I saw the Dark Knight this weekend. I thought it was fantastic. It was different than Iron Man... Iron Man had a bit more glitz and glamor in the filmmaking - it shined a bit more... as did the Hulk - but I really liked them both and this was a great summer for superhero films.

Ledger's Joker is not Nicholson's Joker... Ledger is more The Killing Joke Joker than Burton/Nicholson's vision of the character - which was much more wacky and lacked any real depth. In fact, the whole story is reminiscent of The Killing Joke. That is why I liked it. As much as I liked Burton's take, I always hoped someone would make The Killing Joke.

I think Eckhart was fantastic as Dent and genuinely upsetting as the butt of Joker's joke - as it were.

I liked this because it was dark and the Joker was the complete psychopath that I'd hoped he would be.

I was also happy that Gotham wasn't the same warped updated take on a Burtonesque city that it was in Batman Begins. They went with the city as is, for the most part.

And, being that I live and work in Chicago, it was great to see familiar places and faces... and I was only slightly bummed to see the section and the role I auditioned for... they obviously decided to go a different way... and visually, it made sense.

Well here is my two bits worth....

Movies I have seen this year in a particular order:
These are listed in the order of which ones I go the most enjoyment out of. I think that all are good movies with some provisos.

1. Kung Fu Panda - Hilarious. This is the movie I laughed the most at. I literally laughed so hard my glasses fogged up.
2. Leatherheads - I love corny/cheesy movies and this one fit the bill. Cliched to the max but I loved it because of rather than in spite of that.
3. Wall-E - It's rather shocking how life-like they make Wall-E. At one point the characteristics between robot with a personality and robot without are quite striking. Heavy ecological overtones/plot but I was able to ignore it without ruining the movie. I mean, I understand the point but I go to the movies to escape. It also struck me about 10-15 minutes after the movie how little actual dialog there was. I would rate this as a mid-level Pixar film, but then again that's like saying oh he's not that rich for a billionaire. Side note - the traditional Pixar short before the movie is the best Pixar short ever. Period.
4. Get Smart - I went into this movie expecting absolutely nothing....and that may have saved the movie for me. Not unlike Napoleon Dynamite I think the movie can be ruined for you if you go in expecting too much. You need to have low expectations and then have those expectations exceeded by so much it is amazing. It may also have helped that I don't remember seeing the original show, although I did talk to one lady who said she liked the cheesiness Steve Carell brought to the show more than the original actor.
5. Horton Hears a Who - How do you take a short childrens book and expand it into a full length feature film that modernizes and expands on the original while still remaining true to the original story? I don't know but talk to these film makers because they nail it.
6. Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - It takes a lot to make me lose my suspension of disbelief in an Indiana Jones movie. This one didn't do it in the first part of the movie with Indy surviving, but the finale sure burst my bubble. It's still my 3rd favorite Indy film, (ahead of ToD but behind RotLA and TLC). Plenty of Indy action though clearly ready to pass the torch to a new Indy if needed. Oh and Harrison Ford is a great poster child for active retired people.
7. Jumper - Just because it's last doesn't mean I hated it. I actually really liked the movie, but probably because of 2 things. 1. I read the original book it was based on, and loved it. And, more importantly, 2. I read the prequal that the books author, Steven Gould, penned to flesh out the Griffin character and to shift the story to the new premise. Without those two things I think the movie would have been a lot worse than I thought it was. The books filled in a lot of things the movie never explained. Even if you don't read the original Jumper I would recommend reading "Jumper: Griffin's Story" before seeing the movie.

I saw the White Dark Knight and didn't read Wertz's review until now. I wonder if the dystopia in the film is an expression of the times. I think 20 years from now audiences and film critics will review films and wisely proclaim the dourness a reflection of distrust in government, a war and uncertain economic periods.

I didn't have as much a problem with the shifty camera or the booming music. Batman annoyed me as much as the Joker annoyed Wertz. I kept peering at the mask in search of Eastwood. I don't remember Bale forcing such a ridiculous rasp in Batman Begins.

In fact, everything (including the tongue-flicking) was fine until the Joker is caught. It went downhill for me after unstoppable force meets immovable object. Or was it when the Joker said Batman was so much fun? The camera could've followed Ledger around for 2.5 hours and I would've been content. Bale's acting is unbearably stiff at a time when Gotham is supposed to be turning the corner.

Anyway, I couldn't help but come away feeling the ending is a ringing endorsement of fascism. Oh, I'm not going to ask people to boycott a movie because the social commentary doesn't promote my beliefs, but the excuses for excessive power were thin and martyring Batman for doing what was necessary to save Gotham too convenient. Our poor, law-breaking hero. Poo hoo. Image and faith are more important than truth and accountability.

In a way, the Joker isn't only a Joker. He makes out like a prophet. The illusion died and the entertainment morphed into political commentary for me. Bad commentary at that. How much do you have to suck to portray life as an unrelenting series of impossible, stark choices to make the audience comfortable with a lesser evil? Why would you?

I've never walked away from a film feeling dirty. Maybe it's because I paid to be a captive audience member.

Just saw the Dark Knight this weekend. Personally I think the reviews miss the point that bare-bones vigilantism is a cornerstone of Bat behaviour. The is masochism, there are cliches, and just a hint of sadism to repeat it all at the end of the day. The Bat isn't supposed to be funny. In fact humour would be out of character. The Batman found his niche in the DC universe because people wanted pretension, something that is a bit of a hit and miss depending on the audience on the big screen. The fun factor has always been through the deadpan-like static antics of the bat against a schmorgasborg of hammi villians who do all the joking. Batman's storys bring humour through repetition, to which his villians constantly adapt to but he does not. Tactics, weapons, and fighting stances - sure but as a character the Batman never evolves. In film, this will perturb people less familiar with the character. Get over it.

Which brings me to the main villian. Historically the Joker has always had a mouth and while I found Heath Ledger's incarnation to be interesting, he was not faithful to the character. The character was far too quiet. His stoop and tongue flicking reminded me of someone who was autistic, or froggy. The Joker is characteristically flamboyant. If one held Jack Nicholson's performance of the Joker over Ledger's, I wouldn't hold it against them.

Maggie Gylllenhaal's performance was pure hell. Her goofy round eyes were excessively tired looking, reminding me of a drug user which I could not shake during the movie. She did not convey any emotional connection to the character and I found Rachel's response at the end with the letter to be flat a "too bad so sad" moment where none of her previous relations with Bruce Wayne meant a darn thing. I'm glad that she got written out but unhappy that so much emotional fruit was left hanging on the vine.

I agree the chase scene with Dent was far too choppy. The chase was difficult to follow and the last third of the movie struck me as clipped especially where Dent starts popping up all over the place.

However, the end part of the movie was right on the money. Here's why, the Bat is a character embodying obsession. In the comic extreme personalities attract each other. The Joker has always been able to figure the Bat out and thus I found his comments at the end of the movie to be faithful to the comic. But the Joker has never been able to stay out of the Bat's grip and so the two begin an endless dance of chase, jail, escape, and chase, where they are always prodding each other. Some may find this tedious, others may find this pointless, comic readers recognize this is an attempt at portraying a broken justice system as a primary driver at the creation of cape-type individuals. Radicalism fostering more radical behaviour.

It's been a while since I listed some of my eccentric viewing of old movies.

Muscle Beach Party (1964)

A somewhat disappointing entry in the Frankie and Annette series in many ways. For one thing, Eric Von Zipper and his gang are absent; a major mistake, which was rectified in the later films in the series. For another, the plot lacks the madcap surrealism of Pajama Party or How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi (evil Bond girl in Thunderball) stars as a super-rich young widow who has come to Muscle Beach because she has fallen in love with "Mister Galaxy" bodybuilder Flex Martian (!) from a magazine photograph. (He's played by Mission: Impossible regular Peter Lupus, under the amusing name "Rock Stevens.") Eventually she gives up her interest in musclemen and falls for surfer dude Frankie, who is already involved with Annette. Complications ensue, but it all works out. Lots of familiar faces here. Don Rickles as gym owner Jack Fanny (!), Morey Amsterdam as the owner of a surfer's hangout, Buddy Hackett as the guy who takes care of the rich widow's yacht and business affairs. Lots of surfing footage and a bunch of lousy songs. There are a few highlights:

1. The character of Candy, who has a strange sort of telekinetic power, which allows her to knock men over, and even send them flying off for quite a distance, by dancing wildly and shaking her butt at them. This is actually a fairly important plot point.

2. Stevie Wonder in his first movie appearance at the age of 14, making you realize how bad the rest of the songs are with his energetic performance of a rockin' toetapper called "Happy Street."

3. A very weird scene where Jack Fanny telephones his "silent partner." The phone -- hidden inside an odd-looking globe, in a room full of spooky candles, photographs of old-time bodybuilders, and a sign which just says "STRENGTH" -- is answered by a werewolf called Igor, who passes it to the unseen Mister Strangdour. This fellow smashes bricks and the telephone itself during the conversation. It isn't until the very end of the film that we find out that this is the strongest man in the world, and that he's played by Peter Lorre!

And I've given this way more thought than it deserves.

A Man Called Horse (1970) -- Sort of an ancestor to Dances With Wolves, as a British guy gets captured by native Americans (who seem to have a culture made up of bits and pieces of many peoples) and eventually winds up a respected member of the tribe. Not really very good. (The short story of the same name, by the woman who also wrote "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," is quite good -- it was voted the best western story of all time by the Western Writers of America some years ago.) The infamous self-torture sequence does not appear in the story at all.

The Wolf Man (1941) -- Not my first viewing of this, of course, but yet another in my attempts to introduce my better half to the old classics of supernatural cinema. Anyway, after rewatching this after many years, I was struck by how very simple the story really is, and yet how effective a fable it is for this sort of thing.

City Lights (1931) -- Not my favorite Chaplin -- I'm fond of The Great Dictator -- but not bad. Some of the ballet/slapstick goes on too long, and it's a bit sentimental at times.

Mystic Pizza (1988) -- Eh. I kept coming up with implausibilities (the "smart one" has four jobs?) and I fail to see how Julia Roberts became a superstar. Also, the pizza looked lousy.

Nashville (1975) -- I'd seen this long ago, so it was almost new to me. Having seen it decades ago as a Californian, and now as a Tennessean, I can tell you that it's not really a satire of the local culture as much as a documentary. Ronee Blakley's on-stage nervous breakdown is brilliantly done, avoiding all histronics and simply consisting of her endless chattering about random thoughts. A remarkable portrait of the USA in the Seventies, and an astonishing prediction of the Eighties. The last gasp of the big-budget Hollywood production as complex, adult art film, before the success of Jaws the same year transformed the mainstream, major studio movie business into summer blockbuster popcorn films.

The Vagabond Lover (1929) -- Early talkie designed to exploit the popularity of Rudy Vallee. The plot is some nonsense about him being mistaken for a famous jazz musician. He's a really lousy actor here -- not the excellent comic actor of The Palm Beach Story or How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying -- and his music doesn't siound that great to modern ears. (I was at least hoping for the megaphone and some "vo-de-oh-do." No luck.) A curiosity only.

A Conversation With Gregory Peck (1999) -- So-so documentary about the great actor, consisting of about half home movie type footage and about half his stage act where he would answer questions from the audience. In his eighties here, he maintains his famous dignity and decent-common-man persona. The most effective part is him talking about the suicide of one of his sons. However, way too much time is spent on the birth of one of his grandchildren.

With that thought in mind, I took a hiatus from the summer behemoths booming their way around the multiplex in THX Dolby sound and watched two DVD's with people actually acting instead of running away from computer generated images.

Edmond directed by Stuart Gordon and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by the old master, Sidney Lumet.

Edmond was good. Not great and not Academy Award nomination good, but good. Which ain't bad.

My wife said it reminded her of Falling Down, the Michael Douglas flick. It was similar in its "angry White male" mode. However, as one would expect from a David Mamet written story, it's a bit more intellectual than that and when Edmond loses it, it's a bit more horrific.

Though the racism of the character is supposed to make him seem hard to like, as William H. Macy played it, the character seems more pitiful than hateful. Macy plays the average White guy role to a "T." But you could see how this was a stage play turned into a movie. If you liked House of Games or Glengarry Glen Ross, two other Mamet-penned productions, you might like this as well as it's in a similar vein. I'd give it a solid "B".

However, if you don't like "Mametspeak" you may find some of the dialogue and delivery of it pretentious and annoying. If you don't like William H. Macy, that's an even bigger problem because he's in EVERY scene. You've been warned.

I'd give an "A" to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. After watching it I had to go and check if Philip Seymour Hoffman got a "Best Actor" nomination for 2007 (he wasn't). He gave a great performance and it was worth getting a late fee for keeping the movie an extra day.

Also solid were Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and even tolerable was Oscar-winner-by-mistake (?), Marisa Tomei. She spends a good portion of the movie topless and/or naked (if that's a selling point).

When my wife and daughter wandered through the room and asked me what I was watching, I told them the title and they both said, "That's okay." I had to tell them this was NOT a horror film despite the horror film title. This had to be the same problem There Will Be Blood had. Horror movie titles stuck on non-horror movies.

You have to follow Lumet's playing with time theme, but I enjoyed the movie and especially Hoffman's slow, inevitable slide into pure evil fueled by desperation.

Though this was a horror story. Just not the conventional one with mad slashers or flesh-ripping zombie. The horror here was a bit more ordinary, but not less terrifying in its own way about the utter banality of evil.

I'm (kind of) in the mood for a genuine horror film, but I'm thinking I may be too chicken(bleep) to watch The Descent or Inside which I have read come highly-recommended by afficianados of the genre. Anybody here familiar with either one of these "stab 'em and slab 'em's."

...and will I need a good strong drink, before, after or while I'm watching?

'The Descent' is quite good. Not too hard to watch in my opinion. A bit like 'Alien'.

I saw 'Jumper' last night. Hated it. Perhaps I would appreciate it more had I read the book (as Syfir indicated above). I liked the premise of the movie. It could have been interesting.

Really, any movie with Hayden Christensen in it is bound to suck. Unfortunately, he keeps changing his appearance and it fools me when I watch the previews. I thought Jude Law was in 'Awake', for instance. But no...it was Hayden. And the movie was (of course) stupid beyond stupid. Not only can this man not act, but unlike other talentless-but-still-famous actors like Keanu Reeves, he has no idea how to pick a script either. Fool me thrice, shame on me.

Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)
If this serious sounding title conjures images of life and death decisions, romance and sacrifice, it should. But Mike Newell's playful adaptation angered drama lovers and reaped negative reviews.

Thankfully, I didn't read the Columbian novel and, more importantly, I don't know the first thing about critically reviewing movies.

Critics were right to point out that the movie has all the sophistication of a telenovela. In spite of the oozing melodrama between Florentino and Fermina I couldn't predict the ending. Guessing wrong and, even better, not being able to guess at all how the movie ends is always delightful. I expected fate to intervene again and steal Florentino's moment of triumph with a heart attack or cholera outbreak.

At times it was difficult to not think of Anton whenever I'd glimpse the profile of Javier Bardem's somewhat stunted Roman nose, but I stopped expecting the actor to go psycho as I started understanding Florentino.

This movie may've made me LOL but it's not for kids. There are plenty of sex scenes and one rape scene. Well, I'd call pulling a virgin grieving for his lost love into a steamboat cabin and mounting him while he's screaming, rape, even if he comes back later for more.

Almost forgot. It's in English.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

WARNING Plot spoilers included.

Released just yesterday in the UK, presumably to minimise the damage that The Dark Knight could do at the box office, this is the second Hellboy film that writer-director Guillermo del Toro has brought to fruition.

I rather enjoyed the first Hellboy, released in 2004. It had an interestingly off-the-wall slant on the superhero movie genre. Instead of a human trying to deal with their unusual talents (Spiderman, Batman, X-Men, and almost all others except maybe Superman) you had a non-human raised as a human and trying to fit in with humanity. In this regard, Hellboy is very like Superman, but there is a crucial difference in both the comics and the film - Hellboy - both as a character and the movie - has a modern sensibility of dark humour and cynicism while still ticking the superhero boxes of muscular action.

A young FBI agent transferred to the secret supernatural government branch is the vehicle used to introduce us to the characters. He flirts with Hellboy's human (but super-powered - she can produce fire at will) girlfriend, earns the grudging respect then trust of Hellboy, etc. Similarly, the human FBI overseer, played by Jeffrey Tambor, starts out as an antipathic bureaucrat and ends up earning grudging trust/respect.

At the centre of it all is a great performance from Ron Perlman as the demon originally brought into the world by the film's bad guys as a means of bringing on the apocalypse, but raised with human values, who rejects his destiny to fight against those same bad guys.

In the first film, del Toro's arthouse side (as well as the likes of Blade II and Mimic, he has made quirky films like Cronos, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth) was given a bit of play. The music score, by Marco Beltrami, played up this quirkiness intensely, using Morricone-esque operatic themes for some of the main characters (especially the character of Hellboy's adopted father, played by John Hurt).

To remind myself of the characters before watching the sequel, I re-watched the original and - more than anything else - the music has stayed with me.

In Hellboy II, almost all the team from the first film is reunited. We lose the young FBI agent, but get a reference in the script early on to explain his transfer. This time around, the bad guy is an elf who decides that the age old truce between humans and the supernatural world should end, and who tries to revive a long dormant invincible robot army invented for his father to destroy humanity. We find out about the history in a pre-credit sequence where the childhood Hellboy is told it as a bedtime story by his father - John Hurt again, playing younger this time, rather than older as in the first film.

Hellboy, tired of the secrecy of sneaking around, and the anonymity of saving the world but getting no credit for it, arranges for himself to "accidentally" appear in front of waiting news crews during a supernatural cleanup operation. This plot device, together with a somewhat sympathetic villain (certainly compared to the first film), serve to confront Hellboy with the fact that he cannot fit in with the humanity he is pledged to defend, despite his dreams of heroism.

Abe Sapien, a humanoid fish-creature that was little more than a sidekick in the first picture, comes to the fore in this film, falling in love with the villain's twin sister. Hellboy's girlfriend/wife (it isn't clear) and he are going through a rough patch, and there's a funny and touching scene midway through where the two lovelorn creatures get drunk and console themselves singing along to Barry Manilow's I Can't Smile Without You.

A new paranormal character is introduced as the team's official leader - a German professor who is made up of ectoplasm inside something like an old-style diving suit. Again, we get the initial dislike followed by grudging respect and finally trust thing.

I didn't like this picture as much as the original. I've been trying to put my finger on why that is.

The acting is what you would expect. It's not startlingly good (The Dark Knight[i]'s big advantage, aside from morbid curiosity about Heath Ledger, is that is does contain some very good performances throughout the cast). It isn't hammily bad. It's just workmanlike.

Overall, there is a slight sense of less originality.

The effects are mostly very good, in both conception and execution, but if you've seen more than a few del Toro pictures you'll recognise some of his recurring themes - monsters with eyes where you wouldn't normally find them, for example. I don't know how much to blame del Toro for this - he isn't the only director who does his best work on smaller arthouse projects that the big blockbuster stuff bankrolls - but it's still a little disappointing.

I hope he'll do a much better job of adding his unique visual imagination to the two episodes of [i]The Hobbit that he's now working on. Though splitting that over two films, after Peter Jackson managed to do the whole of The Lord of the Rings in three, doesn't fill me with confidence.

There's a sequence where the team we know discover a whole subculture of supernatural creatures in the heart of New York City which is suspiciously reminiscent of the suprise that Will Smith's character experiences when he first sees the spaceport in Men In Black. Granted, it does have the twist that the characters making this discovery are every bit as supernatural as those they stumble across, but have chosen a different side, but it's still a little too familiar.

Luke Goss, as the bad-for-a-good-reason bad guy who does some impressively acrobatic chop-socky moves, is a little too much like the bad-for-a-good-reason bad guy with impressively... etc. that he played in Blade II.

Worst of all, this time around they've ditched Marco Beltrami as composer, and ditched the themes he originated, and put in Danny Elfman instead. Now, Elfman is a talented film composer and can often be the one person in the whole production team that makes a film memorable. But in Hellboy II his work is almost phoned in. It is just straightforward action adventure stuff, with none of the quirkiness or style that Beltrami brought to the first film.

Hellboy II is not, by any means, a bad film. If we hadn't had The Dark Knight already this summer, it might even be the biggest commercial and critical superhero movie this year.

But, for me, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first film.

It did, however, highlight to me the enormous and underestimated power of the scoring of any film. The music added so much to the first picture, I wonder if the only reason I felt underwhelmed by the second was that Elfman's music wasn't as right for this film as Beltrami's had been for the first. It started me thinking back to things like the collaboration between Morricone and Sergio Leone, to the contribution of John Barry and David Arnold to the Bond franchise (i.m.o the weakest, 1980s Bond films were as much to do with being the ones after Barry had left but before Arnold came aboard as they were to do with the actors playing Bond), and so on.

Hell, I wonder if some of the success of the Halo video games franchise has something to do with the powerful main theme?

I've never paid cash money honey to see a Ben Stiller or Jack Black movie in my life.

Nothing lasts forever.

Took my son to see Tropic Thunder, but not because of Stiller and Black, but because if anyone could pull off the delicate act of wearing blackface and not causing mass demonstrations by the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, it's Robert Downey Jr.

Not a picket sign in sight. Fancy that!

Comedy is a subjective genre. Either you're laughing or you're not. We laughed. A lot and pretty loudly at times. As "a dude playing a dude playing another dude" Downey makes the movie every second he's on screen.

The movie gets a bit unfocused at times with a sub-plot regarding Black's drug addiction and drags a bit in the middle as if Stiller, who also directed, didn't know to give the script a goose and keep it moving along. Just when it threatens to slow down too much Tropic Thunder is rescued by Downey's Sgt. Osiris and by Tom Cruise as a paunchy, bald Jewish producer with a weakness for Diet Coke, rap music and making the air turn blue with "F" bombs.

The phony trailers and commercials that open the movie were more entertaining than the real trailers and commercials we sat through.

If you don't like Robert Downey Jr. there's no reason to see Tropic Thunder.

I, too, LOVED this movie! I am a huge Philip Seymour Hoffman fan (have been since Patch Adams) so I'll see just about anything he's in just because he's in it. I liked the Memento sort of feel to some of it and thought it was clever and even plausible (if totally bizarro). Marisa Tomei was typical, but she didn't really detract from the film. Hoffman was brilliant as always.

I am VERY picky about what movies I will bother watching, so I usually enjoy what I watch. I recently rented Mr. Brooks and Lars and the Real Girl and thoroughly enjoyed both. I'm NOT a Costner fan by any means...wish someone else played the role, but I did think it was a good movie (even with the ending). Lars and the Real Girl was a strange feel good movie that was unexpectedly sweet and charming and left you with warm fuzzies without the usual sap-factor. I don't get the comedy genre labeling...there were a few comedic moments, but this was definitely a drama, IMO. Very different and very well-acted. Really enjoyed Emily Mortimer's performance.

Umberto D (1952) -- Part of the Italian Neorealist movement. It's the simple story of an old man and his dog, who are getting kicked out of their apartment because they can't afford to pay the rent. The realism and the sincerity keep it from being sentimental. (Animal lovers beware: the scene where Umberto goes to the animal shelter in search of his lost dog features scenes of stray dogs being led to the crematorium.)

Surf Party (1964) -- Surprisingly, this turned out to be mostly a serious drama. Bobbie Vinton is the nominal hero, although he doesn't really do much except sing and get into one fistfight with the bad guy. The bad guy is an ex-football player who had a head injury, then went into surfing and skiing instead. (?) He lives in a fancy pad which seems to be much more expensive than he could afford. He also is the leader of a gang of hotdog surfers who defy the law (and common sense) by "shooting the pier" (surfing under the pier, an extremely dangerous stunt.) A cop shows up now and then, trying to stop this activity, and the film turns into Dragnet when he appears. Amazingly for a teen flick made in 1964, there are very strong hints that one of the three young women who arrive at the beach at the start of the movie spends the night with him. In a shock ending, it turns out that he really makes his money as a gigilo for an older woman who owns the fancy apartment where he lives. Watch for the actor who played the goofy bongo player in I Was a Teenage Werewolf as the guy who nearly gets killed trying to shoot the pier. One of the three women later had smash hits with the songs "What the World Needs Now" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart."

The Return of the Vampire (1944) -- Not as bad as I thought it would be. Bela Lugosi pretty much plays Dracula here, although he has a different name. He has a werewolf as his hypnotized slave. Having the werewolf be intelligent and articulate (although under the control of the vampire) while in "wolf" form was an interesting twist. It was also intriguing to have the vampire staked in 1918, then having the Blitz of London blast him out of his coffin in 1941. (Vampire as a symbol of world war?) Other than that, pretty much the usual plot for this kind of thing. Nice to have the "Van Helsing" of the story be a woman.

A Man Named Pearl (2006) -- I actually went to a movie theater to catch this documentary about a guy in a small town in South Carolina who, without training, turned his yard into a wonderland of amazing topiary, turning the city into a tourist mecca and winning recognition as a true artist. A real "feel good" movie, in the best sense.

Beach Party (1963)

This is the one that started it all -- the first Frankie and Annette beach movie. It's a lot of fun. Robert Cummings nicely underplays his role as a developmental biologist/anthropologist/explorer who is studying the teenage surfing scene and comparing it with other "primitive" cultures. Harvey Lembeck is, as always, brilliant as Erc Von Zipper. This one also features the oddly named Eva Six as a Hungarian sexpot. (One of the surprisingly smutty jokes in this early Sixties teen flick is when somebody makes a sand sculpture of this woman, the main feature of which is a caricature of her very large breasts.) It also has what may be the oddest cameo in the entire series. Throughout the film there's a mysterious, almost Messianic figure called "Big Daddy" who is only seen asleep, his face hidden under a big hat, in a beatnik coffee house. (Watch for cult favorite Vyette Vickers, the hottie from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches as one of two women in the coffee house who spend the entire film in the lotus position in black leotards.) They keep talking about how he's going to give "the Word" (you can hear the capital letter) to the teens. At the end, this is revealed to be Vincent Price, and "the Word" turns out to be the strange line "The pit! Get me my pendulum, I'm ready to swing!"

Blasphemer!!!

I saw The Descent; it was not bad, but certainly was nowhere near as good as "Alien." I will grant that I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed The Descent.



Downey's performance was genius... absolute genius. I missed some jokes simply because I was laughing so hard. The "400 years speech" was gold. But I have to give credit to the others as well. Black's homage to Stallone while strapped to the tree was brilliant. In fact the weakest player in the piece was Stiller, who wasn't bad. But, yes, Downey stole the film. I also loved the trailers at the beginning.

I didn't say it was as good as Alien, I said it was 'a bit like it'. I meant it was all dark and creepy and claustrophobic. f course the descent isn't as good.

Its got no space ships in it...

First, I should add my endorsement to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - decent script and direction, with a great cast turning in uniformly good performances. Definitely worth renting on DVD.

I just saw Bill Maher's Religulous, which was much better than I was expecting. On the basis of Maher's TV persona, I assumed it would be a bit shallow and sophomoric, with occasional funny bits, mocking various beliefs. While it is a bit shallow and sophomoric, it's a much more honest and respectful film than I was expecting. There's no open mockery of faith or beliefs (with the exception of Scientology and the like), just a lot of serious questioning of the faithful and believers. Maher is admittedly agnostic rather than militantly atheistic and this seems to soften the edge of some of his interviews. In short, it's a film about a guy airing some of his doubts before those who should be able to address them. They tend to fail. Pretty miserably. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Catholic Church comes off better than almost any other organized religion.

The movie is a bit patchy - some sequences work better than others and some are better researched than others - but in general, it succeeds pretty well. There are humorous bits (and with a minimum of derision), but it turns out to be a more serious and cautionary film than one might expect from the aging enfant terrible of political chat. Unless you are religious to the point of issuing fatwas and advocating the burning of heretics, it's an entertaining and challenging film worth catching.