michaelmunkvold Reviews

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Garbage or acquired taste? You be the judge.

[7/10 · 9 July 2018]

I'm a fan of Herk Hervey's "Carnival of Souls" - which, shot in 1962, was perhaps the first low-budget horror movie sensation - and I don't entirely know why.

"Carnival of Souls" has many flaws, but, like all the best horror movies, it speaks to a kind of anxiety that can't be put into words. Ever been nervous about getting home before dark? Ever felt someone walking too close behind you? Ever just felt afraid without knowing why? "Carnival of Souls" vibrates with that anxiety. It's the cinematic version of that queasy, unnerved feeling we all have from time to time, when we feel a terror we don't quite understand; like few movies before or since, it expresses nameless fear.

The plot is thin, but gets the job done. Mary Henry (Candace Hildegoss) is the only survivor of a drag racing accident, and moves to a small town in Utah to start over as a church organist. During the trip to her new home, she is haunted by visions of a pale, ghostly figure (Hervey) who seems to mean her harm. This specter refuses to leave her alone, even as she seeks comfort in her daffy (to the point of brain-damaged) landlady (Frances Feist) and a friendly psychiatrist, and fends off the attentions of her drunken, beatnik neighbor (Sidney Berger). Finally, she confronts the apparitions that haunt her, with unexpected results (or, at least, unexpected for anyone who's never seen "The Sixth Sense").

"Carnival of Souls" screams "acquired taste". Anyone would be forgiven for laughing at its grade-Z (even for the early 60s) production values. There's the horrible dialogue ("She's a tough-minded little thing", or "That's just what I need, get mixed up with a girl who's off her rocker!") The acting is horrendous, especially that of Hildegoss, who spends the whole film appearing dyspeptic, expressing fear as if it's a stomach-ache. An audience might also be excused for finding the main male character, who spends the entire film basically trying to rape the heroine, so gross as to turn them off. In the '60s, he would have been called a pervert; these days, he would be called out on #MeToo.

So, you might ask, why do I like this movie?

I like it because it gives me goosebumps of the "unknowable fear" kind. Like Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" or the 90s horror film "The Blair Witch Project", it scares us with what we cannot see. Rather than relying on cheap, instantly forgettable jump scares, it slowly builds a sense of vague discomfort, a creepy atmosphere of dread.

Plus, it inspired filmmakers like George Romero and David Lynch to make far superior films. Without "Carnival of Souls", there would have been no "Night of the Living Dead" or "Blue Velvet". Whatever its flaws, it's an important film, if only because it paved the way for other, better films to scare the living hell out of us.

We watch horror movies to get a good scare. A film like "Carnival of Souls", that scares us on a basic, primal level, is always worth watching, even if it fails in every other way.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Putting day-glo lipstick on a pig

[4/10 · 14 January 2017]

Historical costume dramas suck. With a few exceptions ("Amadeus", "Elizabeth") they're stuffy, pompous and boring. That's why I had such high hopes for "Marie Antoinette", Sofia Coppola's punk rock take on the doomed French queen's reign. It sounded like such a great idea: French aristocrats kicking it to Siouxsie and the Cure! Day-glo royal wigs! Rock'n'roll, French Revolution-style!

But when I saw it, my high hopes were crushed. "Marie Antoinette" has all the affectations of rock'n'roll, but none of the energy and passion. It's just a stuffy, pompous and boring historical costume drama, with Manic Panic hair and a decent soundtrack.

In 1770, Marie (Kirsten Dunst) is married off to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) to create an alliance between France and Prussia. She feels lost and alone in her new kingdom, where she is disliked by the Royal Court and ignored by her manchild husband. She numbs her unhappiness with extravagant parties and expensive toys, which take a toll on the French economy and anger the starving peasantry, ultimately setting the stage for a bloody uprising.

And yes, she listens to cool bands and dyes her hair. But there the fun ends; the majority of this movie is spent watching Marie lounging around the palace and having lackluster affairs with people who look just as bored as she does. The characters are given little to do but stand there, look pretty, and go through the motions of a flat, boring story. My God, this movie is dull, and all the hair dye and mix tape soundtracks in the world doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

As the title character, Kirsten Dunst has an air of sweetness and charm, but it's stifled by a one-dimensional character. We want to like her, but the script never gives us the chance - we never meet the person behind the crown, because there doesn't seem to be one. She's a Barbie doll, pretty but plastic, with nothing beneath her shiny surface.

The supporting cast goes to waste, as well. Schwartzman seems bored with the only part in the film more underwritten than Dunst's; as Her Majesty's chief advisor, the gifted comedian Steve Coogan has maybe 10 lines, none of them funny; and Rip Torn (as the young king's father, Louis XV) looks flustered, as if he doesn't know what he's doing there. Watching the film, I could relate.

To call "Marie Antoinette" a failed experiment gives it too much credit: the word "experiment" implies that someone took a risk in trying something new. This movie just trudges through the motions of being a boring historical picture, with the occasional stream of neon and a Blondie or Gang of Four song in the background. That's not experimentation; that's putting Day-Glo lipstick on a pig.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Move over, "Batman & Robin"

[1/10 · 1 May 2016]

I thought I had seen it all when it came to bad comic book movies - from the clumsiness of the Sam Raimi "Spiderman" films to the raging dumpster fire that is "Batman & Robin". Then I saw "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and got a rude awakening: I had no idea just how bad a movie in the caped avenger genre could be. I didn't know a movie of any kind could be this bad.

Everything about "Batman v. Superman" is awful. The story is so busy and overstuffed with characters that, in the end, it's hard to remember what it's about. The fight scenes are bloody and loud without being exciting, mistaking violence and noise for thrills. Worst of all, it's no fun; there's not one single moment of excitement or adventure in two and a half very long hours. I walked out of the theater dazed and upset, as if I had just been mugged. This movie actually ruined my night.

The plot is almost impossible to follow, let alone recap, but I'll try.

Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) become enemies for reasons that are never clear. They reluctantly join forces after Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) unleashes a Kryptonite monster and threatens to kill Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman's mom (Diane Lane) if the two heroes don't fight each other, which will help him take over Gotham City... or something. And then Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) shows up out of nowhere for a loud, bloody and utterly pointless climactic battle.

Yes, this movie is confusing. Very confusing. But that's not even its biggest problem. The worst thing about this movie is that it's no fun at all. The pace is leaden, the "realism" is just boring - there's a scene with a Senate hearing on C-Span, for God's sake - and the characters look perfectly miserable to be there. Who could blame them?

I have never seen comic book characters enjoy themselves less. Affleck and Cavill treat being a superhero as if it's a burden, not an adventure; they frown, grimace and speak with long, tortured pauses, as if they are playing the lead in a high school theater production of "Hamlet". Adams and Gadot aren't given a whole lot to do, but they manage to look really unhappy doing it. Even Eisenberg's giggly, hyperactive Lex Luthor smacks of desperation; he mugs for the camera like an ignored middle child acting out to get attention.

A comic book movie without fun is the definition of failure. Comic books are not Greek tragedy. They are stories designed for children, and children at heart. It's in vogue these days to make "dark and gritty" superhero movies, and it can be done well, as in the Batman movies directed by Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. But those movies worked because they balanced darkness with excitement, grit with joy. They had the kind of magic that lets the 10-year-olds who live within even the most hardened adults out to play.

There is no joy in "Batman vs Superman". It doesn't know what magic is.

It's the only superhero movie I've ever seen that made me sad.

Spotlight (I) (2015)

A familiar story, but well-told

[8/10 · 5 April 2016]

If you've seen one movie about journalists, you've seen them all. They're like intellectual versions of the "Rocky" movies, with reporters as plucky underdogs who beat the odds. With "Spotlight", the story of how the Boston Globe uncovered 30 years of child sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese, the elements are all there: the intrepid reporters facing impossible odds, the shadowy good ol' boy networks blocking the investigation, the world-weary editor putting everything on the line, and justice being done in the end.

While the film doesn't break any new ground, however, it does do a very good job of telling the story of one of the last feats of real investigative journalism in America. There are no surprises here, even if you don't know anything about the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. But for all its predictability, "Spotlight" has moments of real brilliance, and knows the world it inhabits inside and out.

In 2001, Boston Globe reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sasha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) start investigating John Geoghan, a priest who molested hundreds of boys. They uncover evidence that the Catholic Church has been covering up decades of priest sex abuse and shuffling the offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to molest with impunity. Of course, the Church throws its full weight behind killing the story, but senior editors Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) and Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) take on the corruption with help from Mitch Garebedian (Stanley Tucci), a lawyer representing the priests' victims.

I worked as a reporter for several years, and every detail of the investigative process portrayed in this movie rang true for me, often painfully so. It captures the thrill of chasing an important story and the frustration of hitting a dead end. It knows that a reporter's job is a thankless one, but that the small moments of triumph - a detail that puts everything together, your name on a front page story, an approving nod from your editor - make it all worthwhile. It's rare, and refreshing, to see a movie about people who love their jobs.

The top-billed stars, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, are okay, not great; they're at best blandly competent, occasionally slipping into ham territory with wide-eyed monologues of righteous indignation. This is a supporting actor's movie. As a lawyer for the Archdiocese who tries to block the story, Jamey Sheridan is compelling as the kind of reluctant accomplice who allows these sorts of crimes to go unpunished in the name of "just doing his job"; he seems aged before his time by years of unacknowledged guilt. Keaton and Schrieber are nicely understated as men who have given their lives to a profession that is changing faster than they can adapt, old school guys who hate having to care about the online edition. Tucci is fantastic as a true advocate, a man who has spent years fighting for what's right and has the scars to prove it.

"Spotlight" is at heart an old-fashioned story about good triumphing over evil through dogged work and unbending belief. It's a story all the more satisfying for the fact that it is true. It's a little by-the-numbers, but that's okay; it's nice to know that there is a formula for good people doing the right thing.

Irrational Man (2015)

Woody Allen's take on "Crime & Punishment" is punishment to watch

[3/10 · 2 February 2016]

Woody Allen has made two masterpieces, 1989's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and 2005's "Match Point", and a pretty good film, 2007's "Cassandra's Dream", about people who commit murder and have to live with it. With "Irrational Man" - his latest film, and one of his worst - he revisits this theme and screws it up, a failure made all the worse by its bungled effort to emulate one of the greatest novels of all time, Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment".

For the uninitiated, "Crime and Punishment" is the story of Raskolnikov, a man who murders a crooked shopkeeper to prove that he can serve humanity while flouting society's notions of right and wrong. "Irrational Man" follows that theme with the story of Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a depressed, alcoholic philosophy professor who decides to murder a corrupt judge in order to serve the "higher moral good". Once the deed is done, Abe feels he has done the world a favor, and is reborn: he feels alive for the first time in years, and finds love again with an adoring student (Emma Stone) and a married colleague (Parker Posey). His newfound happiness is threatened, however, when an innocent person is arrested for his crime, and his lovers discover what he has done.

Watching this movie is like being cornered at a party by a philosophy major who drones on for hours about the great European thinkers. It believes it is blowing your mind, but it is in fact ruining your night.

Allen seems to have forgotten how to create real, human characters, relying instead on clichés: the burnout professor, the fresh-faced ingenue, the discontent housewife. We never really know them, and we don't particularly want to.

I'm getting pretty tired of Woody Allen movies about wealthy white people going through existential crises. Every single person on screen is as rich and white as a cheesecake, and can't shut up about what a burden it is. (Really, what says "white privilege" more than "philosophy major"?) I don't know about you, but I have better things to do with my time and money than watching a bunch of trust fund babies regurgitate Heidegger while frowning.

The cast is badly misused. Phoenix is given little to do but mope, while Stone - in her second bad Allen film after 2014's goofy-in-a-bad-way "Magic in the Moonlight" - has such a paper-thin character and such terrible dialogue that she can't help but come off as rehearsed and mechanical. Posey's considerable comic gifts are squandered in a role that requires her only to look bored and misty-eyed.

The Woody Allen who makes us laugh and gives us something to talk about on the ride home is nowhere in evidence here. Instead, we get more of the Woody Allen of the last few years: a smug, self-indulgent blowhard who expects us to be dazzled by whatever comes out of his mouth.

No one expects him to be Dostoevsky, but we do expect him to be Woody Allen - to make funny, smart, interesting movies about funny, smart, interesting people. With "Irrational Man", he succeeds only in being an irritating bore who ruins the party.

Mr. Brooks (2007)

Middle-of-the-road thriller elevated by good performances

[6/10 · 1 December 2015]

"Mr. Brooks" thinks it is darker and edgier than it actually is. Like most films in the serial killer thriller genre, it's a bit lazy, coasting on unlikely plot twists and providing few genuine scares. The filmmakers could have tried a lot harder. There is one thing that sets it apart from the straight-to-DVD slasher fare that chokes the genre, however: top-notch performances from actors who aren't usually known for them.

Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a respected business owner and family man. He's also a serial killer who murders couples while they're having sex. (Everybody needs a hobby.) He has abstained from murder for two years, but his homicidal urges creep back up in the form of Marshall (William Hurt), his imaginary, bloodthirsty alter ego. Brooks gives in and commits another murder, only to be caught on film by a peeping tom named "Mr. Smith" (Dane Cook) who blackmails Brooks into making him his "protegé". Meanwhile, Detective Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore) reopens the investigation into Brooks' murders, and the cat and mouse games ensue.

All the elements of a serial killer movie are here: the driven but troubled cop, the painstaking attention paid to the killer's M.O., the far-fetched plot twists. It's all here, and it's all a bit predictable. We see a lot of it coming a mile away, and the plot twist that ties the ending together is far too convenient to be believed. The movie is also loaded down with unnecessary subplots: the 45 minutes or so spent on Atwood's divorce and Brooks' troubled daughter (Danielle Panabaker) do nothing but get in the way.

Another, small complaint: it's set in Portland, Oregon, but was obviously neither filmed there nor made by people who have been there. As a longtime resident of the City of Roses, I know that the Cup and Saucer is in Southeast, not downtown, and that a high-speed chase on the Ross Island Bridge in the middle of the day is a logistical impossibility.

"Mr. Brooks"' saving grace is the acting. Costner is wonderful as Brooks. Most actors playing serial killers resort to imitating Hannibal Lecter, but Costner plays Brooks as an ordinary man with a darkness inside that he doesn't like; he's a murder addict who desperately wants to get sober. Moore takes the stock "tough cop" character and makes her smart, likable and funny, someone we might want to hang out with. Hurt gives his best performance in years as the gleefully malevolent Marshall, relishing murder and mayhem as if it were the best steak he's ever had. Dane Cook is his usual lowbrow, irritating self - which is just right for his character. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose, but he's perfectly convincing as a perverted sleaze.

All of these actors have spent most of their careers giving fair-to-middling performances in mediocre movies; here, they give great performances in a fair-to-middling movie. Good as the acting as, however, it's just not enough. The plot is too tired, the direction too uninspired, the story just too dull.

In a way, "Mr. Brooks" is not to blame for its faults - it simply got to the party too late. The serial killer film genre ran out of steam years ago; after reaching the high-water mark with "Silence of the Lambs", it petered out into a steady trickle of pedestrian slasher films. There's nothing left in the well to draw from. Given that the average serial killer movie is so lousy, "Mr. Brooks" is not that bad in comparison. While it could have been better, it could easily have been much worse.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

A terrible adaptation of a great book

[4/10 · 18 October 2015]

With few exceptions, the book is better than the movie; most film adaptations of novels fall short when it comes to translating the author's voice and their characters onto the big screen. But I have seen few movies screw it up as badly as Peter Jackson's feeble adaptation of Alice Sebold's brilliant novel "The Lovely Bones". Jackson turns a story of grief, loss and rebirth into a clumsy blend of thriller and melodrama that substitutes special effects for real human feeling.

In 1974, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered by her neighbor George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), a serial killer of young girls. She finds herself transported to her own personal Heaven, where she watches as her family is destroyed by grief and her murderer escapes justice. Susie's father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) becomes obsessed with entrapping Harvey, and her mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) buries her pain by running away from her family. Meanwhile, Susie intervenes in the mortal sphere to help her loved ones move on.

It sounds like a good story, right? Well, it is - as a novel. In Sebold's book, Susie's story is powerful, heart-wrenching stuff; as a film, it's shallow, uninspired and hokey. And there's one person to blame: director Peter Jackson. Sebold's lyrical, dynamic prose seems tailor made for film storytelling, but it would need the right director. Jackson isn't that director.

Jackson's basic problem is that he misses the point of the material. Even though it has a fantastic premise, the novel is a small, intimate human drama. Jackson dumbs it down to a combination of police procedural and soap opera, and throws in lots of special effects to compensate. He makes everything big, bright and shiny - he turns Heaven into a big glowing Christmas tree ornament - but that's no substitute for what is lacking: a compelling story with real, relatable characters.

Performances are hit-or-miss. Ronan is a talented actress, but here she's out of her depth. She fails to convey Susie's grief for the life she will never get to live; it doesn't even seem to register with her that she is, in fact, dead. Wahlberg and Weisz are believable as living through every parent's worst nightmare, but their characters are so thinly drawn (again, in sharp contrast to the vivid, multilayered ones in the novel) that it's hard to care much about them. Susan Sarandon is amusing as Susie's rambunctiously drunk grandmother, but she doesn't have much screen time. The only stand-out is Tucci, intensely creepy as the murderous pedophile Harvey. He actually made my skin crawl.

"The Lovely Bones" is a failure on almost every level, and marks the first major misstep of Jackson's career. He is a talented director, but he's the wrong one for a story like this. His gift is for creating bigger-than-life fantasy set pieces with Elves and Hobbits, not telling intimate stories about actual people. Real life - even the afterlife - just isn't his thing.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

"The Wolf of Wall Street" makes corporate sociopathy a lot of fun to watch

[9/10 · 25 September 2015]

"The Wolf of Wall Street" opens with Wall Street scumbag Jordan Belfort (Leonardo Dicaprio) bragging about his superhuman drug intake, his insatiable appetite for hookers, and the fortunes he has made from tricking suckers into buying worthless stocks. And then he tells us he is better than the rest of us peons.

"Money makes you a better person," he says. "Solve your problems by getting rich."

Like any good huckster, he knows how to play our emotions. One minute, it's like he's daring us to hate him, strutting around as if he owns the world. The next, he beckons us to join him in his selfishness... and we do, against our own better judgment, because he makes sleaze look so satisfying. "The Wolf of Wall Street" takes us into his world, and it's one hell of a ride: corporate intrigue, orgiastic parties, and drug-fueled madness that would make Hunter S Thompson proud. "The Wolf of Wall Street" revels in greed, amorality and decadence... and it's damn near perfect.

Belfort's rise and fall during the greed-fueled Wall Street of the '80s is a perfect story for Martin Scorsese: he's at his best when portraying life in the criminal underworld. Here, he makes white-collar crooks just as fascinating as the Mafiosi in "Goodfellas" and "Casino". He empathizes with Belfort and his fellow Masters of the Universe, and lets us get to know (if not like) them.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Scorsese's best leading man since Robert De Niro, and here he gives an absolutely fearless performance as a man with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. DiCaprio's Belfort isn't a lost lamb led astray by excess - he is just a rotten human being, and makes no apologies for it. DiCaprio makes Belfort both repugnant and perversely likable: he gives him a con artist's cocky charm and effortless salesmanship, so we like him even when we see him at his worst. (His worst involves scamming his clients, hitting his wife and leading his employees in a game of "midget-tossing".)

The rest of the cast is top-notch as well. Jonah Hill is hilarious as Belfort's weaselly right-hand man, playing him as a rutting, grunting bag of unrestrained appetites. Margot Robbie is both sexy and slimy as Belfort's trophy wife, who is in her own way as much of a con artist as he is. Matthew McConoughey, as Belfort's drug-addled mentor, gives a performance of inspired, lightbulb-battered moth craziness; despite only being on screen for six minutes, he injects a wild, improvisational energy that we miss after he's gone.

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is not for people who like to see movies where good prevails and everything is all right in the end. There is no moral, no life-affirming lesson to be learned. Bad people simply do bad things, in part for the money, but mostly for the sheer hell of it. But it's a testament to Scorsese's talent that this cynical, black-hearted movie is great fun to watch, and one of the more intelligent satires to come to movie theaters in a long time.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

A tour through Wes Anderson's fantasy world

[9/10 · 16 September 2015]

Watching one of Wes Anderson's films is like calling in sick and spending the day in your room, watching old movies, listening to your favorite records, and refusing to even think about work the next day.

His films take place in a universe all their own, where quirky, big-hearted man-children like "Rushmore"'s Max Fischer and "The Life Aquatic"'s Steve Zissou ignore the real world and live on their own terms. Gustave H., the hero of Anderson's latest film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel", runs the titular hotel as his own private universe of old-world class and glamour. He invites us in, and the tour of his world is one of the most charming, funny, defiantly original films to come out in a long time.

The film is told through the eyes of Zero Moustafa, the hotel's "lobby boy", as he learns the hotel business from his boss, the enigmatic, perfectly polished Gustave H. Zero and Gustave go on a series of improbable adventures - everything from organizing a prison break to stealing a priceless painting from a band of fascists - and come to depend on each other as compatriots, accomplices and surrogate family.

It's been a long time since I've had this much fun watching a movie. Gustave and Zero are totally original, absolutely lovable protagonists, impossible not to root for as they tramp through a series of weird, silly, drop-dead funny adventures. It's a rare movie that can be charming, funny, exciting and bitingly ironic at the same time, but "The Grand Budapest Hotel" pulls it off. It put a big, goofy smile on my face, and a movie that can do that has my seal of approval.

Ralph Fiennes is the perfect choice for Gustave, playing him as an overgrown child who turns the hotel into a shield from the real world that has fallen so short of the world in his head. Tony Revolori as Zero is an ideal match, the straight man to Gustave's wild card. The supporting cast is great, as well: Saoirse Ronan is sweet as Zero's girlfriend, the ever-reliable Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzmann are hilarious as members of Gustave's secret society of hotel workers, and a heavily made up Tilda Swinton is priceless as a batty, elderly heiress whom Gustave, er, "befriends".

The key to enjoying Anderson's films is to immerse oneself in the fantasy world he has created. Everyone has a closet romantic inside them somewhere, and Anderson is a master of bringing it out of even the most hardened "grownup". With "The Grand Budapest Hotel", he creates a world that could only exist inside the overheated imaginations of children of all ages. It's a wonderful place to be.

Sometimes you need to take a day to hide away in your room and crawl up into your own imagination. When that need arises, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" hits the spot.

Sid and Nancy (1986)

A fun, horrifying, tragic, nearly perfect film

[9/10 · 1 September 2015]

I discovered punk rock at 14, when an older cousin showed me films of the Sex Pistols' concerts. From the first blast of "Anarchy in the UK", I fell in love with their joyfully angry noise, and was especially enthralled with their demented dervish of a bass player, Sid Vicious. He couldn't play, but that didn't matter: his manic, raging energy and "who cares?" scowl was candy to a nerdy fat kid from the suburbs. (For about three months I insisted, much to my parents' chagrin, on being called "Sid".) I rented "Sid and Nancy", the story of his doomed relationship with groupie Nancy Spungen, and found one of my favorite movies. I have seen it dozens of times, and each time I feel that giddy, dangerous excitement of the first time you hear your favorite song. "Sid and Nancy" works on many levels: as a time capsule of punk rock in the 70s; as a love story between two damaged people; and as a scarily honest depiction of co-dependence and addiction.

Sid Vicious meets groupie Nancy Spungen just as the Sex Pistols are taking off. They fall in love, not just with each other, but with love itself; they see themselves as Romeo and Juliet, destined to go out in a blaze of glory. After the Sex Pistols break up and the talentless Vicious' career flounders, their youthful rebellion turns into self-destruction, and their flirtation with heroin becomes full-blown addiction.

It might sound depressing - indeed, it's downright grim in spots - but "Sid and Nancy" is often an exhilarating film. It reminds us what it's like to be young and reckless, to feel everything too much. We feel the electric jolt of the couple's first kiss, the warm fuzziness of being crazy about each other. When things go bad, we feel a profound sadness for these wasted lives; we mourn for what might have been. This movie puts us through the wringer, and it's worth every twist.

The cast is incredible. Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb give note-perfect performances; they do not so much portray Sid and Nancy as channel them. They even look like the people they're playing. Andrew Schofield and David Hayman have fun playing Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten and manager Malcolm MacLaren, respectively, as punk rock caricatures, and Xander Berkely - now best known as "24"'s counter-terrorism agent George Mason - gives a brief but chilling performance as a drug dealer who is all too eager to help his "pals" Sid and Nancy ruin their lives. And yes, in case you were wondering, that is a pre-fame Courtney Love, original nose and all, as one of Nancy's drug buddies.

For me, "Sid and Nancy" is not just a great film, but a connection to my youth. As an adult, I know that Vicious and Spungen were basically overgrown adolescents who took "live fast and die young" far too seriously. Watching this movie, however, I feel the joy I felt the first time I heard punk rock, and I like to think that they simply wanted that incredible feeling to last forever. Who could blame them?

World War Z (2013)

My dramatization of the making of "World War Z", in which I portray why it sucks

[3/10 · 26 August 2015]

What I imagine happened during the script meeting for "World War Z", the godawful film adaptation of Max Brooks' excellent novel:

MAX BROOKS: Wow, guys, thank you so much for turning my book into a movie! So, when can I start writing the script?

STUDIO EXEC: Actually, we're getting the guy who wrote "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

MAX BROOKS: Oh. (awkward pause) Well, that's OK. They did multiple character arcs all the time on that show.

STUDIO EXEC: We thought it would be a better idea to make the whole thing about one character.

MAX BROOKS: The journalist?

STUDIO EXEC: No, we took him out. Our main character isn't even in the book.

MAX BROOKS: Oh. (even more awkward pause) Well, you're still going to include all the other original characters, right?

STUDIO EXEC: Nope.

MAX BROOKS: Oh. (agonized pause) The plot's still basically the same though, right?

STUDIO EXEC: Not really. We're just gonna have Brad Pitt run from zombies for two hours while the actress playing his wife sits around and looks worried. And stuff blows up. Lots of stuff blows up.

MAX BROOKS: Did you even read the book?

STUDIO EXEC: Look, you want your check or not?

Across the Universe (2007)

Two hours of bad Beatles covers

[2/10 · 13 July 2015]

"Across the Universe" is like a bad Beatles cover band. It means well, tries hard, and plays the band's catalog with love in its heart - but it's a waste of time. At the end of the show, you find yourself wishing that you had stayed home and listened to the real thing.

Like most cover versions of Beatles songs, "Across the Universe" is awful, a poorly written and badly sung music video masquerading as a movie. The story is shallow, the characters paper-thin, and the musical numbers ridiculously over-the-top. That it drags some of the greatest pop music of the 20th century down with it just adds insult to injury.

The plot, if you must: Lucy, Jude, Maxwell, Sadie and Prudence (get it?) sing Beatles songs as they move along with the change and upheaval of the 1960s, with each song representing a key event of the times. They drop acid while singing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". They tune in, turn on and drop out to "Revolution". They get drafted to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Finally, as if there was any doubt, they realize that "All You Need is Love".

I wasn't there for the 1960s, so I can't say what those times were like for people coming of age in that moment of history. No one involved in this movie seems to know, either. The themes of the time - the anti-war movement, changing sexual mores, drug experimentation - are given such shallow treatment that they have no real resonance for the audience. It's as if the protagonists are standing outside of the world they live in, so apart from the scene that they could have walked in from another movie. They know the words, but not the music.

Wow, do they not know the music. The cast members are all technically proficient singers, but they put no feeling, no soul, into their renditions of Beatles songs. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood, who play star-crossed lovers Jude and Lucy, sing "Strawberry Fields Forever" during a breakup scene, but with none of the loneliness that John Lennon put into his best song. Joe Anderson, who plays Maxwell, sings "With a Little Help From My Friends" during a party sequence, but his rendition has none of the childlike joy that Ringo Starr brought to the original. Sturgess' "Happiness is a Warm Gun", sung while he unconvincingly shoots heroin, is so bad it's offensive.

Writer/director Julie Taymor makes each song into a ridiculously big set piece. The "Strawberry Fields" number has giant, papier-mache strawberries. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is accompanied by Salma Hayek floating in a syringe. I don't think I can describe the "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" number in a family-friendly blog.

Taymor is clearly a devoted Beatles fan, and works really hard to make her audience love these songs. Thing is, the band doesn't need her help. The Beatles are part of our cultural DNA; they don't need to be introduced to new generations, because they have been transcending generations for 50 years. Like a bad cover band, this movie has no reason to exist, and just makes us pine for the real thing.

Happiness (1998)

"Happiness" is where hope goes to die

[8/10 · 6 July 2015]

To call Todd Solondz's "Happiness" a dark comedy is to redefine the words "dark" and "comedy". It hates the world and everyone in it, and takes great pleasure in mocking people stupid enough to try to be happy. In Solondz's world, life is pointless, hope is for suckers, and everybody is basically bad at heart. It says something that the movie's most human, sympathetic character is a child molester.

And, yes, it's a comedy - often a very, very funny one. Funny in a morbid, gallows humor, dead baby joke sort of way, but funny nonetheless.

The chief characters in "Happiness" are all stunted, narcissistic and hopelessly inadequate. Joy (Jane Adams) is a born loser who drifts through a series of menial jobs and drives her boyfriend to suicide; her sister Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) is so self-absorbed that she thinks her biggest problem is that everyone loves her too much; her neighbor Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) can only connect to people by making obscene phone calls; and Bill (Dylan Baker), his therapist and Joy and Helen's brother-in-law, is a pedophile who rapes two of his 11-year-old son's friends.

Somehow, Solondz makes these horrible people really, really funny. Like John Waters and the Farrelly Brothers, Solondz finds humor in ugliness and revels in bad taste. He makes sexual dysfunction and personal failure brutally funny; Allen's obscene phone calls, for example, are almost endearing in their ineptitude and anatomical incorrectness ("I'm gonna f*** you in the... ear"), while Helen's narcissism makes her gloriously clueless ("If only I had been raped as a child - then I would know authenticity!"). Solondz shows his characters in a clear, satiric light, and it despises them.

While Solondz may not like his characters, he does not take the easy way out by making them caricatures. Every one of these awful human beings is a three-dimensional character with reasons for being awful.

For example, most directors would have made Bill a one-note villain, but Solondz makes him a pitiful monster who is tortured by ghastly sexual urges that he knows are wrong. There's a tough scene near the end where Bill has a frank talk with his son Billy about his pedophilia, admitting: that he enjoyed raping his victims; that he would do it again; and, while he would not rape his own son, he would "jerk off instead". Both father and son are crying - Billy with horror as he realizes just what Bill is, and Bill with shame and despair as he realizes the same thing. It's hard to watch, but it's an acting master class and absolutely fearless film-making.

This is a real actor's movie; the cast gives career-best performances. Baker is both horrifying and heartbreaking as Bill; he squirms in his own skin, as if he is being eaten alive by his own sickness. We pity him, whether we want to or not. Hoffman is hilariously pathetic as Allen, sweating and mumbling with lonely self-hatred. Adams is sad and sweet as the luckless Helen, the closest thing the movie has to a moral center, while Boyle is priceless as the contemptible Helen, swanning around as if waiting for the world to thank her for being born.

"Happiness" is the epitome of "acquired taste" - its humor is bitter, acidic and often cruel, and it takes real joy in offending the audience. Go elsewhere for a feel-good comedy with a happy ending. If nothing else, though, it's a true original, and deserves credit for carving out its own niche in the "dark comedy" genre.

Empire Records (1995)

One of my favorite bad movies

[6/10 · 30 May 2015]

"Empire Records" is not a good movie: it's flimsy, shallow and deeply, profoundly stupid. It's like a cross between a Guess jeans commercial and an episode of "I Love the 90s", with pop culture references instead of dialog and youth culture clichés instead of characters. It's a Twinkie of a movie - a momentary sugar high with no nutritional value whatsoever.

Yet, I can't help but like it. "Empire Records" is the kind of cheerfully brainless movie you watch when you're sick or you can't sleep. When you're too stressed to take anything of any substance, its high-spirited, empty-headed charm is pretty soothing, like comfort food or a pair of well-worn sweat pants. Sometimes you need to watch a stupid movie; when you feel such a need, "Empire Records" is just what the doctor ordered.

"Empire Records" doesn't have a story so much as a series of vignettes held together by a thin plot device: the titular record store, which is about to go out of business. The store is staffed by a motley group of Pretty White Kids With Problems who listen to inoffensively "edgy" alternative rock (Gin Blossoms, the Cranberries, etc). They spend their day in the store angsting over unrequited love, musing about movies and bands, and having the obligatory life-changing revelations. (This keeps them too busy to do any actual work; not once do you see anyone so much as clean the bathroom.) They then throw a big party that miraculously saves the store, and everybody finds love and happiness. The end.

I know, it's ridiculous. "Empire Records" redefines the word "stupid". Nevertheless, every time I see this movie I can't help but smile. Maybe it takes me back to when I first saw it, at 14 - when all I wanted out of life was to hang out, listen to music, and feel like I had the elusive, all-important power of being cool.

The cast - actors like Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, and Brendan Sexton - were avatars of cool for adolescents in the mid-90s, and the simple act of watching them made us feel cool by proxy, as if they were letting us hang out with them at the popular kids' table. At that moment in our lives, they gave us what was then the ultimate gift: the fantasy of being forever young, beautiful and hip. Most people eventually outgrow the need to be cool, but when you're a teenager, it's like oxygen. "Empire Records" brings us back to an idealized version of that time, and the nostalgia washes over us in a wave of warm fuzzies. If a movie can do that, it doesn't need to be good.

"Empire Records" may not be a good movie in the strictest sense, but I can watch it with a smile on my face, even if I forget about it moments after I finish watching it. It's cinematic junk food, but so what? There's nothing wrong with a donut every now and again. Just don't let it spoil your appetite for more substantial fare.

The Big Chill (1983)

I hate "The Big Chill". There. I said it.

[5/10 · 17 May 2015]

Maybe I was born too late to enjoy "The Big Chill". I've been told that it is one of the defining statements of the baby boom generation - people of my parents' generation mention this movie in the same breath as Woodstock and the March on Washington. It's lost on me, though. I see only two hours of narcissistic whining and dancing around a kitchen table to Motown.

Maybe you had to be there. Some movies are inseparable from their era, and mean far more to people who were there at the time than to people who have only read about it. Such movies bring back memories of what it was like to be alive at that moment in history. Nostalgia can make even a mediocre movie a powerful experience.

Make no mistake, "The Big Chill" is a mediocre movie. Yes, I know it's "culturally significant". I know it gave birth to the ensemble comedy-drama as we know it. And yes, I know the Motown soundtrack is awesome. But I just didn't like this movie. For me, it was nothing more than watching people I didn't like talking (and talking and talking) about things I didn't care about. Watching this movie is like going to a party where everybody but you has known each other for years. The audience is the odd man out.

The plot, such as it is: A group of thirty-somethings get together for the funeral of their college buddy, Alex, who committed suicide. The group's power couple, Harold (Kevin Kline) and Sarah (Glenn Close), invite the others to stay at their house for the weekend. Memories are shared, old wounds are reopened, and, of course, old flames have sex. And that's it. There's no climax or resolution. It doesn't end, it just stops.

Performances are varied. Kline and Close are wonderful as the adults in the room, people who are too busy living their lives to have existential crises. William Hurt is fun as a smart-assed screwup; he may not know where his life is going, but unlike the others he has a sense of humor about it.

The rest of the cast struggles, however: JoBeth Williams and Mary Kay Place are given paper-thin characters as Middle-aged Women With Romantic Troubles, and Jeff Goldblum (as the group "brain") and Tom Berenger (as an aging actor) fall back on their stock characters of Spazzy Nerd and Wooden Tough Guy, respectively. Meg Tilly, as Alex's much younger girlfriend, seems like a little kid at the grownups' table - although, to be fair, maybe that's the point.

We never really know these people. We don't get to see inside their friendships and see why they supposedly love each other so much. We're just supposed to take it on faith that they've been through everything together and will stick together no matter no what. I don't see why they would bother.

I'm sure that "The Big Chill" was powerful for Baby Boomers who were just starting to make the transition from Flower Children to regular adults. Every generation needs a movie it can call its own, a movie that reminds them of a time when they were young and the world was no bigger than the sum of their own dreams and problems. But for such a movie to really succeed, it has to reach beyond that generation, to have the same resonance for each new generation that sees it.

"The Big Chill" fails that test. Middle-age doesn't look good on it.

Batman & Robin (1997)

Nipples on the Batsuit. 'Nuff said.

[1/10 · 17 April 2015]

Some movies are so bad they're good. "Batman & Robin" is so bad it inspires awe.

It's a disaster of mythic proportions, a film so bad that it killed a multimillion dollar franchise for nearly a decade. I challenge you to find a movie with worse acting, a more ridiculous plot, and cheesier dialog. It's big, loud and stupid in all the wrong ways. When directors of bad movies want to feel better about themselves, they say, "At least I didn't put nipples on the Batsuit."

The plot, such as it is, is beside the point, but here goes: Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O'Donnell) fight Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and Bane (Robert Swenson), who want to turn Gotham City into a giant polar ice cap for some reason. Alfred (Michael Gough) is dying of a Movie Disease that Mr. Freeze conveniently has a cure for. Alfred's niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone, far too young to be an octogenarian's niece) moves into Wayne Manor and becomes Batgirl because... oh, why not? And did I mention that the Batsuit has nipples on it? Honest-to-God nipples!

This is a low point for all concerned. I didn't care for Joel Schumacher's first entry into the franchise, "Batman Forever", but there he at least had some fun making a big, silly comic book movie. There is no creative joy in "Batman & Robin". With every badly choreographed fight scene and inexplicable close-up of Batman's leather-clad ass, you can feel Schumacher throwing up his hands in frustration as he loses all control of the thing.

The actors fare worse. Clooney looks embarrassed and bored. Schwarzenegger's performance consists of a seemingly never-ending series of ice- related puns ("Chill!", "Let's kick some ice!" and, my personal favorite, "You're not sending me to the cooler!"). Thurman plays a good vamp, but there's only so much she can do with lines like "My vines have a crush on you!". You can almost pinpoint the second that O'Donnell and Silverstone realize that they've ruined their careers. Swenson flexes his biceps and growls. A lot.

Yes, "Batman & Robin" is a terrible movie. And yet... I can't look away. Every time I see it on TV, I am helpless in the grip of a perverse compulsion to watch the thing. I know there are better movies on - how could there not be? - but I can't bring myself to change the channel, so transfixed am I by its sheer, mind-boggling horribleness. It's like driving past a car accident. You know you shouldn't look, and right after you do you feel cheap, almost soiled. Once you get a first glance of the carnage, however, the decision whether or not to gawk in fascinated horror is no longer yours.

Indeed, "Batman & Robin" is bad enough that it could find a second life on the midnight movie circuit, like "Rocky Horror" or Ed Wood's movies. It might be fun to dress in costume and, say, throw ice cubes at the screen every time Schwarzenegger speaks. Someone should get some enjoyment out of this movie. Otherwise, it's just a horrible thing that happened for no good reason.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)

Brandon Lee is cringing in his grave

[1/10 · 10 April 2015]

"A man has an idea. The idea attracts others, like-minded. The idea expands. The idea becomes the institution. What was the idea?" - Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) in the original "The Crow"

So, a murdered ex-con comes back from the dead, paints himself up like a member of the KISS Army, and goes after the Satanic cult that killed him and his girlfriend - a cult led by the blonde girl from "American Pie" and the guy from "Bones". The premise of "The Crow: Wicked Prayer", the fourth and (here's hoping) final entry in the "The Crow" franchise, sounds like the setup to a joke... and well, it is a joke. Not a funny one, though.

"The Crow: Wicked Prayer" is the final nail in the "Crow" series' coffin. The acting, dialog and direction is awful, and the story is both ridiculous and boring. Not one character on screen could be recognized as a real person. Really, it doesn't get much worse than this.

To think the franchise started off with such promise. The 1994 film "The Crow" did something that had never been done before: it took elements of the ghost story and revenge thriller genres and told a story about characters we liked and cared about. It had real, human heart to go along with the balletic violence and Gothic set pieces. That, and the late Brandon Lee's iconic performance, made the film a wonderful experience, one of those rare movies you can watch over and over again, each time finding something new.

Then Edward R. Pressman Films, the studio that produced the movie, smelled money, and started grinding out grade-Z sequels. "The Crow: City of Angels" was dull and lifeless, and "The Crow: Salvation" was incoherent and silly. "The Crow: Wicked Prayer" has the dubious distinction of being far and away the worst of these sequels.

A certain amount of melodrama is to be expected in the revenge movie genre, but "Wicked Prayer" is as histrionic as a teenager's dream journal. Should you actually decide to watch this movie, it's my duty to warn you that you'll have to listen to lines like "Revenge is easy - forgetting is hard", "You owe me two lives and a pair of perfect blue eyes", and my personal favorite, "Quoth the raven nevermore, motherf---er!".

It doesn't help that director Lance Muniga doesn't seem to know the difference between a film and a music video; he substitutes explosions, pointless jump cuts and imitation "Matrix" fight choreography for plot, character and dialog.

He doesn't know how to cast or work with actors, either. Edward Furlong is horribly miscast as an undead avenger: he pouts, whines, and looks like a trick-or-treater in the Crow makeup. We don't care if he gets revenge or not. David Boreanz and Tara Reid are quite possibly the least intimidating Satanists ever seen on film - they call each other "dawg" and "shorty", fer Chrissakes. And poor Dennis Hopper just looks embarrassed in a cameo as a Satanic priest who speaks in Ebonics ("The devil will be your homey forevermore!").

Like the "Jaws" sequels and the Joel Schumacher "Batman" movies, "The Crow: Wicked Prayer" is depressing to watch. A brilliant idea has been co-opted and ruined by a bunch of amateurs. The idea has become the institution. It's time to move on.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

A fantastic riddle that might not have an answer

[9/10 · 3 April 2015]

Like most of David Lynch's movies, "Mulholland Drive" defies easy categorization: it could be seen as a drama, a thriller, a mystery, or a dark comedy... or all of these things at once, or none of them. Once you try to make this movie fit into a neat little box, you've lost the battle. Once you accept that it won't give you the answers you want, however, you will have a great time making up the answers yourself. "Mulholland Drive" is about whatever you want it to be about; it's like a dream that could be a fantasy or a nightmare, depending on what you bring into it. I like to think of it as one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books: the path you choose will determine where you end up.

The plot follows the weird, twisty paths Lynch is so well-known for. A young actress named Betty (Naomi Watts) moves to Hollywood to make it big, and meets an amnesiac named Rita (Laura Harring). She decides to help Rita solve the mystery of her identity, and along the way the two become lovers. Meanwhile, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), the director of the movie Betty wants to star in, is strong-armed into casting a certain actress by a shadowy group of mobsters, a mysterious cowboy (Monty Montgomery), and a malevolent dwarf (Michael J. Anderson) in the proverbial smoky back room. There are vignettes about an incompetent hit man (Mark Pelligrino), a man (Patrick Fischler) whose recurring nightmare is coming true, and a nightclub that is like an even creepier version of the Black Lodge from Lynch's legendary TV show, "Twin Peaks". Like that series, there are more questions than answers, and even the answers are open to interpretation.

There are a plethora of fan sites, chat rooms, and even published academic papers debating the meaning, or lack thereof, of this movie. Maybe Betty is living her fantasy of a better life, and Rita is her perfect partner - no past, no baggage, existing only to love her. Or maybe they are both figments of a dream, where, as the nightclub's emcee says, "this is all an illusion."

Watts is completely convincing in a part that requires her to portray the innocence and spirit of a dreamer, and the pain, anger, and sadness she is left to drown in after those dreams are crushed (I won't say how). Harring complements her perfectly as both a damsel in distress and a sultry femme fatale. The sex scenes between them would have been exploitative in a lesser movie, but here they're tasteful and serve a purpose; Betty and Rita are looking for someone to be and somewhere to belong, and mistake sex for the answer to those needs. We've all done that.

'Mulholland Drive" looks, feels and sounds like a distantly remembered dream, the kind that still feels real after you've forgotten what it was about. Composer Angelo Badalamenti contributes his usual sultry, haunting score, and cinematographer Peter Deming gives the movie a bright, Hollywood-style sheen that looks too good to be real, adding to the movie's fantasy quality.

"Mulholland Drive" is not for people who go to movies expecting to arrive at a destination. It might not even be for people who watch movies to enjoy the journey, since it's never clear what kind of journey it is. "Mulholland Drive" might work best for the kind of person who finds freedom in getting lost. If you're one of those people, "Mulholland Drive" is a great ride.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Creepy, subtly subversive masterpiece, one of Hitch's best

[9/10 · 2 April 2015]

Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" might be the most stately, elegant serial killer movie ever made. It stands with "Silence of the Lambs", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and another of Hitchcock's masterpieces, "Psycho", as a film that elevates the thriller genre into art. It's one of Hitchcock's best movies, and one of the best movies in the murder thriller genre.

Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) is a small-town teenager who dreams of a big, exciting life in the big, exciting city. When her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten), for whom she was named and for whom she feels a mystical connection that only a teenage girl can feel, comes to visit, she follows him around like a lovesick puppy - and finds out that he is a serial killer of elderly widows. Suddenly, the adventure has become a bit too grown-up, especially when Uncle Charlie decides that his favorite niece may have to be his next victim.

This is one of Hitchcock's darkest movies, especially considering the time in which he made it. "Shadow of a Doubt" was released in 1943, a time when American movies felt they had a duty to be plucky, sweet and optimistic - there was a war on, after all, and the folks back home needed cheering up. With this movie, Hitchcock turns that optimism on its head: Human evil at its worst takes root in Anytown, USA, and flourishes.

"The world's a hell, Charlie," Uncle Charlie says. "What does it matter what happens in it?" Try finding a line like that in a Ronald Reagan movie.

Cotten is perfect as Uncle Charlie, playing him as a monster disguised as a person. Beneath his charm, he is missing a basic element of a human being - a conscience, a soul - and it is getting harder and harder for him to cover it up. There's a desperate hollowness in his eyes as he smiles and makes nice, as if the strain of keeping his homicidal urges under control is eating away at him. There's a wonderful scene where he lets the mask slip during a family dinner: His eyes go dead and his voice flattens as he delivers a chilling monologue comparing old women to animals ready for slaughter. For a brief moment, we see him for what he really is, and it's terrifying.

Wright seems callow as Young Charlie, which is right for the part - she is just learning that the world isn't always such a peachy keen place. Hume Cronyn is funny as the Newtons' weird neighbor, an amateur criminologist who likes to muse about the perfect murder, unaware that he is sitting right next to an expert in the field. Patricia Collinge as Young Charlie's mother is charmingly clueless about her brother, as well as the world around her. MacDonald Carey plays the detective following Uncle Charlie, who develops an interest in Young Charlie that is almost as creepy as what her uncle is accused of doing.

Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense for a reason - he could make you feel afraid without knowing why. "Shadow of a Doubt" oozes creepy atmosphere, playing to the kind of fear you can't quite put your finger on, as if something horrible is lurking just out of view. It's a great thriller, and a masterpiece of anxiety.

Tusk (I) (2014)

A movie for people who like movies about human walruses

[6/10 · 18 March 2015]

"Tusk" is a carny freak show - it's bizarre, ridiculous and disturbing, and the laughs it does provide are of the guilty, deeply uncomfortable variety. It doesn't so much stay in your mind as infect it with images that you really don't want in your head. It's definitely a mixed bag of a movie, but for better or worse, it's writer/director Kevin Smith's most original work.

Podcaster Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) travels to Canada in search of a story, and stumbles across Howard Howe (Michael Parks), a recluse who promises to tell Wallace about his lifetime of adventures. Howe then drugs Wallace, and turns him into a walrus. You heard me. He mutilates Wallace, sews him into a walrus costume, and conditions him to be a barking, fish-eating sea mammal. And then it gets REALLY weird...

Smith is known for pushing boundaries and exploring new territory, but with this movie he just wanders out into the wilderness and throws away the map. His only real goal seems to be to make "Tusk" as freaky as possible. He succeeds, but in so doing forgets to put much thought into his characters or have much of a story - Howe turns Wallace into a walrus, and that's pretty much it. The end.

Aside from the scenes between Howe and Wallace, there's not much going on here. The other characters - Wallace's girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) and best pal (Haley Joel Osment) and a burned-out Quebecois cop (Johnny Depp, uncredited and mumbling) - are boring. It's all about the geek show. If you like geek shows, you'll be pleased. If you don't, you'll just be really uncomfortable for two hours, and wonder why you spent the time.

That said, "Tusk" still has a lot to recommend it. For me, horror movies rise and fall on two things: the movie's ability to make us share the protagonists' terror, and the villain's scariness. In these, "Tusk" is a success. Wallace's plight is uncomfortable to watch; he's really suffering, his eyes screaming with panic as he waddles helplessly in Howe's torture pit. He can't believe this is happening, and neither can we. Parks, meanwhile, is truly frightening as Howe, alternating between sinister charm and raving madness that would make Kathy Bates in "Misery" proud - often in the same scene.

"Tusk" may well be the definition of "not for everybody", but it makes no apologies for its weirdness. Indeed, it's proud of being weird, and seeks the approval only of those who let their freak flags fly. There's a victory in that. For all of its imperfections, "Tusk" is an original, and how many movies have you seen lately that can claim that?