Smoke acting

Character actor Karel Roden can play two emotions:

Angry, and smoking.

It's probably not really fair to be picking on a guy I've seen in only two movies -- John Herzfeld's 15 Minutes (2001), and Wayne Kramer's Running Scared (2006), which I saw the other night. Actually, Roden was also in Hellboy and The Bourne Supremacy, but I don't remember him in either.

When I first saw him appear in Running Scared, though, the first thing that popped into my head was "Oh, that's that guy who was the villain in 15 Minutes, who always seemed to be making love to his cigarette."

Roden subscribes to a school of acting that says that the more ostentatiously you smoke your cigarette, the more interesting you will appear on screen. And true enough, he smokes cigarettes ostentatiously in Running Scared as well.

Holding the cigarette at unusual angles, most regularly backwards and upside down between his thumb and first two fingers. Masticating the end of it. Blowing smoke through every available orifice in his face, eyes and ears included. Grimacing with the effort of sucking the tip. Working the ember through precise and deep drags. Making a slight smacking noise as he releases it. Puffing and blowing and sucking and mumbling his lines through the object clamped between his lips.

The thing is, it is interesting -- until you recognize what he's up to and identify it as the cheap crutch that it is.

If I were being thorough (or fair), I'd run through my mental database to come up with a handful of other prominent smoke actors. But since this is a blog, and thoroughness (not to mention fairness) is purely optional, I'll simply say that Roden is not alone. He just happens to be the latest example I've seen of the actor who thinks that how he fondles or manipulates a cigarette is his key to getting work. He doesn't really need it -- after all, he does that other emotion, anger, pretty menacingly. Yet he seems to believe that smoking the hell out of a cigarette is a special skill worth marketing.

And I don't know, maybe it is. Maybe that's part of the reason so many people smoke -- part of the tobacco industry's huge arm of advertising that they don't have to pay a dime for. Because it is cool, on some level, the way Roden treats a butt as an essential acting accessory, one that he thinks makes his performance all the more full-blooded. And the reason he probably thinks this is because of the long tradition of directors instructing their actors to smoke that cigarette like they both loved it and hated it at the same time.

So I'll let Roden off the hook. I won't hate the player, I'll hate the game. But I don't really hate the game either. Part of the reason we love the movies we love is because they have style. And a pornographic session of tobacco ingestion undoubtedly contributes to that style.

Like I've said in the past, recognizing that someone is selling you artifice is the first step. If you then want to consciously embrace it, be my guest.

Now why am I suddenly in the mood for a Marlboro Red?

The Wachowski brothers' best movie

When The Matrix first came out, most people looked at the poster and said, "V.I. Warshawski is directing a movie about Keanu Reeves playing an android? What's this then?"

Me? I said, "Oh, it's the new movie from the guys who made Bound."

That's still how I see The Matrix -- Larry and Andy Wachowskis' sophomore and slightly inferior follow-up to their brilliant neo-noir thriller, Bound.

What's that you say? The Matrix? Inferior? Whaaa?

You read right. One of the most influential and exciting films of the last 20 years is not as good as this film. That's how good Bound is.

I watched Bound again last night for the first time in at least seven or eight years. In fact, during the day, I had a similar moment of inspirational clarity to the one I had on Monday, when I went to pick up The 13th Warrior. Except I knew this time, the film wouldn't let me down. It wouldn't be less good than I remembered. Bound is as solid as they come, through and through, and I knew it would be just the "special" viewing experience I was looking for on my birthday.

(Yesterday was my birthday. Let's all stop and make a big deal out of me turning 36. Then again, let's not. If it gives you some idea what I think of celebrating my birthday in some grandiose fashion, I was looking forward to a quiet night with a movie. Then again, if my wife were in town, I'm sure we would have at least gone out to eat.)

Any serious fan of The Matrix should have already gone back and watched Bound, even though it's a totally different kind of film. It's like going back and checking out the early works of a band you love -- sometimes you find out that the earlier stuff was even better.

But I think the reason more people haven't discovered Bound is that it's easy to dismiss it as some kind of Cinemax erotic thriller. The title itself suggests sadomasochism, and the poster does nothing to discourage that idea. Plus, discovering that the two leads are lesbians (Jennifer Tilly's character is actually bisexual) pushes a person even further toward the conclusion that the film exists primarily to titillate.

The truth of the matter is, there are actual physical binds (ropes) that exist in this movie, but they are not used sexually. Rather, Bound as a title has more to do with the trust that must exist in order to successfully execute a criminal plan -- as well as the fact that people become unwittingly bound to each other as the plan adapts to real-world changes, even though they may enter the plan as adversaries. The title is a one-word summation of the script's dozens of smart ideas about trust, deception, desperation, obligation, the criminal code, and ultimately, love. It could be honor-Bound or duty-Bound or love-Bound. Or simply Bound for trouble.

Oh, and if you are interested in being titillated, there are two hot lesbian sex scenes that are not very graphic, but are quite sexy indeed because of how the Wachowskis set up the camera, the dialogue they use, and the tension they create.

So what is Bound about, exactly? I won't tell you too much, because that would spoil the fun. But it's useful to know that Gina Gershon plays Corky, a lesbian ex-con just released from five years in prison for theft. She's been hired to do a big renovation job in the apartment next door to where Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) live. Violet is the arm candy for Caesar's mafiaso money launderer, but she longs to get out, and sees a path to her freedom in the tatooed handywoman working next door. She knows when there will be $2 million in her apartment that will be ripe for stealing -- as long as they can hatch the perfect plan that will cast suspicion on someone else. But when the money gets drenched in blood from an impulsive whacking, the plan must adapt -- or else they'll be caught. And the mob doesn't look too kindly on those who try to screw them over.

What I love so much about Bound is how clean and tight it is. I won't say it's simple -- in fact, some of the chess moves that are Bound's essence rely on thinking three, four, five steps ahead, and truly illustrate the characters' intelligence. However, the twists and turns themselves are simple to follow, always believable, and organic to the action. In fact, so clean is Bound -- taking place almost entirely in the two apartments -- that I could easily see it staged as a play. The only thing you would lose is the Wachowskis' camera work and unobtrusive visual pizzazz, which would become their signature in the Matrix trilogy. Because accolades tend to flow when talking about a movie I love, I'll continue: The dialogue is also sharp and clever, but totally naturalistic. And I'd be remiss in this short capsule review if I didn't point out that this is by far the best work Joe Pantoliano -- a.k.a. Joey Pants -- has ever turned in. Gershon and Tilly are also great, but Pantoliano's Caesar is the far more ostentatious -- and at times, downright hilarious -- role.

One more credit to Bound: The fact that it was a cheap-o press on the DVD didn't affect my enjoyment one bit. The image appeared in the correct aspect ratio, but was boxed on all four sides by blackness, reducing its total size on the screen by a third. That might have been resolved with an adjustment on my DVD player, but let's just say no other DVDs I've popped in have required such an adjustment. I also needed to significantly brighten the image, as contrasts were getting lost in the darkness. ("Fuckin' dark in here!" to quote Caesar early on in the movie.) What's more -- and I found this the most astonishing -- the actual title screen on the DVD was generic. Not even the title of the movie appeared -- just the choices (chapters, setup, etc.) and a generic background used by the company that pressed the DVD.

Gives you some idea just how undiscovered Bound really is. If there's any justice, a Criterion Collection edition will be forthcoming at some point in the future. But just as extra frills can't make a bad movie good, Bound would be a good movie even if you watched it on a 10-inch black and white TV.

There's little doubt that Bound is better than The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and Speed Racer. The film the Wachowskis wrote (Assassins) and the film they produced and wrote (V for Vendetta) also figure to be losers in this head-to-head duel. And I don't really know about this Ninja Assassin they're producing, which comes out later this fall, but it doesn't seem that original. Plus, it's got a crap title.

But is Bound better than The Matrix?

You know what I think. I challenge you to rent it for yourself and find out ...

Remember your history

I mentioned yesterday that my wife was out of town this past weekend, paving the way for one of my patented movie binges.

What I didn't mention was that I did something slightly different this time around. Instead of just voraciously consuming as many previously unseen movies as I could, I consciously sought out movies that I'd loved, but seen too few times. The perpetual compulsion to add to my collection could wait for one weekend, as I deepened my knowledge of some old favorites.

So I took a trip to the library Friday after work, considering only titles that I'd previously seen. At least that's how I started out. But as I swept through the vast collection at the Venice branch of the Los Angeles Public Library -- a collection that I've only recently discovered, which dwarfs the offerings at other branches -- at least five of the 15 or so DVDs I was having an ever-more difficult time holding were previously unseen. Hey, old habits die hard.

But you can only borrow three at a time, so I had some work to do.

I took the unwieldy stack of DVDs and laid them out on a book shelf that came up to around my midsection. When I emerged after a number of very difficult decisions, I'd settled on three titles that I had seen exactly one other time, just as I'd planned.

Here's what I came up with:

1) The Player (1991, Robert Altman). I couldn't believe I'd seen this great film only once, but my list at home said that this was indeed the case. (And even if the list is not 100% historically accurate, over time it takes on the certainty of historical fact.) I know I saw Altman's next film, Short Cuts, at least two times, but apparently my first viewing of The Player was also the lone viewing. This was the perfect example of a title I hoped to find -- something I'd immediately recognize I needed to see again as soon as possible. So this was also the easiest decision, and I started watching soon after I got home. So many brilliant details, so much good stuff in this film.

2) I Am Legend (2007, Francis Lawrence). I wanted one of the movies to be something big and epic, and actually had Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in my mind for this slot. It's the only Lord of the Rings film I've seen only once. But the vast Venice collection came up short in this respect, so I Am Legend jumped to the top. My wife and I loved this film when we saw it in IMAX two years ago -- plus, I'm always drawn to visions of post-apocalypse where they really care about the details of what a world like this would be like. Times Square overrun by tall grass and deer? Yup, I'm in. I watched it late-night Saturday night.

3) The Big Lebowksi (1998, Joel Coen). This cult favorite is also some people's favorite Coen brothers movie, and was probably singularly responsible for significantly raising the profile of the White Russian. However, I was only vaguely positive on it when I saw it a decade ago, so I thought I should definitely revisit it. Only problem is, I didn't. I had it lined up to watch on Sunday night, and was even prepared to have a White Russian or six while watching. (Though I had no plans to watch it wearing a bathrobe.) But I waited too long to start, and then discovered that the thing is 127 minutes long -- not something I wanted to get myself into after 10:30 on a school night. Since it was due back on Monday, I'd have to let this one go by the boards.

Maybe it was the hole left by The Big Lebowski, but I found myself drawn to the local Blockbuster on Monday to pick up something else for my third film revisited. That third something was:

3) The 13th Warrior (1999, John McTiernan). I ranked it during the day on Flickchart, and thought to myself, "Damn -- for the number of times I've pimped this film to somebody, I can't believe I've only watched it once." Blockbuster didn't let me down -- they could have very easily not stocked it -- and I came home with it, watching it in the late afternoon (I get out at 4 on Mondays). In my review of it I referred to it as a "subtle historical epic," and that's pretty much true. While it doesn't have the epic sweep of a Braveheart or a Lord of the Rings, it's got a really interesting cast of characters, comprised mostly of 10th century Vikings, and the Arab diplomat (Antonio Banderas) who travels with them to their homeland to fight cannibalistic mist creatures. A really interesting film.

And you know what?

I didn't like any of the films as much as I'd remembered. Time has a way of coloring your perception of things. Sure, it had only been two years since I'd seen I Am Legend. But the big screen -- especially an IMAX screen -- can really inflate the value of a good film, making it seem like a great one. I think I Am Legend settles in somewhere around "very good." The biggest dropoff of the three was probably The 13th Warrior, which struck me with its originality when I first saw it ten years ago, but yesterday left me with considerably less of a sense of wonder. The least dropoff was The Player, which is still a great film, just not the world-rocking film I remembered it to be.

But you know what else?

Whether I liked the films as much is hardly the point. The point is that all film fans need to remember to take time out of their busy viewing schedules to go back to the same wells again. Those were good wells -- the water was cold and pure and tasted good. And watching these films again really nourished me.

The reality with most films is that they aren't quite as good as you remembered them when you watch them again. This is of course not always true -- there are some films where the more details you spot, the more you fall in love. But my guess is that a lot more films don't have the impact they first had, simply because you already know what will happen, because you no longer have the thrill of first discovery. And that's okay.

I guess it's worth asking whether it wouldn't be better to stop at one viewing, if this is going to be the case. That may be the only way to preserve the unfettered love you have for the film in question.

But I don't have that kind of foreknowledge, and I'll take the risk. Any film I love needs to stand that test of a second viewing. If it's not as good as I thought it was, that's probably worth knowing.

Especially when I'm, you know, ranking all the films I've ever seen ...

A time for projects

With my wife out of town this weekend, I already knew that I was going to spend most of my time indoors.

Yep, when I've got a block of time in the house alone, I'm one of those men who lets the place get within an inch of a health hazard before washing his first dish. I eat terribly and I watch a lot of movies. Not that I couldn't watch a lot of movies with my wife around -- she's been known to like a movie or two in her day -- but she doesn't have the stamina for a good movie marathon or three. I watched three movies Saturday, two Sunday, and am expecting to end up watching two tonight. It's getting late and I haven't started the second one yet, so we'll see.

But I also spent a lot of time watching baseball, and a smaller amount of time watching football. Neither of these things requires 100% of your attention 100% of the time, so having them on in the background is perfect for ...

... projects.

Yep, projects. And I just love projects. But I'm not talking about your typical husband projects, like drywalling or cleaning out the gutter. No, these are movie projects, pure and simple. New lists. Expansions of current lists. That kind of thing.

I first wrote about Flickchart almost two weeks ago, and I'm going to let you follow the link to read what I wrote then, rather than recapping what Flickchart is here. Although I haven't mentioned it again since then, that's not because it hasn't been dominating my brain. It has. I've been building up my list of movies to rank, and ranking like crazy. I crossed 20,000 rankings at the end of last week, and 2,500 movies earlier tonight.

But I didn't rank much this weekend, because I had a different project in mind: To start tracking my rankings over time.

See, I want to know when I've got a list that actually looks like the right rankings. A list where Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull isn't as high as #985, and Eight Men Out isn't as low as #1,597. With Flickchart, the movies you duel are random -- though there are some funny thematic similarities in certain duels that can't be coincidental -- so it's hard to know how long it will take before Eight Men Out will come up against some worthy opponents, or enough movies will leapfrog Crystal Skull and force it downward to where it belongs. It'll happen over the course of time, but only by recording the changes in the rankings will I actually know when I'm getting close.

So here was the idea: Take a snapshot at 20,000, then another at 30,000. Then compare. And then again at 40,000. And so on.

Problem was, I didn't actually think of this idea until I was already past 20,000. So I stopped myself at 21,400, and will hit the others every 10,000 on the dot.

So how to do this? Flickchart unfortunately does not provide an easy-to-export listing of your movies, one per line, as many as you want per screen. Rather, you have to plod through, page by page, with each page holding 50 titles and some of their relevant stats, taking up a good 1-2 inches in height on the screen. That meant to record all these rankings, I'd have to go through 50 such pages.

(Another reason I wanted to do this: In case Flickchart craps out and loses all my data, I don't want all of this ranking to have been for naught. The site has a lot to handle and it frequently times out, so I need to make backups).

So I made up an Excel spreadsheet with four columns: ranking, title, year, director. This forethought would allow me to explore later on which years are the best quality, which directors make my favorite movies, etc. etc. Not strictly necessary, but I'll thank myself for it later on.

And went through, page by page, painstakingly recording all 2,484 titles. All the while getting more feverish, because I would soon find out which film actually ranks last of all the movies I've seen.

I first started by going slowly, moving the cursor down just enough to see the title, then seeing if I could guess the director and the year. At about 200 titles this got tedious, and I sped up. I'd do 50 at a time, then break -- and then when the Yankees-Angels game went into the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th innings, I just went as quickly as I could without stopping. I got through about 1,300 on the first day, and managed to get to #2,484 a little after midnight last night. With breaks in between to watch movies and stuff.

What I hope to do with this data, when I get to 30,000, is see which movies have moved up, which moved down, and which held. (Very few of them will probably hold the exact ranking). Then I will compare to the previous ranking, and include a new column, which shows the total positions jumped or the total positions dropped. Though I'm curious about whether it's up or down, I'm more curious about accuracy. So it's an absolute value of that number, the number off from the previous 10,000. The theory is, when I add all those up, I'll have a base number of total position changes. Then at 40,000, I'll have another number, which will hopefully be smaller. As I go onward, the number will get smaller and smaller until the films are more or less where they should be.

Did you get exhausted just reading about it? Well, I won't have to do as much work next time. Next time, I'll at least already have all the titles in, so I won't have to write those again. (I'm also keeping track separately of the new titles I've added, so I can just group those in). I will have to do a lot of clicking to find the new ranking, but hopefully that will take less time. And if it doesn't ... well, this process is a work in progress.

And tonight the project continued. Not only have I been allowed to start ranking again after my pause to take the snapshot, but I've also gone through my big daddy of all lists, the Excel spreadsheet that contains all the movies I've ever seen. I checked off all the movies I was already ranking, and looked to see how many others I was still missing. Finished that, too, so now all the movies I've seen, that are available to rank on Flickchart, are in there.

And one great thing about Flickchart: you can add movies yourself for the site's editors to consider. You fill in the details -- director, stars, year, etc. -- and they check your work before going to find poster art for each movie. The four I added today are now listed as in pending status, which means hopefully I'll be able to rank them soon. If I want another project -- which I most certainly do -- I can go through and add all 300-some titles that I've seen that they don't have. And then we'll really be in business.

Sound crazy? Ah, but isn't that the essence of all hobbies?

Oh, so you want to know what #2,484 was? You've probably figured it out already: David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. Which, in a way, shows how far this project still has to go. No, I don't like A History of Violence, though I will stop short of saying I hate it. And because I stop short of saying that, there's no way it could truly be last in my rankings. But I can see why Flickchart would see it that way -- reviewing my personal stats for the film, I saw that I had ranked it 53 times, and it had only won a single solitary duel. Just bad luck, I guess -- it had yet to come up against any of the 300-400 films it would certainly beat. (I felt a little better about things when it did come up against such a film today, and jumped up to #2,044).

You've got your projects. I've got mine. Don't judge.

The unattainables

One of the things about being the kind of movie fan I am is that you want to see everything. I have told people, only half jokingly, that my goal is to see every movie that has ever been made.

The good ones. The bad ones. The extremely foreign ones, and the extremely local ones. High budget and low budget alike. All the movies.

I truly hope this never happens. If it did, it would probably mean that I would live in some kind of post-apocalyptic world where they stopped making movies, and where I was probably the only person still alive. The power would be out, so I'd walk the world smashing the windows of Best Buys to use up the battery power of all their portable DVD players, and one by one watch all the movies that I had never seen. It would take a very, very long time, mostly because of my power restrictions, but mostly because there have probably been over 100,000 movies made in the history of mankind (and that's a conservative estimate), less than 3,000 of which I've seen. But if there was no one else around, I'd try to tackle it. It might be like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the last man on earth gets to read all of earth's books (until he breaks his glasses), or maybe like I Am Legend, which I watched again last night, or maybe like Zombieland, which I watched on Friday night.

The point is not really whether I will succeed -- but how it affects my day-to-day approach to seeing movies. There are certain films I want to see just because they exist, and The Brown Bunny has been one of those movies.

If you're a regular at this blog, my guess is you have also heard of The Brown Bunny. But if you haven't, here's the famous thing about it: It contains a scene in which Chloe Sevigny gives writer-cinematographer-editor-director-star-costumer-key grip-crafts services guy Vincent Gallo a blow job. I'm not talking about her head bobbing suggestively in Gallo's lap -- I'm talking about his actual erect shaft and her actual mouth moving up and down the length of that shaft.

This scene has given the movie far more notoriety than it deserves. The movie itself is a pretentious piece of experimental art in which basically nothing happens except Gallo driving across the country and having pointless interactions with various people he encounters. Gallo's Buffalo '66 was also essentially pretentious and artsy, but at least that film worked for me. This one is a true waste of celluloid, and it deserves to be hated, but it does not deserve to be well known. Enter the blow job scene, which instantly turned it into a bizarre little curiosity that someone like me wants to see. And it's not because I'm some debased lover of porn, but simply, because there's something essentially fascinating about seeing a well-known actress give actual fellatio in a "legitimate" film. Not to mention that I'm always interested to see something I've never seen before, period.

The problem thus far about seeing The Brown Bunny: Where the hell am I supposed to get it?

Even though nothing remotely disturbing happens in the rest of the film, except one other short scene -- there's barely even any bad language -- this one scene was enough to keep the film from receiving an MPAA rating (or else they just never submitted it to be rated). It's also obviously enough to keep "respectable institutions" away from the movie. My two sources for watching films on video have been Blockbuster and the public library -- two institutions that want nothing to do with The Brown Bunny. The funny thing is, it would be terribly easy to release a version of this film that might even be PG-13, let alone R. Then again, without "the scene," there's really no point to see it, so perhaps Gallo just saved us some time by steadfastly refusing to cut a clean version.

So for a couple years now, since I've been aware of The Brown Bunny, I've stopped to wonder now and then how I could get it. My most obvious answer was that I had to get a membership at some cult little video store staffed by hipsters, kind of like Kim's Video in Greenwich Village. However, I live 3,000 miles away from Greenwich Village, and am not aware of its Los Angeles equivalent. Not that it would be particularly hard to figure it out -- just that The Brown Bunny hasn't been important enough to me to actually bother. Besides, as institutions like Kim's Video become less and less viable while losing ground to the dueling giants of Netflix and Blockbuster, I also imagine that their inventory has dwindled. Why carry The Brown Bunny if it takes up precious shelf space?

But as I was looking for something else on my desk the other day, I found my old rental card from Odyssey Video, which had what I considered a great deal when I used to live in the San Fernando Valley. If you rented on a Tuesday or a Thursday, any movie in the store was only 99 cents. Of course, there was a catch -- you had to return it by closing the next day. So a person might wonder whether it was really worth a 10-15 minute drive to their North Hollywood location on consecutive days, whether that didn't sap the value of the savings. But when I was sustaining myself by being a freelance film critic my first year in Los Angeles, I'd rent three on a Tuesday and watch them all by the next night at midnight, so I maximized the value. I remember racing to finish movies by at least 11:42 to make sure I'd get there in time.

Anyway, Odyssey Video has several locations in Los Angeles, the closest of which is only five minutes from where I currently live. I checked it out a couple times, but they no longer have the Tuesday-Thursday deal, and besides, it feels strange to actually pay for renting a movie. Of course I pay Blockbuster for their online program, but as it is a single payment on my credit card each month, it feels different. Besides, the main reason I even have Blockbuster is that I need their extensive access to whatever titles I want -- and because I have beefs with Neflix, which I've described on this blog before. So making a real-time payment to not even know if I'm going to find the movie I'm looking for in their inventory? It no longer met my needs.

But finding the card on my desk happened to coincide with another reminder of my back-burner interest in seeing The Brown Bunny. Odyssey Video also has a full-fledged adult section, so they certainly aren't going to shrink away from The Brown Bunny on moral grounds. The main question would be if they bothered to carry it, if it ever rented. Remember what I said earlier about a dwindled inventory?

So I decided to check it out yesterday. I'd been looking through the B section of drama for less than ten seconds when I found it. (They're very anal with their alphabetization at this Odyssey, something that really pleases an anal list-maker like me). A little thrill rushed through me when I saw the title. And I promise you, it wasn't because it meant I could actually see Chloe Sevigny go down on Vincent Gallo, because I'm sure I could find that on the internet if I wanted. It was just the strangeness of it that struck me. Here was The Brown Bunny, verboten in all reputable establishments, right at my fingertips. It was like the moment of disbelief that accompanies finding the exact rare gift or other object you've been fruitlessly seeking for years.

No sooner had I found The Brown Bunny than I decided to test how good this Odyssey really was. I wandered over to S and almost immediately found Shortbus. Shortbus is a far more respectable effort in terms of cinema that should actually exist, as far as I understand it. It's directed by Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell, and explores modern sexuality among straights, gays and bisexuals. It just happens to explore them fairly graphically. However, there doesn't seem to be anything prurient about it, as there is in The Brown Bunny. My guess is that the more graphic stuff is probably gay, which in itself makes it seem more artistically justified than that Brown Bunny hummer.

I decided to go for #3 with Caligula. Caligula is the repellent and pornographic 1979 big-budget telling of the story of the third Roman emperor, which features such big names as Malcolm McDowell, Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gielgud and Helen Mirren. (Who gets naked.) I have had a life-long interest in seeing Caligula, but not for the reason you think. When I was younger -- maybe, junior high -- I had a big compilation of Roger Ebert's film reviews in a book he released annually, and I just loved reading the reviews for the movies he gave zero stars. (A reason I also have I Spit on Your Grave and Mother's Day (1980) on my radar). Caligula was one of those, and quite simply, Ebert reserved the most hateful language he could possible conjure for this film. I could extract quotes from it, but it's all so delicious that I ought to just tell you to check it out here.

Like I said, I'd always wanted to see it -- the absolute worst example of something can be almost as fascinating as the absolute best -- and was all the more enthused for that prospect when I saw that there was no review of it on my website. So I got approved to review it, then sent away for it -- from Blockbuster, bad choice -- almost three years ago. In fact, I watched it on Halloween of 2006 -- it was a day off for me, since I was starting my current job the next day. (And never mind the debates about whether this is a good way to spend part of a rare day off -- I know, I know).

But as I was going along, I realized this was the truncated version -- in fact, reading up on it, I then realized there were no less than a half-dozen versions of the film, some re-cut for length (it was two-and-a-half hours in original form), some re-cut for decency in the vain hope of trying to attain some kind of cultural respectability. The version I saw gave me an idea of how unremittingly awful it was, but it still did not give me what I considered to be the true Caligula, the one Roger Ebert walked out of back in 1979. So I held off on the review, and have been holding off until this day, waiting to find that elusive original print.

Odyssey Video did not have Caligula, but that's just as well. In looking it up online, I now see that my approval to review the movie must have expired, or slipped through the cracks. Another critic has submitted the review, and that's actually fine. Save me the worry.

Although I have stated that I'm impressed with Odyssey Video for carrying these two titles, I probably shouldn't be surprised. If there is any way for them to compete with Blockbuster and Netflix, it's by carrying titles those places don't. That sounds kind of ridiculous, on the face of it, since there are only a couple dozen films that exist that would be prominent enough to be worth carrying, but not carried by the two giants, and those movies would probably not rent very often. But Odyssey already gets a majority of its business, I'm guessing, through its porn section, another thing that the giants obviously don't offer. This is just an extension of that philosophy.

Oh, so to finish up the story, I rented The Brown Bunny (but not Shortbus) and watched it yesterday. Vincent Gallo drives across the country and then Chloe Sevigny gives him a blow job. The end. And yes, it did feel as surreal to watch the blow job as I was expecting. Save yourself the trouble and watch that scene online if you must, and leave the obsessive duty of watching the whole movie to a person like me.

I'm probably not going to see all the movies that have ever been made, but at least it's nice to know that there are fewer I can't see because I can't find them. There's something definitely exotic about an unattainable movie, kind of like Indiana Jones searching for the headpiece to the staff of Ra.

Except the erstwhile Henry Jones has to travel to a local drinking establishment in the harsh winter of Nepal, while I now just have to make a five-minute drive to the video store.

Acceptable pandering

The closest mall to our house has undergone a massive overhaul in the past year. We thought the nation's economic woes might scrap some of those plans, but lo and behold, the grand re-opening came about a week ago, the same October 2009 date that had always been promised on signs outside, that always seemed so far in the future.

This is not a particularly important event in our lives, because a) my wife and I aren't really mall people -- in fact, aren't at all; b) even if we were mall people, we might not choose this one as our regular mall.

Quite simply, this mall has made no bones about being geared toward African-Americans.

And because we are such racists, we would never want to go where such people reside.

Of course that's not true -- if you knew me better, you'd know I make jokes like this to make fun of a person who would actually say such things in earnest, even though I know that's a dangerous line to walk, appropriate for the right company only. Naturally, I consider a website open to the entire world to be "the right company." Then again, I haven't revealed my identity, plus, I'm taking great pains to explain the semantics of my own joke, so you don't misinterpret what I'm saying.

But really, I shouldn't say we don't ever go to this mall, because I've probably been about a dozen times in the three-and-a-half years I've lived within shouting distance. I usually make at least one stop there each Christmas shopping season, which is the one time of year malls become somewhat useful to me. I've also gone there to get my watch band fixed, and to get a quick bite to eat. I'm no stranger.

In fact, I've been just enough times to be really dispirited by the place. Not because it's not a generally dynamic space with generally useful stores, and definitely not because I'm in the minority among a sizeable number of blacks and a smaller number of Latinos.

No, the real reason it dispirits me is because many of the stores go to great lengths to pander to those black customers.

More jewelry stores per capita than most malls. More places to buy pro sports jerseys per capita than most malls. More stores selling the latest and greatest in basketball shoes. And only one small bookstore, not even a full-fledged Borders, but a Borders Express. This is why I might not want to make this my regular mall. By shopping there, I'm essentially saying this kind of "racial profiling," as it were, is not off-putting.

You might say this mall is just a reflection of what the market will bear. Maybe this isn't the best mall to have, say, a tanning salon. And maybe there was a more diverse representation of stores in the past, but some of those places went out of business because they weren't getting enough sales. Most of the people who go there aren't offended by it, so I probably shouldn't be either.

But you know me -- either white guilt or liberal guilt or whatever I have causes me to become offended in situations where I think racial minorities are being abused. There are probably worse afflictions I could have.

And so it is that I probably should feel a little strange that the area of new construction in this mall -- which includes a Target, a Best Buy, a Gold's Gym, and a BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse -- also has a 100-foot-tall advertisement for Disney's The Princess and the Frog plastered on the prime outer wall facing the 405 freeway.

It seems to be saying, in no uncertain terms, "Even though we've made a lot of expensive changes (i.e. changes directed toward white customers) at this mall, we still want your business, black folks."

Well, after all this build-up, I'm going to surprise you:

I'm okay with it.

I noticed it -- that's why I'm writing about it, of course -- but I'm okay with it.

You see, as much as I tend to be disappointed by the way products are marketed to black people -- especially when malls in black areas stock only those products -- I'm even more disappointed by overt attempts at gentrification. Perhaps I am totally cynical, but I have to imagine that the only way such large sums of money would be budgeted to overhaul this mall were if its owners wanted to branch out to whites. After all, it's not like the neighborhood where the mall resides is all black. It's almost as close to Marina del Rey as it is to Inglewood, so it should be a nice, harmonious mix of all ethnicities. A mall where the United Colors of Benneton store actually spills out into the food court and onto the escalators.

But the reality of the situation is, it's a black mall. A black mall whose very viability appears to have been called into question, hence resulting in these massive changes. (Which my wife and I haven't even seen yet. We were going to go last Saturday, but then the day got away from us.)

So if the giant Princess and the Frog poster is really saying "Hey guys, this is still your mall," then hell yeah, I'm okay with it.

Even more optimistically: Maybe the changes to this mall were not white-driven. Maybe the Westfield Group, which owns this and a number of other malls in Los Angeles, is not making a particular play for a new kind of customer. Maybe, like Disney, which this fall is releasing its first film with an African-American main character, Westfield just recognizes the changing face of America, where whites will be a minority inside a couple decades, and purchasing power is (somewhat) equally in the hands of blacks and Latinos as it is in the hands of whites. Maybe Westfield sees a post-Obama America, where presumptions are not made about people's shopping habits based on the color of their skin. After all, they're an Australian company, so they've already got the benefit of the doubt in our household.

So instead of doing the Stephen Colbert finger wag at Westfield for what they may have done in the past, I'm going to give them the temporary thumbs up for what they may be doing in the future. Same to Disney.

Until I actually see the new mall myself, at which point I'm sure I'll find something to carp about.

Conflict of interest

I am on the verge of writing my first film review in which I have a potential conflict of interest.

First, a little background.

Among my wife's friends in Australia are a couple filmmakers who may be on the verge of making it big. They're a married couple -- a director (let's call him Mark) and a composer (let's call her Beatrice) -- who both had a good list of credits in Australian television, but had also collaborated on several shorts and (I believe) one feature. In 2006 they were hard at work on a second feature, called Noise, which Mark wrote and directed, and for which Beatrice composed the music. Noise is about a Melbourne police officer who has tinnitus, the ailment that causes a permanent ringing in one's ears, and the ways in which he becomes involved with two high-profile (and possibly linked) murder cases, while he is also grappling with his hearing becoming further and further degraded.

Noise was accepted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was well received. Some of the people receiving it well were my wife and I, who traveled to Park City, Utah just for the purpose of seeing it -- and for the rare opportunity to see Mark and Beatrice, of course. In fact, we slept in the extra double bed in their hotel room. The producing team was angling for a release in the U.S., but sadly, it never transpired -- even though, after emerging from the theater, I eagerly proclaimed that such a release would be a foregone conclusion. (And no, I do not think I jinxed the film.)

As is my custom, I put in to review Noise right after returning from Sundance -- almost three years ago now. Since the film did not have a fixed release date, my editor suggested that I just write the synopsis for the movie now, and wait until it was released to write the review. I also pitched the idea of interviewing Mark for a feature on the website, but not with much enthusiasm -- since he was unknown in the U.S., an interview with him wouldn't be a very exciting draw for most readers, so my access to him was not a very useful selling point.

So I wrote the Noise synopsis, and waited for its U.S. theatrical release. (It was released in the theaters in Australia and got great reviews.) That U.S. release eventually came on DVD, at which point, I was eligible to review it. In most cases, I don't feel the need to revisit a movie before reviewing it, even if a year or more has elapsed. In fact, when I first started writing for this website, I routinely submitted reviews for films I had not seen in ten years, though you can understand if I was a little vague on specifics. At that point, they just needed content, and I was there to provide it.

However, since I know Mark and Beatrice, I wanted to give Noise a second viewing before I wrote the review. I knew my review would be glowing, but I also wanted to be sure I could latch on to specifics, to make it the best possible review it could be. After all, it's not every day that you know for certain that the person who directed the film will be reading your review.

As sometimes happens, though -- and perhaps it was this subconscious pressure of writing the perfect review -- my second viewing of Noise made its way to the back burner. I got approved to review it some time ago, but it just didn't make it to the top of my online queue until late summer. (And the filmmakers should be pleased to know that you can get Noise through Blockbuster, thank you very much.) Since late summer, my wife and I have both been very busy, and I knew this was a movie she wanted to see again with me. After all, they're her friends -- my friends my proxy, though I'm quite fond of them as well. Plus, the subject matter of Noise is quite heavy, so it never felt like the soothing balm of dumb escapism we usually needed to relax from our busy schedule. We were trying to wait for the perfect time and place for our second viewing.

Not that we're any less busy, but we finally found that time this past Sunday. (Ironically, it was about two-and-a-half weeks after the director himself was in town for meetings with Hollywood types, during which we had dinner with him, and I told him that I was about to review the movie.) Not that there was any doubt, but the second viewing confirmed that Noise is a very good film.

Knowing various members of the crew as we did -- at Sundance, we met and hung out with the producer, the DP, and several actors -- we decided we should definitely check out the DVD extras to see what was there. Lo and behold, there was a making-of doco (to use the Australian slang for documentary) shot mostly by Mark himself. I say "mostly," because as it turns out, my wife shot some of the footage as well. That's right, it was with surprise and delight that we were suddenly looking at familiar footage from our Sundance weekend, where my wife did some videoing and actually asked Mark a few questions. So her voice is in the film as well. I was even on the lookout for whether I might find myself in the background of one of the shots, but I never did. The doco also contained an extended interview with the film's editor (let's call him Greg), who is also one of my wife's friends, and has become my friend through our mutual obsessive love of films -- though I've met him in person only once, briefly. In fact, before the doco, I'd forgotten that Greg was even the editor of Noise -- hence my failure to include him in this piece before now.

As I was taking all this in, I thought, "Wow, I may really have a genuine conflict of interest on this film."

But what is a conflict of interest when it comes to reviewing films, really? Are you supposed to recuse yourself when you know some of the participants? If so, how does someone like Roger Ebert handle that situation? In a 30+ year career, he has certainly met hundreds if not thousands of actors, writers, directors and producers, and presumably developed a friendly relationship with some of them. Does he question his own ability to submit an impartial review when these people appear in a film, or behind the camera?

The thing is, I'm probably one of the only ones -- though I can now include you, dear readers, in that group -- who knows that I have some sort of personal stake in this film. There's little chance that my editor remembers that I know the director (and composer, and editor) of Noise, a film that is probably not even on his radar. So the question is not really one of professional ethics, or at least not in terms of ethics where I have a chance of getting caught and paying some kind of price for my actions. Even if my editor knew I knew the director, I'm sure he wouldn't care. In fact, at the time my editor delayed my initial request to review the film, he certainly knew of my friendship with the filmmakers, and didn't discourage me from being the one who ultimately submits the review. Hey, it's just a website visited by film lovers. It's not going for a Pulitzer or anything.

But there's also the issue of what to say. I'm really lucky that Noise is a good film, because my job should be easy. In fact, if it sucked, I probably would have just gone easy on myself and left the money on the table to leave it unreviewed. As Noise wasn't assigned to me, but rather, a film I requested, there would have been no point to piss off my wife's friends -- people I was only just getting to know -- to prove some kind of principal of journalistic integrity.

The thing is, though Noise is a very good film, it's not a perfect film. That's not some kind of indictment, it's just a simple fact that is true of most movies, and with which Mark, Beatrice and Greg would no doubt agree. One thing the second viewing of Noise gave me -- which an initial viewing that included the intoxication of attending my first Sundance couldn't give me -- was a couple logistical questions. Why did this happen this way? Why did that happen that way? How was this thread of the plot resolved?

Most of these questions are ultimately not that important, because Noise is a film that is purposefully unresolved in certain ways -- which is one of its towering strengths. It is also more about mood and character than it is about point A to point B to point C plot development, another shrewd attribute. So any minor complaints I have would be too insignificant to prioritize in a 300-word review.

The only question is -- would I consider them more significant if I approached Noise knowing nothing about it? Knowing no one who made it?

Like most questions on this blog, that one's pretty academic. I loved Noise, and was blown away that people I know personally could make such a strong film. That's what will, should, come out in my review. Ha ha -- the fact that it was made by people I know won't come out in the review -- that would indeed be a problem. But the sensation one gets from being impressed by a piece of art, regardless of who made it, and then having that sensation enhanced by knowing the artist -- that's what will come out in my review.

And there's one other unspoken undercurrent of this whole discussion, a truth I can't deny: It probably doesn't matter all that much what I write. Since this is a retroactive review, it doesn't have the ability to help get the film released in the U.S., or change the nature of the DVD distribution agreement. In fact, if I'd been approved to review it when originally requested, there was some chance, however small, that my review could have done this. But now, the film is already filed in its place in cinematic history, and all I'm doing is helping shape the historical perspective on it.

Then again, I am doing something else as well. Sure, I'm clapping my friends on the back, giving them one more chance to feel the love for Noise. But I may also be helping add it to the online rental queues of the people who will read my review. I may just be helping bring the movie to a wider audience, in fact. And when you come right down to it, setting aside the potential monetary gain, prestige, and respect among colleagues, that's what a good filmmaker really wants: for his or her film to simply be seen.

Now all I have to do is write it.

Unreasonable fears of theft

I'll drop almost anything into the communal mail bin at work, a wire mesh basket that sits behind the receptionist's desk.

Birthday card? Sure. Thank you note? Why not? Important payment that could have serious implications on my credit rating if it isn't received? I'll drop that there too.

But movies I need to return through the mail to Blockbuster?

Hell no.

In my mind, there's too great of a chance that someone will see this as their opportunity to add to their DVD collection. Really, it's the perfect crime. You snatch that movie, and no one will know what's happened to it. Blockbuster will think the customer never sent it. The customer will think Blockbuster never received it. No one will know that you were responsible, and now you're sitting at home watching Meet the Fockers, laughing it up over your popcorn.

I try to do whatever I can to avoid this.

Which is kind of funny, because I've written in the past about how Blockbuster will give you the benefit of the doubt on almost any shipping snafu you can imagine. Once it leaves their warehouse, an infinite number of things could happen to it, any of which are as plausible as you receiving it and just deciding not to return it. They have a good enough customer service department to want to keep your business, and will take you at your word.

Yet I do cling to this fear of someone snatching my movie from the communal spot where it waits for the postman's afternoon rounds. I thought of it again yesterday, when I entrusted the communal bin with an important document I had to send to the DMV reporting a recent car accident, without which I could get my license revoked and be hung by my testicles on the courthouse steps. (Though, I should say, I was not at fault in the accident). But I left my movie on the passenger seat of the car, intending to drop it in one of those blue curbside bad boys later on in the day. I actually didn't remember to do it until today.

I think the reason I worry is that it's one of the few things a person mails that leaves no doubt as to what it is. It doesn't say the actual title of the movie on the outside of the return envelope -- or, I should say, it does, but the title gets covered by the flap you use to seal it. However, that provides only small comfort, because if someone has the mind to steal a movie, they aren't going to be too worried whether it's something they like or not. Do thieves who break into unlocked cars want assurances that there's something good in the glove compartment? Actually, not knowing what movie could make it a really fun surprise, kind of like opening presents at a yankee swap -- like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

Then again, this thief couldn't be in it for financial gain. Since the DVD arrives in a special sleeve designed by Blockbuster (or Netflix -- all this applies to Netflix envelopes as well), it doesn't have much resale value. You need a case if you really want to move this product on the street.

So I'm essentially fearing the kleptomaniac movie lover in my office who is going to risk snatching the envelopes I dropped in the bin behind the receptionist without anyone seeing him/her.

This fear was somewhat rational in my old apartment building that I moved out of in 2006. My crazy drunken building manager would leave her Netflix DVDs on top of the row of mailboxes for the mailman to pick up, unmindful of the fact that anyone else could walk off with them. And quite easily -- the mailboxes were out of view of most of the apartments.

But is this fear rational now? Not so much.

Oh well. Some fears can't be reasoned with.

And hey, at least now I've memorized the locations of all the mailboxes near my office.

The title that changed

There's a movie coming out this fall called Pirate Radio. It seems to be the latest in a long line of films more or less made possible by The Full Monty, where plucky Brits pull themselves up by their own bootstraps to fight the establishment in unorthodox ways. It's directed by Love Actually's Richard Curtis.

Haven't heard of it? Maybe that's because it was advertised earlier this year as The Boat That Rocked.

In fact, as you can see on the right, a Boat That Rocked poster was the only poster I could actually find on the internet when I used the search terms "pirate radio movie poster." And that wasn't the only "oops" about this movie -- as you can see if you read the fine print, it was also originally scheduled for release in May of this year. And I know this poster isn't just showing the British release date, because it came out at the beginning of April in England.

It's not unusual for a title to change from one country to another, and not just when the languages are different. But it is a little unusual when you see the same trailer for the same movie with two different titles. When I saw the trailer at the theater today, I thought, "Oh, here's that Boat That Rocked trailer again." So I was a little surprised to see the new title pop up at the end. (Okay, I wasn't really all that surprised, since I had already seen the re-branded trailer a couple weeks ago. But I was reminded of it again today, hence this post).

It seems to me like a clear case of dumbing down. I very recently discussed the phenomenon of making foreign titles less complicated for Americans, but it appears that this applies to not-so-foreign titles as well, as long as they are even remotely grammatically unconventional. The Boat That Rocked isn't my favorite title in the world, but it does have a certain cleverness to it. After all, here you have a movie about a bunch of DJs who took their act out to sea to fight the prevailing radio censorship laws in England of the late 1960-early 1970s. (In fact, I believe it may be based on a true story). So the boat literally rocked, but it's also a play on the familiar proverb "Don't rock the boat." Titles that work on multiple levels work for me.

When you come right down to it, Pirate Radio does the same thing. Pirates are traditionally people who ride the seas, but "pirate radio" also refers to stolen, anti-authoritarian radio in the general sense, removed from a nautical context.

So why don't I like it as much?

I guess it's just the dumbing down I resent, the attempt to make it a sort of "rad" title. Clearly, they're trying to appeal to the same young viewers who were taken in by the ideology of a film like Pump Up the Volume. I was 16 years old when Pump Up the Volume came out in the summer of 1990, and I count myself as one of those people. There's nothing wrong with that, per se. But it does reduce some of the sophistication level I rely on from my British films. The Boat That Rocked seems a lot less crass than Pirate Radio.

However they name it, though, I'm not all that interested. One of the highlights of the trailer is supposed to be when a line of rebellious DJs are strutting down the street, and one of them runs into a lamppost. In fact, the audience I watched with today tittered at that point, right on cue. But it's a pretty lame and lazy kind of humor, if you ask me. I mean, how could you not see a giant post like that right in front of you?

Squeezing one in

I have been loaded down with television lately.

September and early October are always the hardest. Not only are there the returning shows that my wife and I love, but this is also the time for sampling the new fare, to see which spaghetti sticks to the wall, and which falls to the floor in a wet heap. So far, nothing's fallen to the floor, and we've picked up (I think) four new shows. (We also deleted one new show off the DVR without watching it, which now seems like a good move.)

But we've made it extra difficult on ourselves this fall. We also decided to drop Cinemax and add Showtime in its place, especially since we're no longer getting the original discount on Cinemax, which has nothing to offer but movies. In addition to (a smaller selection of) movies, Showtime offers us Dexter and Californication, both of which we've been watching about a full season behind. We decided to catch up this fall, and had already seen most of the third season of Dexter. But we hadn't seen any of season 2 of Californication. So we had to square away about four Dexter episodes, then jammed through ten Californications in 72 hours before they yanked it from OnDemand. We'll have to finish that one up on DVD.

Oh, and did I mention that it's the baseball playoffs? Both the team I root for (the Red Sox) and the team I root against (the Yankees) are in -- though if the Sox lose one more they're out -- so I've had that taking up a good chunk of my boob tube time this week as well.

The sum total of all this is that I hadn't seen a movie since last Sunday afternoon. Six days would not be a long drought for most people, but for me, it felt like an eternity. We were going to watch something last night, but the disappointing Sox-Angels game ran until almost 10, at which point it was deemed too late to start a movie. We ended up watching another two hours of shows on the DVR anyway, but short-form programming can be better for the attention span at this time of night.

So when I inexplicably woke up at 7:30 this morning, I got up and watched a movie.

A movie before 8 a.m. would be unheard of for most people, but for me, it's not that uncommon. Most weekend mornings, I wake up an average of 1-2 hours earlier than my wife, so sometimes I use that as my time to control the TV without guilt, to squeeze in a quick and dirty movie before the day gets started. (Not a dirty movie per se, but you know what I mean.) I was going to watch this week's Survivor, but I was just hankering for a movie -- any movie. As it turned out, my wife was sleeping especially deeply this morning, so I got in most of Survivor as well before she woke up.

"Any movie" turned out to be No Reservations, the 2007 romantic drama with touches of comedy starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart. Of the OnDemand choices, it was the best combination of a short running time and a general desire on my part to see it. As it turned out, No Reservations was as paint-by-the-numbers as they get, and a major disappointment. Closed off, selfish, uptight chef (Zeta-Jones) must take on new responsibilities when her sister dies and leaves her custody of her niece (Abigail Breslin). Hot-shot, unorthodox new chef at work (Eckhart) clashes with closed-off, selfish, uptight chef before they unsurprisingly fall for each other. Conflicts ensue, ultimately a new family unit is born. Blah blah blah, who cares.

But the quality of the film is not really the point. The point is, sometimes it feels nourishing just to be watching a film, just to be adding to my collection. A starving man needs sustenance, and this morning, No Reservations was mine. Appropriate, as the movie was all about food.

I found out afterward that it's actually unreviewed on my site, so I'll probably be able to get paid for having sat through it.

Having my appetite satiated, and getting paid for it? Works for me.

How much is the setting?

Before I get into what I really want to discuss today, allow me to briefly indulge in a little Almost Famous flashback. (As well as my fondness for discussing issues of racial politics).

Just look at this poster, and how teeny tiny the black couple is in the background. What, black man don't get to stand in front? I thought Rosa Parks made it so people like Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman could not force people like Faizon Love and Kali Hawk to stand in the back of the lake. Or inlet. Or cove. Or what have you.

Oh, and the Almost Famous flashback? Remember how there was that t-shirt of Stillwater, but Billy Crudup was the only band member whose face was in focus? Yep, kind of like that.

But I'm here to talk about something much more sunny today. Specifically, tropically sunny. More specifically, movies whose settings make us want to see them for that reason alone.

I want to see Couples Retreat a lot more than I think I should, given the quality of the jokes from the ads. I mean, they're okay, but they're nothing special. Particularly the joke about the Euro yoga instructor wearing the skimpy grape smugglers, who gyrates his ass in Jason Bateman's face. I've lost count ... is this the 723rd movie with a scene like that, or the 724th?

But I do want to see Couples Retreat -- I can't deny it. And I'm pretty sure this has as much to do with the tropical setting as anything else. Jon Favreau's character puts his finger on it perfectly in one of the clips from the ads: "This place looks like a screen saver!" Exactly.

I'm pretty sure, however, that it's not merely the setting, but a reminder of how much I loved that setting in another recent comedy, which I believe is destined to become one of my top 25 comedies of all time. I'm speaking of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the superlative 2008 comedy starring the dynamite quartet of Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand and Kristen Bell, which happens to have been set in Hawaii. As if making an even more direct appeal for those who loved Sarah Marshall, Couples Retreat also features Bell, playing Bateman's wife.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall would probably have still been a pretty good movie if it hadn't involved a vacation destination as its backdrop, but the Hawaii setting pushes it over the top. In fact, the Hawaii setting is so intrinsically involved with why we love it, maybe it really wouldn't have been that good without it. Escapism begets laughter begets escapism, and so on. If Peter Bretter (Segel) had accidentally followed Sarah Marshall (Bell) to a hotel in Detroit, we wouldn't have been seeing nearly the same movie.

However, a tropical setting alone is not enough to guarantee liking a film, as we may be about to discover with Couples Retreat. A recent example of a film that struck out in that regard: The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller, and, like Couples Retreat, also co-starring Malin Akerman. By being dumb and mean-spirited, the Farrelly Brothers' remake of Elaine May's 1972 film starring Charles Grodin made me not particularly want to go to Cabo San Lucas.

It's not tropical settings alone that can have this impact on us, either. For example, part of the charm of Dumb and Dumber is that a good portion of it takes place in Aspen. And needless to say, this isn't limited to comedies. We love Dirty Dancing as much as we do in part because of its Catskills setting.

Okay, brilliant deduction, Vance. If you have the budget to shoot on location in a beautiful setting, more people will want to see your movie.

So this is not an earth-shattering realization. But it's always good to know how you are being subtly manipulated by the people who market movies to you. If, with that knowledge, you still want to see the movie in question, go ahead.

Just don't expect Forgetting Sarah Marshall every time out, because you'll be disappointed.

A new way to rank (Warning! May cause dizziness!)

Last Thursday, my friend Don turned me on to a nasty, wonderful little time-waster, which has since become my obsession.

I should say, for the average person it would be a time-waster. For Don and me, it is downright revolutionary.

It's called FlickChart (www.flickchart.com), and it does nothing short of help you rank your favorite movies of all time. But it's not just your favorite movies, either -- it's all the movies you've seen. All the movies you've seen that they have in their database, anyway. And that's quite a lot -- I've already ranked 2,279 of them, and am still going.

So how exactly does this work?

When you go the website and sign up for a free account, it immediately gets you started on ranking your movies. And it does this in a way that's so simple, yet so effective, that I can't believe it didn't occur to someone before now.

Quite simply, you rank your movies as a series of duels. On one half of the screen, you see the poster for one movie. On the other half, you see a poster for another movie. Whichever poster you click is the movie you like better. And each time you click a poster, you are presented with two new films to compare. If you haven't seen one of them, you click a button that says "Haven't seen it," and you are presented with a new film in its place. As you click -- and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click, and click -- the films develop rankings.

At first these rankings are goofy. Say your first two movies are (I'll take two that I don't think are all that great) Burn After Reading and Dead Poets Society. (I hate Burn After Reading, and was in the minority in finding Dead Poets Society manipulative and melodramatic). I would pick Dead Poets Society in this duel, which means that Dead Poets Society would be my #1 movie, and Burn After Reading #2. Then I will get two different movies, and then two more different movies, and then two more different movies, and then eventually duels between some of the same films I've already ranked.

The thing is, Dead Poets Society will stay at #1. Until, that is, it comes up against something better than it -- say, X-Men: The Last Stand -- at which point it will move to #2. When something better comes up against X-Men: The Last Stand -- say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which is a lot better) -- Dead Poets Society will move down to #3. And so on. After much clicking and many duels, Dead Poets Society will eventually end up in its proper place. Each time you get a new film, it adds one to the total number of films you've ranked, and each time you choose one film over another, it adds one ranking.

I found out about Flickchart shortly after I got to work on Thursday, and that's also when I found out two other things: 1) One of my bosses was leaving to spend the entire day at our corporate headquarters, and 2) My most anal other co-worker was out sick. When you added this to the fact that my other boss was already on a scheduled day off, it created the perfect storm for endless amounts of clicking.

And click I did.

All day.

In fact, I ranked so many movies, competed in so many duels, that I literally lost track of time. I almost forgot to eat lunch, and I entered some kind of dizzy fugue where my vision got fuzzy, and I had only a peripheral awareness of the events around me. When I had to do actual work, it was quickly, and with barely concealed annoyance. Sometimes I was so out of it that I realized I'd been staring through the posters, thinking for five seconds about whether The Empire Strikes Back was better than Saw II -- a decision that would have been instantaneous if I weren't half-dead from overindulgence. I was not only hooked, I was an actual addict.

You see, even though I keep a list of all the movies I've ever seen, I have never even considered ranking them. I always wished there was a way, but it's just too enormous a task. How do you decide that movie #1363 on your list is better than #1364? Simple: You can't.

Until now.

See, it's not one big decision about what goes where -- it's a million little decisions. Is Clash of the Titans better than Baby Mama? If so, there's one choice. Is It's a Wonderful Life better than Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls? There's another. And so on. And so on. I make the choices -- I leave the algorithms up to Flickchart.

I rank my favorite movies released in each calendar year as the year is unfolding, and one time, I tried to rank my favorite movies released from 1996 to 2006, just as an exercise. But ranking all the movies I've ever seen? How? How?

I should tell you that at first, it did not seem like Flickchart would be able to provide such an enormous service. As Don and I were both furiously clicking throughout the day -- he had limited boss supervision that day as well -- we both noticed that after awhile, we stopped getting new movies. At about 380 movies -- only 21 of which I hadn't seen -- I noticed no new titles being provided for my consideration. Which was a little disappointing.

But only a little. With a relatively small group of films to focus on, at least I would get a pretty much definitive ranking of those films. Maybe it would take 10,000 rankings, but by that time, I would really know whether I thought Back to the Future was better than Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lost in Translation was better than Children of Men, and Goodfellas was better than Citizen Kane. These are all movies I absolutely love, and eventually, I would have to make the choice between them. (And I can't even tell you how agonizing it has been at times. When I got Donnie Darko vs. Star Wars, I was so angst-ridden I had to email Don then and there. I eventually chose Darko).

If I believe that Flickchart is working its algorithm correctly, I will also have the answer to the question I have previously been unable to answer when anyone asks me:

What is my favorite movie of all time?

It gives me a chill just to think this could be possible. As a film critic, I get this question a lot.

So Don and I agreed that we would rank these 380 films -- or however may of them we had seen (and he had seen seven more than I had, darn him) -- 10,000 times, and then compare our lists. And we would do it by the end of the weekend.

I got halfway there on Thursday. That's right, I made a choice between two movies 5,000 times that day.

Now do you get the dizziness?

But, as I alluded to earlier in the post, there was a stunning realization still in store for me. While Don and I were no less interested by the task, all this clicking gets tedious, especially when you are seeing the same titles over and over and over again. (But not the same posters -- one of the most wonderful things about this website is that there are numerous different posters provided for each film, representing other languages, limited campaigns, etc. etc. That alone makes it a film lover's dream).

But on Sunday morning, I discovered that we had been filtering the movies incorrectly. Somehow, the default setting on Flickchart is for you to receive this initial selection of 380 movies, but nothing more. It's under a strangely and misleadingly named filter called All Movies. On Sunday, however, I discovered that there was a filter called Only Unranked Movies. And as soon as I filtered it that way, all variety of new titles started spilling in -- both totally thrilling me and totally overwhelming me at the same time. At least the goal of 10,000 movies by the end of the weekend would no longer mean anything.

So instead of obsessively ranking the same movies against each other in order to fine-tune the order more and more, I shifted my goal to adding new movies to the list -- and did that most of the day on Sunday, until my wife made me stop and watch a movie with her. I'm never one to turn down my favorite pastime, but a new one had since taken a stranglehold on me, so I relished every break in the action, when she got a phone call or had to go to the bathroom. I had that laptop on my lap less than five seconds after she hit pause. And as soon as we finished the excellent Transamerica -- which I enjoyed no less as a result of my Flickchart distraction -- I immediately added it to my ever-growing list.

I now realize that Flickchart is not a finite project, but a way of life. I will continue adding movies to my list -- there's a place where you can do that as well, instead of just waiting for them to pop up randomly -- and I will continue dueling them against each other over the course of weeks, months, years. It'll be the perfect way to pass the time as I veg out in front of the baseball playoffs for the next couple weeks.

But I did reach 10,000, our original goal, at the end of the night last night. So I thought I should present you my top 20 at this juncture, which now seems like just the beginning.

Without further ado:

1. Toy Story
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Donnie Darko
4. Dumb and Dumber
5. The Seven Samurai
6. Toy Story 2
7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8. Dances With Wolves
9. The Princess Bride
10. The Empire Strikes Back
11. Raiders of the Lost Ark
12. Children of Men
13. Unforgiven
14. Citizen Kane
15. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
16. The Untouchables
17. Requiem for a Dream
18. Fargo
19. The Professional
20. Die Hard

As evidence of how this is a work in progress, there are some films on here that are way too high. For example, though I love The Seven Samurai, it is not my fifth favorite film of all time. Nor do The Professional, Requiem for a Dream and Dances With Wolves belong in the top 20. But otherwise, you are looking at some of my creme de la creme. However, by the "end" of this process -- I put it in quotation marks because there is no end -- it's possible that only a few of these titles will still be in the top 20. There are dozens of wonderful movies in the second half of my current list, just waiting for their chance to move up. Never mind the movies I may one day love that I haven't seen yet -- or that haven't been made yet.

Then there's the question of #1. How long will Toy Story stay? It's hard to say, but I can say that it has been #1 for the entire 10,000. Toy Story happens to both be one of my favorite films of all time, and one of the first two I ranked. So it has ruled the roost from moment one. That's why it gets the poster art for this post -- in addition to the fact that it's also timely, as the film has returned to theaters, along with its sequel, for a two-week 3D run.

So if you are a big movie fan -- which you are if you're reading this blog, or else you're one of my relatives -- and if 2,000 words on Flickchart has not exhausted you too much already, I recommend you get started on it. Now. You'll remember this day as the day your life changed forever -- though whether you thank me or curse my name depends on how you take to the addiction.

And don't blame me if you start to get dizzy. I recommend taking a walk -- and having your bosses out of the office.