The Aviator (2004)

Why did Howard Hughes lose his mind?

Perhaps it was caused by the long hours that he spent editing his own movies in that darkened, private screening room. Hughes sat watching the reels of his multi-million dollar movie Hell's Angels over and over and over again, ruthlessly seeking out what did and didn't work. He wanted to achieve perfection, and fix all broken things. Perhaps this was a sort of compensation, a way of making up for those things he could not repair or improve about himself.

And finally, like a projector that gets stuck in a repeating loop, something busted in his brain. He found himself repeating a phrase during a conversation--repeating it ceaselessly, compulsively, unable to stop.

In most movies about crackpots, the person going mad doesn't seem to realize what's happening to him. What turns Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator from a comedy into a horror film is that Hughes seems fully aware of his freight-train life derailing and plunging into an abyss. In moments where he falls into the repeating loop, he clamps his hand over his mouth to stop the madness, all but bashing his own brains out to get that needle unstuck from its groove, unable to scream because he's too busy talking nonsense.

If only his speech defect were the biggest problem. The Aviator portrays a man who skyrockets to fame and fortune while demonstrating poor judgment on every front... and on the sides as well. Scorsese seems to admire some of this misbehavior as much as he is terrified by other aspects, and thus his film ends up glorifying a self-indulgent braggart, a womanizer, a reckless spender, an egomaniacal fool.

Does that mean The Aviator is a waste of time? Oh no. The film's strengths are impressive indeed, enough to deserve the film a place on any critic's Ten Best of 2004 list.

But it must also be noted that Scorsese, clearly dazzled by Hughes' sensational success, seems insufficiently concerned with anything, or anyone, beyond Hughes and his reckless dreams.

Leonardo DiCaprio, in the first role worthy of his sensational talent since he appeared as a kid in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, brings Hughes to vivid life. It's a pedal-to-the-metal performance, in which DiCaprio's teen-boy voice works to his advantage, accentuating Hughes' boyish impulses and his inability to grasp the complexities of the grownup world. We buy Hughes' intensity, his jumps (no, leaps) to conclusions, and finally his plunge into insanity. During those terrifying sequences when his train of thought derails, DiCaprio looks like he's going to sweat blood. He seems to have used his millions and his genius to send a special-ops squad into his head armed with power tools to try and repair broken connections. The portrayal of this disintegration should silence DiCaprio's critics. The great actor is still there; he's just been waiting for a character who isn't a bland romantic hero (Titanic, Gangs of New York).

DiCaprio's not the only one making a comeback. It appears that Scorsese the Great Director is still alive and well, too. He's suddenly within reach of his first Oscar, and he deserves it far more for this than for his ambitious-but-flawed Gangs of New York. This is the best-looking picture he's ever made, and the editing that merges differing chapters, cushioned with bits of newsreel reports, keeps us informed and engaged without ever devolving into mere exposition. The special effects, which bring to life aerial combat scenes from the production of Hughes' blockbuster film Hell's Angels and the test flights of innovative airplanes, are a hit-and-miss affair; some of them are awe-inspiring, others seem artificial. But the whole production employs artifice without apology, so that it's easy to forgive a few unconvincing flourishes of digital animation.

It's also worth noting that this is the closest thing to a comedy Scorsese has directed since After Hours. You'll laugh, you'll fly. If you watch the viewers sitting in front of you in the theatre, you'll see their hair blown back by the exhilarating (if slightly artificial) stunt-flying scenes, some of which are taken straight from Hughes' own work. Scenes of rapid-fire dialogue are just as much fun, the cast pushing their characters to the edge of caricature, giving a cartoonish energy to the high-speed storytelling. It's hard to imagine framing this story as anything but a comedy, since Hughes dared to climb so many staggering peaks, fell into so many pits, and dragged himself back to climb again.

John Logan, who wrote Gladiator, has far surpassed his previous achievements with a script drawn tight as wire, and barbed as well with sharp wit and touches of poetry. It begins in the 1920's with Hughes' work on Hell's Angels, which seems insane even by today's blockbuster standards. Hughes funds the silent picture himself, driving his colleagues to exhaustion, running far over-budget, and finally completing this controversial project, only to realize that he wants to remake the picture as "a talkie," which he suddenly realizes is the future of film

"The future." Hughes is obsessed with it, as if he's planted one foot in a time two decades forward and, finding this stretch uncomfortable, is desperately trying to drag himself and his present day reality along with him into a new era. Having conquered Hollywood in his mid-20s, he moved on to the world of aviation, purchasing TWA, designing sleek new airplanes with such enthusiasm that it was hard to ignore the rather Freudian implications of such interests. (Hughes was also preoccupied with the female form--primarily their bosoms--and actually confronted the MPAA after they demanded that he edit gratuitous cleavage from his film The Outlaw.)

And speaking of women, Hughes welcomed the opportunities his fame and fortune brought him. Like most rich, powerful visionaries, he didn't give a second thought to what any Higher Power might think of him; he was happy to bed a long line of glamorous ladies (the film only mentions a few) who pursued him or gave in to his charm.

Of the famous ladies he "courted," Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani, in a fleeting, one-line appearance) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale, "all dolled up") made headlines. But the one who played the biggest part in his glamorous life was Katharine Hepburn. The film portrays Hepburn as one who truly, deeply loved him, even as the cracks began to spread through his sanity.

But none of them would be able to compete with Hughes' one true love--aviation. And the film delights us with Hughes' brave test-flights of new airplanes ... until one of them comes to a famously misguided landing in the middle of Beverly Hills, altering Hughes' life forever. (This particular sequence, edited brilliantly by Thelma Schoonmaker, will have viewers reaching for their seatbelts and the ushers reaching for the fire extinguishers.)

In the later chapters, as a mid-40s Hughes disintegrates into mental illness, viewers will become more and more impressed with DiCaprio's work. We admire the Hughes he creates; we care about him; we're horrified by him; and we're infuriated with him. This was a man of fantastic dreams and motivating energy, and yet he was also self-absorbed, selfish, and heartless in his relationships with others. The Aviator's primary flaw is that it becomes too enamored of Hughes without properly  acknowledging the damage he did to the lives of others along the way, the opportunities he overlooked to employ his wealth and talent in more humanitarian ways.

This is a dilemma that will fuel conversations after the film is over. But it is our responsibility to acknowledge when something is done with excellence, and while the script does not raise enough questions about Hughes' reckless, egomaniacal actions, the rest of the filmmakers involved do excellent work.

Inspired by the energy and drama, the actors revel in their opportunities, and some of them turn in work that stands alongside the best of their careers.

I've already praised DiCaprio for finally delivering on the promise he showed in his earliest work. But in spite of his fantastic effort, the movie is stolen out from under him. Cate Blanchett gives such gusto to her turn as Katherine Hepburn that when she walks off the screen, the characters left behind look likely to depart as well, following her in awe. She may not look like Hepburn, but the body language and the verbal bravado are the same. No performance by a supporting actress this year--except perhaps Maia Morgenstern as the unforgettable Mary of The Passion--will burn as brightly in retrospect.

Alan Alda plays Senator Owen Brewster, Hughes' governmental nemesis, who tries to bring down the Hughes legacy on charges of war profiteering. Alec Baldwin gives menace and a wicked wit to the head of Pan Am, Juan Trippe. As Hughes' chief advisor and financial tutor, Noah Dietrich, John C. Reilly delivers a generous, humble, but solid performance, refusing to over-play the characters astonishment at Hughes' reckless spending. He also delivers what is probably the biggest laugh-out-loud punch-line of the film.

Oscar nominations should also go to Robert Richardson's vivid, imaginative cinematography, which equals his excellent effort in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Dante Ferretti's production design is awe-inspiring; we feel transported through time, from the decadence of the Coconut Grove nightclub to a vast beet field where Hughes has to set down one of his experimental planes. The costumes by Sandy Powell are meticulously designed. And Howard Shore, the composer of The Lord of the Rings' Oscar-winning soundtracks, delivers something entirely different and equally effective.

Scorsese has much to be proud of with this film. But as a storyteller, working with Logan's screenplay, he's stuck in some of the shallowest waters of his career. He's a seeker, one fascinated by men of power who change the world, men who often defy religion and the law in order to communicate their vision to a bewildered world. From Charlie Cappa (Mean Streets), to Raging Bull's Jake LaMotta, to Henry Hill (Goodfellas), to Christ himself (or, at least, Nikos Kazantzakis' fictionalized, flawed savior in The Last Temptation of Christ), he wants to know what makes these larger-than-life personalities tick, what crosses they must carry as they struggle to reconcile the honorable and dishonorable parts of their nature. In Hughes, there's not much to admire in the way of virtue. He ran roughshod over anyone who stood in his way. While his courage was impressive, his methods and his priorities would unfortunately become a bad example to many who came to admire him. If you prefer celebrity, power, and riches to integrity, humility, and generosity, then Hughes is your American dream made manifest.

When it comes to learning how to succeed by worldly standards, Donald Trump wouldn't even qualify to serve as Hughes' apprentice. Hughes's achievements should prompt us to wonder what would be possible if billionaires like Donald Trump had more than just ego and ambition - if they had dreams about a better world. Bill Gates, actually, would be a better comparison; his humanitarian efforts and commitment to helping Africa are more impressive than any of Howard Hughes' vainglorious dreams.

But where is the cultural hero with the imagination, the daring, and the ambition of Hughes, who also demonstrates a sense of ethics, of integrity, and of selfless love for others? Imagine what an impact such a person could have on the world. To find someone with that kind of vision, courage, and humility, you'd have to go back two thousand years. Or you could watch another 2004 movie ... by a director named Mel Gibson.

There, you'll see the difference between the heroes we want to be and the heroes we should desire to be. The glitz and glamour that Howard Hughes enjoyed is certainly more appealing than what Jesus Christ endures in The Passion. But only one of these men sets the example that can save the world ... even if his story is overlooked, or worse condemned, by critics. How little things have changed in two thousand years.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

The Apostle (1997)

This review was originally published at Green Lake Reflections, the arts-review branch of a Green Lake Presbyterian Church's website, in 1997. It has since been edited and revised.

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In The Apostle, his directorial debut, Robert Duvall gives what is arguably 1997's best performance by an actor.

Even more impressive that – Duvall wrote the screenplay, which gives us what may be the most unapologetic, intimate portrayal of a religious man in the history of American cinema.

This is the story of the Reverend E.F. — "Sonny," to those close to him — a minister whose marital troubles lead him to a violent crime and a flight from the law. Duvall's story is so simple, he can take his time and acclimate the audience to the environment, the needs of the communities, and thus the possibilities of healing and harmony in broken families and across racial lines.

And he clearly knows his way around the heart of southern evangelicalism. The enthusiasm of the congregations in the churches depicted is remarkably genuine, and even hardened skeptics will find it hard to resist the inspiring power of those rousing worship services.

Duvall's supporting cast includes a surprisingly engaging Farrah Fawcett as his disillusioned wife, Billy Bob Thornton as a stubborn thick-headed redneck, and Miranda Richardson in yet another of her astonishing transformations this time, she's a southern belle through and through.

In this simple story of a pilgrim's progress, Duvall's patient and observant direction avoids sentimentalism, does not look away when things get ugly, and leaves a lot of loose ends, giving the film the authenticity of a good documentary when it comes to the context, and the intimacy of a candid autobiography. E.F., zealous as he is for the gospel, has not overcome all his sins: He has "a wandering eye" and a lack of self-control.

He is also unique among big-screen Christian characters in his willingness to get angry with God. In one scene, we visit E.F.'s mother awakened in the night by the familiar — and, it turns out, endearing — sound of the fallen evangelist ranting and raging at God.

It sometimes seems that filmmakers find it impossible to portray a Christian who isn't hiding some shocking skeleton in the closet or on the verge of stumbling into serious criminal behavior. But Duvall isn't interested in attacking faith itself... just exploring the sin of hypocrisy. He illustrates the fallible humanity of evangelists, the need for humility in a leader, and the need for redemption even in (and especially in) one who who is respected as a teacher. Audiences accustomed to cruel caricatures of Christians will be challenged by this nuanced presentation of believers who, for all of their theatrical and emotional forms of expression, are also noble, hardworking, admirable people.

In this, we find a truer example of the gospel at work than we would in a preachy, two-dimensional story. This gospel feels applicable to own own lives, unlike the harsh and punishing prescriptions of judgmental and legalistic TV preachers. This reverend, who can seem alien and threatening when he's onstage shouting at congregants, is revealed to be thoroughly human as we discover his weaknesses, his heart, and his own incomplete understanding of an incomprehensible God.

Unlike so much wishful-thinking storytelling in Christian media, The Apostle isn't about how his devotion to Jesus brings him to the end of wrestling with sin. It remains a realistic character sketch about a sinner who, after a battle with his conscience, emerges wiser, his faith renewed, but still flawed and struggling. This rings true in a way that audiences should find easier to receive than a sermon.

When seen in combination with the simple powerful telling of the gospel in Spielberg's Amistad, The Apostle should have viewers thinking about the gospel in a fresh new way this year... and I suspect its power will make it an enduring favorite.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

[This review was originally published at Looking Closer in 2001 on the occasion of this film's release.]

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There is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature. - Capt. Lt. Gen. R. Corman (G.D. Spradlin)

The most critically acclaimed movie of the 2001 was made 22 years ago. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) stands on many critics' lists of all-time favorites, and this new, longer version — Redux — reveals further Coppola's ambition and brilliance. While the 49 minutes of added footage here say more about ambition than brilliance, they do provide important missing pieces that strengthen the film's argument against war and, more convincingly, against the American arrogance that led to the cataclysmic fiasco of the Vietnam War.

Martin Sheen stars as Captain Willard, an American soldier sent on a mission up the Nang River through Vietnam into Cambodia to find and assassinate another American, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). In a tense meeting with his superiors, Willard is shown Kurtz's impressive military history, and he is told the long and sordid tale of Kurtz's deterioration from an exemplary soldier to a power-mad rebel.  "His methods became...unsound," mutters the commander, looking halfway to crazy himself.   Kurtz has disappeared into the wilderness to start some kind of cult.

At first, Willard cannot comprehend how this "perfect soldier" could embrace such brutality and the animal laws of the jungle. But the farther he travels into the hellish battlegrounds of the jungle, the more he realizes the madness, audacity, and, yes, "unsound methods" of America's participation in the struggle. As young and bewildered soldiers die meaningless deaths around him, he feels his own soul, and sanity, suffocating. In the end, Willard has some inkling that he perhaps he is as lost as the man he has been sent to kill.

Basically an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, which sets the story in the Congo rather than Vietnam, Apocalypse Now is about Americans lost in a war they do not understand. Conrad's novel gave Coppola the perfect vehicle for a cinematic odyssey into the heart of the Vietnam conflict.

It is also the perfect device for so many universal stories, mythic and true. The journey is everyman's road to self-discovery.  Contrary to popular psychology, "self-realization" is a slow road to a realization of one's own limitations, helplessness, and innate evil. Even King David, "a man after God's own heart," found absolute power to be absolutely corrupting.  In Apocalypse Now the men are not God-fearing, so they have nowhere to turn when they hit bottom. Thus the film becomes a parable of the godless reaching the precipice at their wits' end.

It is also a story of family dynamics.  Willard is a sort of surrogate father to a crew of young and fearful recruits.  As he tries to muster fatherly guidance to a group of young punks, he can't even bring comfort to himself, and then watches the family crumble under pressure. When his men see that duty has robbed Willard of his own conscience, their last hope for moral guidance and rescue from the inevitable darkness disappears. They too are on the slippery slope to madness.

Perhaps most intentionally, Apocalypse Now is the story of a nation.  One country is trampling another in an arrogant rush to play "hero".  But as the authorities back home make decisions behind closed doors, the reality of warfare's damaging effects is visited upon the sons on the front lines.  And, contrary to the press's reports (in this new version we listen to Kurtz reading polished PR from Time Magazine), things are not improving. Innocents are getting shot for merely looking suspicious, and in this kind of war you look suspicious if you look foreign.  The movie is very hard to watch; the camera doesn't flinch; we do.  There are children in the trees where those bombs are headed.  And screaming mothers learn very quickly that you cannot carry your frightened children and outrun the blast of a grenade.

This is not just gratuitous gore. This is even nobler than the realism of Saving Private Ryan which tends to shout at us "Look how real it all is! Isn't it terrible?!"  No, Coppola reaches for something higher, more literary. Everything on one side of a particular frame is juxtaposed with something elsewhere in the same picture.  While medics tend to the dying, other soldiers joke their way into a sort of escapist surreality.  Untimely comedy and the inconvenience of accident make things discomfortingly real. One scene involving the discovery of a puppy alive in the chaos is as heart-rending as the famous moment when a bull is sacrificed during a dark ritual, but both suggest the same thing...the death of the innocent, natural world at the hands of arrogance and confusion.

Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is almost too good. He captures so much natural beauty that we gasp and gape at the grandeur of sunsets, jungles, a fleet of helicopters like bizarre locusts hovering on the horizon; but we're not allowed to enjoy it, quickly struck down hard by the undeniable foolishness and madness taking place in the foreground. With unflinching boldness, Storaro shows us elements we are accustomed to seeing in scenes of nobility and patriotism, but instead captures the truth of human ignorance, accident, arrogance, and the way violence begets violence spiraling down into chaos.

The new material isn't entirely necessary, and some may find it excessive. When the soldiers encounter the Playboy Bunnies that the government has sent to entertain them, the scene is amusing for a moment and then becomes a nauseating display of lust, violence, and chaos. But in the second encounter with the Bunnies, a new scene, we see the men pairing off with the for romantic liaisons, and we quickly have another example of American male arrogance, insensitivity, and possessiveness. It is as troubling and as hard to watch as any scene in the movie. As the men pursue encounters to match their fantasies, it is difficult to ignore the tragic, reprehensible hard-heartedness of the soldiers toward women who are clearly numb with abuse and neglect. Does it add anything to the story? I think the "Bunny scene" deepens the film's metaphor about specifically American evils. But it does toe the line of excess.

Later, when Willard has dinner with French colonialists in the jungle, their political discussion seems like a subject that the interested the director, but it feels like we've switched to the History Channel. And then we switch to the soft porn channel — where Willard has a romantic liaison with a ghostly French widow, and gives us one too many reminders that man is divided between his will to love and his will to destroy.

But Redux's virtues far outweigh its flaws. Apocalypse Now in any version remains one of the richest, most extravagant moviegoing experiences of my life. See it on a big screen; to see it on video is to settle for a concert on the radio rather than going to hear a symphony.

While many critics call The Godfather and The Godfather, Part 2 Coppola's finest films (some, in fact call them the greatest movies ever made), I prefer Apocalypse Now. The Godfather is strong in script, performances, and direction, but Apocalypse goes beyond this into visual poetry, where the story and the world in which it takes place are so forcefully beautiful and terrible that it seems Coppola is just a tour guide — wherever he aims the camera, mystery, nightmare, and revelation are vivid and the screen is hardly big enough to contain them.

You can practically feel the heat from the helicopters, smell the sweat on Captain Willard's furrowed brow, inhale the cold dank mist down the river. The jungle is soundtrack enough, so he restrains the soundtrack to the most necessary moments. When music does come in, it is attached to character. The Doors' songs resound in Willard's head like a musical curse, and "Flight of the Valkyries" is the theme song of choice for a half-mad military leader as he leads the charge on Vietnam from a height where he doesn't have to see the anguish on the faces of the dying. (You see, a movie about American soldiers in Vietnam doesn't need a riveting soundtrack; the soldiers are so media-saturated that they prefer to fight with a soundtrack piped right into reality.)

Coppola's greatness is that he binds all of these searing images and sounds into a meaningful purpose. When humankind decides there is no god beyond itself, it slowly spirals downward into self-destruction — no film portrays this truth better. There are painful moments when these broken men seem ready to cry out for God, but instead they reach for the wrong things. Every man that Willard encounters along his dark path is at another stage of madness born of despair. The film inadvertently echoes Ecclesiastes — human effort is futile without the humbling, guiding influence of God's grace and love. It is a giant DO NOT ENTER sign posted at the edge of the human heart's sinful abyss.

I can think of no more fitting portrayal of hell in the history of movies than the moment when Colonel Kurtz comes a culminating moment of self-realization and gasps, "The horror, the horror."

Just as troubling, though, is the film's opening line... as we see Willard's face upside-down in the frame, perhaps at the end of his journey and thinking back, we hear him murmur, "I am still only in Saigon." The damage is done.  Like the Radiohead songs says, "There are trapdoors that you can't come back from."

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Anger Management (2003)

I was interested to see what Adam Sandler did to follow-up one of my favorite films of last year - Punch-drunk Love. Director Paul Thomas Anderson perceived a real actor behind Sandler's usual lowbrow-comedy shenanigans. Together they delivered the most original and exciting romantic comedy since When Harry Met Sally, one that defied formula and became a profound modern parable about romance, grace, rage, and self-control.

That was an impressive step forward for Sandler.

And Sandler's new movie Anger Management is about as awful as Punch-drunk Love is great. While he shares top billing with Jack Nicholson, and is thus sure to score a huge hit, he has fallen back into a gutter of unimaginative, juvenile humor and preposterous storytelling.

I should have looked beyond the impressive cast list and been worried by the names of the producers—these are the folks responsible for the forgettable Master of Disguise and The Animal. (Remember those? No? Well, there you go.) These filmmakers, including director Peter Segal, aren't even playing the same game as Paul Thomas Anderson... they're playing a whole different sport.

Watching Anger Management is like going to the NBA All-Star Game and seeing a fantastic team take the floor, but when the game begins you realize that they're all stoned.

Segal must have been proud to score such a great cast. And the premise had promise. But that's about all he can be proud of. The movie tries to mix the buddy-movie feel of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the raunch-fest of a Farrelly Brothers movie, and the psychological twists of thrillers like The Game. These things don't mix.

Here's the promising premise: Sandler stars as Dave Buznik, the usual shy, insecure, occasionally wrathful Sandler character who this time stumbles into a giant misunderstanding and ends up in court. No, this isn't The Peter Buck Story. You see, Buznik didn't really lose his temper. He was a victim of post-9/11 hypersensitivity on the part of passenger airline staff. Thus, he is swiftly appointed to attend anger management courses, and there he provokes the other offenders to rage by demonstrating just how self-controlled he actually is. Soon, his anger management instructor, Buddy Rydell (Nicholson), is moving into his apartment to tyrannize and terrorize his life until his well-repressed anger either goes away entirely or explodes and sends him into solitary confinement.

There's more. Too much more. The movie piles on characters and tangents that exist only to allow for as many dirty jokes as possible. It's like they took a bunch of lousy Saturday Night Live skits and constructed a flimsy story that would connect the dots.

Of course, there's a love story. And there's a plot about whether Sandler will get the big promotion at the office. Plus, there is a whole lot of time and energy spent discussing the importance of a man's "size" in his relationship with his girlfriend. To cap things off, it stoops to play on our emotions about the terrorist-damaged New York, giving Mayor Giuliani a most insultingly inappropriate last-act appearance.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Anger Management is this: the actors seem to have no idea how bad the movie is. They revel in its badness. Nicholson's wicked grin still seems to delight many critics, but I got sick of it long before this same old shtick won him another Oscar in As Good As It Gets. In fact, Nicholson has become such a predictable performer that he earned himself an Oscar nomination again this year merely by holding back from his signature eye-flashing and teeth-baring. Here, he basically hams it up, showing he has as much sense of good comedy as Robert DeNiro has shown in recent years.

Folks don't expect much of Sandler, and, well, this time he meets their low expectations with the same menu of stammering, blinking, and explosive rage that he did in The Waterboy. The two have a couple of good scenes, like the one in which Nicholson forces Sandler to stop in rush hour traffic and sing "I Feel Pretty." But then they bring the joke back over and over, until we're sick of it.

The wonderful Marisa Tomei continues to confound the expectations of those who know she's a great actress, wasting another of her rare big screen appearances on this gooey-eyed and ludicrous character.

In fact, the only pleasure I had watching Anger Management was being constantly surprised by the likable actors who lined up to embarrass themselves. John C. Reilly, Harry Dean Stanton, Luis Guzman, John Turturro... the list goes on. This cast deserves the Coen Brothers, not this stuff.

Thanks to the cast's enthusiasm, the comedy engine turns over a few times, splutters, sounds like it's coming to life with something truly inspired... but then it stalls, choking on the fumes of mean-spirited punchlines. We are forced into the unpleasant company of sex-obsessed lesbian porn actresses who exist in this movie only so the frat boys in the audience can hoot in Neanderthal enthusiasm. We are even subjected to a scene in which a Buddhist monk is baited into violence and adolescent insult-hurling. Kevin Nealon plays an attorney who is gay, and any reference to his homosexuality is used to make us laugh at him. Why isn't somebody blowing the whistle on the movie as throwing fuel on the fire of prejudice?

It says a lot that Heather Graham, once again onscreen only to flaunt her pin-up physique, is one of the highlights of the movie. At least she has the guts to over-play her big scene and achieve some level of outrageous surrealism. (I won't ever see a plate of brownies without thinking of her face-stuffing temper tantrum.)

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles had the appeal of a good story about being trapped in bad circumstances with unpleasant company. We could relate to it. It struck a balance between engaging comedy and a simple heartwarming story of an odd couple trying to learn to live with each other. It left us with a simple moral: open yourself to the outcast and the unappealing... learn the joys of showing grace and love.

Anger Management has no such virtues. It careens between raunchy humor and a story of "true love" in which characters make alarmingly immature and foolish decisions with frightening frequency. The moral seems to be: Learn to French kiss in public.

And the movie spends so much time worrying about whether "size makes a difference", you have to wonder if the screenwriters have some kind of insecurity complex. The film makes a pretty clear argument that relationships are really all about sexual satisfaction. It's all the lovers talk about.

To make a bad movie dull, the whole thing is filmed without a fragment of creativity. I like what the New York Times critic said: "In the list of adjectives that one could append to Mr. Segal, the word slick is not one of them - that capacity seems beyond his means. Some of the movie is so primitively staged that you can almost hear someone leafing through the book of instructions that came with the camera."

How does such a comedy get made? I blame There's Something About Mary. When that film became a smash hit, studio execs everywhere realized that they didn't need to pay screenwriters for good comedy. Large numbers of people will pay good money to hear the same sort of fart and dick jokes they heard in junior high. There's nothing wrong with a good bawdy joke... but it has to be a good bawdy joke, and no one seems to remember how to tell those. Thus, generations are growing up believing that this is good comedy, while good comedies are hardly promoted at all, shoved aside into the "art house theaters" where only those who listen to movie critics will find them.

If you're still reading, I assume you're already one of those people who listens and who cares about decent moviemaking, and you probably know those arthouse theatres pretty well... so what good is this article going to do to stop the masses who don't listen, don't care, and have already lined up for opening night, making Anger Management the box office hit of the week?

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Amistad (1997)

It's probably politically incorrect for me to do anything but praise Amistad. After all, it is one of the boldest cinematic portrayals of the plight of American slaves ever filmed. And it was directed by Steven Spielberg, who crafted such a memorable memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and a gift to its survivors, with Schindler's List.

And with such an impressive lineup of distinguished actors, surely we're looking at a landmark cinematic event!

Oh, if only. Alas, many of the things that his previous historical epics, including the underrated Empire of the Sun, led us to expect from Spielberg seem to be missing this time around. Amistad feels strangely incomplete, and at times even airbrushed to be easier on the eyes.

The film's strengths are many. Djimon Hounsou gives a promising breakthrough performance as Cinque, the African who rises to represent his fellow captives. The attention to historical detail is impressive. Courtroom scenes avoid Hollywood legal arena clichés.

And above all, there's Anthony Hopkins. In his turn as former President John Quincy Adams, Hopkins lives up to his reputation as one of the big screen's most compelling presences. Most audiences would flinch at the idea of a movie's finale consisting of one long philosophy-heavy speech, but Hopkins, as the unsteady, deep-thinking, quirky master orator, makes every word count. He's brilliant.

But neither Hounsou nor Hopkins are given the chance to carry the film the way Liam Neeson carried Schindler's List. Hopkins' appearances are fleeting, and Hounsou's character feels too much like the Model Suffering African, without enough distinction in his character to command our attention.

The rest of the cast are less than brilliant, and some are miscast entirely. Matthew McConaughey is an especially unfortunate choice, playing the lawyer who seeks to help the slaves against all odds. McCounaughey doesn't embarrass himself; he does his best with the material he's given. But he's only required to look determined and throw a couple of temper tantrums. He never really finds a character to inhabit.

Morgan Freeman looks like he was handed his lines, coached through his scenes ("Look solemn and stand in the back of the room, Morgan. Okay, now look deeply moved by what you're watching. Now, smile."), and then went home. Others -- Nigel Hawthorne, Pete Postlethwaite, Anna Paquin, Stellan Skarsgard -- are equally distinguished and equally underused. Why cast such important actors in such brief, bland parts?

Even Hounsou is the victim of bad scripting. In the first half, we see him get angry, yell a lot, and make his eyes very very big like an African Mel Gibson; then in the second act he reveals his story, his terrifying memories, and we learn about what he left behind and why the others respect him. But it always feels "representative" rather than specific.

The slaves remain an anonymous bunch from beginning to end, unlike the living personalities of the Jews in Schindler's List. We're expected to feel for them. Look at the atrocities they endured! Look at what a strange and disorienting world they find themselves trapped in! And indeed, their sufferings are great. But the same lessons could have been taught by a PBS documentary. One character informs the attorney that the winner in court will be the one who tells "the best story". Spielberg should have taken that advice. Instead, he seems to be crafting a tool for classrooms instead of cinemas.

The screenplay gives so much attention to the legal complications of freeing the slaves that we don't have time to develop more than mere sympathy for them. Hollywood's master storyteller seemed confused about which story he was telling. He moves so fast and so frequently between different contexts that we never find our balance. More character development, please, Mr. Spielberg... even if it means a longer movie!

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski brings alive scenes of the slaves' escape from their chains on the nightmarish sea journey. In the opening minute of the film, sweat on a slave's forehead glistens like stars in a night sky. But the courtroom scenes are filmed through a murky lens, so the Supreme Court members' heads glow with silver halos while the rest of the room is drab and shadowed. It is an interesting approach, but dulls the drama of these scenes, making the figures look trapped in amber like the mosquito in Jurassic Park.

Worst of all is the pompous overbearing nature of John Williams's soundtrack. It's as if at the beginning of each scene he must announce "This is going to be rough! Hang on!" or "This is tragic! Get out your hankies!" He's never been so unnecessarily melodramatic. Some silence would have been nice. Spielberg restrained him in Schindler's List, and as a result the soundtrack was powerful, enhancing rather than dominating. But the final minutes of the film, as Spielberg directs an embarrassingly sentimental farewell accompanied byWilliams's euphoric crescendo, are inappropriately reminiscent of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

In spite of its flaws, Amistad will remain a notable film for two reasons.

First, for Anthony Hopkins' climactic speech. It will ring in the memory long after the movie's particulars are forgotten.

And second, for a surprising appreciation of the Gospel. In one profound scene, a slave browses the Bible and, from the pictures, follows the story of a holy man who suffered much, was executed, returned from the dead, and showed tormented souls the way to the kingdom of God. The slave finds hope in Jesus without having heard a single sermon. Through the rest of his personal sufferings, he notices the cross in things all around him, and it brings him a powerful hope. This is the most straightforward, understated, and powerful big-screen representation of the gospel in recent movie history.

And it's the bravest decision Spielberg the Storyteller has made since Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he let human heroes fail while the Almighty saved the day.

by Jeffrey Overstreet