Movie Review Black Los Angeles

BlackNLA Movie Reviews

*****THE REEL DEAL: Reviewz from the Street*****

by Edwardo Jackson

BIASES: Early 30s black male; frustrated screenwriter who favors action, comedy, and glossy, big budget movies over indie flicks, kiddie flicks, and weepy Merchant Ivory fare

LATE FALL REVIEW, PART ONE

News of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Despite breakups,
birthdays, computer issues, and Georgia political attack ads, even
after a month away, you can't stop THE REEL DEAL!

MAN OF THE YEAR (PG-13)
Biases: Good concept; hope it's funnier than its Dow Jonesy star.
Players: Robin Wiliams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, writer/director Barry Levinson
Logline: "From the Comedy Store to the White House:" Jonathan Stewart-style talk show host/comedian Tom Dobbs (Williams) launches a freewheeling Presidential bid, only to win on an electronic voting glitch that has a whistle-blowing system technician (Linney) fearing for her life.

The Deal: Gotcha – you thought this was a comedy, didn't you? There's a reason why the trailers to this thing are only tepidly amusing - because the film itself has an identity crisis. Co-starring Robin Williams (a volume comic instead of a value comic if there ever was one – and he's on target with his riffs about 40% of the time here) and Chrisopher Walken's sing-songy cadence (!), "Man" bounces between
being a convenient dumping/proving ground for independent, liberal politics and a low-rent thriller that squanders an otherwise capable cast and high concept. Talk about being sold a bill of goods: when tickets cost eleven dollars at some Los Angeles theaters and a movie leaves you wondering just what did you pay for, this type of bait and switch should be a federal offense. Seriously – or at least a very
stern misdemeanor. Yes, people are going to comedians like Bill Maher for news. Yes, I agree with Dobbs'claim that "Democracy is a collision of ideas." But it only works when those ideas are good ones. At $11 plus parking, "Man of the Year" is not such a good idea.
@@ REELS (Extra medium)

THE QUEEN (R)
Biases: Overwhelming praise for Mirren has me intrigued.
Players: Helen Mirren, Martin Sheen, director Stephen Frears
Logline: Just days after the election of Tony Blair (Sheen), Britain's youngest Prime Minister in history and a modernist with an anti-monarchist wife to boot, Princess Diana's death elicits days of a curious non-response from the Royal Family, illuminating if not cruciblizing Queen Elizabeth II's (Mirren) distaste for her former
daughter-in-law and the distance between the monarch and its subjects.

The Deal: Yeah, I just made up a word, but it seems to fit: "The Queen" is a very engaging, 360 degree inspection of Queen Elizabeth's own trial by fire, and how public scrutiny into her own petty jealousies and self-perceived failings as a mother – especially when held up to the already-revered-but-now-flawless-in-death mirror of
"the peoples' princess" – hardens her views but at the cost of some serious introspection and public grief. The living embodiment of tradition, protocol, and a bygone time of English dominance, Mirren's Queen Elizabeth is a gold statuette waiting to happen. A far cry from the supple, lean body that gloriously sexed up Cuba Gooding Jr. in "Shadowboxer," the owlishly bespectacled, gray wigged symbol of dowdy regality that is Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth emotes with all the
ease of squeezing out diamonds, her latent jealousy of Diana's popularity even in death just a perfectly dictioned sniff of royal elitism away. Mirren's not only the forces of modernity warring against the intractability of royalism in the flesh ("freeloading, emotionally retarded nutters" says Mrs. Blair of the Royal Family, who
cost the United Kingdom "30-40 million pounds a year"), but also an out-of-touch oxymoron herself: while Mirren's Queen spends half the movie espousing the historical importance of the Crown's image, it's that very same symbolism to a people – her people, her subjects – particularly in a time of death, that she risks ignoring. Frears continues to handle actors marvelously, drawing out a wholly
sympathetic, championable performance from Sheen as rookie, revisionist Prime Minister Blair, whose outsider status and free-thinking crisis management team vainly tries to defend and deflect negative press from Her Majesty - who's holed away at the Balmoral summer home, without a comment for or a clue about the pulse of the people. Caught between ameliorating the grief of the people who
elected him and refereeing the overarching arrogance of a figurehead long past its relevancy, it's no wonder Blair mutters "They screwed up her life. Let's hope they don't screw up her death." Toss in Frears' wonderfully staged high speed hunting of Diana through the media, a caught-between-a-rock-and-hard-throne Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), plus a divinely non-regal, intuitive musical score, and you have a
"Queen" for all occasions. Especially those held at the Kodak Theater.
@@@@ REELS (An urban legend/instant classic)

OPEN SEASON (PG)
Biases: Here goes that animated, 3-D thing I love so much…
Players: Voices of Ashton Kutcher, Martin Lawrence
Logline: Boog (Lawrence), a domesticated zoo bear, is dropped off in the wild, joined soon by mischievous deer Elliot (Kutcher). Pursued by a bloodthirsty, vengeful hunter (Jack McGee), Boog and Elliot try to make it back to the town of Timberline before the start of (open) hunting season.

The Deal: Paced by flourishes of wit yet dragged down by occasionally gross humor (I don't think even today's kids are laughing at the scat jokes, y'all), "Season," despite its charms, is just another animated film in a crowded, animated field (Memo to Hollywood: Put the 3-D animatronic software DOWN!). Kutcher's goofy, spongy voice is natural for an animatic and Martin Lawrence is amiable enough for mainstream audiences (although "amiable" isn't what makes the humorously
mercurial Lawrence entertaining). But it's Billy Connolly's hysterical, Guinness-soaked portrayal of a nut-tossing cult leader of a band of territorial squirrels that takes the ca – er – acorn. Boog is right: "The woods is no place for a bear." Neither is the wilderness of today's multiplex.
@@ REELS (Extra medium)

VOLVER (R)
Biases: Heard it was all the rage at Cannes.
Players: Penelope Cruz, writer/director Pedro Almodovar
Logline: When Raimunda's (Cruz) friends and family begin to see visions of her dead mother around their homes, it brings up a lot of family secrets and unfinished business for three generations of these Spanish women.

The Deal: Yawn. Here is yet another entry on my "What in the World Were Other Critics Thinking" list, joining notables like "Mystic River" and "You Can Count on Me." Is this movie well made? Sure – it's Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Talk to Her). A directorial talent of international repute, Almodovar pushes the envelope in his films, this time pushing us in the realm of pseudo-dark comedy that
just isn't funny. I guess it's deep because there are a lot of women hugging and crying and if that makes me an insensitive, silly man, then I'll be that. While Almodovar does toss us the odd lingering shot of Cruz's "world class cleavage" (his opinion, not mine) and she seems far more at home in her native Spanish tongue than in ours, "Volver" (which means coming back), despite playing with the bounds of time and space, life and death, is a touchy feely affair that I can't touch or feel.
@ REEL (If you can't sneak in, don't go in)

FAST FOOD NATION (R)
Biases: Down with SuperSizing!
Players: Wilmer Valerrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Greg Kinnear, director Richard Linklater
Logline: From immigrant workers sloughing through terrible conditions in slaughterhouses to the marketing whizzes pushing product to a less-than-suspecting American populace, an inside-out look at the global impact fast food has on a variety of lives.

The Deal: Blood in the meat, workers on drugs, a (real life?) five minute montage on the slaughter of cattle to produce beef – it's all enough to make you wanna turn vegetarian. Almost. Which is precisely the point in Linklater's no-holds barred, multilateral fictionalization of Eric Schlossser's nonfiction book of fast food woe. Blessed by a malleable, low-rent cast (with the exception of salesman Kinnear and franchisee Bruce Willis in a very smug, amusing cameo), "Nation" gives you self-involved ecoterrorists (Paul Dano), struggling Mexican workers (Moreno, with plain Jane appeal), and those who abuse the system from within (the diverse wunderkind Bobby Cannavale). Kinda like with hot dogs, "If you love 'em, don't watch how they're made." If you're a true meat lover like myself or a fast food devotee like others, this movie does what it's supposed to do for everyone: give a moment of pause. Will it stop you from driving through McDonald's? Not if you believe what Harry (Willis' character) does. In speaking about there being "too much manure in the meat," he says "It's a sad fact of life that we all have to eat a little shit from time to time." Literally and figuratively.
@@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot)

SHORTBUS (unrated)
Biases: Oh, that's the sex movie…
Players: Writer/director John Cameron Mitchell
Logline: When pre-orgasmic sex therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) follows her gay couple patients Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson) to New York's uber-swinger spot Shortbus (a salon for the sexually challenged where "voyeurism is participation") in search of her first orgasm, she's exposed to a whole new cast of diverse characters with a myriad of ideas on sex, relationships, and life. Oh yeah – and there's real life sex taking place onscreen, too.

The Deal: While that last fact may suck people in (I won't lie – I was intrigued), it's "Shortbus'" totally irreverent and libertarian spirit that holds you. In spite of a few dramatic lulls, director provocateur Mitchell's resoundingly indie experiment is aggressively interesting, focusing more on relationships than sex , although the sex is pretty explicit but unglamorous (how many movies will you see this year with
a guy-on-guy-on-guy threesome? Right – didn't think so). The acting by this little known cast is fine in the face of the movie's scattershot, relationship-anarchic message, particularly Lee as Canadian sex doc Sofia Lin and Justin Bond playing himself, an acidic grande dame of the whole Shortbus scene ("You're so far behind, you think you're first"). If you have an open mind, "Shortbus" – which has been panned by many critics in part for its unapologetic sexuality – is pretty damn funny. Plus it's a voyeuristic look at fidelity as a concept not as a reality to peoples' sexual lives, identities, and egos. Even though its third act gets bogged down under the weight of its own symbolism, let's be real here: Who doesn't like sex?!?
@@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot)

THE PRESTIGE (PG-13)
Biases: Nolan, Jackman, Bale…pre-sold.
Players: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, co-writer/director Christopher Nolan
Logline: Former partners turned rival magicians Robert (Jackman) and Alfred (Bale) engage in a war of career one-upsmanship that threatens their livelihoods, their very lives, and the lives of their loved ones in turn of the 19th century London.

The Deal: Named after the third act (and hardest part) in a magic trick, "The Prestige" hails from a beautifully crafted Nolan brothers (Christopher and Jonathan) script that examines the virus-like, all-consuming nature of obsession while irrevocably blurring the line between reality and illusion. Factoring in Nolan's own professionally personal obsession with multiple timelines and continuity complexity,
this production shrouds itself with a layer of mystery and ambiguity where you're kept somewhat in the dark but not so much that you give up curiosity – somewhat reminiscent of TV's "Lost"…or a good magic trick. Nolan is a narrative and visual maestro, who extracts uniformly excellent performances from Bale (hotheaded, innovative magic purist), Jackman (the better showman), and Caine (the scruffy, deliciously Cockney assistant). Even Americans Piper Perabo and Scarlett Johansson exude a cheeky confidence to match their stellar Brit-ccents. Armed
with that aforementioned champ of a script that never dumbs itself down and supplies a whopper of a twist at the end, "The Prestige" pulls off the greatest trick of all: being a piece of outstanding filmmaking in Hollywood's traditionally fallow fall period. Abracadabra!
@@@@ REELS (An urban legend/instant classic)

BOBBY (R)
Biases: Big cast, big names, interesting subject.
Players: Joshua Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, Shia LeBeouf, writer/director Emilio Estevez
Logline: Lives and loves cross in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot, touching on all pertinent issues of the day: Vietnam, racial equality, and the working poor.

The Deal: With Martin Luther King and Malcolm X out of the way, Bobby Kennedy's populist approach to the presidential campaign gave people hope, a hope not to be found in this "positive" but far from perfect (or interesting) movie. Not even the likes of Sharon Stone and Laurence Fishburne can breathe life into overripe, on the nose
dialogue that clearly hails from the pen of an actor instead of that of a polished writer ("Every day, you keeping the brown man down," complains Jacob Vargas' Miguel. Who TALKS like this?). Ashton Kutcher's pothead is in a whole other movie – an annoying one. The omnipresent musical score attempts to conduct/orchestrate our feelings but comes off as calculated, self-important manipulation. Slater's racist kitchen manager is so blatantly obvious, he lacks the basic political skills needed to have ascended to manage ants at a picnic let alone a kitchen staff of minorities he not-so secretly loathes. Although there are a lot of characters in this thing, they come off as caricatures; to quote John Wooden, "Never mistake activity for
achievement." A lot of what Bobby Kennedy speaks to is eerily pertinent to today, and he was definitely a straight shooter during a time that needed him. But should he (like many others) in death be almost deified? Ridiculously overcast with a cavalcade of established stars, "Bobby," much like its namesake, exists in memory more for lost potential than for actual achievement.
@ REEL (If you can't sneak in, don't go in)

THE GUARDIAN (PG-13)
Biases: Goody! "Top Gun" goes all Coast Guard on us.
Players: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, director Andrew Davis
Logline: Retired Coast Guard rescue swimmer Ben Randall (Costner), emotionally scarred from a bad rescue attempt years back (natch), trains and eventually bonds with hotshot swimmer recruit Jake Fischer (Kutcher), a cocky young man with a big heart that reminds Ben a lot of…Ben.

The Deal: There's an unrealized, sexy element of danger to a Coast Guard rescue swimmer that both Costner and Kutcher tap into for "The Guardian." It's a shockingly solid script, much more surprising and personable than its lazy, "we're the new 'Top Gun'" ad campaign would leave you to believe. While not Hamlet, both Costner and Kutcher's characters are just complicated enough to make them interesting and hold your attention for most of the time when the action doesn't.
Where the pic suffers somewhat is in its length, with it easily needing to trim at least fifteen minutes, some of it rescue footage. Nonetheless, "The Guardian" is surprisingly satisfying late fall fare. "We're the Coast Guard, Jake…no one appreciates us until they need us," grumbles Costner's Ben. My bad. We need you, Ben. We need you.
@@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot)

Like what you read? Agree/disagree with The Reel Deal? Think he's talkin' out his...HUSH YO' MOUF! (I'm only talkin' about The Reel Deal!) Email him at ReelReviewz@aol.com!

Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com




			BlackNLA Movie Reviews ***THE REEL DEAL: Reviewz from the Street* by Edwardo Jackson BIASES: Early 30s black male; frustrated screenwriter who favors action, comedy, and glossy, big budget movies over indie flicks, kiddie flicks, and weepy Merchant Ivory fare LATE FALL REVIEW, PART ONE News of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Despite breakups, birthdays, computer issues, and Georgia political attack ads, even after a month away, you can't stop THE REEL DEAL! MAN OF THE YEAR (PG-13) Biases: Good concept; hope it's funnier than its Dow Jonesy star. Players: Robin Wiliams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, writer/director Barry Levinson Logline: "From the Comedy Store to the White House:" Jonathan Stewart-style talk show host/comedian Tom Dobbs (Williams) launches a freewheeling Presidential bid, only to win on an electronic voting glitch that has a whistle-blowing system technician (Linney) fearing for her life. The Deal: Gotcha – you thought this was a comedy, didn't you? There's a reason why the trailers to this thing are only tepidly amusing - because the film itself has an identity crisis. Co-starring Robin Williams (a volume comic instead of a value comic if there ever was one – and he's on target with his riffs about 40% of the time here) and Chrisopher Walken's sing-songy cadence (!), "Man" bounces between being a convenient dumping/proving ground for independent, liberal politics and a low-rent thriller that squanders an otherwise capable cast and high concept. Talk about being sold a bill of goods: when tickets cost eleven dollars at some Los Angeles theaters and a movie leaves you wondering just what did you pay for, this type of bait and switch should be a federal offense. Seriously – or at least a very stern misdemeanor. Yes, people are going to comedians like Bill Maher for news. Yes, I agree with Dobbs'claim that "Democracy is a collision of ideas." But it only works when those ideas are good ones. At $11 plus parking, "Man of the Year" is not such a good idea. @@ REELS (Extra medium) THE QUEEN (R) Biases: Overwhelming praise for Mirren has me intrigued. Players: Helen Mirren, Martin Sheen, director Stephen Frears Logline: Just days after the election of Tony Blair (Sheen), Britain's youngest Prime Minister in history and a modernist with an anti-monarchist wife to boot, Princess Diana's death elicits days of a curious non-response from the Royal Family, illuminating if not cruciblizing Queen Elizabeth II's (Mirren) distaste for her former daughter-in-law and the distance between the monarch and its subjects. The Deal: Yeah, I just made up a word, but it seems to fit: "The Queen" is a very engaging, 360 degree inspection of Queen Elizabeth's own trial by fire, and how public scrutiny into her own petty jealousies and self-perceived failings as a mother – especially when held up to the already-revered-but-now-flawless-in-death mirror of "the peoples' princess" – hardens her views but at the cost of some serious introspection and public grief. The living embodiment of tradition, protocol, and a bygone time of English dominance, Mirren's Queen Elizabeth is a gold statuette waiting to happen. A far cry from the supple, lean body that gloriously sexed up Cuba Gooding Jr. in "Shadowboxer," the owlishly bespectacled, gray wigged symbol of dowdy regality that is Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth emotes with all the ease of squeezing out diamonds, her latent jealousy of Diana's popularity even in death just a perfectly dictioned sniff of royal elitism away. Mirren's not only the forces of modernity warring against the intractability of royalism in the flesh ("freeloading, emotionally retarded nutters" says Mrs. Blair of the Royal Family, who cost the United Kingdom "30-40 million pounds a year"), but also an out-of-touch oxymoron herself: while Mirren's Queen spends half the movie espousing the historical importance of the Crown's image, it's that very same symbolism to a people – her people, her subjects – particularly in a time of death, that she risks ignoring. Frears continues to handle actors marvelously, drawing out a wholly sympathetic, championable performance from Sheen as rookie, revisionist Prime Minister Blair, whose outsider status and free-thinking crisis management team vainly tries to defend and deflect negative press from Her Majesty - who's holed away at the Balmoral summer home, without a comment for or a clue about the pulse of the people. Caught between ameliorating the grief of the people who elected him and refereeing the overarching arrogance of a figurehead long past its relevancy, it's no wonder Blair mutters "They screwed up her life. Let's hope they don't screw up her death." Toss in Frears' wonderfully staged high speed hunting of Diana through the media, a caught-between-a-rock-and-hard-throne Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), plus a divinely non-regal, intuitive musical score, and you have a "Queen" for all occasions. Especially those held at the Kodak Theater. @@@@ REELS (An urban legend/instant classic) OPEN SEASON (PG) Biases: Here goes that animated, 3-D thing I love so much… Players: Voices of Ashton Kutcher, Martin Lawrence Logline: Boog (Lawrence), a domesticated zoo bear, is dropped off in the wild, joined soon by mischievous deer Elliot (Kutcher). Pursued by a bloodthirsty, vengeful hunter (Jack McGee), Boog and Elliot try to make it back to the town of Timberline before the start of (open) hunting season. The Deal: Paced by flourishes of wit yet dragged down by occasionally gross humor (I don't think even today's kids are laughing at the scat jokes, y'all), "Season," despite its charms, is just another animated film in a crowded, animated field (Memo to Hollywood: Put the 3-D animatronic software DOWN!). Kutcher's goofy, spongy voice is natural for an animatic and Martin Lawrence is amiable enough for mainstream audiences (although "amiable" isn't what makes the humorously mercurial Lawrence entertaining). But it's Billy Connolly's hysterical, Guinness-soaked portrayal of a nut-tossing cult leader of a band of territorial squirrels that takes the ca – er – acorn. Boog is right: "The woods is no place for a bear." Neither is the wilderness of today's multiplex. @@ REELS (Extra medium) VOLVER (R) Biases: Heard it was all the rage at Cannes. Players: Penelope Cruz, writer/director Pedro Almodovar Logline: When Raimunda's (Cruz) friends and family begin to see visions of her dead mother around their homes, it brings up a lot of family secrets and unfinished business for three generations of these Spanish women. The Deal: Yawn. Here is yet another entry on my "What in the World Were Other Critics Thinking" list, joining notables like "Mystic River" and "You Can Count on Me." Is this movie well made? Sure – it's Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Talk to Her). A directorial talent of international repute, Almodovar pushes the envelope in his films, this time pushing us in the realm of pseudo-dark comedy that just isn't funny. I guess it's deep because there are a lot of women hugging and crying and if that makes me an insensitive, silly man, then I'll be that. While Almodovar does toss us the odd lingering shot of Cruz's "world class cleavage" (his opinion, not mine) and she seems far more at home in her native Spanish tongue than in ours, "Volver" (which means coming back), despite playing with the bounds of time and space, life and death, is a touchy feely affair that I can't touch or feel. @ REEL (If you can't sneak in, don't go in) FAST FOOD NATION (R) Biases: Down with SuperSizing! Players: Wilmer Valerrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Greg Kinnear, director Richard Linklater Logline: From immigrant workers sloughing through terrible conditions in slaughterhouses to the marketing whizzes pushing product to a less-than-suspecting American populace, an inside-out look at the global impact fast food has on a variety of lives. The Deal: Blood in the meat, workers on drugs, a (real life?) five minute montage on the slaughter of cattle to produce beef – it's all enough to make you wanna turn vegetarian. Almost. Which is precisely the point in Linklater's no-holds barred, multilateral fictionalization of Eric Schlossser's nonfiction book of fast food woe. Blessed by a malleable, low-rent cast (with the exception of salesman Kinnear and franchisee Bruce Willis in a very smug, amusing cameo), "Nation" gives you self-involved ecoterrorists (Paul Dano), struggling Mexican workers (Moreno, with plain Jane appeal), and those who abuse the system from within (the diverse wunderkind Bobby Cannavale). Kinda like with hot dogs, "If you love 'em, don't watch how they're made." If you're a true meat lover like myself or a fast food devotee like others, this movie does what it's supposed to do for everyone: give a moment of pause. Will it stop you from driving through McDonald's? Not if you believe what Harry (Willis' character) does. In speaking about there being "too much manure in the meat," he says "It's a sad fact of life that we all have to eat a little shit from time to time." Literally and figuratively. @@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot) SHORTBUS (unrated) Biases: Oh, that's the sex movie… Players: Writer/director John Cameron Mitchell Logline: When pre-orgasmic sex therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) follows her gay couple patients Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson) to New York's uber-swinger spot Shortbus (a salon for the sexually challenged where "voyeurism is participation") in search of her first orgasm, she's exposed to a whole new cast of diverse characters with a myriad of ideas on sex, relationships, and life. Oh yeah – and there's real life sex taking place onscreen, too. The Deal: While that last fact may suck people in (I won't lie – I was intrigued), it's "Shortbus'" totally irreverent and libertarian spirit that holds you. In spite of a few dramatic lulls, director provocateur Mitchell's resoundingly indie experiment is aggressively interesting, focusing more on relationships than sex , although the sex is pretty explicit but unglamorous (how many movies will you see this year with a guy-on-guy-on-guy threesome? Right – didn't think so). The acting by this little known cast is fine in the face of the movie's scattershot, relationship-anarchic message, particularly Lee as Canadian sex doc Sofia Lin and Justin Bond playing himself, an acidic grande dame of the whole Shortbus scene ("You're so far behind, you think you're first"). If you have an open mind, "Shortbus" – which has been panned by many critics in part for its unapologetic sexuality – is pretty damn funny. Plus it's a voyeuristic look at fidelity as a concept not as a reality to peoples' sexual lives, identities, and egos. Even though its third act gets bogged down under the weight of its own symbolism, let's be real here: Who doesn't like sex?!? @@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot) THE PRESTIGE (PG-13) Biases: Nolan, Jackman, Bale…pre-sold. Players: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, co-writer/director Christopher Nolan Logline: Former partners turned rival magicians Robert (Jackman) and Alfred (Bale) engage in a war of career one-upsmanship that threatens their livelihoods, their very lives, and the lives of their loved ones in turn of the 19th century London. The Deal: Named after the third act (and hardest part) in a magic trick, "The Prestige" hails from a beautifully crafted Nolan brothers (Christopher and Jonathan) script that examines the virus-like, all-consuming nature of obsession while irrevocably blurring the line between reality and illusion. Factoring in Nolan's own professionally personal obsession with multiple timelines and continuity complexity, this production shrouds itself with a layer of mystery and ambiguity where you're kept somewhat in the dark but not so much that you give up curiosity – somewhat reminiscent of TV's "Lost"…or a good magic trick. Nolan is a narrative and visual maestro, who extracts uniformly excellent performances from Bale (hotheaded, innovative magic purist), Jackman (the better showman), and Caine (the scruffy, deliciously Cockney assistant). Even Americans Piper Perabo and Scarlett Johansson exude a cheeky confidence to match their stellar Brit-ccents. Armed with that aforementioned champ of a script that never dumbs itself down and supplies a whopper of a twist at the end, "The Prestige" pulls off the greatest trick of all: being a piece of outstanding filmmaking in Hollywood's traditionally fallow fall period. Abracadabra! @@@@ REELS (An urban legend/instant classic) BOBBY (R) Biases: Big cast, big names, interesting subject. Players: Joshua Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, Shia LeBeouf, writer/director Emilio Estevez Logline: Lives and loves cross in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot, touching on all pertinent issues of the day: Vietnam, racial equality, and the working poor. The Deal: With Martin Luther King and Malcolm X out of the way, Bobby Kennedy's populist approach to the presidential campaign gave people hope, a hope not to be found in this "positive" but far from perfect (or interesting) movie. Not even the likes of Sharon Stone and Laurence Fishburne can breathe life into overripe, on the nose dialogue that clearly hails from the pen of an actor instead of that of a polished writer ("Every day, you keeping the brown man down," complains Jacob Vargas' Miguel. Who TALKS like this?). Ashton Kutcher's pothead is in a whole other movie – an annoying one. The omnipresent musical score attempts to conduct/orchestrate our feelings but comes off as calculated, self-important manipulation. Slater's racist kitchen manager is so blatantly obvious, he lacks the basic political skills needed to have ascended to manage ants at a picnic let alone a kitchen staff of minorities he not-so secretly loathes. Although there are a lot of characters in this thing, they come off as caricatures; to quote John Wooden, "Never mistake activity for achievement." A lot of what Bobby Kennedy speaks to is eerily pertinent to today, and he was definitely a straight shooter during a time that needed him. But should he (like many others) in death be almost deified? Ridiculously overcast with a cavalcade of established stars, "Bobby," much like its namesake, exists in memory more for lost potential than for actual achievement. @ REEL (If you can't sneak in, don't go in) THE GUARDIAN (PG-13) Biases: Goody! "Top Gun" goes all Coast Guard on us. Players: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, director Andrew Davis Logline: Retired Coast Guard rescue swimmer Ben Randall (Costner), emotionally scarred from a bad rescue attempt years back (natch), trains and eventually bonds with hotshot swimmer recruit Jake Fischer (Kutcher), a cocky young man with a big heart that reminds Ben a lot of…Ben. The Deal: There's an unrealized, sexy element of danger to a Coast Guard rescue swimmer that both Costner and Kutcher tap into for "The Guardian." It's a shockingly solid script, much more surprising and personable than its lazy, "we're the new 'Top Gun'" ad campaign would leave you to believe. While not Hamlet, both Costner and Kutcher's characters are just complicated enough to make them interesting and hold your attention for most of the time when the action doesn't. Where the pic suffers somewhat is in its length, with it easily needing to trim at least fifteen minutes, some of it rescue footage. Nonetheless, "The Guardian" is surprisingly satisfying late fall fare. "We're the Coast Guard, Jake…no one appreciates us until they need us," grumbles Costner's Ben. My bad. We need you, Ben. We need you. @@@ REELS (It's pretty hot - go give it a shot)** Like what you read? Agree/disagree with The Reel Deal? Think he's talkin' out his...HUSH YO' MOUF! (I'm only talkin' about The Reel Deal!) Email him at ReelReviewz@aol.com! Edwardo Jackson is the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com, and an LA-based screenwriter. Visit his website at www.edwardojackson.com © 2004, Edwardo Jackson