A young man in his 20s is kicking ass as a contestant on a locally-produced version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” In between tapings, he’s interrogated by the police over suspicions that he’s cheating because he’s from a poor neighborhood and thus they don’t believe he can possibly have the education to know the answers he knows. He’s not cheating, of course – it’s actually all some kind of amazing divine luck: ALL of the seemingly-difficult answers are burned into his memory thanks to popping up in the major events of his colorfully hardscrabble Dickensian life – what other kind do poor Movie Kids have, after all. Isn’t that something else? His account of these events to the authorities forms the narrative structure of the film, a tale of too-clever-by-half kids making do with what they can, amazing encounters, narrow escapes and, of course, The Girl.

This should REALLY suck, right?

Re-read the above description, keep in mind that this film has been released NOW as opposed to forty years ago as a Tommy Kirk vehicle, and tell me you’re not inclined to expect complete and utter pablum likely starring some Disney Channel teen idol looking for a film career. BUT… and it’s a big but… the film in question takes place amid the slums of modern India. See? Now you’re suddenly more interested. What a difference a gloss of exoticism makes on these tired Western eyes, no?

It also helps, of course, to have Danny Boyle directing.

The story is, no joke, exactly as I laid it out above – but the location makes all the difference. The sheer SCALE of the centuries-established poverty of the Bombay (soon to be Mumbai) slums is unlike anything most people have ever seen… a “poor neighborhood” the size of a “poor continent.” Scenes of the poor and/or orphaned children clambering across massive industrial pipes the size and length of the Great Wall, or picking through a dump so vast they can/have-to literally camp out while crossing it are the stuff you’d see in a surreal dream-sequence – except it’s real. This is “showy” filmmaking that goes back to the days when we were still figuring out what filmmaking WAS: Want them to snap to attention during a story they’ve heard a billion times before? Shoot it somewhere REALLY interesting.

It’s almost something like a family film… but, though it’s not especially graphic things get REALLY intense a lot of the time. The requisite child-exploiting bad guys of the first act are a really sick pack of scoundrels that would likely cause Oliver Twist and David Copperfield to mess their knickers rather than crack wise; and like most life-stories about poverty-stricken youth it morphs into a gritty gangster saga in it’s second half. It’s also pretty unsparing in it’s depiction of Indian Police “interrogation” techniques – if this is how they handle suspected TV Game Show cheats, I don’t think anyone has to worry about the Mumbai terrorists “getting off easy.”

But, it finally manages the trick of being uplifting and even joyous despite the occasional spurts of darkness WITHOUT becoming cheesy or treacly. I’m gonna call it “reccomended” (not that you’ll need my encouragement when the innevitable Awards showers begin.)

The first thing to know about trying to get “into” Anime is that unless you’re ALSO going to try and absorb every single facet of Japanese popular fiction from about the end of WWII on, you’re NEVER going to know “enough.”

Case in point: Up until about fifteen minutes ago, I was unaware of the existance of something called “Yatterman” – though it’s apparently HUGE in it’s native country. I’m aware of it as of now because it turns out that batshit-insane Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Miike (“Audition” would be his best-known work over here) has turned in a big-budget (for Japan) live-action adaptation. One of the most interesting developments in genre film in recent years has been the revelation that Miike’s gonzo stylings – previously used exclusively in service of just about the most violent, surreal, graphic, horrifying and yet brilliant/frequently-hysterical movies you’ll ever see – are a near-perfect fit for children’s films; first-evidenced in “The Great Yokai War.” This film looks for continue the trend.

Here’s the trailer:

Anyway, as if a new Miike film wasn’t a mandatory must-see ANYWAY, a quick jaunt to Wikipedia informs me that “Yatterman” is apparently about a boy/girl duo of globe-trotting inventor/heroes who’s primarily transport/weapon is a giant robot dog that transforms into an all-terrain rescue vehicle. Their enemies are a Boris & Natasha-style trio of heavies led by a femme fatale who dresses like an even-more-fetishized “Batgirl.”

Yeah. Seeing this as soon as possible.

So, apparently, “Jurassic Park 4” ain’t gonna happen: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=51101

Well, that sucks.

But… can I just ask, now that apparently the ONLY franchise about dinosaurs allowed to exist in an era where you can CGI up an army of them for less than it costs for a Jim Carrey walk-on is done with… CAN WE GET SOME MORE FUCKING DINOSAUR MOVIES NOW, PLEASE?

Seriously. Back in the 50s and 60s when all anyone had to work with were expensive, time-consuming suits, stop-motion puppets and intricate miniature photography we were getting like 30 to 40 dinosaur movies a year. But today? Nothing. That’s fucking criminal. And don’t tell me the audience isn’t there… “Dragon Wars” was HUGE internationally. Someone get behind a camera and get this shit done.

Saw it. Liked it. Not a fucking clue what it’s actually supposed to mean just yet, but it’s incredibly arresting and watchable. Manages an interesting trick with a minor supporting character played by Jennifer Jason Leigh whereby she evolves into about the closest thing the film has to an outright villian – and a fairly reprehensible creature of one at that – entirely offscreen. The character turns up about four times very briefly, but somehow second-hand information from other characters fleshes her out more than some of the more frequently-seen players. Neat trick, if nothing else.

The basic idea here is a middle-age-to-death story of a struggling theatre director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who opts to use a McArthur Genius Grant to stage a “massive theater piece.” His scheme involves renting a MASSIVE warehouse, building a to-scale recreation of New York City and populating it with actors playing himself, his aquaintances and just random people in an autobiographical recreation of… well, everything. Soon enough, there are actors playing actors PLAYING ACTORS, the story turns so inward that a set of the warehouse goes up IN the warehouse and the whole thing seems to consume everyone involved. It may help to note that the world outside the warehouse is actually MORE surreal: One character buys and lives in a house that is perpetually on-fire but never burns down, a therapist seems to operate through some form of precognition, and the Director finds the actor to play him in a mysterious fellow who has been following him around secretly his entire life. Oh, and there are small implications throughout that even the “real” parts are being stage-managed in some way, like Hoffman pausing to squirt in artificial-tears before a big breakdown scene.

So, yeah… it’s a Charlie Kaufman movie. I’m not sure it all fits together as well as some of his previous scripts, but it’s incredibly interesting and full of BIG ideas to chew on. Oh, and a topless Emily Watson. You CAN’T go wrong with that. (She’s soooo much hotter than she gets credit for most of the time.)

Incidentally, for what it’s worth, a “Synecdoche” (Sin-Ech-Doh-Key) is when you use a part of something to refer to a whole, usually as in a group (i.e. referring to an army as “500 guns” instead of “500 men WITH guns.”) I’ve not the foggiest what it means in the context of the film-proper, however, aside from a rhyming pun on the central location of Scenectady, New York. Make of that what you will.

…is completely fucking awesome and needs to be seen by you NOW.

It’s just this side of ironic that the whole “hook” of Punisher as a comic character is that he’s essentially a “realistic” movie-vigilante transplanted into a superhero-vigilante world, hence translating him “back” to film has always been slightly difficult. Here, they’ve finally made it work by letting Punisher bring the “comic-book-ness” of his world to the movies with him: We’ve got a hero who’s basically yet another John Rambo/”Death Wish” heavily-armed urban crimefighter set up against a villian – the disfigured gangster Jigsaw – who’s additude and operations are right out “Batman.” And yet, it finally.

Plotwise, it’s uncomplicated: Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson, officially an action star) aka “The Punisher” is an ex-military hardass who’s waging a one-man war on NYC organized crime after seeing his wife and kids killed for witnessing a mob hit. He hits a moral dilema upon learning that his most-recent mob mass-execution has produced a pair of unintended consequences: Firstly, he’s unwittingly placed psychotic low-level thug Billy “The Beaut” Russoti (Domonic West) – now bearing horrible facial scars and rechristened “Jigsaw” – into leadership as the sole survivor of The Family; and secondly that one of the hoods he DID kill was actually an undercover FBI agent – which puts the law MUCH more heavily on his trail and places the late agent’s widow and daughter into imminent Jigsaw-related danger. Do ya suppose maybe he’ll consider hanging it all up, only to see… I dunno, maybe evil rising in his absence and realize he’s the only one who can keep doing what he’s doing? I wonder…

The details all seemingly grow out of the Marvel Studios mandate to “listen to the fans” that informed “Iron Man” and this year’s OTHER successful “reboot” of “The Incredible Hulk.” For all the talk of drawing from Garth Ennis’ recent work with the character, this version of Punisher hews most closely to the characters mainstream comics heyday in the 1980s – right down to amusing supporting roles for complicit Detective Soap and tech-saavy Microchip (Wayne Knight in a surprising “straight” semi-dramatic turn.)

Otherwise, it’s all about how many bullets can be fired, how many faces can be blown-up/caved-in, how many explosives can be set off and how many times the audience can be made to applaud the sheer bravado with which “Green Street Hooligans” director Lexi Alexander – a stuntwoman and former kickboxing champion turned filmmaker – piles on the badassery like she’s on a one-woman mission to out-testosterone every male action director on the planet. She comes pretty damn close, too. It’s easy to imagine this film taking away “Crank’s” crown as the ultraviolent “guy movie” to beat.

This is everything I want in a Punisher movie, and damn near everything I want in an action movie. Taken on it’s own terms, it’s damn near perfect.

Wow.

Does this suck.

It’s not QUITE “Twilight” awful (i.e. everyone’s favorite Mormon Vampire Abstinence Porn blockbuster will remain the worst thing I’ve seen all year for the forseeable future) but it’s up there. Think “Pearl Harbor” bad. Think “Transformers” bad.

Baz Luhrman is one of those filmmakers who I like in principal even while despising most of his movies. I understand that they have their defenders and even genuine fans, but Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet are easily two of the most brutally terrible things I’ve ever had to sit through. The guy has an eye for cinema, he knows how to stage a scene, he’s got good taste in actors and he can coax that rare playfulness (or even WARMTH) from Nicole Kidman… I just wish he’d put all this to use in movies that don’t suck.

Also – and not that this is his “fault” or anything – but have you ever noticed that lots of the same critics who turn up their noses at, say, Robert Rodriguez or post-“Kill Bill” Tarantino for their indulgence in deliberate reference to the movie-ness of their movies have NO apparent issue with Luhrman, even though he’s every bit the conossieur of cinematic reference? I guess when you’re callbacks are to Busby Berkley and Judy Garland instead of Chang Cheh and Pam Grier, that makes it “okay.”

Anyway, the idea here is for Luhrman to stage a big “old hollywood” melodrama epic about his homeland as if it had been staged in the actual Golden Age. It’s a nice idea, but the follow-through is all over the map. Half of the time the characters are acting like the elevated caricatures of pre-method actorly bravado, the other half of the time they’re “normal.” Half the time it looks like a Technicolor road-show, half the time it looks like Saving Private Ryan.

The story is so predictable you can plot the entire film note-for-note based on a single mammoth chunk of exposition in the first five minutes: Nicole Kidman is a British aristocrat who needs a Drover (“aussie cowboy”) played by Hugh Jackman to help her move beef cattle across the outback to break a land baron’s monopoly. A conspiracy murder mystery, political commentary, the Stolen Generation of half-caste Aboriginal children and the WWII Japanese bombing of Darwin all conspire to keep them from settling down for 2 1/2 hours while you tick off how many “historical epic” cliches Luhrman can bungle within that running time. If you’re not laughing by the time Aborigini Gandalf shows up to start throwing the magic around, you’re probably one of Luhrman’s financiers.