The English Patient (1996)

Director Anthony Minghella’s sweeping WWII romance ranked as #24 in my countdown of the greatest left-wing films of all time:

Filled with poetic dialogue, lush cinematography, some truly extraordinary scenes — such as the sandstorm sequence where Katharine and Laszlo fall in love — and  a charming subplot involving the short-lived but sincere romance between Binoche’s Canadian nurse and Kip (“Lost’s” Naveen Andrews), a brave Indian who defuses bombs, you almost will yourself  not to notice the film’s depraved and shockingly selfish philosophy. The film is seductive, though, and you want to give into it, but in the end the only moral outcome would be to have the cast of “Inglorious Basterds” storm in and beat Laszlo to death with a baseball bat.

If you don’t mind being manipulated by an ingeniously crafted and immoral piece of propaganda (and I don’t), another bonus is the look of the film (the cinematography won an Oscar), which is a jaw-dropper on Blu-ray.

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Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Many will never forgive the fact that director John Madden’s fictionalized account of a passionate but ill-fated love affair between a young, struggling William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes)  and the beautiful young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) who inspires some of his greatest work, beat out Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” for that year’s top Oscar prize.

This might be heresy, but I think the best film won.

Thanks to one of the best screenplays ever written, “Shakespeare In Love” is also one of the most original films to come out of the 1990s. Paltrow is luminous, and the supporting cast — which includes Tom Wilkinson, Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench (who along with Paltrow would win an Oscar for her work here), Simon Callow, and Ben Affleck — are all outstanding, thanks to their own talents and how well each character is individually defined. Some of story’s best moments come from the development of the Wilkinson and Affleck characters as Shakespeare’s talent and art overcomes their own personal agendas.

The story is at its most effective, though, in pushing the buttons a romance is supposed to push. You want this young couple to find a way be together, and you’re a little heartsick when you think about the possibility of them not making it.

Acted with great energy and humor and photographed in vibrant colors, this is an intelligent crowd-pleaser that looks gorgeous in high definition.

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Chicago (2002)

Director Rob Marshall pretty much revived (for a while, anyway) the musical genre with this age-old tale of murder and fame set in 1920s Chicago. Rene Zellweger might be the film’s star, but she’s completely blown off the screen by Catherine Zeta-Jones (who won a supporting Oscar) and a surprisingly game Richard Gere (who should’ve won a supporting Oscar).

The musical numbers are a little too choppy for my taste, and every one of them is staged as though it’s a finale, but the story is engaging and a few of the numbers are legitimate show-stoppers. Everyone’s obviously having a good time, and it’s more than a little infectious.

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Crash (2004)

There are all kinds of movies I dislike, ignore, dismiss and am even disgusted by. This is one of the rare titles I absolutely loath. This overwrought, melodramatic, piece of pretentious crap reeks of a left-wing superiority that emanates from the Hollywood Hills and looks down its oh-so-superior nose on the “little people” of Los Angeles. Sanctimony is its theme, superiority its muse, and smearing its goal. It’s an abomination of a film that reveals nothing about the good people of the Southland, who live and work and worship together in complete harmony, and everything about the self-serving elites who created and championed it.

My suggestion is that while you’re enjoying the other four Blu-rays, you use this one as a coaster for your Pabst Blue Ribbon.

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No Country For Old Men (2007)

An excerpt from my 2007 review, which, unfortunately, is no longer online:

The “country” in “No Country For Old Men” is a bleak, sun-bleached West Texas, not far from the Rio Grande circa 1980. Why 1980, is never explained. Maybe to get away with Chigurh’s haircut, a villain soon to become as iconic as Hannibal Lecter. But the barren landscapes, flares of dry lightning, and burgeoning towns just a few years away from being Applebee’d, perfectly symbolize a flat, hopeless, forbidding vastness offering nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from that thing that’s so spooked our Sheriff Bell.

The first one hundred minutes of “Old Men” are dynamite. The story is simply set up in act one with act two being its own symphony of unnerving tension as Chigurh and Moss play out their respective roles of unrelenting cat and crafty mouse. Nothing’s contrived to bring these two together and no superhuman acts are performed by either. All the action and suspense comes from entirely believable situations, which only adds to the unyielding tension as it becomes more and more clear Moss will never escape.

The only super power on display is that of the Coen brothers’ direction, the actors’ performances, the cinematography and editing. Each scene is ingenious in how it creates its own suspense, but also in how it builds on the knot tightening in your gut. The camera’s always in the right place, revealing a precise piece of information; even the removal of a pair of socks lifts your antennae. The editing is a work of art that utilizes timing, camera angles, and individual shots for maximum unease.

To the film’s further credit, just as no absurd coincidences or super human feats are contrived to move the plot, nobody does anything unrealistically stupid, either. It’s fascinating to watch the minds of Chigurh and Moss at work as each tries to get a step ahead of the other using whatever’s available to them. These aren’t MacGyvers turning paperclips into getaway cars; these are intelligent, very determined men thinking things through in a way we can relate to in their use of duct tape, wire hangers, phone bills, and compressed air to get what they want. …

The acting is first-rate, and in an era where lazy stars are continually caught coasting with lazy accents, everyone in “Old Men” hits it perfect. As I mentioned in my “Gone Baby Gone” review (another film with well-done accents), the key isn’t so much getting the accent perfect, the key is creating a believable accent that — and this is most important — the audience doesn’t notice. Even Scottish Kelly McDonald manages to convince and Woody Harrelson to not annoy. No small thing. One fine bit of casting is Tess Harper as Sheriff Bell’s wife. Her role here bookends beautifully with her memorable turn as Robert Duvall’s calming influence in “Tender Mercies.”

I close that review unsure about the film’s ending. At the time, I was dissatisfied that so much had been put into building up to a confrontation that never arrived.

In the five years since, that’s no longer a problem. This is one of the best films of the decade by a wide margin,, and repeated viewings only confirm that. The depth of the themes at work here make return visits even more satisfying, and the high-definition transfer of the landscapes, towns, light and shadow that the Coens shot so meticulously really come to life, as does a sound design that helps to immerse you into the landscape and feel every round fired.

There are some great films in this collection, but only one bona fide cinematic masterpiece, and this is it.

‘5 Bext Picture Collection’ is available today at Amazon.com.

In the undeniably entertaining “Shark Night,” director David R. Ellis brings to life a couple of one-dimensional, stereotyped, Southern, racist rednecks to… lecture… us… about… bigotry… Talk about a disconnect. Naturally, there’s a young black man and Hispanic woman who are racially taunted by these two inbred-looking good ole’ boys, but when the film itself engaged in this kind of racial stereotyping (and more), I began to wonder if “Shark Night” was working on the kind of  high level, self-aware social satire only a dog could hear.

For instance, the black guy and the Hispanic woman are naturally a couple — can’t have them romantically mixing with Caucasians, I guess. ***SPOILERS*** Also, both are the very first victims of the shark. But it’s when the shirtless Black guy fights the shark with — ready for this? — a spear, that I began to see the real genius in this film’s penetrating racial commentary.

Or not.

Anyway, “Shark Night” is pure B-movie dumb in the finest way possible. Though no legitimate masterpiece like last year’s epic “Piranha,” you will be entertained throughout. Mixed in with the dumb is a little suspense, gratuitous nudity, gore, action and more dumb. “Shark Night” proudly is what it is and, by design or accident, more insightful when it comes to racial issues (that expose the Hollywood left) than the Academy Award-winner “Crash.”

It’s also a much better movie than “Crash.” Not that that’s a high bar.  

But the real brilliance in the storytelling comes from a shark-attack story where the gaggle of lovely, barely-clothed victims-in-waiting reside on an island. Oh the contrivances you’ll witness to get them into the water, especially after they know what’s in the water. 

Good stuff and a great time if…

You bring a sense of humor and an irony detector.

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SHARK NIGHT is available at Amazon.com. DVD Features:

• ·         Shark Attack!  Kill Machine! – Use this feature to jump to your favorite kills quickly
• ·         Ellis’ Island – A cast appreciation of what Shark Night director David Ellis brought to the film 

SHARK NIGHT Blu-ray Disc Features:

All of the DVD features, plus…

• ·         Shark Night’s Survival Guide – Everything you need to know about the sharks in the movie to avoid becoming human chum!
• ·         Fake Sharks Real Scares – This behind the scenes featurette focuses on the use of both animatronic and CGI sharks in Shark Night
• ·         Digital Copy

Cheadle, best known for his work in films like “Hotel Rwanda,” “Iron Man 2″ and “Crash,” told Jet Magazine he wished Obama had been more “gangsta,” and less a “consensus seeker.”

Now, he’s trying to clarify those comments.

“I realize that when speaking to reporters who are looking for the juiciest comments to print, a word like gangster in connection with a black president uttered by a black celebrity can almost be too much to resist,” the Oscar-nominated actor wrote. “I say this not in defense but to offer some perspective. I believe I used the word gangster and I meant it. But I wasn’t talking about pants sagging and forties and ‘hoes’ or any of that other nonsense and I find it hard to believe that that is what some people thought I was saying. I was talking about wish fulfillment; my own and my desire to witness something more than I had.”

Cheadle then fell back on apology-speak, mixed with some revisionist history – didn’t The One have a Democratic Congress for his first two years in office? – to explain what he hopes to see from Obama now.

“Many of my friends and family are scratching it out somewhere decidedly south of the ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, looking at losing their homes, colleges they can’t afford and healthcare they can’t avail themselves of. They’re the ones I’m thinking of when I say gangster,” he wrote, noting the constraints of having to work with an uncooperative Congress. “President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and the gap widening.”

Cheadle finally succumbs to the kind of heated rhetoric that was allegedly banned from public discourse in the wake of the awful Tucson shooting earlier this year.

“I still have a fevered dream of the POTUS smacking up John Boehner in a public forum in middle America and making him defend support of tax cuts for the super rich,” he said. “I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs. I want the president to bail out homeowners who fell for the okey doke from predatory lenders and are two seconds from living on the streets or are already there… I want him to stand in front of the haters and go all Bill Duke on them and say, ‘You know you done fucked up now, don’t you?’ I kinda want a gangster president. I was about to write that in the future I would chose my words more carefully but I’m sure I won’t.”

We’re pretty sure he won’t, either.

Crying out in anguished pretension

To say we’ve enjoyed our time in Los Angeles would be an understatement. Adventure we sought and adventure we received. Though I eventually failed out, I loved the few years I (barely) scraped out a living in the independent film world and that it led to eventually being a part of Andrew Breitbart’s BIG empire feels something like providence. There is very little, however, my wife and I will miss about the city itself. We learned pretty quickly that all the cliches are true about the crime, traffic, smog, tremors, and artificiality of it all. Simply put, this city is a dump with a 10% sales tax where light bulbs are contraband the seasons change from hot to scalding and throwing your garbage in the wrong bin ranks as something close to a capital crime. No offense, but I see Los Angeles as nothing more than a big, fascist, one-story ghetto and those of you who love it are welcome to it.  

One cliche that is a total lie, though, is the unbelievably phony narrative created by the Leftist media and Hollywood about the people who live here. Throughout my misspent life, I’ve lived in Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and now California — and I have never met nicer people than the people of Los Angeles. That’s not hyperbole or rose-colored glasses or sentiment. It’s a fact. Over the years, I’ve been all over this city and have met and worked with folks from every possible background and income group; from movie stars, producers, journalists and politicians to cops, public school teachers, and factory workers. The people who live and work and make this city run are almost without exception uncommonly decent and kind.

Which brings me to the Paul Haggis film “Crash.”

What city does that man live in? Or does he just look down on the “little people” hustling out a living in the valley and seize every opportunity available to lord his progressive superiority over us? Because the Oscar-winning moral obscenity known as “Crash” would have you believe that the marvelous American melting pot known as Los Angeles is filled with racists and racial strife and racial tension and race, race race, race race. Well, that’s a damned lie. My hand to God, in eight years I have personally never seen, been involved in, or known anyone involved in any kind of racial incident.

Monterey Park, California

Sure, we’ve been through droughts, fires, mud slides, and three murders on our block. Yes, my wife’s been robbed at gunpoint, we’ve been awaken by our house shaking like pre-Army Elvis, and have sweltered with no air conditioning due to hours-long power outages in 105 degree heat. But never once have we felt a moment of stress or tension with anyone over race.

Not ever.

Furthermore, I don’t live in the Hollywood Hills or Santa Monica or Beverly Hills. I live on the border of (the unfairly maligned by Hollywood) East Los Angeles in a city called Monterey Park … where I’m the minority. My neighborhood is 80% Asian and Hispanic, and I have never once been made to feel like any kind of outsider. Not to sound corny, but we’re all Americans here. This is a neighborhood where the excitement and celebration surrounding the Chinese New Year is only topped by the 4th of July.  

Boone, North Carolina

“Crash” came out in 2005 and I didn’t much care for it then. It was smug and pretentious and proud of itself. But it took a while for me to realize just what a defamatory attack it was on the people of this city. I remember the moment it struck me. I was sitting in church one Sunday just a year or so ago, when I looked over and saw a white guy sitting in the pew next to me. At first I was surprised and then I was surprised I was surprised and then I figured out why. You simply don’t see many white guys in my church. In fact, sometimes I’m the only one. And that’s when it struck me that I was part of a small racial minority in my community. But because race had never been any kind of an issue with my neighbors, I had never once given the difference in skin color or ethnicity or whatever any kind of thought.

I don’t know what life is like in the upper echelons of the Hollywood Paul Haggis and his ilk reside in, but down here in the San Gabriel Valley we Americans live together just fine.  

E pluribus unum.

So goodbye, Los Angeles. And please don’t take those Julie and John-shaped roadrunner clouds you’ll see tonight personally. Hate the city, already miss the people, and Paul Haggis can go to Hell.

But these great Americans are generally not members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and they don’t get to vote for who takes home the Oscar.  People like Sean Penn do.  And Tim Robbins.   And tranny vomit recipient Susan Sarandon.  

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These are the kind of folks who make up the majority of Oscar voters, so it’s no wonder that the Academy Awards show is so often a festival of nitwittery that leaves normal Americans scratching their heads wondering, “Um, what the hell was that?” 

Oscar has more than its share of astonishing failures, of crazy-uncle-locked-in-the-attic nods that the Academy sorely regretted about the time the after-party coke bowls ran dry.  The terrible Oscar choices listed here are only from the last few decades since the sting of choosing How Green Is My Valley over Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon has presumably faded since 1941– well, for some of us.  Oh, and you won’t find Marisa Tomei on this list – she rocks.  Deal with that, haters. 

So, in no particular order of insanity, here are Oscar’s 10 biggest recent screw-ups: ]

1. Crash: Best Picture 2006: Before Paul Haggis annoyed the Scientologists, he annoyed most of the rest of the world with Crash, a ponderous stew of liberal guilt and condescension that lucked into a Best Picture Oscar through a combination of pinko button pushing and the pure dumb luck of having an equally tiresome raft of competing nominees.  

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With fellow nominees Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck, Crash was up against sodomy, moral equivalence, more sodomy and George Clooney.  Apparently, the voters found Crash the lesser of five mediocrities. 

2. Shakespeare In Love: Best Picture 1999:  Well, I guess I’m just being petty.  I mean, Saving Private Ryan was merely a stirring, technically magnificent tribute to the unbelievable bravery of the heroes who stormed the beaches at Normandy and freed Europe from the grip of Nazi tyranny.  But Shakespeare In Love was about show business and it also displayed Gwyneth Paltrow’s epically unimpressive rack.  So I guess it was an easy choice for the Academy – they got to pick a flick about Actors and Acting while also dissing those dirty brutes who do Army stuff.  To pat themselves on their collective backs and diss the proles – how could they pass up that opportunity?  Well, they couldn’t, and they didn’t. 

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Now, there’s nothing really wrong with Shakespeare In Love.  It’s a perfectly serviceable film if you happen not to have testes, or merely hate all they stand for.  Sure, there are some guys out there who think a topless Gwyneth from 14 years ago is sexy, but movies need to appeal to more than just lonely shut-ins whose life partners are manufactured by the Kleenex Corporation.  This condescending, anti-American snob is to hot women what her husband’s band Coldplay is to cool music,and she needs to stick to her goop.com blog where she comments on the everyday problems that real moms face, like uppity butlers and “tiara hair.”  Enough said about her.  

In ambition and execution, Private Ryan – a film I have my problems with – was so manifestly superior artistically and technically that to overlook it could not simply be a mistake.  The electrifying initial landing scene is so unforgettable that it alone justified a Best Picture award regardless of what came after.  No, there had to be an agenda.  And that’s what makes this choice more than just risible – it was despicable. 

3. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman: Best Actor 1993:  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  From his iconic roles in the 70’s like Michael Corleone to the bizarrely over-the-top but unforgettable Tony Montana in the 80’s, you could always count on Al to deliver.  But this?  It’s bad enough that it came to this; it’s worse that the Academy acted as an enabler to Pacino’s sad decline into tedious caricature. 

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Hooah?  I don’t think so. 

4. Roberto Begnini in Life Is Beautiful: Best Actor 1999:  This award was so manifestly undeserved that it made President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize seem as underwhelming as a third place middle school science fair ribbon tossed at Albert Einstein.  Let me put this out there – Life Is Beautiful is perhaps the stupidest, most offensive major motion picture ever made.  When the Nazis came looking for Begnini, this holocaust comedy literally had people in the audience yelling, “Hey, he’s hiding in the alley!” 

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Someone told Roberto Begnini a terrible lie – that he was amusing.  In fact, he is the most annoying performer in the entire history of cinema, a history that includes Matt Damon and Channing Tatum.  What takes him to a whole new level of suck is that he thinks he’s hilarious, which he is – in the same way a giant herpetic lesion is hilarious.  

The “wacky” English-mangling acceptance speech he offered when presented with this award was brilliant…to those who hit the sauce in their limos beforehand.  For the rest of the audience, it was like a root canal sans anesthetic, but without the fun.  Fortunately, Begnini has faded into well-deserved obscurity and his movies are today largely forgotten, a tribute to the collective human mind’s ability to block out traumatic experiences. 

5. Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine: Best Supporting Actor 2007:  “Let’s honor a trangressive indie comedy where the grandpa swears and drinks and does drugs – yeah, that’ll blow the collective minds of those squares out there in Jesusland!”  Such was no doubt the thought process that went into handing the little gold naked guy to veteran Alan Arkin for what was essentially playing the same curmudgeonly character he’d been essaying since the great Freebie and the Bean.  Now, that was an amusing, truly un-PC movie: 

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So rent Freebie and let Little Miss Sunshine fade into a vague, unpleasant memory. 

6. Diablo Cody for Juno: Best Original Screenplay 2008:  Once again, the Academy experienced the equivalent of a “double bagger,” where it wakes up in the morning, looks at what it brought home, and asks “What the hell was I thinking?” 

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Juno is not the most horrible movie of all time, despite the presence of the spirit-killing Michael Cera and Ellen Page and a soundtrack full of crappy, waify hipster alt-folk songs that are so twee they make Justin Beiber seem like Megadeth.  It’s just that Juno is embarrassingly pretentious, with the precocious heroine’s vocabulary packed with painfully cutesy words like “shenanigans.”  And when Rainn Wilson’s character calls her “home skillet,” well, you just want to slap him. 

This is the problem with a novelty act movie – the Academy is amused for a few minutes, votes it an Oscar, then spends the rest of eternity shaking its collective head after figuratively sobering up.  

7. An Inconvenient Truth: Best Documentary 2007:  It’s hard to believe that it was only four years ago that people actually believed in global warming.  But it’s not hard at all to believe that among the biggest suckers were the pampered quarter-wits who do most of the Academy Award voting.  Al Gore’s ridiculous exercise in propaganda, delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, was a natural choice for the Oscar voters, but they were probably pretty disappointed they couldn’t also vote for the nominated documentary that dissed Christians or the other one that trashed America over Iraq.  Whoever said that Hollywood doesn’t embrace a diversity of thought?  

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In any case, An Inconvenient Truth is destined to be the Reefer Madness of 2007, with stoned UC Berkeley students from the Class of 2032 laying around their dorms laughing at how stupid people were back in the mid-aughts.  Well, some people. 

8. The English Patient: Best Picture 1997:  Perhaps the Academy wanted some balance after properly awarding the magnificent Schindler’s List Best Picture in 1994, which is the only possible explanation for why this over-praised, under-interesting celluloid atrocity could have won.  After all, this is the film that seriously posits that collaborating with the Nazis is perfectly cool if it will help you score with a mediocre chick who happens to be married to some other dude.  

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Sure, we can’t expect the film’s mere utter moral bankruptcy to dissuade the Academy voters – these are the folks who think Roman Polanski is the real victim.  But couldn’t they at least notice that this soapy melodrama is about the most boring way to spend nearly three hours outside of a Meet the Press marathon?  

9. Kate Winslet in The Reader: Best Actress 2009:  What the hell is it with Hollywood and Nazi sympathizers?  Well, admittedly Kate Winslet’s character had more going for her than just cavorting with brownshirts – she was illiterate and liked to do underage boys.  In Hollywood, that’s like an acting trifeca, and Kate went the full fascist-illiterate-pedo. 

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Oh, the performance itself?  Um, I have a question:  How did Kate Winslet get tagged as some sort of great thespian revelation?  In every movie she is in, she always seems to bear the same furrowed-brow, vaguely troubled expression, as if she was suffering from mild indigestion.  It must be something else – perhaps her willingness to doff her clothes and display her chubby charms in pretty much everything she’s been in.  Whatever.  

10. 3-6 Mafia’s “Hard Out here For A Pimp”: Best Song 2006:  Perhaps the most hilarious pick of all time, the Academy’s choice of the year’s Best Song from the rap/hooker extravaganza Hustle & Flow was just awesome.  For once, the saccharine Disney ditties and the generic pop hits were thrust aside in favor of a gritty urban tune that finally dared to musically explore the difficulties that industrious entrepreneurs face in their daily lives.  Yeah, nothing like a song we can all relate to. 

Most amazing were the hip hop stylings of those past and future unknowns, 3-6 Mafia, cavorting on stage while a bunch of dancers dressed like Hollywood’s idea of “hos” gyrated and frolicked before the bejeweled and bewildered audience: 

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Simply spectacular.  Yeah, it sure is hard out here for a pimp who’s trying to get his money for the rent.  Who can’t identify with that?  Especially in Hollywood.  

And this year, Oscar, don’t forget to keep your pimp hand strong!

Why it’s a left-wing film

Although he had directed the middling horror film “The Hand” in 1981 and a couple of short films, “Salvador” was Oliver Stone’s first Oliver Stone Film, a political-themed drama based on a true story and yet still skewed in unmentionable ways to condemn what would become the two-time Oscar-winning director’s usual targets: America, Reagan, the military, the CIA, and conservatives in general.

The film’s narrative covers the tumultuous 1980-81 Civil War period in El Salvador with a story that starts just prior to Ronald Reagan taking office in January of ‘81, but through a lot of exposition (masterfully delivered by star James Woods) Stone still manages to blame much of the country’s chaos on Reagan, the “right wing” and, of course, the CIA for supposedly supporting and training and enabling the military death squads that roamed the country murdering supporters of the leftist uprising.

Stone also uses a sleight of hand to make you think it was Reagan who was in office and who continued military and financial assistance after the brutal assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero (during a Catholic mass and just after a blistering anti-government speech) and the horrific rape and murder of four Catholic nuns. Both of these tragedies occurred in late 1980 while Carter was still in office, but Stone seems incapable of dealing with the fact that running the American government and continuing all that aid — though it was briefly suspended after the bodies of the nuns were found — in the face of the worst kind of human rights abuses was a Democrat president and Congress.

When Reagan did take office, he merely took over a policy his liberal predecessor had long supported.  

As expected, Stone’s look at El Salvador is also childishly simplistic. On one side, an American-backed right-wing government that denies civil rights, murders the innocent, and holds on to power through dishonest elections and terror. On the other side, the noble peasantry rising up only for their rights, some of them outright Communists. To Stone’s credit he does include a scene with Communists indiscriminately shooting prisoners, but he also has Woods scream, “You’re just like them! You’re just like them!”

America’s reasons for being involved in El Salvador were completely valid. Having another communist country and the Cuba/Soviet influence that came with it in Central America was fraught with peril when it came to our own national security and it takes a special kind of fool to believe the leftist uprising would result in any kind of Worker’s Paradise for the people of El Salvador, most especially for the well-intentioned but naive Catholic clergy who tended to side with the rebels.

Well, God love him, but I think we all know that Stone is one of those special kinds of fools and one sly enough to put the political arguments he disagrees with in the mouth of an unlikable, over-bearing, macho, but not very bright  military officer. This allows Woods to swat down the other side’s case with ease and leave the viewer with the impression that America was indifferent to the suffering of the people of El Salvador, we didn’t really believe there was any kind of legitimate Communist threat there and that we knowingly used that ruse as an excuse to strut our stuff throughout Central America, fill the pockets of military contractors and shake off the ghost of Vietnam.

Why it’s a great film

Four words: The Mighty James Woods.

Though The Mighty Paul Newman won a long overdue Oscar for “The Color of Money” and everyone was rooting for him to win, we all knew that Woods (who was nominated) had turned in the best performance of 1986, and arguably one of the best of the decade.

If you’ve seen Woods’ unforgettable portrayal of Lester Diamond in Martin Scorsese’s last decent film, the 1995 masterpiece “Casino,” you’ve only seen half of what he accomplishes as Rick Boyle in “Salvador.” Lester Diamond has all the same livewire qualities of needy, desperate sleaze that Boyle does, but whereas Lester is utterly soulless and unsympathetic, using that indescribable thing only the greatest of actors possess, Woods instantly and wordlessly gives Boyle a humanity you somehow sense; and though he’s introduced to us as a selfish liar and manipulator only interested in a quick buck, a cheap high, and even cheaper whores, you still find yourself instantly rooting for him.   

Prior to “Salvador” Woods had shown what he could do in 1979’s terribly under-appreciated “Onion Field,” but nobody noticed. In 1984 he anchored a major role in one of the greatest films ever made, director Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” but the studio so thoroughly fucked that film three ways from Sunday (sorry, there’s no other way to describe it), that again no one noticed. Finally, with the sordidly charming, always on the hustle Rick Boyle, Woods hung his star and though the film itself was a box office flop, we all saw and fell in love with both James Woods and “Salvador” on home video and HBO.

The other important reason the film works so well is that Stone is an extraordinarily gifted director (though his last few efforts have been embarrassments) who wisely chose to make “Salvador” primarily a character study and story of personal redemption. Like Bogart’s character in “Casablanca,” Stone introduces us to a thoroughly selfish and self-involved cynic who finally finds his soul through the realization that something is happening in the world more important than himself. Though we disagree with the political fantasyland Stone creates, the world and situations in which Boyle finds his redemption are secondary to our desire to see that redemption.

Stone co-wrote the film with the real Rick Boyle (both were nominated) and the first act is nothing short of brilliant in introducing us to this character and all his flaws as he cons his unemployed DJ pal Doctor Rock (a never better James Belushi) into a Hunter S. Thompson-like odyssey filled with drugs, sex and reportage. But once Boyle arrives in El Salvador (unable to afford a plane ticket, he hilariously has to drive there from California) and sees what’s really happening (according to Oliver Stone), he changes, grows, gets involved, risks his life for others and wants to become a better man and Catholic — going so far as to offer to marry a local woman with two kids in order to get her out of the country.

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Of course Boyle’s already married and undoubtedly the worst Catholic within a few hundred square miles of wherever he stands. But the pleasure of watching his selfish qualities diminish and his humanity take over is quite rewarding and because he never becomes perfect — he’ll always be a scoundrel — the transformation feels very real.  

If none of the above convinces you to check out “Salvador,” I promise you that watching Boyle give his first confession to a priest in 30 years is well worth your time. The scene is poignant, utterly faithful to the character, and on-the floor-funny.

Great actor. Great character. Great director.

What’s not on the list

“Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Crash” (2004)

Writer/director Paul Haggis’ “Crash” doesn’t qualify because it’s a piece of cinematic shit — a sanctimonious, superior, strident, melodramatic, over-wriiten, over-acted, smug piece of cinematic shit that looks down on the “little people” of Los Angeles from the morally illiterate, self-righteous tower of the Hollywood Hills and declares us all racists. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for almost eight years now and the least of this Godforsaken city’s problems are its overwhelmingly decent and tolerant people. When it comes to different cultures living harmoniously together, L.A. is one of the great success stories of history. I’m a white guy married to a Spanish-speaking woman who was born in Mexico living in an overwhelmingly Asian neighborhood just a few block from the mostly Hispanic (and unfairly infamous — thanks Hollywood!) East Los Angeles (where we shop, eat, see movies…) – and I have never ever ever ever once seen or been involved in any kind of racial incident, much less the one’s depicted as an everyday reality in that godawful film

The only bigot here is Paul Haggis and those who rewarded his deep-seated prejudice against anyone not like his superior self with glowing reviews and Academy Awards (Best Picture!). In the worst way possible, he ruthlessly defamed the good people of this city, an overwhelming majority of whom look out for one another and see only fellow Americans in what is a richly diverse and endlessly interesting melting pot. The everday people in America moved past race a long time ago. The only ones who refuse to move on are like the leftists in Hollywood who remain obsessed with skin color and keeping those divisions wide and raw for political gain.  

Adding insult to injury is that “Crash” stole that year’s Best Picture Oscar from the film that truly deserved it, director Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” a production that certainly had an agenda but not a political one. This poignant and heartbreaking story of two men who fall in love and can’t be together isn’t about gay marriage or any other partisan issue. Instead, Lee presents us with two very real and sympathetic characters, demands we recognize them as human beings, and wisely leaves it at that.

Because watching any kind of physical intimacy between two men makes me extremely uncomfortable (you call it homophobia, I call it wiring), I’ve only seen “Brokeback” once but the final scene’s stayed with me ever since. Heath Ledger’s character alone in that house trailer with nothing but that shirt worn by Jake Gyllenhaal’s character to remember him by is emotionally devastating stuff.

There’s nothing right or left about “Brokeback Mountain,” and I personally found it refreshing to see the rare Hollywood portrayal of homosexuals as something other than the easy stereotype of flamboyant Judy Garland fanatics.

“Hereafter” applies “Crash” and “Babel” school of storytelling, interweaving the stories of three distinctly different people in different parts of the globe in an intricate fashion. The film kicks off with a bang as Marie (played with a touching sense of fear and wonderment by French actress Cecile de France) is knocked out by the notorious Indonesian tsunami of 2004 before springing back to life and finding herself haunted by the visions she had while unconscious.

Marie’s a newscaster and is expected to keep a level-headed scientific mindset, but she is soon obsessed with her quest to figure out what happened and risks losing her reputation, career and relationship. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a lonely man named George (a surprisingly vulnerable Damon) struggles to ignore the psychic abilities that have haunted him since he nearly died in a childhood accident.

And in London, a 12 year old boy named Marcus ( Frankie McLaren, in a heartbreaking debut) is already living a tough life, with his mother a hopeless junkie and no dad in sight. When his beloved twin brother is killed in a tragic accident, he’s left seemingly alone in the world and desperately seeks to learn what happened to his brother after death.

Writer Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”) has created an original work that easily matches and perhaps surpasses his prior Oscar-nominated scripts. The way he handles the age-old questions of the afterlife strikes an audacious balance: he doesn’t embrace or cast aside any particular faith’s answers, yet he still finds a resolution that should be satisfying to anyone of any belief background.

And when the story strands come together, Morgan and Eastwood forgo the expected, walloping “Holy cow!” moment at the end. Rather, the fact that the twists are subtly surprising rather than shocking is in itself after a decade in which it seems more and more heavy dramas seek to hammer viewers over the head with heavy-handed showmanship.

“Conviction,” meanwhile, tells a powerful story on a more earthbound level. Based on the true life story of how a small-town waitress named Betty Anne Waters (played by Swank) went back to school and earned everything from her GED to a law degree in order to save her brother Kenny (Rockwell) from an unfair life prison sentence, it is propelled by gritty sense of the can-do American spirit and the universal power of family ties.

Betty and Kenny grew up in a highly dysfunctional home and indulged in numerous forms of delinquent behavior as children before Betty matured into married life and Kenny continued his hard-partying ways. But when a local woman is brutally murdered, Kenny is called in for questioning before being set free due to a lack of evidence.

He is arrested two years later, however, and subjected to a trial in which he is convicted based on a nasty stream of testimony from an array of witnesses. Betty swears she will fight to get him out, starting a grueling 18-year journey in which the small-town waitress earns her law degree and then teams up with famed lawyer Barry Scheck (yes, the DNA expert from the OJ Simpson trial) to plead for the admission of DNA evidence.
It may appear that the entire story was just revealed, but there’s a whole lot more going on in “Conviction.” This is one of those tales where the truth is stranger than fiction, and a gritty tale of rough people in tough times in an often-overlooked corner of America.

Director Tony Goldwyn and writer Pamela Gray have created a film that, like “Hereafter,” wrestles with big issues in a smart fashion, and which also employs subtlety throughout before reaching a cumulative powerhouse ending.

But it’s with the actors that “Conviction” really scores its points. Swank may be one of the few actors in Hollywood history to have won two Oscars, but her performances in “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby” were so hard-edged that she was more impressive than relatable. Here, she finds a warmth that has eluded her work thus far.

But Rockwell burns through the screen with a performance that combines rock-star charisma with an unpredictable violent streak crossed with quiet despair. And Juliette Lewis (a past Oscar nominee for “Cape Fear”) might just win the supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of a slimy white-trash woman who proves to be way more trouble than Kenny ever expected.

Both films add to an impressive slate of fall releases, including “The Town” and “The Social Network,” that are proving that audiences are craving intelligent stories with great performances. Sure, “Jackass 3D” might have set box-office records this past weekend, but “Hereafter” and “Conviction” will have a far more lasting impact on viewers’ minds and spirits.

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Is this from the same Paul Haggis known for the soulful Hispanic slow-motion scream and leading the way in 2007 with the trashing of America’s troops? Just very hard to believe because “The Next Tree Days” looks like a fairly straight-forward action thriller. Seems rather shallow to produce such a thing with America still in Iraq … and racist.

Oh, that’s right, now that Obama’s in office no one screams in slow motion anymore and Tommy Lee Jones can now feel comfortable flying the American flag right-side up. 

Sellout.

Internet hoaxes that look too good to be true usually are. Over the weekend, a leaked resignation letter written by director Paul Haggis spilling all kinds of dirt about the Church of Scientology hit the web and looked way too good to be true. But now that New York Magazine and the Hollywood Reporter have picked it up….

After 35 years as a member of the Church of Scientology, Paul Haggis is calling it quits. In a badass letter to Scientology’s national spokesman Tommy Davis (who hates Martin Bashir), the filmmaker lays out the reasons why.

It all started when a San Diego church publicly supported Prop 8. Haggis asked Davis to denounce its actions but Davis never went through with it. Then the already-pissed Haggis read an interview in which Davis denied Scientology’s practice of “disconnection” (forcing members to cut off communication with loved ones who oppose Scientology). But Haggis knew disconnection first-hand. His wife was forced to cut ties with her parents.

Choice snips from the Haggis letter:

As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us. …

The fact that the Mormon Church drew all the fire, that no one noticed, doesn’t matter. I noticed. And I felt sick. I wondered how the church could, in good conscience, through the action of a few and then the inaction of its leadership, support a bill that strips a group of its civil rights.

This was my state of mind when I was online doing research and chanced upon an interview clip with you on CNN. The interview lasted maybe ten minutes – it was just you and the newscaster. And in it I saw you deny the church’s policy of disconnection. You said straight-out there was no such policy, that it did not exist.

I was shocked. We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification – I didn’t have to look any further than my own home.

You might recall that my wife was ordered to disconnect from her parents because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church. This is a lovely retired couple, never said a negative word about Scientology to me or anyone else I know – hardly raving maniacs or enemies of the church. In fact it was they who introduced my wife to Scientology.

You read the full letter here.

It’s a cinch to see why actors like Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker and Jessica Biel signed up for the gritty drama “Powder Blue,” out this week on DVD. The film lets them wallow in bleak, bleary-eyed scenarios, the sort of heightened reality that acting school monologues are made of.

It’s even easier to see why “Blue” shot straight to DVD.

The film goes the “Crash” route, a trail that, more often than not, gets most screenwriters hopelessly lost. Jessica Biel famously sheds her top to play Rose, a single mother and stripper who goes by the name Scarlett on stage. What, Rose wasn’t strippery enough?

Her son is in a coma and it’s all she can do to make ends meet while keeping her cretinous boss (Patrick Swayze, enlivening a very silly role) at arm’s length. She’s less wary of Jack (Ray Liotta), a new strip club customer who doesn’t seem very interested in watching her doff her clothes. We also meet Charlie (Forest Whitaker) a man whose personal grief has left him suicidal. Charlie meets un-cute with a waitress (Lisa Kudrow), but he’s too numb to respond to her advances. He doesn’t need a Friend. He needs a shrink – or a more fully realized character to play.

Finally, there’s Qwerty Doolittle (Eddie Redmayne), and no, that’s not a typo. He works in a funeral home and has trouble with the ladies. Naturally, the characters’ lives intersect in dramatically draining ways while the steroid-enhanced soundtrack strains to make us care.

To be fair, Biel’s performance here should send a flare up to other filmmakers that she’s more than just a pretty face … and legs … and fill-in-the-blank. She’s a stripper with a heart of gold until someone looks at her cross, but she gives the film its most fully dimensional performance.

Writer/director Timothy Linh Buih has ambition to burn, dabbling in dream-like sequences and a dollop of magic realism. But he doesn’t have the chops to pull it off. The characters feel emotionally malnourished, and the final 20 minutes finds each bonding in ways that strain credulity.

Biel’s eagerly awaited Mr. Skin moment wasn’t enough to earn “Powder Blue” a theatrical release, and the film’s convoluted dramatics ensured its path to DVD.

Christian Toto is a contributing reporter for The Washington Times, MovieMaker Magazine and boxoffice.com. He blogs about film at whatwouldtotowatch.com