2003 / 110 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

And so we find ourselves staring Sean Connery in the eye, once again, and wondering why he still gets gainful employment. He’s still alive, apparently. He’s still swaggering about as though he had a reason to still be swaggering. No man ever has or ever will get more mileage out of James Bond’s legacy than he, and he seems to know it. There is the cocky, self-satisfied air to him of a man who no longer has to prove anything to anyone, least of all himself. One gets the sense that if the Bond era Connery (the one that used to matter) could see himself now, he would probably punch the old coot right in the jaw. I’m not saying that the man isn’t occasionally capable of greatness. He still has a few jewels left in him from time to time: “Hunt For Red October”, “The Untouchables” and even “Finding Forrester”. But on the whole, he has become a parody of himself, a joke that no longer seems to matter. When one considers that he was once offered the role of Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings” and turned it down, one can only breathe a sigh of relief. Ian McKellan is an actor still capable of impressing people. Connery is, unfortunately, not.

Connery isn’t the only reason this movie sucks. In fact, he may actually be one of the better things about it, such a lackluster enterprise it is. But he is still a joke in a joke of a film, and that IS his fault. This is Bond on autopilot and it’s a sad spectacle indeed. But where are my manners? “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” would like you to believe that it is an adaptation of the fine series of recent graphic novels from which it takes its name. But to assume that, my dear friends, would be a complete mistake. The mere concept of Victorian era literary heroes united against a foe bent on destroying the English Empire and tossing the world into chaos is all that remains. All the wit, all the ingenuity, all the darkness and nuance that made the comic such a fascinating read, all those things are gone. Instead we have bland characters and bland special effects and bland plot and bland pretty much everything. It’s rather hard to imagine this movie getting much duller. When the idea of Victorian era adventure fails to get a rise out of me, then you know this is a very slipshod film indeed. The screenwriting is lazy (the film comes to a screeching halt in order to establish character that good actors might have essayed without the film pausing for a breath). The direction is lazy. The production design is shiny, but never for a moment do you think you’re anywhere but a soundstage. The action sequences wheeze like a long distance runner that has hit the end of the marathon and is no longer even trying. The sorry jokes sprinkled throughout land with a collective thud. And characters I assume were meant to be intriguing and menacing only manage to bore and annoy. And what the hell is Tom Sawyer doing here? Or Dorian Gray? They weren’t in the comic, and they don’t really manage to do anything special to validate their presence here. The plot is some routine claptrap about preventing some madman bent on world domin(yawn)ation from starting a world war. Some of the suspense is drained from this notion when you realize that there will be a world war in twenty years from the events in this film anyway. I could go on to tell you that the action sequences are not only boring but pretty damn retarded as well, but I think you will have already figured that much out. If not, well, look no further than the sinking of Venice, which is prevented by blowing up a building in the center of town. Hey, don’t ask me. I watched the damn movie and I didn’t get it either.

Oh, what’s the use. I’m getting depressed just thinking about this damn movie. If you really must see it, it’s your funeral. I’ve said my piece, and I hope you learn from my mistake. All I can say is that Connery better start earning his share of the Oxygen again pretty soon. He’s coasted about as far as he can get on his past credentials, good as they are. I haven’t seen “The Avengers”, so I can’t tell you whether this movie is better or worse. But I can tell you that this movie isn’t very damn good. I can say that much.

2003 / 143 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

For years I’ve wanted to see a truly amazing pirate movie, a movie with all the fun and action and wit and “Shiver me timbers” sort of dialogue that I had always dreamed of. For years I’ve wanted to see a pirate film that delivers on the promise of daring do, skullduggery and intrigue. I’ve longed for a movie that contains the right balance of sword fights and cannon fire and plank walking and gold doubloons. I’ve wanted a movie with cutlasses and pistols and gold teeth and fake eyes and parrots and rum and island paradises and ships being looted. I’ve wanted to see rough and tumble men soaring the seven seas and saying “Arr” and singing songs about the pirate life and the consumption of rum. I have, therefore, sat through a great many lackluster pirate films to see, in vain, if that promise were fulfilled. Some came so very, very close (”Captain Blood”, “Treasure Island”) but yet lacked a certain something I had always longed for. Some were downright terrible (”Cutthroat Island”) but I still watched them, so great was my desire to see the pirate life accurately committed to celluloid. Some had beautiful moments and then sucked: “Pirates of Penzance” starts out with a magnificently rousing rendition of “I am a Pirate King” sang by Kevin Kline and then slides off the rails the minute that song comes to an end. But none of them are half the salty spectacle that is “Pirates of the Caribbean”. “Pirates of the Caribbean” gets things right that I hadn’t even realized were wrong. It includes brilliant, little touches that I didn’t even know were missing. There have been a few good movies this summer, but this was the first one that was so good I immediately called most of the people I knew and instructed them to rush to the cinema.

Everything works to an absolutely glorious effect here. The plot is sheer bliss, at least to me: a group of undead pirates sail the seven seas cursed by a treasure they once found and foolishly squandered. They must get back every piece of this treasure in order to revert back from the bloodthirsty ghouls they have become. Sure, they are unable to be killed. But moonlight exposes them as the skeletal army of brigands that they really are. They are unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to enjoy the company of a woman. So they live forever, but their lives suck. Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) of this damned ship (The Black Pearl) has therefore spent the past decade searching for every last bit of this cursed Aztec loot, the last doubloon of which now hangs around the beautiful neck of Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, a true beauty that makes me want to buy plane tickets for England). They arrive at Port Royal, abduct the lovely, young lady and make for the island where the treasure resides to reverse the curse. The young lady’s secret love (Orlando Bloom) springs a pirate captain (Johnny Depp) from prison and makes off in hot pursuit. I’m smiling just describing this plot. Like I said, it’s pure bliss. It’s not Shakespeare, but who cares? It’s just the sort of beautiful, rugged adventure I’ve longed to see for years.

Keira Knightley is stunning and proves a perfect heroine. She’s no mere damsel in distress. She’s an independent minded woman who actually gets off her ass and saves the man who has come to save her at some points. Orlando Bloom is great here, as the man who longs for Keira but is too shy to do anything about it until she is abducted by brigands. He’s dashing and cool and perfectly suited to the role of a dashing rogue. But the real treasure of this film is Johnny Depp. He’s absolutely brilliant. He gives a rousing, distinctive and completely strange sort of performance here. He’s full of facial tics and strange mannerisms and one-liners. Most pirate captains in movies are dashing, chivalrous heroes. Depp has his heroic aspects, but he’s also an eccentric chatterbox criminal who rarely shuts up and is always thinking. He’s easily the most interesting hero on display in cinemas this summer, or in many a summer. Every moment he was onscreen brought a smile to my face. This is why I love Johnny Depp: he takes roles that could be rather routine in anyone else’s hands and invests them with his trademark oddness and makes them that more interesting than pretty much any other actor would have made them. But he never hits the wrong notes in his performances and he always modulates them so that they are perfectly at home in the framework of whatever film they are in service of. His Captain Jack Sparrow is a marvel to behold. I also enjoyed the cool villainy of Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbosa. He’s a fiercesome adversary, but Rush always manages to essay the humanity at the heart of this undead figure. He makes Barbosa’s longing almost tangible. It’s a great performance, the sort of performance that an Oscar winner usually doesn’t put into a movie made for summertime.

And the action? Oh my God! The action! There are sword fights and cannon fights and battles between humans and legions of the undead. The film is bursting with spectacle, and all of it is magnificent and pulse pounding. I was on the edge of my seat for the majority of the film. And these aren’t simple stock movie action sequences either, they are staged with a real wit and true bravado. They are also staged in such a kinetically satisfying manner that you are never left in the theater scratching your head and wondering what exactly is happening (this seems to be a problem more and more frequently in action films). Not only that, but I had no idea how refreshing it would be to see rope acrobatics and sword fights rather than the car chases and half-assed shootouts I’ve been subjected to all summer. This is also a rather beautifully photographed film: with gorgeous beaches and sunsets and lovingly constructed period ships (not to mention the lovely Miss Knightley). The eye delights in this film, and the mind is also given something to mull over.

Simply put, I thoroughly love this movie with every fiber of my being. It stimulates me in every conceivable way. It’s beautiful and eerie and exciting and funny and the characters are even given more than one dimension. Gore Verbinski is quickly establishing himself as a master filmmaker, and this is his best work thus far. I have fallen absolutely in love with this movie. I am high on this movie. I am giddy just thinking about it. I can’t say that about any other film I’ve seen this summer. “Terminator 3″ is a well crafted and exciting film, but it did not engage my heart in the way that this film has. This, I am sure, will not be the case for everyone. I doubt this movie will captivate everyone and slap an immovable smile to their faces, but it did mine. There was not a single moment of this film that rang false for me. I’ve already seen it three times, and I can still make that statement, so exhilarating is the film’s intoxicating blend of heroism and bad grammar and crusty, rum-soaked attitude. I am truly enchanted by “Pirates of the Caribbean”. It’s a film so good that it even makes up for sitting through “The Hulk” and “Charlie’s Angels 2″ and “The Matrix Reloaded”.

2003 / 81 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

For those of you who haven’t noticed it yet, Colin Farrell is an amazing talent. He’s young, handsome and charismatic. He can be cocky, he can hide his Irish accent expertly (though if I had an accent that cool, I’d be using it all over the place) and it’s usually a very good movie if he isn’t the best part of it. “Minority Report”, for example, was a great movie and he was just one of the little things that made it so good. He took a role that could easily have been the most hateful man in the movie (the guy is chasing down Tom Cruise, after all) and invests it with so much wit and panache that you can’t help but root for the guy, at least a little. After all, like Tommy Lee Jones’s star-making turn in “The Fugitive”, Colin is just a guy trying to do his job. Well, as good as he was in his brief turn in “Minority Report”, he’s much better with much more screen time in “Phone Booth”. Colin Farrell has been on his way to major stardom for a while now. After this movie, he will have achieved it. This movie is the sort of one-man show that legends are made of.

But let me not get ahead of myself. First of all, let me tell you the plot of the film and then maybe you’ll have some idea why I see loads of money and fame in this dude’s future. “Phone Booth” is the story of a self-absorbed PR man who gets his due, and then some. He’s a fast-talking liar, snappy and full of himself, but with the wit and bravado to make this all work in his favor. He’s a very slick guy who gets basically everything he wants. Well, not quite everything. His charms have not yet landed him in the pants of a young actress (Katie Holmes) he has been attempting to seduce. He calls this young vixen every day from the same phone booth, taking off his wedding ring whenever he does so, to talk her into sharing a hotel room with him one day. Unbeknownst to him, a mentally unbalanced gentleman (Kiefer Sutherland, with a voice that could chill an erupting volcano) has taken an interest in his daily phone calls and has decided to teach him a lesson. He has a sniper rifle aimed on Colin, you see, and he’s trying to achieve Colin’s redemption…even if it kills him.

The entire movie is a game of cat and mouse in which we don’t even see the cat. Kiefer Sutherland is no more than a disembodied voice on the other end of a phone line for most of the film, and he still makes for a menacing foe. And part of Kiefer’s instructions is that if Colin leaves the phone booth, he dies. Therefore, the movie concerns a single location, one man at that location, a voice on the phone, and a group of police who soon become involved. And yet, it’s the most gripping film of this young year and the most absorbing thriller since last year’s “Panic Room”. And, like “Panic Room”, it has Forest Whitaker as a kindly man in a bad situation. This time, though, Forest is on the right side of the law. And he’s just as good as he was in “Panic Room”, which is to say that he is great. All three of the main actors in this film are excellent, particularly Colin Farrell, because he really has to be. Anything less than a brilliant performance on his part and the movie, lively and slick as it is, falls to pieces. Colin is the character we have the most invested in. Colin is the character we spend the most time with. And if Colin doesn’t work, nothing does. But Colin Farrell is awesome here. He gives the sort of performance that acting schools can analyze and talk about for years to come, a sweaty, cocky, blistering performance that speaks of oceans of character hidden beneath the surface. He is nothing short of fascinating here and I think he stands a chance of being remembered come Oscar time. Kiefer does a splendid job here too, creating menace out of the simplest inflections of his voice and making us never quite sure where he is going with this. We empathize with Colin and we twist with discomfort just as he does.

The movie does a great job of never tipping its hand and never letting you know what could happen next. It’s refreshing. You feel the claustrophobia of the phone booth, but you are never constricted by it. That phone booth feels bigger in this movie than the entire world has felt in a lot of movies. The entire world is boiled down in a microcosm in that phone booth. You can feel the stagnate heat of that booth, feel the sweat pouring off Colin, feel the frustration and discomfort of the situation with palpable intensity. In that regard, this film does an amazing job. It’s not quite perfect, however. The ending is a bit weak (though satisfying, for reasons that have everything to do with Colin’s magnetic performance). Hmm. That’s about all I can think of. The ending is a little weak. Otherwise, it’s a riveting, tightly wound and explosive little film with a message.

It’s the sort of movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of, which makes it all the more amazing that it’s by the director of “Batman and Robin”. I suppose this is his penance for that film, his way of making amends. And, by God, he nearly does it. This is an extraordinary bit of filmmaking. The editing, pacing, music and momentum of the movie are fantastic. Joel Schumacher has expressed a mood and a feel that I never thought him capable of, and delivered a dandy little thriller that has haunted me for days.

2003 / 108 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Terminator 3″ is basically one long, chase scene with a bit of character development and story thrown in between chases so one can catch their breath. And yet, it works just fine. In fact, it works far better than I ever expected it to. James Cameron isn’t directing this one, and Linda Hamilton is nowhere to be found; yet the groundwork Cameron has laid in the first two films is elaborated upon quite nicely.

The plot is basically just like the first two: there is a war raging on in the future between a ragtag group of human commandoes and the machine menace which has taken over the world. It is still John Connor’s (Nick Stahl) destiny to overthrow the machines and restore human rule to the planet. Obviously, the machines don’t like this, so they keep sending machines back through time to kill Connor before he can have a chance to stop them. Their first two attempts failed, so they are trying again. In one corner, we have the representative for the machines: the TX (Kristiana Loken), a looker with a liquid metal exterior and a cyborg endoskeleton who has the ability to control any electronic device she gets her hands on. In the other corner, we have the agent of the resistance: an outdated model of cyborg chosen mainly for nostalgia value (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The two duke it over for the fate of Mr. Connor. Only this time, there is an added wrinkle: the world is coming to an end in three hours or so.

Jonathan Mostow takes the concepts established by Cameron (and, let’s face it, artfully stolen from a generation of science fiction writers) and takes them in a new, action packed direction. The film is relentlessly entertaining, piling mano y mano conflicts and car chases in interesting vehicles onto the mix. Loken is wooden in her role, but this is a good thing. She is, after all, a robot. Though she doesn’t bring the sort of panache to the role that Arnie does, she is about as good as Robert Patrick and establishes the essence of an unstoppable adversary very nicely. Nick Stahl fills the shoes of Edward Furlong rather nicely, even acting in a movie that doesn’t necessarily require it. I liked seeing Claire Danes working again, and she does a very good job in the role of the woman who will eventually marry Connor and aid in the human resistance. But Arnie is the actor to watch here. He eclipses everyone else on the screen, simply by reminding you why you enjoy watching him in the first place. He has the requisite number of cheesy one-liners and fights and he does them better than anyone else in the business. He was born to play this role, and I mean that in the best possible way. He knows this character like the back of his hand and could probably play it with his eyes closed, expertly. He even works a subtle bit of self parody into his performance that infuses these dire proceedings with a refreshing sense of humor.

So what’s missing that James Cameron brought to the table? Well, the sense of menace is diminished, that much I must admit. Cameron had an effortless way of letting us know that the fate of the world hung in the balance in the last two movies. The apocalypse has never been closer than it is in this movie, and yet we just don’t feel it tangibly the way we did in the other two. And I must admit that Linda Hamilton has come to be the soul of these pictures, and her absence does subtract a certain something. These are not crushing blows, and they only become evident on a repeat viewing. This is a magnificently paced motion picture, and the action sequences are original and insanely exciting. The little character and story moments sprinkled throughout the picture are also quite well done and the ending is a true surprise. The film never really rises above the fact that this is nothing that we haven’t seen before, but that hardly seems to matter. I never knew where this movie was going next, and that truly excited me. I had never seen a Terminator movie go to the places this movie went, and that too made me very happy.

And seeing Arnold kick ass and say cheesy lines, well, that alone is worth the price of admission. You get to see a true master working in the medium in which he most excels. It’s been far too long since Arnie has been this damn good, and it’s a wonderful thing to see.

2003 / 106 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Okay, I’ll admit one thing right off the bat: this isn’t a great movie and no amount of suspension of disbelief, no amount of argument, no amount of anything is going to make anyone think otherwise. It has as much plot as an Advil commercial, probably less because at least Advil commercials have a clear agenda in mind. In an Advil commercial, usually, there is this guy with a headache. The guy bitches about said headache. He is given some Advil. The afore-mentioned guy marvels that, Whaddya know, his headache has now been vanquished by the mighty power of Advil. All hail Advil. You like that? Well, you aren’t even gonna get even that much plot out of this movie.

But the ludicrous spell of this movie doesn’t even demand that much plot. I sat in the theater, largely spellbound by this piddling trifle of a film, and was amazed by how little I gave a shit that nothing was really happening. If I want a plot, I read a novel. I do not, however, read an issue of Maxim. This film is the cinematic equivalent of an issue of Maxim, only more ludicrous and with less articles about scoring with women. There are four very lovely ladies in this film, and this film makes no bones about doing its damnedest to make them look as hot as humanly possible. I’ve seen less than complimentary pictures of Cameron Diaz, but here she is a true goddess of the highest order. Ditto for Drew Barrymore and especially Lucy Liu (though I must mention that no amount of cinematic magic can hide that lazy eye). This movie might pretend to be about empowering women, hell, maybe it even is about empowering women, but it’s also about objectifying them at the same time. There were many women in the audience with whom I saw this film. There were also a few guys who had come unescorted and looking furtively around themselves (sort of like guys buying an issue of Playboy). And I would assume that both parties got from this film precisely what they wanted to get out of this film. The women got to see women kicking a great deal of ass. And the men got to ogle some lovely ladies for about two hours. I was in the ogling party, but I also enjoyed the ass kicking as well.

The ogling front is well served by this film. You get to see the girls in cowboy outfits, in French lingerie, in tight cat suits, in AC/DC shirts (I had no idea a hot girl in a Judas Priest shirt could be so sexy) whatever your fancy, your libido will thank you for purchasing a ticket to this film. However, it’s on the front of ass kicking that this film falls tragically short. The first film had some excellent fight scenes. They were fun and beautifully shot and they provided a sheer burst of kinetic energy. Alas, the fight scenes in this film look far too rendered to ever take off. These are not the beautiful vixens from the first movie, no; these are mere computer simulations of them. These are but pixilated avatars for Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore. And why? Because no human being could do any of the shit they do in this movie and nothing can convince us otherwise. The action scenes are all far too ludicrously over the top to work at all. If you thought the action in the first one was too much, well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Yes, there are occasional glimmers of excitement to be had here, but not a lot. The action is all ridiculous, and not even in a cool way.

You may have noticed that I have not yet mentioned the plot. Well, that’s because there isn’t any. There is a stream of occurrences masquerading as a plot. Apparently, the Federal Witness Relocation Program has decided to contain all the names of everyone involved in that program on two little rings. And when someone has both these rings, I guess, they can rub out anyone in the Witness Relocation Program. Yes, even Henry Hill. How is the information contained in these rings? I have no idea. An even better question: WHY is the information contained on these rings? Rings? Is it fucking “Lord of the Rings” here? Is Gollum going to grab the rings from Cameron Diaz and start blathering on about his “Precious”? (If you want something precious from Cameron, might I direct you in the vicinity of her magical ass.) I mean, what the hell are these screenwriters smoking and where the hell can I get some? Because if it enables this plot to make sense to these people, it must be some phenomenal weed. Couldn’t the information just be on a computer disk or something? I don’t know. Just a thought. Makes more sense than a couple of fucking rings, I can tell you that. Now, you see, if the action sequences had worked, I probably wouldn’t have even cared about the damn rings. But they don’t, so here I go.

Cameron, Lucy and Drew all seem to be having an infectious amount of fun. And that fun is contagious to the audience, which is why I was able to sit through this at all. There is a nice moment between Drew and Crispin Glover (hooray! He’s back! No idea why or how, but on this point I don’t really care!) near the end of the film that made me happy. Unfortunately, it’s followed by another moment that I absolutely hated. Demi Moore is the bad girl here (the movie pretends that this is a startling revelation, but if you’ve seen a commercial for this flick you already know) and she is probably better than I’ve seen her in anything. Perhaps that will tip you off to the fact that I’ve never really liked her all that much. I also enjoyed the over the top work of Justin Theroux here, doing a weirdo Irish De Niro impression that kept me strangely entertained. Matt LeBlanc and Luke Wilson both return, and both of them are just fine. And John Cleese actually doesn’t embarrass himself by appearing in this film where he has no right or need to be. So I guess that’s something. And Crispin Glover’s work is, as always, unimpeachable. But Bernie Mac is just the wrong choice for this movie. He’s too much. And if there’s anything this movie doesn’t need it’s too much of something. His comedic style just overbalances every scene of the film he’s in. Bill Murray worked much better. His laidback cool was more in harmony with everything else in the movie. We see a photo of him in this movie and it’s funnier than anything Bernie Mac has to contribute. Apparently, Murray and Lucy Liu got along like a couple of wolverines on angel dust. But did they have to use Bernie Mac? Ah. I’ll give it up now.

So, to summarize, this movie is nowhere near good. But if you have a penis, it will thank you for seeing this film. That much I can tell you. Your brain, however, might punish you for it. But, as Robin Williams once eloquently said “God gave you a brain and a penis and only enough blood to operate one at a time”. The fact that I barely thought how asinine this film was until I had left the theater goes a long way toward proving this theory.

2003 / 138 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“The Hulk” has been reimagined as a kind of Greek tragedy. The plight of Bruce Banner and the genetic experimentation that has been performed upon him, the accident in the lab that unleashes the results of this experimentation, his father conflict, his repressed memories, his lackluster love life which has gone to seed because he is unable to show his emotions enough that he can keep the woman he obviously loves hanging around…they all seem to illustrate, amply, that it’s not easy being green. When Kermit the Frog said it, he wasn’t just talking shit after all.

That’s about the only point being made by this film. And with all those psychological quagmires abounding, one might assume that this is an intriguing and exciting, even absorbing film. Unfortunately, none of those bits ever got under my skin. Nothing about “The Hulk” managed to grab me at all. Therefore, as well crafted as many portions of this film were, none of them ever did the one simple job I ask of a movie: keep me from shifting in my seat.

Okay, I can give the film certain praise. It has very good editing. The editor has done quite an admirable job cutting all this nonsense together. It doesn’t quite make the movie great, but it and the choices made by the director of photography do their best to give this film the look and feel of an actual comic book. It’s only the plot and characters, and lack of point to either of those that keep this movie from ever really taking off. Also, the juxtaposition of shots within the same frame sometimes gives the movie the feel of a comic book come to life, but it never really has a reason for existing. There were only a couple of instances in which I thought this method proved really clever. Otherwise, it was usually something along these lines: here’s a shot of a helicopter, now to the left of that is a different angle of the same helicopter and here at the bottom of the screen is yet a wider shot of that same helicopter. So what? We get it! A helicopter is flying! None of these shots is even really all that different from the others. So we basically get to see the same helicopter three different ways, none of them incredibly interesting. Oh, how very special. There are a lot of shots like that and it’s a neat device that I think could prove really interesting in an actual interesting film, but it’s simply a gimmick here. It never really takes off, no matter how unique it might be. And I guess the editor really didn’t do that amazing of a job either, come to think of it. He put everything together fairly well, but I still found my attention wandering a great deal of the time.

The deadbeat dad plot point is a fairly tired one. You see, Bruce’s father experimented with his own DNA, and then passed his genetic mistakes on to his son. Now, years later, his son has had an accident that triggers these mistakes into making Bruce a big, green colossus whenever he gets mad. So he hates his dad. Big deal. The main characters in lots of movies hate their dad. I’ve seen it and, aside from Nick Nolte playing this role with all the subtlety of a Vegas drag queen, no new wrinkles are really introduced into this relationship.

Then we have the love story, which is a dead end. There is zero chemistry between Eric Bana (who plays the non-green version of the Hulk) and Jennifer Connelly. Mostly because Eric is utterly bland in this film (wanna see a performance by him that will keep you awake? Rent “Chopper”). He sleepwalks through this movie, occasionally clenching his fists and turning into a CGI creature. Jennifer Connelly is good enough in this film, though she really isn’t given a lot to do. This role is nearly exactly the same as her role in “A Beautiful Mind” (both are women in love with brilliant men that have problems) only with elements of the Fay Wray character in “King Kong” thrown in for good measure. See, the Hulk is just like Kong. When the Hulk is a rampage, the only thing that can calm him down is seeing Betty (Connelly). When Kong was running amok, the only thing that calmed him down was seeing Fay Wray. Therefore, not only is the story of this film taking elements wholesale from “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” but from “King Kong” as well. It also rips off “Frankenstein” with the whole green monster trick, as well as Nolte’s father figure whom was basically a modern Dr. Frankenstein attempting to play God. (Which, in another boring moral, is bad, as we might have guessed.)

The elements of this story are expected to carry the movie. The only problem is that we have seen these elements a thousand times before in far more interesting interpretations. Nothing feels really new here. The split screens and unique edits are new, and Elfman’s score is decent, if not really one of his finest. The acting is adequate but never really extraordinary. Even at the end, when the movie really starts hanging out in left field and getting weird, I found myself strangely uninvolved. How can this movie feel this vapid? The special effects are good (the digital figure of the Hulk is probably the most emotive actor in the movie) but they still never quite engage the way they should. I’m not sure why, but there just isn’t anything spectacular here. It all feels so bland, so blasé. They made a decently put together film out of familiar and worn elements, but they never really bothered to invest it with that spark that makes a movie like this work. “Spider-Man” may have had a few flaws in retrospect, but at least it had that spark. It hooked me. It kept me involved. “The Hulk” was cold and distant. It was an artistic filmmaker (Ang Lee) trying his hand at a popcorn movie, and it looked beautiful quite often, and it was full of psychology and, I suppose, a bit of philosophy. But even these elements seemed tired and worn. There is no energy to this film. No true life force.

Oh, and “The Hulk” never really uses his powers in a superhero fashion. All he does is run from the military. I’m sorry, but that’s really boring. I don’t want to see The Hulk run from the military. I want to see him smash evildoers (and you can allude to a bad relationship with his father, but it feels like a mistake to devote this much of the movie to it). Not only that, but there is no real suspense here. As soon as Bana becomes the Hulk he is impervious to basically everything. Therefore, in all the big suspenseful moments where we are meant to be on the edge of our seat, we know that there is no real worry. Nothing can stop the Hulk. Nothing can faze him, which makes him even duller.

There is really nothing I can recommend about this movie. It isn’t terrible. But that’s about all I can give it. It did nothing for me. There were moments in this film where The Hulk has some wonderful facial expressions, where you can see the painstaking work that went into these special effects and you can see how special it is that a technician on a computer can wring an actual performance out of an arrangement of pixels, how he can make these algorithms and data bytes come to life and actually generate a feeling within you. But, unfortunately, the film never backs these moments up. The film never gives us a hook to hang these emotions on. So those poor technicians’ work is all for not. And why? Because all their ponderous psychology and silly technique never really add up to anything. There is no grand spectacle. There is no excitement. There is very little flair. All we are left with is a big, green dud: a big film about a big guy with big problems that I never gave a shit about. For all its ponderous prattle (much of which is very boring) it never arrives at much of a point.

2003 / 111 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Hollywood Homicide” may not be the greatest movie I’ve seen in ages, but it is a rather refreshing concoction that, at the very least, puts a fresh new twist on the whole buddy cop genre. It also houses the most entertaining performance that Harrison Ford has graced us with in quite a while.

The plot of “Hollywood Homicide” is fairly routine: there has been a mass murder and two cops are called in to investigate. This time, however, the people who’ve been murdered are a rising, new rap group and the two cops called in are Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. Unlike most cop movies, this one doesn’t start with the two cops being partnered up for the first time and rubbing against one another in the wrong way for a while before gaining a begrudging respect for one another. We’ve seen that situation thousands of times and, frankly, it’s got mold on it. Writer/Director Ron Shelton instead gives us two guys who’ve been partners for a while and get along pretty well with one another. The begrudging respect is built in. They’re not best friends or anything, but they get along pretty well. Well enough to unload their troubles on one another and to laugh at certain eccentricities that one or the other happen to possess. Hartnett and Ford are actually quite great together. They have an easy rapport that enlivened pretty much every scene.

But the real genius of “Hollywood Homicide” is that it’s a cop movie that actually uses its locale to the fullest advantage. The events of this movie could not have taken place in any other city in the world. The two main cops (Ford and Hartnett) moonlight as a real estate agent and a yoga instructor, respectfully, and Hartnett’s character even dreams of becoming an actor. Harrison is not too great of a real estate agent and quite a lot of fun comes from watching him try to crack the case while putting more effort into unloading pieces of real estate that he’s been stuck with forever. It puts a fun, little spin onto the proceedings. I liked the fact that the case was secondary to these guys. It was just their job and, while they do it well and do end up solving the case (oh, come on, like you didn’t know that was gonna happen) they seem more concerned with getting a producer to watch their audition or getting Martin Landau to buy a mansion. I’ve never seen that in a cop movie before. I also liked the little eccentric touches that get sprinkled in along the way like Ford sleeping with a telephone psychic or Hartnett getting information by promising to shop around an informant’s screenplay. Those were clever, little touches that really lent the movie a sense of personality all its own.

The film is far from perfect: some of the action sequences could have used some tighter pacing and some of the plot contrivances are a little too convenient. The things that don’t work are, in fact, the things that we have seen before. What makes this outing so much fun are the things that we haven’t seen before. We’ve never spent two hours with characters like these and never seen Hollywood used in a movie in quite this way. Those are the things that give this film what so many movies these days seem to lack: personality. This movie is unique. It’s eccentric. It’s fun. It’s got California written all over it. The leads have chemistry together. The dialogue is snappy. The script is fresh and constructed, mostly, with care. All these things might not make “Hollywood Homicide” perfect, but they definitely make it distinctive. And, for once, Harrison Ford looks like he’s having a good time. And seeing Harrison have a good time makes me have a good time. He’s got that Han Solo wink in his eye for the first time in at least a decade and it made me happy. If you care about little things like that, then you might find yourself caring about “Hollywood Homicide”.

1984 / 227 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Sergio Leone is a god. That’s all there is to it. There is no disputing this. It is a fact. He has taken a subject that has never really fascinated me all that much (gangsters) and made it come alive. He has made it live and breathe in a way that other filmmakers have not quite accomplished. He has created the greatest mob epic that one could ever possibly hope for.

“Once Upon A Time in America” is the story of four very close friends. They grow up together in the same section of New York, doing odd jobs for local hoods until one day they decide that it is time for them to have their own gang. Why work for others when they could be doing it on their own?

They start their own gang, and it becomes a great success. So much so that the rival gangs try to dissuade them from business. Quite forcefully, in fact. This does not work, and the boys grow to manhood, only to learn that one of them has involved them with an Italian mobster as well as some shady men who are with the Labor Union.

This movie is truly amazing. The sets are fantastic and beautiful. The production designer should be commended. Ennio Morricone’s music is beautiful and adds poetry to the action, as does every Morricone score. The camerawork is a sight to behold, taking a location we have seen many times before (New York) and a subject we are not unfamiliar with (the mob) and finding fresh angles and approaches to it. The city has never looked so beautiful. It still looks a bit grimy, but it is also beautiful.

But the transitions in this movie. Wow. I have never seen such a flawless use of editing. This movie is exceptionally well-paced. It may be close to four hours long but unless you have a clock close to your television, you would never know. Half an hour of this movie moves like ten minutes of any normal film. This film flows, secure with its story, assured of its characters, and with a solid destination in mind. Not a scrap of film is wasted.

And I have not even gotten to the performances yet! Robert Deniro has played a gangster many times before, but never as well as he does here. His roles may resemble one another on the surface, but he finds a way to make each character distinctive. He finds a way to breathe life into the people he plays every time, and he does it effortlessly. James Woods also does a commendable job. He is great when given a great role, and often just all right in a movie like “The Specialist”. Well, he has a great role here and he owns it. He stops being James Woods and becomes this man. He is superb.

Another great thing? The tone of the film. Movies like “The Godfather” often approach this subject with a sort of somberness that just makes the whole affair too detached for my taste. Coppola places the mob on a plateau above normal people (well, that’s my impression, at any rate) and makes it hard to relate to the people and situations involved. But Leone does a remarkable job of showing the inalienable humanity of his characters and letting us relate to them. We may not agree with some or any of the things they are doing, but we can see where they are coming from. We can see why they are the way that they are and we can understand them. It would be impossible to stick with this film for four hours, no matter how pretty it was or well it was made, without that one vital spark.

In short, “Once Upon a Time in America” hooks you from the very first frame and does not retract the hooks until four hours later. It is a mesmerizing, poetic, haunting and all-around brilliant bit of filmmaking.

And that is why Leone is a god.

2003 / 111 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

A great heist movie doesn’t need a whole hell of a lot to succeed for me. Not really. All it needs to do is have a cast of intriguing characters, each with their own little hook and distinctive personality, each of whom feels like a perfect fit with the others and a unique ability to contribute to the heist in question. Also, it needs a good objective for the protagonists to carry out. It also would be nice if that objective had a nice motive behind it, other than simply the acquisition of something worth a great deal of money. Oh, and it needs to have an intangible atmosphere of unassailable coolness in which to marinate.

All of these necessary ingredients line up magnificently in “The Italian Job” and combine to make one of the finest heist films it has ever been my pleasure to see. I never thought I would make such a bold proclamation about a film involving “Marky” Mark Wahlberg. But here I am and here it is.

The film begins with a fabulously clever and unassailably cool heist sequence in Venice, Italy led by Mark and his mentor, Donald Sutherland. They mastermind a perfect heist, escaping with, if I remember correctly, ten million dollars in gold bars. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous member of the team (Edward Norton) double crosses the team, killing Sutherland, making off with the gold and leaving everyone else for dead at the bottom of a fjord. A year or so later, Mark finds the location of Norton and masterminds a plot to retrieve the gold as a sort of revenge. (As mentioned in the film “Trading Places”, the best way to get back at rich people is by simply turning them into poor people.) His team includes not only the original players- Jason Statham (a British action hero god from “The Transporter”), Seth Green (a computer nerd whose character is the real inventor of Napster), Mos Def (as an explosives expert who is deaf in one ear)- but also Charlize Theron as the foxy daughter of Donald Sutherland’s character. Together, they form a quite lively team and hatch a very intricate and clever plot to get the gold back.

The heist in a movie like this is almost inconsequential, at least to me. The real fun is in watching all the characters line up everything they need to do in order to pull the heist off. It’s like watching a porn film in which the foreplay is the best part. I always love scenes where the characters know what they need to get done, buy the equipment and get everything timed like clockwork, and then encounter a setback which forces them to rethink the entire thing. “The Italian Job” is filled with neat little moments like that. This isn’t to say that, when the heist is perpetrated, that it isn’t fun. It’s a hell of an action sequence with all sorts of clever little moments and twists that I wouldn’t dare ruin. But the planning is always my favorite part.

The actors all do a uniformly wonderful job in this film. Statham is a force to be reckoned with as he is in every film. He’s charming, funny and he always seems to be thinking: a rare thing in an action hero. Charlize is sexy and sweeter than ever: the most captivating safecracker I’ve seen in a film. Mos Def is good enough and Seth Green is rather hilarious. And saying that Sutherland is good in this film is almost a waste of space, since he’s great in everything. But the real surprise is the amount of charm and finesse displayed by Mark Wahlberg. He’s actually charming in this film, which came as a shock to me since he usually displays all the charm of a brick wall. And the fact that Edward Norton didn’t want to be in this movie and lets it show actually helps this film. He’s a convincing prick here. So convincing that you get the feeling it isn’t an act. Also, between this movie and “The Score”, we learn that one should never include Norton in any sort of heist. It’s invariably a bad move.

Aside from a slight implausibility problem with the amount of gold they are sneaking away in tiny, little cars, this film is nearly above reproach. It’s nicely paced, oozing with charm and some genuine menace, and it’s got that essence of sheer cool that I mentioned earlier. I really enjoyed the score to this film, the best and most fitting one I’ve heard in any movie so far this year, and the cinematography and the editing were masterful. The director, F. Gary Gray (the same man responsible for the only good “Friday” movie) seems to have a great handle on this material and a winning way with every actor and crew person involved…except maybe Norton, but Norton still works within the confines of the film. This film was far better than I ever expected. I haven’t seen the original version with Michael Caine, so I’m not certain how this one measures up. But I can’t imagine any heist movie being more entertaining than this one.

2003 / 101 Minutes / G
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

You know what I love about seeing kids’ movies in the theater? No, it isn’t the sweet little dickens that kicks the back of your seat for roughly an hour and a half. No, it’s watching the little goofballs react to what they’re seeing on the screen. Like, for example, at the beginning of this film when Marlin (the main character, a clownfish with the voice of Albert Brooks) loses his entire family except one son to a vicious barracuda. Right after that, the cute little girl in front of me turned to her mother and asked, sweetly, “What happened to all the other fishies?” Call me a sadist, but it brings a deranged smile to my cynical face.

“Finding Nemo” is the sort of kids’ film that even two adults with no children whatsoever can attend and have a great time, and not just because you get to witness the beginnings of such scarring psychological trauma. Oh no, there are all sorts of other benefits to be had. “Finding Nemo” creates a world of color and comedy and, yes, even danger. The threat of nature in all its brutality hangs over the entire film, established by this grisly beginning. You get more of a sense of danger in this innocent little film than you do at any point during “The Matrix Reloaded”. And that heightens everything that comes after, even the comedic moments have an edge to them because you know the stakes being presented. And this film is full of comedic moments. It’s a gorgeous little movie that taps more deeply into Brooks’ comic potential than the flaccid, live-action “The In-Laws” ever does. Ellen DeGeneres is also often hilarious as a scatter-brained fish with less of a short-term memory than the protagonist of “Memento”.

The story is fairly straightforward. Due to the afore-mentioned incident, Marlin becomes increasingly more protective of his last remaining family member, the titular Nemo. On Nemo’s first day of school, he takes place in a dare that results in his being captured by a scuba-diving dentist and taken to an aquarium in a Sydney dentist office. As a result of this, Marlin must search the entire ocean for his only son. In the process, he meets the scatterbrained fish described above as well as a group of twelve-step sharks, a pelican with the voice of Geoffrey Rush, a whale and others. It’s a lively adventure that zips along and even nestles in a nice message for not only children but adults as well. The message is even worked in without the sort of sermonizing one usually finds in such movies.

“Finding Nemo” is a triumph of color and fancy. It has many impressive set pieces (one involves a submarine and some underwater mines, both left over from World War Two) and a lot of big laughs. It is a densely populated and imaginatively realized world that brought a nearly constant smile to my face. Its only fault, as far as I can see, is that it seems a bit long at nearly two hours. Near the end, my attention was beginning to wane as climax after climax was piled on top of one another. But that is but a minor quibble. Pixar has done it again, with Andrew Stanton creating a world that immerses the viewer throughout and gives a great platform for colorful visuals, morals, well-developed characters and astounding flights of fancy. It also provides nearly as much entertainment for little kids and big kids as the “Toy Story” films, and more than 2001’s flawed “Monsters, Inc.”

Go already, you’ll have a good time. Really, that’s about all I have to say. But, hey, it’s enough. Other than “X2″, this is the best that the summer has to offer…so far.