Columbo [TV Series] blog

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Takes place for the most part in the lower downtown area of New York
City; it was shot in 1981 and lost for 21 years. Ill-fated 19-year-old
NY artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (celebrated graffiti artist, who died from
a drug overdose in 1988 at age 27) plays himself in this crude work that
mixes truth and fiction, where he’s an innocent struggling artist and musician.
The oddball amateurish film, a slice of life flick, mixes together the
city’s booming art and music scene with a lot of atrocious dialogue and
pretensions. It brings back memories of when the city was a haven for such
carefree hipster underground artists. It’s directed by fashion photographer
Edo Bertoglio and written by pop-culture critic cable access TV show’s
Glenn O’Brien.

Basquiat checks out of a hospital for some unnamed ailment and spends
the rest of the movie wandering aimlessly around Manhattan. After passing
the Guggenheim and stopping only to blow his horn, he returns to his slum
neighborhood in the Lower East Side, where his angry landlord locked him
out because of back rent owed. The artist grabs one of his paintings in
the hopes of selling it for $500 to pay the rent. He looks for a place
to crash and meets artist buddies like Fab Five Freddy and a stranger–a
gorgeous Italian model who gives him a ride. Basquiat drops in on a number
of downtown scenes that are happening: taking in a Liquid Sky fashion show
and digging the performances of New Wave bands like DNA, catches Kid Creole
do a monster Calypso number at the long gone Peppermint Lounge, and avant-rock
violinist Walter Steding playing at the hip Mudd Club. Deborah Harry pops
up as a bag lady, as she’s in a skit reaching for some kind of fairy tale
motif whereby she turns into a princess when he kisses her.

The lost film was found by the fashion stylist producer Maripol Fauque
and he recut what was salvageable (using Saul Williams of Slam fame to
do the new lines for the deceased Basquiat). It was screened at the 2000
Cannes Film Festival.

It works strictly as a time capsule, giving one a look back at a
pre-Giuliani city that seemed unruly and filled with
garbage-strewn streets but produced art. Invaluable because it catches
the sights, sounds and moods of a city that are of a bygone era. It has
little value as a piece of art or as a real film, but it scores as nostalgia
for the good old days of chaos, generosity and art before the sinister
corporate mentality took hold of the city and attacked the city’s underground
roots in the name of progress and safety.

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Colour
Schemes

Blast

and

Guess
Who

reopen the tribe debate

By
Katrina Onstad

May
6,
2005
A socialite (Thandie Newton) is
pulled from a pile wreck by an
copper (Matt Dillon) in Fall.
Photo Lorey Sebastian. Ceremony Lions Gate
Entertainment.

The film

Crash

presumes that a thin,
easily punctured membrane of tolerance protects
Los Angeles from its worst self. A Hispanic cop
uncorks a torrent of vitriol at an Asian driver.
An Iranian-born storeowner accuses a Latino locksmith
of scamming him. A white woman grabs her husband’s
arm in fear when two young black men approach
on a crowded street. The black men complain to
one another about her racist gesture, and then
hijack whitey’s car.

Crash

is tiring. Directed and co-written
with well-intended ambition by Canadian-born
Paul Haggis, screenwriter of

Million Dollar
Baby

, the film knits together several L.A.
stories; imagine a humourless

Magnolia

.
It is a movie of lists — lists of stars
and racial epithets and disasters.
Sandra Bullock plays the angry wife
of an aspiring politico (Brendan
Fraser) who is mean to their Mexican-American
maid. Matt Dillon is an angry cop
who is mean to the black bureaucrat
(Loretta Devine) mishandling his
dying father’s care. Thandie Newton
is an angry upper-class wife whom the angry cop
harasses for being black; she, in turn, meanly
and angrily accuses her black husband (Terrence
Howard) of being an Uncle Tom.

While its air of self-importance and the sheer
number of tragedies that befall the characters
will probably place

Crash

beyond critical
reproach, it is actually a rather silly film.
Another list: After the white cop-black woman
molestation, the anti-Arab vandalism, the near-shooting
of a dark-skinned five-year-old girl — can there
be more? Yes! There is always more pain! — a
van appears, and it is filled with Cambodians
who are about to be sold as slaves. Rarely have
I laughed so hard at human trafficking.

But I fear I laugh alone. Liberal white audiences
will tiptoe around

Crash

, feeling that
it is somehow necessary or just to be reminded
of their own moral shortcomings and culpability.
The right might see the film as vindication of
a different yet equally disturbing type:

See?
They’re as scared of us as we are of them!

Crash

wants to be good. It wants to
make an oh-so-serious contribution to the debate
surrounding race in America, and that’s fine.
(Up here, we have our own massive, multicoloured
elephant in the room, but this is an American
film, so let’s talk about their problems, which
aren’t so different from ours, really.) And yet,
for all its high-mindedness and melodrama, in
the end,

Crash

delivers a Sesame Street
message: we are all the same. And we are all
assholes (except for the deified Latino locksmith
and his angelic daughter).

Which brings me to Ashton Kutcher.

Guess
Who

, his largely panned release from last
month, has less impressive credentials
and lower aspirations than

Crash

.
Instead, it has Kutcher, television’s latest
crossover doofus. But I would argue that the
tepid, slapsticky remake of

Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner

,
directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan
(

How
Stella Got Her Groove Back

) and produced
by Kutcher, is a more revealing
investigation of contemporary race relations
in America than the pretentious

Crash

.
In fact,

Guess
Who

improves on the original 1967 film’s
earnest, dubious politics, in which
everyone’s happiness hinges on the white patriarch’s
acceptance of his daughter’s black boyfriend,
played with impossible virtue by Sidney Poitier
in an era when black characters in liberal
movies weren’t permitted to be flawed.

Race catch: Bernie Mac
(left) and Ashton Kutcher in Estimate
Who. Photo Claudette Barius. Ceremony
Columbia Pictures/Regency Enterprises.
The
inverted

Hypothesis
Who

casts Bernie
Mac and Judith Scott as Percy and
Marilyn Jones, nobles-middle-realm
black parents of a daughter who brings
home a white boyfriend named Simon (Kutcher).
It’s not a very good moving picture, unforgivably flogging
stale jokes, same when institute and hidden son-in-law
go for a push and the motor car radio
plays several songs in the vein of

Ebony
and Ivory

and

Walk
on the Disorderly Side

, a scene as humorous as the
new Pope.

The film is smarter on the relationship level.
Simon irks Percy Jones, alpha male father, and
it’s not just his Kutcher-ness, nor is it even
as simple as his skin. It’s something Percy can’t
quite articulate beyond “I don’t trust him.”

Percy’s mistrust turns out to be, in part,
anxiety that a mixed-race relationship
will create problems for his beloved daughter.
His confusion — some murky mixture of his own
anti-white feelings, a sense of losing his child
and fear for her in the world — is a more interesting reaction
than screaming “Cracker in the house!” at the
top of his lungs, as Percy would if he suddenly
found himself in

Crash

.

Guess Who

links
racism to love, where

Crash

links racism
almost exclusively to anger. The former makes
for a far more interesting narrative, even if
it is a movie with copious panty jokes.

In

Crash

, racial confrontations are
triggered by moments of urban crisis like a car
accident or an act of violence. The extremity
of these incidents has a leveling effect, making
all experiences of racism the same. But racism
isn’t universal in character; it’s driven by
our very personal wins, losses and histories.
I can only presume that a black man’s feelings
about having a white son-in-law suddenly assuming
a seat of power in his home would be different
from a white man’s feelings about entering a
black man’s family.

It’s not that

Crash

isn’t right, it’s
that it’s right about only one thing, over and
over: we’re afraid of each other. That racism
is rooted in fear of the unknown is an elementary
truth, the kind of limited observation made by

Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner

almost 40 years ago.
Fear is the jumping-off point for the new version,
too, but

Guess Who

— and God help me
for saying this about a movie that
climaxes with a go-cart race — has a wiser, more contemporary
outlook. Simon was raised by a single mom, while
his girlfriend grew up in a home rivaling

Dallas

’s
Southfork; in

Crash

, it is skin, and
almost never class, that sets off the multitude
of emotional explosions. But

Guess Who

knows
that fear isn’t one-dimensional. It doesn’t simply
simmer, waiting for a justification to boil over;
most of us are in constant negotiation with our
fear. We work against it, or with it, every day,
like Simon and his girlfriend tentatively stepping
into the world together.

A family dinner in Guess Who: left to precise,
Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher, Zoe Saldana and Hal
Williams. Photo Claudette Barius. Courtesy Columbia
Pictures/Regency Enterprises.

Guess Who

has one great scene — repeat:

one

—
about exactly this kind of familiar, quiet discomfort.
Over dinner with his girlfriend’s family, Simon
is goaded into telling a string of black jokes.
We wait nervously for the inevitable offence.
At first, the family cracks up; the jokes are
fairly gentle, and they offer the listeners a
chance to peek inside white culture, to see those
unknown perceptions and undo them. Then Simon
makes a joke that goes too far — interestingly,
about black men being unemployed — and nobody
laughs. Of course, the scene falls apart. Grandpa
goes wingy and the verbal equivalent of a food
fight ensues.

The small ways in which we offend or hurt one
another, those lead-footed dances we do along
each other’s most sensitive zones, shape how
we live together. When, in

Crash

, white
racist Matt Dillon pulls black socialite Thandie
Newton from a fiery wreck and they have a mutual
reckoning, their shared humanity is exceptional,
and fleeting. It does not feel rooted in the
real world, however, where racism
matters.

Perhaps

Guess Who

succeeds where

Crash

fails
because laughing across colour lines
just feels better than being hectored
and shoved towards enlightenment.
The best modern film on race in America arguably
remains Spike Lee’s

Do
the Right Thing

, a movie that balances both
comedy and drama, defusing stereotypes
and setting off political bombs.
Recent successful comedies about
the non-white experience, like

Barbershop

and

Harold & Kumar
Go to White Castle

, bring audiences into
new worlds, showing that measuring
difference is not the most important
thing in the lives of people of colour.
Why, then, is it the most important thing to
Paul Haggis? I would hate to think that a white
person couldn’t make an astute film about race.
Wait — somebody did, and his name is Ashton Kutcher.
Someone round up the flying pigs.

Crash

opens across Canada on May 6

.
Guess Who

is in theatres.

Katrina Onstad writes with respect to the arts on the side of CBC.ca.

Related

Complete Oscar Coverage

Question schoolboy Franck (Lespert) returns severely as a management trainee in the unvaried factory as his father, a tool slick operator. Like Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanité, this rousing and operating drama grandly (and ironically) invokes our peculiar species in its head, reciprocate as it’s marked by an basic directorial style that minimises visual flourish and favours non-official actors. But where Dumont applies a cryptic and distanced gaze, Cantet, for the duration of all his formal restraint, fashions a film of communicative intimacy, sacrifice a refreshed, significant and challenging view of in the works, class and bloodline. If the choice of milieu, a concrete industrial satellite of Paris which we head the hang of throughout Franck’s eyes as he journeys home by queue, recalls ’60s political Godard, so does the film’s evolving rank-consciousness. But whatever Cantet’s public stance, his methods are dramatic, not didactic. His realism is based on acute, telling pronouncement. The film has its faults. Franck’s discovery of stealthily management plans lacks credibility; the skullduggery of the bosses is overdone; and the procreate is a scrap too bovine. But these are quibbles.

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On the superficies, Frankie and Johnny appears to be the typical fawn-inducing romantic comedy that Hollywood continues to crank wrong for lambaste-office success. The curriculum vitae takes place in Changed York Big apple, where Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino play a waitress and a cook, respectively. Both actors would normally appear out-of-place in these working-class roles, and romantic chemistry seems sceptical. Also, the conductor is Garry Marshall, who created such predictable mainstream fare as Catchy Piece of work, The Other Sister, and Runaway Bride. Looking deeper, however, reveals a more complex side that explains the allure of this astounding film. Terrence McNally adapted the calligraphy from his own play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune, and his dialogue zings with energy and wittiness. Also, Pacino and Pfeiffer catch napping by connecting superbly and giving performances that rank with the best roles in their careers. Marshall turns down the wet determinant considerably, and this prudent move allows the characters to shine.

Pacino plays Johnny&#8212a lively, short-order cook who just completed a sentence of 18 months in prison. A straightforward, honest guy with an attraction also in behalf of knowledge, he spends his unused time reading Romeo and Juliet and spouting passages to his bemused coworkers. From his first day working in the diner, Johnny’s enthusiasm carries over to his chap employees and patrons. After spending time away from society, he is looking in the interest of derive pleasure, and Frankie (Pfeiffer) immediately catches his eye. Unfortunately, she wants nothing to do with his to the fore proposals, and continues to billet barriers between them.

Frankie is a beautiful female in her mid-30s with lavishness of angelic years uneaten in her liking sprightliness. Unfortunately, lifestyle troubles have planned fist her cold to the end of embarking on any more relationships. She however hints at the problems until the unalterable decree, but it’s clear from the start that her heart has been cracked too many times. Johnny tout de suite takes to her no-monkeyshines aspect and asks her out on a time. Frankie tries to tend up the tough exterior and set aside him, but his ebullient nature begins to exchange her mind. Can these two lost souls relate and execute a lasting relationship? It depends on their ability to crop up b grow to terms with biography failures and face the future.

This story succeeds due to an effective setting that creates a believable feeling of living in the working-class areas of New York. While Frankie strolls down the city streets and stares out of her window, we observe a far-reaching array of people living their own stories. Within the diner, each secondary character has a abundant background only hinted at within the continuity; in agreement efforts of a talented group of supporting players help create an authentic aerosphere. Long-serving actor Hector Elizondo exudes compassion in Nick&#8212the diner’s owner&#8212who treats both his patrons and employees allied to his family. Nathan Lane provides some needed comic relief as Tim, Frankie’s neighbor and most beneficent friend; Kate Nelligan and Jane Morris also do a nice craft as her quirky auxiliary waitresses.

Romantic comedies can unquestionably forth attractive stars, but it means little if the narrative lacks the weight necessary to make their mess intriguing. Terrence McNally’s screenplay thrives because it places its characters within realistic situations and gives them complex emotions. Frankie and Johnny wisely avoids the usual comic misunderstandings that keep the lovers apart in myriad stodgy romances. Instead, the obstacles are palpable and difficult, and it takes some serious chin-wag to best of them. Although it offers the usual likable actors and fun moments, this film also creates a mature atmosphere that overcomes the pratfalls of the fashion and leads to great screenplay.

Nathan Shumate

on

July 4, 2001

in

Sci-fi

—

• Directed by James Whale
• Written by R.C. Sherriff, based on the novel by H.G. Wells
• Starring
  • Claude Rains
  • Gloria Stuart
  • William Harrigan
  • Henry Travers
• Produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr.

As you may have noticed, this is the first review in the “

Evidence of Things Not Seen

” Video Binge; I figured, if you’re going to do invisibility movies, you have to start with the grandpappy. And in addition to my usual informative and entertaining commentary, you might also discover why this movie almost may have deserved a remake like

Hollow Man

.

Given that this is one of the Universal adaptations, in the tradition of

Dracula

and

Frankenstein

, it’s surprising how faithful it attempts to be to the H.G. Wells novel (much better, for instance, than

Dracula

— and we won’t even speak of

Frankenstein

as being an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel). That’s good, because we get at least a glimpse (so to speak) of what really makes the novel, one of Well’s slightest, still worth reading: its wit.

“How much garlic did you put in this linguini?!”

We open, as in the novel, at a lower-class pub in a working-class English town, where a mysterious stranger shows up in a blizzard, unseasonably seeking a room. Naturally, his wrapped and goggled visage, revealing only his nose, causes quite a bit of stir when once he leaves the room with his hostess; Was he in an accident? Is he a criminal evading the law? Or, for that matter, is he a criminal who was in an accident? (This is, you recall, a pub before sports TV was a possibility; there’s no built-in entertainment.) Who is this mysterious man?

By way of answer, we cut directly to a chemical lab, where the older Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers, best known as Clarence the angel in

It’s a Wonderful Life

) and the younger Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan) conveniently expositionize on how the third scientist, one Jack Griffin, has now been missing for close to a month. Naturally, Cranley’s daughter Flora (Gloria Stuart, who more recently played old Rose in

Titanic

) was in love with Griffin, and naturally Kemp was his rival for her affections. Isn’t that the way it is in every laboratory?

Alas, our dimwits at the pub are ignorant of this, and so live in tolerance of their lodger until the hostess finally gets fed up with his surly manners and the big ol’ chemistry set he plays with in his rooms (“1001 Fun Experiments!”). And when the lodger knocks the innkeeper down the stairs, the police and the boys from the pub come up to teach him a lesson –

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“As God is my witness, I only wanted to take a little off the nose.”

– and here’s where we get the scene that everyone remembers, and that every subsequent invisibility movie has had to reference: The lodger removes his false nose and his concealing bandages, revealing — nothing! There’s nothing there! My heavens, it’s an invisible man! And it’s Claude Rains!

Stripping to his invisible birthday suit, Griffin knocks his pursuers and capers off into the street, playing pranks on passersby with the help of lots ‘n’ lots of piano wire. (A side note: despite the fact that the entire invisibility thing is based on Griffin running around in the buff, not a soul brings up any of the obvious bawdy possibilities. Nothing! Not even, “Poor blighter, runnin’ around in the winter, naked as the day ‘e was born.” Not a thing. I mean, if I were making this movie, that would probably be my tagline: “He’s invisible — undetectable — but only when he’s NAKED!!!!” But those were more innocent, more decorous, more cognitively dissonant days.)

In the meantime, Cranley and Kemp discover a fragment of a chemical ingredient list from Griffin’s destroyed files, and the last on the list is a rare drug called “monocane.” This gives Cranley pause, because although it’s well-known as a bleaching agent (hmm), it’s lesser-known property is that it drives its consumer COMPLETELY INSANE!

“Hoots, mon, whaur’s ma heid?”

In other words, you’re not going to find it on your HMO’s drug formulary.

Well. Kemp goes home that evening, and while sitting around reading the paper, he notices a strange draft… then a disembodied voice…

Yes, Griffin is completely off the deep end, and he wants to recruit Kemp to be his right-hand man as he wages an invisible reign of terror! You know, murders, train wrecks, New Coke, that kind of thing. Apparently his breed of insanity is one which causes him in effect to say, “I plan to commit the kinds of atrocities which any other person would try to stop, and I’m going to trust you and tell you all about them!” But first, he wants to get his notebooks, which he inadvertently left behind in his lodgings; they supposedly hold the key to an antidote, so that he can slip in and out of invisibility at his leisure. And he needs Kemp’s help there.

“They simply shoehorned me into the plot? Oh, how could they? How

could

they?!”

What ensues is naturally a whole bunch of invisible falderall, followed soon thereafter by his promised reign of terror!, as well as a number of lame attempts to catch him. Along the way, Kemp simpers and pleads with the police to protect him, and Flora does… very little.

If you’ve read the book, you recognize the broad outlines of the plot intact here. Notably different is the inclusion of a love interest so obligatory and perfunctory that her presence is head-cockingly absurd. I mean, she does nothing! The love triangle is sketched in in the opening scenes, then never referred to again. Kemp’s part is much beefed up from the novel, but not necessarily to great advantage, as the movie Kemp is a rather useless man, given more to whining and whimpering than any form of constructive action.

In fact, the biggest deficiency in the story is that there just plain ain’t a protagonist. Griffin’s not terribly sympathetic, Kemp is less a commendable figure here than he is in the novel (where he only shows up halfway through), Cranley and his daughter are both fifth wheels, and in the denouement the reign of terror! is brought to a close by a whole bunch of nameless bobbies and an Amish-looking farmer. (All right, they can’t both be fifth, can they? So Cranley is fifth, and Flora, who is even more irrelevant, is sixth. Okay?)

This being black-n-white film stock, we’re without the all-important Clue of the Yellow Snow.

The inclusion of the psychologically-damaging effects of monocane are an innovation over the novel, where Griffin’s megalomania is apparently an outgrowth of his native personality combined with his unusual circumstances. My guess is that the filmmakers in this case were trying to soften Griffin and make him more sympathetic because, shucks, it’s not HIS fault he wants to hurt people and rule the world. But it still doesn’t humanize him enough to give the audience someone to root for.

With the movie being so clearly inferior to the rest of the famous Universal characters, why is The Invisible Man considered part of the same pantheon? It’s the special effects, baby! The image of the bandaged, goggled Invisible Man is still a striking one, and both it and the matte effects for the unwrapping have become as identifiable symbols for invisibility as the square cranium is for Frankenstein’s monster. Not only that, but until recently, those effects (along with the requisite piano wire) have still been the standard for conveying invisibility.

“Until recently,” of course, means until the advent of the current crop of CGI cinema. Which is why I made the remark, waaaay back, that

Hollow Man

may really be the remake that

The Invisible Man

deserves. Oodles of people complained that

Hollow Man

was a not-terribly-compelling story whose only

raison d’etre

is it’s new ‘n’ improved invisibility effects; those same people would to well to remember that the original was in much the same boat.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 123
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on
  
  Star Trek
  
  : 0

Posted in

Bestowing special powers on the wearer, the titular garment belongs to confidential intermediary and playboy millionaire Clark Devlin (Isaacs). His trade? To analyse the deliberate pollution of the world’s water supply to boost sales of bottled water. When Devlin is briefly put out of commission, it falls to his chauffeur Jimmy Tong to step into the driving suit and hold the great. Working repayment for Dreamworks things being what they are, Chan swops sidekick Chris Tucker as regards Heartbreakers babe Hewitt as rookie Del Blaine, but it’s difficult to believe that Jimmy could get anorexic Del to fall for him. The laughs are stricty rationed. And even the sight of Jackie knocking thoroughly James Brown hardly raises a smile. Chan is charming, funny, daring and soothe able to go off together peerless stunts, but he’s lumbered here with a daft story, poor script, stomach-churning continuity and petite space to do what he does best.

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Moviehole at the Toronto International Film Celebration
by

Paul Fischer

(Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 7:00 pm )

The 2008 Toronto International Film Festival returns with a vengeance with more studio product being screened than ever before From Brad to Keira Knightley, stars shine in abundance, while the usually calm Canadian city is a frenetic jungle of media, personalities, filmmakers and a public on the lookout for a star or two. But ultimately, Toronto remains a haven for cinema, from Hollywood's mainstream to that odd cinematic jewel, yet to be discovered. Paul Fischer has been covering the Festival for over a decade and continues with his regular report. Already, some great films are ready to be devoured by an eager festival audience.

First up is ''The Lucky Ones'', directed by Neil Burger [The Illusionist], a film that one thinks is about Iraq [yawn] but evolves into something fresh and funny. After suffering an injury during a routine patrol, hardened sergeant TK Poole [Michael Pena] is granted a one-month leave to visit his fiancée, but when an unexpected blackout cancels all flights out of New York, TK agrees to share a ride to Pittsburgh with two similarly stranded servicemen: Cheaver, [Tim Robbins] an older family man who longs to return to his wife in St. Louis, and Colee, [Rachel McAdams] a naive private who's pinned her hopes on connecting with a dead fellow soldier's family. What begins as a short trip unexpectedly evolves into a longer journey. Forced to grapple with old relationships, broken hopes and a country divided over the war, TK, Cheaver and Colee discover that home is not quite what they remembered, and that the unlikely companionship they've found might be what matters the most. The Lucky Ones is a film that explores family and relationships, sexuality and one's priorities in a life turned upside down amidst the chaos of war. Yet at the same time, thanks to a razor-sharp script by director Burger and Dirk Wittenborn, this cinematic road trip is not only a truly exquisite character study and a densely thematic piece, but it is surprisingly hilarious, with the humour derived from a realistic sense of character. The Lucky Ones does of course examine the Iraqi war, but never hits you over the head with simplistic political diatribes. More importantly, here is a film that blends and weaves into many facets of human behaviour, and done with humour and emotional honesty. The film's trio of actors is consistently sublime. Robbins is beautifully understated, while McAdams is a revelation here, breathtakingly and disarmingly funny. Superbly directed by Burger and beautifully shot in a vast array of locations that serve to further heighten the film's themes, The Lucky Ones is a richly entertaining film and one that works on so many fascinating levels.

British director Mike Leigh returns to Toronto with his latest, joyous offering, ''Happy-Go-Lucky'', featuring a hypnotic performance by the exquisite Sally Hawkins. She stars as Poppy, a primary school teacher from north London whose life, at first glance, seems to be full of complications. It is hard to figure if she is a little crazy and irresponsible or deeply sane and sensible. Either way, everybody falls in love with her for better or for worse, including her highly-strung driving instructor. While we all know Leigh's process, creating a sense of improvisation, there is no sense of that at all in his work. There is a seamless fluidity and genuine sense of character, in particular in this film, which is both delightfully funny and quirky, yet honest and credibly emotive. Poppy is the perennial optimist, and the film becomes this wonderfully wise look at optimism and how important it is to view the world in an optimistic way. Hawkins' Poppy is a refreshing cinematic character, which leaps out of the screen and enchants you from the outset, and through the exquisite work of Hawkins, Leigh's latest film is so beautifully charming. Leigh of course continues to keep us guessing as to what he does next. Every film is a unique journey, and this one is another superb triumph.

One of the most eagerly awaited films of the year is Guy Ritchie's latest crime caper, ''RocknRolla'', a fast-talking, plot-driven, hilarious stunner of a film that will blow audiences away as long as they pay close attention to the film's crazy plot. In a nutshell, a Russian mobster orchestrates a crooked land deal, putting millions of dollars up for grabs and attracting all of London's criminal underworld led by the amoral Lenny Cole [Tom Wilkinson], the ambitious One Two [Gerard Butler] and a crooked, cold, sexy accountant [Thandie Newton]. To try and explain these characters' connections would take up more space than is possible here, but suffice it to say, the film's ending, in true Ritchie style, is the ultimate payoff. RocknRolla is very British, and while a major Hollywood studio is releasing it, Ritchie has refused to tone it down, from language to violence. This film shows what a remarkable filmmaker Ritchie is, from the way he audaciously uses editing, as he cuts from character to character and scene to scene. This is a sharp, fast and kinetic work, a film that is a visual feast, and also a masterpiece of dialogue and character. Wilkinson steals the film as the underworld figure that epitomizes manipulation. He is simply magnificent, relishing the character and chewing the scenery at every turn. Butler is droll and charming, while Newton is exquisite as Stella. Full of wonderful villainy, this is cinematic gangsterism as only Ritchie can convey, pulling apart the mythology of the genre and contemporary London. RocknRolla is a stunningly mesmerising and exhilarating entertainment not to be missed.

Directing just his second feature, Ed Harris' ''Appaloosa'' is a classic Western based on the popular novel about two self-appointed US marshals hired to clean up a town run by a murderous rancher [Jeremy Irons]. Harris stars as Virgil Cole, who is teamed up with friend Everett Hitch Viggo Mortensen]. Into Cole's life comes Allie [Renée Zellweger], an independent woman of sorts, desperate to find a man to protect her from the harshness of the West. Appaloosa is a Western that takes its cues from the likes of Rio Bravo, and the film has a classic Western structure. Yet it takes its time to delineate characters and so with skill. As with the Western of old, Appaloosa is about men and violence, the lawlessness of the late 1800s in post-Civil War America. This film bristles with violence and humanity, and explores the nature of morality in an amoral world. Harris not only directs this fine film with clarity of vision but also delivers another stellar performance, though its Jeremy Irons, as the film's multi-faceted antagonist, who steals the film. The movie's one flaw is the miscasting of Zellweger, who seems incapable of doing little more than either pout or smile forcibly in a one-note performance that detracts from the major plot of the film. Beyond that, we have a finely textured, riveting Western that marks a welcome return to a classic American genre.

While American comedian and political satirist may not be as well known outside of the US as we would like, all that is about to change as he embarks on a journey throughout the world - well the Middle East and parts of America - to unravel his own quest about the impact and dangers of organised religion in the spellbinding documentary, ''Religilous''. Director Larry Charles made an impact at Toronto two years ago with his mock documentary, Borat. Charles directs the Maher-produced film but this time it is Maher doing what he does best: conducting wide-ranging interviews in order to find out for himself why religion is so rampant in this country in particular. There are personal interviews with his mother and sister, interviews with religious leaders and politicians, and in all, the result is a film that is both anarchically hilarious and truly fascinating. It not a particularly cinematic film, shot in a raw style so as one truly gets to know Maher's diverse subjects. The film is audacious and compelling. No group is spared and everyone is crucified in this fascinating, hilarious and provocative film that will lead to copious discussions long after the film's final credits. A brilliant masterwork, one can hope that Religilous will be seen en masse both in the US and around the world. In these uncertain times, this film is a must.

The passage of time has not been kind to what varied view as Fellini’s chef-d’oeuvre. Certainly Di Venanzo’s high-cue images and the director’s flash-take action approach place 81â?„2 firmly in its early ’60s context. As a self-referential detail it lacks the layering and the keenness of, for example, Tristram Shandy, and the central character, the stalled director (Mastroianni), seems less in torment than doodling. And just… The bathing of Guido system is a study force out to go to film- makers, and La Saraghina’s rumba for the off with a flea in his is a gift to soda pop video. Amiably spiking all appraisal in every way a gloomy scriptwriter mediator, Fellini pulls a multitude of rabbits out of the showman’s hat.