Fourth Row Center

When the director of the indie The Merry Gentleman suffered a ruptured appendix, actor Michael Keaton stepped up and delivered a beautiful, quiet and contemplative film about two souls looking for redemption and release from the horrors of their pasts while struggling with issues of trust and acceptance as they face painful and uncertain futures. Set in Chicago, Keaton plays a loner who struggles with the horrible things he does for a living, and is about to end it all when a woman (Kelly MacDonald) running from her past as the wife of an abusive husband interrupts his attempt and ultimately saves his life. This one moment draws the characters together into a complex relationship that has dangerous – and perhaps deadly – consequences. But these characters, drawn with light stokes of the director’s brush, manage to embed themselves into the psyche of the viewer, resonating with a power that is both puzzling and refreshing. The Merry Gentleman is not an easy film to sum up without givi...

Moon is one of those festival films that manages to surprise and delight, as it far exceeded my expectations. Often, "independent" and "sci- fi " add up to a nice effort and only that, with two much effort expended in trying to make "cool sci- fi " while leaving story and character back on Earth. Not so, Moon . English director Duncan Jones said his influences were the original Alien , Silent Running and Outland , and he's crafted a story about a simple blue collar working man who's finishing up a three year contract mining helium on the moon and wants nothing more than to return to his wife and child back on Earth. But with two weeks to go before returning to Earth, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell, in a role written with him in mind) begins to suspect that he is not alone on the moon. To continue with the synopsis would include a spoiler on which the entire plot of Moon turns, so I will say only that Sam is tested physically and psychologically to his l...

I am sitting in the Egyptian theater waiting on Moon to start. It's been a good festival thus far, as I've seen films ranging from a Romeo and Juliet-inspired tale of teen angst and forbidden love to a few of the great classics classics of American cinema. Tonight I am here to see a cabin fever flick set on the moon starring Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who has spent three years alone overseeing a mining operation and, with two weeks to go before he is to return to earth discovers that he may not be alone. The Egyptian is one of those huge, grand old city cinemas with lush velvet curtains everywhere and colorful ornamentation (in this case, the theme is, well, Egyptian). They feature typical art house fare - independents, foreign films, classics and great weekend midnights like Raiders of the Lost Ark , Bladerunner and The Princess Bride . Tonight's feature is sold out, and the place is packed. Fourth row center feels like the middle of a sardine can. But the cinematic ex...

In The Answer Man Jeff Daniels plays the author of a bestselling book on spirituality who is himself still searching for answers to life's most painful questions. He lives in fear of being discovered as a fraud and his solitary life is invaded by a few fearful and searching souls who believe he holds the answers they've been seeking. At its core The Answer Man is about fear -- fear of being alone, of not knowing where our lives are headed, of losing those close to us, of not finding the answers to the questions that plague our lives. Daniels is immensely likable as the bitter sage who gleans answers to his own questions through the act of helping others. He is supported by a capable cast that includes Lauren Graham as the love interest. The Answer Man is not a perfect film, but neither are its characters.

Among the many programs featured each year at the film festival it is perhaps the archival program that I enjoy the most. I have screened many great films from years past, both well known and obscure, in large venues packed with movie lovers. This year's archival screenings are introduced by Robert Osborne, that knowledgeable, film-savvy host from Turner Classic Movies. He's like a professor: he knows everything about every movie ever made. And he is also much like a favorite uncle who knows all the family gossip, but in Osborne's case they are stories from Hollywood's Golden Age. Watching him introduce a movie is like having him in your living room, rummaging through you DVD collection and offering observations like,"Once Hitchcock completed filming the classic shower scene he realized he could never use Janet Leigh in a movie again because viewers would forever associate her with Psycho ." Osborne introduced The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn...

The Seattle International Film Festival is back and again this year I am going to cram as many films as I can into the 25 days of non-stop screenings. SIFF boasts 268 features and 124 shorts this year, as well as the usual few surprises. Today I screened a new film called Shrink , starring Kevin Spacey as Henry Carter, a successful Los Angeles “psychiatrist to the stars” who turns to drugs following the death of his wife. The movie deals with loss, suicide and drug addiction. But despite the heavy subject matter the superb cast delivers a good deal of humor and humanity along the way. Shrink is also about movies – watching movies, loving movies and making movies. The lives of an obsessive-compulsive Hollywood power agent, a struggling screenwriter, two substance-abusing film actors and a distraught teenager who escapes her pain by cutting school and going to the cinema orbit and intersect with Carter as his life and career spiral out of control. This is a film about broken people sea...

In order to review George of the Jungle, it must be placed in proper context.  This is a Jay Ward cartoon come to life. Jay Ward brought us George of the Jungle, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Cracked Fairy Tales, Dudley Do Right, and many others. The Narrator was a trademark of each tale. George of the Jungle stars a very likeable Brendan Frasier as the main character, Leslie Mann as Ursula Stanhope, George’s true love, and Thomas Hayden Church as George’s competition for Ms. Stanhope’s heart. And, then you have John Cleese providing the voice of an Ape named Ape. My family watched George of the Jungle and it was a big hit with everyone. The language is fairly clean, and most of the jokes are juvenile.

It is best to remember that the twisted mystery in which Ben Affleck ’s character, one Congressman Collins, entangles himself does not bear careful examination. It is convoluted and raises more questions that the film ultimately answers. The real power in director Kevin ( The Last King of Scotland ) Macdonald ’s political thriller is in Russell Crowe ’s star-powered performance as the reporter who manages to unravel it all. It’s not an easy task, but Crowe , playing a methodical, tenacious old-school hard-news reporter makes it look easy. He inhabits the role with such rumpled grace that, as with many of his best roles, the character emerges and remains a dominate force in the film as a whole. The movie becomes less about the mystery itself and more about how Crowe ’s Cal McAffrey goes about solving it all. Much is being made of the issues confronting the film’s fictional Washington Globe, which is helmed by the always solid and compelling Helen Mirren as Cameron Lynne. McAffrey la...

I found this article interesting. The Dark Knight finished its official run last on March 5th, the day before the Watchmen opened. It ran for 231 days and made $131, 364 in the final week on 54 screens. Officially, this put the movie in the top 50 money makers last week according to Box Office Mojo . It amazes me that a movie released last July had those legs. I watched it once in the theater, and maybe twice on DVD (and the second time because my wife agreed to watch it). Did the film cross boundaries with people that most "comic book" movies don't? Like the Watchmen, I thought the film was over long, and started to dry up when Heath Ledger wasn't on the screen. Something about Christian Bale's growling Batman voice bugged me. But kudos to the franchise for launching the most attended movie since The Phantom Menace.

I read the Watchmen back in 1989. At the time, I was going through a string of up and down relationships. To clear my head, I invited my bud, David, with me to go spend the weekend at Edisto Island. It was great. We hung out, drank some beer and he loaned me his copy of the Watchmen. It did not grab me like it did others. In fact, I would have gone as far as to say I did not like it. Fast forward, last week, I bought the comic (sorry, graphic novel) and have been making my way through it. I think there was too much heartbreak, sand (and maybe beer) that I missed a lot of the story. I don't think I even read excerpts at the end of each issue. It is in those narratives that flesh out the world of the Watchmen. What I missed the first time was that Alan Moore created another world that was really fleshed out. How could they ever make this into a movie? All of that back story just so that you understand how this movie hit me. It was like the reading back in 1989: it was good, but n...

Saturday was the third annual Best Picture Showcase, featuring the five movies nominated for this year's Best Picture Award. Sitting through five movies is very difficult, especially for the final film. Last year, they played No Country For Old Men , and I dozed off during a critical part and I was lost for the final twenty minutes of the film. Not wanting to repeat the same thing this year, I packed up some "No-Doze" to help me make it through. With the exception of Benjamin Buttons, I had very little idea of what the films were about. I posted the films that I liked the best on my Facebook page when I got home, and I wanted to address that here. Milk - It was the first film of the day, and it was the one that I was looking forward to watching the least. It was the subject matter - an openly gay man running for office. What I found was a movie that was more about civil rights than homosexuality (however, there was plenty of men kissing men in the film, so be warned). ...

It’s not unusual for me to wait until the last moment to post my Oscar picks. I am always torn between picking my favorite in a given category or choosing the artist or film that I think will win, regardless of my own opinion. What follows, this year, is a combination of both, a few predictions and a few hopefuls. We'll see how I do following tonight's Oscar telecast. Supporting Actress Viola Davis, Doubt Supporting Actor Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight Actress Kate Winslet, The Reader Actor Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler Editing Slumdog Millionaire Art Direction The Duchess Cinematography The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Costumes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Makeup The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Visual Effects The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay, Adapted Frost/Nixon Screenplay, Original In Bruges Song Peter Gabriel, “Down to Earth,” WALL-E Score The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Foreign Film Waltz with Banshir Documentary Encounters at the...

In Taken , Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired secret agent who moves to Los Angeles to be close to his daughter, who is living with Bryan’s ex-wife and her well-to-do husband. But when his daughter is kidnapped while visiting Paris with a friend, Bryan comes out of retirement and hunts down the thugs who snatched his daughter. Taken is a high concept movie that moves along well and benefits from Neeson ’s determined and level performance. He is likable and believable. Taken holds no surprises -- we know how things are going to go down in the end: with fists and bullets flying. It’s the journey that’s entertaining, seeing how Bryan uses his experience and his wits to connect the dots and find his daughter’s kidnappers. Taken is co-written by Luc Besson (who directed La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element ), but his script, though often crisp and tight, has no real spark. The film is ultimately mediocre, and it occurred to me that as capable as Neeson is, Harrison Ford or B...

In advance of the Oscar nominations I thought I'd share a few thoughts about 2008's slate of movies. In thinking about the forthcoming Oscar noms it is strange that there was nothing huge this year that would make for typical Oscar fodder, big films such as Titanic , The English Patient , Braveheart or Shindler's List . I suppose those who produced the big-budget period picture Australia were hoping a late-year release might generate Oscar buzz. No one, apparently, went to see it. So this years best movies are, in my opinion, all over the board. Still having not seen a couple of flicks on many critics' top ten lists ( The Wrestler , Happy-Go-Lucky and Revolutionary Road among them), I will endeavor to offer one of my own: Frost/Nixon Slumdog Millionaire In Bruges Doubt Gran Torino Changeling The Dark Knight Man on Wire The Bank Job Iron Man Regarding Wall-E: although it failed to move me personally, I was impressed with the animation and particularly the storytelling...

Director Ron Howard is at the height of his powers with this screen adaptation of Peter Morgan’s play about a series of interviews British talk show host David Frost conducted with Richard Nixon in 1977. For such a simple concept the film is taut, engaging and fascinating. Frank Langella is brilliant as the embittered Nixon, hoping to reverse his fortunes by vindicating himself in the interviews. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance. Sheen (Tony Blair in The Queen) is spot on as the talk show host hoping to reverse his own fortunes by essentially “convicting” Nixon of his crimes. Langella and Sheen are supported by terrific performances by Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt as Frost’s associates, and Kevin Bacon as Nixon’s chief of staff. Frost/Nixon is an absorbing exploration of television journalism, entertainment and politics. Watching the movie I was unaware as to what was fact and what was not, but the end result was so engrossing that ultimately the line that blurred truth from fictio...

That The Tale of Despereaux is beautifully designed and animated does help to make up for its few flaws, among them a script and a story that could have been a bit tighter. Despereaux hails from Universal Animation Studios (the folks who brought you Curious George and The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends ), no giants in the animation arena and not known for the caliber of films coming out of PIXAR or Dreamworks Animation. Despereaux seems to be Universal's desperate attempt to play in that arena. That said, it is an honest effort despite the mixed results. In addition to the elegant production design the movie boasts an A-list cast that is at times stellar but for the most part merely adequate. Matthew Broderick hits the mark with his portrayal of the titular mouse, an oddity among his peers because of his uncommon boldness and desire for adventure. After being banished from Mouse World for essentially not fitting in, Despereaux discovers that he is destined for grea...

Director Mark Herman ( Brassed Off, Little Voice ) adapts a moving and tragic novel about two boys separated by race, hatred and superstition during the height of the Third Reich. Having seen this movie it’s no surprise why the reviews are so mixed, and why both positive and negative reviews have been delivered with such conviction. There seems to be little middle ground as to whether or not it is fitting for filmmakers to tell this type of story in the way that it was told, partially set in a concentration camp in Germany during the second World War. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas brings to mind Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful , a concentration camp film that dealt with the tragedy of the Holocaust with hope and at times a comic touch. Both films use similar elements to tell their stories, but Pyjamas takes a heavier hand and Herman never flinches away from the story he is telling, and in the end he delivers a film that is sure to elicit discussion from its viewers. It was only...

The new James Bond movie kicks off with a ferocious car chase wherein Bond struggles to get the upper hand. He leads his pursuers around narrow winding mountain roads and, not surprisingly, experiences a number of close calls. I kept waiting for Bond to engage some Q-section gadgetry on his Alfa Romeo to take out his opponents -- machine guns, oil slicks, and so on. But not this Bond. He has but his raw nerve and wits to get him out of this scrape, and I realized that this is the new Bond. Bond retooled. A tough, layered and resourceful secret agent who doesn't need to rely on techy gadgets to save his skin. And I like it. Quantum of Solace is a new Bond adventure, yes, but ties in heavily with Casino Royale . Quantum builds on the story told in actor Daniel Craig's initial outing as 007, and as such this film does not stand well on its own, which is its weakness. That said, director Marc Forster ( The Kite Runner , Finding Neverland ) delivers everything audiences have com...

My friend Mike summed up one aspect of this film with the comment, “The half of the audience that doesn ’t have kids was watching this movie on a whole different level.” Director Clint Eastwood’s Changeling brings to mind other recent films wherein parents deal with tragic circumstances involving their children: Gone Baby Gone and Eastwood’s Mystic River among them. The emotional core of films like Changeling rely on the audience empathizing with the pain of a parent who loses a child, and Angelina Jolie delivers her best performance in years as a mother whose son is nowhere to be found when she returns from work. Set in Los Angeles during the 1920’s, Changeling is a true story. Eastwood works from a marvelous canvas in this period film. Its rich set and costume design suits the movie’s slow and deliberate pacing, and Eastwood’s minimalist musical score allows the audience to immerse itself not only in this world of 1920’s L.A. but in Jolie’s solid performance as a determined woman...

Ben Stein (speech writer for both Nixon and Ford, comedian, game show host, and actor) continues to intrigue me. Like many of you, my first introduction to him was as the droning economics teacher from Ferris Beuller's Day Off ("anyone? anyone?") . Years later, he hosts a game show called Win Ben Stein's Money , a series of Visine commercials and an internet letter. And that leads us to his documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. If it was not for this appearing on Netflix's Watch Now section, I most likely would not have watched the film, but why not? I added the title to my Watch Now queue and went upstairs to have it streamed to my TV via the ROKU Box. One other thing you have to know is that Stein rejects Darwinism and embraces Intelligent Design. The premise of the movie is that Academia has created a wall that is dividing science and rejecting new ideas. In this case, Academia is rejecting Intelligent Design as a new attempt by Christian's to h...