Film

Rub a dub dub. By the time young Emily Browning - the Australian waif who stars in The
Uninvited - sees her 8th or 9th scary, decaying corpse come to life I
begin to wonder if anyone ever considered late-stage anorexia as a
cause for these hallucinations. Between last month's The Unborn
(featuring the sharp-hipped Odette Yustman) and this movie, I am now
certain that a steady diet of pizza and pancakes can ward off ghosts.

Unfortunately
the requisite beanpole heroine isn't the only well-beaten path that
this film walks. Like other post-holiday horror releases we're treated
to basic thriller formulas, teen drinking, PG-13 half-nudity - along
with more scared-stiff and seemingly starving protagonists who should
probably stop at a deli on the way to the police station.

DiCaprio returns for another season of mad men. It's been ten years since Kevin Spacey got his head blown off in
American Beauty, and director Sam Mendes still has a lot more to say
about living inside the box. And while he doesn't cover much new
territory here, at least he hasn't lost his melancholy spirit.

Revolutionary
Road, Mendes' latest take on how rough it can be when carpet swatches
and cul-de-sacs run your life, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
as Frank and April Wheeler, a married couple living in a nondescript
suburb outside of New York City in the mid 1950s. The film opens with a
high-angle night shot and a '40s-era ballad cutting through the
soundtrack. I only remember this mundane detail because that also
describes the opening scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Point being,
both are essentially prison movies.

Has anyone seen my stapler?Part of the draw for The Wrestler is how close the storyline tracks
Rourke's real life rollercoaster. After his rise to fame in the '80s,
followed by his boxing stint and subsequent weird-guy tabloid filler,
Mickey had been reduced to bad movies and bit parts. There are a few in
which he truly shined, such as Marv in Sin City, and stunning
performances in The Pledge, Spin, Animal Factory and Get Carter. In The
Wrestler he finally puts all his cards on the table, hanging himself
out like a skinned deer for us to gawk at. It's the proverbial car
wreck and we're unable to avert our eyes.

The plot of The Wrestler is
nothing new. It follows a familiar comeback formula, but it shines by
turning convention on its head. We shudder at the thought of Rourke's
battered character Randy "The Ram" Robinson stepping in the ring again
for a few wrinkled dollar bills and nearly cheer when he contemplates
retirement. But the gritty realism, honest performances and tight
storytelling drive this moving character study. We know Randy's time
has come and gone, but he doesn't. The parallels to Rourke begin
immediately - physically battered, broken down, beat up, empty and
drained, he still clings to some kind of hope for redemption, or at
least another shot.

James Bond goes back in time.If we agree we go to movies in large part to be entertained, Defiance is a success. If further we can agree we also go to be moved or educated, Defiance does that as well. Lastly, if we care about movie pedigrees (director, actors, cinematographer) Defiance scores again as a full-blooded thoroughbred.
Director Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, Last Samurai) has a style and pace that are recognizable and satisfying. There are typically a few overly romantic moments in his films that are otherwise wonderful examples of story telling. His heroes thrive on long odds.

Defiance
Starring: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell. Directed by Edward Zwick.
Rated R.

I'm your biggest fan. 3-D is the perfect way to remake an 80's slasher flick. In a word, My
Bloody Valentine 3-D rules. With newer, higher-tech 3-D glasses, as
soon as your eyes adjust everything starts looking more realistic. It's
a mess-with-your-mind effect. The initial scenes cause a voyeuristic
wax museum feel then soon become hyper-realistic. Sitting around a
diner counter, actor Kevin Tighe looked so real I expected him to walk
up, shake my hand and say, "Hey Salvo, how ya likin' the movie so far?"
Other
things get more noticeable too-a blood-spattered wall, the character's
complexions, fog on windshields, hell, even tire treads stand out. Gore
has never looked more eye-poppingly gruesome, especially when someone's
ribcage is split open. Okay, enough about 3-D, let's talk about the
flick itself. It's a pumped-up remake of the drearily hacked together
1981 flick of the same name and it's a gazillion times better. The
original was so dark that you couldn't even see what the hell was going
on. Well, that's all been changed. There's nothing you don't see in MBV
3-D.

Do you find me creepy?The Unborn is not scary enough to be good and too serious to be "so bad
it's good." The flick is a gab-fest generic possession story that goes
beyond absurd and way beyond caring if it makes sense or not.

The
convoluted mess of a plot doesn't even try to win you over; it just
employs one sad old trick after another; a crumbling insane asylum,
tricky mirrors and doorways-there's even the medicine cabinet mirror
trick that I have complained about so often. The newest twists thrown
in are some hints of Jewish folklore, the Kabbalah and crickets from
Jerusalem. The snappy and clearly intended-to-be-witty dialogue tries
to distract, but it's so off the hook that you'll want to run out and
rent your favorite horror movie to wash the memory out of your eyes.

I finish things. In Hollywood, there's following convention, defying convention, and
then there's Clint Eastwood, who created his own set of conventions,
and is now shredding them to pieces in the last decade of a career
spanning more than 50 years.

I'm required to say this whenever I
review an Eastwood film. That said, Gran Torino probably ranks in the
bottom half of Eastwood's past six or seven films, which is sort of
like saying Oprah isn't quite the richest woman in the world. And while
I've been tempted to conclude that his directorial outings fare better
without him in front of the camera, this film is Exhibit A in the case
to prove me wrong.

So why do they call you the gay blade?There's something extremely vapid about The Spirit and I don't mean the
character-the movie. Sure there are big guns, pummeling, wisecracking
and tons o' cleavage but the acting is wooden and stiff. The characters
all seem soulless, leaving the audience no reason to care about any of
them.

This work pays homage to the work and genius of comic book
writer Will Eisner. Director Frank Miller gives Spirit his Sin City
treatment-color highlighting the black and white tone, a constant weird
sepia look, manic silhouettes, and white blood. You'll leave the
theater with memories of these images, but the slick stylizing of Sin
City just doesn't gel. There are some really funny lines, some
over-the-top scenes, but overall it's too arty for its own good. All
flash and no heat.

A bee in her bonnet. There is a line in Good Will Hunting that could be paraphrased thusly:
"Only a handful of people can tell the difference between how good we
are." And when it comes to acting, there are probably only a handful of
people who can tell the difference between the best performance ever,
and the performances by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt.

I could go on and on about the plot of Doubt,
the meditation on religion in general and the Catholic Church in
particular, as well as its relevance to the clergy molestation scandals
today. I could talk about the script, the play from which it's based
(written by John Patrick Shanley, who also directed this film), and the
superb set design that gives the movie its frigid, eerie feel.

Rhinestone cowboysI was there. Twice. The first time was in San Francisco in '78 when Dan White shot and killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone. The second time was at the Castro theatre for the opening week showing of Milk, almost 30 years later. It was a special, bittersweet night.

Milk is directed by Gus Van Sant, an openly gay director known for diverse films including Drugstore Cowboy and Good Will Hunting. Harvey Milk was a gay rights activist with political aspirations. Dubbed "The Mayor of Castro Street," he was ultmately elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors-not because he wanted to be a politician per se, rather he saw it as the right thing to do.
I lived on Castro Street for two years as an outcast - the slob-hetero of the neighborhood. This year, as the token straight waiting in line for the movie, I had a similar feeling, but this time we all shared the communal interest and a kind of sublime reverence.