the rhapsodic cineaste

“My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you! ” – Harvey Milk (Sean Penn)

I find that you can usually tell when a film, particularly one with an agenda, has eclipsed its status as mere entertainment and become something greater. Whether it is striving for artistic or political importance, the process for judging a film’s success is generally the same.

For me, it usually begins when, after watching the film, I think less about the acting or cinematography, whether the script was any good or if the pacing was off. When I see a great film, my thoughts afterwards are entirely centered on how the film made me feel, what it made me think.

After watching Milk, what I came away with was a profound sense of moral outrage. It was as if I’d been punched in the gut. I was, and I remain, pissed off. I wasn’t thinking about Sean Penn’s acting, which was excellent. I didn’t notice Van Sant’s direction or have the chance to absorb the camerawork of Harris Savides.

Instead, I just kept thinking to myself, ‘this sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen here.’ I’ve always believed, naïvely I suppose, that we are a kinder, gentler nation than the America represented in Milk. But then, I’m probably getting ahead of myself.

Milk is a biography of Harvey Milk, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the first openly gay elected official in California, or anywhere else for that matter. The story begins with Milk’s political awakening, and his realization that organizing minority voting blocs is the key to political power. From here, Milk’s multiple runs at city and state office are chronicled, before culminating in his battle against California’s Briggs Initiative (Prop. 6), a ballot measure to remove openly gay and lesbian teachers from their jobs in California’s public schools.

When I was a kid, I remember being amazed that in the mid 1960s, when my mom attended college in Florida, the drinking fountains were segregated. Learning of these bigoted anachronisms in school, the photos were so anathema, they seemed from a much more distant past. I thought of this while watching Milk, because its hatreds seemed both more contemporary and more exotic at the same time.

There are series of debates in Milk, between the activist and State Senator John Briggs (Denis O'Hare), who suggests that gay teachers are dangerous, because they’ll recruit the state’s youth to their “homosexual agenda.” I found this ironic, particularly because we did learn of racism in public schools. But I was much older before I knew of Harvey Milk, Anita Bryant or discrimination ordinances related to sexual orientation.

And while it doesn’t seem particularly helpful to compare one group’s victimization to another’s, it strikes me that today we’re witnessing the same discrimination against gays that Harvey Milk rallied against thirty years ago. Can anyone not see the parallels between California’s Prop. 6, from 1978 and the 2008 ballot measure, Prop. 8 that stripped California gays of their marriage rights?

There’s a pivotal moment in the film when Harvey Milk takes the stage at a rally. There have been death threats against him, but he grimly jokes that being assassinated will at least provide publicity to the gay rights movement. On stage Milk speaks of “The New Colossus,” an Emma Lazarus poem that adorns the base of the Statue of Liberty. He quotes its famous line, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free.” Milk then mentions the Declaration of Independence, citing its observation that “all men are created equal,” that we all have the same unalienable rights.

Observing Penn, as Milk, deliver this impassioned speech, I was personally reminded of the Pledge of Allegiance, and that it closes with the affirmation, “with liberty and justice for all.” Milk reasons that these words are true, that the statue will not crumble, that the Declaration will outlive all of us. It occurred to me, watching this, that you either believe in the primacy of these ideas, or you do not. You either hold sacred these concepts, or you instead favor your prejudices, you make excuses for your preferred exclusions.

But Milk was smarter than I am. He understood that you cannot reach people with abstract arguments about freedom and liberty. You have to personalize your arguments. Milk demonstrates this, showcasing the activist’s controversial suggestion to begin outing closeted gays, and with his plea for gays to begin outing themselves, to parents and friends, forcing the bigots to make their hatreds personal.

There are lessons to be learned from this film, which concludes with the murder of Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone by another city supervisor, Dan White. In the aftermath of the shootings a crowd march from the Castro district to city hall, while Penn delivers, via voiceover, one of Milk’s speeches, ruminating on adversity and hope.

Milk was a man who lost, frequently. He may have become discouraged, but he didn’t give up. He picked up and started over, working to win more people to his side. If the American experiment is to continue and flourish, if we are to witness the day when the founding documents are true for all people, than like Milk we have to pick ourselves up and start again. We can do something about inequity.

These are the thoughts that came to me while I watched this film. For me it is a transcendent success.

“I wake up every day, right here, right in Punxsutawney, and it’s always February 2nd, and there's nothing I can do about it.” – Phil Connors (Bill Murray)

In Groundhog Day Bill Murray’s Phil Connors joins the echelon of characters who, needing a bit of redemption, bear witness a holiday miracle. Only unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, or George Bailey, Phil’s miracle comes not at Christmas, but on February 2, Groundhog Day.

And though rodent of legend, Punxsutawney Phil, makes an appearance, he is not outwardly involved in Phil’s miracle. Nor is Phil visited by the traditional ghosts or angels. In fact, Phil’s journey may not be a miracle at all.

Is Groundhog Day science fiction? A fairy tale? Both or neither? At one point Phil even suggests, “I’m a god. I'm not ‘the’ God…I don’t think.” His life has become so insane, the events so bizarre, that he’s just not sure.

And neither are we. The movie doesn’t feel the need to explain itself, because it knows that the why is less important than the what, simply that Phil is reliving the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again.

In some ways Groundhog Day feels like an old episode of Star Trek, or The Twilight Zone. It resembles a time travel story where we keep seeing the same events play out again and again. Stories like that tend to be repetitive and dull, the science fiction equivalent of a clip show, reusing the same footage over and over.

But Groundhog Day capitalizes on this inherent monotony. At first, living the same day repeatedly drives Phil crazy. So crazy, in fact, that he tries to kill himself, but to no effect. No matter the method, he wakes up again on February 2^nd, and again to the maddening strains of Sonny & Cher’s I Got You Babe.

For a comedy, the film is surprisingly deep. When Phil realizes that there is no way out of his predicament, he begins to abuse it. Studying people and their habits, Phil uses his unique knowledge for seduction. Soon though, he realizes the emptiness in this and starts to use his never-ending day to improve himself, and the lives of others.

Murray is terrific in the film, the perfect blend of incredulous and sarcastic. I particularly like that he doesn’t begin the story as a cardboard villain. He doesn’t shift away from a life of evil because a ghost has terrified him with visions of hell. He’s simply lost. Cynical? Sure, and maybe a bit self-important. But he’s not really bad, just a bit empty on the inside. It makes his spiritual transformation easier to believe.

Another thing that makes the movie so good is how it gets out of it’s own way and just lets the plot unfold. Most stories dealing with inviolable rules of the spacetime continuum are too often filled with breathless exposition, that lets us know why we cannot defy physics.

Groundhog Day does none of this. Sure, Phil tries to kill himself and fails, repeatedly. In watching, we understand that whether due to paradox or divine will, it’s not Phil’s time. Likewise, when Phil begins to use his gifts to help people, we see him desperately try to save an old man. He cannot, no matter how he tries. These things are explained subtly, and we simply accept them as true.

Tolstoy once wrote that, “everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” The funniest parts of Groundhog Day come after Phil realizes that he can’t change anything else, so begins instead to modify his own behavior. We watch Phil at his daily “first ever” piano lesson, become a master ice sculptor, and continually tweak his reaction to insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (Tobolowsky). There’s an infectious joy in watching Phil expand his horizons.

When watching the film, there is just one piece of the puzzle left unanswered that I’ve always wondered about. Exactly how long is Phil’s life on repeat? How much time did it take him to get it right? Months? Years? Decades? We’ll never know, I guess. But this too doesn’t really matter. What remains important is that he becomes unstuck.

Read the whole damn thing. Though not really a critic, as a film enthusiasts, I find this depressing and offensive:

“It is often said in Hollywood that no one sets out to make a bad movie, but the truth is that people cheerfully set out to make bad movies all the time. It is more accurate to say that no one sets out to make a movie without having a particular audience in mind. Many studio executives argue that films can’t objectively be categorized as “good” or “bad”: either they appeal to a given demographic—and make the studio at least a ten-per-cent profit—or they don’t.”

I don’t care that it’s already made more than $85 million, and I will confess that I haven’t seen it, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and declare that Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) is an objectively bad movie. Popular? Sure. Good? Not a chance in hell.

Jason Bourne: Who has a safety deposit box full of money and six passports and a gun? Who has a bank account number in their hip? I come in here, and the first thing I'm doing is I'm catching the sightlines and looking for an exit.
Marie: I see the exit sign too. I'm not worried. I mean, you were shot. People do all kinds of weird and amazing stuff when they are scared.
Jason Bourne: I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?

The Bourne series of films feel fairly smart. Or, at the very least, they don’t feel dumb. Typically action films are filled with ridiculously imagined gadgets and a glibness in the face of danger that often cheapens their threat. (See: Bond, James) There’s no outlandish technology here, though. No biting quips in the face of almost certain death.

As Jason Bourne, Matt Damon is a refreshingly intelligent action hero. Before engaging in a Parisian street chase, he’s studying a city roadmap. And when escaping from an embassy, he ditches a gun in favor of a radio and foorplan, to evade his would-be captors and to find a way out as quickly as possible. There’s an attention to detail, a kind of realism that lend the film its intelligence.

And sure, all action films are stupid to a degree, they defy believe. Particularly unrealistic is the level of physical abuse that our action heroes usually sustain. CIA trained or not, there’s only so much damage that the human body can realistically endure. In this sense, even The Bourne Indentity strains credulity, but it doesn’t bother me because it’s a film with purpose behind it, it has a moral.

As the film begins, a man is pulled unconscious from the sea by a fishing trawler. He has been shot, and when he awakens we learn that he has no memory. The number of a Swiss bank account, found in his hip, provides the only clue to unlocking his past.

In Geneva, the man uncovers his identity, learning that he is Jason Bourne, and that he lives in Paris. He also discovers that that he has multiple aliases, a deposit box filled with currency, and a gun. So Bourne makes his way to Paris, bribing a down-on-her-luck sojourner named Marie (Potente) to take him there.

What Bourne does not realize is that he is a CIA black operative, who in a crisis of conscience, botched an assassination attempt. Now, his superiors at the agency need to eliminate him, to protect their own careers.

When The Bourne Identity was released, it represented a fresh take on the spy thriller. And, apart from the tongue-in-cheek devolution of the Bond series, I think what set Bourne apart, what makes the character not only compelling, but relevant is that he represents the intelligence services in a jaded era.

In a cynical age, where faulty intelligence was used to justify war in Iraq, Bond still proudly serves Queen and country. Bourne is out in the cold, abandoned by his government and protecting his own interests.

Until Casino Royale (2006), when a Bourne inspired Bond was revitalized, 007 had become self-parody. Though the agent had a license to kill, Bond was not a stone cold assassin. Sure, he’d kill when necessary, but couldn’t really be considered an killer.

Bourne on the other hand is instinctively lethal, though he tries not to be. Fighting his instincts, partly due to the amnesia, and partly Marie’s influence, Bourne takes every opportunity not to do harm. More than once he ends up in possession of a gun, only to throw it away. He murders several adversaries, but only when his own life is at stake. He is desperately trying not to function as the instrument he was designed to be.

As I mentioned, the film has a moral. Bourne is seeking not only his identity, but also a kind of redemption. As bits of his memory come back, he is ever more desperate to escape the killer he knows that he is.

The Bourne Identity is something of a hybrid. It takes all of the traditional elements that still work, like filming on location in beautiful foreign cities, and couples this with a freshness, in fantastically fast editing and exhilarating stunt work. Combined with a modern, and believable espionage concept, it is the most refreshing, seemingly honest spy thriller in many years.

Ward Abbott: I don't suppose it’ll do me much good to cry for help, huh?
Jason Bourne: Not much. You killed her.
Ward Abbott: It was a mistake. It was supposed to be you. There were files linking me to the Neski murder. If the files disappeared and they suspected you, they’d be chasing a ghost for ten years.
Jason Bourne: So we got in the way. Is that why Neski died? Is that why you killed Marie?
Ward Abbott: You killed Marie, the minute you climbed into her car. The minute you entered her life, she was dead.
Jason Bourne: I told you people to leave us alone. I fell off the grid. I was halfway around the world.
Ward Abbott: There's no place it won’t catch up to you. It’s how every story ends. It’s what you are, Jason, a killer. You always will be. Go ahead. Go on. Go on! Do it! Do it!
Jason Bourne: She wouldn’t want me to. That’s the only reason you’re alive.

Watching The Bourne Supremacy, I can’t help but be reminded of a relatively obscure Harrison Ford film, Regarding Henry (1991). In that movie, Henry Turner (Ford) is merely a sleazy, self-absorbed attorney. But, like Jason Bourne, his character suffers a brain trauma and loses any memory of his previous life. While Henry is merely a opportunistic lawyer, as opposed to Bourne’s cold-blooded assassin, both stories are tales of redemption—showcasing the heartwarming, positive aspects of severe head injury. And it’s telling, I suppose, that in Hollywood’s eyes, a career as either a killer or a lawyer require similar redemption.

Joking aside, Bourne’s amnesia allows him to push the reset button on his life, to reevaluate his choices—what he can remember of them anyway. He is steered on this path by Marie Kreutz (Potente), who he dragged into his journey escaping from the U.S. Embassy in Geneva. The Bourne Identity ended with the pair, now lovers, reunited in hiding.

It will not spoil much of The Bourne Supremacy’s plot to reveal that Marie is murdered very early in the film, in an botched attempt to assassinate Bourne himself. Unbeknownst to Bourne, he has been set-up by Ward Abbott. Brian Cox reprises his role as Abbott, the CIA deputy director responsible both for the Treadstone project, and the attempts to eliminate Bourne in the previous film.

Complicating matters is a second CIA deputy director, Pam Landy (Allen), who is investigating the set-up where Abbott has implicated Bourne. Landy is an ernest patriot, chasing the evidence wherever it may lead. As such, she is essentially Bourne’s ally, though neither agent realizes it.

As my attempt at a summary might suggest, the film is intricately plotted. To its credit, all of the pieces fall into place and there are no glaring errors. The set pieces are ratcheted up from the first film, becoming somewhat less believable. Though for an action film—particularly a sequel—it again manages to balance the thrills with a rare intelligence.

The nicest surprise in The Bourne Identity is in its use of Marie’s character. Unlike a Bond film, there isn’t a new leading lady for every Bourne outing. And though Marie dies early in the story, it is her death that propels events forward.

If Bourne hadn’t suffered from amnesia and had never encountered Marie, one can imagine that Abbott’s betrayal would drive him to carnage. But because of Marie’s influence, which facilitates his redemption, Bourne seeks simply to disable his enemies, not destroy them.

There’s a moment in the first film where Bourne realizes that Marie is afraid of him. They’ve both had the chance to digest their discovery that he is a killer, a fact which intimidates her. Marie eventually moves past this, compartmentalizing the information. Bourne does not really get past this moment though. From this point on, he uses Marie as a kind of moral compass, substituting her conscience for his own.

Watching the trilogy in rapid succession, it’s interesting to note how fluid they are. In The Bourne Identity, Marie suggests that if she leaves, Bourne will quickly forget her. He replies, “How could I forget you? You’re the only person I know.” It is a testament to how well these films work that, though she dies early in the second film, Marie remains Bourne’s touchstone, impacting the story long after her character has died. That’s a remarkable achievement, particularly for a film as adrenaline-fueled as this one.

Martin Kreutz: Where’s my sister?
Jason Bourne: Why don’t you sit down.
Martin Kreutz: Where is she?
Jason Bourne: She’s dead. She was killed. I’m sorry.
Martin Kreutz: I knew it would end this way. It was always going to end this way.
Jason Bourne: I didn’t believe that.
Martin Kreutz: And how did she die?
Jason Bourne: She was shot. We were together in India. He came for me.
Martin Kreutz: You killed him?
Jason Bourne: Yes.
Martin Kreutz: And now what?
Jason Bourne: Someone started all this, and I’m going to find them.

With The Bourne Ultimatum, the trilogy of Jason Bourne films comes full circle, ending quite literally where the story began. Not at the covert CIA medical facility where we learn that David Webb became the killer Jason Bourne, but in New York’s East River. Once again, an unconscious man, suffering from a gunshot wound is floating in the water.

As I mentioned previously, the Bourne films are just smart. They’re very well written, and unlike most sequels, Bourne’s subsequent outings feel as if they were planned from the beginning. Nothing feels tacked on or reinvented, but rather part of an intended arc.

Here, for example, Bourne is trying to unlock the mystery behind Operation Blackbriar, not Treadstone, which was the focus of the two previous films. But we learned of Blackbriar in the first film, when Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) disavowed Treadstone before an oversight committee. Densly plotted? Absolutely, but this is the sort of attention to complicated details that bothers me when missing.

There are some new villains in this final installment, but this too carries the air of believability. Bourne has eliminated many of his earlier adversaries, and considering this is a story about a vast government conspiracy, it’s not surprising for previously unseen players to appear.

CIA operatives Pam Landy (Allen) and Nicky Parsons (Stiles) both return in this chapter, continuing to provide Bourne with support. Both relationships to Bourne evolve nicely, and their assistance is much more overt here. For the first time since Marie’s death Bourne has clear allies, people he can trust. The Groundwork has been laid that suggests future Bourne films, beyond the resolution found here.

The least plausible parts of The Bourne Ultimatium, are the action set pieces, particularly a street chase that begins in a parking garage. The lack of abuse that several of the characters endure becomes just too hard to believe here. There’s also a sequence where Bourne breaks into a CIA office complex that, while thrilling, seems ridiculously easy, even for a covert agent.

When it’s not focused on outperforming its predecessors, this is still a movie with a soul. The ghost of Marie hangs over the picture. Even after her death in the second film, the character still serves as Bourne’s conscience, keeping his darker instincts in check. She’s also driving his desire, not for bloodlust, but to terminate the project that created him.

The Bourne Ultimatium is a fitting conclusion to a riveting trilogy of films. The entire series is so well crafted, and so well received, that further Bourne adventures are all but assured. I, for one, cannot wait.

“THERE ARE MORE THINGS N HEAVEN AND EARTH HARRIS, THAN ARE DREAMT OF N YOUR PHILOSOPHY” – Freeway Condition Roadsign

I first saw L.A. Story eighteen years ago, and instantly became smitten. In a nod to La dolce vita (1960), the film opens on a stunning vista of Los Angeles. Gorgeous woman dive into a pool. Overhead the famous Tail o’ the Pup hot dog stand floats lazily in mid air, surreally suspended by a helicopter, all to the strains of Charles Trenet crooning Le mer. I knew then, in those first moments, that I was going to love this movie.

Steve Martin, who wrote the film, stars as Harris K. Telemacher. Harris has a PhD in arts and humanities, but performs the wacky weekend weather on TV. For fun he roller skates through art museums. Like his Shakespearian mentor, The Great Blunderman, he is a fellow of infinite jest. Harris is also “bored beyond belief,” searching for some deeper meaning from life.

Mostly about relationships and the search for lasting love, the film is also about Harris’s romance with the “City of Angels.” In many ways L.A. Story is the west coast answer to Woody Allen’s longstanding love affair with New York. Though this film is both sweeter and less literal than much of Allen’s oeuvre.

Unlike Allen’s pessimistic view of fidelity, often coupled with his clinical atheism, L.A. Story is optimistic and, quite literally, magical. Early in the film, Harris is introduced to Sara McDowell (Tennant), a British journalist who’s writing a story about Los Angeles. There is a mutual attraction but complications, both real and imagined, keep the couple apart. That is until a freeway sign begins communicating with Harris, offering him advice about love.

I was reminded of L.A. Story when watching Groundhog Day earlier this week. Meteorology must be a particularly soul-deadening line of work because, like Bill Murray’s Phil, Harris is going through the motions, essentially empty inside.

More importantly, both films employ fantastic devices to rescue their protagonists. Groundhog Day never reveals its secrets, we never find out how the magic trick was performed. We don’t learn much more from L.A. Story, but at least here we see the magician, the highway condition road sign.

Or perhaps Los Angeles itself is orchestrating events, and merely using the road sign as its prop. In either case, we are at least aware that events, or fate, are conspiring to help set Harris on the right path.

If I have one criticism of L.A. Story it’s that the film is really a mishmash of comedic styles. Much of the film wants to be seen as serious, or at least genuine. We’re expected to believe that, in the film’s universe, these elements of wonder are not only possible but real.

But there are a few sillier moments that threaten to turn the film to pure farce. At one point Harris realizes that it’s the first day of spring, open season on the L.A. freeway, and so begins an absurd gunfight between angry motorists. Similarly, when Harris drives his car just down the block to visit a neighbor, the film becomes simply ludicrous.

Sure these things are funny. But this is a film that asks me to accept that a weatherman and a talking freeway sign can reverse the polarity of the earth. If it took itself just a bit more seriously, the film’s magic might feel less like slight-of-hand. Then again, I’ve never been to L.A. Perhaps Martin is suggesting that the city itself is so absurd as to defy belief, that the entire story is to be taken at face value.

Fundamentally, L.A. Story represents the generic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back romantic comedy. But it does this in such a unique way, with so much texture, that the formula feels somehow fresh. And any film that deftly combines a homage to Shakespeare with its sincere tale of romantic wonderment, set to a soundtrack that incongruously blends both Django Reinhardt and Enya, has earned a place of deep affection in my heart.

Man On Train: Don’t take that tone with me, young man. I fought the war for your sort.
Ringo: I bet you’re sorry you won.

The author Kurt Vonnegut once explained, “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did.’” Without hyperbole, Vonnegut managed to characterize the Beatles’ importance to the music and culture of the 20^th century better than 40-years of euphoric praise and thoughtful analysis combined.

To measure the talent of the Beatles, not just as musicians, but as performers and humanitarians one simply has to listen, to observe. It would be a profound understatement to call them merely infectious. Watching the screaming throngs caught up in Beatlemania, it’s as if the world had gone collectively insane. It’s kind of a hysterical euphoria, and I think it’s fair to say the world hasn’t seen anything quite like the Beatles since. There are occasional pretenders to the throne, but none have managed to capture humanity’s hearts and minds quite so universally.

This is my roundabout way of framing A Hard Day’s Night with some perspective. Anyone well familiar with the Beatles will know what to expect. For those new to the band and their music, the film is as good a place as any to dig in. Knowing only their musical legacy, one might be surprised by how funny and subversive their first film is.

Presented as a kind of mock documentary, A Hard Day’s Night chronicles the Beatles as they make their way to a television performance. While the band is surrounded by fictitious handlers, and Paul McCartney is assigned an imaginary grandfather, the film is filled with much honesty.

From the opening sequence, with the band running from their mobs of fans in a train station, the film captures the phenomenon of Beatlemania. It also manages to highlight the personalities of each individual Beatles, as well as their dynamic as a group.

Fans of the Peter Sellers and Richard Lester short, The Running, Jumping & Stand Still Film, the Beatles happily approved manager Brian Epstein’s suggestion that Lester direct their first film. Today it seems like an obvious choice, for the Beatles themselves were natural comedians. From their first big break, the chance to record with comedy producer George Martin, to their eventual break-up, when George Harrison suggested that the Beatles’ spirit entered Monty Python, the band’s entire career was infused with humor.

Watching A Hard Day’s Night, it’s impossible not to laugh. Here the Beatles are simply four lucky lads, surrounded by chaos but very much at the eye of the storm. They have a wonderfully giddy rapport, spring-boarding off of each others jokes. Though scripted their banter feels genuine, largely to the credit of screenwriter Alun Owen. As Paul McCartney explained in The Beatles Anthology:

“Alun picked up a lot of little things about us. Things like: ‘He is late, but he is very clean, isn’t he?’ Little jokes, the sarcasm, the humour, John’s wit, Ringo’s laconic manner, each of our different ways. The film manages to capture our characters quite well, because Alun was careful to try only to put words into our mouths that he might have heard us speak.”

This resonates, especially when comparing the band’s first U.S. press conference to the film’s encounter with reporters. While the movie’s scripted answers are a bit snappier, in reality the Beatles were very quick on their feet. It becomes clear that in the film they’re essentially playing heightened versions of themselves, reciting lines but not really acting.

I suspect that A Hard Day’s Night would remain a comedy classic, even without it’s Beatles music. As it is, I’d be remiss not to mention the songs, but then again I can scarely imagine that anyone is unfamiliar with them. The Beatles catalog has been the soundtrack of my own life, and I was born after they’d disbanded. They’re simply ingrained in our collective consciousness.

Revisiting this film, laughing at the boys’ antics and their witty banter, tapping my foot to Ringo’s perfect rhythm, or humming along to their soaring melodies, and occassionally adding my own soft voice to the Beatle harmonies, I know that Vonnegut was exactly right. Spending time with the Beatles, I realize how lucky I am to live in this time and in this place. Their music and their films make me happy to be alive.

“Without the ring, there is no sacrifice, with out the sacrifice there is no congregation, without the congregation there'll be no…more…me.” – Clang (Leo McKern)

Help! is wildly self-indulgent. There are a few reasons for this. To hear Paul McCartney tell it, “…things went a little bit awry, I think, because what happened then was we started saying, ‘well we’ve never been to the Bahamas, can you write that in?’…‘I’ve never been skiing, I wonder if you could write a scene in with skiing?’” John Lennon was even more direct in his assessment, explaining, “we were smoking marijuana for breakfast during that period. Nobody could communicate with us; it was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time.”

All things considered, it’s surprising that the film remains remotely coherent. Diverging from the far simpler A Hard Day’s Night, there is an outlandish plot here. Ringo has come into possession of a sacred ring, required for ritual sacrifice, and the cult who previously owned the ring wants it back.

To be clear, Help! is entertaining. As with A Hard Day’s Night there is quite a bit of amusing banter between the bandmates. Some of the humor is reminiscent of Monty Python’s sketch comedy, a very good thing to my mind.

For better or worse, the movie was also fairly inspirational. John Lennon suggested it was a precursor for the Batman TV series. Personally, it’s hard not to see how much the film influenced the fabrication of the Monkees.

Unlike A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles play highly caricatural versions of themselves here. While the earlier film felt biographical, here the Beatles all live together in a series of connected rowhouses. The exaggeration is amusing in its own way, though it reduces the movie to a cartoon.

Ultimately, Help! is an excuse to watch the Beatles wander around, stoned out of their minds, with a few rudimentary music videos thrown in for good measure. How much you’ll enjoy that is directly related to your affection for the Beatles themselves.

“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland. 80,000 leagues beneath the sea it lay, or lie. I’m not too sure.” – Narrator

Yellow Submarine isn’t exactly a Beatles film. By this stage in their career, the Beatles had become disenchanted with film, and saw an animated feature as a good way to fulfill their contract with United Artists. Most of the film’s songs were recycled from earlier albums, and the band’s speaking parts were poorly imitated by voice actors. Were it not so fun, it would be tempting to simply dismiss Yellow Submarine as a money grab.

Expounding on their caricatural performance in Help!, here the Beatles are living together in Liverpool, in a modest brick building called The Pier. Inside, the building is impossibly large—like Oscar’s trash can or Snoopy’s doghouse—filled with endless corridors of doors, each opened to reveal something more outlandish than behind the last.

As the film opens Young Fred has escaped Pepperland from an invasion of Blue Meanies, a gang of nasty, music-hating villains who have imprisoned inhabitants of Pepperland. He arrives in Liverpool to persuade the Beatles to rescue their doppelgängers, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

And so the band sets out to the rescue, in Fred’s Yellow Submarine, traveling through a series of vividly painted, pop art seas, all set to a collection of popular Beatles songs.

I’m uncertain whether the film was specifically intended as a rejection of Disney animation. The cartoon style here is the anthesis of Disney’s realistic multi-planed technique, opting instead for a rudimentary psychedelic style. The Blue Meanies themselves seem to spoof Mickey Mouse, with their mouse-eared hats. If criticism was intended, it’s quite subtle and doesn’t come across as mean spirited.

As with Help! I suspect one’s enjoyment of Yellow Submarine largely depends on how one feels about the Beatles themselves. As an unabashed admirer of the Fab Four, the film works on multiple levels.

Unsurprisingly, the film, like their music, mostly deals with peace and love. Anger and negative thoughts are defeated with love and song. Violence is resisted through pacifism. At the very least, it certainly works as an appropriate children’s fable.

Yellow Submarine, though obliquely, also showcases the Beatles at the top of their game, when there remained the biggest band in the world. As such, the film is filled with moments of profundity about the band’s importance to history.

When the Beatles find themselves in the Sea of Nothing, in the company of Jeremy Hilary Boob, PhD, they are surrounded by emptiness, a simple white screen. When they begin singing Nowhere Man the Beatles dance across the screen, suddenly filled with beautiful colors and flowers in their wake. As they perform the Sea of Nothing comes alive with their creations. It is a perfect metaphor for a moment in time when the Beatles seemed capable of anything.

When rescuing Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Ringo suggests that their glass prison is Beatle-proof. John explains that, “Nothing is Beatle-proof.” Watching even the band’s cartoon incarnations sing and dance their way through Pepperland, I must agree.

Reporter: Mr. President, what place do you think you will have in history?
George W. Bush: History? In history we'll all be dead!

Let’s get the disclosures out of the way first. I voted for George W. Bush, once. It is a mistake I deeply regret. In my view, not only was his presidency disastrous, but his poor judgement and intellectual incuriosity, coupled with a narrow cynical ideology, drove me from the Republican party, likely forever.

That said, I have no earthly idea who Oliver Stone intended to attract with his biography of the former president. W. isn’t a bad film, but with a figure both as divisive and as fresh in our minds as George W. Bush, Stone takes great effort not to offend. Ironically, Stone’s reputation is already such that the 22% who still approved of the president’s job performance when he left office will likely avoid the film, suspecting it a hatchet job. Alternatively, I suspect ardent liberals will be annoyed by the film’s attempt to paint W. as the victim of a cold, detached father he spent a lifetime trying to impress.

In typical Stone fashion, the story isn’t told chronologically, instead jumping around to various points in W.’s life, highlighting the events that Stone and his screenwriter, Stanley Weiser, have decided are important. Almost entirely excised is any reference to Bush’s tenure as Texas governor, and the president’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina is ignored completely. More surprisingly, Stone omits all but the most off-handed references to 9/11.

One would imagine that presiding over the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history would be a subject worthy of inclusion in a presidential biography. Stone merely pays it lip service, ignoring both the event and the President’s subsequent power grab. The film says nothing about the ensuing erosion of civil liberties or Bush’s belief in the unitary executive.

Instead, we see Bush as a frat dick with daddy issues. Constantly seeking approval from Poppy, W. drinks, gets arrested, and dates trashy women. Once W. is elected president, much of the film is focused on the Iraq war, reminding us that George H. W. Bush failed to go into Baghdad. Viewing that decision a mistake, the younger President Bush and his circle of neo-conservative handlers are hell-bent on finishing the job.

Perhaps something was lost in the film’s editing, but repeatedly, and inexplicably, we witness W. choke on a pretzel while watching a football game. Portrayed as if a significant revelation to the president’s character, the event tells us absolutely nothing. The near-death experience isn’t even spirited as either life affirming or the cause for some serious soul searching. It just happens, totally devoid of context.

The film’s acting is something of a mixed bag. Josh Brolin has the unenviable task of playing George W. Bush without becoming a parody, and does a terrific job. A role that could have been little more than an comedic impersonation, Brolin infuses his subject with a real humanity. It’s a nuanced performance imbibed convincingly with religious zeal, pathos and humor.

Unfortunately, most of the acting is just astoundingly bad. Some of the actors don’t even try to capture their subjects’ voices or mannerisms. Neither George H. W. Bush (Cromwell) or Dick Cheney (Dreyfuss) bear any real resemblance to their real-life conterparts. I’m not sure whether this is more or less distracting than Scott Glenn’s Donald Rumsfeld, or Thandie Newton’s Condoleezza Rice, whose performances are even less nuanced than a subpar episode of Saturday Night Live. After finding a pitcher perfect W. in Brolin, Stone has filled the film with jarring performances that repeatedly draw attention to themselves, and away from the story.

Unresolved conflict between fathers and sons are a central theme to Oliver Stone’s work. While such sub-text can make for good Shakespearian drama, W. simply ignores too many critical events in order to force the story that Stone wants to tell. It’s a shame that Stone couldn’t let go of his own hang-ups to deliver a more complete, and complex portrait of the former president. Perhaps it is Stone’s empathy for a fellow Yalie, or simply pity, but W. feels like it wants to excuse the former president.

Whether or not W. ached for his father’s affection, it does little to mitigate the tragedies we’ve collectively endure under his calamitous stewardship. While not as complete a failure as W.’s presidency, it’s this odd grasp for kinship that keeps Stone’s film from being a success.

Efe Turner: Ain’t you goin’ back, Abe?
Abe Lincoln: No, I think I might go on a piece…maybe to the top of that hill.

In 1858, Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln defended his friend William Armstrong in a murder trial. The case remains notable for Lincoln’s use of a then obscure legal tactic, judicial notice. Using an almanac, Lincoln successfully challenged the testimony of a witness who claimed that bright moonlight provided enough light to observe the crime.

John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln uses this case as the basis of its fictionalized account of the future president’s early life. Mostly a courtroom drama, Lincoln is presented as expected. He is intellectual, dedicated and deeply serious about the law. He has a good sense of humor, though, which he uses to effectively disarm both an angry lynch mob and his legal opponents. In other words, the film is not about a real man, but the marbleized icon memorialized in Washington, D.C.

It’s almost startling how nakedly patriotic Ford’s film is. Today audiences and critics practically demand that biographies are “warts and all” affairs. If a portrayal doesn’t sufficiently demonize some aspect of the character’s character, highlight some self-destructive flaw, then it’s dismissed as nothing more than hero-worship.

It’s no surprise then that Henry Fonda first turned down the role, likening the task to playing Jesus Christ. While I appreciate that Ford wanted to pay tribute to an icon, the film would have been more effective it it was more focused.

In some ways this is a paint-by-numbers biography, simply cramming in all of the elements we may not have learned in elementary school. So while there is only passing mention of the one-room log cabin, learning to read by firelight and Abe’s reputation for honesty, other bits of Lincoln’s early life—like his talent at rail splitting
—are shoehorned in. An alleged relationship with Ann Rutledge, and Lincoln’s early courtship of Mary Todd are both chronicled, but in an off-hand way. They’re mostly irrelevant to the story, especially in a fictionalized account.

Young Mr. Lincoln would be a much stronger film if it cut out all of the superfluous material, focusing solely on the courtroom drama, this is where the film really shines. Watching Fonda working to free his clients, I kept thinking about his much later role as a juror in 12 Angry Men (1957). There too, Fonda is impassioned, working nimbly to persuade his fellow jurors of reasonable doubt. If only the story here was a bit more tighter, focusing on Lincoln’s efforts to sway his jury, to foster doubt, it may have presented Lincoln as something more like a real man, as opposed to a idealized legend.

“It's just…what? This is our whole life, and you’re taking it without permission! This is stealing! You're taking our homes, our schools, our hospitals…It’s all we have! And it’s on sale? I’m gonna get to the bottom of this. I’m gonna get to the bottom of all of it!” – Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld)

After his break-up with Mia Farrow and the tabloid circus that followed, Woody Allen’s professional reputation was tarnished, perhaps irrevocably. Throughout the 1990s Allen did a number of things to shift public opinion, including a rare acting performance in the computer-animated Dreamworks film Antz (1998).

Antz is the story of Z-4195, or Z for short, a non-conformist ant. And hiring Allen for the role was a casting coup. He’s perfect as the neurotic complainer, unhappy with his role in the colony, a drone destined for a live of drudgery. Z is desperate for some way to break free, to express his individualism.

Considering the length of time it took to develop Bee Movie, it’s surprising that, like Antz, the film focuses on a non-conformist insect, unhappy with his role in the colony and desperate to escape the drudgery of life as a drone. The only real difference is that Seinfeld’s Barry is a bee.

All of which made it a bit disappointing that, for his first project after retiring his wildly successful sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld spend the better part of a decade developing this highly derivative movie. In fairness, I suppose, once things get going the two stories diverge.

While both Antz and Bee Movie evolve into romantic comedy, Barry’s is a bizarre inter-special relationship, with human florist Vanessa Bloome. Their chemistry has an uncomfortable romantic undertone, but is key to the film’s machinations. It is Vanessa who leads Barry to the discovery that humans have been stealing the bees’ honey, transforming the film into a courtroom drama. The plot shifts a third time, in the dramatic climax, forcing the humans and bees to work together to re-pollinate the planet.

Bee Movie is amusing enough, but considering the talent and effort that went into making it, I expected something a bit more original. A largely disappointing and forgettable movie.

“That’s the basis of our influence now, the fact that we’ve spent less on food. It’s America’s best kept secret. We feed ourselves with approximately 16 or 17% of our take-home pay. That’s marvelous. That’s a very small chunk to feed ourselves. And that includes all of the meals we eat at restaurants, all of the fancy doodads we get in our food system. I don’t see much room for improvement there, which means we’ll spend our surplus cash on something else.” – Earl L. Butz, 18^th United States Secretary of Agriculture

For good or for ill, in the United States today, much of our agricultural policy can be directly traced to Earl L. Butz. As Secretary of Agriculture from 1971-1976, Butz abolished the strategic grain reserve and shifted government crop subsidization policy to reward surpluses. Butz was also an advocate of monocropping, and encouraged farmers to plant their crops “from fencerow to fencerow.”

In addition to fostering corporate agriculture, these policies led to an abundance of inexpensive commodity crops, like corn and soy. Cheap corn gave rise to corn-fed livestock, and by extension cheaper meat. It also made high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) an affordable alternative to sugar.

In their documentary King Corn Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis explore corn’s ubiquitous place in the food chain. Beginning with a hair analysis demonstrating how much of their diet can be traced to corn, the recent college graduates decide on a radical next step.

Cheney and Ellis move to Iowa, rent an acre of land and spend the next year growing a crop of government subsidized corn. They plan to ultimately follow their crop as it makes its way through the food system.

King Corn is an unexpectedly sweet film. Though both Cheney and Ellis grew up in the east, each had ancestors from the same rural county in Iowa where they grow their corn. The story of corn is intertwined with a history of agriculture, personalized through their families’ biographies and interviews with distant relatives.

In the age of Michael Moore’s self-aggrandizing, gotcha documentaries, Cheney and Ellis treat their subjects with an abundance of respect. They have an obvious reverence for the family farmer. And, while they are clearly troubled by corn’s place in our diet, they don’t fault the farmers—many of them barely making ends meet—who grow the subsidized commodities.

In fact, I think that King Corn may be a bit too generous. By focusing their documentary on smaller farmers, Cheney and Ellis ignore the rise of corporate agriculture. And in neglecting the fact that the top 10% of growers receive 75% of agricultural subsidies, King Corn glosses over a major contributing factor to the corn in our diets. The conglomerates that are growing these monocrops are tied to the large companies that package corn-syrup sweetened processed foods and offer 99¢ corn-fed beef burgers.

I suppose Cheney and Ellis recognize that most advocacy works best from the ground up. In educating consumers about their food supply and the sheer quantity of corn-based foods being ingesting, they’ve provided the tools for people to modify their own diets.

Cheney and Ellis close the film with a simple action of their own, mostly a symbolic gesture, by purchasing the acre of land they’d rented for their experiment. Sure, it’s a futile effort, that will do nothing to curtail the pervasiveness of corn. Yet watching the two baseball fans play catch in their now fallow field made me smile.

“The American Dream, in my opinion, is in the toilet. It’s history. It’s gone. The American Dream is now how do we survive the future. It’s not having an eight bedroom home with eleven bathrooms. It’s not having the career and a lawn and all of the amenities. It is simply how do our children and our children’s children even have a chance at life.” – Michael Reynolds

Garbage Warrior wears its bias on its sleeve. A documentary about architect Michael Reynolds, the film is largely told from Reynolds’s point of view. It champions the architect’s perspective, it advocates his ideology.

The film’s not really a white-wash though. We see that Reynolds can be abrasive, dismissive of authority and that some of his designs are dysfunctional. We learn that there have been angry clients and lots of lawsuits.

To be clear though, with Garbage Warrior director Oliver Hodge is evangelizing on Reynolds’s behalf. Either you accept the designer’s belief that climate change, dwindling natural resources and overpopulation are potentially catastrophic or you don’t. If you accept Reynolds’s thesis, the film is a call to action, a blueprint for sustainable living. If not, well then Reynolds and his designs probably come across as sheer lunacy.

Though not really the focus of the documentary, it’s impossible to talk about Reynolds, or Garbage Warrior without discussing his creations, dubbed earthships. So what exactly is an earthship, anyway?

An earthship is essentially a passive solar home, situated for maximum southern exposure. The home’s south face is usually glass, and absorbs light from the sun. The earthship’s foundation, using principles of thermal mass, consists of old cans, plastic bottles and tires. The tires are filled with “rammed earth,” dirt tightly packed with a sledge hammer. When filled with as much mass as possible, the stacked tires are plastered in adobe.

Using these innovative techniques, earthship’s both capture and store the sun’s energy. Without heating or cooling systems, the homes traditionally remain a consistent 68° F, regardless of the external temperature.

Reynolds and a rebel gang of misfits and malcontents have been building these homes outside of Taos, New Mexico, where land is cheap and unconnected to the utility grid. Through the use of solar panels and grey water recycling systems, earthships can effectively remain off-the-grid, and free from utility payments.

Much of Garbage Warrior focuses on Reynolds as he battles county and state government to build earthship communities free from zoning laws. Flagrantly disregarding the law, he is stripped of his architectural licenses. And Taos County closes one of his earthship developments for code violations.

In the film, government employees claim that these were good faith efforts designed to keep the community safe. Other participants suggest that utility companies, threatened by the potential loss of revenue, successfully lobbied against Reynolds and his communities. I suspect one’s opinion about the state’s true motivations largely depends on one’s political philosophy. The film does offer a hint to the director’s opinion though.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunami that claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced more than one million people, Reynolds and his team traveled to the Andaman Islands. Presented as a contrast to Reynolds’s fight with the New Mexican government, the Indian government is eager for any assistance and training that Reynolds can provide. Similarly, in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita, Reynolds’s crew visit Mexico, building an earthship for victims there.

In the wake of calamity, governments are only too eager for sustainable alternatives, forgoing bureaucracy to get earthships built as quickly as possible. But Reynolds’s point is that we’re all facing disaster. His mission is to build as many of these homes as possible, before we all run out of time.

I thought about Reynolds this morning as I read that Nicholas Gotelli, a professor at the University of Vermont, was invited to a debate with creationists from the ironically named Discovery Institute. Gotelli responded that:

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

I mention this because it reminds me of the inane pseudo-debate on climate change, in light of the potential perils we face. If we accept that catastrophic climate change has a basis in reality, with broad scientific support, it strikes me as insanity that we’d continue to simply go about our business as usual.

I have an enormous respect for former Vice President Al Gore, and the attention he’s brought to global warming with his film, An Inconvenient Truth (2006). But if you believe, as Gore does, as Reynolds does and as I do, that we are on the precipice, does it seem more intelligent to hypocritically rack up outrageous utility costs, as Gore does? Or does it make more sense fighting to build energy-independent housing, as Reynolds is doing?

Claiming that we face enormous challenge but ignoring potential solutions seems quite irresponsible to me. Garbage Warrior demonstrates that Reynolds is offering solutions, risking his reputation and livelihood to deliver them. Anything else is simply whistling past the graveyard.

Mamma mia, here I go again, my my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I’ve missed you?
Yes, I’ve been brokenhearted, blue since the day we parted
Why, why did I ever let you go?
Mamma mia, now I really know, my my, I could never let you go.
– Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep)

Writing about Chicago, I suggested that one’s enjoyment of the film was predicated on one’s enjoyment of musicals in general. I’ll offer a similar disclaimer for Mamma Mia! with an additional caveat, this movie is purely for fans of the Swedish pop group ABBA.

Developed first as a stage musical by playwright Catherine Johnson, Mamma Mia! has shoehorned much of ABBA’s catalog into the story of single mother Donna Sheridan (Streep) who has raised her daughter Sophie (Seyfried) at a dilapidated hotel on a secluded Greek island.

About to be married, Sophie wants to invite her father to the wedding, so she steals her mother’s diary to discover her mysterious dad is one of three men. Undeterred, she invites all three to the wedding. Hijinx ensue.

There isn’t very much plot, just enough to stitch ABBA’s discography into a reasonably cohesive narrative. Streep, predictably, makes the most of her role and proves to be a surprisingly effective singer.

Seyfried, too, has a good voice, which is all her character really demands. To see Seyfried actually act, check her out in HBO’s Big Love. She is excellent as Sarah Hendrickson, the conflicted teenaged daughter of polygamists.

Neither Brosnan, Firth nor Skarsgård has a particularly strong talent for song, which is painfully obvious when they sing, or more accurately rhythmically shout over musical accompaniment.. Their banter is amusing enough though, and each display a seemingly genuine affection for Seyfried’s Sophie.

Mamma Mia!’s worst sin isn’t that it’s a horrible train wreck of a film, but rather that it’s completely unnecessary. I suppose that to be expected when you try to string a narrative from a collection of thirty-year old pop tunes.

“For guys like me, Las Vegas washes away your sins. It's like a morality car wash. It does for us what Lourdes does for humpbacks and cripples. And along with making us legit…comes cash, tons of it. I mean, what do you think we’re doing out here in the middle of the desert? It’s all this money.” – Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert DeNiro)

For years Casino has been derided as kind of a Goodfellas Redux. It’s not hard to see why. Released only five years after Goodfellas, the film reunited Martin Scorsese with author/screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, and actors Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent in a profane, shockingly violent tale about organized crime.

Inspired by true story of sports handicapper Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro, Casino has more in common thematically with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II (1974). Though both films ostensibly portray the mafia’s influence in Las Vegas gambling, each more subtly chronicles the disintegration of a marriage and a vain quest for legitimacy.

Whereas The Godfather’s Michael Corleone is unrepentantly evil—his own quest for legitimacy merely lip-service to his long dead, youthful ideals—Casino’s Ace Rothstein wants merely to be an honest businessman. The dream is still within his grasp.

Interestingly, here is a mob movie where the lead character is generally honest, non-violent and law-abiding. Sure rules are bent here and there, and Rothstein has no illusions about the true nature of his gangster employers. Yet he works hard to keep his nose clean. Las Vegas has legitimized his trade, and he makes every effort to exploit the opportunity he’s been given. It’s largely the criminal escapades of gangster Nicky Santoro (Pesci), that destroys Rothstein’s dream.

Martin Scorsese is a modern master and, as such, any tale he decides to tell is one worth watching. Repeatedly. While not my favorite Scorsese film, Casino is in the director’s top tier.

Red: Man, I’m just into Buddhism, and I’m at peace with the fact that me, as this person, probably gonna not be around. Think about a hermit crab, okay? And it's a shell. It’s like, they go from one shell to the next. And that’s what I am. I'm just a hermit crab changin’ shells.
Dale: Except if you’re a dick your whole life, your next shell will be made of shit, okay? If you’re an asshole, you're gonna come back as a cockroach or a worm or a fuckin’ anal bead, okay? If you’re a man and you act heroic, you'll come back as an eagle. You’ll come back as a dragon. You’ll come back as Jude Law, okay? Which would you rather be?
Red: Maybe the anal bead, depending on who it belongs to.
Dale: Belongs to me.
Red: Then the dragon.

The best part of Sunday night’s predictably bloated, self-congratulatory Oscar telecast was Judd Apatow’s short tribute to comedy in 2008, with Seth Rogan and James Franco reprising their characters from Pineapple Express. I’ve been a fan of Apatow’s universe since his short-lived TV series, Freaks and Geeks (1999), but I hadn’t found the time to watch his latest production. The Oscar skit was sufficiently charming that I moved Pineapple Express to the top of my screening queue.

The film did not disappoint. Largely a dumb stoner comedy, the plot revolves about process server Dale Denton (Rogan), who witnesses a murder. The killers are drug kingpin Ted Jones (Cole) and his girlfriend Carol (Perez), a corrupt police officer. Dale is stoned when he stumbles on the crime, and in a fit of drug-induced paranoia he flees the scene, carelessly leaving behind a roach. Naturally, Ted recognizes the marijuana as his own rare strain, called Pineapple Express. This leads the killers to Denton’s dealer Saul Silver (Franco), and a wacky chase-fueled buddy comedy.

Sure it’s puerile—there are plenty of kicks to the crotch and a lot of mindless stoner ramblings. And the plot is filled with dead-ends. A weirdly amusing prologue and a subplot with Dale’s underaged girlfriend (Heard) are poorly resolved. The film’s climax unexpectedly veers into a gratuitous bloodbath. But it’s damned funny.

I was in stitches when Saul attempts to rescue Dale, evading the cops in a stolen police cruiser. The windshield is covered in red slushie, so Saul attempts to kick it out, like they do in the movies. The result, and it’s effect on their chase is the films best sustained gag. Dale and Saul also find themselves in an amusing, and incredibly destructive, stoner fight with another dealer named Red (McBride).

While there’s nothing particularly original or groundbreaking here, Pineapple Express met my basic criteria for a good comedy, keeping me laughing throughout.