Reviews

It must take a lot of courage for Hollywood's successful, glamorous, pseudo-intellectuals to make fun of average people and their pathetic lives and values. Like Sofia Coppola's "look at how clever we are" Lost In Translation, Zach Braff's GARDEN STATE is another smug, superior and condescending exercise in how a disaffected man – with the help of an adorable, and incomprehensibly available, girl – can mock the hapless and hopeless and ridiculous while reconnecting with a world not worthy of him. (A suggestion: let's save these guys the trouble, tell them they are too smart and sensitive for this world and shoot them.)

Excessively quirky, as these films usually are, and hopelessly episodic, the film wants to be cool and wickedly "inside" – a diversionary piece of satirical entertainment for the tuned-out, too-cool zombies who will delight in the laughs the film scores at the expense of, restrain yourself, a truly bad singer's rendition of "Three Times a Lady" sung at a funeral, a horny sight seeing dog, etc. It's all here. No obvious joke has been overlooked.

Every scene, every set, every moment has a distracting "cool" element (the motorcycle with a sidecar, the house overrun by a habitrail, the mansion devoid of furniture in which characters get around in a golf cart, the abandoned boat at the bottom of a quarry). And just to make sure that you'll stay awake: the soundtrack cranks in to signal every scene change, every emotional beat.

You might be able to entertain yourself through the movie by randomly moving props around in your head: what if Zach got around town in a golf cart and the former classmate who invented silent Velcro (too, too funny – not!) moved around his empty mansion in the motorcycle. Or lived in the boat at the bottom of the quarry. Nothing has any real reason for being in the movie – and that includes the characters. And when our filmmakers can no longer trust an audience to watch even a simple drama unless it is festooned with bells and whistles, we have much bigger problems than whether or not one overly medicated man finds love and rejoins the world.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy to befall any artist is to have their life become more compelling than their work; such is the sad case with Peter Bogdanovich whose meteoric rise to fame was matched only by a truly famous fall from favor and a bewildering journey through tabloid hell. (Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers mined the not inconsiderable drama of the first act of his life to sporadically great comic effect in 1984's Irreconcilable Differences. And his tragic love affair with Playboy model turned actress Dorothy Stratten is fictionalized in Bob Fosse's astonishing, horrifying Star 80 (1983). How many directors become characters in films?)

Bogdanovich's love affair with film is undeniable, though it has, in the past three decades, yielded far more perplexing misfires (The Cat's Meow, At Long Last Love, Nickelodeon) than unqualified successes. That said, The Last Picture Show is an extraordinary accomplishment and worthy of its place in the list of great films of the 1970s.

1971's other important films (Friedkin's The French Connection, Pakula's Klute, Kubrick's Clockwork Orange) are loud, angry, violent and contemporary – in-your-face reflections of a society in which rage and nihilism, engendered by Vietnam and the growing discontent over government corruption, is the currency of communication. The uncertainty coursing through the veins of American pop culture also begat in equal, if not equally graphic, measure a palpable sense of sorrow at the destruction of a simpler way of life (no matter how "true" that memory may be).

Like Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof and Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show is a powerful and poignant evocation of the death of a community and a way of life. Thematically rich and imbued with Bogdanovich's remarkable knowledge and passion for film, the movie works on a dazzling number of levels; and Bogdanovich's use of nostalgia and traditional, archetypal genre conventions both enriches the movie and compounds the heartbreaking loss at the heart of the story.

His deft handling of a cast comprised of then (largely) unknowns (Bridges, Bottoms, Shepherd) is first-rate and he draws forth superb, often sublime performances from everyone (in particular, Johnson, Burstyn and Leachman). There isn't a false note or a misstep in the movie and there is a naturalness here that is not easily achieved or earned. The great production design (by Bogdanovich's then wife and partner Polly Platt whose contributions to his work and her subsequent involvement in the best works of James L. Brooks should not go underestimated) and the achingly beautiful cinematography by the late Robert Surtees are vital to the success (emotionally, intellectually, thematically) of the film.

The Last Picture Show is a truly rare work of surprising depth and emotional resonance; and the heartache for a time and place forever gone and the desperate and quiet struggles of its very real, very human denizens is matched only by the sorrow found in contemplation of Bogdanovich's Icarus-like fall from such exalted heights.

From M*A*S*H and Nashville to The Player and Gosford Park, Robert Altman has shown again and again that there is simply no other director working that can juggle so expertly a large cast and interlocking stories. But the success or failure of an Altman film ultimately rests in his ability to seamlessly combine the often disparate tones of the story; in The Player, for example, he creates a work that is, at once, a satire of Hollywood, a film noir thriller, and a romantic drama. The result is pure magic and I am hard pressed to think of another director that could have achieved such spectacular results. Alas, Dr. T and the Women is unable to decide if it is a satire of Texas' idle rich, a farce exploring the disjointed dynamics of desire and romance or a family dramedy.

The comedy often works, for Altman is a smart and witty comic that never fails to make the ridiculous and the absurd touchingly human (Cynthia Stevenson's funny and heartbreaking firing in The Player comes to mind). But here the film's bouncy jazz-like rhythms keep getting undercut by melodrama that, rather than enriching the comedy, serves only to leave you scratching your head in bewilderment. This push-me, pull-you experience is both frustrating and exhausting and, when the film, at last, finally lands in its absurdist desert, you are left with disappointment not delight. Altman does not, however, fail to elicit, as always, terrific, sometimes remarkable performances from his cast. And you can't hate a film that has such a rare love for women in all their strange and wonderful variations, and an unqualified and generous love of humanity.

A shameless and not particularly distinguished MSCL rip-off (esp. hackles-raising since it was Executive Producer Stu Bloomberg's ABC that botched, bungled and then buggered MSCL). BUT the show is watchable and the cast is, for the most part, engaging and genuine. (The "stunt" casting of Kelly Osbourne should be a reminder to network execs that what sounds great in December is usually a bad idea come September.) The asides give the show a nice touch and distract the viewer from the obviousness of the storytelling. Though I fear that this gimmick will age very, very fast and we will be left with One Tree Hill. The three male leads are a particularly nice reprieve from the "Can you tell them apart?" problem of The WB's series. And we can only hope that D.B. Sweeney's role will match this underrated actor's talents.

Can you remember the last time you were truly frightened? When you got up during a movie to make sure your doors were locked. The windows latched. When you checked under your bed? Shut the closet door. Considered leaving a light on?

LOT will sink its teeth into you and not let go. The actors are game, and director Salomon and writer Filardi have crafted a chilling adaptation. There are jolts to satisfy the most jaded. And enough to chills to make you think twice about sleeping with your back to the door.

You have been warned.