Twelve Goofy Men.

Nonsensical, self-indulgent, and occasionally even a tad smarmy, Steven Soderbergh’s much-hyped Ocean’s Twelve is also, I’m happy to report, just plain fun. While Eleven was an intricately designed (and quickly forgettable) clockwork caper flick, this sequel turns out to be a rather silly, rambling affair that reeks of inside-baseball, and I mean that in the best way possible. In fact, I’d say Twelve turned out to be what Soderbergh tried and failed to do with Full Frontal…As much a riff on stars and stardom as the heist movie we were all expecting, it’s probably the most sheerly pleasurable film experience you’re going to find this side of The Incredibles.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems here. The film starts slow, reintroducing every character from the first movie as if they were the reuniting Beatles. The plot…well, the plot doesn’t make much sense at all — this isn’t the type of heist movie where you can put the jigsaw pieces together yourself. A lot of the scenes are probably a beat or two too long, and the movie’s got more endings than Return of the King. But, y’know, in the final analysis, none of that really matters. Right about the time Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) goes to check in on imploding (i.e. “going all Frankie Muniz”) TV star Topher Grace (“I just phoned in that Dennis Quaid movie!”), Ocean’s 12 starts to show its true colors: Forget the crime and just have a good time.

And have a good time I did, although admittedly all the Hollywood in-jokes and cameos on display here are my cuppa joe. Sure, the movie could probably have used more Clooney and more Bernie Mac, but there’s a lot of characters to keep in play here, and, besides, it got the cowbell just right. I won’t say Ocean’s Twelve is a great film, but it is a well-made, entertaining film, and it kept a smile on my face for most of its running time. So, if there’s an Ocean’s Thirteen in the works, deal me in.

The Grapes of Wretchedness.

Lost in a wine-dark sea, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is withering on the vine. His wife left him two years ago and he’s still in the drunk-dialing throes of despair. His novelist aspirations are dying an ugly death in ever-smaller publishing houses. Both oenophile and alcoholic, he drinks too much, eats too much, surveys the world in furtive glances, and cringes with self-loathing every time he looks in the mirror. He’s lugubrious, pedantic, bristling with negativity to the core. In sum, Miles is almost completely beaten down by life…so of course he attracts the attention of a smart, beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) who shares all his important interests and remains fond of him, even and despite his awful behavior.

If you can get past this one critical and wholly improbable plot point (and I did, eventually), Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a trip to California wine country well worth taking. The movie basically plays like an approaching-middle-age version of About Schmidt (right down to the unfortunate nude scene), but this seemed a more well-rounded and generous film than its predecessor. (I thought Schmidt derived too many laughs from turning Dylan McDermott’s character into a buffoon. That being said, I also think Sideways flinches from reality in the closing moments in a way About Schmidt didn’t.) And, while I’m about as far from a wine connoisseur as you can get (whites with chicken and fish, right?), Sideways also succeeds in making the subculture of oenophilia both accessible and reasonably engaging, a few ham-handed “wine-is-life” soliloquies notwithstanding.

Special nods go to all the actors involved here, and particularly Paul Giamatti for making it so easy to empathize with the easily unlikable Miles…I can’t think of many other folks who could have pulled it off so well (In fact, looking back I’d say Nicholas Cage pulled it off less well in Adaptation.) I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Thomas Haden Church, as Miles’ low-key, horny doofus of a best friend, and Virginia Madsen, as the previously noted underwritten muse of second chances, get some action come award time (which may end up meaning sour grapes for the Closer crowd.)

Once Bitten, Thrice Shy.

While it was pretty clear going in that the Blade trilogy had already peaked in the first five minutes of the first film, when Wesley Snipes busts up Traci Lords’ vampire rave to New Order’s infectious Pump Panel remix of “Confusion,” I still had high hopes that Blade: Trinity would live up to the “quality popcorn flick” standard of the first two. Alas, the Daywalker’s third installment is a bit of a mess. It’s got a few reasonably numbing wire-fu action sequences, sure, but it’s missing that certain je-ne-sais-quoi that made the first two outings such fun. The result is…well, kinda flat.

Surprisingly, given that this is the third Blade written by first-time director David Goyer (who’s also scribed next summer’s Batman Begins), the biggest problem here is the writing. For one, there’s holes in the plot you could drive a Batmobile through. (If the vampires can capture Blade so easily, what’d they need Dracula for? How did Drake know when the good guys would hit the psychiatrists’ office?) Moreover, entire setpieces are lifted straight out of other, better films. (For example, the aforementioned psychiatrist, stolen right out of The Terminator, or the bloodbank and (ugh) baby scenes, both jacked from the original Blade.) And worst of all is the dialogue. Ryan Reynold’s character, Hannibal King, not only has to spit out a slew of stale-on-arrival wisecracks in every scene, he also appears to have learned English from reading AICN talkbacks.

In fact, that may be the most annoying thing about Blade: Trinity — Like no movie since Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, it appears conceived, written, and marketed to appeal solely to Harry Knowles’ disgruntled army of foul-mouthed, oversexed, ADD-afflicted teenagers, right down to the Patton Oswalt cameo and the gratuitous Jessica Biel shower scene. For what it’s worth, though, Biel and Reynolds are troopers about it all, while Blade himself just seems bored at this point. (By the way, I’m a happy member of iPod Nation, but Biel’s iPodatry here was, frankly, embarrassing.) Casting Parker Posey as evil vamp Danica Talos probably seemed like a good idea (and a nod to the NYC uberyuppie milieu of Stephen “Deacon Frost” Dorff in the first film)…but she’s got nothing to work with, except some terrible repartee with Reynolds. And I don’t know what it is about Vampire Big Bads, but the guy who plays Eurotrash Dracula has got to be the worst actor I’ve seen in a major movie since Shane Brolly in Underworld. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put it (birddogged by my bro), he had “all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.” In sum, Blades 1 & 2 are both surprisingly enjoyable, but this time they miffed it.

Team Alexander: World Police.

Alexander the Great. Seeker, despot, conqueror, legend…and who knew he anything to do with the Kennedy assassination? Ok, Oliver Stone’s Alexander doesn’t actually pin the events of November 22, 1963 on the Macedonian conqueror, but, to be honest, I kinda wish it had — it might have injected some much-needed energy into the film. Over the past two decades, Oliver Stone has made films that are stunning, controversial, wrongheaded, and unforgettable, but never before has he made one so flat-out dull.

To its credit, I guess, Alexander shows signs of being an absolute train wreck right from the first reel. After a very brief nod to Citizen Kane, which suggested we may at least be getting a gloriously over-the-top outing from Stone this time around, the film settles in to Anthony Hopkins wandering around the set of the “Losing My Religion” video and spitting out long, interminable chunks of Basil Exposition. (Speaking of which, Stone must have been watching his VH1-Classic…there’s a scene on a mountaintop later that seems lifted straight out of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.”) Then, we’ve got Mommy Dearest Angelina Jolie writhing around with snakes for a bit (women = serpents = temptresses = deceivers, get it? Don’t worry, in typical Stone fashion, the point will be beaten into the ground over the next three hours.) Twenty minutes in, by the time young Alexander is channeling the Horse Whisperer, it’s pretty clear we’ve got a real stinker on our hands.

From there on, it’s just a pile-up. Other than a neat camel charge or two, the battle setpieces are completely inscrutable, and not in a good “Fog of War” kinda way. For some reason, the men all speak with Irish brogues, while both women (Jolie and Rosario Dawson) sound like Brides of Dracula. Give them credit, though. Jolie, Dawson, and Val Kilmer (as Phillip of Macedon, by way of Dr. Moreau) seem to be the only three people involved with this project who saw it for what it was and racheted up the hamminess dial to 11.

Much has been made in some reviews of Stone’s decision not to shy away from Alexander’s bisexuality — namely his love affair with the doe-eyed Hephaistion (Jared Leto, who fulfilled close to the same function for Tyler Durden in Fight Club) — and I suppose he should be applauded for it, given the recent trends in Red State country. But, frankly, what with all the earnest looks and pre-established Freudian baggage, it all comes off as high camp, and not nearly as open-minded as it thinks it is. Not that heterosexual relations fare much better, mind you…when Colin Farrell and poor, lovely Rosario Dawson hiss, scratch, and wrestle naked on their wedding night (yes, you guessed it, snake flashbacks are involved), it’s just about the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen.

To sum up, Alexander is a flat-out disappointment and easily the worst Oliver Stone film I can think of offhand. This review notwithstanding, it’s not even fun-bad. Think of it more as Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie.

Sex Education.

Hoo boy, the Red Staters obsessed with “moral values” out there are just gonna love Kinsey. With its unflinching recognition of myriad forms of human sexual behavior, its intimations of bisexuality and wife-swapping among team Kinsey, and its occasionally graphic (albeit antiseptic and not at all titillating) depictions of the act of coitus (to channel Maude Lebowski), Bill Condon’s biopic of Indiana’s famous sex statistician is the closest movie we have this year to a Passion of the Christ for science-minded free-thinkers. In fact, the film seems almost genetically designed to get under the skins of the abstinence-firsters and moralist types who’ve decried Kinsey’s studies for fifty years.

That being said, the strength of Kinsey, and what elevates it to being a better-then-average biopic, is the way it ultimately gets under everybody’s skin. Alfred Kinsey is not simply white-washed as a martyr to science and a hero of sexual enlightenment (although, in its most conventional moments, such as the last ten minutes, the movie hammers those particular points pretty hard.) Rather, Kinsey is portrayed as a man whose relentless pursuit of sexual knowledge often leads him down some troubling and morally ambiguous roads. Even the most open-minded libertines in the audience may find themselves feeling that things seem to have gotten a little out-of-control around the home office in Indiana by the end, and get extremely discomfited when Liam Neeson’s Kinsey sits down with an even creepier than usual Bill Sadler, a pedophile and sexual predator who’s taken some notes of his own.

Kinsey is at its best when it rides this razor’s edge, honoring the professor’s undeniable contributions to science and society while recognizing that his dispassionately treating sexual behavior as he earlier treated gall wasps ultimately opened the door to immense personal pitfalls, particularly for the men and women around him who had trouble maintaining such a scientific distance. Speaking of which, while Neeson is solid and Laura Linney is Laura Linney as usual, the supporting character work in Kinsey is particularly good. Special marks go to a fearless Peter Saarsgard as Kinsey’s #2 (Watch out, Ewan – you’ve got a competitor now for the full-frontal roles), John Lithgow for his bleary final scene as Kinsey’s father (which redeemed an otherwise one-note character), and Dylan Baker as the long-suffering Rockefeller Foundation point person (who must partly have been picked here for his memorable role in Happiness.)

In sum, although it ends with a rather bland huzzah for the march of science, Bill Condon’s Kinsey is for the most part an intelligent, nuanced, and multifaceted appreciation of one man’s probing (and occasionally perilous) quest to illuminate humankind’s most intimate frontier. (And as such, it’ll probably go over like a lead balloon in American Pie country.)

Incredible Journey.

Well, the folks making next summer’s Fantastic Four film must be having a really bad couple of weeks. ‘Cause it’s hard to see how they can even close to topping the energy and fun of Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, Pixar’s new gold standard (and here I thought Toy Story 2 was going to hold that honor for some time to come.) More a film for comic fans than for little kids, The Incredibles is an inventive, madcap romp through superhero tropes that gives Spiderman 2 a serious run for its money as the best comic book film of 2004.

I must say, I was surprised right off the bat at how PG the film turned out to be. This is a darker film than most previous Pixar forays, with a surprisingly high body count and some mordant sight gags in the mix (for example, the montage explaining the trouble with capes). Whatsmore, Mr. Incredible’s most potent villain turns out to be existential ennui at the workplace, which seems as if it might fly right over the heads of the Finding Nemo age demographic.

Their loss, our gain. The Incredibles is a consistently clever ride, right down to the details. The writers and production designers have not only designed robots, ships, and a evil fortress that breathe originality while still paying homage to classic icons (Not unlike Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant in that regard — so take that, Sky Captain.) They’ve also come up with unique applications and situations for some of the hoariest superpowers going (strength, elasticity, speed, etc…Elastigirl’s break-in to Syndrome’s lair stands out as a particular highlight.)

The only real misstep in the film, aside from it feeling maybe 10-15 minutes too long (and, arguably, the Ayn Randish subtext), is the Brad Bird-voiced Edna Mode, who seems like some unholy cross between Vera Wang and Joan Rivers and comes off as somewhat embarrassing and misconceived. Better thought out is Mr. Incredible’s McNamara-esque boss and the “Issue No. 2” villain, The Underminer, whom I very much look forward to in the sequel. But, look, here I am monologuing again…To sum up, as the sinister mime Bomb Voyage might put it, “C’est incroyable!”

Ghost in the Machinist.

Batman? Try the Scarecrow. Christian Bale purportedly lost 65 pounds for his role as The Machinist, and, boy, does it show. In a film that swims in unease, Bale is the creepiest special effect of all, jutting collarbones and vertebrae this way and that. If nothing else, he has done for eating disorders here what highway-gore films of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s did for Driver’s Ed. And the movie itself? Well, I’m not sure if it (or any film, for that matter) would be worth Bale’s gruesome physical transformation, but The Machinist is a pretty solid foray into puzzle-movie territory, one that establishes a grim, unsettling mood early on and maintains it throughout.

Bale’s Trevor Reznick — Given the explicit nods to Dostoevsky throughout, the name resemblance to NIN’s frontman is probably also intentional — splits his time among his job, an airport cafe, and the bed of his favorite hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh, less show-offy than usual.) He shambles through the world without food, sleep, or even much color (everything, other than the occasional flash of red, has that institutional-green Matrix cast to it.) And, as the film goes on, Reznick tries to make sense of the increasingly strange events that befall him…events which I can’t really talk about without giving the game away, but that may involve conspiracies, murders, impending madness, and/or all of the above.

I have to say I was a bit dismayed by the way the pieces ended up fitting together in the end, but The Machinist is more about the journey than the destination anyway, and as a sinister tone poem the film works quite well…not a masterpiece by any means, but definitely a respectable night at the movies. Now, Alfred, could you please bring Mr. Wayne here a few cheeseburgers?

Masters of Puppets.

So, just before the Sox took George Steinbrenner down a peg this past Wednesday, I got to witness an ornery Kim Jong Il marionette suffer a similar fate at the hands of Team America: World Police. Going in to said puppet show, I was expecting a gut-bustingly funny film a la the South Park movie (and most South Park episodes), despite David Edelstein’s warning about sloppy satire. Well, unfortunately, Edelstein was right: While Team America does have some really hilarious moments (the cyanide hammer, Kim’s attack panthers, Matt Damon, the Michael Bay song), as a whole it doesn’t really hold together.

I should say first off that, the humor notwithstanding, this is probably one of the most amazing (non-stop-motion) puppet shows ever put to film. There are a few extended sequences — Paris, the Panama Canal — where the scale and execution of this puppet world is breathtaking. But, sadly, this ambition and devotion to detail doesn’t carry over to the script. For the first two-thirds or so, Team America is a spot-on imitation of pretty much any Jerry Bruckheimer film…but, unfortunately, it lampoons the genre so closely that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a parody. Instead, half the time I felt like I’d stumbled onto one of the New Classics on TNT.

Then, the final third of the movie swings too far in the other direction, and ends up relying way too heavily on puppet entrails and cussing dolls to generate laughs. As for the politics of the piece, I just don’t get how the South Park guys, who usually craft some of the most devastating satire around, couldn’t mine anything more substantive out of the War on Terror than the notion that left-wing Hollywood activists coddle tyrants by speaking their mind. (And, Trey & Matt, if we’re not supposed to care what the likes of Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin think, then why in Hell should we listen to you two?) In short, the puppetry in Team America is inspired, but the comedy is often lazy. Funny at times, sure, but I expected more than just an intermittently amusing anti-Hollywood screed from the creators of Cartman & co.

World Gone Wrong.

Well, admittedly writer-director Kerry Conran’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow — which I finally caught on Sunday afternoon — doesn’t look much like a film shot in a tiny blue room, but, lordy, it sure as heck feels like it. Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon…they’re all fine enough in other situations. But, alas, pretty much everyone here, with the possible exceptions of Giovanni Ribisi, Bai Ling (who doesn’t speak), and the dead Lawrence Olivier, have contracted Portmanitis, and what considerable acting chops they usually possess have been sucked into the CGI machines and spat back out as a deathly dull flatness.

I don’t blame the cast, though. Because, however pretty the movie looks on occasion, the upshot is Sky Captain is as terribly written as Stephen Sommer’s ghastly Van Helsing this past summer. Seriously, this film makes zero sense whatsoever – the scenes of robots, planes, flying carriers, etc. just pile up on each other with no underlying sense of plot or development. Meanwhile, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are forced to deliver C-movie boilerplate that would’ve seem dated in Buster Crabbe’s day. I know we’ve reached an age where visual effects technology can spruce up even the lamest of tales, but still…I just don’t understand how a script this bad makes it out of Quality Control.

Perhaps to compensate for the wooden script, Conran packs his film chock-full of genre homages and fanboy cues, and one would think these would help alleviate the boredom. But, to be honest, they came so thick and so hamhandedly that even I, who usually has a high tolerance for this type of in-joke, started to feel beaten down by them. Oh, look, Metropolis, The Iron Giant, Office 1138, the SS Venture, Indy, Dagobah, Shangri-La as Rivendell…no, wait, Naboo…by the end of it, Sky Captain seemed less a full-fledged film than a 120 minute attempt to impress Harry Knowles. (Apparently, it worked. Harry is producing Conran’s next film (sigh), A Princess of Mars.)

As with Van Helsing, arguing that Sky Captain is a nod to the serials of the 1930’s is really no excuse. So was Raiders of the Lost Ark or even a B-movie like Big Trouble in Little China, and they held together a lot better than this overstuffed claptrap. In sum, the view out Sky Captain’s cockpit may be oh-so-pretty and genrefied, but the story here is strictly World of Yesterday.

Watching the Detectives.

When I first heard that David Russell’s I Heart Huckabees was billing itself as an “existential comedy,” I cringed. At the very least it sounded pretentious, and the last Naomi Watts film I saw about interconnected nothingness — 21 Grams — turned out to be a dog’s breakfast. But, given the cast and David Russell, I remained intrigued, and gave it a go on Wednesday. As it turns out, Huckabees is actually pretty solid — fitful and a bit meandering, sure, but still a pleasant, funny, and decently thought-provoking night at the movies.

Russell gets special points for making both his bizarre tale and his philosophical digressions easy and entertaining to follow. — unlike, say, Waking Life, you never feel like you’re getting battered over the head with coffee-house theory. Albert (Jason Schwartzman) is an embattled young environmental activist who enlists the aid of “existential detectives” Bernard and Vivian (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to ascertain the cosmic reasons behind a seemingly random coincidence involving a tall Sudanese immigrant (Ger Duany). After further research, our detective duo discover Albert’s plight probably also involves Huckabees corporate cog Brad (Jude Law, with a lousy American accent) and Brad’s girlfriend and Huckabees spokesmodel Dawn (Naomi Watts, ditto.) All the while, Albert and his “Other” — petroleum-despising fireman Tommy (Mark Wahlberg) — have begun to doubt the meaning of it all and are inexorably falling under the sway of Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a french nihilist to do Lebowski proud.

Got all that? Well, like I said, it makes more sense on the screen than it does on the page (or, um, computer screen, well you get it.) For the most part, particularly in the early going, Huckabees is jaunty and whimsical. Albert and Tommy’s visit to the god-fearing Hooten household (Jean Smart and Richard Jenkins) is particularly funny. (And, perhaps surprisingly given the cast here, Mark Wahlberg steals every scene he’s in.) But, I’ll admit, as the film wore on, there were times when I began to doubt its infinite nature. I thought some of the visual playfulness (“blanket-vision,” or the godawful-creepy Jude Madonna) fell flat, and I found my attention wandering during the final act. Still, all in all, I’d recommend the film with some reservations…You may not heart Huckabees by the end, but you’ll more than likely be entertained by it. I give it two-parts blanket, one-part void.