Culture

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.