Reviews

If you liked Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, etc., you'll like Inland Empire. There are some similarities to those previous films, but Inland Empire is a new departure, or maybe a culmination, for David Lynch.

Anyone who thinks they can write a spoiler for this movie doesn't have a clue what they saw. This is not a plot driven movie in any sense. It's a film about the nuts and bolts of reality and the human mind -- among other things.

Laura Dern has finally been given a role to expand into, and she doesn't disappoint at all. Her white trash trailer wife monologues are stunning. There is also a street kid monologue (with subtitles!) towards the end of the film that is likewise a classic, and performed by a totally unknown Japanese girl.

I thought the ending credits sequence too precious; we get Laura Herring and the usual suspects trotted out. We learn that Naomi Watts did voice-overs. But this is classic Lynch that will have you pondering for a long time.

This is a fictionalized but meticulously filmed story of the Japanese experience of the battle at Iwo Jima. It is the complementary story to Clint Eastwood's other film about Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers.

I wasn't going to write a review of this film at all, because there's not a whole lot to say about it. It's good. But it's also the most haunting film I've seen in a long time. The lunacy of war and aggression will stick with you long after you've left the theatre. You've been warned! Yes, there are a few historically inaccurate details (two G.I.'s lighting up cigarettes at night -- and then complaining that they'd be sitting ducks for Japanese snipers!) but overall this is a thorough film both in terms of the history of the conflict, and in the psychology of the Japanese people and military. Like the last Nazis waiting out the end in Hitler's bunker, these people can only come to the realisation that they've been duped into a war that they will not win.

I saw this at the German Film Festival in San Francisco, and having been to a few of these before, I was prepared for a depressing experience. What's with these Germans? Anyway . . . this is a brutal, thorough, carefully crafted portrayal of the tortured life of what Americans call with politically correct blandness a "sex offender." Our protagonist, Theo, is raping his third victim when we meet him. He is a smoldering, violent thug. We next encounter him, 9 years later, as he is released from a mental hospital into a supervised residential setting. He is a broken man. He is riding a beast he hates, and he has no idea when the beast will bite again.

As a portrayal of psychology, angst, subtlety of emotion, and real human relations, I would give this film a 10. The sparring session between Theo, and his budding girlfriend Nettie, is a brilliant display of the subtle forces which are torturing the both of them. The fact that these two people have the sparsest dialog in the history of cinema may not be realistically correct, but it is an excellent artistic way of turning the focus to their inner emotions. This film is art, after all -- not a documentary.

The only reason I didn't go for 10 stars is that I had a persistent feeling that something was missing. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I would have liked some back story about Theo's youth, something that would make him a whole person. The film does work without that, but it is a lack that a writer and director of such brilliance could somehow have remedied.

This is not a feel good, date movie.

A new school teacher has an affair with one of her teen age male students. Another teacher observes their activity and confronts her.

If that sounds like the ultimate in spare plot descriptions, I'm afraid it's all I can say about this film without spoiling it. This is a film which is plot driven, and that plot is full of so many twists and turns that to say any more about it without a spoiler alert would get me a black eye from the IMDb. A difficult film to review, indeed.

This is a film which is primarily about women (some of them anyway): their emotions, how they think, how they act, how they rationalize, how they maneuver. It's an unflattering picture, but excruciatingly well done. The dialog is razor sharp (i.e. bitchy) with nary an ounce of fat. Judi Densch is brilliant. Cate Blanchette does a superb job portraying a woman who is borderline disturbed - on one level conflicted about what she's doing but on another totally enthused.

The men come off looking much more intelligent and noble, tho they have minor roles. Cate's husband, in fact, has two or three sentences towards the end of the film (again, I can't tell you what's happening when he says them because it would give away the plot) that are succinct, honest, to the point, and sane. This is in sharp contrast to everything else we've been seeing.

Highly recommended. Whoever wrote this should get a Pulitzer, not an Oscar.

This film is set in England in the year 2027, when the human species has become infertile. There are no, or few children, and no one yet of child bearing age. The world in general has collapsed, tho it is not made clear to us if this is directly related to the infertility problem. There is an underground resistance movement which has found a pregnant girl and is trying to get her to a safe haven. That's the general gist of it.

Acting? Superb. Cinematography? Astounding. Dialog? Mostly great, with a few clunkers here and there. Action? Lots of it, and Spielbergian in its quality and realism.

The problem is, this is a film with no message, no insight or meaning, other than the moronic way we manage to deal with our ever more stellar technology, and the violent way we solve our problems. It mostly plays the emotion card, and people who are satisfied with that will love the film. People who love action that's well done, will love this film. Unfortunately, there's nothing else here. It's a magnificently executed depiction of destruction, violence, and despair.

A lot of people are calling this film thought provoking. You don't want to have those kinds of thoughts.

When it comes to films about the Buddhist and Hindu worlds, you really have to know beforehand what you're looking at, otherwise it will make little or no sense -- or worse. Capturing the inner journey on film is probably impossible. Having issued that warning, I can tell you this is a good film.

When we first meet Rinpoche (a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist teacher), he is a solitary little man walking around London, followed by a handful of totally enthralled students. He has a passion for soccer, and apparently good food, too. It is not clear if he has a shrine room, an organization, or a practice center -- the usual venue for Buddhist teachers. He seems aware of but untouched by his surroundings.

It is only when we get to his home base in Bhutan that we see he is a major spiritual, social, and political figure. People are bowing to him all over the place, he blesses hundreds of people, he is chauffered, and wined and dined.

So what does this actually tell us about the dharma? A lot, but you have to know what you're seeing before you see it. First, his Western students are immensely lucky to have such access to him; they hang out watching TV, cook dinner together, etc. As Rinpoche laments himself, in Buddhist countries the gap is too great between him and the ordinary people for him to be as effective a teacher as he should.

It also shows us how an enlightened being is truly without ego pretense. He is as happy and comfortable living in a plebe flat in London, as sitting on a throne in Bhutan and naming babies for groveling parents. He is not so much a teacher of important subject matter, but the embodiment of that subject matter. It's that total lack of pretense that rings true. Not that he's an easy man to be around -- far from it, but it is one of the jobs of the real teacher to keep his students off balance. It keeps them from turning into a barnacle on the guru, and forces them to work with their own minds, which is the whole point of this particular spiritual path. Occasionally he does say a few words about the dharma, mostly geared to Westerners.

This film also contains a gem of an interview, two interlaced interviews actually, one of them with Gesar Mukpo, the half American/half Tibetan son of Chogyam Trungpa Rin. and a tulku in his own right, and the other with Steven Seagal, who gets sliced and diced as a total phony. People need to be warned about the bad teachers. In fact, it was around the time Steven Seagal was enthroned that I left Buddhism as a formal member.

So once again, this is a film for true believers. Preaching to the choir so to speak. It is also possible for someone who knows nothing about Buddhism to watch this film and become inspired to check out the dharma, and I think that was a primary reason he gave approval for the film.

It's been about 40 years since Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism landed in the West, and this film is a fascinating reality check on how it is developing. This film shows that overall it is developing very well, not only in terms of creating good students, but challenging Tibetans to adapt the core of their teachings to a very alien culture.

This film is about people working and staying at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the day Robert Kennedy was shot there.

There are actually two films here. The first is a narrative about a bunch of truly uninteresting and useless personalities who work in a hotel. The other is a collection of film clips from the RFK campaign. Putting the two of these together could have been a good idea. In this case, it results in nothing less than a disaster and travesty, which insults us the audience, and even worse, it immerses RFK into the worst kind of soap opera trash. It's an insult to all concerned.

I gave this film two stars, instead of zero, because of the film clips, and Laurence Fishburne's acting, which almost saved the character he was playing. In all honesty, it's been a long time since I've seen a film this bad. Furthermore, I lived thru the 60's, and this film does nothing whatsoever to capture the atmosphere of the times. The doper scenes are caricatures. There's no tension whatsoever, either between the characters, or about the politics of the day. Believe me, 1968 was anything but a dull year. People were truly freaking out. The whole country was falling apart. From this film, we're led to believe that the biggest crisis of the day was a dullsville hotel manager cheating on his wife, and an alcoholic lounge singer.

What were the people who made this garbage thinking?

====================

Well, that's the review I wrote immediately after seeing this film. However, upon further reflection, I'm having a very different take.

Particularly irksome was the casting in this story. It's all big names. In fact, it's totally topheavy. This is most annoying. "Oh, there's the Hobbit!" "Oh, there's the West Wing!" "Oh, there's Morpheus!" If a Hollywood film has two of these people, that's normal; they're balanced by the lesser known actors.

But these are not stupid people. So it dawned on me; this is exactly what they wanted to do. This is not really a film about RFK, or the assassination, or the Ambassador Hotel. It's a political statement from Hollywood. Laurence Fishburne's Uncle Tom routine has nothing to do with the story line; it's seriously out of whack with the politics of race of the day. That's clear. This also explains why none of the subplots ties in at all with the assassination. They're not supposed to. I kept wondering what the heck the Czech reporter had to do with any of this. Now it's clear. She was there to show that tho the message is anti-right establishment, but they're not Commmie Pinkos, the traditional retort of the conservative right. And that stuff about the CHADS! obvious in retrospect.

This film is an in joke. It's a message from the Hollywood elite about how little we've progressed, and how off track politically and socially we've become, how we're still embroiled in stupid wars, racism, poitical duplicity, etc. That's the only explanation that makes any sense to me. These are not stupid people. Taken at face value, this film is nonsense.

In the final analysis, this is a time travel action flick, with a few good lines of dialog, and a heroine with nice breasts.

The plot has enough holes to drive several Hummers thru sideways.

There is no depth whatsoever to any of the characters here.

Tell me how Denzel Washington plays "chicken" on a suspension bridge, without killing anyone or himself, and without getting nailed by the police? I kept hoping something better was coming around the bend, but it just kept spiraling down into tinseltown pyrotechnics.

In fact, there was a movie just like this about 10 years ago, same plot, same ending, same bogus science, and it was just as disappointing.

Harold Crick is an IRS agent who hears a woman's voice narrating his life as he goes through his day. The woman is actually a novelist, and he is the main character in her latest novel. This is bad enough for the fellow, but one day he discovers she is going to kill him off.

This film is brilliant. The premise, the dialog and the acting are superb. The story is literal and allegorical and clever all at the same time. It's wraps a lot of different concepts together in a way I've never seen done before in a film.

Will Ferrel has truly made the transition into "serious" acting here. Dustin Hoffman, as usual, is amazing to watch, and he has the best lines. Emma Thompson has her character flawlessly portrayed.

The reason I have not given this film ten stars, is because the ending is not consistent with the rest of the film in terms of quality. OK, it's an acceptable ending, and it makes sense, but it lacks the brilliance of the rest of the movie. They should have come up with something better. Also, the Maggie Gyllenhall character was flawed; she starts out a firebrand and ends up a Barbie Doll. Unfortunate.

But these flaws notwithstanding, a great film to see and savor. The most original dialog I've heard on screen, and an amazing tour de force of literary style that shows a respect for the audience rarely seen in a tinseltown production.

P.S. Trivia note. The director went to great pains to make this take place in an unidentfiable city -- all the transit buses have nary a word painted on them -- but the opening scene has Harold getting onto a BART train! The rest of the film doesn't look like San Francisco tho.

This is a documentary about three Iraqis. The first is a Sunni boy who works and goes to school in Baghdad. The second is a Shiite religious figure in a city to the south. The third is a Kurdish boy (and his family) in the north.

I've seen a lot of documentaries and cinema verite, but this one is one of the most successful. It's as if the camera is invisible, and the photographer got access to whatever he wants. Any documentarian is going to be jealous of this one. I could give many examples. One of the more chilling is the Shiite vigilante raid on the town's market, in which they beat up and kidnap fellow Shiites for the sin of selling alcohol. How on earth does an American get access to that? He actually climbs right into the trucks with the masked militants and films the whole thing from beginning to end.

And the result is spectacular. There's this Iraqi fellow sitting on the floor, surrounded by men with guns, his hands tied and a bag over his head, and he makes the comment "What's changed since Saddam? I've done nothing and I'm still sitting on the floor with a bag over my head!"

When we move up north to visit the Kurds, we see a brick factory where men are making mud bricks, just as they have been doing for many thousands of years. This is clearly not Nebraska, and anyone who invades a country like this, even with the most altruistic of motives, clearly has no idea what Iraq is about. Whatever the American foreign policy mistakes, military and political mistakes, the bottom line is we lost totally the small window of opportunity we had to turn Iraq into a democracy.

This is the story of a young man whose mother spirals into serious mental illness, with some major help from her corrupt therapist. She lets the therapist adopt her son. The therapist's family is not the model of sanity.

I take issue with the labeling of this film as comedy, unless they specify that it's a very black comedy. This is a film about mental pain, and the failure of our culture to deal with it properly. I myself know personally two "therapists" (Ph.d's of course) who are the equivalent of Dr. Fisk. Not identical or similar, but the moral and intellectual (or lack thereof) equivalent. The level of exaggeration in this film is not great, because the reality is already bizarre enough.

What makes this film worth seeing is the caliber of the acting. They lined up some top guns here, and the results are dazzlingly depressing. Annette Benning has the neurotic, self-absorbed art mother down to a T. Augusten is well cast; charming, vulnerable and clueless. Gwyneth Paltrow has a small part but she packs a lot into those few moments. Natalie is so right on I thought at first they had found some Goth street chick to play the part -- but she is actually a professional actress. Alec Baldwin as the macho ex-husband with no interest whatsoever in all this whining b.s. is also well done. And so forth.

So what you have here is a sort of Series of Unfortunate and Entirely Avoidable Events, without the humor, playing at scream level, and worthy of an Oscar. If that's your mix, have at it.

This film documents the life of Jim Jones, his emergence as a charismatic and successful religious figure, and his eventual downfall.

The whole People's Temple story always struck me as just another of the 60's cult phenomena. We had Rajneesh and his farm, and uncountable other guru's who exploited, and continue to exploit, large numbers of gullible followers. The Moonies are still with us, but well below the radar most of the time.

What's odd about Jim Jones -- to me, anyway -- is that no one really seems to know who this guy really was. This film gives more insight than anything else I've seen or read. It talks about his childhood, which was extremely poor, and his family situation, which was equally grim, so we get some insight there. But he was a very carefully guarded fellow. Always wearing those shades, always talking in the manner of a preacher. But who was he really? What was he like when he took off the robes and had a beer? We may never know. His followers certainly didn't know, and no doubt that's a major part of the problem. There is one scene in this documentary in which Jones is standing at the back of a group of people at a large gathering, and his demeanor reminded me of the dictator in North Korea -- it was that kind of vague, arrogant, totally in control look. Spooky.

The most telling comment in this film was the remark made by one of the PT's former members, who said "No one ever goes and joins a cult. They join a church, or a club." But what is the tipping point at which people can tolerate psychological and physical abuse against themselves and their friends? We don't get an answer to that. The people who made this film didn't have to tell us the answer, but it would have been a better film if they had.

This is the film documentary of the lives of a dozen English children filmed at 7 years intervals starting at age 7. They are from a wide variety of backgrounds. A few turn out with predictable lives, most do not.

On the plus side, this is the story of people who grow up, deal with life's challenges, and grow into maturity. Some of them are relaxed and open with the documentary, such as the African/English fellow (sorry -- I'm bad with names). Many of them are profoundly concerned with the welfare of others, and became teachers, or philanthropists.

On the dark side, most of these people are clearly annoyed with the project -- tho they have participated in it for years. Also, one must assume the best on the part of the director of these films, for the devil is in the editing. How balanced is it really? And there is also one more point which detracts somewhat from the appeal of this movie: it's about the English, the most guarded, self-efacing and embarrassed people on the face of the earth. The physicist tells a joke about the extrovert engineer who looks at the feet of the *other* person when he's talking, and one wife talks about how her husband was always apologizing to her for nothing, but that just about sums up the English social milieu, typically an uptight people who are embarrassed with life.

Maybe this is why I found the fellow with mental illness to be so refreshing, poignant and profound. He had come to terms with life -- as they all had -- but he was able to conceptualize it and share it.

Watching a film like this inevitably inspires one to compare oneself with the people on screen, or more accurately inspires one to look at one's life a little more closely and how one has handled the ups and downs of life on this planet. In that sense, it's surely a good film.

Unless one is a thoroughly incorrigible voyeur, some parts of this film will be boring and irrelevant, but overall a good experience.

This film is about a Lebanese folk dance troupe that goes on tour. They do traditional "debke" but also modernized, even hip hop, versions, which are controversial in their country.

I am not Lebanese, nor Arab, so for me this was a treat on several levels. I got to see a country that's been in the news a lot, but about which I know little. The music is wonderful, the dancing interesting. Contrary to what most people here are saying, I thought the acting amateurish and the plot predictable. Mediocre cinematography.

But that's not the point -- this is a fun movie. It's a bit longer than it should be, but the music is thrilling. Also funny. I saw it at the Arabic Film festival in San Francisco, and most of the audience was Arabic if not Lebanese, so I got a sense I didn't get all the humor, but most of the dialog is accessible to anyone. If you like Middle Eastern music, don't miss it.

A detective receives a call about a murder at the Buddhist Temple. He enters the Zendo, with his gun drawn, and pointing it at the rows of black-clad, shaven-headed meditators, shouts "Nobody move!" Now, if you get the humor in that, this film is for you. If you do not get the humor in that, please avoid this one; you'll feel bored, confused, and cheated.

This is a clever little Indie about the zen experience. The casting is good, the dialog sufficient. It's funny and sad and pithy and cosmic, and the writer/director struggled for many years to make it happen, but it's a film for insiders only. There was a steady stream of people leaving the theatre the night I saw it - maybe 20% of the audience left the place -- which is unusual for San Francisco. People are usually on the patient side here, especially with "art films" and exotica. Even I did not stay for q & a with Rosenbush. As I mingled with the crowd leaving the theatre at the end of the film I was hearing a lot of negative comments, but they were the comments of people who had no idea what they had just seen. How many people have a background in emptiness and egolessness? These are just not common concepts in American pop culture.

This film is opening in a dozen cities next month, which is good, but there should be a disclaimer so a lot of people don't waste their money, time and attention, and give it a bad rap, which it definitely does not deserve.

P.S. For a much more accessible treatment of Buddhism, see the diamond-perfect Korean film "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring Again." No pre-requisites for that one.

P.P.S. - I got a real kick out of the review from Boulder. Ha! If there ever was a film made for Boulder Buddhists, this is it. Probably the only place on earth, outside Dharmsala, that would draw a packed house and a standing ovation. ha!

This is a documentary about a spiritual woman in India, who could be described as a Hindu version of Mother Theresa. She is a practitioner of the path of service, which sees all people and beings as expressions of God.

I'll say here again what I've said about all the spiritual documentaries I have seen about Eastern religions and saints: You have to know what you're watching. Communicating the spiritual life on film is a real challenge, and probably cannot be done. But if you know what you're seeing, such documentaries are real gold. They're not going to convince you one way or the other, but they will show you real spirituality in action, at least what the camera can record.

I was disappointed that the film did not present a more rounded picture of this woman and her work, but that was a judgment call on the part of the director/writer. Perhaps he thought we would be overwhelmed by the goody goody quality of a woman who spends 24/7 hugging, feeding and caring for complete strangers.

At the very least, this film illustrates the vast potential we have as humans, a perspective that is grossly lacking in the American/Western world view.

This is basically the story of a pre-teen girl who is competing in a talent contest, and her dysfuntional family.

But like some simple films and books, this one runs pretty deep. It's a comedy that runs from hilarious to bittersweet to outright bitter. Some of it is very funny, some of it is just plain painful to watch, because this is really a film about losing and what that means in this country, the US of A, where winning is everything. It could have been a feel good movie, with whatever ending, and it is actually very close to a formula movie, but what sets it apart is that everyone in this film REALLY is a loser, and coming to terms with that is shown to be both a relief and upsetting. It's possible to make peace with losing on the one hand, because as Dwayne and Frank say of the pageant judges "We don't want those people judging Olive!" and on the other hand, there might not be a game out there that's worth winning.

As for the literal deeper philosophical implications, regarding Nietzche and Proust, having read neither, I have no idea, and the filmmakers don't give us much of a clue. It did prompt me to think of checking them out, and that's a real achievement for a movie. I haven't had a movie stimulate my curiosity like that since the Matrix trilogy.

So I highly recommend this flick if you want a new take on an old genre, and you like to think some about what you've seen. Everyone in the theatre enjoyed this film the day I saw it, and in fact it got a round of applause at the end. (I saw it in Berkeley, so actual results may vary.)

This is a Spanish film (subtitles) about a Jewish girl who brings her Palestinian boyfriend home to meet the family. This is not a serious social or political commentary. It is a farce in the vein of Opera Buffo and a long tradition of Spanish farces. It's hysterically funny and well done, but it is what it is. I enjoyed it tremendously. The bathroom scene with the fiancé and the grandfather had me laughing so hard I needed cpr.

The dialog is well done and tight. There is one scene towards the end where the girl and her boyfriend are having a fight and they go thru the entire Israeli/Palestinian conflict in about 3 minutes. It's really an accomplishment.

A good film about a subject that desperately needs some humor, especially these days.

If you're a fan of Turkish and Middle Eastern music, you're in great luck. This film is a documentary of current music in Istanbul, spanning the traditional to the modern. It's very good. You could not do better if you went to Istanbul yourself. We get interviews with Orhan Gencebay, concert clips of modern musical icons, a road show with a Romani (Gypsy) audience, Turkish Hip Hop (surprisingly very very good), and much much more. Some of the best female vocalists I've ever heard. A Kurdish woman singing in a hamam (steam bath) who will rip your heart out. Lots of social and political background. If this is your thing, you'll have a grand time. I could barely sit still in the theatre.

CD soundtrack now available on amazon. Pricey.

This film is the cartoon story of a gay duck, his life, his loves and his adventures. He marries a diva, he tries sexual behavior modification therapy with a Christian fundamentalist, buys an amusement park, and generally lives it up.

That's the general plot, but this film is an absolute riot. Loaded with gags, parody, puns, double entendres, etc. Musical and dance numbers galore. Fabulous guest appearances by the stars we know and love. I laughed until it hurt. There are no words that can adequately describe this film, and all I can really say about it is if you like mad cap humor, this one's for you. NOT a profound statement about the gay experience. And buy the DVD -- you can order it on Amazon.

Guest appearances by Michael, Barbra, Liz, and the usual suspects.

P.S. To Wayne who wrote the pejorative comments about my review: I had absolutely nothing to do with the making of this film, I do not know anyone who made this film, and I have not received any incentives, financial or otherwise, to promote it. I saw it in a packed auditorium with a seating capacity of 1,407. No one walked out during the screening, and most of the audience was laughing as much as I was. I'll admit it's goofy humor, but duh! it's a cartoon.

I always knew Francis Ford Coppola was a talented guy, and a good cinematographer, but until I saw this film, I did not realize the depth of his genius.

This film is about a bunch of lost children, sometimes referred to as "hoods", or "juvenile delinquents" which was more fashionable when I was that age. They hang out on the street, in pool halls and sleazy bars, and generally get into a lot of trouble. The ringleader of this group, if either term is appropriate, is played by Matt Dillon, and he is a magnetic tho dim witted character, whose major talent it seems is pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.

The cast is stellar; Mickey Rourke, Tom Waitts, Nicolas Cage, a very young and thin Lawrence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, etc. This many talented and powerful actors haven't been in the same room since 10 Angry Men, and it's really a cinematic feast.

So why is this genius, anyway?

We never learn what city we're in, and we don't even know what year we're in. Could be the 70's, but could also be the 40's, 30's, 50's or even 20's by the decore and landmarks. This is pre-computer and pre-big box chain stores. It's the America that has vanished, for better or worse.

The story we get is actually an allegory, or mythology. This is NOT a literal film. It ranges from the surreal, to the cosmic, to the real. The staged street scene which we see after the guys leave the circus, and the scene in the pool hall are masterful art which defy description here. The scene where Dennis Hopper drops in on his kids is an amazing portrayal of squalor and despair. You've got to see this stuff. It's a commentary on the dark underside of the urban American psyche, perhaps like Death of a Salesman, if that play had been written by Hieronymous Bosch in Cleveland after a 3 day bender.

Brilliant camera work, dead on dialog, intense acting, I could go on and on. Way above anything out of Hollywood since Citizen Kane.

This is a documentary about a women's prison in the UK. It tells the stories of several women. Some of them are there because they had unfortunate childhoods that led to bad choices as adults. Some are there because of just poor decisions without any heavy back story. Many are there (from foreign countries) because they got caught smuggling drugs ("mules".) I went into the theatre not expecting much, except that I'd probably get depressed. This is, however, a very different kind of film. For one thing, the women sing songs about their lives, in various styles, ranging from hip hop to almost operatic. The singing is extraordinarily good, well choreographed, and well filmed.

Also, we get detailed stories from a dozen or so women about what they did to get locked up, and how their lives evolved. This also is fascinating, but of course also disturbing. Many of these women were abused in childhood.

But there are also other horrifying little facts that fall out of the stories. There are two women from France who got 18 years (!) for drug smuggling for professional drug dealers, but there is also a woman who murdered her neighbor in cold blood and got three and a half years! Very scary legal system.

I highly recommend this film as valuable social insight, but it's not for the weak of heart -- very gritty.

Nicky is a successful playwright in New York City. He's got a new play about to open, a marriage that's shaky, and a theatre critic who is gunning for him. This all takes place at the time of the World Series in which Boston is playing New York. Nicky is a life-long fan of the ill-fated Red Sox.

This is a kind of quirky indie-type film. It has some James Toback flavor to it, and not just because of Robert Downey Jr. What I enjoyed most about this film is Michael Keaton's performance. As noted above, he took the role for a hundred bucks a day, which does not surprise me. It's a plum role, and he's obviously enjoying every minute of it. This is really a film about his character. Robert Downey looks about as bored as I've ever seen him on screen, which is saying a lot, but his character is --like most of the supporting roles -- under-developed, and not much to get excited about.

The only decent supporting role in this one is the Elliot Litvak character, and to some extent Nicky's father.

So if you're up for a few laughs (we're talking mild humor here) with a thin plot, and good acting at the top, this is a worthwhile experience.