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Naked Truth
The more notorious the nude scene, the harder it will be to take the actor/actress doing it seriously as a performer. The more credible the actor/actress already is, the less notorious the nude scene will be. MERWYN GROTE, St. Louis, Missouri
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The Joy of Singing (No MPAA rating)
Don't get the wrong idea. "The Joy of Singing" also could be titled "The Joy of Singing Rather Than Being Murdered." One of the meetings of Madame Eve's voice class begins with her tearful announcement that two of the group have been found dead. Her students eye one another uneasily. Who will be killed next? We wonder, too.

Crazy Heart (R)
Some actors are blessed. Jeff Bridges is one of them. Ever since his breakthrough role in "The Last Picture Show" in 1971, he has, seemingly without effort, created a series of characters who we simply believe, even the alien "Starman." He doesn't do this with mannerisms but with their exclusion; his acting is as clear as running water. Look at him playing Bad Blake in "Crazy Heart." The notion of a broke-down, boozy country singer is an archetype in pop culture. We've seen this story before. The difference is, Bad Blake makes us believe it happened to him.

Sherlock Holmes (PG-13)
The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I liked "Sherlock Holmes." Yet another classic hero has been fed into the f/x mill, emerging as a modern superman. Guy Ritchie's film is filled with sensational sights, over-the-top characters and a desperate struggle atop Tower Bridge, which is still under construction. It's likely to be enjoyed by today's action fans. But block bookings are not likely from the Baker Street Irregulars.

It's Complicated (R)
"It's Complicated" is perfectly plausible if you are only willing to believe that Meryl Streep sells a whole lot of muffins. She plays a bakery/restaurant owner who lives in Santa Barbara in a sprawling hacienda on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, set on grounds approached by a sweeping circular drive. (I've been to Oprah's place, which is only a little nicer.) Life is sweet, although Jane hires an architect to give her a new kitchen. Her current one tragically has only two ovens.

A Single Man (R)
Hemingway wrote something years ago that returns to my memory from time to time: "Isn't it pretty to think so." Never mind what he was referring to. The words apply for me to those situations where we imagine the reality to be quite different than it really is. Perhaps our imagination is a protective strategy.

Nine (PG-13)
My problem may be that I know Fellini's "8½" (1963) too well. Your problem may be that you don't know it well enough. Both of us may be asking, who exactly was "Nine" made for? This is a big-scale version of the 1982 Broadway production, which won the Tony Award as best musical. It's likely that most who saw it had either seen the Fellini film, or made that their business.

Police, Adjective (No MPAA rating)
"Police, Adjective" is a peculiar title for a film. The posters at Cannes 2009 read "Politist, adjective." With a period, and a gun on top of a dictionary. A critic from Romania, sitting next to us before the screening, explained that the purity of the language is enforced as fervently in Romania as in France, and "police," of course, is properly a noun.

Broken Embraces (R)
Pedro Almodovar loves the movies with lust and abandon and the skill of an experienced lover. "Broken Embraces" is a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath. As it ravished me, I longed for a freeze frame to allow me to savor a shot.

Avatar (PG-13)
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

Up In the Air (R)
Ryan Bingham is the Organization Man for the 2000s. He never comes to the office. Technically, he doesn't have an office, he has an address where his employer has an office. His life is devoted to visiting other people's offices, and firing them. “Up in the Air” takes the trust people once had in their jobs and pulls out the rug. It is a film for this time.

The Young Victoria (PG)
Orson Welles allegedly said a movie studio was the best toy train set a child could ever desire. He should have been Queen Victoria. She was crowned in 1837, and ruled until 1901, queen of the greatest empire the world has ever known. She was married to Albert, her great love, from 1840 to 1861, and though she was a widow for the next 40 years, at least unlike many monarchs, she wed the man of her choice.

Mammoth (No MPAA rating)
Our health-care system rests, to a sizable degree, upon the shoulders of Filipino doctors, nurses, patient-care specialists and caregivers. There is a reason for this. Medical schools in the Philippines produce many graduates who take such jobs in North America, where there is a perennial shortage.

Cloud Nine (No MPAA rating) (12/16) »

Did You Hear About the Morgans? (PG-13) (12/16) »

Q. Upon asking my 25-year-old sister what she would like for Christmas, she responded with the following: " 'It's a Wonderful Life' on DVD -- but make sure it's in color!" Disgusted, I asked her why she would ever want to watch the colorized version over the black-and-white original. Her response made me laugh. "Well, how am I supposed to tell what color Zuzu's petals are?"
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (R) (2004)
Visiting an old people's home, I walked down a corridor on the floor given over to advanced Alzheimer's parents. Some seemed anxious. Some were angry. Some simply sat there. Knowing nothing of what was happening in their minds, I wondered if the anxious and angry ones had some notion of who they were and that something was wrong. I was reminded of the passive ones while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Wiped free of memory, they exist always in the moment, which they accept because it is everything.
I asked myself, who is this guy named Matthew Dessem? I'd be doing reading for one of my Great Movies pieces, and I'd encounter an essay by him on a site called the Criterion Contraption. The Criterion Collection is the standard bearer among high-quality DVDs, but he wasn't associated with them, except in an indirect way: He has set himself the goal of seeing and writing about every single film in the Collection!

Of Time and the City
The streets of our cities are haunted by the ghosts of those who were young here long ago. In memory we recall our own past happiness and pain. Terence Davies, whose subject has often been his own life, now turns to his city, Liverpool, England, and regrets not so much the joys of his youth as those he did not have. Central to these are the sexual experiences forbidden by the Catholic Church to which he was most devoted.

"Synecdoche, New York" (2008) is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing of it in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.

Look at it this way. We have the chance to see virtually every American film that's released, and many of the English language films in general. But with the crisis in U.S. distribution, the only foreign-language films are those someone paid hard cash for, and risked opening here. "You always like those foreign films," I'm told, often by someone making it sound like a failing. Not always, but often. They tend to involve characters of intelligence and complexity. If they're about people of subnormal intelligence, they're about that, or acknowledge it. In most of the world, people want to hurry into adulthood, not clinging to adolescence.

True, the once neglected art of animation has undergone a rebirth in both artistry and popularity. Yet having escaped one blind alley, it seems headed into another one: The dumbing-down of stories out of preference for meaningless nonstop action. Classic animated features were models of three-act stories: Recall "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" or "The Lion King." The characters were embedded in stories that made sense and involved making decisions based on values. Now too many stories end in brain-numbing battles, often starring heroes the age of the younger audience members. Here is no food for growth and for the imagination, just brainless kinetic behavior.

I was born on the 20th of March 1974 in sunny Johannesburg. My love of movies began at a very young age. 80's classics like "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial," "Back to the Future" and "Rain Man" inspired me to study film after leaving school. At the Pretoria Technikon Film and Television School, my natural talent for low budget clay-mation was discovered when I threw together a one minute mixed-media animated short in the space of a day, which went on to score a unanimous 95% from the resident lecturers.

I was born on February 6, 1975, into a quiet family in San Juan, Metro Manila (Philippines). I barely remember anything in that time before we moved at the turn of the 80s. From what I recall, I grew up in a fairly middle class neighborhood, but my mother would tell you that we were always poor. Thanks to mom and dad though, it never felt that way.

thumbs
Linked here are reviews in recent months for which I wrote either 4 star or 3.5 star reviews. What does Two Thumbs Up mean in this context? It signifies that I believe these films are worth going out of your way to see, or that you might rent them, add them to your Netflix, Blockbuster or TiVo queues, or if they are telecast record them.

Gathered here in one convenient place are my recent reviews that awarded films Zero Stars, One-half Star, One Star, and One-and-a-half Stars. These are, generally speaking to be avoided. Sometimes I hear from readers who confess they are in the mood to watch a really bad movie on some form of video. If you are sincere, be sure to know what you're getting: A really bad movie.

in theaters
on dvd
Inglourious Basterds  (12/15)
Taking Woodstock  (12/15)
The Hangover  (12/15)
Arizona Dream  (12/11)
World's Greatest Dad  (12/8)
Public Enemies  (12/8)
The Cove  (12/8)
Coraline  (12/8)
A Christmas Tale  (12/1)
Funny People  (11/24)
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