August 19, 2005

I was planning on commenting on a few key films today, but my car decided to die on my way home and the delay has left me short of hours. So…

It's a pleasant, if goofy weekend at the movies. Red Eye is exactly what it claims to be… quick, dumb and full of you-go-girl action. Cillian Murphy is menacing…Rachel McAdams gets to do cute, spunky and resourceful… and Wes Craven gets to make almost every character - including DreamWorks' Terry Press - into one-note characters who do his fiendish bidding.

The 40 Year Old Virgin is the funniest of the summer films. If you can't laugh at this, go see your proctologist for a stickectomy. You'll know very quickly as 40 year old Steve Carrell wakes up and heads to his morning urination with a protruding organ known to all of us who were once teenaged boys. Judd Apatow shows the good taste of not showing his star wrestle to hit the target which lies in the opposite direction of the morning wood. But as he trudges back to his bedroom, he's still pointing north. If you at least giggle at this, you are in good shape. If you yawn, go find another theater in the multiplex.

It is a very funny, often gentle and more often raunchy… fun… memorable… a good time at the movies that shouldn't offend your date if you insist on a testosterone laden alternate to Red Eye. Since Red Eye is a spare 85 minutes, you could just make it a double feature.

CONTROVERSY seems inevitable for a film called Paradise Now that premiered at Berlin earlier this year, will be appearing at Telluride and Toronto in the next few weeks and is due for release by Warner Indie in last October. But the question is, who will be upset?

The film is about two close friends in Nablus, a West Bank territory where Palestinians live, who are called on to be suicide bombers in an attack on Tel Aviv, Israel. The film is remarkably good about keeping the issue on a human level without preaching… at least until a bit of an outburst late in the third act. This is a story of two believers who, when faced with actually following through with their plan, show their hole cards in various ways.

In some ways it reminds me of my beloved Blood In The Face, a doc about neo-Nazis that had the liberal Sundance crowd enraged because it did not take an overt stand against Nazism… which seemed ridiculous to both the filmmakers and me. Palestinian sympathizers will be upset by the film's dismissal of suicide bombing as a legitimate way of trying to force the hand of the Israelis. Israeli sympathizers will be upset by the film's portrayal of these suicide bombers as somewhat reasonable young men, true believers in a cause, with all the live concerns of regular Joes. Critics will be upset that the cast is so damned good looking and that in the end, there are some old-school movie speeches.

I saw the film with a fairly quiet group, few of whom I knew and none of whom I knew well enough to chat with after the screening. And I am aching to have the discussion. I am looking forward to hearing people's strong points of view. For me, it is the kind of movie that I really enjoy. It feels, for the most part, real. People who do crazy things are usually pretty normal in many ways. And they make a major choice.

There have been peacenik Israeli movies, but I haven't seen one that takes the point of view of the right wing extremists in the country, the counterpoint to the suicide bombing element in the Palestinian culture. His characters in this movie would argue that the media is already telling that story for the Israelis, dazed by some voodoo, too sympathetic to the Gaza pullout to focus on their argument that East Jerusalem should still be in play.

But I'm not trying to start a political argument here… too one sided… even by e-mail.

A very interesting film… just the kind of movie that makes for a good, chatty dinner after the movies… and we'll see in the next few weeks whether this becomes a controversy or whether it gets lost in the endless unnecessary coverage of The Da Vinci Code.

Have a good weekend at the movies… things are heating up…

E-ME.