As much as I love horror (even awesomely-bad horror), I’ve never really developed much of an affinity for vampire movies. Most of the time they are too cliched and ridiculous for even my forgiving tastes. Even so, I couldn’t resist checking out the unbelievably well-received Swedish vampire flick, Let the Right One In.

Set in 1982 and based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s best selling novel, the story centers on Oskar, a small, quiet boy who is recipient of frequent bullying by his classmates. One night, while hanging out in the courtyard of his apartment complex, Oskar encounters a young girl, Eli, with pale skin and a wardrobe that seems woefully inappropriate for Sweden’s frigid winter climate. Though their initial encounters are standoffish (Eli repeatedly questions Oskar about his motives, “If I weren’t a girl, would you like me anyway?”), the two eventually form a bond.

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I tell you that we quickly learn that Eli is in fact a vampire. The older man she lives with–who we are initially led to believe is her father–seems to be little more than her glorified errand boy, “hunting” when she is thirsty and disposing of her “leftovers” when she must catch her own food. Although she is obviously a very deadly creature whose very existence depends on the death of others, we almost never feel like Oskar is in danger around her. That dynamic represents a good part of where the beauty of Let the Right One In comes from, this bizarre, yet touching friendship that forms between Oskar and Eli, who both are unable to make any other significant connections in their lives.

To classify Let The Right One In as just another horror movie really doesn’t do it justice. There are elements of horror (and Tomas Alfredson does a nice job using the bleak, muted Scandinavian setting to create suspense), but the main questions of the work don’t center on who will survive and who won’t–as in most horror films. Instead, we wonder about the possible outcomes of this relationship between a young boy and a vampire who has looked 12-years old for God knows how long. This ties in to one of my favorite things about Alfredson’s work here, which is that he leaves the ending open to interpretation. In fact, in the “Behind the Scenes” feature on the DVD, he discusses how the film’s ending can be justifiably seen as either happy or quite depressing.

Outside of Alfredson, I think both stars of the film deserve a great deal of credit. Kåre Hedebrant (don’t ask me to pronounce that) shows great emotional depth as Oskar, a pretty typical 12-year old boy thrown into a bizarre situation. His counterpart, Lina Leandersson, is similarly excellent as Eli, managing to simultaneously convey both the natural innocence associated with her character’s appearance and a subtle menace which hides just below the surface.

Overall, Let the Right One In is a outstandingly crafted film that will be enjoyed by most audiences. If you’re squeamish and concerned about gore, be aware that there are a few somewhat graphic scenes, but nothing too bad. If you’re willing to turn your head away for a few seconds every once in a while, you should still really enjoy this film. One final recommendation: Before you start watching the movie, make sure you adjust the settings to Swedish audio with English subtitles. My girlfriend and I just selected “Play movie” and were subjected to some unsurprisingly terrible English dubbing.

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The Strangers

I, along with most other moderately serious movie goers, have grown very tired with the whole slasher / torture porn genre of horror movies that have littered theaters for the past several years. While The Strangers looks like it may fall into that genre if you just judged it from the trailer, writer/director Bryan Bertino thankfully didn’t go that route. The film’s plot is simple and straightforward, a young couple at an extremely difficult time in their relationship are terrorized by a group of, of course, strangers. The surprising thing is that it really didn’t need much of a plot. The Strangers is essentially an exercise in creating suspense, and at that it excels. Bertino gradually builds an overwhelming sense of dread around his characters before anything really goes down, making sure that you’re never too relaxed. Once things do start to happen, however, you won’t leave the edge of your seat. If you’re a fan of horror movies and appreciate the art of creating suspense, then The Strangers is definitely worth your while.

Young@Heart

Young@Heart is a documentary about a senior citizen’s choir who perform famous rock songs, including hits from The Ramones, Sonic Youth, Coldplay, etc. The film manages to be both heart wrenching and inspirational as the choir struggles to overcome the deaths of two members in the weeks leading up to their show. You can’t help but be impressed by, and feel connected to this group who is defying stereotypes and doing what they love during their golden years. Be prepared to grab some Kleenex during the last couple scenes of Young@Heart as one of the choir’s members performs an absolutely stirring rendition of Coldplay’s “Fix You.” It hit me much in the same way that Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” did the first time I saw the video.

The Counterfeiters

Wow, what a movie. After I saw the outstanding animated French film Persepolis, I was about 90% sure that the Academy had chosen the wrong movie for last year’s “Best Foreign Language Film” Oscar, even though I hadn’t seen all the nominees. Let’s just say I spoke too soon. The Counterfeiters is the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, a famous Jewish-German counterfeiter who was forced by the Nazis to lead a team of concentration camp prisoners ordered to produce fraudulent British currency to finance Hitler’s war effort. There have been tons of World War II movies, but this is a fresh, interesting story that we’ve never seen played out on film. Karl Markovics is excellent as Sorowitsch and director Stefan Ruzowitzky shows some serious skill behind the camera. If you at all enjoy foreign films, The Counterfeiters comes highly recommended.

The Incredible Hulk

As I mentioned in my review of Pride and Glory, I’m a huge Edward Norton fan and will see just about anything he’s in. After being disappointed by Pride and Glory, however, I was prepared for Hulk not to be very good. Thankfully, I was proven wrong. Hulk isn’t an Oscar caliber film, but it’s still a pretty good time. Norton gives a characteristically strong performance and the story is fast paced and action packed. I didn’t see Ang Lee’s 2003 version, but from what I’ve gathered Lee tried to take the franchise in the King Kong / Frankenstein sensitive beast tragedy direction, and it just didn’t click with viewers (it was a giant box office flop for those of you who didn’t know). It appears that writer Zak Penn and director Louis Leterrier took the criticisms of the last Hulk to heart and went out to address them one by one. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining big budget blockbuster, you could do much worse than The Incredible Hulk.

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I’ve been a bit hesitant to rent many independently released foreign language films recently. After my debacles with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 days and Bamako, I started to second guess the festival awards and excessive critical praise that adorns the boxes of many of the movies I’ve never heard of at my local video store.

The Band’s Visit stood the risk of falling victim to my recent bias, sitting idly in the depths of my online Blockbuster queue, watching inferior movies pass it by and make their way to my mailbox. Thankfully for me, I was at the East Bay Blockbuster a few days ago, rushing to make an exchange because I had other errands to run, and grabbed this tremendous film because it was the first title I came across that was on my “must-watch” list.

The Band’s Visit chronicles an Egyptian police orchestra’s trip to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center. This trip is of particular importance because the word around the water cooler back in Alexandria is that the band may be the next casualty of the department’s tightening budget. Upon their arrival (in full uniform of course), a combination of language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, and general miscommunication sends them on a bus to the outskirts of a small desert town that is clearly not where they are supposed to be. The band’s leader, Tewfiq, tries to appear unfazed by the situation and is determined to get the band to its show without calling home for help.

When the band makes it into town, they come across a small cafe where they manage to procure a meal, despite a shortage of Israeli money. After their meal, Dina, the cafe’s free spirited and sharp witted owner, informs them that there are no more buses leaving that day, so they will be stuck there until morning. Dina and the cafe’s other two employees agree to house the band for the night. What follows is a wonderfully crafted study of culture and communication.

The film does an exceptional job capturing the subtleties of human interaction as pairs of almost polar opposites are forced to spend the night side by side. Tewfiq, a proper and emotionally restrained man, agrees (out of politeness) to go for a night on the town with Dina, who seems determined to make Tewfiq feel awkward with her blatant lack of decorum. Haled, the band’s resident ladies’ man, uncomfortably positions himself as the fifth wheel on a double date with one of Dina’s employees who lacks any sense of how to interact with women.

The Band’s Visit has many awkward moments, but everything feels very true to life. There is a quiet humor in the movie that has been applied with an incredibly delicate touch. The best thing I can say about The Band’s Visit is that it feels more authentic than just about any movie I’ve seen in recent memory. The actors all do a terrific job of capturing the essence of their characters and their emotions all come across with stunning realism. The Band’s Visit isn’t something to watch if you’re looking for fast paced entertainment or cheap laughs, but if you’re interested in seeing an exceedingly well crafted movie, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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MetaCritic Score: 81

I had high hopes for Bamako. Scores in the 80s are tough to come by on MetaCritic and I usually am a fan of any movie that is left-leaning or politically subversive. When I heard that the basis of the film was a trial in which the powerful international economic institutions were being challenged by African society I was intrigued. Given these factors, it seems strange to report that I found Bamako to be completely and utterly unwatchable. I literally fell asleep on two separate occasions trying to watch this film, a record only bested by the three times I fell asleep when my ex-girlfriend tried to get me to watch Pride & Prejudice.

Almost 100% of the film takes place in an outdoor courtroom where lawyers and citizens take turns approaching a podium and then prattling on for 10 minutes. The only breaks in the monotony are the small glimpses into the day to day life of Africans. We see several of the citizens’ every day tasks and gain very limited information about the lives of a few characters. These departures from the courtroom vary from mildly interesting to completely irrelevant. One of the most ridiculous of these was the 5 minute clip from some random western that bizarrely featured Danny Glover in a non-speaking role. How weird is that? (edit: Turns out he was a producer. Still the scene was random and bad.)

After making it about an hour into the movie on my second attempt (during which I did push ups and sit ups to get my blood flowing so you can’t say I didn’t give it my all), I came to the realization that there was no way I was going to make it through the rest. I did, however, want to see if any storyline developed or significant events occurred, so I fast forwarded through the last hour. Sure enough, nothing happened. The entire movie was literally speech after speech after speech. It’s ridiculous.

I can’t really recommend this movie to anyone, it was that terrible of a movie viewing experience. Wait, scratch that, if you’re my sophomore year World Politics teacher (who spent 80% of the semester rambling about Africa) then you might enjoy this, otherwise you’ll be bored out of your skull.

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4 Months was never put out into wide release, but was the 2007 winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or, the top prize of the Cannes Film Festival, and was also named to the top 10 lists of many of the nation’s top critics. All that being said, it should, understandably, come as a surprise that I didn’t particularly enjoy this film.

4 Months has a tight, narrow focus, and for that I give it credit. We meet the characters with their goal already laid out, they set out to accomplish this goal, and afterwards the movie ends. There is barely any background, there are only the slightest of side plots, and the story is direct and realistic, without any hint of allegory or metaphor.

The film focuses on two college girls living in Romania in 1987, near the end of communist rule. Otilia and Gabi are roommates and best friends. Gabi has a serious problem (she is pregnant) and enlists Otilia to help her as she tries to get an abortion. The other problem is that, in Romania during this time, abortion is illegal, but Gabi doesn’t have the resources or maturity level to handle being a mother at this point. Through a friend who had a sister who had an abortion, Gabi has obtained the name of a man who will perform the operation. Gabi is too afraid to go meet the man herself, so she sends Otilia in her stead. When Otilia meets the man, who refers to himself as Mr. Bebe, he is immediately upset because not only did he specifically state that he wanted Gabi to meet him in person, but he also instructed her to make a reservation at one of two specific hotels, which she has also failed to do. Mr. Bebe has a stern, imposing personality whose presence becomes increasingly ominous the longer he is around the girls.

When he learns that Gabi has lied, not only about the money she claimed to have, but also about how far along she was in her pregnancy, the entire operation is almost called off before Mr. Bebe lays out an alternative method of payment which will ask much more of Otilia than anyone can reasonably be expected to do for a friend. Despite this, not having the operation is not an option for Gabi, and what must be done is done. The rest of film details the collateral damage of this event and these decisions. It offers no easy answers or tight resolution, leaving Gabi and Otilia only with the reality of what has happened, and the viewer with only our imagination as to what the future holds for these two young women.

I give writer/director Cristian Mungiu a lot of credit for the level of authenticity and realism in 4 Months. He avoids all clichés and never stretches the truth for the sake of entertainment. In the environment of today’s film industry, this was a bold and risky proposition. He is able to accomplish this, in large part, because of the tremendous performances of the film’s three main stars, Anamaria Marinca (Otilia), Laura Vasiliu (Gabi), and Vlad Ivanov (Bebe). Each of these actors fully captures the essence of the role and seems to have an intimate understanding of the realities of the time. However, while he may have produced a film with an exceptional level of realism, he has also produced one that has an absent enjoyability factor and is nearly totally devoid of entertainment value.

Now, I don’t need explosions, sex, or CGI to find a movie enjoyable, but, to be truly successful, a film needs to be more than just an exhibition of the director’s ability to convey reality. For comparison’s sake, watching this film is sort of like watching a brilliant mathematician solve an extremely difficult proof for two hours, at the end you may come away knowing that what you just saw was an impressive accomplishment, but the total lack of anything to make the presentation entertaining ruins your experience.

Apart from the lack of entertainment, one other aspect of the film that I really disliked was the frequent use of obscenely long, continuous shots. According to Time Magazine‘s review of this film, 4 Months is composed of less than 70 total shots. There are a few of these that are on the border of excruciating, but perhaps the worst of all is the 5+ minute shot of Otilia staring ahead blankly at the dinner table of her boyfriend’s parents’ house. I know that it is meant to show how the events of the film have rendered her almost completely stoic, but we get the point by the one minute mark, and Mungiu insists on forcing us to listen to the boyfriend’s family’s mindless pseudo-intellectual drivel for another 5 minutes.

All-in-all, from a technical standpoint, I can understand how 4 Months could have garnered critical acclaim, but the decries of “masterpiece” and “brilliant” seem drastically overstated. I can only recommend this to those who have a very specific interest in the technical and stylistic elements of film, or those who see a films proximity to reality as the major determinant of success. For the casual movie fan, I’d suggest a pass.

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I’m going to start with a mini-rant here, but bear with me.

One pet peeve of mine is when studios put tags like “*Generic Big Name Director* Presents…” on the poster/box for a new movie when they served as a producer, but didn’t direct the movie themselves. Usually the director whose coattails they choose to ride is someone who has had major success in the genre (or a closely associated genre) of the movie to be released. I’m guessing the thought process among studio big shots goes something like this, “Well, we sure like this movie, but I’m pretty sure no one is going to pay to see it if it’s our director’s first major release and our star has never been on a magazine cover. What if we offered *Generic Big Name Director* a boat load of money to ‘be a producer’ and give it his seal of approval? No one will be able to resist shelling out their money to go see a movie if we put *Generic Big Name Director*’s name on the cover! It’s brilliant!” Sometimes this happens because it is feared that a truly quality movie is going to be overlooked and sometimes it happens because a studio is afraid a crappy movie is going to fail and they want to cover their asses.

The former is the case with El Orfanato whose poster displays Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro’s name in significantly bigger lettering than either the film’s star or its director. It upsets me because it takes the spotlight off director Juan Antonio Bayona, who really deserves a lot of credit for making a great movie. It also sucks because it just pumps up the already nearly inevitable comparisons between Bayona’s work and del Toro’s “Best Foreign Language Film” Oscar winner from last year, just because they are both Spanish language suspense/horror films that involve children. I think Kobe Bryant summed up my opinion best in a recent interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. When asked about whether he wanted to be the next Michael Jordan, Bryant replied, “Just let me be me.” He went on to acknowledge that even though Kobe does want to someday be considered the best basketball player ever, he doesn’t want to be “the next Jordan,” he just wants to be great in his own right. I wish the studio would have just let El Orfanato be its own movie and not forced it to be the “next” Pan’s Labyrinth in order to be considered great.

Ok, on to the review.

El Orfanato is the story Laura, a woman who, along with her husband and son, Simon, has recently purchased and moved back into the house that previously served as the orphanage in which she was raised many years earlier. Laura hopes to turn the home into a bit of a sanctuary for children herself, as she has dreams to adopt and care for several “special needs” children. Shortly after they move in, Simon begins telling his parents of several new invisible friends that he has made, which his parents attribute to an overactive imagination coupled with isolation from other children his age. After a few, particularly troubling incidents involving Simon and his invisible friends, he and his mother have a falling out on the day that she has invited the families of the children she plans to adopt to her house for a party. After Laura has a disturbing encounter with a mysterious child wearing a burlap mask, she realizes that Simon has gone missing. After months of searches turning up no trace of Simon, Laura begins to open to the possibility that their may have been a supernatural involvement in her son’s disappearance. Her investigation into the history of her house, and of herself, leads to some frightening discoveries and a stunning and emotionally jarring ending that is on par with any of the genre’s greatest works.

Screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez crafted a masterful script and Bayona has brought it to its maximum potential, creating an astounding amount of fear and suspense for a movie that features virtually zero blood. Belén Rueda, who plays Laura, does an exceptional job with her role, hitting all of the motherly emotions. I speak very little Spanish, but the quality of her delivery comes across in any language. Spanish film icon Geraldine Chaplin (who has 111 film/TV credits on her IMDB page) also delivers an excellent performance as Aurora, a medium that Laura hires to help investigate her son’s disappearance. She exudes the perfect balance of conviction and craziness to make her character come alive.

El Orfanato is a film that I would recommend to anyone. I truly think that this is a work, like Pan’s Labyrinth, which will appeal to the vast majority of viewers, even if they don’t traditionally like foreign language or horror films. The quality of the direction, script, and acting is all top notch; the degree of originality is also a tremendous accomplishment for a genre that often struggles to avoid formula driven gore fests. Go check it out next time you want to watch a scary movie with your girlfriend but don’t want to develop a case of Hostel/Saw-like nausea.

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Wow. What a movie. I will get this out of the way right up front, I think The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the best picture to come out last year. It took me a couple days to decide, but I would rank it slightly above the Oscar winner, No Country for Old Men, which is saying a lot, because I loved that movie as well.

Diving Bell is the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of Elle Magazine in France. In his early 40’s he suffered a surprise stroke which left him almost completely paralyzed. While his body was of little use to him, his mind remained as sharp as ever. After overcoming a battle with self-pity, Bauby, played to perfection by Mathieu Amalric, decided to make the most of the situation by writing a book about his experience in the hospital through a time consuming and labor intensive method of communication with the woman hired to take his dictation.

The film explores how several of Bauby’s relationships changed as a result of his stroke. Some of the most powerful moments in the film are the interactions between Bauby and his frail, aging father, whom Bauby had been helping to care for before his stroke.

Also notable is the way in which Bauby maintained his creativity and sense of humor throughout the ordeal. His real and imagined interactions with his gorgeous therapists and the woman to whom he dictates his book are frequently hilarious. These scenes showcase Bauby’s personality and help reinforce our recognition of his inner strength by showing how he hasn’t let his condition rob him of his identity.

The acting in Diving Bell was solid, but it was the direction and cinematography that really stole the show. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. There was pretty stiff competition for Best Direction, so you can’t really complain that Julian Schnabel didn’t win, but the cinematography in Diving Bell was obviously superior to There Will Be Blood. It is also ridiculous that Diving Bell wasn’t even nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It got universal critical acclaim including the highest score on MetaCritic for last year, tied with There Will Be Blood. Much of the film is shot from Bauby’s first person perspective which is truly unique in the way it is presented. Schnabel and company also did a great job with the locations. There aren’t a ton of scenic landscapes in the film, but when scenes outside the hospital are used, they are used very effectively.

The screenplay, which was also nominated for an Oscar, gives the viewer a healthy balance between Bauby’s internal dialogue, which is largely drawn from the book, and actual dialogue between the characters.

Let me repeat that I cannot recommend this film highly enough. If you’ve been living a cave for the past year or so and want to rent one movie to catch up on what you’ve missed make sure it is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it is a tremendous achievement on so many levels and should be an instant favorite to almost anyone who isn’t too averse to subtitles. Go out and rent as soon as you have the chance, you’ll be glad you did.

Cool Trailer Remix

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I’m not normally big on monster movies. This may surprise some people because I’m normally a huge fan of horror movies in general. Serial killers? Sure. Zombies? Why not? Murderous ghosts? I’ll give it a shot. For some reason, however, monster/creature movies have always struck me as being a little too over the top and outrageous. After seeing The Host, though, I’m now beginning to think that this was just because there hasn’t been a decent monster movie made in recent memory.

The Host is set in Seoul, South Korea and centers on the highly dysfunctional Park family. Gang-du and his father, Hie-bong, run a small food stand on the bank of the Han River. Hang-du doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. He’s kind of chubby, he’s always falling asleep on the job, and he doesn’t really seem to have any sense of ambition. Somehow, however, he must have at least had his game together at one point because he has a daughter Hyun-seo, who appears to be smart and very well adjusted. Hang-du’s sister, Nam-joo, is a world class archer who has the problem of freezing under pressure, and his brother, Nam-il is a cynical alcoholic.

The film opens with a scene in a morgue with a cold-hearted American ordering his Korean assistant to dump hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, even though he knows full well that the pipes eventually lead to the Han River. (Interesting Note: This is based loosely on a real event, where an American ordered 20 gallons of waste that contained formaldehyde be dumped down the drain. The drain would eventually lead to the Han River, but not before passing through two water treatment plants and reducing any formaldehyde to safe levels.) This is really the only explanation we get for the monster’s existence and it seems to be done more as a courtesy to the viewer than as a necessary plot device. As much as I think my subconscious wanted a more complete explanation of how this menacing creature came into existence, when I think back, I think the way this was handled worked well. This allows the film to be presented as more of a disaster movie, likening the monster to an earthquake or tornado, which adds a sense of realism. The message that is put across to the characters/viewers is basically, “You may never know exactly how or why this creature is here, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is, so now you’re going to have to deal with it.”

The creature first makes its presence felt when it attacks the area of the Han River bank where the Park’s operate their business. The creature is menacing and devastatingly powerful, but not to an absurd degree. The fact that the damage the creature creates is proportional to its size (which seems to be comparable to a school bus) really does wonders for the film. If the monster would have been smashing buildings or throwing tanks around it would have been too easy to become comical. Amid the chaos of this first attack, the creature captures Hyun-seo, despite Gang-du’s best efforts to save her. Gang-du and the entire Park family are distraught. They think that they have lost the little girl forever. After the attack, all of those that survive are taken to a large gymnasium that is basically set up like the Super Dome after Hurricane Katrina. It is here that we learn that the only other person beside Gang-du to come into contact with the monster and survive appears to be suffering from some strange new virus that officials decide must be carried by the beast. Gang-du is immediately perceived as a threat and is taken into custody. While in quarantine, Gand-du receives a phone call that encourages him to hold out hope that his daughter may still be alive and he might have the chance to save her.

From a visual standpoint, I thought The Host was very well shot. There were a lot of muted gray, green, and blue tones throughout the film which worked especially well in the sewer scenes of the movie. The creature also looks fairly realistic, both in its movement and appearance, which is a credit to whoever was in charge of the film’s CGI.

My one serious problem with the DVD is the terrible English dub. Normally I watch foreign films in the native language with subtitles, but when I started this one up and it defaulted to English audio I decided to let it go. This was a mistake. Whoever cast the English voice over actors for The Host needs to get fired from whatever project they are currently on just because they did such an awful job here. The English voices were beyond ridiculous and at some points were just outright cartoonish. Often, there was slapstick emphasis in places it where it had no business being and there were frequently very significant differences in what the dub said and the subtitled translation put on the bottom of my screen. Why was I watching the movie in English with English subtitles, you may ask? Well, this is mainly because I had that little belief that the voice actors were actually doing the writer’s script justice. I think I would have enjoyed Host significantly more if I had watched it in Korean, and I partially blame myself, but that isn’t enough to excuse just how unprofessional a job this was.

That being said, I still did enjoy the film quite a bit. For anyone who is considering renting the movie, I still recommend it. Just watch it in Korean with subtitles. The Host is filled with great suspense, solid art direction, and awesome CGI. If you like horror movies then this falls into the “Definitely Rent It” category. If you don’t like horror movies, I still think there is plenty of value in The Host that makes it worth your while. While great at generating suspense, the monster isn’t something that the faint of heart are going to have nightmares about. There is also just enough humor / satire thrown in to make Host a completely worthy selection for a movie night with a few friends.

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The box for Paris, Je T’aime tells us that the film is going to make us “Fall In Love” with the city, but, while the city is the setting for each of the 18 vignettes, it really isn’t the focus of the film.

Paris is really about the people of the city. In particular, it’s largely a movie about the bonds forming, changing, and ending between those people. In addition to dialogue, the movie also puts a huge focus on non-verbal communication between people, as the viewer and the characters both get just as much out of what isn’t said as what actually comes out.

Paris is also equally about the people behind the camera, directing each scene, as it is about the people in front of the camera acting them out. Each director firmly places his or her stamp on their portion of the film.

Paris is really just an anthology of 18 short stories set in the city. I’m not sure if this is the packaging’s fault or my own, but I went into this movie anticipating it to be more in the vein of Magnolia or Traffic, two of my all-time favorites. What I mean by that, for those of you who haven’t seen either of those two pictures, is a series of initially independent or loosely related stories that gradually merge into a cohesive unit and end with a unified, interesting resolution.

What I got, however, was a series of totally independent stories that, for the most part, never overlapped or had a defined resolution.

That isn’t to say that the film is devoid of value, because it certainly does have some strengths. Paris’s strengths come from the performances of its powerhouse list of directors (22 total) and actors (some pretty big names).

I love watching a really well directed movie, seeing how a director uses camera angles, lighting, pacing, etc. to convey the message of a scene. Paris really does something very interesting by changing directors from story to story; you get to see all of these different styles contrasted with one another back to back to back. This makes it easier to appreciate how unique and talented each one is when you see how they do things differently from everyone else. Some of my favorite directorial performances in the film were those of Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men, Fargo), Vincenzo Natali (I didn’t recognize any of his previous work, but his Paris segment “Quartier de la Madeleine” featured some visuals reminiscent of Sin City), and Isabel Coixet (a Spanish director who I’ve never heard of either, but will hopefully get to see more of). Wes Craven’s scene, which was unsurprisingly set in a graveyard, was also one of my favorites, but, despite the setting, was something pretty different from what you would expect from him.

As for acting performances, Buscemi does a great job working wit the Coen brothers again, the always beautiful Natalie Portman does a good job in Tykwer’s scene which reminds me somewhat of her role in Garden State, Juliette Binoche (Chocolat, Cache) is very convincing as a mother struggling with the loss of her son, and Gena Rowlands (The Notebook) has a very witty and powerful dialogue about the end of a long marriage with Ben Gazzara (The Thomas Crown Affair, Happiness). Some other random names you may recognize who show up briefly include: Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Elijah Wood (in Natali’s scene), and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Overall I’d say I really enjoyed about 50-60% of the 18 vignettes. Some were just too weird for me, including one strange stop-action story that involved two mimes and another that included several very angry Asian women, and some were just lacking enough substance to really pull their own weight.

As for a recommendation, to me it was definitely worth renting. If you’re someone who is big into the directorial aspects of filmmaking then this is as intriguing a movie as you’re going to find. If you enjoyed the story format of Waking Life then this is something that you’ll probably be glad you checked out as well, because they are somewhat similar in format.

However, if you’re just looking for something entertaining to pick out while you’re at the video store or picking something out for a movie night with some friends, you’re better off looking somewhere else.

I should be getting We Own The Night and Gone Baby Gone in the mail tomorrow from Blockbuster, so you can expect to see something up on both of those within the next week.

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