On the night of his retirement party, a Nevada detective (Jack Nicholson) tags along to the crime scene of a child murder. When a mentally handicapped suspect is swiftly arrested, coerced into confessing, and commits suicide the would be retiree is less than satisfied. Skipping his fishing trip to Florida, he conducts his own investigation while using the daughter of a new lover (Robin Wright) as bait and putting his own sanity into jeopardy. From a novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt, The Pledge is haunting, poetic, and truly tragic, offbeat and uniquely directed by Sean Penn, with a commanding and sensitive performance by Jack.

**** out of ****

After proving a danger to the son he was supposed to replace, a cyborg (Haley Joel Osment), is cast out in the wilderness by the mother he was programmed to love and desperately seeks The Blue Fairy he learned of in Pinocchio lore in order to transform him into a real boy. Steven Spielberg's working of material developed by Stanley Kubrick is light sci-fi with an incomplete feel, often fascinating and always watchable while still arriving in an unsatisfying place. Some of this material seams ideally suited to the director and other, more darker parts of the story just don't. Osment is rightly cast and William Hurt is excellent as the Geppetto cipher.

** 1/2 out of ****

A successful, nebbish insurance investigator (Woody Allen) can't stand the new secretary (Helen Hunt) hired to rearrange the office, and the feeling is mutual. When the two are hypnotized at a nightclub as part of a work outing, they fall hopelessly in love when under the spell, and are soon being called upon by the hypnotist to clean out their clients. Dismissed, Double Indemnity inspired Allen film has great, evocative period flavor, sumptuous cinematography,  many funny one-liners and great back and forth, even if the premise starts to wear a little thin and the film goes on a little too long. Woody is in fine form, Hunt is a good foil, and David Ogden Stiers is an effective presence as The Great Zoltan.

*** out of ****

For unheard of privileges and a months long stay of execution, the Sonderkammando unit at Auschwitz calms the new arrivals before the gassings, cleans the death chambers, and loads the bodies into the furnaces. As a revolt is planned in several of the facilities, female inmates are tortured and killed while many of the men question their role and what they would do to stay alive. Tim Blake Nelson's grim, unrelenting, and oppressive The Grey Zone is a potent, talky drama which boasts excellent performances (including Harvey Keitel, Allan Corduner, and Steve Buscemi) and was unsurprisingly based on the director's own play which in turn was based on an account from survivor Dr. Miklos Nyiszli.

*** 1/2 out of ****

7/17/10 Waking Life is about a young man caught in a series of dreams who meets several people and listens to their philosophies on life while he formulates his own opinions. Director Richard Linklater, who may be the most innovative and experimental director working today, created this marvel of a movie by filming it with a digital camera and having dozens of writers animate the film while adding their own trippy spins. This is a thinking person's movie and is not for everyone. However, it is a movie that can be watch casually or intensely, and can be revisited many times. Waking Life is a little gem of a movie that each person should at least tempt to watch. Look for Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who make a welcome reprise of their characters from Before Sunrise.

***1/2 out of ****

Early winter, 1942, in a snowy, idyllic mountainside manor in Wanssee just outside of Berlin, the top Nazi brass, representing the major bureaus of the party, gather for a top secret summit to discuss the Fuehrer's latest dictate: the Final Solution and how it will be practically carried out and streamlined. Hosted by a meticulous Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) and presided over by the suave and cunning Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh), the men casually drink, jest, smoke, and eat while laying the groundwork for the deportation and extermination of the Jews from Greater Germany. Drawn from the only known copy of the meeting's minutes, Frank Pierson's Conspiracy, which plays like a perverse adaptation of 12 Angry Men, is a brilliant, chilling, and intelligent imagining of the odious gathering and gives striking insight into the personalities that colluded to found such unthinkable atrocities. The cast is top shelf, with Branagh, Tucci, and Colin Firth (playing an attorney concerned with the legalities involved) standing out.

**** out of ****

From its start as a Dutch trading post through the immigrant experience up until present day, covering formative politicians including Boss Tweed, Al Smith, and Fiorello Laguardia, and other visionaries that shaped its mindset and the physicality such as Walt Whitman, Frederick Law Olmstead, and Robert Moses, New York: A Documentary Film is a lengthy, comprehensive, informative history of the incomparable metropolis by Ric Burns, told with the same rigor and craft associated with the works of his brother Ken. There are many passages of note and a great use of footage though I somehow wished the film had time to slow down to focus on smaller stories instead of on the hustle and bustle and constant progress and forces shaping the city. The documentary is also hurt by chest thumping New Yorkers, historians and celebrities alike, constantly harping on the vast greatness of the city while adding little to the experience. Lastly, following the 9/11 attacks, a final episode was tacked on detailing the monotonous history of the World Trade Center buildings, which was mostly overlook during the first run.

*** out of ****

When their car reaches an impasse, a couple relocating to the burbs along with their young daughter who's none too happy about it decides to explore the nearby, creepy ghost town. Soon, the girl finds he parents possessed by this other world and herself drawn in to an alternate reality where she meets a new cadre of friends and enemies and must demonstrate courage and discipline to conquer. I've always felt held at arms length by Myzaki's roundly praised films and their uniquely branded characters and unconventional plotting. The same held true here yet I was overtaken by the majesty of the wondrous, breathtaking, imaginative, and intense visuals.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Using his upbringing in Hannibal, Missouri and experiences as both a riverboat captain and gold miner as resources for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and many of his other beloved works, Samuel Clemens would assume the moniker of Mark Twain and be hailed as one of the most recognized and respected authors of his time. Ken Burns' documentary on The Father of American Literature never really soars like it should and is perhaps a tad overlong, but benefits from Twain's spoken words (voiced by Kevin Conway) and appearances from Hal Holbrook (who has performed his Mark Twain Tonight! stage show for over 60 years) and Arthur Miller, though other Twain "experts" add very little.

*** out of ****

A sweeping look at Jazz, a true American art form, detailing a sequential history of the medium and focusing on, among many others talents, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bennie Goodman, and Billie Holliday. With Ken Burn's Jazz, the composition is on par per usual but suffers again from the lack of engaging commentators, here pack of pompous snobs, and what's drawn out over the course of 19 redundant, pretentious hours could have been told more effectively in less than half.

** out of ****

An impoverished single mother (Halle Berry) whose husband (Sean Combs) has just been put to death takes up with one of his executioners (Billy Bob Thornton), a bigoted prison guard also mourning for his son (Heath Ledger) who took his own life after botching the same execution. Monster's Ball is a drab, dreary, and dreadfully preachy film from Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, World War Z) headlined by an abstruse Thornton and a hysterical Berry (whose constant writhing left me reaching for my bottle of Excedrin bottle and scratching my head wondering just what the Academy thinking when they handed her the Best Actress trophy) and compounded by their notorious, prolonged, and almost laughable sex scene. In support, Peter Boyle as Thornton's virulently racist father rivals his Young Frankenstein portrayal for absurdist caricature and Heath Ledger is a saving grace of the picture, delivering a broodingly powerful performance and again reminding us once more what a talent was lost. 

A brilliant skinhead (Ryan Gosling) joins an underground anti-semitic sect, leading the debate on group policy, while personally targeting Jews with his own degenerate gang. Through flashbacks, it is soon revealed that he himself is Jewish and was once a gifted and discerning student at Hebrew school. When a New York Times reporter catches wind of his story, he finds his credibility threatened, and his belief system shaken once again. Based on a true story, The Believer takes the same approach as American History X by deconstructing racism through the presentation of a rabid, intellectual bigot. Like that film, it also features a strong central performance, here by Ryan Gosling, which is made all the more impressive by the fact that he was twenty years old when he filmed it. Also similar to the earlier movie, The Believer is inclined towards pretensions and moralizing which strains what is occasionally a very powerful statement.

In Monstropolis, creatures of all shapes and sizes dwell in a city powered by screams and the top scream earner/mega-celebrity is James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) always accompanied by his faithful companion, the wisecracking Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). While the screams fuel the city, its inhabitants are deathly afraid of human contact, and when a rambunctious little girl enters their realm, it places Sully and Mike in jeopardy, causing a chain reaction that uncovers a deep rooted conspiracy in the Monster City. Pixar's third feature outing is an amiable, imaginative film which doesn't play as well it's second time through (I'm finding that about a lot of the films I've revisited lately) and is more geared towards kids than adults. The voicework from Goodman and Crystal is excellent and while much of the foreground animation is creative, I noticed that the background elements appeared cheap and rough-hewn.

During its theatrical release, it was accompanied by the Oscar winning short For the Birds, posted below

Attorney Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) raised three child prodigies (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson) with his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) in their Archer Avenue home, then promptly abandoned his family when they needed him most. Two decades later, finding himself in financial straits and his wife set to marry her accountant (Danny Glover), Royal informs his estranged, dysfunctional clan that he is dying of stomach cancer and reinserts himself back into their lives. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is a great looking, moderately amusing film that finds Wes Anderson (who cowrote the film with Owen Wilson, who is also featured) getting too carried away with his own sensibilities and penchant for art direction whose ship is largely righted by a virtuoso performance from Hackman and other veterans in the cast including Huston, Glover, and Bill Murray.

In 1993, U.S. Special Forces were dispatched to Mogadishu, Somalia in what was supposed to be something of a cakewalk, their mission being to land in a crowded marketplace and extract a notorious warlord. However, due to overconfidence, misinformation, lack of preparation, pissing contests between Rangers and Delta Force units, and over anxiousness on the part of the White House, troop members wound up ends in a desperate firefight which claimed the lives of 19 soldiers. Adapted Mark Bowden's reporting and subsequent novel on the ordeal. Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" is a gritty, realistic, and alarming story which had dire consequences on world politics but has gone almost forgotten today. Made with an expansive cast (Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Piven, William Fitchner, to name a few), many of whom saw their careers launched by the film, Scott determines to focus singularly on the mission and the ensuing chaos, offering no extraneous detail. The result is an unrelenting and engrossing experience that like the events depicted (sadly) does not resonate for very long after it is over.

When it comes to the attention of the great wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) that his old dear friend Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) is in possession of the One Ring, he determines it must be destroyed in the cauldron whence it was formed before the evil being Sauron can attain it and wreak destruction. Charging Bilbo's nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his loyal friend Sam (Sean Astin) with this task, a fellowship consisting of two men (Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean), two more hobbits (Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd), an elf (Orlando Bloom), and a dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) forms to guard the ring's passage, as the aforementioned embark on a battle to save Middle Earth.  I was going to treat these films as three separate entries but i wanted to spare myself the writing (and you the trouble of reading) what is already widely known of what is essentially one, expansive film anyway. Peter Jackson's magnum opus is an overblown adaptation of the beloved J.R.R. Tolkein fantasy trilogy, which was a sequel to his equally successful (and forthcoming as another Jackson adaptation) The Hobbit. These first installments continue to achieve endless amounts of acclaim, but I find them unnecessarily overlong and incredibly corny efforts to please the Tolkien fanboy minority. They are most notable for their spectacular visuals, which by no means deserve to be downplayed considering, in my opinion, that they buoy a nearly ten hour film. Of the three films ("The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers", "The Return of the King"), none is far superior to any other, although the first installment has the unenviable task of being the set-up film and the last's multiple endings conjured nightmares of my bladder exploding when I first viewed it during the theatrical release. Ian McKellen (you almost need an actor of his breadth to take some of this shit seriously), Viggo Mortensen, and Sean Bean are in fine form although the hobbits (with the exception of Holm) are completely insufferable, especially Astin who is in all out Rudy mode. I thought Andy Serkis' Gollum was phenomenal, and that Jackson and co. are to blame for not clearly explaining the CGI process to Academy voters in efforts to garner him an Oscar nod. Detours also detract from the overall effect (I was bored to tears every time an elf was on screen) and many segments are beyond mawkish to the point of laughability. Still, the virtuoso filmmaking, breathless photography, and seamless CGI make this trek worth enduring.