Barton Fink (reviewed by Dad)

The kids have already been introduced to the Joel and Ethan Coen, first through their Horatio Alger business fairy tale Hudsucker Proxy, more recently through that weird concoction of quirk and grit that is Fargo.  So – unsure what would be the result – it was time to introduce Ben to what I consider to be the Brother’s Coen’s very best picture: Barton Fink.

The title character of this 1991 dark work (played by John Turturro) is an idealistic, young playwright who, after a smash hit on Broadway, is offered the chance to write for the pictures.  This requires him to relocate to Hollywood where he splits his time between the studio and a residential hotel, each of which compete for the most hellish tormenter of Barton’s soul.

On the studio lot, he has to navigate between Jack Lipnick, the crazed megalomaniac who helms the studio (played brilliantly by Michael Lerner), and other Hollywood types including studio player Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), a Faulkner-like fellow writer (also a sous and brute) W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) and Mayhew's secretary-with-a-secret Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis).

Speaking of secrets, Barton shares the floor of his decaying hotel with traveling insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (played by John Goodman).  On the surface, Charlie is one of the ordinary schmoes Barton writes about in his “socially relevant” dramas. But might he be more than that?

While the characterizations in this ensemble alone would make Barton Fink a masterpiece, the locations (especially Barton’s hotel/prison) are are almost characters in their own right.  And no film in history has depicted the lunacy of Hollywood and the suffering associated with writer’s block with Barton Fink’s combination of cinematography and mania.

The kids are definitely getting schooled enough in film to start exposing them to stories that require appreciation of the self-referentiality that has led to more than one Hollywood classic (from Singing in the Rain to The Player, Hollywood’s best products tend to be about itself).  But I wasn’t sure how Ben would react to some of the surprises in the story, especially those that appear on the surface to be surreal diversions, but in fact speak volumes about the nature of a main character (in this case, the seemingly talented but ultimately shallow Fink).

So, Ben, what did Barton do for you?

Ben Replies: It was so incredibly different from Fargo that I was caught by surprise. But I ended up loving Barton Fink. It was a truly intriguing movie that left me with more to think about than I’m used to at the end of earlier movie nights. The acting and writing were great.  My biggest criticism was that at times the performances were too subtle, which meant you couldn’t really tell what what the film was trying to say until long after you finish watching it. This meant I like the film less for perfect storytelling or intense entertainment, than for its thoughtful and meticulous qualities. In summary, I really liked it (although maybe not as much as Dad).

Quiz Show (Reviewed by Dad)

The 1994 historic drama Quiz Show provided a peek into the early world of television and television game shows which gave contestants the chance to win thousands of dollars by showing off their smarts, demonstrating that anything was possible for “average American Joes” who knew their stuff.

The problem was that a number of winners in these programs didn’t need to know their stuff since many of those early TV quiz shows were fixed, feeding answers to contestants television viewers liked, while asking those the public had bored with to throw the match to the next up-and-coming personality.

Such was the fate of Herb Stemple (played by John Turtorro), a working class schlemiel whose braininess won him thousands before his winning streak on the game show 21 came to an end at the hands of the erudite Columbia professor Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes).

The film dramatizes actual events, including the exposure of the quiz show scandals which involved sponsors, producers and contestants getting hauled in to testify before Congress.  The pivot point of the story is congressional investigator Dick Goodwin, played by Rob Morrow (mostly known for his television work on Northern Exposure and Numb3rs) who befriends Van Doren, even as he investigates him at the behest of Stemple (who has let his loss fester into loathing of the WASPy academic who defeated him).

The people behind the film might have thought they were creating a political allegory to help us understand how the media manipulate the public, even as they feed us the images and stories we most desire (such as rags-to-riches tales which let us stare as tens of thousands of dollars exchange hands).  By the end of the film, however, it was not a political message that resonated but a human one.

Scenes featuring Goodwin and Van Doren, for example, are charged with tension as the young Jewish lawyer gets drawn into (and becomes infatuated with) his target’s family – Charles being the son of the famous scholar, poet and fellow Columbia professor Mark Van Doren (played brilliantly by Paul Scofield).  But these scenes feature just a fraction of the sparks generated when the younger Van Doren must confess his success, and later his dishonesty, to his father.

Generally, it is the older actors who dominate the screen – even in bit parts.  Paul Scofield is definitely the best thing in the picture.  But veteran character actor Allan Rich (playing Robert Kintnet – the head of the network during the quiz show scandals) was only slightly less brilliant than Scofield or legendary director Martin Scorsese in one of his few acting roles (as the cynical head of Geritol, sponsor of the crooked game show).

Not all is perfect with the younger cast members, however.  In fact, it was hard to concentrate on Murrow’s performance, give how much of his energy he was putting into affecting a Brookline (MA) accent.   Even Fiennes, who usually inhabits his roles un-self-consciously, seems to struggle with the ticks and language required to portray a scion of America’s intellectual aristocracy.

There is also a problem with the film’s central premise that the corruption of television quiz shows says something big and important (other than the fact that they are as fake as professional wrestling).  Which is why the movie’s best moments are small and intimate, requiring us to ask ourselves how we would respond if a big check was offered to us if we would simply make a distinction between entertainment and lies.  

Ben replies: Another one where I agree with you. Quiz Show is an oddity that shows that a film can be very flawed, while still being great for what it does right. This movie centers around three performances, two of which range from forgettable to not just not as good as they could have been, and I could name several other problems. However, so much of this film is unforgettable as an entertaining look into the world of entertainment.  The acting from the supporting cast and a quick-witted screenplay alone make the film worth watching.  It’s also one of the most clean movies that we’ve reviewed, with a PG rating (so nothing to watch out for but a slow second act and a couple of so-so performances).

Goodby Lenin (reviewed by Dad)

This 2003 German charmer is set in East Germany, just before the “East” is dropped when the Berlin Wall fell and both halves of the country were united as simply “Germany.”

Years earlier, Mutter (played by Katrin Sab) was abandoned by her husband who defected to the West, leaving her to raise two children, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl) and his sister Lara, on her own. After emerging from nearly catatonic grief, she finds a renewed commitment to life by throwing herself into Party work, becoming an exemplary “comrade” in Erich Honecker’s East German “socialist paradise.”

The kids grow up to become working-class cogs in Berlin’s Communist economy, adding interest in the opposite sex to their repertoire as adolescence turned to  young adulthood. One such romantic pursuit leads Alex to one of the protest marches that broke out in Germany as the ripple effects of Gorbachev's Perestroika (reform) program reached the rest of the Warsaw Pact.

Unfortunately for Alex, his inadvertent participation the march led to a beating by the East German police, followed by arrest (all without reaching the girl).  Double unfortunately, Comrade Mom was on the street where the march and police attack took place, and watching her son get clobbered and dragged away caused her to have a heart attack and fall into a coma.

A lot takes place during her months-long coma (from which doctors said she would never recover), including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Communism and the reunification of Germany.  The kids roll with these changes, moving from earlier meaningless jobs to far more meaningful careers installing TV satellite dishes and working in a fast-food drive-through.  And, as it turns out, Mom’s nurse was the very girl Alex previously pursued (and subsequently caught during one of his many visits to the hospital to be by his mother’s side).

Just as they kiss, however, Mom springs from her coma - a miraculous recovery.  The only problem is that her fragile condition means that any shock (such as finding that her beloved Soviet system no longer exists) could trigger another heart attack and kill her.  Faced with this choice, Alex takes the only reasonable course of action (for a comedy movie script anyway): moving his mom back home and doing everything in his power to prevent her from discovering that history has transformed her world.

As it turns out, Alex is remarkably resourceful in maintaining this illusion, beginning with scrounging for East Germany food packaging into which he could stuff the West German (I mean German) products that had replaced Socialist pickles and coffee.  As time moves on and his mother becomes more lucid (and suspicious), his deceptions escalate.

This long set-up of a seemingly comedic premise might obscure the amount of heart in this picture.  Each character is endearing in his or her own way, even as they expend tremendous energy  hiding the truth from one another.  

Sab and Brühl are particularly good at combining warmth, intensity and eccentricity as they create the reality-distortion fields the family has shared for their whole lives.  And the subtle messages the filmmakers deliver are as complex as the power of nostalgia to make us long for what once made us miserable, and the way familial love can be communicated through deeds and glances, rather than words.  

Ben replies: The interesting premise, a great script, and impressive visuals (like the scene where the mother runs out of her apartment to see a changed world) fortunately make up for uninspiring acting. It’s a great mix of comedy and seriousness. Although it’s a slower-moving film that makes it better for more mature audiences, it has a lighter touch than you’d likely find in more “family” films. Certainly a strong candidate for your viewing.

The Walk (Reviewed by Dad)

In 1974, French aerialist Philippe Petit walked across the Manhattan skyline on a tightrope (actually a steel cable) strung between the soon-to-be completed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.  His caper to run a wire between the towers and his epic crossings (eight times!) were the subject of the 2008 documentary Man on a Wire.

The Walk, a more recent fictionalized version of the same story, is director Robert Zemeckis’ attempt to recreate the event as well as send a valentine to New York in general and the World Trade Center in particular.

I say fictionalized, but The Walk is more of a fairy tale whose mirthful nature is exemplified by the main character (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) narrating his story from atop the torch of the Statue of Liberty.  As flashbacks show us Petit’s upbringing in France, his discovery and falling in love with wire-walking, his mentorship by uber-grump Papa Rudy (played by Ben Kingsley), and his teaming up with friends to cross the towers of Notre Dame and then the Trade Center, Zemeckis’ Paris and New York bore the same relationship to reality as Hill Valley of Back to the Future did to actual 1950s small towns.

But just as this make-believe moved from wearing out its welcome to getting downright annoying, the film generated some genuine magic in its recreation of the walk itself.  But even here, I couldn’t help noticing how much the steady and careful crossings in The Walk contrasted with footage of the actual event shown in Man on a Wire where Petit taunted the cops waiting for him on both ends of his wire by dancing back and forth before crossing the distance between the towers yet again.

I suspect that this lack of fidelity was the result of limitations in CGI technology (or F/X budgets).  In fact, at certain angles the traversing Petit resembled nothing so much as a video game character that was still in the process of rendering.

All this fakery would have been less of a problem if the non-fiction story upon which the film was based was not so well known or well documented elsewhere.  The filmmaker’s attempt to romanticize buildings that met such a tragic fate in 2001 presented further problems, although not ones for which Zemeckis should be held liable.

For Hollywood, like the rest of the nation, has never really come to grips with the magnitude and meaning of 9/11, which is why we retreat to the story of Petit or films like World Trade Center (which turns the horrific events of 9/11 into a formula story built around the epic heroism of firefighters) to help us avoid confronting the reality of an attack that left thousands dead and the world permanently changed.

Ben’s response: I think that the movie was just edgy. That is to say different and weird for the sake of being different and weird. I’ll admit that the scene on the wire was pretty cool, and one of the only reasons I don’t totally regret watching the movie. It was just stupidly written and childish, and that’s not to mention the long and so melodramatic scene where they set up the wire. I haven’t seen the documentary, but I think that would’ve made this overly dramatic film much more difficult to like.

City Slickers (Reviewed by Dad)

Years ago, I took a course on how to write formula movies for Hollywood where City Slickers was used as an example of a formula pic you could set your watch to, which makes the movie a true testament to how great screenwriting transcends mechanics.

For those who missed it when it came out in 1991, City Slickers is a cowboy buddy comedy starring Billy Crystal as Mitch Robbins, a New York radio-ad timeslot salesman with a loving wife, two teenage kids, and the mother of all mid-life crises.

The crisis manifests itself during Crystal’s hilarious meltdown before his young son’s class during a “Bring Your Dad to School Day” that leaves everyone in the room (kids and teacher alike) gaping and depressed.  With his wife threatening to kick him out unless his “gets his smile back,” Robbins hits the trail with two boyhood friends for a working-ranch cowboy vacation that he hopes will put his life back on track.

Those two friends are Phil (played by Daniel Stern) an affable loser stuck in one of filmdom’s most loveless marriages, and Ed (the late Bruno Kirby), a sporting goods salesman who takes time away from his underwear-model main squeeze to exorcise the chip on his shoulder by going on dangerous vacations with his two buddies Phil and Mitch.

The film actually begins with the three buddies joining the Running of the Bulls in Spain where, of course, Mitch is the one who ends up with his bottom gored.  And it’s Ed who comes up with the idea of a two-week working holiday wrangling  on a Western cattle ranch.

The boys get to the ranch in time to meet their companions for the adventure: father and son black dentists (get over it, scolds the son), doppelgangers for ice-cream kings Ben and Jerry, and the (as usual) underutilized Helen Slater.

Slater gives Mitch and friends the chance to act heroically when the film’s nemeses, a pair of no-good cowpokes, gives her a hard time.  But the day is actually saved by the dark and dangerous Curly played by the incomparable Jack Palance.

This being a formula picture, the challenges Mitch and his friends face begin light and end overwhelmingly heavy, eventually leading to a situation requiring Mitch to summon up that inner cowboy he never knew was in him.

Unlike other stars who have successfully mixed comedy and drama, notably Tom Hanks and Robin Williams, Billy Crystal doesn’t let his performances get tripped up by the secret desire to make audiences love him.  His Mitch is a pain in the butt – childish, broody, whiny – albeit a pain in the butt with a remarkable gift for wisecracking.  And it’s his willingness to play to these imperfections that generates genuine drama from formulaic scenarios.

The film also treasures quiet moments, notably short scenes featuring the three friends conversing while in the saddle, scenes which transcend broader comic and action sequences and secretly reveal the true theme of the picture: what it means to be a grown up.

The kids seem to have liked it when we shared City Slickers at a Vermont B&B.  Or so I think.  Ben?

Ben Replies: I enjoyed City Slickers, it was fun to watch, although no one expects a comedy to be groundbreaking, and Slickers was not.

As someone who’s not super familiar with older comedies, this cowboy laugh-out-loud reminded me a bit of Anchorman, Zoolander or Ted: hilarious in a fun kind of way, full of people being stupid, and brimming with bright but not very real characters. Every scene is fun and the cast is great. But with every cliche (and an overly long saving-a-calf scene), I’m reminded that, having heard City Slickers  was an Oscar winner, I was secretly hoping that it would be more than just enjoyable.  Although I enjoyed the film a lot, groundbreaking it was not.

My Cousin Vinny (Reviewed by Dad)

My Cousin Vinny’s “R” rating kept us from sharing this favorite with the boys until now, even though – having just recently gotten around to a family screening – the only thing that might make the film objectionable is ripe language (no sex, no violence).

Actually, that’s not quite true since the storyline is kicked off with a murder. Specifically, the clerk at a local quickie-mart in rural Alabama is bumped off during a robbery, and blame falls on a pair of New York college kids (played by Ralph Macchio and Mitchell Whitfield) who had just stopped by the shop during a cross-country drive in their mint-green GM convertible.

After being arrested and accidentally confessing to a crime (albeit, not the homicide they are accused of), Macchio decides to call home for rescue and is alerted that his cousin Vinny – a newly minted attorney – is on the way.

If the two accused boys were fish out of water, they have nothing on Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) and his leather-clad fiancé Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei in an Oscar winning performance) who roll into town completely unready for the local culture or courts.

This becomes apparent when the judge presiding over the case (played by the incomparable Fred Gwynne, sans monster makeup) repeatedly scolds Attorney Gambini for his informal attire, inability to comprehend (much less follow) procedure, and frequent curse-laden outbursts – some of which land Pesci in the same jail as his clients for contempt of court.

But after a slow start, Vinny finally gets the chance to shine as he demolishes one witness after another with a mix of goomba and chutzpah anyone who has ever traveled through Brooklyn will find immediately recognizable.  The prosecution eventually decides to fall back on evidence supplied by an FBI expert in automobile-related forensics, much to their dismay when Vinny’s fiancé is forced to take the stand.

As much as I continue to enjoy this picture (now through my children’s eyes), in retrospect it does seem as though the script was written backwards from a few (admittedly show-stopping) courtroom scenes. That said, every scene in which Pesci and Tomei interact is pure magic, more than making up for the implausibility of the key conceit in this high-concept comedy (would a law school graduate, even a totally green one, really have never heard of “discovery?”).

The fantastic nature of such a scenario may explain why I found that aforementioned R-rated language so jarring.  For the multiple F-bombs dropped by the leads placed them squarely in the vulgarity-laden tough-guy genre that have become Pesci’s trademark in films like Goodfellas and Casino, not in the semi-fantasy world of this much gentler storyline.  

So, I don’t know.  Ben – what do you think?

Ben Replies: Regardless of plot holes and ridiculous moments, Vinny is undeniably hilarious. Everything about this film has you laughing at every turn. The film is perfectly cast, especially the leather-clad duo of Vinny and Mona and the script is perfectly riotous. How can even the stiffest fellow not bust a gut when Pesci’s character brings the cooking time of grits to question on the stand? As a courtroom drama, however, this flick is only alright. A scene involving the identification of tire tracks was incredibly clever (and probably scored Tomei’s her Oscar).  But if the goal was to make A Few Good Men with an incredible underdog winning his first case, that case was kind of open and shut and, without the comedy, could be criticized for being boring.  So all in all, I agree with your thoughts on the film.

Dark Knight (reviewed by Dad)

Having seen nearly all Batman movies on opening week since Michael Keaton first donned the cowl in 1989, this repeat viewing of Dark Knight (the second installment of the Chris Nolan series starring Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader) reminded me of everything I love and hate about the Batman film franchises.

On the plus side, you’ve got the greatest villain characterization since Jack Nicholson went whiteface in the aforementioned 1989 Batman with another Joker – this one played by Heath Ledger (right before his sad and early death in 2008).  Ledger’s Joker is the edgiest villain in any superhero film ever, a grisly, scarred clown who destroys not for money or power but for the sheer joy of bringing anarchy to Gotham, a city that still sports 30-million inhabitants despite frequent visits by mass murderers itching to burn the place to the ground.

Apparently Gotham’s mobsters are on the ropes, pressed on one side by a certain black-caped vigilante and on the other by a new “incorruptible” District Attorney, Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart).  And so they say “Yes” to the Joker, who promises to solve all their problems, despite misgivings about allying themselves with a murderous nutcase.

Long-time comics fans knew before the first frame was shot that District Attorney Dent was destined to become the psychopathic Two Face, another Batman rogue, one who makes decisions regarding who will live and who will die based on the flip of a scarred coin.

In an earlier, more innocent era, Two Face was just another themed criminal whose duality calling-card primarily manifest as “two-ish” crimes (like stealing twin diamonds and making his escape on a bi-plane).  But that was another Millennium, which means today the villainous Dent is left flipping a coin in order to determine if he will plug a child (the son of Commissioner Gordon, played stalwartly yet again by Gary Oldman).

Another thing I like about the Nolan Batman oeuvre comes from the hero’s mature sidekicks played once more by Michael Caine (as Alfred) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox, the Wayne Enterprises exec who provides the Batman with his military-level armament).

But getting back to Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, the introduction of a second villain represents an element that plays a role in many a Batman stinkeroo: too many bad guys.  It was one thing when Adam West faced off against his entire rogues gallery in the 1966 TV-series cinema spin off.  But Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Bane (who cares) squaring off against Batman (George Clooney), Robin (Chris O’Donnell) and Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) in the 1997 Batman and Robin definitely proved that more was much, much less.

Dark Knight’s doubling up on the bad guys wasn’t as much of a misfire as that, but the extra baddie in this picture definitely lessened the impact of Ledger’s signature Joker and blurred the real duality driving the Batman mythos: that of Batman and the Joker as mirror images of one another.  And why does so much of the drama in this of the next picture (Dark Knight Rises) hinge on maintaining the heroic myth of the incorruptible Harvey Dent?

In any superhero pick, you come to expect a storyline driven by the need to set up the next action scene.  But the most skillful of these (such as the first Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man and Avengers pictures) manage to create enough drama (as well as humor and romance) to make you forget that fact.  Not so Dark Knight where I kept wondering why the characters were doing what they were doing, other than to get everyone where they needed to be for the next big fight.

All that said, Dark Knight is definitely not one of those “I’m going to hate this picture just as much when I watch it ten times on cable” pictures.  Watching it with Ben made me remember what I liked about the picture much more than what I disliked.  So keep ‘em coming guys!  I’ll keep buying tickets (this time for both myself and the boys).

Ben Replies: I’ll start with what you said about this film going with the “Sinister Six” approach, like Batman and Robin or Spiderman 3 (where Thomas Haydyn Church, James Franco and Topher Grace teamed up against our webbed friend). I would say this is not a fair comparison. These films were made for the purpose of making the superheroes look unbeatable, and the Dark Knight is trying to do the opposite. The film brings ideas about humanity to the table in a way no film of this sort has ever done before, and brings out the man in Batman much more than Clooney’s attempt did.

On the point of Harvey Dent, I couldn’t agree more about the storyline being forced. And as for Ledger’s incredible performance, I was just as shocked by the merciless clown. I do however believe that the drama that led up to the action was there, even if it was not as skillfully done as the rest of the film.  

A final thing you may have forgot was that even though the cast was made up of all-stars (Freeman, Oldman, Bale, Ghyllenhal, Eckhart and of course the Brokeback Mountain star who was acting so much his makeup was sweating off) there were so many characters, everyone except for the clown and possibly Dent were uncomfortably underdeveloped, including “The Bat” himself.

Dark Knight (reviewed by Dad)

Having seen nearly all Batman movies on opening week since Michael Keaton first donned the cowl in 1989, this repeat viewing of Dark Knight (the second installment of the Chris Nolan series starring Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader) reminded me of everything I love and hate about the Batman film franchises.

On the plus side, you’ve got the greatest villain characterization since Jack Nicholson went whiteface in the aforementioned 1989 Batman with another Joker – this one played by Heath Ledger (right before his sad and early death in 2008).  Ledger’s Joker is the edgiest villain in any superhero film ever, a grisly, scarred clown who destroys not for money or power but for the sheer joy of bringing anarchy to Gotham, a city that still sports 30-million inhabitants despite frequent visits by mass murderers itching to burn the place to the ground.

Apparently Gotham’s mobsters are on the ropes, pressed on one side by a certain black-caped vigilante and on the other by a new “incorruptible” District Attorney, Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart).  And so they say “Yes” to the Joker, who promises to solve all their problems, despite misgivings about allying themselves with a murderous nutcase.

Long-time comics fans knew before the first frame was shot that District Attorney Dent was destined to become the psychopathic Two Face, another Batman rogue, one who makes decisions regarding who will live and who will die based on the flip of a scarred coin.

In an earlier, more innocent era, Two Face was just another themed criminal whose duality calling-card primarily manifest as “two-ish” crimes (like stealing twin diamonds and making his escape on a bi-plane).  But that was another Millennium, which means today the villainous Dent is left flipping a coin in order to determine if he will plug a child (the son of Commissioner Gordon, played stalwartly yet again by Gary Oldman).

Another thing I like about the Nolan Batman oeuvre comes from the hero’s mature sidekicks played once more by Michael Caine (as Alfred) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox, the Wayne Enterprises exec who provides the Batman with his military-level armament).

But getting back to Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, the introduction of a second villain represents an element that plays a role in many a Batman stinkeroo: too many bad guys.  It was one thing when Adam West faced off against his entire rogues gallery in the 1966 TV-series cinema spin off.  But Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Bane (who cares) squaring off against Batman (George Clooney), Robin (Chris O’Donnell) and Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) in the 1997 Batman and Robin definitely proved that more was much, much less.

Dark Knight’s doubling up on the bad guys wasn’t as much of a misfire as that, but the extra baddie in this picture definitely lessened the impact of Ledger’s signature Joker and blurred the real duality driving the Batman mythos: that of Batman and the Joker as mirror images of one another.  And why does so much of the drama in this of the next picture (Dark Knight Rises) hinge on maintaining the heroic myth of the incorruptible Harvey Dent?

In any superhero pick, you come to expect a storyline driven by the need to set up the next action scene.  But the most skillful of these (such as the first Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man and Avengers pictures) manage to create enough drama (as well as humor and romance) to make you forget that fact.  Not so Dark Knight where I kept wondering why the characters were doing what they were doing, other than to get everyone where they needed to be for the next big fight.

All that said, Dark Knight is definitely not one of those “I’m going to hate this picture just as much when I watch it ten times on cable” pictures.  Watching it with Ben made me remember what I liked about the picture much more than what I disliked.  So keep ‘em coming guys!  I’ll keep buying tickets (this time for both myself and the boys).

Ben Replies: I’ll start with what you said about this film going with the “Sinister Six” approach, like Batman and Robin or Spiderman 3 (where Thomas Haydyn Church, James Franco and Topher Grace teamed up against our webbed friend). I would say this is not a fair comparison. These films were made for the purpose of making the superheroes look unbeatable, and the Dark Knight is trying to do the opposite. The film brings ideas about humanity to the table in a way no film of this sort has ever done before, and brings out the man in Batman much more than Clooney’s attempt did.

On the point of Harvey Dent, I couldn’t agree more about the storyline being forced. And as for Ledger’s incredible performance, I was just as shocked by the merciless clown. I do however believe that the drama that led up to the action was there, even if it was not as skillfully done as the rest of the film.  

A final thing you may have forgot was that even though the cast was made up of all-stars (Freeman, Oldman, Bale, Ghyllenhal, Eckhart and of course the Brokeback Mountain star who was acting so much his makeup was sweating off) there were so many characters, everyone except for the clown and possibly Dent were uncomfortably underdeveloped, including “The Bat” himself.

Unbreakable (Reviewed by Dad)

I’ve been enjoying watching Ben and his brother getting into the films that made M. Night Shyamalan a star director at the turn of the Millennium.  While Shyamalan’s 1999 surprise blockbuster Sixth Sense still packs a dramatic punch, the film Shyamalan made right after that hit - Unbreakable - has better withstood the test of time.

Like Sixth Sense, Unbreakable builds off a sad-sack Bruce Willis at the film’s center.  This time, Willis plays David Dunn, a security guard at Philadelphia sports stadium whose life is clearly troubled.  Difficulties with his marriage are hinted at as he makes a half-hearted attempt to pick up a fellow passenger on a train.  And then, the lights go out.

For everyone but Dunn, that is.  For the train he rides suffers a hideous derailment, one in which the girl he was hitting on and every other man, woman and child are killed - all except Dunn who survives the accident not just uninjured, but unscratched.

Relief over his survival turns to mystery once David hears from a mysterious stranger, Elija Price (played by Samuel L. Jackson), a collector of comic books and comic book art who proposes an explanation for why Dunn alone survived the train wreck: he’s actually a superhero.

After kicking off with some anthropological gobbledygook, Price gets to the meat of his argument.  For the obsessive comic collector and fan is afflicted with a hideous bone disorder that makes him fragile and thus vulnerable to injury from the slightest jolt.  And if someone as weak and breakable as he exists on one end of a spectrum, might there not be someone powerful and invulnerable on the other?

It takes some time for Dunn to determine whether Elija is nuts and his theory bunk, or if there might be something to this whole superhero thing.  In the process, he manages to drag his son into a search for the truth which (like any activity involving dragging your kids into something) has unexpected consequences.

One of those consequences - where Dunn uses the morning newspaper to show his son the truth (while hiding the news from Mrs. Dunn) - leads to the most powerful dramatic moment in the picture, cementing my opinion that the greatest talent both M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Willis possess is creating incomparable scenes involving the action star interacting with children.

After Sixth Sense, Shyamalan got stuck having to create pictures with endings that caught the audience by surprise, so expect the unexpected in the final scenes of Unbreakable.  But the things that make the film both enjoyable and memorable are less about the shock ending than the human drama that takes place before then which tries to answer difficult questions regarding what it might mean for an ordinary man to realize that he's an extraordinary superman.

The film’s PG-13 rating probably derives from one brutal scene involving a kidnapping that might scare the 12-and-under crowd. But for 13-and-overs who have been weaned on fully-formed superheroes complete with costumes, armor and back stories, Unbreakable tries to answer a fundamental question never raised in either the Marvel and DC universes, namely, why is it axiomatic that someone with superior abilities must use them to fight for those less powerful than themselves?

Ben Replies: : I agree that Unbreakable had a good story and some good acting on the part of Bruce Willis and others. I get that it was a new take on a superhero movie, but the format and style seemed dull and kind of forced. The idea of turning a superhero movie into a subtle psychological piece of Oscar bait shouldn’t work, so I applaud that the filmmakers tried, and succeeded to an extent. But with such a good cast, it’s a shame that Shymalan felt the need to be so experimental. The dialogue between Jackson and Willis could have been more intense, but instead we are stuck will very average dialogue by two actors who could have acted their characters out of the park. This film could have been brilliant, but M. Night was trying too many things at once, so I finished the film feeling like the whole effort was mediocre.