Pick of the week:  Home (9/10):  A remarkable European movie about a family who live in idyllic happiness until a freeway moves in next to their home and they all start to slowly go insane, eventually walling themselves up inside their house.  Absurd, and strange, but well worth it if you speak French (no English version is available).

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TV series of the week:  Galapagos: Les Iles Qui Ont Change Le Monde (8/10):  Seriously beautiful nature photography of the creatures and land masses that make up the Galapagos Islands.  Again, available only in French.

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Blu-Ray of the week:  Do The Right Thing:  Still Spike Lee’s best, still an all-time classic, race relations have never had such a serious look that looks so good or is as entertaining.  A masterpiece.

Columbus Day (3/10):  Val Kilmer is a thief who has just pulled off the heist of a lifetime.  Now he’s going to spend an entire movie on the phone.  Yawn.

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Stone of Destiny (4/10):  Not an action movie, or a comedy, or a dramatic film, or a good film.  Just a true story about some Scottish nationalists who steal a stone.  Meh.

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La Jeune Fille Et Les Loups (4/10):  Even the occasional glimpse of a cute wolf cub and Laetita Casta’s nipples can’t save this movie that doesn’t have the guts to go all out.  In French only.

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12 Rounds:  After The Marine, they still let John Cena make movies?  Really?

The Code:  Jewel thief movie that stars Morgan Freeman (not always a good sign), Antonio Banderas (not always a good sign), and Radha Mitchell (she’s promising).

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li:  Apparently there have been like thirty movies in this series since Jean-Cluade Van Damme and Raul Julia lit up the big screen in that awful, awful first one.  This one stars that chick from Eurotrip.

Entourage: The Complete Fifth Season:  Still one of the best shows on television.

Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience:  Do I need to describe this one?  Get your ten year old girls in front of the TV, and go to the garage to drink beer.

The Education of Charlie Banks:  I like Jesse Eisenberg, but this movie was directed by Fred Durst.  Previously seen directing The Longshots, and planning a Limp Bizkit comeback tour.  Expect awful things.

Also out:

Kaidan
Pedro
The Human Contract
Stargate Atlantis: Season Five
Tunnel Rats
I.O.U.S.A.
Octane
Princess Protection Program
Tokyo!

On Blu-Ray this week:

12 Rounds
Barbra Streisand Live in Concert 2006
Bigonzetti: Caravaggio
Chopin: La Dame Aux Camelias
Flawless
How The Earth Was Made
John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and Friends: The 70th Birthday Concert
The Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert Experience
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Strauss: Ariadne Auf Naxos
Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li
Tan Dun: Marco Polo
Ted Nugent: Motor City Mayhem
Tokyo!
Transmorphers: Fall of Man
Two Lovers
Wagner: Die Walkure

Out next week:

Knowing
The Unborn
Five Fingers
Night Train
The Prodigy
Skate or Die
My Faraway Bride
The Saddle Club: Horseback Riders
The Saddle Club: Back In  The Saddle
Before Tomorrow
Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy
Petticoat Junction Official Second Season
Reno 911! Complete Sixth Season
Matlock Season Three
Modern Love

On Blu-Ray next week:

The Deep
Grumpy Old Men
In Memory of My Father
Iron Maiden: Flight 666
Knowing
Legends And Lyrics Vol. 1
Legends And Lyrics Vol. 2
Night Train
Push
The Unborn
The Universe: Complete Season Two

“We fight not for glory, not for wealth, or for honours, but only for freedom…”

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     Blah blah blah.  Sorry, Charlie Cox, but you are not Mel Gibson in Braveheart.  Leave the fighting-the-British-for-Scottish-freedom speechifying to the Australians.  The idea in Stone of Destiny is that Ian (Cox), Kay (Kate Mara), Gavin (Stephen McCole) and Alan (Ciaron Kelly) are going to steal the Stone Of Destiny (appropriately) from its current resting place in Westminster Abbey.  The Stone Of Destiny is a symbol of Scottish freedom, and has been appropriated by the British.  How stealing it will help the Scottish nationalists defend Scottish tradition, I’m not sure.  How it will help them achieve freedom is never explained.

     The thing is, this is based on a true story.  Four college kids in 1950 really did break into Westminster Abbey and steal the stone.  However, it seems to me that the theft of the stone was more of a symbolic statement, and a thumb in the eye of the British rulers of Scotland, than it was any sort of concerted attempt to start a rebellion or to achieve any kind of actual freedom.  So making long speeches about the non-existent and not-really-even-considered Scottish “freedom”, such as it is, makes little sense.  You are not fighting for freedom.  Got it?  You’re merely trying to be an irritant, and it’s working.  Take what you can get.

     The story itself could be neat, if it wasn’t so cookie-cuttered into movie form.  This film is based on a book by Ian Hamilton, one of the real-life students who actually stole the stone in 1950.  Either his book is painfully written and cookie-cuttered into the form in which he thinks all books are written, or the people who made this movie took some liberties with the story in order to make it look like every other movie ever made.  There is the idealist kid who has the idea to steal the stone.  The totally hot chick he recruits to be the getaway driver.  The strong, tough, beer swilling college jock who of course has to have his “I’m more than this” moment later in the film.  And the dweeby, quiet shy kid who is scared of everything but gets to come along because he has a car.  Wait.  Is this the cast of Road Trip?  Might as well be.

     So you have the cast of Road Trip in a movie that isn’t funny.  You have a biopic about a real guy telling a true story, only it has been changed so it looks like Road Trip, only not funny.  You have speeches about Scottish nationalism and freedom and all that business, but it isn’t Braveheart.  Normally, I think it’s good when I have trouble categorizing a movie into the “action” or “comedy” or “drama” genres.  It means I’m watching something so different that it’s at least a great effort, even if it isn’t a great movie.  In this case, I can’t categorize it because it simply isn’t anything.  It’s so the same as everything else that it defies categorization.  And if anything, it smacks terribly of lack of effort.

     There are a few bright spots.  Kate Mara is terrific as Kay, and Robert Carlyle is sympathetic as the politician in Scotland who is helping the kids.  Kate Mara is hot, and Billy Boyd is solid as Ian’s brother who helps off and on.  And Kate Mara is…OK.  Really, Kate Mara is the only reason to watch this movie.  Not because she’s hot, or because she is a wonderful young actress, although both those things are true.  No, she’s the best reason to watch because the rest of the movie is pretty bad.

“So…uh…em…right.”

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      That’s about the extent of each of the myriad phone conversations Val Kilmer has with his ex-wife, Marg Helgenberger, in Columbus Day, out on DVD June 30th from Alliance Films.  Kilmer is trying to win his ex back, one phone call at a time, from a phone booth in a park.  At the same time, he is trying to get a ton of money for the item he just stole, by calling his fence many times, from the phone booth in the park.  And at the same time, he is trying to reconnect with the daughter he abandoned, one phone calle at a time, from the phone booth in the park.

     The fact that fifty percent of this movie takes place over the phone wouldn’t be so bad if the plot, the dialogue and Kilmer’s acting weren’t also phoned in.  He is a master thief, you see, and he has just pulled off the Job Of A Lifetime.  This theft will have him set for life, and he can now win back his ex-wife, teach his daughter that he isn’t such a bad guy, and pick up right where things left off.  This would be fine in a movie where the lead character believes all these things and then discovers that abandoning your daughter can’t be forgotten overnight, or that your relationship with your ex can’t be fixed by six phone calls when she still hates you.  But this isn’t that movie.  In Columbus Day, it all seems plausible.

     So we wait for Kilmer to make it through this day, and we know that if he does, everything will work out just fine, as he imagined it, and be hunky dory.  In the meantime, he strikes up a strange friendship with a little kid who hangs around in the park because he doesn’t like school and his mother is terrible.  The kid, played by Bobb’e J. Thompson, is precocious and funny, and he has a few good moments because Thompson is really trying here.  But he’s the only one in the movie who is, so all his efforts are in vain.  At no point is the unlikely bond between him and Kilmer even close to plausible, and the kid’s involvement in the story, although it forms the bulk of the movie, is totally unnecessary.  Which makes the bulk of the movie totally unnecessary.  Which makes the movie totally unnecessary.

     One more thing before I finish this review.  I don’t want to think about this film much more, and I will likely have forgotten all about it in about an hour.  But I need to mention the case.  Whatever Kilmer has stolen, from the Big Bad Gangster Guy, is in the case he carries around.  Whatever it is, it’s the ticket to his freedom, his financial independance, and the rest of his worry-free life.  And he has an irritating conversation with the kid about the case being the city of gold.  But we never get to see what’s inside.  That’s a concept that worked once.  After Pulp Fiction, there was nothing remotely interesting about a case carrying a Nameless Something Valuable.

     But the fact of the matter is, Columbus Day is so scattershot, and so badly realized, that even if I had seen what was in the case, I wouldn’t care.  I didn’t care what was in the case, I didn’t care what happened to Kilmer’s wife and daughter, and I didn’t even care what happened to the cute and personable little kid.  I did, however, care about what happened to Kilmer.  I feel I should say that.  I was even rooting for something to happen to him.  That is, I was rooting for him to be shot.  Not only did his character appear to be a pretty bad thief and a pretty bad husband and a pretty bad father and a pretty bad friend to the little boy in the park, but his death would have hastened the end of this movie.

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     The Galapagos Islands are home to the coolest, most spectacular animals in the world.  The majestic scenery, the incredible wildlife, and the stunning ocean are all beautifully realized and filmed in Galapagos: Les Iles Qui Ont Change Le Monde.  The DVD, available June 30th from Alliance Films, is in French only.  No subtitles, no English narration.  It’s too bad, really, because it couldn’t be too tough to get a different narrator to record a different track.  It’s not like there’s any dialogue in the movie.  Iguanas don’t speak any of our languages. 

     Then again, it doesn’t much matter what language is featured on the DVD, because it’s the pictures that tell the story, and they’re damn cool.  Also damn cool are the iguanas, albatross, penguins, giant tortoises, sea turtles, glow-in-the-dark sea creatures, owls, cormorants and boobies that populate the show.  No, not the good kind of boobies.  The bird kind.  The first disc on the set is called Born In Fire (or, Nees Du Feu, if you will).  This disc looks at the volcanoes and the geysers and the natural landscape dotted with crazy animals and a huge variety of plant life.  Spectacular.

     Disc two is the one that gives the DVD it’s name.  It’s called Les Iles Qui Ont Change Le Monde, or, The Islands That Changed The World.  Although I really hate documentaries that feel the need to do cheesy human re-enactments of historical events, and this is one, Disc Two is still the best in the set.  The cheesy human re-enactment here is of Darwin discovering the Galapagos islands and using the wildlife there to create his theory of evolution.  Darwin was a brilliant guy, and here we get to see him observing different varieties of buntings and finches and making surprised facial expressions.  “Oh my!” He seems to be saying.  “Look at the differences in their beaks!”

     But cheesiness aside, this disc features the best nature photography of the three, and the story of Darwin and how he observed the differences in the wide variety of creatures on the Galapagos islands to formulate his famous theory is fascinating.  The third disc is called Les Forces Du Changement (or Forces of Change).  It’s about the modern Galapagos islands, and the sad influence of human beings on this pristine and magical otherworld.  It’s depressing, but it’s important to know what we’re doing there.  It’s also important to know that the single biggest destructive force human beings have at their disposal are goats.

     And then there’s a fourth disc that’s a bonus disc, about a giant tortoise that is the last of its breed, and it’s 80 years old, and people are trying to keep it alive.  That’s fine, and it’s a nice story and a cool extra disc, but I would have appreciated something else in my special bonus features – an English option.  It doesn’t really matter to me.  I’ll watch this in any language, and I would still enjoy it in Portugese.  But not having that option there automatically leaves out about half your audience, and I would like more people to see this remarkable film.

“Qui m’a deshabille?” 

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      La Jeune Fille Et Les Loups opens with a pack of wolves visciously tearing apart a deer carcass.  Within moments, a pack of human beings appear to massacre the wolves in an even more viscious scene.  As the wolves are taken away, the lone surviving member of the pack, a tiny and dreadfully cute black cub, wanders into the town looking for its family, and meets up with Angele, a tiny and impossibly cute little girl.  I think the scene where the cub sees the rest of the slaughtered pack hanging in Angele’s father’s house (he is the taxidermist) is supposed to be heartbreaking, but it’s too early in the film, and everyone is so cute that it’s just kind of sappy.

     Angele decides to release the wolf cub back into the wild, since she figures it’s his only chance of survival.  The young wolf is almost immediately attacked by an eagle – life in the wild is dangerous for a solitary wolf cub, you see.  Then some years go by, Angele’s parents die (it’s wartime, no big deal), and Angele grows up to be ridiculously hot.  Laetitia Casta hot.  So gorgeous, in fact, that she must be played by Laetita Casta.  She is now studying to be a veterinarian, but she’s not a terribly impressive intellect – one of the first scenes in which we see her, she is being convinced to pose nude in some kind of “patriotic” photo by some apparently unscrupulous horndogs.  This works for me, because I too am an unscrupulous horndog, but I’m not sure it works for the movie.

     Oh, I should mention – La Jeune Fille Et Les Loups is out June 30th from Alliance Films, and the DVD is entirely in French.  No English subtitles or dubbing available.  This isn’t always a problem, because a lot of the scenes with the wolves, and a few of the scenes with the nipples, need no dialogue for explanation.  But if you want to enjoy the film thoroughly, it would be best to esnure that you are a Francophone.

     Anyway, back to the movie.  The first day of veterinarian school involves the milking of a horse for his semen and a big old horse penis flying around.  Angele is ridiculed for wanted to become a chick veterinarian, and run out of the classroom, but she shows she has the fire of a young girl who doesn’t care what everyone thinks, and she has a mind of her own, and she won’t let this man’s world intimidate her, and all those other character traits that a young woman needs to exhibit in a lazy movie starring a totally hot chick like Laetitia Casta.  You see, she must be more than just a spectacular face.  She must also be feisty, and driven, and determined, and stubborn.  And so forth.

     She soon decides she needs experience with wild animals if she is going to become a real veterinarian, and accepts a ride into the mountains that surround her home town.  I guess her idea is that she will just hop out of the plane and ask the bears what’s wrong and check for their heartbeats or something.  But of course, the plane crashes.  Every plane flown by a guy with a circus-ringmaster moustache, in every movie involving a plane flown by a man with a circus-ringmaster moustache, will always crash.  It’s a law.  Angele is hurt, and the ringmaster goes for help.  But while he goes for help, the wolves close in…but one of them recognizes her…

     I like the idea in movies like this, that the one wolf in the pack can prevent the other forty wolves from attacking and eating the obviously wounded and clearly delicious fresh meat with which they have all just been blessed.  Like he can just growl and stare at them, and they will back down.  OK, leader of the pack.  We will not eat this gorgeous, defenseless and obviously tasty hot woman.  We will wait until we see a giant caribou, stalk it for hours, expend a ton of energy chasing it en masse, absorb kicks to the face and blows from horns, and make an attempt at taking it down that may not work in the end, instead.  I guess you know this woman.  And we wolves understand the bond that you formed with her as a pup – we’ll be cool.

    From there, the movie actually begins.  An hour has gone by, and a ton of stuff has happened, but the real movie actually starts at about the 57 minute mark.  Now Angele is rescued by the wolves and their protector, a mentally handicapped man named Giuseppe who lives up in the mountains thanks to the benevolence of an elderly local millionnaire.  His existence there is being threatened because the old man is growing incoherent and his son is taking over the business, planning to run a railroad through the mountains.  For some reason, this means that he will kill all the wolves and run this nice young man off his land.  I’m not sure what one has to do with the other.  I guess he doesn’t want the wolves looking pretty next to his train tracks.

     Now Angele is involved in this battle, and she fights to help Giuseppe save the wolves and his home.  Because she is hot, she is able to convince the bad guy to let her do a few things, and the suggestion is made that she is willing to sleep with him to make those things happen.  Of course, she doesn’t, because that would have made this a movie with guts to show questionable behaviour.  There is a scene where she is about to give herself to the mentally handicapped Giuseppe, but an attack by the bad guys stops them before they can get naked, which saves the movie from doing something interesting.  And in the end, it’s just an hour of pointless plot followed by an hour of after school special, kids-save-the-community-centre stuff.

     La Jeune Fille Et Les Loups is better than an after-school special, but it isn’t good.  Casta is a good actress, but her talents are wasted here because the film doesn’t let her go all the way in any situation that would make things interesting.  The real stars of the movie are the wolves themselves, and they are beautiful and compelling, but they are kind of incidental to the plot.  In fact, the whole plot feels incidental.  As does the whole movie.

“Attention, tout va deraper!”

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      The DVD case for Home suggests that a comparison can be made between Home, on DVD June 30th from Alliance Films, and Hitchcock’s The Birds.  There’s a quote from Claude Andre from Ici that suggests the connection.  Now, I just watched The Birds, so I was paying close attention for any similarities.  I can see it in certain shots, but a quote like that on the box can easily lead you astray.  Because this movie is nothing like The Birds.  It’s a little more like Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking movie about a traffic jam and a bourgeois apocalypse, Weekend.  And not just because both films are in French only, but becaause they both involve traffic, traffic jams, and the seemingly natural loss of sanity that comes with them.

     The movie starts out, in true European fashion, with parents playing street hockey with their kids while smokes dangle out of their mouths.  It may not be good parenting in the traditional sense, but the family seems terrifically happy.  The two kids take baths together – the young boy and his older sister Judith (the sensational Adelaide Leroux) spend the entire second scene naked together, while she (of course) smokes a cigarette in the tub.  Leroux spends a lot of this movie naked, but this is a European movie which treats that rather remarkable nudity casually, as though it’s entirely natural, and it doesn’t feel gratuitious or exploitative.

     This happy family lives their blissful life in a calm and isolated countryside far from the rest of the world, next to an abandoned highway.  It appears that construction on this big highway has been ignored for years, but now it has been finished and the freeway is now open to traffic.  Which means that Judith can no longer sunbathe by the road and crank up her heavy metal tunes – she can no longer hear them.  The two younger kids have to do a daring dash across the road to the field, and their mom has to throw them their lunch across the freeway.  Their dad has to park on the other side, across the road, when he gets home from work, and he crosses to home by means of a drainage tunnel beneath the highway.

     Of course it’s a little exaggerated, and a little bonkers.  The scenes where Isabelle Huppert is hanging her laundry out by the road, and the bras are drawing honks from passing truckers, are a little much.  I guess we are to assume this family is incapable of moving their usual operations to another location, or that this house has no backyard.  They eat dinner outside in the front yard by the freeway, wearing earplugs.  Of course the noise gets to them, which is understandable.  And they’ve had such an idyllic life up until now that the idea of moving isn’t even in their minds.  But then again, this isn’t a regular movie with regular characters who behave in regular ways.

     I feel that I have been unfair in comparing this movie to Weekend.  Truly, there is very little that is similar about the two movies, except for the traffic, the craziness, and the occasional absurdist touch in Home.  This movie is far more conventional, and has a pretty standard narrative.  But it’s not like The Birds either.  It’s not really like anything.  It’s just a really good movie about a family that must deal with the impact of the hectic pace of the modern world, which is thrust upon them against their will.  The movie is funny and strange, Adelaide Leroux is sexy and strange, and Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Madeleine Budd and Kacey Mottet Klein are all terrific.  And strange.

     The movie gets stranger and stranger as it goes on, and that’s a good thing - in one scene, the younger sister (now a maniac germophobe) shares a sanitary mask with her older sister, who cuts a hole in it so she can still smoke while she wears it.  There are many great scenes in Home, and although it’s in French only, with no English options, this movie is well worth it for anyone who speaks French and is willing to take a chance on something new and daring.  And strange.

Pick of the week:  Inkheart (6/10):  For lack of anything better.  This is a seriously flawed movie, and it involves Brendan Fraser, but there are some good messages for kids and some good characters that make it decent.

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Inkheart

 Documentary of the week:  Inside the Koran (9/10):  A fascinating, informative look at the Koran and the various interpretations of the book that have led to lots of bad stuff and lots of good stuff the world over.

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Inside The Koran

 Crossing Over (4/10):  A movie about Korean, Nigerian, Australian, British, Mexican, Muslim and other immigrants and their problems with immigration and green cards and so forth.  Tries to do way too much, ends up not doing much at all.

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Crossing Over

The Bible Unearthed (8/10):  A 4-part TV series that looks at the history of the bible, determining what might have been based on real historical events and what might have been invented by the people who wrote the book.  Very interesting.

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The Bible Unearthed

 Confessions of a Shopaholic:  One of them chick-flicks that got buried with a winter theatrical release.  That doesn’t bode well.  But I like Isla Fisher.

The Pink Panther 2:  The first Steve Martin Pink Panther movie might have been one of the worst movies of all time.  This one is apparently worse.  I won’t be reviewing this, because I refuse to watch it.

Dragon Hunters:  Cartoon about two guys trying to slay the biggest dragon of all to get enough money to buy their farm.  If they don’t…buy the farm…first.  I’m amazed no one has made that joke yet.

Strike: Balls of Glory:  A bowling movie.  Starring Tara Reid.  ‘Nuff said?  I think so.

Eastbound And Down: Complete First Season:  Hilarious but sad show about an alcoholic baseball coach.  One of the good shows on television.

Also out:

Dog Eat Dog
Table For Three
Mark of an Angel
Legend of the Bog

On Blu-Ray this week:

The Code
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Dragon Hunters
Inkheart
Last Year At Marienbad (Criterion edition)
Mr. Troop Mom
Origin: Spirits of the Past
The Pink Panther 2
Waltz With Bashir

Out next week:

12 Rounds
The Code
Columbus Day
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience
Entourage: The Complete Fifth Season
Princess Protection Program
The Education of Charlie Banks
The Human Contract
Kaidan
Pedro
Tokyo!
I.O.U.S.A.
Octane
Stargate Atlantis: Season Five
Tunnel Rats

On Blu-Ray next week:

12 Rounds
Barbra Streisand: Live in Concert 2006
Bigonzetti: Carvaggio
Chopin: La Dame Aux Camelias
Do The Right Thing
Flawless
Home Front
How The Earth was Made
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers And Friends: 70th Birthday Concert
The Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert Experience
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Strauss: Ariadne Auf Naxos
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Tan Dun: Marco Polo
Ted Nugent: Motor City Mayhem
Tokyo!
Transmorphers: Fall of Man
Two Lovers
Wagner: Die Walkure

“Everything about her is a red flag.”
“Only when viewed through the distorted looking glass of your own paranoia.”

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     The writing is not excellent in Crossing Over, out June 23rd from Alliace Films.  The dialogue is, at times, jarringly silly in its attempt to be smart.  However, there are moments when the movie is pretty smart.  Just not enough of them.  There is just too much going on in this film for anything to be really compelling.  There is an Korean kid who gets involved with the local gangster thugs (which was explored fully, and done much better, in Gran Torino).  There is a Muslim honour killing, an illegal Mexican immigrant woman trying to get back into America to take care of her son, a musician pretending to be Jewish to get his green card, and an actress forced to sleep with a bo-toxed up Ray Liotta to stay in the country.

     Then there is Harrison Ford, who plays an immigration federal agent who sympathizes with the people he is forced to capture for deportation, Ashley Judd who is an immigration lawyer who wants to adopt a young girl from a war-torn African country (and RayLiotta’s wife), and a girl who writes an essay about the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 and gets investigated by Homeland Security, which could lead to her deportation and that of her family.

     Unfortunately, this is just too much.  Very few of the situations resonate, because they are spread far too thin.  The only story line that really works is that of the young girl who wrote the 9/11 essay.  Even then, her story is just a series of what-comes-next.  She gets reported to the police by the school principal, who doesn’t understand the essay and thinks she might sympathize with the terrorists.  The cops turn it over to Homeland Security, who bust into her house and search through her room to find evidence of that sympathy to meet their pre-conceived notions that she is a threat.  Although they can’t find anything with which to prosecute her, they can deport her.  And her family must decide if some of them will stay in America, if they will all go with her, or if they will let her go back alone.

     That story line works mostly because of some terrific acting on the part of the girl who plays the young Muslim woman.  (I believe her name is Summer Bishil, but there are so many characters that I’m not 100% certain who plays whom.)  Also poignant is a scene where a Mexican immigrant (Alice Braga) begs Harrison Ford, the immigration officer, to look after her child.  But it is too little in a movie that features immigrants from Australia, Korea, Nigeria, England, Mexico and other countries, then tries to tie them all together tangentially, in the style of Crash.  I liked Crash, in that it was a pretty good meditation on racism that was tied together in a seemingly effortless way.

     Crossing Over does not tie things together effortlessly.  In fact, this movie smacks of one thing more than anything else – effort.  There is a scene where Harrison Ford’s partner, played by Cliff Curtis, happens to end up in the convenience store that is being robbed by the gang with the young Korean kid.  Curtis is struggling with his own Iranian family, his rebellious sister and their overbearing father.  He recognizes something of himself in this kid, and…I don’t know.  The whole scene is just so forced I couldn’t bring myself to care about this shoehorned connection between the two characters. 

     Also terribly forced is the connection between Ashley Judd (a lawyer representing the Muslim girl who is also trying to adopt the Nigerian girl) and her husband Ray Liotta, an adjudicator who is blackmailing the crazy-hot Australian actress Claire Shepard (Alice Eve) into having sex with him in exchange for a green card.  The whole connection is so tenuous and forced that I just didn’t care about (or even like) any of the characters.  I think that in the whole movie, I only really liked five of the seven hundred characters.  And three of them were children.

     Claire could be a compelling character.  She really appears to have no choice but to submit to this disgusting relationship with the gross bo-toxed Ray Liotta.  And Alice Eve spends a large portion of this movie naked.  Very naked.  Which is nice, but useless in the end.  She comes off as pretty callous and sleazy herself.  But played right, this particular interaction could have been a movie all on its own.  So too could the story of the Korean kid (oh no, wait, it was in Gran Torino), or the story of the Iranian family and the rebellious daughter, or the story of the British musician (Jim Sturgess) pretending to be an uber-religious orthodox Jew.  And especially the story of Harrison Ford and the Mexican woman, which is compelling for a few seconds here.

     But unfortunately, all these stories are not given much time, therefore none of them have much depth, and the movie’s parable about immigration is lost in the superficial nature of the seventy-eight stories.  For those who want to see a good movie about deportation, immigration and heartbreak, check out The Visitor.  Actually, that one was far better than good – it was magnificent.  Crossing Over is just a laundry list of immigrants who have trouble with green cards and meet in convenience stores.  And it’s contrived and tedious.

“Tolerance and intolerance, apparently in equal measure.”

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     Perhaps no book in history has been more misunderstood than the Koran.  And not just by Western societies who view the book as a violent, scary book that gives rise to extremism, but also by those who consider themselves to be experts on the holy text.  Although to suggest those people misunderstand the Koran is perhaps not accurate.  I think that any text considered to be holy, whether it be Koran or Bible or something else, is rarely misunderstood.  By their very nature, these books lend themselves to hundreds or thousands of different interpretations, and there is no real way to determine which is the “correct” one.

     I have a real problem with anyone who talks about the “correct” interpretation of books like the Koran, as several religious figures do in Inside The Koran.  It seems to me that there is no such thing as a “correct” interpretation of anything.  That’s what makes it an interpretation.  But as this documentary makes clear, it isn’t just biased interpretations of the Koran that are dangerous, it is also the purposefully selective reading of the book, and the wilful ignorance of certain passages, that is truly dangerous.  The Koran says that if an adulterer, or a thief, acknowledges his or her mistake and repents, that they should be forgiven.  In countries where public stonings and hangings and beheadings still take place, this passage is conveniently ignored.

     In fact, the film takes a look at certain cultures and religious leaders who use the Koran to their own ends in a more over way – the Saudi officials who edited the text of the holy book to specify Jews and Christians as the enemies of the Muslim faith, and even added text referrin to modern weapons like tanks and missiles as an example of the proper way to retaliate against the enemies of Islam.  How people can read that today, believing that it is the Word Of God from 650 AD, is beyond me.  But the culture of various Muslim countries is more important, most of the time, than the book that unites the whole faith.

     Which makes one of the most interesting revelations of the movie less interesting.  A copy of a written Koran dating from about 720 or so is discovered, and the text appears to have been edited several times.  This goes against the teachings of the faith, which say that the words have been preserved, unblemished and unchanged, since the 600s.  But if Saudi officials can edit the text to promote terrorism and anti-semitism, then it probably shouldn’t matter that the text was edited 1300 yeas ago.  It’s still happening today.

     The documentary opens with a self-styled martyr reading from the Koran, and this is, of course, one of the biggest central themes of the film – does the Koran really say that it is the obligation of every good Muslim to wage war against the perceived enemies of the faith?  It’s pretty easy to look at the faith from a Western perspective and say – who cares if it does or not?  Why are you following a book anyway?  Even if it does say that, it’s still just a book.  But of course, it is not that simple.  There are so many Muslim countries in the world, and so many of those countries base their cultures almost exclusively on the teachings of the Koran, that the interpretation of the text is all-important.

     And this is what makes the difference in cultures in Muslim countries so incredible.  One woman, a human rights activist interviewed for the movie, says that in Cairo in 1974 you would not have seen a single veil on the streets of Egypt.  Now, however, the vast majority of the women walking the streets, including this activist herself, wear the full covering, hiding their faces and their bodies with only their eyes visible.  This is the other big topic tackled in the film.  The treatment of women in the Muslim religion, and the differences between Turkey and Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Muslim cultures.

     “Our facial expressions are like another language…it seems to me that covering the face is like cutting off one’s tongue – taking away a form of communication.”

     This is the assessment of the narrator, who is questioning a Muslim woman who covers her face in deference to her husband.  (It’s my assessment too, and that of many Westerners, I expect.)  But most of the women interviewed in the movie disagree.  Most of them have another perspective on the niqabs and the veils, and they feel that it brings them closer to God and that they wear them by choice.  But then, just like the other facets of the Muslim religion, there are vast differences from culture to culture when it comes to the covering of women.

     Some of the more brutal practices of Islam are investigated during Inside The Koran.  Honour killings, female genital mutilations, and public executions are touched on briefly.  I think I would like to have seen a little more about this – specifically about the reasoning behind not allowing young girls to go to school in some countries and the general oppression of women in those areas – but that could be a whole documentary unto itself.  And the general point of the movie is that in the end, the bad stuff that comes out of the Koran doesn’t really come out of the book, but rather from the culture itself and the way they want to interpret the Koran.

     If you want to cover your women up, then you decide that the Koran says they ought to be covered.  If you want to hate Israel, you decide that the Koran speaks against Jewish people.  And although the Koran is explicit about the sanctity of life and the sinful act that is suicide, you can justify suicide bombings if you try really, really hard to re-interpret some passages and try really, really hard to ignore the live-and-let-live ones.  (There is one fun moment in an otherwise very serious movie that suggests that the “correct” – again I hate that word – interpretation of the text says that upon their death, martyrs will receive seventy-two grapes to eat.  Not seventy-two virgins.)

     And of course, like any good documentary, when this one is over each person who watches it can put their own “interpretation” upon what they have seen.  Just like the Koran itself.  And I have done so – I took several things away from this movie and here’s an example.  The man who, at the beginning, is explaining why his wife is completely covered, really bothered me.  He says that women must cover up completely because “everything about them is seductive”.  And in keeping with that idea, he begins to cover up his daughters.  From the age of three.  If you’re even considering the possibility that something about a three-year-old could be “seductive”, then there are some serious problems with your rationale.

     More than anything though, this film made me want to read the Koran.  It is a loose collection of “guidelines” for life that follows no chronology at all – totally unlike any other bible.  By its very nature, it is incredibly open to thousands of different interpretations.  Some of the scholars in this movie say that the Koran is pretty clear that no one is closer to God than anyone else, and that it speaks out explicitly against any kind of clergy, priests or religious officials.  They just don’t make sense with the Muslim faith.  But there are a lot of people making their livings as religious leaders in the Muslim world, and this would be an inconvenient thing for them to acknowledge.  It would certainly mean they would lose their power.  And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

     An informative, comprehensive and important documentary, Inside The Koran comes out June 23rd from First Run Features.

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      The Bible Unearthed is a four-part TV series from 2005 that examines the history of the Bible.  How much of it was based on actual events that took place at the time of the Bible’s writing, and how much of it was invented by the people who wrote it.  Which is cool for people like me, because I’m fascinated by the origins of religious texts and I find it very interesting to separate fact and fiction when it comes to those texts.  It would also be a very interesting DVD for people who are into archaeology, for it is through archaeology that the veracity of Bible verses is ascertained.  Not me though.  I find archaeology to be extremely boring.  Colour me dull (and I won’t blame you) but I prefer watching talking heads.

     Thankfully, there are some fascinating talking heads in The Bible Unearthed, out June 23rd from First Run Features.  These are the biblical scholars and archaeologists who are so interested in the history of the bible that they have dedicated themselves to archaeological excavations trying to uncover the truth.  They have the same curiosity I do, you see, but they are active about it.  I, on the other hand, am too lazy to get off my couch and do a bunch of research.  So it is very convenient for me and my beer and my bowl of kettle chips that someone else has done the work and the research and the analysis, and broken it down for me.

     Now, I watch a lot of stuff like this.  Although I am an avowed atheist, I am still utterly mesmerized by all things biblical, and I am always seeking to understand why people believe what they believe, or worship what they worship.  But because I watch so many documentaries of this nature, and read so many books about it, there are times where I get pretty tired of Jesus.  Just about every movie about religion has to at least mention Jesus (as does Inside The Koran – stay tuned for that review) in passing, if not focusing on him entirely.  So it was a surprising revelation to me that The Bible Unearthed had virtually nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever.

     Instead, this is an examination mostly of the old testament, and the books from which the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths all emanated.  When Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, did he really use trumpets to bring down the walls?  Was there even a battle of Jericho?  Was there even a city of Jericho, or a larger war where the Israelites conquered Canaan?  This is pretty darn interesting stuff.  Through excavations of old ruins, archaeologists are able to determine where buildings were burned, where people were killed and where wars were waged.  And of course, where they weren’t.  They even go so far as to determine which tribes ate pork and which didn’t, and to try to figure out a reason for that.

      I would type in all the revelations I learned watching this documentary here – it certainly sparked a long and involved discussion of religious text in my house – because I enjoy talking about this stuff.  But I think that if you too enjoy this kind of stuff, it might be worth picking up yourself.  And then you can learn that Joshua fought no battle at Jericho, and that Jericho did not even exist in the time of Joshua, and that…oh, just get the DVD.

“For the love of Thomas Hardy!”

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    Boy, the people in Inkheart sure love their books and authors.  References to a bunch of different books are made, dozens of books are shown, and of course books are central to the movie’s theme.  I was kind of hoping to see some more obscure books than The Wizard of Oz and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I suppose that since it’s a kids movie the books referenced ought to be kid-friendly.  But there was a pretty heavy over-reliance on The Wizard of Oz.  The movie is about Mo (Brendan Fraser), who is a silver-tongue.  Which means that he is one of the people in the world blessed with the unique ability to read written words and have those words come to life.

     Years ago, he read a book aloud to his infant daughter, a book called Inkheart.  When the book came to life, and the bad guys appeared, Mo’s wife (Sienna Guillory) disappeared into the book.  The bad guys decided they liked our world, and staked out an area away from the authorities.  We are to assume here that a giant castle a few miles from a major city where murders and kidnappings and slavery are taking place would escape the notice of the people in the surrounding area.  We are also to assume that no silver-tongue ever once reads out loud before the age of thirty.  (Otherwise, they might discover their gift earlier, which would be inconvenient for the plot.)

     I can suspend my disbelief for a kids movie when it comes to minor problems like these.  Which means that the single biggest flaw with the movie is Brendan Fraser.  He’s still adequate at playing the slightly befuddled potential action hero that he plays in just about every kids movie.  And although he is acting beside Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent, two extremely high-caliber actors, he does not look out of place because they’re phoning it in.  Mirren and Broadbent, after all, are not Streep and DeNiro.  And Brendan Fraser is not Pauly Shore.  But they’re all pretty close.

     So if Fraser is watchable and not irritating, and he is the worst part of this movie, it must be at least decent, right?  Well, right.  Inkheart is, at least, decent.  A scenery-chewing performance by Andy Serkis, clearly having fun in the role of bad guy Capricorn, helps.  And a lot of the time, other characters than Mo are on the screen.  Less Fraser is better.  But many other characters are pointless, and not just Helen Mirren.  One of the 40 thieves is read out of the Arabian Nights, and joins our heroes for some time, for no discernible reason.  The author of Inkheart himself is dredged up, again for no apparent reason.  There are brief references to Peter Pan (a ticking crocodile), The Hound of the Baskervilles (a big wolf-dog with glowing eyes), and a unicorn and some flying monkeys.

     The flying monkeys appear to just be updated versions of those from the movie The Wizard of Oz, rather than something new that could conceivably have been read out of the book itself.  But no matter.  The best character in the movie is Broadbent’s.  He plays Fenoglio, a fire-juggler who was read out of Inkheart, and he just wants to go back into the book to rejoin his family.  Which leads to the most criminally underused actress of the movie.  Jennifer Connelly, who might be the best actress in the entire film, spends about three seconds of time on the screen as Fenoglio’s wife in the book.  She has no line of dialogue whatsoever, and never appears again.  Why bother?  I am hoping that on the cutting room floor, there is an additional forty minutes of the movie that involves Connelly in some important way, footage that will show up when the director’s cut gets released two years from now.  Here’s hoping.

     There is no explanation of the origins of these “silver-tongues” – it would be nice to know how they originated, or what is the source of their powers, or something.  Although when the obvious happens and Fraser’s daughter turns out to be a silver-tongue herself, I get to assume the whole thing is hereditary.  In fact, Fraser’s daughter, played by the wonderful Eliza Bennett, is the heart of the movie, and the most compelling character.  Her search for her missing mother and her confusion over her father’s powers rings true, and despite a really obvious and far too simple ending to the movie, she works hard at making it all reasonable.

     Of course, it’s not all reasonable at all.  The ending pretty much negates the movie entirely, in the sense that it’s something that, had it been done at the beginning (and it was the incredibly obvious thing to do), there would have been no need for the movie at all.  And the postscript, where Fenoglio is sent home (to a wife whose face we never see - I suppose Jennifer Connelly had left the set by that time), conveniently ignores all the rules of silver-tonguery that have been laid out over the course of the rest of the film.  There are many problems with Inkheart, and on one level it’s terrible.

     But I preferred to watch Inkheart with an open mind, and a sense of awe, and certain scenes provide that awe.  The special effects are solid for the most part, and Eliza Bennett and Jim Broadbent are good enough to convey the sense of power that comes from reading written words aloud and bringing books to life.  Throughout, Inkheart is entertaining and well-paced, and although it misses the mark a lot, it hits the mark often enough to be at least decent.

“There’s the difference between truth and fiction.  Fiction has to make sense.”

     The strength of The International is that it makes sense.  So many international-espionnage movies don’t, with plot twists and turns and intrigue and shady characters getting crammed into a big ball of unintelligible mishmash.  The International is better than that.  Sadly, it’s pretty forgettable, but it works and it’s fun for two hours.  Clive Owen and Naomi Watts star in the story of a giant international bank that seeks to dominate the world and own countries through arms deals and assassinations and other nefarious dealings.  Now, I don’t doubt that massive international banks do some bad things, but I suspect that they aren’t usually quite this despicable.

     The movie starts out as an interesting game of cat-and-mouse, and a mystery that gets slowly revealed through some great scenes and some weak ones (one particularly obnoxious scene involves a constantly moving camera panning around a boardroom scene, which really detracts from the important dialogue).  Then, when it’s time to ratchet up the action factor, there is a ridiculous shootout at the Guggenheim museum.  (Alfred Hitchcock really liked the showdowns at American landmarks, but I think he would maybe have spun in his grave while this thing was being shot.  And all those people were being shot.)

     You see, really bad guys always meet at art museums and galleries.  And the contract killer here is a really bad guy.  Or is he?  This is about the only moment in the film that really qualifies as intrigue, and it gets utterly devalued by the hail of bullets that follow.  Everything else is pretty…usual.  The sources that lead Clive Owen to the real bad guys keep getting killed just before they can tell him what they know.  There are assassinations that are carried out by two different snipers, for no discernible reason at all.  There are lots of people getting hit by cars.  (Although the initial scene of Owen getting smoked by a van’s rearview mirror is a pretty startling and good one.)  And there are those people who hand packages to other people who then take them and sneakily pass them off to still more people.  It’s a spy movie, after all.

     Only there are no spies.  Technically.  There are prosecutors, and Clive Owen has a shadowy past, and there are international arms dealers and businessmen and banks.  But no actual spies.  Which is fine.  The International is well constructed, it makes sense, and there are some tense scenes that work almost as well as those in better films, like The Interpreter.  And possibly, without that ridiculous shootout in the art museum, this movie might have been better.  But then, it wouldn’t have had a ridiculous shootout in an art museum.

“I’m saying that when the president does it, it’s not illegal.”

     I don’t know if Frost/Nixon is more resonant post-Bush, or less resonant.  Certainly there are a ton of amazing parallels between the two presidencies, and watching Nixon deconstructed in Ron Howard’s terrific film has to have a familiar look to those aware of the activities that took place in the Bush White House.  However, at the same time, I think we’re all a little desensitized.  As someone who was not yet born when Richard Nixon was facing impeachment hearings in the biggest political scandal of all time, I can’t imagine what a gigantic moment that was for the United States and the rest of the world.  I do know that he faced impeachment, and Bush didn’t.  But did Nixon really do anything worse?

     The tone of the movie suggests that he did.  In that he did something that was specifically illegal, and knowingly did this illegal thing and then tried to cover it up and then got busted.  He resigned, rather than be impeached, but never admitted any wrongdoing at all.  Then, in 1977, he sat down for a series of interviews with little-known British television host David Frost.  This movie is the story of those interviews, the preparations, and the results.  Frost basically had three months to prepare, but he was one of those playboy good-time party boys who never took this moment seriously enough.  Or so the movie says.  Only toward the end of the 12 interview sessions does Frost realize that he needs to do a little more.

     And what follows is one of the great moments in television history – the dismantling of Nixon’s stonewall, and the final word on Watergate – Nixon’s admission of guilt.  Frost/Nixon does a wonderful job talking up the power of television while also discussing, frankly, the limitations of the medium.  It also does a wonderful job of making both David Frost and especially Richard Nixon into sympathetic yet deeply flawed characters.  This is partly thanks to Ron Howard, but I think even more thanks to Frank Langella, who is magnificent as Nixon, and Michael Sheen is splendid as Frost. 

     The dialogue and confrontations between the two protagonists are fantastic, and tense, and really exciting.  But I think Langella is at his best in his dialogue with his right-hand man, Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon).  I think the best scene in the movie is the one where Nixon is thinking about investigating Frost before the interviews, and he starts telling Brennan about some Cuban ex-CIA guys he knows who can break into Frost’s hotel room to find some information.  Bacon’s face, in that scene, is incredible.  The look he gives Nixon is an uncomfortable one of half-horror, half hope – hope that he’s joking.  And I think that encapsulates this entire movie.

     Frost/Nixon is uncomfortable.  And it’s horrifying.  And it’s hopeful.  And it is an educational and exhilirating look at one of the most incredible media moments of all time.  Watch it.

Pick of the week:  Trailer Park Boys, Complete Series (9/10):  No movie worth renting.  No Blu-Ray worth seeking out.  (Except for perhaps Dr. Strangelove).  Only this TV series, the best in Canadian history, which for the first time exists as a complete series.  There is nothing new, and if you have the individual season DVDs already don’t bother.  If not though, this is totally worth it.  And that’s it for today.

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45 R.P.M. (6/10):  A Canadian movie about a young boy and a young girl and their coming of age story.  There isn’t a lot that’s compelling about the characters or the movie until the end, but it works.  Just barely.

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 Operation Valkyrie (4/10):  A German movie from 2004 that tells the exact same story that the new Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, tells.  A fascinating story, but somehow the movie becomes boring fast.  The Cruise one is better.

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 Dough Boys (4/10):  A really formulaic, really silly movie about young hustlers on the mean streets who get in over their heads with a local gangster.  There are a couple of decent performances, but it’s mostly dreadful.

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 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Deluxe Edition (2/10):  Another dreadful installment in a dreadful series of films.  Continues the special feature Lost Tales From Camp Blood that began on the first three Deluxe Edition volumes.  And it involves Corey Feldman.

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 Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, Deluxe Edition (2/10):  A unique entry into the Friday canon in that the killer is not Jason.  And we actually see a murder committed by someone who is not wearing a hockey mask.  Feldman is gone, but his character remains, and the movie continues the streak of serious suck.

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 Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Deluxe Edition (2/10):  That Feldman character returns, this time played by a third actor.  This version of Tommy decides, for some bizarre reason, to exhume Jason, but inadvertently resurrects him for more carnage.  Of course.  Still terrible.

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 Friday the 13th:  That new, 2000s remake, not another re-issue.  Although it might as well be a re-issue.  I can’t see any entry into this dreadful series not sucking.

Powder Blue:  Jessica Biel is actually a pretty decent actress when she isn’t playing just eye candy.  I suspect in this movie, she’s just playing eye candy.  However, there is a pretty solid supporting cast – Ray Liotta, Kris Kristofferson, Forest Whitaker and others.

Madea Goes To Jail:  More Madea madness.  Grandma’s crazy!  Tyler Perry did OK with his first Madea movie, which was OK.  Perhaps this one can live up to that decidedly middling expectation.

One Week:  Joshua Jackson heads off on a road trip in this Canadian movie that looks like a watered-down, lamer Into The Wild.  But it could be OK.

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice:  Did anyone know Tom Selleck was still getting work?  He is, but apparently only in the Jesse Stone movies.  Which are like a serial Seagal character.  Ugh.

The Cell 2:  A serial killer murders his victims, then brings them back to life so he can kill them again.  Soon, they beg to die.  Only, for real.  Remember the first Cell movie?  Like, thirty years ago?  This one does not involve Jennifer Lopez.  That might be both good and bad news.

Direct Contact:  Dolph Lundgren.  Nuff said.

GFE: Girlfriend Experience:  Porn star Sasha Grey stars as (appropriately) a prostitute in this faux-documentary style movie shot from the john’s perspective.  Sasha Grey could be a surprisingly good actress.  Or she could be a porn star.  At least one of those two statements will be correct.

The Necessities of Life:  Canadian film about an Inuit man in a sanitorium in Quebec City that cleaned up at the Genies. 

Also out:

Family Guy Vol. 7
Let’s Make Money
Skid Marks
Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases Vol. 2
Harder They Fall
Les Liens Du Sang
Restless
Sword of the Stranger
Tommy and the Cool Mule

On Blu-Ray this week:

Friday the 13th, Part 2 (4/10):  Less dark in Blu-Ray, so you can see the kills better.  That’s about all this junk has going for it.

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 Friday the 13th, Part 3 (4/10):  In 3-D, which is neat…3-D and Blu-Ray…but the 3-D is too cheesy to really matter.  It did make my girlfriend jump a few times.

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 Also on Blu-Ray this week:

Burn Notice: Season Two
The Cell 2
China Circus: Elites
The Diary of Anne Frank
Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Equator: Battle For the Light
Fracture
Friday the 13th (2009)
Generation Kill
Ghostbusters
The Greatest Game Ever Played
John Adams
Kickboxer – Uncut
King of the Streets
Lost: The Complete First Season
Lost: The Complete Second Season
Miracle
Morning Light
Nightwish: End of an Era
No Way Back
Ocean Voyager
Rockers (I recommend this one – unbelievable soundtrack)
The Rolling Stones: The Biggest Bang
The Seventh Seal
Sling Blade
Spaceballs
Striking Distance
Sword of the Stranger

Out on DVD next week:

Confessions of a Shopaholic
Inkheart
The Pink Panther 2
Crossing Over
Dragon Hunters
Strike: Balls of Glory
Table For Three
Eastbound & Down: The Complete First Season
Dog Eat Dog
Mark of an Angel
Legend of the Bog
The Bible Unearthed
Inside The Koran
Our City Dreams

On Blu-Ray next week:

The Code: Thick as Thieves
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Dragon Hunters
Inkheart
Last Year at Marienbad
Mr. Troop Mom
Origin – The Movie
The Pink Panther 2
Waltz With Bashir

“A family wants to adopt her baby, but…they don’t want her.”

     To the sounds of “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Clap Your Hands”, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” and other sounds of the 60s, a young boy and a young girl come of age in yet another Canadian coming-of-age-in-the-1960s movie.  Following on the heels of A No-Hit, No-Run Summer and Maman Est Chez Le Coiffeur, 45 R.P.M. is basically the same film.  It’s still pretty good though, thanks to some decent performances by the stars, Jordan Gavaris and Justine Banszky, and some great character actors like Michael Madsen and Amanda Plummer. 

     Parry Tender (Gavaris) is fifteen years old, and he’s desperate to get out of the small, remote northern Canadian town in which he’s stuck.  His tomboy best friend, Luke (Banszky), is even more desperate to leave than is Parry.  (Luke is such an effective tomboy, in fact, that I didn’t even know she was a girl until about twenty minutes into the movie.)  Of the two, Banszky is the better actor, and she also has the more compelling character in the end.  The two of them decide that the best way to get out of their small town predicament is to win a radio contest being run by a big New York City radio station.  Thanks to a strange atmospheric anomaly, they are able to get that station if they hold the radio just right on the roof of Parry’s house.

     Parry is not really a very interesting main character.  He’s similar to many other disaffected, withdrawn fifteen-year-olds in so many other movies, but that’s about it.  He doesn’t go to school, and he has a pretty brutal personal history.  But he doesn’t really talk to people, even those close to him, and he never really gave me any reason to like him.  Luke, on the other hand, is a likeable young girl who appears to be in love with Parry, who remains oblivious.  Complicating things is the pretty new girl in school, Debbie Baxter.  Debbie is played by the very pretty Mackenzie Porter (incidentally, she is the sister of Canadian Idol guy Kalan Porter.  Not that it matters.  Just some trivia.)

     Debbie’s father (Michael Madsen) has been stationed at the base in Northern Canada, and he’s the kindest, smartest adult in the whole movie.  But he is badly underused.  Also underused is Amanda Plummer, who plays Luke’s mother.  She represents the other end of adulthood, and she is pretty much the ultimate Mother From Hell.  The movie spends too much time on Parry and Luke, or Parry and Debbie.  And Parry is just not as interesting as the other characters.  Every time a conflict appears to be brewing between him and one of the girls, or him and his adoptive father, or him and the local cop, it disappears pretty quickly and nothing ever comes to a head.

     The one thing that does come to a head is the story of Luke, who ends up being forced into a dramatic and devastating revelation that will change her life and Parry’s forever.  Which is pretty standard for a coming-of-age-in-the-60s movie.  In the end, this is just a standard movie.  It’s OK, and it paints a nice picture of small-town Canada, remote youth culture in the 60s, and the Cold War tension in military towns.  But there isn’t much more to the film, the radio contest proves to be ultimately irrelevant (aside from providing an excellent soundtrack) and without some good performances (especially that of Banszky), it could be pretty boring and pretty bad.  45 R.P.M. comes out on DVD June 16th from Alliance Films.