Déjà Vu (2006, USA)

I can’t even imagine the audience that Jerry Bruckheimer envisioned for this movie. Considering that it did so poorly at the box office that it didn’t recoup its budget, I hope he’ll think twice before executing yet another high-concept, low-brainpower action flick like this one (since he's Bruckheimer, he totally won't, but one can dream). Denzel Washington is utterly wasted in his role as a New Orleans ATF agent trying to solve the case of a Fat Tuesday ferry bombing (way to capitalize on location, in more ways than one). The rest of the cast, including Adam Goldberg, Val Kilmer, and (blink and you'll miss him!) Bruce Greenwood, doesn't fare much better, as most of the characters spend the majority of the running time staring at video screens. Seriously. It’s the action film equivalent of videoconferencing, and by the time Washington leaves the lab to save the girl and catch the bad guy, you’re way past caring. And I don’t even want to get started on the usual problems of a movie plot that deals heavily with time-travel. Even at their best (Terminator 2, Primer), time-travel movies that aren’t farce are riddled with issues, especially if the purpose of said time-travel is to go back into the past to change something. Anyone who’s halfway paying attention can come up with several major objections to the dénouement of Déjà Vu without even getting into the creepiness of voyeurism as the next hot way to pick up a date.

Infernal Affairs 2 (2003, Hong Kong)

Infernal Affairs 2 is pretty damn confusing, even if like me, you’ve seen Infernal Affairs five or six times (okay, so maybe I have a thing for Andy Lau). Even with most of the primary characters returning, there’s just so much going on that the first half hour is a real head-scratcher. The plot settles down a bit after that, though it still feels overstuffed with characters without a lot of backstory. This is somewhat ironic, as Infernal 2 is actually a prequel to the original film, delving into the early years of Lau and Chan’s mole lives, and somewhat fleshing out the odd relationship between the gangster Sam and Inspector Wong.

One of the best aspects of Infernal 2 is the backdrop of the Hong Kong handover. The story cycles through three points in the nineties, finally ending with 1997 and the transition of power in both the political sphere and the gangster underworld. While not as gripping as the original, Infernal 2 is still quite a good action/crime film, though both Andy Lau and Tony Leung are missed (their youthful stand-ins are poor replacements). At least there’s still the excellent Eric Tsang as Sam, one of my favorite characters from recent gangster movies.

Land of the Dead (2005, Canadian/French)

I had very high expectations for Land of the Dead, mostly because I spent much of the summer of 2005 finally getting around to Romero's other Dead movies. I wasn't disappointed by the latest installment - though it's not on par with the original Dawn (my personal favorite), it's still a lot of fun, and takes excellent advantage of the recent upgrades in gore technology. Land also continues the tradition of Romero's social subtexts, long a part of his particular brand of gross-out cinema. In this round, he sets his sights on the rich, white, and privileged, as by the time Land takes place, the majority of North America has been overtaken by zombies, and the powerful live in luxury tower cities such as Fiddler's Green, leaving the common man outside to run and hide. Is it any wonder that Land was filmed in Canada, and not the U.S.?

The casting is pretty solid - Simon Baker isn't particularly charismatic, but pulls off the hero role serviceably well. Neither John Leguizamo nor Asia Argento bugged me, which is unusual of late, and Dennis Hopper is obviously having a great time. As I mentioned, the make-up and special effects are pretty fantastic. Plus, you just can't beat Big Daddy as the zombie heavy. I hope that somewhere up in zombie heaven, he and Bub are kicking back and eating brains for all eternity.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005, USA)

I came to this movie with a very specific perspective – this might be an overshare, but I was raised by (somewhat) reformed hippies, and my father in particular had difficulty reconciling his idealistic and self-interested past with the duties of being a parent. I grew up in a house not entirely unlike Jack & Rose’s until I was nearly her age, and the degree of isolation that Rose deals with in Ballad reminds me of my own early adolescence, which has been both a blessing and a difficulty to me. In any case, between both my own family and those similar to us in the town where I grew up, I learned a lot at an early age about the vanity, selfishness, and gross snobbery that went hand-in-hand with certain aspects of hippie idealism.

While the subject matter of Ballad was familiar to me, I found the execution heavy-handed – writer/director Rebecca Miller has difficulty reining herself in, and some of her metaphors, use of period music, and dialog are pretty over-the-top. But it’s always worthwhile to see Daniel Day-Lewis do his thing, and I’m sure working with Miller, his wife, was an interesting experiment for both of them – I can’t remember seeing him quite this emotionally entrenched in a character before, and he does a wonderful job playing a very difficult and often hard-to-like man. Camilla Belle, as Rose, is also very good – as is the rest of the cast, though I think that Catherine Keener doesn't get the opportunity to expand upon her character as she might have.

In the end, I’m not entirely sure what I was supposed to take from The Ballad of Jack and Rose. It’s such a specific story, and the narrow focus makes it difficult for some of the larger themes to translate. For example, the rebellion of adolescence is a pretty universal concept, but as it develops within Rose’s insular world, her form of rebellion can be hard to relate to, even for someone who knows some of where she’s coming from.

Smokin' Aces (2007, USA)

The hell? There’s so much randomness in this movie, it distracts from what should be a pretty straightforward shoot ‘em up. Cops and hitmen alike are after one very fucked-up Jeremy Piven, for reasons both obvious and . . . slightly less obvious (the twist at the end is rather blatant). Scattered, bloody, and generally half-assed, Smokin' Aces is yet another example of what Tarantino has wrought on contemporary cinema – my only real question is how the hell Joe Carnahan got all of these people to sign up for a write-off project like this – Piven, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds . . . Alicia Keys? Matthew Fox? Jason Bateman? (Actually, the Bateman scenes are kind of hilarious, but maybe just for big fans of Arrested Development.)

I’ve seen one of Carnahan’s previous films, the solid, if generally by-the-numbers, cop drama Narc, and don’t quite understand how he got from point A to point B. But at least Ray Liotta’s getting work again. Right? Right?

Sholay (1975, Indian)

One of the most popular Bollywood films of all time, Sholay is a prime example of the “curry Western,” a subset of the “angry young man” genre that dominated Bollywood in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The plot is similar to what you’d get if you took The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, got rid of five of the heroes, and added some songs. Sort of. Despite the highly dated fashion (those are some lovely leisure suits, Amitabh) and occasionally silly plot, it’s a pretty fantastic movie. The songs are fabulous (though the U.S. DVD release doesn’t bother to translate the lyrics in the subtitles), the action sequences are inventive (including a well-done bandit attack on a moving train), and, above all, there's a wonderfully nasty villain. I’ve read that the actor Amjad Khan, who played the villain, Gabbar Singh, had trouble walking through city streets after Sholay hit theaters, because pretty much everyone in India had seen it, and they would all hiss at him or call him names. Indians take their movies seriously.

Versus (2001, Japanese)

When zombie samurai show up in the first minute of a movie, you know you’re in for a good time. Versus feels like a video game and moves at a break-neck speed that can be more than a little tiring, but it has a sense of humor about itself and features a ton of gratuitous zombie-fu, which make the whole thing a lot more enjoyable even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense in the end.

Gozu (2003, Japanese)

Imagine that David Lynch goes to Japan. Once there, he heads out to the sticks and drops a lot of acid. Then he has to outrun some bloodthirsty yakuza while simultaneously attempting to work out his long-suppressed sexual issues.

Or, you could just imagine a perfectly typical Takashi Miike movie. If you’re into really, really twisted shit, then you’ll loooove Gozu. The first ten minutes had me falling off the couch, and the last ten had me hiding under it. Fantastic.

Half Nelson (2006, USA)

Perhaps I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but it took at least an hour after I finished watching Half Nelson for me to have that “Oh!” moment, and understand why everyone freaked out about how great it was. On the whole, despite a great performance by Ryan Gosling as a drugged-out inner-city junior high school teacher, it’s got a pretty paint-by-numbers indie drama plot. Apart from Gosling, the real redeeming quality of the movie is wrapped up in the understanding that a thirteen-year-old girl is the smartest and most self-aware character on the scene – if you can’t buy this, then the film just won’t work for you. As Drey, Shareeka Epps is great, but it’s the machinations of her character that gives the film its depth. I’m still not entirely sold on the nearly uniform critical praise that Half Nelson received last year, but it is one of the better American indie films I’ve seen recently, and it makes me sad that Gosling is riding his well-deserved Oscar nomination right into yet another psycho-Anthony Hopkins thriller.

300 (2007, USA)

300 may be the most awesome HoYay! giggle-fest ever. It’s got to be in the running with the Nicholas Cage version of The Wicker Man for best comedy of the last two years.

This movie taught me that you cannot trust dark people, the crippled, government officials (even when they’re not trying to kill you and rape your wife!), or, in some cases, women.*

*Also, you can’t trust religious establishments (inbred or not).** And does Greece really have wolves? I don’t think Greece has a lot of wolves. Or that Spartans developed the Corinthian column prior to . . . oh, I’ll just stop while I’m ahead.

**Or Athenians. Fucking sculptors and philosophers – the hell good are they? And wouldn't you think that a movie made almost entirely during post-production would perhaps have been thoughtful enough to cover up Gerard Butler’s fillings? Or maybe the Spartan army just had a really good dental plan.