Reviews

Up front, I admit gambling has no attraction to me. Thank goodness. Because the casinos have rigged the rules to ensure, over the long haul, their customers will lose. And at every level of these places' staff, from cocktail waitress to pit boss, each despises what is known as the "adventure player" who openly manipulates them, as much as they despise their "legitimate customers." To those working in "the gaming industry," suckers and tourists are wannabe losers looking for a thrill, and just by playing straight with them, the casinos from Vegas on down have a virtual license to print money.

Pretty boring, right?

Not this little documentary. First off, it presents the quandary: Are "adventurer players" -- those who learn to count cards, spot a dealer's weakness, prey on less experienced other players at the same table -- are they lonely sociopaths, or are they knights to the rescue of minor gamblers, able to keep casino staff on the up-and-up? On the latter point, the casino staff are even more contemptuous toward card counters and other highly observant players who have gamed the system, than they are about their regular customers or even the out-and-out cheats. This despite the card counters using exactly the same strategy as the casinos to turn a profit: they become experts at their preferred games and that alone confers an edge that enables a tiny percentage to become wealthy without breaking the law or getting their legs broken.

I was aware of this murky subculture beforehand, and films like Scorsese's "Casino" tell it like it is about how, back in the days when the mob owned most of Vegas's casinos, card-counters and cheaters in the era of the 50s to the 70s, were aware of the consequences of being caught: depending on the offense it could be just a reprimand, or a reprimand delivered more forcefully by physical means. Back then, transgressors risked life and limb, especially limb, by cheating or card counting or anything else hurtful to the senior mobsters who owned the casinos.

This film suggests that the risk is still there, only complicated by who is up in charge of gambling in the state or tribal territory the suspect is in. If you are the at a shady-looking gambling establishment in the wrong state, you need to be confident how far you can push the owners into, once your tactics are discovered, being willing to evict you with your profits, or brutally assault you and retain your chips.

Although in most sanctioned areas, gamblers are rarely physically assaulted, nevertheless to be successful at their trade as an advantaged player requires big cojones and an extraordinary combination of skill and acumen: meaning, the ability to spot a dealer who unknowingly shows his or her hole card, and profiting from that shortcoming by going all in on bets that on their face seem to be ill advised. And later, with as much subtlety as possible, the advantaged player purposely endures losses, in the hope of discouraging a security staffer from blowing the whistle, aware that turning in the wrong customer can cost the casino a lot of money in litigation by the mis-identified player. The suckers claim they were wrongly identified in the security footage, leaving the establishment open to charges. If he has the moxie, illegally influencing other players, or using errors by dealers to gain an advantage, or simple card-counting, gives the advantaged player all the edge he needs to play an eight-hour shift and walk away with hundreds of thousands.

Rarely do the casino owners and their security people have it so easy in this era of facial recognition technology -- which gives the casinos the ability to spot a known advantage player before he can milk the house dry. This has forced a complete re-think by the advantaged player to continue their profitable ways by using different tactics.

The film contains the opinions of well-spoken peers all the participants involved in this zero-sum game. Through careful editing and real-life presentations of borderline illegal behavior by all parties, the film opens the skeptic's eyes to the far more interesting wagers placed below the table by all parties, perpetually at war in the casino battlefield, often derided by their peers for self-serving reasons, and deprived of what most of us would consider the essentials of a good life: having a well-paying career and a loving family, living modestly but by recognizing what is truly gratifying, avoiding the dark cloud of debt and nevertheless enjoying a good quality of life, for the advantaged player and his family.

What kept me with this film was the whimsical personalities of the several professional gamblers it portrays. All are genuinely likable. All have their own systems and strategies. Some, like KC, with his collegiate good looks and engaging personality, could probably be selling real estate and earning even more. The catch is, and what makes them interesting, is that these guys do not like to be managed.

We accompany KC in his high-end RV as he drives around the country, literally, seeking less-well-informed tribal casinos in the middle of nowhere, with the understanding he is less likely to be spotted as a money-losing (for the casino) advantaged player as he lays down the heavy bets. But if he is recognized, a nasty fate could befall him. Like the stereotypical gambler, advantaged players are drawn in by the risk, the uncertainty, the ability to worm out of a threatening situation by their street smarts and their knowing the inside line of every type of game.

But there's a catch. Tribal lands, and what goes on in them, are not available for investigation by real-world authorities like cops and DAs. It's in the hands of the tribe. Details about punishment meted out to miscreants are not made available to outsiders.

Even before he faces a liquidity crisis, KC does not come across to me as a happy guy. His trade is a predatory, solitary one. In his hotel room after hours he shows off his winnings by way of graphs generated by Excel spreadsheets. And his earnings are astonishing. But something is wrong with this picture. (Later on, he shows the devastating losses he has borne, and his deeply embedded loneliness.)

I must bear in mind, among the few gamblers I know, not one has ever admitted a loss. The pathological addiction to gamble, especially among the wealthy, makes the ultra-rich client, known as a 'whale,' to the casinos, sought after by all the casinos in Vegas. To the point where this customer will have a personal "escort" with him at all hours to ensure he enjoys a good time.

This transactional relationship between the two parties, gambler and casino, can be equated to paying for sex, and thus qualifies as a vice. We think of losers as the weekend visitors who fly into Vegas and drop a couple thousand - or million. And they are. But they can afford it, most of the time. The gambling addicts, and the advantaged players in this film, are both in the lonely grip of a vice that probably will destroy them the long run, but whose allure is their certainty that they are blessed and their perseverance will pay off.

For the pro gamblers depicted in this doc, you can tell there is something weighing on them. These guys are intelligent and self aware. Which, ironically, makes them the biggest suckers of all. Because we can tell that in the straight world, they could have done well at whatever profession they chose. But instead they elected to walk on the dark side, becoming master manipulators of both casino employees and fellow gamblers, and therefore hated by all when their tactics are revealed.

Even when their winning streak is hot, you get the feeling watching the pros mindlessly placing chips or collecting them, of a great interior emptiness. Compare one of these guys making $20 thousand a month to a high school teacher making little more than a tenth that amount, but winning in another way: beloved by his or her students, respected by colleagues, getting letters from former students 20 years after graduation.

That teacher has connected with fellow humans in need of a mentor's ability not to run their life, but to show them the possibilities, and let them decide. And even when they don't get back to you, you know you've reached them, and thus made them aware of the "third way" to game the system and remain respectable.

If you go to the dark side, you will be remembered in less than inspiring ways by all the dealers and pit bosses you've scammed by doing something better than they could. But to the psychologically maladapted, the dark side is tempting, even when the payoff is pretty slim, and maybe in part by knowing they have dominated what in real life would be their doppelgänger - dealer, pit boss, other players -- through their wits and artistry.

But as Peggy Lee would put it, is that all there is? Even a straight-out hustler is prone to second thoughts when robbing both the dealer and the player beside them. Will they ever truly be respected, or loved? Probably not. But their underlying pathology tells them they are worthy of neither, and that only by their wits will they be able to manipulate others, sometimes at several levels, and survive. This dismal self-knowledge forces them to conclude that only by conjury will they obtain the love and support they lost so long ago.

The history of Japan is riddled with wars, calamities, tsunamis, you name it. Maybe this is why so many Japanese paintings are of idealized pastoral landscapes, and harmony is featured in everything from flower arrangements to the precision of the Japanese tea ceremony.

It could be argued that out of the chaos of Japanese history - and the most significant event before the 2011 earthquake was the country's destruction by the United States in WWII - has emerged a national culture of survival. Not of the individual, as celebrated in the USA, but of the family, the community, the nation. This outstanding eight-part TV series, in particular through some key characters whose roles are portrayed by what must be the cream of the current generation of Japanese actors.

I know nothing of today's Japanese cinema so watched this series to get a sense of whether it was still grounded, some would say petrified - by form and tradition. One can view Ikiru only so many times before beginning to wonder if WWII had cast a permanent pall over the country.

Have no fear. From the opening scenes I knew I was in for a treat. Rather than frame the movie around the event, as American disaster movies do, it frames the event around the characters who in their diverse personalities, age groups, and job responsibilities collectively personify the nation of Japan.

In the best Godzilla tradition, Japan is struck a mortal blow by an unknowable vast creature from the depths of the sea. Doing nothing would seal the country's fate. Losing their organizational discipline or their resolve amidst the chaos caused by inter-agency squabbling or just being overtaken by events would have the same effect. What the movie asks is, does Japan still possess that extraordinary resilience that saved them from events that would hsve reduced other societies to the Stone Age?

To my great viewing pleasure, the telling of this epic but also very human story is done with a thoroughly fresh cinematic style. The photography is as real-world as Kurosawa's is mannered. The interior shots are well-rendered versions of what most people would think a multi-agency emergency response center would look like, or the office of the country's prime minister, or the home of an average family whose son has gone missing. They evrn take a pretty good shot at the command crnter of a nuclear power generating plant, but "The China Syndrome" still has a lock on that nearly science fiction environment.

As naturalistic as the surroundings are the characters who inhabit them. We are reminded of many Japanese characteristics: respect between managers and workers - it goes both ways; the tension between private corporations and Japanese government officials; the willingness of workers to die trying to save their companions.

And wow, what a fix the Japanese were in over those seven days! I recall watching events unfold through the Western news media as the Fukushima disaster took place, and now am aware we were never told the truth about what the consequences of failure to keep the reactors under control would have been.

Existential decisions had to be made with few resources and little time, and through old-fashioned dramatic talent, the director and actors were able to extract as much audience anxiety about two men trying to open a valve as Hollywood's usual mashup of computer generated graphics.

This movie tells the story of Japan's greatest crisis since Hiroshima, and I got a sense the cast snd production crew gave all the talent and intensity they could summon, because it chronicles how contemporary Japanese society dealt with the one thing everyone in that country would eventually encounter: disaster.

. So not only did I get the goods on what really happened in Fukushima, I got to know contemporary Japanese people - not just from heated interactions as they grappled with their circumstances, but also in the routine exchanges that make up everyday life. And nearly always, I liked what I saw.

Tom Cruise was pushing 60 when they shot "Top Gun: Maverick," and to me anyway he looks better with some cragginess to his features than he did 20 years ago. He is less pumped-up and more lean. His face, for so long agelessly youthful, has matured -- he looks manly but without any trace of the infirmaries of old age.

In a sense, this movie is Tom's swan song. The titles say he co-produced the film and played the lead role, but according to people who were there during production, he basically ran the whole show. He negotiated how the flying sequences would be filmed from the cramped interiors of F-18 strike-fighter jets. This meant that he and several of the films characters would be up in those planes, and using a new generation of micro-sized digital movie camera, they would be filmed as if they were doing the flying. At first the Navy resisted, but to Tom, using CGI to present the air battles was a deal-breaker. It's an indicator of Tom Cruise's star power that the Navy came around. A good thing too, because the flying sequences were, to me, the only thing watching in this sequel to Top Gun.

Oh, it was great seeing Tom looking so fit and no longer weirdly youthful, but all grown up into a very handsome, mature man. He plays his cookie-cutter character the only way it can be played, totally straight, and his visual charisma keeps our attention locked onto him in every scene in which he appears.

Like Tom, all the actors are forced into two-dimensional roles in order to go through the motions required by the brain-dead plot. Two stories run in parallel behind the plot: a rekindled love affair between Tom and his female flame, played by Jennifer Connelly; and an inherited hate story, if you will, between Tom and the son (Miles Teller) of Tom's on-board weapons officer whose call sign was Goose, who was killed when their plane crashed. We are expected to believe that among the best of the Navy's elite aviators selected to accompany Tom on a treacherous, top-secret raid, they selected a pilot with a blood-feud against Tom for causing the death of his father. Sometimes Hollywood, in the service of generating some excitement, asks us to suspend our disbelief to the point of absurdity.

And so the formula plods along: Tom is offered the mission and accepts, the pilots to accompany him are auditioned, and they all go up in their planes for training. Eventually comes the Big Mission. I won't describe any more than that, because most people are aware of how the formula goes anyway, and this rendering of an aviation war movie gives us not a single memorable line or plot twist. Compared with this Hollywood disposable thriller, my favorite WWII aviation warfare movie, "!2 O'clock High," is Shakespeare.

Like most action movies, this one allows no more than ten or so minutes of talking or other boring content to separate the exciting sequences the audience paid to see: flying, riding motorcycles without helmets, and fisticuffs.

As I said before, the flying sequences are excellent, setting a new standard for portraying airborne warfare between modern fighter jets. But my favorite flight sequence is toward the end, when Tom takes his female flame up in a gorgeous WWII propellor-driven Mustang fighter. As it turns out, this is Tom's personal plane, and he is an excellent, thoroughly credentialed pilot. (Though not in current fighter jets. He did not fly in the F-18 scenes.) That Mustang was one of the highest-performing fighter planes of WWII, and thus by definition designed for expert pilots only. Is there anything Tom Cruise cannot do?

Since you're asking, I'm not sure he could produce a serious drama for and about adults. From films like Rain Man and Eyes Wide Shut I know he is a competent actor. But more important to Tom than creds as an actor is his status as the reigning Hollywood male star, a credential he has clung to over decades by carefully selecting his roles and cultivating a persona that reminds every member of the audience that the character they are seeing on-screen in any given movie is a lightly modified version of Tom Cruise. Like William Holden, Hollywood's 1950s golden boy, Tom and his movies will recede from the public's consciousness soon after he retires.

And so, as I said earlier, "Top Gun: Maverick" could be described as Tom's swan song, though no doubt he has many movies left in him to make in the upcoming decade or two. Tom had to convince a lot of people to put up the financing for this film, to be willing to pay a huge premium to satisfy his demand for realistic dog-fighting sequences, and in some cases, even to appear in the film. It was Tom's intention to give Val Kilmer a role despite his voice not functioning due to throat cancer. A lesser producer would have considered Val's inclusion to be an expensive distraction, but Tom Cruise knew the importance of Val's character in the original movie, and that he audience would want him in the remake. In addition, though I haven't been told so, I'm pretty sure Tom wanted to give Val a part he could play despite his disability.

Another way this will be Cruise's signature film is that it is the first of his starring productions to pass the billion-dollar gross earnings mark. This is especially impressive because to protest the presence of a Taiwan patch on Tom's flying jacket, China refused to air the film and thus the film lost hundreds of millions of viewers. (Tom and the producers agreed, they were not going to remove that reference to Taiwan, no matter what.) But in the end, what Tom accomplished here may have been successful by Hollywood standards, but as a movie it is, like most of Tom's other features, devoid of staying power in the annals of quality film-making. As much as the profits, mediocrity in the service of profit is another aspect of Tom's legacy that cannot be denied.

Still, for a film to make this much money is impossible to fake: a huge worldwide audience needs to be enthusiastic and put their money down to see the film in an actual movie theater. To satisfy international audiences, the plot must be kept simple and the dialogue at grade-school level so even when translated into subtitles, nobody will lose track of what is going on. And since the plot is so formulaic, and the relationships between the characters are so transparent, so devoid of the subtleties of human interaction, the film's worldwide audience have no problem figuring out the story and the two subplots, nor will they give a damn about any of them, because what they mainly want is Tom in a jet fighter, shooting down enemies of the U. S. A. (The bad guys represented in this production are modeled after North Korean military personnel.) Better than he's ever done before, and that's saying something, Tom Cruise gave this huge audience the mindless entertainment it wanted and the result was massive profits for the studio and for Tom personally, as well as an enjoyable viewing experience for millions of people. Tom Cruise is at the very top of his game, and the production was carried out at an exemplary level of professionalism. Had Tom Cruise not gone into the movie business, there is little doubt he would be a big player in whatever industry or profession he took on.

I, however, was not among those who gladly forked over $20 to see this film in a theater. By accident I discovered Amazon Prime were screening the movie at no charge. I had no intention of going to see the film, but for free, viewed at home on my 4K 65" Sony TV running on a high-speed fiber optic internet connection, I thought what the hell and parked myself for a couple of hours. The superior production quality of the film came across fine. But everything else about the film was to me so predictable and devoid of interesting characters or subtleties of personality, I would have enjoyed "Top Gun: Maverick" a lot more if during playback I turned off the movie's sound and fired up my sound system to the max and played "Van Halen Rising" as I skipped from one action scene to the next.

This dream-like fantasy tells the story of an artificial teen boy whose scissors-like hands are capable of terrible injury and enduring beauty, but most of all set him apart from "real" people. Director Tim Burton used the Edward Scissorhands character to reprise his personal sensitivity and the social isolation of his teen years. Played with affecting understatement by Johnny Depp, who wept when he read the script, this film will resonate with every kid whose gifts are used against him or her by inferior peers. Such nerds and outliers, Burton is telling us, are capable of creating beauty and engendering love. The price of such a life is loneliness, but when the person is true to who they are, they are spared the desolation of the banal.

Ironically, considering how much death is involved, this is a life-affirming movie, with a little something for everyone. The fantasy genre is extremely tricky to pull off but this one works, thanks to Burton's central idea, and its realization as a screenplay by Caroline Thompson. Thompson's treatment was sufficiently compelling to populate the cast with A-listers, and for all of them making this film was a labor of love.

With directing prowess beyond his years, Burton coaxes his players to come up with, simultaneously, a retelling of Frankenstein, a gentle satire of suburbia, a teen love story, and in a more general sense, a portrait of America from the perspective of an outsider - someone who loves it, is repelled by it, and can never fully be a part of it.

The film's majestic leap from the suburbs to timeless love in an enchanted garden is brought home with almost overwhelming intensity by the lush choral work and orchestration of Danny Elfman. As counterpoint to his wonderful choir, Elfman gives us the bell-like celesta, an instrument from the 1890s, first used by Tchaikovsky in "The Nutcracker Suite."

I have never seen such a diversity of opinions about this film's worth by the top critics of its time - 1990. As he is prone to do, Roger Ebert misses the point completely and pans the film. The respected Globe and Mail calls it "a classic." But it was famously contrarian Pauline Kael's description of the film as "kitsch . . . Cheesy plot-centered melodrama . . ." that confirmed the rightness of my opinion when I first saw the film 22 years ago and upon seeing it again recently . . . Edward Scissorhand awakened a part of me I had long given up as gone with childhood: the capacity to be spellbound.

This haunting 1992 documentary about the never-ending struggle between Africa's two apex predators might be too violent for today's TV programmers, but the violence has a purpose and its protagonists represent the most vile (in humans' judgment) and the most noble (ditto) of African carnivores. Another thing we learn from this documentary: how good National Geographic was in earlier days. You can have your NatGeo.

The setting (if memory serves) is a large game preserve in Botswana. This part of it is the hunting domain of a large pride of lions. But even Africa's most powerful predator has enemies, and for the lions it is a clan of hyenas that raids its kills and if they find a lion wounded or alone, will tear it to pieces.

Both highly intelligent, their lives revolve around whose strategy works best in getting food. The lions tend to do the actual killing, but the hyenas stalk them and when they can, get away with as much of the kill as they can before the rest of the pride shows up and scares them off. In this cat-and-mouse existence there are skirmishes and occasionally outright battles.

The entire film is shot at night, the preferred hunting time of both species. The film makers go back and forth between the communities, identifying important individuals, like the huge male who rules the pride, or an equally fearless female who governs her matriarchal society of hyenas and even whose pups are shown deference by others.

The scientists who study animals have by tradition been scornful about attempts to interpret the actions their subjects as indicative of their having thoughts and emotions like ours. Anthropomorphism, they call it. This mindset reminds me of, as a boy when fishing with my father, I'd notice the worm squirm as I baited my hook. "I'm hurting it!" I'd cry, but my dad would say no, they can't feel pain. And he was a medical doctor.

Assigning feelings, personalities, relationships, what have you, to animals is much easier to do now because on YouTube we see uploads daily that illustrate all these feelings and relationships are grounded in reality. Whether it's a fisherman saving a bear cub from drowning and its mother thanking him, or an orca or dolphin saving a drowning fisherman, which has been documented repeatedly - or as in a recent YouTube documentary a female snorkeler, a scientist used to working with big fish, was saved by an orca that inserted itself between her and a huge tiger shark that had begun its attack. Inconvenient though it may be to those who raise animals for food, or those whose belief systems place humanity on a plane no other creature could reach, or even aspire to - nevertheless, it's just a fact that we have far more in common than we thought. Another example: it's now known that horses, and even cattle, form deep friendships and mourn when separated from their pals.

Audiences back in the early 90s were privy to very little of this, and the anthropomorphism dogma ruled American and European cultures. (The first peoples knew about animal relationships all along.) The story that this beautifully written and narrated (by Powers Booth) film conveys is on several levels but the theme is consistent: Animals have feelings and complex relationships, and until we acknowledge that, we will not be capable of knowing ourselves. Nor after seeing this can we conveniently label lions to be the good guys and the hyenas to be the villains. The world of tooth and claw, where life can go on only by consuming other life, where there is no mercy for the injured, is troublingly like our own. Not so long ago it was exactly like our own. But now that we are civilized (ha ha), we think we can set ourselves above our fellow apex predators. Until, that is, we watch this film. Lions, hyenas, us . . . We're all cut from the same cloth with the exception that our intelligence gives us more tools and choices. Let us hope we can learn to use them more wisely in the future than we did in the past.

No recent Western contains a stronger cast, a finer script, a superior score, or more stunning cinematography than 1993's Tombstone. Based on a true story, and set in Arizona after the Civil War, when the country was rapidly expanding westward and open range was giving way to fenced-in fields, the story's central incident involves a showdown between outlaws (the Cowboys) and Wyatt Earp's gang of deputy marshals, including his brothers and tubercular dentist Doc Holliday.

This film contains perhaps the most memorable storyline of the post-Civil War West: the forces of lawlessness duking it out with those of civilized society. Both groups, the Cowboys with their red sashes who have had a free hand in Tombstone for years, and the Earps who are the closest thing to lawmen in the region and are reluctantly drafted by the citizens to protect them from the Cowboys, are reluctant to do battle but circumstances bring about the memorable showdown.

Director George Cosmatos knew this would be a character-driven story and he hunted down Hollywood's finest to fill the central roles. The historical Tombstone characters best remembered today are strongly drawn in the film by first-class actors doing their best work. The lead role, Wyatt Earp, is strongly played by Kurt Russell. He is the head of the Earp family, backed up by brothers Morgan and Virgil (Bill Paxton and Sam Elliott), and accompanied by a dentist/gunfighter dying of tuberculosis, an effete Val Kilmer, whose brilliant portrayal of an elite southerner going down with Dixie steals the movie. He deserved an Oscar for creating this utterly original character.

Everybody knows the bad guys make or break a Western, and here they are represented by legendary character actors Powers Boothe, William Brocius, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Jason Priestly, and too many others to name. At times a few more people are on the screen than necessary, and some performances cone across as mannered, but we don't mind because we're having so much fun watching. Unlike "Shane," where earnestness and virtue prevail, "Tombstone" refuses to take itself so seriously, and is all the better for it. Kilmer's faux-shootout using a drinking cup for a revolver is hilarious. (Don't believe me? You've got to see it!) The historical Tombstone characters were larger than life in their time, and their depiction with no punches pulled is what this movie's audiences wanted to see. Neither they nor the critics were disappointed.

People mostly have their minds made up about Mickey Rourke. They love him or despise him. He holds nothing back, on camera and off. In his stardom years he squandered his good name by not showing up for shoots, and his involvement in bad behavior. What saved him was his transparency -- he became the character he played -- and his magnetism -- viewers are glued to him in every scene.

This film brings out both these attributes, and does so in one of the most challenging roles an actor can play. Set in the brutal world of professional wrestling, where the winner might be decided beforehand but the spectacle from the beginning and the end of a match is physically devastating, Rourke holds his own against his opponents, professionals all of them. I'm sure they went easy on him, but in this environment, an average, fit man would be ready for a trip to the hospital within the first minute. Mickey's years as a pro boxer taught him the gladiator mentality. Director Aron Oronosky gives us backstage access to the wrestling subculture with locker-room scenes that show the brotherhood of the combatants, and the realities of their lives, including the drugs, the poverty, the broken bodies, and the loneliness.

Why do they do it? Because, for Rouque's character at least, because they are the superstars in the toughest show on earth. They are loved by their fans, and at the end of a match, they bask in the applause. This motivation not to quit can lead to personal life conflicts, and in his decision whether accept a lucrative match, Rourke gets pushback from his love interest (Marisa Tomei) and his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). Mickey's relationships with these women are not mere diversions, but integral to the story.

Mickey's ability to look and act like a professional wrestler at the age when most men are contemplating retirement cost him months of physical training, and ring time with the toughest men in any sport. He is completely believable in the role. Even more than this, above his portrayal as a wrestler is his characterization of a dying star of a man. Truly, the performance of a lifetime. So why didn't he get an Oscar? Because the Academy is a highly political organization where people have long memories. This is its way of punishing Mickey for his sins from the past.

Yes, it's a formula movie about road rage. The theme of free-floating hostility runs deep, thanks to the stresses endured by all characters involved -- stresses of modern life we can all relate to. The story is about one very large man, played by a nearly unrecognizable Russell Crowe, choosing to take out his job termination on a family in the process of disintegration. The scatter-brained mom is his victim of choice because she refuses to apologize to him for honking at him in traffic. Crowe makes her pay by attacking members of her family in turn, coming last for her precious son., who is so unctuous we find ourselves cheering Russell on at times.

We are saved from pointless and boring destruction by a director who keeps things moving at a snappy pace, and over-the-top playing out of the violence to the point where it is almost cartoonish in nature, not to be taken seriously. At the center of things is Russell Crow's performance. He's the opposite of the cookie cutter bad guy. You can see the twinkle in his eye as his taunts his victim over a cell phone about what his next action will be. In a funny way, he becomes the focus of audience sympathy. For one thing, his is by far the most engaging personality in this road-going battle. His self-involved victims seem powerless to work together to thwart him, even when warned. As events build to a climax, we are genuinely eager to find out whether Crowe will win out by annihilating the entire family. And thus we are entertained, which is the point of this movie.

This is not a dramatic representation of our society's decline as manifested by road rage. It is an opportunity to find out how crazy Russell Crowe can get when his character is completely unbound. The answer? Pretty crazy. But if you look closely, he is giving us a wink just as he is about to do something particularly nasty. Go for it, big man!

If like me you are not a Broadway buff but have an acquaintance with some of Sondheim's songs and are curious to know more about him, this meticulously crafted HBO documentary is a worthy investment of your time.

Through exhaustive source material, in particular interviews with the great man ranging over his life, brilliant editing and generous performance clips take the viewer on a straight, unbroken line that describes his inspiration, the unfolding of his genius, its realization on stage in both hits and flops, the acknowledgement of his enormous contribution, and the passing on of his legacy through his commitment to lectures and tutorials with aspiring young lyricists and composers.

As you watch you get to know the man. You might have been expecting a tormented genius but he is quite the opposite: friendly, at home in his own skin, frank and forthright, able to derive satisfaction from his success and yet be free from conceit. By the end you like him as much as you like his music. And as the credits roll, you silently thank the producers of this documentary for taking such pains to organize the multitude of video and audio clips involved into a seamless narrative that has nary a false or wasted moment. It is bliss.

If the last five years haven't been enough to convince you of the terminal dumbing down of a large percentage of the American population, a reading of the majority of IMDB's reader reviews of the 2021 film "Pig." will leave you in no doubt. To most who commented, this magnificent film was as wasted on them as pearls before swine.

I've seen "Pig" and won't spoil it for you if you're considering seeing it yourself. But it might be helpful if I informed Cage's two distinctly different audiences which of them would like it.

If you are from the audience that enjoys a manic Cage bouncing off the furniture, as in films like "Mandy," "Trespass," and "Bangkok Dangerous," you might want to give "Pig" a pass. But if "Joe" (except the last 10 minutes) or "Leaving Las Vegas" were enjoyable or at least fulfilling for you, what you saw in those films you will see even more of in "Pig." Which is to say, the spectrum of human feelings as experienced by characters you come to know.

This is a film about loss. Cage's character experiences it most acutely, but the trauma of being deprived of something or someone vitally important in a person's life is felt by each of the main characters. As it goes along, the story makes clear that some things are worse than loss: among them, not being aware you are experiencing it; and worse, being too shallow to be capable of feeling it.

The vacuous sentimentality of most of today's movies, contrived as they are to appeal to audiences whose souls have been numbed by social media and reality TV, is completely absent here. Probably that is the reason the film bombed in theaters and was quickly transferred to streaming media -- Prime and Apple at this writing.

Today's audiences need to be spoon-fed from the standard menu of Hollywood corn about the nowhere lives of cardboard characters, because that is all they know. Here they have Cage reacting in super close-up as succeeding emotions wash over his features in barely detectable waves. Make that completely undetectable to most American audiences. But the ones who get this movie are in for a treat.

I long suspected Cage was capable of a role like this and now I own the movie because I'll be watching it in the years to come. Not just for Cage's performance, but also for the fine work of the supporting cast; for the writing; for the restaurant racket back story (Anthony Bourdain would have loved this film); and for the camera work and the music. What makes all these elements cohere is the direction by first-timer Michael Sarnoski. That this is his directing debut is almost beyond comprehension. We can look forward to some very fine work from this guy.

I hope he will once again direct Nic Cage. Sarnoski and Cage are locked into the same artistic laser beam, and the result of their collaboration is like oxygen to American film lovers who have been drowning in superheroes and Kardashians for what seems like forever.

A contemporary review of 1979's Richard Pryor: Live In Concert could not have foreseen the staying power of this historic performance. Decades later, our viewing experience is heightened by our awareness of Pryor's later misfortunes, and the disappointing resurrection of old hatreds by demagogues determined to exploit America's racial divide.

Pryor's transformative performance gives a tantalizing glimpse of a more harmonious America, one that could have been but did not come to pass. People on both sides remain unable to overcome their self-identification first by race, and then a long way lower down the list, by shared citizenship. Through a series of spot-on skits that reveal our culture-centric absurdities, Pryor effectively communicated our shared humanity. He showed us what might have been.

Today's viewer of this classic will detect the transformation of the mixed and initially apprehensive audience into a unified body, brought together by laughter not at Pryor's illustrations of the other side's haplessness, but of their own.

By so convincingly showing us what might have been, today's viewers now realize that Pryor was not merely the Black comedian whose career followed Cosby's unctuous panderings and pre-dated Eddy Murphy's wisecracks. He was on a different plane entirely, a visionary who like Lenny Bruce who forced us to acknowledge the self-diminishment of our lives that is the consequence of giving in to our fears.

Now considered by many to be the greatest stand-up performance ever captured on film, the venue, lilly-white Long Beach CA, provided just the right atmosphere for Pryor to drive home his humor to a near-equally mixed audience by race.

At the beginning, the viewer can sense a subtle unease among the audience, perhaps brought on by concern that Pryor's central theme, about how strange it is to be Black in America, could lead to a bad vibe in the room and even animosity.

Pryor picks up on this the moment he walks onstage. Through a spontaneous improvisation of a white man requesting his reserved seat be vacated by the Black man occupying it, Pryor's impersonation of both characters proves to be a metaphor for the chasm that exists between the races, affecting even the most mundane interactions. Disarmed and intrigued, the audience now understands that this night will be about the comedy of being human, about foolish is their behavior when people play into their respective stereotypes, meaning that ultimately the joke is on them.

By expressing the triumph of shared humanity over the damage done through obsessive self-identification with "our people," Pryor's humor illuminates the folly of prejudice through biting insight and some brilliant physical comedy. Viewers of the film were provided moments of audience reaction, and as it turned out, people laughed loudest when Pryor delivered a spot-on depiction of THEIR race's stereotypes. By the end of his never- flagging 70-minute performance, he had brought together those hundreds of people who at the beginning seemed so far apart. Pryor delivered a performance for the ages, one from which we still can learn - and laugh.

This film could only have come from New York, could only have been inspired by gay men of color, could only have used the best disco music of the era. Thanks to the talent of a sensitive director, the film makes accessible to straight audiences one of the most exotic subcultures of gay life. It's all about vogueing, where gay men of color dress as women or straight men or something in between, always in spectacular costumes, and compete one-against-one using a dance form that mostly consists of model-like poses transitioning from one to the next with maximum style. The venue is hot-house dance clubs in the middle of the night, the atmosphere is claustrophobic, ultra-competitive, and electric, charged with drugs, hormones, and larger-than life egos. It is wildly entertaining and also deeply poignant, a gesture of "I am!" defiance in the middle of the AIDS. crisis, at a time before acceptance of the gay lifestyle became widespread in the U.S.A.

The director cuts through the rhinestones and pancake makeup and makes the performers accessible to the audience in all their humanity. Their lives are difficult, plagued with poverty, discrimination, and rejection by their families. Lovers are in short supply. It can be a lonely life, and the film's subjects compensate by forming "houses" dominated by a senior-level star who is worshipped and served by junior acolytes.

The characters we meet are unforgettable. Yes, there are delusions of grandeur, but underlying that is a self-awareness of the travails of devoting one's life to glamor when living a threadbare existence. Those who succeed on the "ball" circuit display amazing levels of creativity and talent. Occasionally stars emerge, the most famous being Ru Paul. The vogue culture is ultimately a celebration of life in an entertaining and utterly new way by that tiny population of the New York gay world that has given American popular culture its roots, from fashion to disco to hip hop. Through their ability to rise above their hard lives and create moments of beauty, these artists enrich all our lives.

Yes, the loveable drunk. A cliché that hung on decades after it should have died, and this film is one of the last vehicles for what in the old days could be counted on as guaranteed laughs. Dudley Moore gives us the ultimate loveable drunk. He is young and handsome, talented and kind to strangers, and the heir to a great fortune. In the best 12-step tradition, Arthur is given the opportunity to redeem himself. And this is why the film's early scenes are the ones most worth watching. Not because they are funny, but because they are so tragic. Arthur is adrift in a sea of booze, laughing hysterically at every turn of events. Most of the audience laughs along with him. But a few will perceive Arthur's laugh for what it is: a cry of desperation at the terror of real life. Once past this epiphany, informed viewers will wish for Arthur's deliverance. Will he get it? That would be telling. But a word of caution to those who prefer the "old" Arthur: Be careful what you wish for. One more thing: John Gielgud steals the movie with an Oscar winning performance.

A Faulkner-esque exploration of the human heart, constructed around people damaged by fate and bound together by circumstance in the confines of a small Arkansas town. Love is manifested in many ways, mostly little ones, but too often the inner demons prevail and evil is done. This little film chronicles the eternal battle.

There's a state just before adulthood when you are still susceptible to your childhood dreams: being loved, being cared for, the kindness of strangers, feeling safe in your home.

But no longer are you a child. As a young man you want adventure, the freedom of the road, the release of drugs, the comfort of friends, some cadh in your jeans, the intimacy of unknown lovers.

And should you as an adolescent choose the road less traveled and live out those opposing fantasies concurrently, the aspirations of one become the motivations of the other, and complications ensue. Where you find the love of a friend you seek the intimacy of a lover. Where you seek a caring father you settle for a middle-aged, penniless addict. Where you seek the home you left long ago, you find the emptiness of the open road. You are left to either the cruelty or the kindness of strangers, it's a coin toss of fate,

Through Mike's quest we sense his separation from reality, and we recognize it in the yearning, boyish faces of his fellow hustlers. Theirs is a fantasy of living for the day and counting on their beauty to bring them the money they need to survive and get high. Are they such bad people? Are they not merely fulfilling the fantasies of their clients who are no more than their older selves, who are still seeking that dream vicariously, if only for a few moments?

Throughout the film runs a terrible melancholy, reflected in Mike's (the role of River Phoenix's brief life) lonely quest for home and love. As a foil, the object of his love, Scott (an icy and calculating Keanu Reeves), lets him down time after time and yet betrays a fondness for Mike, an awareness of his innocence that makes him unable to withstand what the reality of life on the street throws against him.

But just when we've given up hope on Mike, he is rescued yet again by some kind stranger. In the meantime, we see Scott pursuing his ambition and reviling the father who could bestow, or take away, his far more banal dreams of wealth and social status.

People mistakenly classify this as a "gay" movie. To those in tune with it, the film is a transcendent revisiting of the joys and heartbreak of youth. It most strongly affects those of us whose hearts were broken at that vulnerable time and could never heal. We experience once again the pain of truly being alive. The pain is the price we must pay.

Director Van Sant is telling us not to regret following our dreams, that we must to save our souls be faithful to ourselves. And more, Van Sant brings alive the essence of loneliness through his brilliance as a movie maker. He sets much of the film in the most desolate parts of the county, with a haunting haunting steel guitar in the background. The superb editing melds fantasy and reality. Through his technical movie-making skills, as well as his pathos for his characters, Van Sant makes us recall how at that age when we were poor and adult life was a dark mystery, we possessed forces that nevertheless drove us forward into new relationships and new places. These forces were fueled by the intensity with which we experienced life when we were young. Perhaps the film's greatest sadness is our knowledge we will never again experience life with such purity and passion.

A by-the-numbers actioner with good production values but a lame story. Kidman's character is an in-over-her-head analyst who is saved from her womanly weakness over and over by lanky, devil-may- care scallywag Clooney. Really, it's a ridiculously demeaning portrayal of a woman with authority, and Kidman adds not a whit of irony to her role.

The plodding pace drains the energy from Hollywood's best-quality visuals and stunt work. Clooney's charm isn't enough to offset the wooden performances by those around him. Everybody marches in lock step through a series of ever more unlikely developments, toward a conclusion that can't come a minute too soon.

This movie reflects its producers' contempt for its audience by giving us the clichés and stereotypes we've seen a hundred times before, and not a whit of originality to offset them. It takes a special kind of cynicism to waste this much money and talent, but director Mimi Leder is down to the job.

The conceit of this odd little film is that to experience family love the late-middle-aged American man must return whence he found it -- to Italy of course!

The score is lovely but the sound quality execrable. The comedy hits Americans sideways but the location shots of Naples are breathtaking. (What can Florence be like?)

The storyline is all over the place but then it doesn't matter because we are spellbound by every scene where Lemmon and Mastroianni are together. Both are at the top of their form, not out of any sense of competing, but rather out of respect -- to their characters, to their director, and to each other.

Lemmon is the most restrained I've ever seen him. His tendency to be seen working is quelled, perhaps, by Mastroianni's generous willingness to cede the center of the stage.

So what we have is a little movie with a somewhat pretentious theme that nevertheless, because of its idiosyncrasies and contradictions, and especially because of the performances of its leads, is well worth viewing.