That awkward moment when you meet your friend at a secret cosplay meeting.

Doctoral Architectural Procedural.

If you like architectural special effects, DOCTOR STRANGE is the movie for YOU. Having purchased the building-bending app from INCEPTION, director Scott Derrickson plugs it in and goes on a two-hour coffee break while skyscrapers fold on top of one another, streets turn into Rubik’s cubes, and right angles become three-dimensional Escher-esque imbroglios. Then he emails the zip file to Marvel Comics and collects his paycheck.

It’s magic. No rules. Fuck you. Any wonder I never read any Doctor Strange comics as a sensible teen.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Dr. Stephen Strange, a brilliant neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands after a car crash, when they shake uncontrollably after being reconstructed. Before you feel any sorrow for our antagonist/hero – he crashed because, while driving like an asshole in his supercharged current-model phallic status-mobile, he was scanning x-rays, hubristically declining patients that were not “worth his time.” He chose his watch that night from a drawer full of expensive watches, each spinning in its own tiny display case! And his estranged lover is doctor Rachel McAdams, who reconciles with him when she sees how his teleportation skillz make her underpants so wet. Still feeling sorry for this elitist dick?

Hearing about a process that might cure him, and desperate to become the raging dickwad he was before the accident, Strange goes on a sabbatical to Kathmandu, where he meets The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, smugly shaved-headed) and her helper elf Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), beseeching them to make his hands steady so that he might once again join the privileged few who have a spinning watch rack.

Upon picking up Magic really fast, Strange does something which illustrates the overarching stupidity of Magic – he “steals” books from the Magic library (guarded by Benedict Wong) by using a teleporting device, where only his hands shoot out from a circle of teleportation, grab the book and then disappear back into the circle without Wong being the wiser. Hark back to the opening scene, where we saw the villain Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) launch a full frontal attack on this Magic library, with henchmen and magic knives and all sorts of bluster, to steal simply two pages from a book. But Strange shows us you can steal so much more efficiently with a teleporting circle – so why didn’t Big K do it that way? Mo’ explosions, mo’ box office. That first attack on the Magic library was the unnecessary spinning watch rack for the filmmakers.

However, it turns out Kaecilius (who must be stopped by the Ancient One and Strange and any other extras standing around with third-rate fighting ability) wants to use the pages to, uh, cast a spell so as to, uh, make magic and, uh, bring down, uh – What is the plot again, Marvel?!

It’s magic. No rules. Fuck you.

Ladies, three Cumberbatches for the price of one.

Kaecilius is trying to bring down Ancient Tilda because she’s using power from the dark dimension to stay alive. And Kaecilius doesn’t like people doing bad things, so he’s willing to kill a bunch of good wizards to prove he’s not bad. Royt. So though they can use static whips and invisible swords and defy gravity and walk across dimensions, the fate of all creation once again devolves to fisticuffs…

During a magic-fight, Strange is “chosen” by a “levitating cloak” which has its own personality. Then Kaecilius chases Strange and Mordo through intertwining dimensions of city streets and buildings, while M.C. Escher turns over in his grave and we contract a mild form of neuromuscular eye disease. Later, Strange would turn back time like Superman, but more nobly, because it wasn’t for the sake of Panty.

Kaecilius reveals the bad guy behind his bad guy – an evil supernatural force so overwhelming, it can only be represented by a lame special effect with vertical lines on its square black face, called – Dormammu!—

–wait! “Dormammu”? Such a cute name. Is that a fluffy panther or something? Maybe an ancient Aztec astronaut, or a legendary Earth spirit? Where have I heard that name before?… Turns out, I must have read some Doctor Strange comics in my misspent youth because that name is only from this canon.

Or maybe I picked it up from other Strange media. Like every other modern MCU property, Marvel’s maven of Magic has already been on the screen (in a 1978 TV movie, before superhero movies were a major entertainment cog, and in a 2007 animation feature). This DOCTOR STRANGE is set up to exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“While heroes like the Avengers save the world from physical dangers, we sorcerers safeguard it against more mystical threats”) and comes at us with updated medical grit, a morally-ambiguous villain, and state-of-the-art production values that twists the universe – nay, multiverse – in on itself. Marvel have either done the good Doctor proud, or developed a new way to design proscenium arches.

END

Pederast Priests and The Coverup That Rocked a Religion.

What other business could you be in where your company gets caught running a child sex ring since forever, and you still keep your customers?
— Bill Maher, REEL TIME, March 2013.

If only the movie SPOTLIGHT was called BUSTING RAPIST PRIESTS, maybe it would be better served by its title. As it is, naming the movie after the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team from The Boston Globe doesn’t ring any bells. Because it gives no indication of what the Spotlight team did – uncover hundreds of priests in 2001 involved in pederasty and coverups in the Boston Archdiocese.

Priests who preyed upon children, who were then systematically shunted from diocese to diocese as their crimes were uncovered but not indicted. Lawyers who represented the priests, who were bound by the strength of the church (read as paid off) not to divulge names or details of cases. Damning case documents which should have been on public record made to disappear by the church. Lawyers who represented priests’ victims, vilified by the church for trying to bring the rapist priests to justice!…

Maybe call it THE PEDOPHILE PRIEST CONSPIRACY(?)…

Poffy’s Open Challenge To The Law: When you stop priests raping kids, THEN you can come for my parking tickets.

Though we know of the broad strokes in this shameful worldwide outrage – priests raping children, then cowering behind the skirts of an institution supposedly steeped in righteousness – SPOTLIGHT succinctly fills in so much more of the picture. For instance, the offending priests (under their unholy protector, Mother Church) are represented by lawyers as zealously as any private citizen, not only because it is the priests’ right, but because the Church has such deep coffers it can afford the best legal counsel. In other words, buying the spiritual bankruptcy of the lawyers; and the lawyers ultimately profiting from sexual abuse of children!

We hardly consider the perception of the abused children, which is demonstrated here distressingly through the victims, now grown: “When you’re a kid from a poor family, when a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal. So when they ask you to do something questionable, how do you say no to God?” Ironically, exactly as the church depicts Satan approaching you in the guise of a savior, so too do their very own representatives in Christ come at their underage victims in the guise of God.

“It was like God showing up…”
“…like God noticing you…”
“…like God asking you…”

And ultimately: “I was preyed upon, not prayed for.”

Michael Keaton (BIRDMAN) is tactful head of the Spotlight team, Walter “Robby” Robinson, who must deal with the smarm of condescending church representatives. Mark Ruffalo (FOXCATCHER) shines as Michael Rezendes, with the intensity of a windup toy. Rachel McAdams (SOUTHPAW) is Sacha Pfeiffer, too pretty for words, who delves into S.N.A.P. (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests) and the psyches of the victims. And Brian d’Arcy James rounds out the Spotlight team as Matt Carroll, who discovers a priest-rapist’s house one block from where he lives with his small children!

Liev Schreiber (PAWN SACRIFICE) is new Globe editor Marty Baron, bearded like Sabertooth, steering Spotlight through the abuse scandal (“focus on the institution, not individuals”). The Spotlight team reports to Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery, MAD MEN), whose father helmed The Washington Post‘s takedown of Nixon 30 years earlier. (That’s a helluva family pedigree – taking down the government and then the church!)

Stanley Tucci (TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION) is lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, representing sexual abuse victims – and vilified by the Church! Scruffy, unorganized, with an office disappearing under paperwork, Garabedian was daily shattered by sexual abuse cases, yet could make no headway in publicizing the scandals because the Church would “disappear” public trial documents, making it impossible for him to corroborate his claims. He tells Rezendes: “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” The Church would use all their power to discredit the people who expose them. Garabedian was the good guy, trying to restore balance, humanity, normalcy – yet he was the one attacked, on the run. See how the devil (i.e. church) comes at you, telling you the man doing right is in the wrong?

Jamey Sheridan (who played the devil in Stephen King’s THE STAND) is senior judge Jim Sullivan, paid off by the church not to tell. (Any wonder they could buy off Satan so easily? They just had to roll over in bed and ask.) And Billy Crudup is slick lawyer Eric Macleish, who zealously represented accused priests (“turning child abuse into a cottage industry”), yet felt a twinge of conscience and sent a story to The Boston Globe years ago, that went unnoticed. Robby Robinson would kick himself that it took so long to see the threads coalesce into a scandal.

Concern – Drowsiness – Constipation – Model – Mad – Who?

The scorching level of talent in this movie is secondary to the gripping way the infuriating case is spelled out by writer Josh Singer (THE FIFTH ESTATE) and director/co-writer Tom McCarthy (THE COBBLER), driven like a detective thriller, tension mounting like a gargoyle on a cathedral rampart. The reporters get closer and closer to a villain – who is EVERYWHERE. By the time they have uncovered 87 priests involved in sexual abuse – in the Boston area alone! – the Church’s claim of “a few bad apples” is no longer tenable. A psychiatrist refutes the “few bad apples” palliation, calling such a high number a “recognizable classifiable psychic phenomenon.” A skulking reality hiding in plain sight, abetted by not just the bishops in power who transferred offending priests to other dioceses (or sent them to “treatment centers” – church-authorized safe houses), but abetted by judges and lawyers as well, and simply by the instilled attitude that something like this could not possibly happen in an institution so “blessed.”

Are priests so smarmy and arrogant about all the “good” they supposedly do, that they feel they can claim the asses of young boys and girls as recompense?

Maybe call it CATHOLIC PRIESTS CAUGHT WITH THEIR COCKS OUT (?). (If the MPAA censor this grand descriptive title, they’re on the side of the rapists…)

When you don’t question authority, this is the kind of thing that happens. Institutions do things they shouldn’t do; they become used to getting away with things that someone should have called them on earlier, and when you have so much deference for an organization that you’re not willing to ask hard questions, this could be the end result.
— Sacha Pfeiffer, Boston Globe reporter, Spotlight team.

SPOTLIGHT pulls no punches as its team beats shoe leather the old-fashioned way, physically checking basement files, knocking on doors, waiting for hours for departments to open, for lawyers to see them, for phone calls to be returned, for evidence to be corroborated, and eventually crucifying their perps on a cross of mainstream media.

During 2002, Spotlight published over 600 articles pertaining to this scandal. The end title cards tell us that “major abuse scandals have been uncovered in the following places,” followed by an endless list of virtually every city in the United States, followed by another endless list of every country in the world.

I want to hug and kiss this movie, and put my hand down its pants like a priest. Thank You Tom McCarthy, for keeping SPOTLIGHT indicting and unforgiving, never backpedaling, never relenting in the accusations and evidence. But how many more bitchslaps upside the head does society need before something gets done about this plague on humanity? The anti-christ is already here, represented in every ordained “holy” man who continues to freely walk the Earth, after sodomizing / fucking / raping a child…

Let’s not kid ourselves: though SPOTLIGHT shines a white-hot beam on this epidemic worse that AIDS, worse than terrorism, worse than Trump, NOTHING will continue to happen. As long as we continue to hide behind introspective titles like SPOTLIGHT, and high-minded terms like “archdiocese” “bishop” “vatican” “infallible” there remains a psychological buffer on  child-fucking priests being brought to justice.

Okay, so we’re agreed: we reissue the movie as CHILD-FUCKING PRIESTS BEING BROUGHT TO JUSTICE…

END

Too mysterious for its own smart.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS is director Guy Ritchie’s brash, bombastic, brainy and body-shaved sequel to his 2009 SHERLOCK HOLMES. Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) takes on Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) in a battle as much to do with wits as hits. Along with friend, confidant and eternally disgruntled crimefighting partner Dr. Watson (Jude Law), Holmes must stop an assassination at a peace conference, to avoid the world tipping into chaos (which implies the leaders of the world have anything to do with causing peace, which is exactly their opposite  function – they exist to shatter any existing peace and create interminable conflict for politics and profit – but we’ll let this movie have it’s indoctrinated stance).

The story (written by Michele and Kieran Mulroney) seems hard to follow at first, but we realize that much of it is misdirection and verbosity. We are not regarded as nitwits, so there is much to hear in quick asides and fastidious jokes; SHADOWS is a rich tapestry in a world where every wide-release movie has turned into formulaic mush due to studio constraints and short-attention-span viewers.

Robert Downey Jr. is once again hedonistically body-shaved for the role of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s persnickety detective. (Maybe his hair has all been shucked off because suits of iron can be very chafing.) The way the filmmakers set up Jude Law’s contrariness is a wonder: here are two men who we know are the best of bromancers, yet do not have one kind sentence for each other in the first two acts, Watson lamenting with every breath that he would rather be somewhere else.

Poor Rachel McAdams (as Holmes’ love interest Irene Adler) gets it early (don’t know why they tempted us with her luscious beauty if they were just going to rip it away from us). Holmes takes her death with almost nonchalant grief, for there is someone else with cheekbones just as saucy around the corner who will share this adventure with him – the gypsy flame Madame Simza (Noomi Rapace).

Stephen Fry is Holmes’ free-spirited brother Mycroft; stunning Kelly Reilly is Watson’s wife, Mary. And Paul Anderson is that trope we know and love so well – the villain’s right hand man who keeps tracking the hero and never killing him, because. Just because.

Ritchie expands on the devices he used in the last movie; the breakdown of fight sequences before they happen, crash-cutting trails of clues; artfully piecing together daunting sequences that never lose their threads. It’s an amazing piece of filmmaking, with excellent production values that drops us bodily into the world of 1890.

Listen for the theme from TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA as Holmes tries to keep up with horses while riding a mule. (Like Indiana Jones, horses are his snakes.)

It’s hard to keep up with the plot in A GAME OF SHADOWS, especially with Downey enunciating like a verbose poetry slammer; for the most part, looking and listening carefully is a rewarding experience – but sometimes we just want a shiny suit of armor to blow stuff up with a salty metal quip.

END

The Adventure of the Hero’s Rebirth.

Guy Ritchie‘s SHERLOCK HOLMES is not quite a reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s infamous British detective; more like a punch in the face. An analytical punch in the face.

I’ll admit I’m not a Sherlock Holmes aficionado. Matter of fact, of the lifetime of books I’ve devoured like a balrog (and sometimes like a Hello Kitty) I’ll confess I have probably never read a full Sherlock Holmes adventure. I say ‘probably’ because I seem to know the character intrinsically. Is that because – as Harlan Ellison claims – “there are only five literary creations known to every man, woman and child on the planet: Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Robin Hood and Superman”? (Though an over-broad comment, it elucidates the meme haunting humanity since it became humanity – the aspiration toward super heroes. And mice.) Consequently, I cannot comment on the veracity of this movie’s faithfulness to canon or its references and in-jokes. I can only take it at face value. Confession over. Let’s punch something.

Poffy Holmes

Apparently, this SHERLOCK HOLMES is more faithful to the spirit of Conan Doyle’s original vision of the absent-minded, drug-addled, brawling consulting detective than the hundreds of watered-down TV and feature film versions (homogenizing the character for the infuriating lowest common denom, who like their heroes as dirtlessly pure as Superman with undies preferably on the outside for maximum visual sanitariness). Nonetheless, because we are so indoctrinated with the image of the Baker Street sleuth in deerstalker cap, pallid disposition and the tendency to weep at the sight of a woman’s thigh, it is a shock to our sternum when we actually meet Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) as an absent-minded, muscular, brawling, intellectual egotist.

This ain’t Basil Rathbone (Holmes in a clutch of 1940’s films), Peter Cushing (THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES 1959; come to think of it, I have read The Hound in many horror compendiums; huh, so I’m not as illiterate as some presidents I know), or even – laughably – Charlton Heston (who took a crack at Holmes in THE CRUCIFER OF BLOOD 1991). Make no mistake – Downey’s Sherlock Holmes is definitely a super hero. (No wonder he’s Iron Man.) He takes no shit, this Sherlock; a regular No-Shit Sherlock.

We meet Holmes as action man, taking down his opponents Seagal-style, complete with analytical calculations in voiceover on how it’s done: “Head cocked to the left, partial deafness in ear: first point of attack. Two: throat; paralyze vocal chords, stop scream. Three: got to be a heavy drinker, floating rib to the liver. Four: finally, drag in left leg, fist to patella. Summary prognosis: unconscious in ninety seconds, martial efficacy, quarter of an hour at best. Full faculty recovery: unlikely.”

Doctor Watson (Jude Law) is Holmes’s begrudging right-hand man, unwillingly pulled into crime cases against his better judgment. And then using that better judgment to help Holmes. In this film, we meet him betrothed to Mary (Kelly Reilly), whom Holmes tries to deconstruct and gets wine thrown in his face for his troubles.

Mark Strong is Lord Henry Blackwood, dabbling in the black arts and seemingly resurrected after his hanging, with intent to overthrow Parliament. Set in 1880’s London, the plot revolves around Blackwood’s ingenious magical plotting and Holmes deconstructing Blackwood’s methods as the scientific ploys they are.

And Rachel McAdams is lovely Irene Adler, a character spoken of in only five of the scores of Sherlock Holmes stories, yet, as Conan Doyle writes, “To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.” Me too. Every time I see McAdams, I just want to conjugate my verb to arrive.

Gutshock action, high-browed humor, cerebral plotting, brain-teasing conundrums, unconsummated romance, Gladstone the dog incessantly victim to Holmes’s experiments, and Robert Downey Jr. toned like a jungle cat, absent-mindedly plucking his violin, almost lighting his pipe, never wearing a deerstalker hat, and doing an awful lot of Elizabethan mumbling.

END

Going and coming across time.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time… He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between… he has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun.
— Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

Everything we learned from Michael J. Fox is wrong! You don’t need a DeLorean to travel through time – just a nice butt and the right genes.

Forget that THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE has that unctuous “romantic” tag on its ear, like some rhinoceros lumbering through the predictable pabulum jungle; despite its whispery trailers with jangly poetry-slam guitars and pillow promises that couldn’t possibly be kept, it is an entertaining, intriguing tale of a man who involuntarily travels back and forth in time, whose major problem is not, it would seem, holding down a job or keeping important appointments, but rather that it puts a crimp in his Nookie Schedule.

Despite its title, it is about the Time Traveler, not his wife. We wonder how she fits in as the subject matter when all she does is be cute and get cuter.

Eric Bana is Henry, whom we meet as a ten-year-old in the back of his mother’s car just before they have a head-on collision. He disappears out of the car and reappears on the street, naked, watching his mother die in a Pretty Orange Explosion worthy of John Woo.

Suddenly, Man-Henry appears to Boy-Henry and tells him he is a time traveler. “I am you from the future!” How many times have we heard THAT before when a nice young man wanted to touch us where the judge said it was “statutory something”?

Adult Henry meets Clare (Rachel McAdams, gloriously cute) and she tells him that she has known him since she was a little girl – when he popped out of the bushes naked and asked for her picnic blanket to cover himself. Again with the risqué advocacy that encourages little girls to talk to naked men in blankets.

Clare grows up to be Spinner of the Year (with a tramp stamp to prove it) and the titular Time Traveler’s Wife. She and Henry spend endless hours staring into each others’ eyes and double-dating with Clare’s friends Clarisse (Jane McLean) and Gomez (OFFICE SPACE’s Ron Livingstone), who become close enough to learn of Henry’s anomaly. And only Ron Livingston can pull off that casual amazement so effortlessly.

Makes for some humorous moments, like Clare and Henry’s wedding, when Henry disappears, only to reappear as an older Henry to marry Clare, then reappears later as his Original Self for their first dance. Then he disappears on their wedding night.

That’s when it starts to get real for Clare. No matter how many whispery promises and jangly poetry-slam guitars, this has GOT to get tiresome after a point. Sho’ nuff, it does. Couple of years later: “Do you think I want this life?! A husband who disappears without warning? Who would want that?!” Well… YOU wanted that, honey! It’s not like he volunteers for service in Iraq – he can’t help himself, the poor guy.

From a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, directed by Robert Schwentke, executive produced by Brad Pitt, THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE moves fast enough that we don’t consider too many time anomaly questions. In early dialogue Henry establishes he has tried to change events, but they happen anyway. And the movie engages in only marginal scientific dabbling, connecting genetics to time travel, giving Henry’s condition a formidably silly name – chrono-impairment. (Milk shooting out of nose stifling a giggle.)

They birth a creepily cute time traveling kid, Alba (played by Tatum and Hailey McCann at different ages) and the movie departs from Romantic Movie Protocol by foreshadowing an inexorable tragic end.

But with Henry always traveling back and forth in time, we are left with future hope for snatches of happiness.

And at last we figure the reason for the Time Traveler’s Wife – with her snatch of happiness.

END

When the frame gets filled with old people – Look Out! Cutie Pie Alert!

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN meets Blackwater.

Politics, conspiracy, murder – is the STATE OF PLAY. And Rachel McAdams looking tastier than Christmas dinner.

A murdered congressional aide is linked to Republican Congressman, Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck, playing it straighter than Tom Cruise’s public persona) in a sex scandal that leads to questions regarding his links to a no-bid, war-profiteering contractor, PointCorp (think: Blackwater, renamed Xe). A former roommate of Collins, investigative reporter, Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe, playing it scruffier than Nick Nolte on a bad hair day), uncovers what looks like a conspiracy.

For those uninterested in political intrigue, there’s spinner Rachel McAdams (whose only conspiracy is to commit hotness), as McAffrey’s naif reporter chum, Della Frye, wearing dresses that nicely accentuate her high, tight a-cups, looking cuter than a Hello Kitty backpack on a 16-year-old girl scout.

All the news that’s fit to Talking Points!

Writer Mathew Michael Carnahan (LIONS FOR LAMBS, 2007) once again displays his uncanny Beltway underbelly knowledge and knack for conjuring compelling stories from dry political duplicity. Kevin McDonald directs STATE OF PLAY (which could have easily become a talky mystery) like an action thriller.

Crowe, looking faintly like Jesus, plays something almost non-existent in this 24-hour-news-cycle world – an investigative reporter. Taste the syllables in your empty mouths, news media; remember when this species was not extinct? No wonder he looks like a martyr.

Crowe’s acting chops simply beats the rest of the cast to death. Deep in The Method, he appears in his shoddy car (the back seat a scandal of wrappers and paper cups), on the way to a crime scene, singing loudly to Irish beer-drinking songs. He is paunchy, unshaven; his cubicle is reminiscent of paper-age pack rats, his apartment the messiest in the world – yet his mind like a shark’s tooth.

It is not surprising that democrat Affleck (the only man brave enough to satire progressive demagogue Keith Olbermann on SNL) is playing a Republican, and it is certainly not surprising to any Republicans that he is busted in a sex scandal; what is surprising is that his Republican congressman actually cares about The People, trying to uncover corporate corruption, rather than being molded by it, which would effectively make him a pariah at the All-White All-Male Racist Repub Country Club.

Helen Mirren is the newspaper’s ribald editor, showing us what The Queen would sound like with the tongue of a construction worker. She only wants the dirt on congressional philandering, while McAffrey pleads more time to go deeper into the story.

But maybe McAffrey just wants to go deeper into something else, as we discover a past affair between him and the congressman’s wife, Anne (Robin Wright Penn). At one point, he tells Della he is following a lead and slinks off to have a drink with Anne.

Jason Bateman is PR man, Dominic Foy, a pimpster for richies, playing the same distracted, ad-libbing eccentric he has made a hilarious career of. Through him, we discover everyone is in collusion (again, like THAT would surprise anyone in politics!).

A PointCorp insider tells McAffrey about corporate operating procedures: “They do whatever the fuck they want; they answer to no one. It’s a fundamental restructuring of our domestic intelligence policy – the privatization of homeland security, billions of dollars… wrath-of-God money.” Is he talking about Blackwater/Xe? Of course he is. The filmmakers don’t go too far to disguise PointCorp’s analogy to George W. Bush’s real world, no-bid murdering mercenaries; the logo even resembles Blackwater’s.

STATE OF PLAY never mentions what government is in power, because – as we have seen with the new spineless Obama administration – it doesn’t matter what government is in power for government misfeasance to continue. (Nine months into Obama’s reign, Bush’s shit still rains: still Iraq, still illegal surveillance, still Afghanistan, still Guantanamo, still no health reform, still no torture investigations, still no Bush, Rove, Cheney, Woo indictments for war crimes…)

STATE OF PLAY brings together many suspenseful story strands and clacks them into place neatly, but in the end, backs away from its high level of crime, bringing the story down to one man’s bad decisions which only made it look like corporate conspiracy. Collins, who seemed so sincere, was only looking out for his own interests – That’s Our Republican!

McAffrey asserts something demonstrably incorrect: “Through all this gossip and speculation that permeates people’s lives, I still think they know the difference between real news and bullshit, and they’re glad that someone cares enough to get things on the record and print the truth.” No, they don’t know. Why else would Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck still be on air? How else did networks garner ratings by talking about Palin’s wardrobe for a week? How else did George W. Murderer crouch for two felonious terms in the Oval Egg?

Yet this movie’s construction and its performances are superb. The hardest aspect to swallow in STATE OF PLAY is that there are newspaper offices where investigative reporters still exist.

END

A Craven effort.

The setup of RED EYE is thriller-worthy: a charming stranger (Cillian Murphy) insinuates himself into the good graces of a young woman traveling alone (Rachel McAdams) on a Red Eye flight from Dallas to Miami.

The exposition is dynamic: because she is virtually trapped in the airplane, seated beside him, the stranger’s beguiling attitude suddenly becomes very cold as he outlines a plot to her – he holds her father hostage (a very slim, very underused Brian Cox), to blackmail her into being complicit in the assassination of a senator.

But the denouement is dreary: like the Red Eye flight their characters spend most of the movie on, director Wes Craven and writers, Carl Ellsworth and Dan Foos have nowhere to go but down, as we once again realize that American senators DO NOT get assassinated in American movies of this weak-chested ilk. This is not an Oliver Stone or Clint Eastwood film – those guys can get away with almost anything – this is Wes Craven, the man who brought us THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977), SWAMP THING (1982) and SCREAM (1996). No big leaps of bravura. Consequently, the outrageous assassination attempt (launching a rocket from a boat in the ocean to the penthouse suite of a hotel on the shore) reeks of desperation to inject the dragging plot with some kind of Van Damme-ish audacity.

But as the movie drags on, the longer it keeps going, the less and less it compels, until the last act’s obligatory and interminable Chase Sequences only serve to dull an already blunt climax.

Like reading this review, by the end of the movie, you find yourself asking, “Is that it?”

Yes. Yes it is.

END