Joseph Mazzello (little Tim from "Jurassic Park," if you can recognize him) as Dustin and Patrick Maple as Chris, and of course, Eduardo, who initially didn't want the site live as nothing good might come of it. And he was right. It crashed the Harvard computer network! The scene intercuts with Mark, Eduardo, Dustin and Chris launching FaceMash with various Harvard kids, doing various naughty college-kid things, getting hold and watching, and letting, it spiral out of control...Poor Eduardo. He might not be the smart business major that he was (he did sign those papers), but he was a nice guy. Zuckerberg, you brilliant, genius ass-wipe!

"The Social Network" isn't that great movie we might have expected, not as perfect, or as masterful, as most to all critics raved it as. The movie was never as great as those first twenty minutes. The characters were maybe not as rounded as we might have wanted them to be. And maybe the movie might have been too quick for it's own good (I did have a hard time catching all that great back-and-forth quip in the first scene!), and maybe Trent Reznor's score (who's music for this movie has garnered a rave and following of it's own) might be too jazzy, too techno. And Fincher might have wanted to bring all he could to "The Social Network." That's one I don't think much of. If Fincher allowed himself to hold back for better of the material, than Reznor, the cast, and Sorkin, could too. I won't hold much on that idea. "The Social Network" didn't need style. It had it all it's own. But style is a dangerous idea.

See this movie, if you had to pick one. It's better than most garbage out right now. It might not be as well shot as most of that stylized trash. And I don't know if it was intentional, for Fincher to hold back on it too, but the cinematography was ugly! (Sorry, Jeff Cronenweth) But "The Social Network" is certainly better. Way better. And it will get those nominations. Oh, you bet.

A Rousing, Roaring Mediaeval Action Film That Works Up To Being A True Hero's Legend.

DVD REVIEW:

"ROBIN HOOD" (2010) ☆☆☆ 1/2

My article heading is what I said to sum up my review last summer for Ridley Scott's revamp of classic hero/folk tale "Robin Hood," the honest of men in evil King John's Mediaeval England of tax marauders who brimming with righteous longing fought for equality among Englanders by classically "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." In more light, adventurous, mostly romantic versions of "Robyn of the Hode," we got Errol Flynn, Disney Animation, and Sean Connery and Kevin Costner as the titular character playing it with silly-confidence or faux rough-n'-tough. Here - with the gruffest of the gruff Russell Crowe as Sir Robin and Ridley Scott, director of those other well made mediaeval sword n' shield epics, "Gladiator" and "Kingdom of Heaven," helming what undoubtably is the most expensive, madly-imagined, and breathiest of the bunch - "Robin Hood" is given a prologue of the most dangerous kind. Scott takes us to a more hell-bent, historically based (if it were historically based) world of Robin Hood showing him as an archer in arrogant, self-serving King Richard's army pillaging-it-up back to England after the Crusades (in this movie Richard The Lionheart isn't the wise-old King of the other, nicer tales). And through a series of happenstance and Robin's near-cunning, he soon finds himself in the Nottingham we all know, banding with his Merry Men, including Little John (here a big, stone-wall womanizer) and Friar Tuck (here humble but boozy), feuding with the Sheriff of Nottingham (the most sleazy culprit of the law if there ever was one), and wooing the maid Marion Loxley (not so maidenly, but a tough, takes-no-shit farmer). We don't get Robin stealing from those rich much, but better instead him the war hero in King John's resistance against the invading French - assisted by back-stabbing English Chancellor Godrey (Mark Strong, playing it up again as the villain) - and climaxing in a raging, mesmerizing battle with swords and arrows and knights and barons and forest kids fighting in the shallow waters of the English coast, crystal-clear in digital clarity and riveting in slow-motion photography. For the story of "Robin Hood," as big as it's interpreted here, it's a battle sequence we could only hope to get. And for the rest of the movie, as well.

Sure, this isn't the Robin Hood we're familiar with, but it's the best we've been given. Robin doesn't steal from the rich and give to the poor, but war and battle works just as well. And director Scott can do it so damn well. I'm going to mention this more, but could we hope to ask more? For Robin Hood? From Ridley Scott? From Universal dishing out, for Scott to make the movie of it's scale, $200 million, where the studio may hit bankruptcy after it's poor box office performance? No, I don't think so.

With raging action, enchanting backdrops, and tough characters that Scott is known for, all in his steely, but beautiful world of the chaotic past (again, if this were real history), this may not have been the Robin Hood of playful romance or of the charming archer and folk hero of those other films or stories, or even the poems that came to bring about the story, that you wanted, but it's certainly the movie with the type of scope, action (with those lush mountains, forests and fields of England, and the breathtaking fights that take place in it) and feuding drama we should, again, hope to get out of the material. I was excited to see it, and I was excited watching it. I loved this movie. I loved it for the action, the drama, the spectacle, the fact that the movie works on all these levels and looks as great as it does, with actors who play as great as they do, and a director and crew who know how to dazzle and excite they hell out of it's audience. However, Most critics, and audiences, too, thought the movie moved too slow, had bad interpretation of it's precious, familiar characters, and was too boggled in historic hogwash that might not have been true to begin with. For one, offering that prologue, though I thought great opening, was too much for the simple folk fable. But, instead, I say, why wasn't there more backstory? More King John tyranny, more Nottingham, and incidentally more Sherif of Nottingham, or (and you must be screaming it!) more of that dashing Robin swiftly and cunningly stealing those gold sacks and defiantly calling from the tree tops "Ha-Ha-Ha!" Why not? The movie could be longer, and better. Scott has made those good, near three hour monster epics before. Why deter of it here? Universal already gave away 200mil and signed away their last endorsement check, why not make this movie longer. The movie might have, I don't know for sure, there might have been more filmed. Anyway, why not some more Hood?

Would you want to sit through a three-hour movie if it wasn't "The Lord of the Rings?" No, I wouldn't think so. And if I was a regular Joe and not a film fanatic I probably wouldn't, either.

"Robin Hood" may not be dashing, but it's dazzling. It may not be romantic, but it's smart. It may not be colorful, but it's beautiful. It may not be bantering at us, but it's exciting and kicking the crap out of us.

The cast is top-motch, with Cate Blanchett as Marion, Max von Sydow as Sir Walter Loxley, William Hurt as Chancellor William Marshall, Eileen Atkins as the King's mother Eleanor, Danny Huston as King Richard, Oscar Isaac as King John, and Matthew Macfadyen as the Nottingham Sheriff (in what little scenes he is given). Russell Crowe brings the mix of tough and suave that we want in our Robin Hood. And we couldn't forget Mark Abby or Kevin Durand as Friar Tuck or Little John, or Alan Doyle or Scott Grimes as Robin's other Merry Men. Mediaeval drama is compelling, especially in the hellish back-drop of historic warring countries, and especially with this great cast we have here.

And a great immersive script by Brain Helgeland, who continues to prove he can write in any genre, for any style; again, should we even note, that wonderful brazen cinematography by Scott's key, key, collaborator, John Mathieson, who helped Scott achieve the vision that makes him the Ridley Scott of mad historic fantasy. Oh, that gritty, blessed style! (And if that brings you down, maybe the movie's more earth tones will keep you in..."Robin Hood" can't be too dark, can it?) There's Robin's iconic music - and all hero's should have melodies, even ones as dark and foreboding as here - by Marc Streitenfeld, a new Scott collaborator and first-timer for a movie on this scale. He did a fine job. And, as always, editing by Peitro Scalia, production design by Arthur Max and costumes by Janty Yates. All part of Scott's impeccable crew. Like Spielberg, or Nolan, or even Kubrick, who couldn't hope to achieve their monumental vision or success without their own great crews. "Robin Hood" couldn't have succeeded, either.

Forget the pans. Out of most mediaeval epics, this is by far the best one recently, and the most crowd-pleasing (so were "Gladiator" and the other critically distasted "Kingdom of Heaven"). There are worse movies of this type, like "Pathfinder," "In the Name of the King" or the recent "Centurion."... And could you spend any more money on any other worse movies on DVD or in theaters?

Maybe "The Last Airbender," a genre misfire. Or "Vampires Suck." I haven't seen it, but I heard it sucks. Yeah, I went there.

ANOTHER NOTE: The DVD Unrated Version has some new footage, about 16 minutes or so. In deleted, now included, scenes we see more of the mangy orphan thieves, the Sherwood Forest Kids, and with them Marion and Robin helping and earning their trust, and with Marion similar to Wendy and the Lost Boys. With Robin in one of these good scenes is captured by the kids, but convinces them of his trust and worth the only way Robin of the Hood can, the whole thing similar to Peter Pan (maybe that was why it was cut. Who knows?). Macfadyen's Sherif even shows up for more screen time when Robin and Marion risk to save a poor calf from a mud pit. Sherif looks on disdainfully as Robin courts Marion, saving her from the mud pit too, after she herself gets stuck (what a stubborn woman, that Maid Marion!). I liked that scene, and all the rest, too, and might even have liked the deleted scenes not included had I taken the time to watch them. Hey, this could have been the better movie after Scott had wanted, and we had, too. "Kingdom of Heaven" was assembled in a Director's Cut after initial release, making that the epic Scott masterpiece, with the more immersive subplots and bang-up action, we should have seen in theaters. Again, who knows? But, I still wonder if there was more... "Robin's Hood's" subplots were deleted from the movie, I'm sure, for pace reasons, but it's worth the extra viewing time. You might like the movie better. I did. And I hope you do.

Show Some Love For "Persia"

DVD REVIEW:

"PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME" ☆☆☆

I haven't written on this blog in a while. I feel I owe you that. However, not due to lack of interest, or boredom, or anything close to not sharing my thoughts on movies with you all. The fact is I'm broke. Put in a corner. Shamed. Why? I'm a recently graduated, out of work college student, and for the past summer since my completion at school I've done little to jack but flock to the movies and spend all of what spare money I had on them, all for the joy of telling you about how I feel on the latest releases. (And how could a movie buff not resist going to the movies?) But hey! Things are looking up for me recently! After I spent all my change and haven't had a chance to see anything, but instead sit on my butt scouring the internet day and night, thinking about writing a screenplay but not even getting past keying the slug line, I had a sobering thought. With no movies to see, with no basis to write about them, and nothing else better to do - and, seemingly more final, a dead car that I've somehow been waiting with horror to ultimately give out - I finally decided it was time to leave the cold coop that is Chicago for the warm, high-altitude climate that is the West, or more importantly for us movie guys, Los Angeles - Hollywoodland. I fly out this coming Sunday. But no fears! The great thing about writing internet blogs is you can do it from anywhere. All I need is my laptop. And a movie theater...

Anyway, enough say-so on my soon-to-be rising multimillion dollar movie career, lets talk about movies. And in this case, "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time." First off, as you may know, it didn't do much. Not for box office, or for critics. Consensus is more like a virus than just tons of infected cells getting together to cause one; as soon as one scathing review hits, all the rest are bound to follow and infect as well. Critics, and audiences, too, love to bash movies, especially ones that are expensively mounted, fixedly marketed, and, like most big-budget movies, meant to start an ever continuing successful franchise. And certainly ones that plummet and shatter into a million pieces.

No, "Prince of Persia" didn't start a franchise, and with a modest income of $335m worldwide it probably only just made everything it had spent with little to gain. And that makes us all happy and relieved, for some reason. Because don't we want to see a big, calculated risk fail? For huge, Hollywood summer tyrants, often based on popular, existing material, to fall off there tentpoles? For Disney, Jerry Bruckheimer and Jake Gyllenhaal to finally have a fluke at the box office? And why? Because we should be jealous at such ludicrous numbers that they get? That it's such a lavish production, made with all the best intentions, with some of the most talented guys in showbiz hurdling their craft at what we secretly hope will be a embarrassing failure, because we get off at seeing huge Zeppelins crash and burn, despite how lovingly and meticulously they are built, sometimes from the ground up?

"Prince of Persia" wasn't built from the ground up, but despite that it doesn't deserve such nonsensical criticism. It's a good show, often spectacular and dazzling, but all the while an entertaining medieval fantasy that might be the most beautifully constructed Middle-Eastern romantic epic ever made. And I really think it's only flaw, though quite major, is it's lack of concentration on character, and also relies too heavily on the action and glamour and audacious stunt work. But it's a fine effort, written with no action/fantasy cliches or meaningless gimmicks in sight, and directed with canny fun by Brit Mike Newell (of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"). The movie is more often decent and wittingly written than ridiculously penned, the actors play with hammy panache, and it all results in just pure over-the-top epic fun. Everyone seemed to have had a blast making this summer movie.

"Prince of Persia" isn't exactly memorable, nor does it leap the bounds of it's formula, like popular McGuffin quest adventures Indiana Jones or The Lord of the Rings, but it's a bang for your buck. It might not be worth that second viewing, but it's certainly worth the first. Give it a chance. You can spend more than a dollar at the Redbox or $4.99 a month on Netflix. Like $10 at the theater?... And hey, haven't you been meaning to see this on DVD anyway?

Dreams within dreams, within dreams, within a well-constructed movie labyrinth; "Inception" is a movie lover's paradise

"INCEPTION" ☆☆☆☆

I didn't expect anything out of "The Dark Knight" when it was released two summers ago. At least, not anything spectacular.

I was at work opening day, and my friend had phoned me vigorously until I finally picked up on break, in a bathroom stall. He said he had just seen it the night before, at Thursday midnight (breaking an arrangement we had to see it together), and excitedly stated that once I got off shift that we must go and see it, must, right then, not a second sooner. For him to bathe in movie honor again, for me to go to the best moviegoing experience of my life (for him, anyway). He also didn't leave out that it was the best, the best, movie he had ever seen. Several times, in fact. And several times more on the car ride over to the theater. Even then, sitting in what was a packed movie house at early morning, my expectations weren't all too high. I had wanted to see "The Dark Knight" - the new, then second and highly-anticipated Batman movie proclaimed a comic-book movie masterpiece after exploding reviews had stamped it, with a red-hot poker, "genius" and "masterful" - but wasn't as excited to see it as those critics were, and decided to wait, after my friend's dire persistence, until the following Saturday to finally watch it.

And, like every critic and movie fanboy, found "The Dark Knight" a fantastic entertainment. Not really a bat-masterpiece (as some have coined), but instead a well done, thoroughly cooked, genre crime film, and succeeding better as a full-out immersive experience. The cleverly layered, vigorous intercutting caper, captured in downtown Chicago/Gotham City in all it's architectural glory, with more wow-induced stunts, exploding car-chases, an involved (though not impressive) ensemble cast, and vamped-up script, then any smaller budgeted crime drama would get; and all-out villainy run by Heath Ledger's crazy/master madman Joker, a role that popularly proved his talent as a diverse actor, and prematurely after his sudden death only months before the movie's release. And director, co-screenwriter Christopher Nolan, who helmed the first franchise reboot "Batman Begins" (of which I didn't like as much), and turned the Batman legacy itself into the majestic noir fable of youthfully wronged millionaire/vigilante Bruce Wayne, and his caped alter-ego Batman, ridding Gotham City of evil tyranny, something far from the comic-books, or even Tim Burton's fun Goth spin, or even beyond the dreams of what executive producer Michael Uslan had dreamed, who had made it his sole goal to produce a "serious" Batman film.

And still, even after "The Dark Knight," going into Christopher Nolan's new massive-scale noir/science fiction blockbuster, "Inception," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and another array of popular actors, in the all-too-real world of ambit and limitless dreams, I didn't expect any type of greatness out of it. That Nolan could be the next Spielberg, or Lucas, or Kubrick, and that "The Dark Knight" was just a once-every-so-often success, possibly proving Nolan as the heir to Spielberg, and those others, as the king of popular, and mind-bending, movie entertainment.

And, still, I was wrong again. "Inception" is the type of mass-popular entertainment (or extravaganza), and quality film, with the level of complexity and depth, that so immerses us, like the world of dreams itself, that we can't possibly get out of it, or want to. A world of tangible dreams, of actual boundaries and mathematical sureness, that the dangers are all-too-real. If you get hurt in a dream, you feel the pain. If your body moves while you dream, your dream-self moves with it. Like Joseph Gorden-Levitt, fist-fighting in a classy hotel corridor as the space turns over and about like a fun-house circle, and Gordon-Levitt floats in the air like an astronaut, as if hovering on a shuttle in orbit, as his real body goes through free fall, all the while spinning out of control, and for us in agonizing/mesmerizing slow-motion, ticking down the time until all drastically ends. Ends into what? Into death. And when you die in a dream, you may not die in real life, but you go "in limbo," the dreaded unconscious hyper-sleep where dream and reality merge, and minutes seem like years, moments like life times, where whole cities are built from the ground up and crumble in front of your eyes, and where you may very well lose your sanity. These are the very real consequences of Leo DiCaprio and his skilled team of "extractors," dreamscape specialists who invade the minds of unsuspecting persons and steal their "secrets" and sell to the respected employer, and who here brave the mind of rising-up young business mogul Robert Fisher Jr. (Cillian Murphy) to instead "plant" an idea, called "inception," so he would believe it is his own, and by-and-large change the world, and cause the dismantle of his inherit conglomerate. "Inception" is a tricky business, to successfully and convincingly make believe the concept was the person's own, something that could easily be traced back to the dreamer, or "architect," of whom creates the actual physical world of the dream itself to bring the hapless subject in to make feel at home, or believe that his dream is his, is benign, while these extractors go about inhabiting and manipulating like a virus, a comparison DiCaprio's master extractor Cobb believes is similar to what ideas actually are. But it's also dangerous, with "projections" that come in with the dreamer's emotionally compromised subconscious as skilled assassins or deadly loved ones as guilty memories; and delving into layers, dreams within dreams, to further deepen the sleep of Fisher, and to subject him to the weaknesses of his own subconscious, in order to successfully plant the idea. But it could mean for Cobb and his team, as well as Fisher himself, to fall into limbo, and never wake again.

The movie "Inception" is like the various layers of the dream, well-constructed, diligently detailed, and wholly convincing. A movie that once it gets further into the dreams with Cobb, into the various levels and depthless pits of the psyche, drags us along with it, drenching us in it's complexity and network of catacombs and mazes. In "Inception's" ultimate payoff climax, where it excitingly careens us on the edge of our seats, Cobb's crew goes deeper than they ever imagined, having to get out not just three layers, but four; a van-free fall, a death-spinning hallway, a snow-glad mountain fortress shootout, and Cobb's own memories, his dead wife Mal's fatal lair of hate and despair. Like "The Dark Knight," Nolan, with his swift editor Lee Smith and Hans Zimmer's booming music cues, madly intercut between it all, and by this point the movie becomes so engrossing that by the end of it you might feel walking out of the theater you were in an unescapable dream, living in a virtual hell, and that the only way to get out is death, or worse.

"Inception's" main architect is Chris Nolan, the writer/director, who knows the world he is creating, loves it to death (he spent years writing the screenplay), and stylishly takes us through it like this were a cool "Ocean's Eleven" heist, and Dicaprio and team, Gordon-Levitt, Murphy, Ellen Page, Ken Wantanbe, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, and a group of other well known actors, are the George Clooney's, Brad Pitt's, and Matt Damon's. And with Lee Smith's rapid editing, Hans Zimmer's ferocious synthetic/orchestral score, Wally Pfister's steely photography, and Guy Hendrick Dyas ironclad production design, puts us into this brazen and bold world just as well. And for Nolan personally, "Inception" is a much bolder, bigger, and hugely imagined film than even "The Dark Knight," and far better than "Batman Begins" and his "The Prestige," another mind-cruncher about merciless rival magicians, and their highly sought after secrets, in early 1900's London. And you'll all have to tell me about "Memento," a supposed mind-boggler masterpiece (other than maybe "Inception," no doubt), by a novice Nolan, I haven't seen (I'll get around to it).

While it has a cleverly structured script and deft directing from Nolan, I still feel there were flaws in "Inception." The characters, even DiCaprio's Cobb with his visual representation of his guilt ridden conscious as Marion Cotillard's tragic Mal, are all pretty weak, and aren't as deep as the dreams they so immensely dive into. And the first half of the film, before the movie takes us into Fisher's mind with Cobb and team, and so entrapping us, was a bit slow-paced with insipid exposition (just not as cool or satisfying as "Ocean Eleven" expositional planning). Not a bad first half at all, but put "Inception" off to a less-than-fantastic start.

And the ending, even with how clever and perfectly whole an idea that brings all of the thing full circle, was too predictable, and I saw coming even before the movie started. It could have been how discreetly the film was marketed that I was looking for something to be a little off, or maybe I was more clever than the idea itself. Anyway, the ending is perfect, and beautifully symbolized. You couldn't go wrong.

Many critics will see this film again, and many moviegoers, too, and I certainly will. Not really to catch anything I've missed (actually, "Inception" isn't as mind-bending or twisty-turny as most have said it is, at least not in the film's plot), but just to experience it again, and see a film that is a true movie lover's delight. Chris Nolan I don't think is the next great pop director, but loves the movies just as much as we do. He knows what we want to see.

To submerge us in ecstatic movie dreams. Go see it. Go see it twice. "Inception" is a marvel of a movie.

RECENT MOVIES: Disney's new "based on" fantasy flick, "The Girl" returns, and "Winter" chills you to the bone

"THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE" ☆☆

All the "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" needs, Walt Disney's new kid-action fantasy, is the beloved "Fantasia"/Mickey Mouse cartoon (and famous classical piece), and a similar sequence in the updated movie itself, to merit an $150 million budget, with extensive CGI, high-powered car-chase stunts through downtown Manhattan, and Nic Cage stylishly getting us through it all as centuries old, cool master sorcerer Balthazar, who needs to find the Prime Merlinian, a foretold young wizard who will one day destroy evil before they vanquish the world by rising the undead (called the, uh, Rising) and killing everybody. And Disney, as well as director Jon Turtletaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (the dream-team that did "National Treasure") seem to think that's all they should offer. It isn't good enough, for adults or kids, to the classy entertainment that this show, and Nic Cage's Balthazar, thinks it is.

College-guy Dave Stutler, played by type-cast dweeb Jay Baruchel, is "the chosen one" who will, and must, stop the evil, and who, just like us, can't seem to get why he should. What does he owe to save mankind from zombies and the supposedly very dangerous, formidable sorcerers and sorceresses, including Salem's own Abigail Williams, who have been inside an ancient doll, called the Grimhold, for so many years? Because he is The Chosen One? Because he is a nerdy dork who needs to prove his worth, and get the girl, of whom he's wanted to woe since he was ten, when Balthazar himself halted the process by introducing himself into Dave's ordinary life with a silver dragon ring and a destiny that means confronting and once and for all stopping evil for the sake of good, where all else will fail? Why should he care? In the moment where Dave would walk away from Balthazar, and sorcery, and his supposed magical destiny, he decides to stay, because he thought that the magic was cool. Is that why we should care, too? Why we should stay in the movie theater? Because we thought the magic was cool?

Actually, I didn't think the visual effects were that impressive.

The Disney short, with Paul Dukas' famously whimsical orchestral piece, is a much better entertainment, and far better aesthetic piece, then the movie it's "based on," with Mickey as the Apprentice, in his notable blue-starry pointy hat and red cloak, controlling a mop magically to pail water, when the whole thing turns disastrously wrong as the mop multiplies to hundreds and swamps The Sorcerer's dungeon with raging water, and Mickey desperately trying to stop it, and the majestic Sorcerer coming to halt the mad procession in one swift, masterful hand, just in the nick of time. "Fantasia's The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is one of the world's best known pieces of perfectly synced images, animation, and classical music (from a guy who doesn't know much about classical music or animation), and could beguile me on dozens of viewings then 2010's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" could only halfway through.

Like most blockbuster entertainment this year, it's a poor movie, with uninspired acting/directing that's too hammy, with an uninspired script (with that great inspired piece?) that's just as fuddled in plot gimmicks and devices like most of kid entertainment out right now, and that some kids may find too silly to even like. A flying, steal eagle? Chinese dragon puppets coming to life? The Grimhold? The Rising? Abigail Williams? The only motive to bad-guys is to take over the world? And the only one to stop them is "the chosen one?" Who is always a young hero? Magic shouldn't exist and be known to anyone, but the climatic battle blasts out in the middle of Washington Square?

And "The Prime Merlinian!?" Give me a break.

"THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE" ☆☆☆

Not as good as it's predecessor, the smart, chilling Swedish whodunit crime thriller "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," about morally wronged Lisbeth Salander, the virulent young goth-girl with a scared childhood, and her fare colleague and on-and-off lover, Mikael Blomkvist, the assiduous "Millennium" magazine editor and amateur sleuth, solving murder while we get closer to Lisbeth's past, on her reason's for despising men (though loving Blomkvist), and confronting new villains for sake of others and her horrible past. That first film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev with screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and the acclaimed novel by Stieg Larsson, is a a well-crafted thriller, with terrific suspense and compelling characters, Mikael Blomkvist, the various suspects, involving Nazis and old family feuds, and of course Lisbeth herself, who overtakes her chaperone, vicious rapist Nils Bjurman, and as we learn more about her she steadily and mercilessly begins to unwind. In "The Girl Who Played With Fire," Lisbeth is framed for murder of "Millennium's" new reporter and his girlfriend, as they were uncovering sex trafficking, and while that is something Lisbeth would be against someone has placed her prints at the scene of the crime. But why? And why does it involve Bjurman? And is it to do more with her troubled family history? She and Mikael try to solve it, while Lisbeth is hunted by a large albino with an abstinence for pain, the cops try to track her down, and Mikael begins to uncover the mystery of who is "Zala."

"Girl Who Played With Fire" isn't as catching a story as "Girl With Dragon Tattoo," and this one, now directed by Daniel Alfredson and written by Jonas Frykberg (though with the same book/writer in the novel series) isn't as chilling or involving, and it could be the director wasn't as steadfast or the book was just weaker than the first. Anyway, I didn't like this one as much. But it's still an engaging mystery/suspense movie, with a throughly engrossing climax (although it ends too soon). I think we can see the payoff in "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" do better, and aren't seconds in trilogies weaker anyway?

"WINTER'S BONE" ☆☆☆ 1/2

An indie film, with a true indie cast and crew, that relies on it's sheer force to persuade. Persuade us of 17-year-old Ree Dolly's (a great Jennifer Lawrence) plight to keep her younger brother and sister, Sonny and Ashlee, from depravity in rural Missouri, where the winters are stark chill and devoid of any life, warmth, solitude, and sense of security. Where drugs causes her dad to go missing, and his involved family business to become an unflinching barricade to the truth, of horrible red-neck monsters, higher on the chain of command like an organized mob of true killers. Ree can't stop finding her father, even if it means her own safety. The two younger Dolly's will go hungry, and missing dad, Jessup Dolly, put up their home as collateral for his bond, and a ditched court date will submit Ree, her siblings, and disabled mom, to the streets if he doesn't show, which is why Ree has to find him, and why she has no choice. The army won't take her, the possible economy down-spiral can't get her a job, and the seemingly endless miles of vacant, skeletal woods, rundown lower-class houses, and the bitter dead of winter that seeps hope out of us just as it might Ree, is why she no choice, and why she can't give up. Braving the haunting rural landscape and the vicious cretins that will go to any lengths to keep their drug trafficking out of the law, Ree needs to find her father, of whom she hates, her drug-induced, cooking, good-for-nothing lowlife of a dad, to keep Sonny and Ashlee feed, and warm for winter. With only the help of friendly, giving neighbor Sonya, girlfriend Gail, and well-meaning uncle Teardrop, where Ree's and his relationship is something odd and special to behold, can only keep Ree up for so long before she makes her own choices.

However, "Winter's Bone" ends the way you would expect, everything resolved, and things back to the way they were, which doesn't defeat the movie, but keeps it from a truly perfect moral conclusion. Ree never makes a choice. Well, if only to stay with her sibs and not go into the army, something she has always wanted (with 40,000 big ones to help her family along), but we'd expect that. (SPOILER ALERT!: Maybe losing the home, giving Ashlee and Soony away, and going out on her own, in those endless, dark, dank, unforgiving woods, to an uncertain future, would have suited it's story better) Anyway, the film relies on it's impact, on Ree, and those woods, to frighten us, and chill us, to the bone. It works like hell.

RECENT MOVIES: Evil needs to be more evil, Night descends, but Knight makes us laugh, Karate Kid makes us cheer, and Ridley Scott reglorifies a legend

"DESPICABLE ME" ☆☆ 1/2

A better title than idea, about underground-suburbanite, James-Bondian villain Gru (who in the advertising trailers looks like the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock) trying to steal the moon, and beat his nemesis, younger, pretentious nerd, Vector, for the # 1 spot as super-baddie of the world. And in order to do so adopts three darling orphans, hopeful, but disdainful Margo, troublesome Edith, and all around cuttie pie Agnes, from the local shelter, and he hopes to use the kids and just as easily dispose of them for his master plan. And the kids hope to warm Gru's heart, and ours, to find the adoptive father in Gru they, nor he, never knew he had. Can we hope, too?

The gags are all funny and relatively light (no potty humor, thank you), the story follows a good arc, the characters are rounded okay (I had my problems with Mr. Nerfario, who jumped from compliant gadget maker of Gru to being his aggressive outer conscious), but the sentiment, however trying to get there, doesn't pull our heart strings enough. "Despicable Me" could have used deeper moments with Gru and the kids, having finer ground to feel for them. And with that, to make the movie better from there, a bit more whimsy, more funny, and more character stuff. Maybe make Vector less pompous and idiotic and more venomous, and evil banker Mr. Perkins more menacing making him the real villain of the movie, and orphanage warden Miss Hattie more like the abominable chaperones of "Harry Potter's" the Dursleys; and why isn't Gru more of a spiteful scoundrel than just a troublesome school bully on the playground, possibly making him a more attractive, or unattractive, character? The little yellow minions were funny enough, but could have been just as hysterical as Universal had marketed them to be. The girls, Margo, Agnes and Edith, are easily the most interesting because they are the center of the human factor in this (and they are really cute!). But despite them, we still needed more bittersweet.

I didn't like the idea, but it works enough, I just would have wanted to see the "Despicable" that was in the title, with the more balancing wit and emotion. The pop songs were good, though. Groove on, Pharrell Williams!

"THE LAST AIRBENDER" ☆

M. Night Shyamalan is a writer, director, and producer with the privilege to even write, direct and produce at all. A once talented and intriguing moviemaker, Shyamalan is now a confectuous self-promotor whose works turn inside out once torn apart by outside common sense, aka the critics who once admired him and the audience who flocked to every original pic he dished out. Since then, he has fallen victim to his own "genius," making movies that are flat, poor and fail on every level. M. Night's latest, the CGI fantasy "The Last Airbender," a property that he didn't originally create, is another on his failing resume, and possibly is his worst. There is no going into it much, everything about the movie stinks.

Except for the crew: DP Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings); effects house ILM, with Pablo Helman as the VFX supervisor (Stars Wars, among various films for Steven Spielberg); production designer Philip Messina and costumer Judianna Makovsky. They all do top-notch work here, and composer James Newton Howard's score made the movie a little better at times.

Still, even with all that talent, "The Last Airbender" is atrociously bad. Sorry kids, go back to watching reruns of the animated show...That includes you, too, Night.

"KNIGHT AND DAY" ☆☆☆

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz serve up classic hollywood actor chemistry, entertaining the audience and allowing us to laugh at the very reckless/brainless plot that doesn't make much sense. That's why it works. Still, the movie could have used more logic.

"THE KARATE KID" (2010) ☆☆☆

I haven't seen John G. Avildsen's 80's "The Karate Kid," another rise-up underdog story that got audiences as easily as Avildsen's own "Rocky" did, and this new "Karate Kid" - directed by Harald Zwart with terrific newcomer Jaden Smith (just like his dad, Will Smith, and he was also the film's Executive Producer) as Kung-Fu Kid Dre Parker and Jackie Chan (possibly the role he was born to play, he just needed to wait a few years) as Zen Master Mr. Han - is another grandstander as well. It's the type of movie, with a house-raising finale, we've seen before, a hundred, a thousand times, where the underdog overcomes his fears, wins in glory, earns the respect of his opponents, friends and family, and gets the girl. We've seen it so much we know the formula better than Hollywood does, and if it doesn't please us the way a good crowd-pleaser should, than we can't really say it was pleasing at all. "The Karate Kid" follows that tradition, and in turn earns our respect, that we know what we want in an underdog sports drama, to jump and cheer and rout for Dre Parker and be charmed by him and be touched by him, and feel and be mystified by Mr. Han. This "Karate Kid" hugely succeeds on that level. The movie could have been shorter, though.

"ROBIN HOOD" (2010) ☆☆☆ 1/2

This is the glorified version of Robin Hood, done in that terrifically chilled, gritty and romantically mesmerizing style that director Ridley Scott can only do and all others, mostly patchy imitators, fail at. Of lush landscape, cold and mystifying woods, formidable fortresses, and bang-up action. Scott has made some of his best work when doing high genre works like this: "Alien"/"Blade Runner" for science fiction, "American Gangster" for the old-fashioned 70's crime drama, and "Kingdom of Heaven"/"Gladiator" for the medieval epic, and the styles of those, as well as Scott's signature retro pace, is some of the best you'll see around.

A great A-list cast, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt, Max von Sydow, among others, with Scott's impeccable crew, and Brain Helgelad penning the script (the guy who wrote "Mystic River"), create the best Robin Hood yet.

I could care less that it tries to be historically accurate (What?), "Robin Hood" is a rousing, roaring medieval action film that works up to being a true heros' legend.

However, I would have preferred more of Robin stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Maybe that comes with the half-baked history.