2002 / 141 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

When was the last time you could use both the words “fun” and “fascinating” to describe a film you saw? When was the last time that you had a ripping time watching a film and yet was amazed and emotionally stimulated by its psychological depth and moved by its plot? Such things are the reasons that “Catch Me If You Can” is Spielberg’s best film of the past decade. It’s brimming with fun and it’s insanely cool and clever, and yet it has a heart and a lot on its mind as well.

“Catch Me If You Can” is the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a man who had scammed over four million dollars in phony checks by the time he was nineteen years old. He had also successfully impersonated an airlines pilot, a doctor, a secret service agent, a wealthy playboy and a lawyer and had charmed his way into even more money and respect. Frank’s life is a fascinating tale, that much more amazing because aspects of it are based in truth. It is also the story of the man who made it his mission to track Frank down: humorless FBI agent Carl Handratty (Tom Hanks).

“Catch Me If You Can” is essentially a two-man show, with each man giving a stupendous performance. Both men are also polar opposites. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio, worthy of a nomination for Best Actor but, not surprisingly, snubbed of one) is a born charmer, a man with enough self-confidence and pure gusto to get anything he needs out of life with simply the right set of words and a smile. Handratty, on the other hand, is a humorless individual devoid of much overt charm but with a single-minded dedication toward his job. He doesn’t joke, he rarely smiles, but he has a strange respect for Abagnale, not that it discounts his ambition to catch the man and make him take his medicine. The difference between these men is humorously illustrated in a scene where we cut from Frank seducing a young woman to Carl watching his laundry spin in a Laundromat. What is the main thing that draws these men to one another? What makes them kindred spirits despite the fact that the law is against them? Both of these men are unable to keep the people they love happy or even around them. Both of them, because of the lots they have chosen in life, are doomed to be alone, no matter how hard they attempt to change this.

It’s subtext like this which gives “Catch Me If You Can” it’s resonance. Sure, it’s a hell of a lot of fun watching Frank boldly bluff his way all over the world and into any profession that momentarily gathers his attention. It’s a tremendous amount of fun. I particularly loved the scene where Frank actually cons a high-class prostitute (the insanely gorgeous Jennifer Garner) into paying him for a night of sex. And the way he eludes the authorities at a certain airport is ingenious in its daring simplicity and its shrewdness. If the film had nothing more resonant than this air of gleeful duplicity, it would still be highly recommended, and worthy of “A” status. “Ocean’s Eleven” was a gleefully constructed tale of larceny and fun on much the same level. What makes the film stick in the consciousness long after the initial viewing, however, are the scenes of palpable loneliness and heartache. For all his gusto and all his confidence, Frank is a sad man who has never quite gotten over the way his parents’ perfect marriage disintegrated before his very eyes. And, for all his no-nonsense mannerisms and lack of apparent personality, Carl seems to have thrown himself into his work simply because it’s the only thing he has not yet screwed up. The running situation that both men are alone on Christmas with no one to talk to but each other speaks volumes for their characters. Hanks and DiCaprio do some fine work here. One might be able to steal the whole show if the other one weren’t so damn good. The rest of the cast does an admirable job as well. Christopher Walken snagged a much-deserved Oscar nomination as Frank Abagnale Sr. He informs the role with a dog-eared sadness and determination that strikes rings true and hits deep in the heart. Martin Sheen and Jennifer Garner also make fine use of their limited roles, and Amy Adams is delightful as the woman who finally steals Frank’s scamming heart.

But a load of kudos is also due to Steven Spielberg and the fine team he has assembled. After the fine job they did crafting the flawed but engaging “Minority Report”, they have trounced that fine film with their excellent work here. They have done an especially great job in capturing the piece’s period details. They seem to have captured an era in this film. They have taken the glamorous, glossily retro-futuristic sensibilities of the mid-Sixties and distilled their essence directly onto the screen. The production design is nearly flawless. There is an even-handed skill and a subtlety to this work that may shock most fans of Spielberg’s work. Notice the way he invests even a stain on a carpet with subtext and deeper meaning. This is the work of a true genius. What’s more, it’s also a completely new direction for Steve, a door he hasn’t chosen to take us through before.

I certainly hope he chooses to use this door again, and very soon. It has the elegance and poignancy that he demonstrated in “A.I.”, only on a more intimate level. “Catch Me If You Can” isn’t just the most fun I’ve had in a theater since “The Transporter”, it’s also the best film of the year. Bar none.

2002 / 168 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I’d be lying if I were to tell you that “Gangs of New York” was anything less than stunning, that it was anything short of a mesmerizing document of a time period little has been told about. It is rich in character, setting, mood and plot. If anything, it’s a little too rich for its own good.

“Gangs of New York” is the story of, surprise-surprise, New York City in the middle of the 1800’s. It was a time in which street gangs fought each other for dominance. Not only the dominance of their own gang, but for the dominance of their culture, their religion, their way of life, and, of course, for money. Into this maelstrom comes a young man named Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio, giving another fine performance this year). Amsterdam has returned to the city from a long stint in Helltown Correctional Facility for Boys, and he has returned with a single thing upon his mind: revenge. His father was killed in a spectacular battle with the man who now basically runs things in the shady Five Points district of New York: Bill “The Butcher” Cutting (Daniel Day Lewis, in the performance of the year). Bill the Butcher is a man true to his name. A man who carries more knives on his person than you can buy on an average night watching the Home Shopping Network. Bill controls pretty much everything in Five Points, mainly because he is too vicious for anyone to want to mess with. Amsterdam ingratiates himself to Bill and is taken under his wing. And here is where the situation gets sticky. He comes to respect Bill, on Bill’s own terms, maybe even to like him. But he still has a duty to his dead father, does he not?

“Gangs of New York” doesn’t really have what I would call a “good guy”. Sure, Leo is a good enough sort and even organizes a sort of revolution at one point. But he also allies himself with the very devil who killed his father, and is a big part in helping the man orchestrate his schemes. He resents the men who once ran with his father and now run with Bill, but one cannot help but see the ironic hypocrisy in this. He is, after all, doing the very same thing himself, if only to better bring the Butcher down. “Gangs” is filled with many such moral quagmires and murky dilemmas. It is also ran through with the scent of blood and carnage. It vividly emphasizes a time in which New York was not so much a city as “a furnace in which a city might someday be forged”.

Martin Scorsese has a lot to say in this film, which is to be expected. It has, after all, taken him at least two decades to bring this epic to life. He has all the dialogue in the right place. All of the expressions and colloquialisms seem spot on. So does the anger and rage of a city in which immigrants and native-born fight for respect and dominance. It’s a complex and fascinating tale that is well-written and well-acted. And yet, by the end, there are so many things going on that the film seems overstuffed. There are rumbles and race riots and political statements. There is a love story and a revenge story and the story of a city coming into its own, and all of them, like the people in the film itself, seem to be struggling for dominance, clamoring over one another to be noticed. This doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie; far from it. But, as with “Casino”, only to a much better extent, it makes the film feel far too busy. I admire Scorsese’s ambition and I certainly love the scope of his story. But it has a way of making the more personal moments feel a little out of place and unnecessary. As fascinating as the relationship between Amsterdam and Cameron Diaz’s charming pickpocket character is, one cannot help but long for more of the things that actually happened. Not a second of Bill the Butcher’s screen time feels unnecessary, however. Daniel Day Lewis delivers a blistering and overwhelming performance. His performance is so good, in fact, that it’s nearly detrimental to the rest of the film. He blows all the other actors off the screen with his rage and his determination. He is a truly complex and brutal character, the sort of man that could only have lived and dominated in this sort of time period, and Lewis hits all the right notes and then some. It’s a towering spectacle, much like the rest of the film.

Scorsese may not have made a perfect film here. But he made such a damn good one that all of my petty complaints seem trivial. Despite my own small qualms, it’s a film that demands to be seen, and one which entertains and enlightens as few of this year’s films have.

2002 / 179 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I have put much deliberation into the grade for this film. I have seen the film twice in its first twenty-four hours of release, and there was no film I had more anticipation for this year. And, truth to be told, it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. But it still sent tingles through my body. It still caused my heart to soar for the majority of its running time. It still contained scenes that were so true to the source material that they almost caused tears of joy to stream openly down my face. So how can I call it anything less than a major achievement? The answer is that I cannot. It is my favorite film so far this year (though I have yet to see “Gangs of New York” and “Catch Me If You Can”, both of which I hold high hopes for), warts and all.

First off, let me outline the plot. Anyone familiar with the books will know what happens in this film. And, if they are not familiar with the books, then I shan’t say much to give away the events of the film. Frodo and Sam are continuing the quest they began in the first film: to take the One Ring to Mount Doom, deep in the heart of evil Mordor, and destroy it. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas are on a mission to recover two other hobbits: Merry and Pippin. Merry and Pippin escape from the foul beasts that have ensnared them and make a few new, powerful friends. And there are other surprises in store as well. The imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien is transferred to the screen much as it was in “The Fellowship of the Ring”: completely intact and with few alterations.

It is these alterations which sometimes bothered me, but that is simply because they messed with certain characters I held near to my heart from the books. The character of Faramir undergoes the most disappointing change. (Fans of the books will know what I speak of and others won’t even care.) My other beef with this film was that there was a bit too much humor at times, pretty much all of it involving the dwarf Gimli. And the pace and editing of the film could be accused of being all over the map, though the story itself is all over the map, and always has been. I found that this took some adjusting to, but that it soon made perfect sense to me. None of this, however, was at any time disorienting. Plus, it’s not that fatal when a three hour films feels breathless and rushed. The latest Harry Potter opus was about twenty minutes shorter and felt a good half hour longer.

So much for my few complaints, now onto the stuff that I thought was worthy of praise: pretty much everything else. This is an amazing film. It towers head and shoulders above even the original three “Star Wars” films in terms of imagination, scope, and the psychological complexity of the characters involved. Yes, George Lucas has created some nifty beings with his digital magic. But none of them lived and breathed before our very eyes the way that the character of Gollum does in this film. Gollum is an utter triumph, not just of special effects wizardry (though he is that) but also of character and screenwriting. Lucas seems to have forgotten that it isn’t enough just to create a character that looks good, but you have to use all your other artistry to give him a soul as well. Gollum has a soul. In fact, he’s probably the most complex and fascinating character in the film. I’m not joking when I say that I believe Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar for his voice and movement work in bringing this digital creature to life. The same goes for Treebeard (voiced by Gimli himself, John Rhys Davies) who lives up to every expectation I had about him from the novels. I have always loved the Ents, and I was not disappointed by anything about them, except perhaps for their amount of screen time. In retrospect, however, I feel that the film has just enough of them. After all, it has a lot of ground to cover.

The film essays the idea that Middle Earth is a grand and magical place, yet also strikes just the right notes to let you know that you are watching the end of an age of this magical world, and that the magic may be running out. There is food for thought here. There is complexity and a wealth of theme that Lucas probably simply dreams of late at night. Peter Jackson may look like a hobbit, but he’s a wizard in disguise. He creates grand vistas using both his native landscape and his computer arsenal and I, for one, cannot see the seams where one ends and another begins. This is great work. I am not going to say that he is the only one worthy of praise. Watch the credits and note each name up on that screen and each one of them deserves every ounce of your gratitude for doing their own part to bring this magic to the screen. But Jackson has assembled these folks and marshaled them under his banner. He has also led them to fill the film to the brim with such beautiful, little nuances and touches that the film has the breath of life within it. “Fellowship” had this triumph as well. But the fact that he has lost little of the magic (if any) between that film and this one is a miracle.

But let me also pay a moment’s respect to the greatness of the actors and actresses at work in this film. Each and every one of them was perfectly chosen and does a magnificent job, but I want to particularly draw your attention to Elijah Wood and Sean Astin. Their moments of the film are filled with the most honesty and daring and they really establish themselves as great actors with their work here. So do Brad Dourif in his brief turn as Wormtongue and the afore-mentioned Andy Serkis. Also, notice how Viggo Mortensen deepens and distinguishes his character, instilling him with even more honor and humanity than in the previous film.

So I recognize one or two flaws here, and I like “The Fellowship of the Ring” a little bit more, but this film is still an utter triumph. I’ll be seeing it at least two more times (I saw the original seven times in the theater) and I will cherish every moment of it. Movie screens have seen nothing more amazing this year, even with the few flaws at hand, and I doubt they will see anything this glorious again….at least until next December, when the final installment of this wondrous fantasy plays itself out.

1946 / 130 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

There are some who easily dismiss this movie as pap. As the sort of sticky-sweet tripe that they always try to veer clear of. The sort of movie that is so sweet and treacly that it is liable to give one a toothache. Well screw that! Those people are cynical idiots and they can rot alone in their gilded tower of cinematic ineptitude. Because the reason that “It’s a Wonderful Life” has endured all these years, triumphing even though it was one of the biggest box office failures in history upon initial release, is because it is none of those things. And it should have been. There is a reason why people are still watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” all these years later, and it’s the same reason that people won’t be watching crap like “The Santa Clause” over and over decades down the line. Not to say that I didn’t find “The Santa Clause” pretty entertaining in its own right, but it was like a Little Debbie snack, fun and sweet but not likely to stick around for long.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is like a Little Debbie snack cake in an entirely different way: it keeps you coming back for more. And if “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a snack cake, then Jimmy Stewart is the creamy filling that makes the thing so damn good. Look again at Jimmy’s character. He is a nice guy, sure, but Jimmy never made a character that was only a nice guy and nothing more. George W. Bailey (any coincidence that George W. Bush chose the name that he did???) is a nice guy, but a nice guy you can totally identify with. He may do the right thing when he absolutely has to, but he doesn’t often want to. And he often bitches about doing it as well. His life has been one disappointment after another from the time he was a small child. It is a great strength of the movie that it does not start with George in trouble.

Instead, it shows us his life. It shows us all the things he went through, all that he had to give up, all the compromised dreams and unfulfilled promises. It shows us what led to him wanting to jump off that bridge, and what brought him to the brink of the abyss, to the end of his rope. It also makes us fall head over heels for George, to understand him implicitly, and to know what he is going through. It isn’t all that different from what any of us have gone through in our lives. Such is the power of the film. It knows that we people are all basically the same. It knows that we can identify with George and his problems and his love for a woman that he hardly knew he loved (Donna Reed).

And then comes the part you all know: the part where he is about to jump off the bridge and kill himself and then a low-rent angel appears to save him. Henry Travers plays Clarence, an angel who has fudged a few of his other assignments. This is, in fact, his last chance to earn his wings. A better angel might have undermined the inherent and gently nurtured sweetness of this movie. When Jimmy sees Clarence, hears his explanation and says “You look like the sort of an angel I’d get”, well, the moment just hits so close to home. You can nod and think that, if you did have a guardian angel, it would be someone as inept as Clarence. But maybe Clarence isn’t quite as inept as he seems. After all, when Jimmy wishes that he’d never been born, Clarence (with a little help from the Big G) is able to grant his request. Jimmy soon learns that each of us touch everyone around us. Even if we don’t want to, we can’t help it. Everyone we interact with is affected by our being there. It is a simple message, but an important one, and it is not as corny as it sounds.

Oh, I’m not saying that it’s not corny at all. It has a few moments. The fact that his wife would become an old maid without him doesn’t have the sting it might have had in 1946 (after what you see Jennifer Connelly doing by the end of “Requiem For a Dream”, it’s pretty much nothing) and a few elements may have dated. But it is still essential holiday viewing. It’s a movie that nurtures hope and puts a big knot in your throat by the end. It’s a movie that makes you smile and makes you think. It is without overly sentimental touches, and if there are any, I certainly didn’t mind them. And it has weathered well.

It’s easily the best of the holiday chestnuts and, if you don’t mind me saying so, as far as being worn out by overplay, I think that honor should go to “A Christmas Story” instead. I’ve had about enough of that kid and his Red Ryder beebee gun, thanks anyway.

And God Bless Us, Everyone!

1968 / 88 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

It’s a great idea for a movie. So great, in fact, that it probably inspired the book I wrote (I say “inspired”, I did not plagiarize it). The reason I watched it again recently was because it’s hilarious and I wanted to see it again. But also because I have written a book that is about a man intentionally trying to make the worst film of all time, and I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t subconsciously ripped it off. Thankfully, the two are nothing alike and my own book is still publishable (a vast relief seeing as how I have spent over three years writing and revising the damn thing) and bares only the most passing resemblance to Mel Brooks’ ingenious film. I think I noticed more subconscious cribbing I had done without meaning to from “Singin’ in the Rain” last time I watched it.

But whatever the reasons for me watching this fine film, I did so. And I have to say that I believe it is Mel Brooks’s finest hour. Well, his finest hour and a half actually. There might be a couple more laughs in “Young Frankenstein” or “Blazing Saddles”, but I doubt it. I doubt there was anything in those two films (or anything else in Brooks’ ouevre, including the oft-overlooked and very hilarious “Twelve Chairs”) that compares with the side-splitting spectacle of “Springtime For Hitler”. But I shall get to that soon enough.

“The Producers” is the story of two of life’s losers. One is Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel). Max was once one of the biggest producers on Broadway. Now, however, his shows are most apt to close the same night that they open. He lives in impoverished squalor and has to seduce rich, little old ladies in order to raise money to produce his plays (”Did you bring checky?” he asks one rich, old bird midway through seduction, “Can’t produce plays without Checky.”)

One day, this loser meets another loser: Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder, comic god). To call Leo a shy man would be an immense understatement. He is almost cripplingly bashful and paranoid. (The moment in which he thinks Max is going to jump on him and kill him is one of the funniest moments of any film ever.) He is an accountant who has come to review Max’s pitiful books and make sure they are in order. It is while doing this that he makes the offhanded remark that “conceivably, one could make more money with a flop than a hit”. This sets the wheels of Bialystock’s imagination into motion. Soon he is bullying Leo into assisting him in raising two million dollars for the worst show in Broadway history, which will only cost a hundred thousand. No one ever asks for returns on their investment when a show flops, you see, so they will never have to pay anyone back. They can take the money and go to “Rio, Rio by the sea-o!” They pick the worst play known to man: “Springtime For Hitler: A gay romp with Adolph and Eva” and hire a director who is more than a little effette and has a prediliction toward musical comedy. Then they hire a dense hippie as their Adolph. It’s an inspired plan. It can’t help but work.

Except that it doesn’t. And the consequences are hilarious.

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are a brilliant comic team here. Zero is a bully and Gene is a mouse: a hysterical combination that is funnier than it has any right to be. But also worthy of note in the cast are Dick Shawn and Kenneth Mars. Dick Shawn is the hippie moron hired to play Hitler in the production and his mixture of Hitler dialogue with hippie slang is more than worthy of the price of this film’s rental ( “Where’s Goebbels, man? I need my Little Joe!”).

And Kenneth Mars (you may remember him as the constable with a wooden arm in “Young Frankenstein”) is inspired as a Nazi refugee playwright whose only friends are pigeons and who has a burning desire to make people see the Hitler he loved. His descriptions of Hitler versus Churchill are comedic brilliance. (”Hitler was better looking than Churchill! He told funnier jokes!”) And the moment when you see a group of high-kicking, goose-stepping Nazis perform the musical number “Springtime For Hitler” while the audience looks on with their jaws literally agape is sheer genius. Based solely on this evidence, I would have to rank Brooks among the greatest of all comedy directors.

Roger Ebert once called this his favorite of all comedies and while I wouldn’t go quite that far, I would have to admit that it is one of them. Brooks had not yet surrendered to his impulse toward fart humor (he hadn’t on “Young Frank” either) or excess. Though there is enough excess here in the correct proportions and it works marvelously. He gets pristine performances out of all his actors and, in case you haven’t noticed, the dialogue is so great it should be bronzed. The timing is perfect. The ending is perfect.

This is as close to perfection as Brooks ever got. “Young Frankenstein” is on equal footing with it. But I’m sure you have already seen that one. If you haven’t seen “The Producers”, however, you are missing something incredible. You are in for a helluva treat.

2002 / 99 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

There is a song by the Talking Heads called “Heaven”, in which they say that “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens”. This lyric occurred to me quite a bit as I endured a recent viewing of Steven Soderbergh’s “Solaris”.

It isn’t that “Solaris” is a bad movie. It’s not really bad. But I can’t really think of anything that makes it that good of a movie either. “Solaris” is, I sort of think, the story of man who has recently lost his wife. I guess this guy (George Clooney) is an astronaut. Or, at least, was an astronaut somewhere along the line. He sits around, mourning the loss of his wife (which, it seems, can be a full-time job if you are a character in a movie, seeing as how he doesn’t seem to do anything else) until one day when he receives a message from a buddy. This buddy is on a spaceship orbiting the planet of Solaris. He informs George that George has to come right up to the spaceship and check out what is happening.

It is there that the film takes a turn for the fantastic and, also, for the utterly mind-boggling. George arrives on the spaceship to find a lot of bloodstains, a crazed astronaut whose manner of talking reminded me of Lumberg in the film “Office Space”, and, of all things, his dead wife. The wife is walking around, talking and getting him to fall in love with her all over again. Ah, but is this really his wife? Is it her spirit? Is it just an illusion? And, most importantly, what the hell is going on? You see, it was shortly after this development that I stopped caring and stopped being able to follow the film. I get it that his wife is showing up and he starts falling for her all over again, okay, I get that part. But once that is established, nothing else seems to happen. The movie grows sluggish. It just sits there and does nothing. I guess it’s about the nature of dreams and reality and the idea of heaven and about letting go and about loss and blah blah blah blah. But it doesn’t seem to do anything with these notions. It establishes that it is about these ideas, but it doesn’t seem to explore them at all. It doesn’t build, it doesn’t progress, it just treads water.

All the other critics I have heard from seem to like it, so maybe I am missing something. I probably am. All I know is that I almost fell asleep on at least four different occasions during the film. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s a good thing. I was monumentally bored by the whole enterprise. The characters were so dull, so excruciatingly dull. They did not spark my interest. The plot didn’t seem to exist. The philosophy was nice and all, but without anything else to hang the film on, it got old rather quickly. After watching “Solaris”, I felt as though I had taken a nap for about two hours. I was groggy and frustrated and a little confused. I hate that feeling, and I hate any movie that fosters such a feeling. Therefore, “Solaris” was not my cup of tea. It was pretty and all, but I’ll take “2001″ any day.

1950 / 110 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

The kid from Poughkeepsie doesn’t always make it big. The shining starlet doesn’t always end up on top. The good guys don’t always win. The good guys, in fact, aren’t always that good.

Hollywood is a place where the dog does, in fact, eat the other dog. Sometimes it just devours the dog’s dreams and sends him back to Ohio with his tail between his legs. As the picture opens, we meet Joe Gillis. Joe is a writer who has carved a niche for himself in B pictures and had some moderate success. That success has apparently left him by the time we meet him. The first thing that happens to him during our acquaintance is that a couple of men arrive at his door to repossess his car. He tells them a lie to keep the car (a friend is borrowing it and has taken it out of town). He then gets cracking at finding a job so that he can keep his job.

He meets with an old friend who is the head of a studio. No soup. He phones his agent. Nothing. On his way to yet another encounter, he sees the men who are out to repossess his ride. Even worse: they see him. A chase ensues and, with a blowout and nowhere else to go, he turns into the driveway of a seemingly vacant palace of a house. It isn’t long before he discovers that it is not deserted. It is inhabited by Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Norma, it soon turns out, had a great deal of success back in the Silent Era. But now…not so much. She still receives a fan letter every day (her butler advises Joe not to look too closely at the postmarks) and still insists that she is “still a big star. It was the pictures that got small.”

Eager to make a buck and desperate to keep his car, Joe strikes an arrangement. He will help streamline Norma’s script to be turned in to Cecil B. DeMille. It will be her comeback, and she will support him until it is finished. There is something odd about this woman and the way she still insists in living among the ghosts of her glory days, yet Joe is willing to strike a bargain with even the Devil if necessary. He has no wish to return to Ohio, humbled, and no wish to lose his car or admit defeat.

To say that things do not turn out as planned is an understatement.

Why does it work? The script. The screenwriter has obviously been through Hollywood and knows it inside and out. He is familiar with how it can create a star one week and smash them to bits the next. It knows how a man who is desperate for work looks. It knows the delusions and facades of those who are no longer as big as their egos would have them believe. The direction is also first class. Billy Wilder has done a marvelous, sure-handed job here, giving us a movie unlike any made before it. A movie that has echoed on down through the ages. The characters are all amazing and he has selected the perfect actors to give them a pulse. William Holden is excellent as usual as the cynical, hungry screenwriter desperate to make something of himself. When he discovers the true motives behind Norma’s kindnesses, he is repelled at first and recoils. Yet he is too kind to entirely leave her. Or is it that? Is it just that he doesn’t have the backbone to admit defeat and takes an easier road instead? Holden plays it with a little of both operating at once. We root for his character, but he isn’t entirely sympathetic and he isn’t a totally nice guy.

The focus and insane heart of the film, however, is Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond. Gloria really was a Silent Star who the Talkies had cast aside. She really was having a true comeback here. No doubt this is what inspired her performance, and an inspired performance it is. Knowing, scary, poignant, larger than life and yet totally believable all at once. It takes you by the throat and drags you to the end. There is a sadness and a madness to Norma that Gloria captures and essays perfectly. There is a strength and a wounded pride, a need to be loved and accepted yet again. And perhaps a knowledge that her butler is not telling her the exact truth, but too much fragility to dash this lie to pieces. She is brilliant here. She is the life force of the film and a potent one she is.

Erich Von Stroheim is also magnificent as Max, the butler who safeguards Norma, perhaps unwisely, against the truth at all costs. He shields her from the harsh light of the world and has his own, hidden and somewhat admirable motives for doing so.

And the ending, well, WOW! It is literally one of the five best endings of any movie ever. (Others worth mentioning: “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Casablanca”, “Network”, “Vertigo”) and it shocks you and leaves you unsettled. It is perfect. It keeps in with the ironic dark humor of the film and yet trumps it at the same time. Holden’s narration is also a perfect touch, giving us just enough information but not too much that we don’t have room to think for ourselves. This movie is so cynical, so bitter, so utterly caustic about Hollywood and the way that it eats its young, the way it ruins everything it touches, that it is truly amazing that it ever got made in the first place.

That brings me to an anecdote that I feel needs to be passed along. At the first screening of this film, a studio executive was outraged. He was Louis B. Mayer of Metro Golden Mayer, one of the biggest execs in Hollywood. This exchange followed:

Mayer: “How dare this young man bite the hand that feeds him!”

Wilder: “Mr. Mayer. I am Billy Wilder, and go fuck yourself.”

The entire movie is an eloquent elaboration of this statement.

2002 / 132 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I love Bond movies. Some people love them and some people just don’t get into them. That’s really all there is to it. If you are the sort of person that loves them, then you are in for a hell of a treat. If you’ve never understood their appeal, then don’t worry about catching this one, because it probably won’t make you a convert.

Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond, master spy for the British Secret Service. He’s got a license to kill and a gift for thwarting the most power-hungry evil geniuses on earth. He’s also been proven to be somewhat invincible. Which is why, when he is caught and tortured at the end of the standard-issue opening action sequence, we are shocked. Bond can’t be caught. He can’t be tortured. He can’t get dirty and grow a beard and look this haggard, this broken, this defeated. It’s just not how these movies are supposed to go. Which is why Bond fans (and you know who you are) will be hanging on every second of this stuff. We’ve never seen this before, and that is the strength of so much of this latest entry into the James Bond pantheon: we’ve never seen it before.

In the past decade (at least) the Bond films, even the best ones, have adhered to a strict formula. There’s been an air that we’ve been there, we’ve done that: Bond had very few new tricks left up that immaculately tailored sleeve. This is why “Die Another Day” is so damn refreshing. It keeps serving up things that we Bond fans thought we would never see. I won’t ruin them here, but if these movies are your bag, then you will smile throughout “Die Another Day”. You will thrill to the fights, ooh at the gadgets and laugh at the characteristic Bond one-liners.

Among the many perks of this film is the fact that Bond and his new nemesis Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, who sometimes looks like a clone of Guy Pearce) seem to really hate each other. Graves is a debonair British entrepreneur who seems like nothing so much as a shadowy reflection of Bond himself. He’s not just some old guy sitting in a room and stroking a cat. He’s a man of action and grace and misdirection, a man who is a match for 007, for once. His henchman, Zao, is also a treat. He’s an archenemy deserving to go up there with Odd Job and Jaws. He’s a vicious mother who seems almost impervious to everything Bond can dish out.

Then there are the Bond girls. Halle Berry does a fine job with the cheesy one-liners and sexual innuendo. Here is the sort of woman that Bond belongs with: a woman every bit as strong, sexual and dangerous as he is. We also have Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost, a British agent and ice princess it’s fun to watch Bond thaw. Both of them are memorable, more than just Bond’s average bimbo of the week.

The film even manages to grip us on the plot level. The plot involves diamond smuggling, enormous lasers and a plot to take over the world, and it’s ridiculous (so much so that it sometimes approaches the sort of parody you might find in an Austin Powers film) but it unfolds beautifully. I usually sit through a Bond movie, enduring the plot and awaiting the next action sequence, but I actually enjoyed the plotting of the film as much as, and maybe more than, the outlandish action bits. Until it goes really over the top in its finale, this is a tightly made Bond film that oozes with style and finesse. Brosnan has put his own signature stamp on the role. I still regard him as the second best Bond ever, right below Connery’s place on the pedestal. And this movie is a great Bond adventure that has the potential to become one of my favorites. Sure, it’s sometimes ludicrous. The Bond series always has been something of a fantasy tailored for the adolescent boy in all of us. But at least it has the guts to try something that approaches the ridiculous. At least it has the balls to do something new and risk failing.

In this case, the risk has paid off handsomely.

1976 / 96 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

There is a simple reason that movies like this one must be seen and that is Clint Eastwood.

Few men have the way with a tough line of dialogue that the esteemed Mister Eastwood does. And thank God for it. He also can express any emotion while barely moving a muscle. He just turns and looks past the camera and you need no other clues. You know what the man is thinking.

And he was never better than he was as “Dirty” Harry Callahan. He was born to play Dirty Harry. The steely squint, the put-upon posture, the way he can growl a line like “Go ahead, make my day” and make it seem like the most natural thing in the world. That is why the character of Dirty Harry has endured and endeared itself to the popular culture so very, very well.

Sometimes you just want to see a pissed off cop shoot up anyone committing a felony. As far as that genre goes, “The Enforcer” is a well-done film.

This time, Harry is assigned to kill, oh, sorry, arrest a group of radical militants who have stolen a bunch of weapons (including some rather nasty rocket launchers) and are threatening to raise all manner of havoc unless they are given a lot of money. Some people on the police force want to pay them off and be done with it. But not Harry. No way in hell. Why pay someone when you can shoot them instead?

Of course, it would not be a Dirty Harry movie if Harry’s partner were not capped within the first half hour, and this one is no different. His Italian partner is blown away during the robbery of the police arsenal and Harry is, as always, pissed. It does nothing to improve his mood when they assign a rookie woman as his new partner (Tyne Daly). Clint has nothing against women, he just doesn’t think they are right for the job of police work.

In this case, Harry may be wrong.

I liked the relationship between Tyne and Clint. It was a nice, natural relationship. They flirt a little, but it is the way you flirt with an attractive female coworker. I was so happy that they did not end up in the sack. It was much nicer just to see these two professionals learn to respect one another and grow into a friendship. Much more refreshing than having the two of them sleep together.

The weakest part of this movie are the villains. As far as the villains of a Dirty Harry film go, they are pretty tame. They are not the Satanic force that Andy Robinson was in the first “Dirty Harry” and they are not particularly memorable. Whenever they are not onscreen, you might find yourself forgetting all about them.

But despite this, there is still a good time to be had watching Dirty Harry prove everyone else in the San Francisco police department to be horribly incompetent and shoot anyone else in sight. He also gets to deliver lines like “Your mouthwash ain’t making it” in that way that only Harry can. Aside from “Dirty Harry” itself, this is my favorite of the Dirty Harry pictures.

Go ahead, make your day.

1986 / 99 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

How can one resist a movie with a title like “Big Trouble in Little China”? I don’t really know. But I know that I can’t. From the moment that the title appears onscreen, a goofy grin alights on my face. It can’t be helped.

Plus, it’s the sort of movie that just trips my trigger. It’s got a swaggering, smart-ass, one-liner-spewing hero (Kurt Russell). It’s got plenty of mysticism and a couple of demons. It has the end of the world at stake if a demon marries a woman with green eyes. I am hooked. I gotta tell ya, I love this stuff. They don’t make enough movies like this, for my taste. It’s the reason I liked “Army of Darkness” and “The Mummy” (1999) so much. I love this kind of plot. I love it when a man or a group of men have to pit their powers against an otherworldly foe and the fate of the world is at stake. Witness my favorite movie (if you don’t know it by now, I’m not saying it again), for further proof.

Is this film really up to the caliber of those other films I mentioned? No. I suppose not. Some of the special effects are rather iffy. Some of the dialogue is immeasurably cheesy. Some of the situations are sorta lame. But it has charm. It has its own sense of style. It’s got a wonderful B-movie with attitude tone going for it that I simply must surrender myself to. And, most important of all, it has Kurt Russell.

Kurt Russell may not be the best actor in history, but there’s just something about the guy that I find appealing. It’s as though he knows that he isn’t that awesome of an actor, so he just has fun with it. I respect that. He makes whatever he does seem truly effortless. And there is no better man to star in a John Carpenter film. I can tell you that right now. He is a swaggering, macho, one-liner-tossing John Wayne wannabe. He comes across as one of those guys you know who is always trying a little too hard to be tough. And you know what? It works magnificently. His performance here serves the tone immeasurably. It is the bedrock on which the entire film is based, in fact. It is the gel which holds it all together. When a Chinese mystic begins to explain the reasons behind a Chinese ghost and starts going a little long, Kurt rolls his eyes and counters by saying “Get to the goddamn point, Egg!” and you laugh so hard because, in all these movies, that’s what you really want to say to the mystical know-it-all anyway. It’s a perfect moment, in its own bizarro way.

John Carpenter has always disappointed me a little. Yes, even with this movie. It could have been another “Ghostbusters” or “Army of Darkness” in the right hands. But it never quite gets there. I love the idea of the film and the I love humor and I love the tone. I love the lead actor and I love it when a two-thousand-year-old Chinese demon (played deliciously by James Hong) says “Now this really pisses me off to no end”, but it could have been something even better. I just have never been entirely satisfied with this movie, and I don’t know exactly how to say why. But I have grown to love it, nonetheless. I am charmed by it. I suppose I just like it when a movie has its own distinctive personality. So many of them, after all, just seem like cookie cutter, paint-by-numbers movies. Seen one and you’ve seen ‘em all.

Well, you’ve never seen anything like “Big Trouble in Little China”. No matter what else you say about it, you have to give it that.