By now everyone who has yet to see it (which, judging by the boxoffice numbers right now is a rapidly-shrinking group, yowza!) knows approximately two things for certain about “The DaVinci Code”: That the critics are not being kind and that their unkindness is not expected to matter in the end.

That you know the 2nd part because it tends to appear IN reviews demonstrating the 1st part is a “clue” that you won’t need a Rennaissance-era puzzle-box to decode for yourself: The mainline critics are having their fun unloading the Big Guns on a film that’s really no worse (or better) than dozens of others like it, secure in the knowledge that it’s garaunteed-hit status absolves them of any lingering caution toward even-handedness. The opportunity to swat the crap out of a Summer Blockbuster without fear of being branded a hit-killing spoilsport should it be “rediscovered” down the road only comes along once every so-often.

So let’s all of us, “DaVinci” fan, foe or newcomer alike, take a deep cleansing breath and observe that while Dan Brown’s pulp-potboiler is closer a relative to “Encyclopedia Brown” than “Encyclopedia Britannica,” it’s also far from a literary dud. In fact, overall it’s a cracking-good solve-the-mystery page-turner expertly infused with an illusion of depth and import via the grounding of it’s puzzles in a challenge to what is likely the last relic of assumed-sanctity in the post-Christian West: The divinity and chastity of Jesus Christ.

Ron Howard has faithfully ported over both the virtues and flaws of Brown’s tome, offering up one of the most studiously reverent (to the material) literary adaptations since the first “Harry Potter” installment. Everything that made the book a worldwide phenomenon is here, along with everything that keeps it from achieving greater grandeur. What Howard’s critics are damning him for, fairly or not, is nothing short of being unable (pardon the pun) to turn water into wine. The criticism isn’t wholly unfair… after all, great films like “The Godfather” have been made from pulp hits that were merely “good” before. And just as “merely” turning Coca-Cola into Pepsi would be impressive in it’s own right, surely it can’t be a criminal act to make a film that is “merely” good from a book of the same pedigree?

Tom Hanks has the lead as Brown’s franchise character, famous professor of symbology Robert Langdon. While on a book tour in Paris (forget the Jesus stuff… in WHAT universe is a symbologist an international celebrity giving enthusiastic lectures to sold-out crowds and book-signing lines to rival Stephen King?) Langdon finds himself unwittingly drawn into the mystery surrounding a colleague who was murdered in the Louvre and has left cryptic riddles for Robert and the man’s granddaughter Sophie (Audrey Tautou) to decipher. Hotly pursued by a French detective (Jean Reno,) Langdon and Sophie chase a trail of clues relating to DaVinci, paganism, early-christianity and, yes, the literal Holy Grail… amid further complication involving the actual murderer, a psychotic (and endlessly resourceful) albino monk named Silas, employed as a one-man hit squad by Opus Dei (seen here functioning as the Vatican’s answer to the Men In Black.)

A few rousing escapes and puzzle-solving scenes later, the pair seek the help of Sir Leigh Teabing, (Sir Ian McKellan, who seems to approach this material as a kind of home run derby for dry English witticisms,) who helpfully lays out What The Big Deal Is for those of you wondering what the hell is so “controversial” about this story. I won’t join the critical press in spoiling The Big Whoop-Dee-Doo, but suffice it to say it involves Jesus, DaVinci, dozens of historical heavyweights, The Crusades, witch-trials, pagan goddess-worship, secret societies, a bit of “everything you know is wrong” in regards to Christianity, and there’s a WHOPPER of a secret buried somewhere in Europe that The Church is willing to KILL to keep from being discovered.

All of this clue-to-clue dashing around is about as engaging as it was in Brown’s original book, though in translation much of the more tangential digressions of symbolism and art-history that made the peice seem so much bigger and important than it eventually is. Also, not unexpectedly, now that the audience is watching the events with their own eyes rather than through Langdons, he winds up as a kind of passive “hero” considering his billing. Given that his prime function, robbed of his inner monologue, is to be on hand for the puzzles and solve a few of them here and there, the result is a less-than-proactive hero who’s often overshadowed by Tautou’s more commanding presence as Sophie… and EVERYONE dissapears into the ether whenever McKellan takes the stage.

It’s all very intriguing and interesting, and lighter than air when you get right down to it. What a refreshing change of pace, to have a Summer Blockbuster that aims to snap us to attention with bold, even blasphemous, ideas rather than bold explosions… that can make a scene in which a British history buff narrates a flashback-y secret history of modern civilization more alive and fun than anything in “Mission: Impossible 3.”

But let’s not get carried away. For all the cultus that’s sprung up around it, seeing it acted out in three dimensions makes it more clear than ever that “DaVinci Code” is at best an extremely well-constructed distraction, a fun story well told in grand pulp-mystery tradition. That so many outraged leaders of organized religion are calling for boycotts, fasts and candlelight vigils as “resistance” to this film says nothing about it’s relevance and more than enough about the dwindling relevance of organized religion. Any institution that can be “rocked to it’s core” by a work so relatively trivial as this deserves to be rocked to it’s core… and then some.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

Sigh.

Normally, this space would be filled by a review of “The DaVinci Code.” Except that an entire night’s worth of shows are sold out. Darn.

Until then, please enjoy yet another funny video:

And for those for whom the YouTube icon won’t play:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rpbS6xC9EU

Well, that’s that. Here it is. The single finest movie poster I have seen for ANYTHING in I don’t know how long. Y’see this, Graphic Designers? THIS is what one of these is SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE!

Irwin Allen didn’t invent the disaster movie, but he DID perfect it: Trap a bunch of interesting characters (or, failing that, not-so-interesting characters played by recognizable stars) in a location and then have them react to a calamitous event that turns the world upside-down. In “The Poseidon Adventure,” the formula reached a kind of poetic zenith by taking the approach literally; in that the cast had to escape from a cruise ship that had been capsized… LITERALLY turned upside-down. Like most of Allen’s films, the focus was on the BIG: Big names, big thrills and really, REALLY big melodrama. Lots of characters with detailed, interlocking backstories worked out their issues in broad strokes amid the carnage, and the result was a blockbuster then and a fondly-remembered “camp-classic” to this day; the sort of film where the most memorable performance is given by Shelly Winters as a jolly older lady who summons the last shred of her past as a champion swimmer to make a self-sacrificing dive and save the day.

In contrast (which is innevitable, lets not pretend otherwise) Wolfgang Petersen’s new remake is a lean machine. Not only does it shorten the title to simply “Poseidon,” it disposes almost-entirely with the concept of a first (or third) act: The film has BARELY begun when a massive “rogue wave” flips the luxury liner over on New Years eve, and the rest is ALL 2nd act as a group of strangers band together in a desperate, obstacle-laden dash for the exit. The cast (smaller than last time, as well) is in no way afforded the kind of lengthy buildup they were in Allen’s ouvre: Our Heroes are sketched out as broad, simple cliche’s of the genre, and for the most part they behave accordingly.

Josh Lucas is a professional gambler who (grudgingly) opts to lead people to safety. How can he do this? Well, not to spoil the surprise, but suffice it to say the old rule of “ex-_______” guys being EVERYWHERE in action movies holds true. Taking him up on the offer is Kurt Russell, playing a retired NYC firefighter who’s (no, seriously) the retired Mayor of New York! That’s two, count `em, TWO post-9/11 references for one, folks! The Mayor is looking out for his daughter (Emmy Rossum from “Phantom of The Opera”,) who’s brought along the boyfriend whom dad is really hoping she’s not sleeping with… so, boy, won’t he be surprised to learn that they’re already married!

Richard Dreyfuss as an older gentleman feeling suicidal after being dumped by his boyfriend, Jacinda Barrett as a single mom who’s son takes instant shine to Lucas, Freddy Rodriguez as a waiter and Mia Maestro as a stowaway round out the cast. Oh, and Kevin Dillon shows up as a drunken, verbally-abusive lounge lizard. Guess which one of these people is only here to be “the funny kill.”

This is all very exciting, with good effects and a handful of genuinely kickass action setpeices, but the fact is that cutting all the “fat” from the disaster formula has rendered much of it largely unmemorable. The hammy crew from the original may have been corny, but we got to known them so well that it actually mattered when they started dropping off in the 2nd act.

“Poseidon” is in a little too big of a hurry to finish, as though everyone involved is just hoping to get the job done and move on to more important things. That probably aptly describes the additude of most of the players here, but that it’s ended up so palpable in the movie-proper is something of a dissapointment.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

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And here’s the link for those who can’t make the player work:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2725608

WARNING: The following ultra-negative comments about this film MAY indirectly spoil one or more of it’s twists for you. If you find this is indeed the case, please take solace in the fact that watching the first five minutes of THE ACTUAL MOVIE will ALSO indirectly give away all the twists. That is all.

Good LORD.

Is it really this hard to make a decent ghost movie anymore? Really?

Here’s another PG-13 “horror” offering where a concerned family huddles in the living room night after night trying to figure out a way around the invisible “entity” that’s been nightly visiting, pummelling and (apparently) raping their teenaged daughter. Eventually, bad goes to worse, the “ghost” names a new target, etc., etc. There’s some novelty with setting all this in Puritan-era New England, a big ol’ twist as to “what’s really going on” that anyone slightly familiar with genre cliches will pick up right away, a “modern day” framing device that exists ONLY to provide a cheap-o secondary twist, ONE standout sequence involving a carriage “chase” and the whole thing flat-out SUCKS.

The “true story” this hogwash is supposedly based on is the “Bell Witch Haunting,” a series of phenomena plaguing a Tennesse family in the 1800s. The film calls it “the only case in American history where a spirit caused the death of a person,” which is dubious at best. The film here omits and fractures nearly all of the “true” story, reworking it into the format of a standard-issue haunting/posession flick: The Bells (Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek) have a sour business dealing with the local would-be “Witch,” and soon their teenaged daughter (Rachel Hurd-Wood from “Peter Pan”) is getting smacked around and violated by something unseen night after night. Oh, and in the daytime she’s frequently spooked by the apparition of a little girl with a burned-looking face.

The grownup actors are mostly slumming it, while Wood gets put through the wringer making all Linda Blair-ish in her room while the FX team goes to town with the fishing line used to send papers, bedsheets and stuntpeople flying around the place. Otherwise, it’s all about long scenes of checkers and Bible-reading while we wait for stuff to happen, uninteresting business that director Courtney Solomon (late of “Dungeons & Dragons”) endeavors to make palatable by spinning the camera-dolly around and around and around. The big “carriage crash” scene from the trailers provides, just as there, the only moment of innovation or interest.

As for “what’s going on,” it’s annoyingly easy to figure out once you remember that “serious” films don’t have the word “American” in their title, much less go to the trouble of recreating Puritan decor, unless their aiming to fire a volley at The Patriarchy. The pitch-dark (and over-used by now) “twist” itself comes off as forced and icky, given the goofiness of the film otherwise, and it’s re-emergence as a last-second “booga!” is played in the worst possible taste. Nevermind the fact that HOW this reveal ties-into and “explains” all the supernatural goings-on is damn near the most moronic thing I’ve seen in a “horror” film in awhile. When we finally see “it,” what we get is the lamest “ghost” since the reamke of “The Fog.”

This is the kind of weak counter-progamming that largely exists to get clobbered by “Mission: Impossible 3” in ticket sales. This time, it deserves it.

FINAL RATING: 2/10

Can we please knock it off with the breathless commentary about whether or not the public revelation that Tom Cruise is apparently a blithering lunatic is going to hurt the man’s career? Let’s be honest about this: Being unlikable won’t have much effect here because this actor was NEVER “likable.” That’s not to say that he was UN-likable, but rather that being likable was never the big selling-point to this particular star’s boxoffice appeal. Tom Hanks is “likable,” Tom Cruise on the other hand has made his fortune being recognizable; so it probably doesn’t matter what he’s recognizable “as.” This is especially true for his “Mission: Impossible” franchise, which now in it’s third installment continues to exist as NOTHING more than delivery on the promise of one of the most recognizable stars on the planet performing various action-movie stunts.

But, for whatever reason, the four-word premise of “Tom Cruise shooting stuff” has been enough to propell audiences to theaters in droves twice before, and will likely do so again this time. This new one, written and directed by TV wunderkind JJ Abrams, is the best of the set so far but, honestly, what kind of praise is that? The first film is best remembered for being needlessly complex, the second for being stunningly empty even for a Tom Cruise paycheck-peice, so is it really some miracle that this one is better? I guess… but the series STILL has yet to produce a full-blown classic.

But let the good be counted where it is: The plot makes no bones about being unimportant; Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his sidekicks are hunting around for a McGuffin literally called “The Rabbit’s Foot,” the actual USE of which no one ever stops to explain. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a fun bad guy turn as an arms dealer who is demonstrably so good at getting away with murder that he’s bored with it. The plot hands Hunt a brand new wife to get kidnapped and rescued, a humanizing touch that plays out as such a bald-faced cliche it’s kind of marvelous to see it actually trotted out in an actual movie; but she’s played with conviction by “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s” Michelle Monaghan, so there’s that.

So the movie is decent, it’s action scenes work, and yet… is this REALLY the best they can do? The SOLE requirement for the boxoffice topper-status of these is that Cruise shows up onscreen firing some kind of weapon and this is STILL all they can come up with? It took a few solid decades for the James Bond films to grow timid of doing anything risky or special… this series was already there before it started.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Not that I think it’s likely that he gives a damn, but I feel sort of bad for Robin Williams. The reviews for “RV” have been appropriately dismissive, but nearly all of them make reference to all of the other less-than-wonderful “family” movies Williams has made. Yes, fine, the man WAS the king of treacly family-friendly pablum several years back, but let’s have a LITTLE acknowledgement of all the interesting, offbeat work he’s done in dramas like “One Hour Photo” and “Final Cut” in between then and now.

But to the movie-at-hand. Williams plays the mandatory well-meaning-but-buffoonish upscale suburban dad with eyes on a Hawaiin vacation with the family. Said family is, per the genre, largely imperfect, the au-courant twist being to blame the family non-togetherness on Wireless Age detachment. The teenaged daughter recoils from the attentions of the father who used to be her hero, while the pre-teen son grouses about his height and seems to have accepted Vin Diesel as his personal savior, and BOTH vanish-in-plain-sight into the cocoon of earbud headphones: It’s “them kids’re growin’ up TOO fast”: The iPod Edition.

And so comes the story: Dad is a put-upon advertising executive with a creepy, germophobic boss to please and a young turk gunning for his job. So when boss-man orders dad to postpone Hawaii (planned as the only chance for family togetherness before the kids take off for camp and college-prep) to attend an important McGuffin… I mean meeting… in Colorado, he hatches the kind of desperate plan people only hatch in these movies: He pulls a massive, rented mobile-home up in front of the house and announces to the fam that they’re going on a Colorado camping trip instead.

The rest you already know. Anyone who’s seen ONE family-vacation movie can plot the bulk of the film easily: The titular vehicle WILL prove to malfunction in amusing ways. Campgrounds and trailer parks WILL come stocked with ultra-colorful supporting characters. A second family of “full-time” vacationers, captained by Jeff Daniels, WILL be caricatured middle-American oddballs. There WILL be extended jokes about septic-tanks, ornery raccoons and unfriendly weather. The looming threat of “the meeting” WILL only come up when it advances the plot and, certainly, the 3rd act WILL primarily involve bigger and bigger chases, pratfalls and stunts on Williams’ part.

The “family vacation” movie has been around as long as family vacations, but the genre reached it’s high water mark in “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” which every entry since has more or less tried to follow. The difference is, what set “Vacation” apart was it’s lack of mercy: It set Chevy Chase off on an honest-to-goodness vaction from HELL, an unrelentingly cynical exercise in bad-to-worse situations made hysterical by it’s lead character’s unflappable delusions of old-school American Family good times. The country-cousins REALLY ARE annoying as hell, infidelity REALLY IS tempting, Wally World REALLY IS closed, the old lady and the dog REALLY DO die.

There’s one point where the film seems to arrive at a moment of twisted, self-acknowledging genius that would be transcendant if it didn’t seem so likely it’s occured totally by accident: As the film laboriously set’s up it’s obligatory scene of scatological slapstick involving the attempt to empty a septic tank, a crowd of beer’d-up yahoos gathers to watch the “show.” The film lingers on this group, dolled-up like “Deliverance” extras, and it dawns on me: The film is inviting an audience of moviegoers who’ve eagerly lined up to watch a “poop joke” to laugh derisively AT THE IDEA OF AN AUDIENCE EAGERLY LINING UP TO WATCH A “POOP JOKE”! I was reminded of “A.I.” when, right around the time that audiences might’ve been wondering where the “action” was in their Steven Spielberg robot movie, the film dives into a harrowing sequence where friendly mechanical-people are tortured to “death” to he delight of an explicitly “redneck” crowd who cheer on the mindless destruction Nascar-style… except I think Spielberg did that on purpose.

“RV” is not a “bad” movie. It’s funny, not too long, and achieves what it sets out to achieve. Most of the laughs are genuinely earned, and the innevitable “family reconnects” scenes feel more organic than is typical of the genre. Incredibly, at the expected moment where “the truth comes out” and the family attacks Dad for lying to them, he doesn’t immediately concede and repent his workaholic ways… instead, he does what an actual PERSON might do: He throws it back at them, reminding them that it’s his hard work that provides jewelry, fancy clothes, cars, MP3 players and hopes of attending Stanford.

You’ve already seen this movie before you’ve seen it, so trust you’re gut on this one: If you like the version of “RV” immediately conjured in your mind after seeing the trailer (or even the poster,) then you’re going to like the actual movie. If not, you won’t. That’s really the bottom line on this one.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Footnote: Memo to comedy screenwriters: EVERYONE is already sick to death of trendy jokes about characters not being able to get a WiFi, cellular or Blackberry connection. Yes, we all know it’s an amusing fact of 21st Century living right now, but IN A MOVIE long scenes of people holding little devices up in the air waiting for the “right beep” IS NEVER, EVER, EVER FUNNY.

Soon enough, we’ll be able to talk about “9-11 movies.” The protective airtight do-not-touch seal on the subject comes off, for movies anyway, this year. “Too soon” or “not soon enough” are irrelevant. Get used to it. Sooner than you think, we’ll be having conversations about “9-11 movies.” Which ones are better, which ones are less so, protrayals and repeat characters and so on and so forth.

But not yet. Right now, it’s only the beginning. Right now, Paul Greengrass’ “United 93” is not “a 9-11 movie.” It’s THE 9-11 movie. It’s patient-zero: The first big screen film to recreate events of that day in detail. So, right now, any attempt to simply “review” it is going to seem somehow insubstantial. What else can it be compared to? From what do we draw reference? Even the IDEA of holding it up against other “disaster” movies… or even calling it a “thriller”… seems somehow small and almost vulgar.

Relating the facts (along with some studiously-careful conjecture) of United 93, the fourth plane hijacked on 9-11 that crashed in Pennsylvania following an (apparently) successful attempt by it’s passengers to overwhelm the terrorists and stop them from hitting their target (believed to have been Washington, D.C.), Greengrass pushes his now-famous semi-documentary style of quivering cameras to it’s logical extreme: The film plays from the perspective of a fly on the wall. There’s no “manipulative” music, no visible story-structure, no “money shots” or “applause lines.” We don’t learn most of the characters names, nor do we glean but slivers of backstory. It exists entirely in the moment, NOTHING before and only a series of explainatory title cards after. This isn’t just adaptation, it’s re-creation.

This is probably the only way that “THE 9-11 movie” could have been made and worked as well as it does, (the time for more story-driven, conventional-narrative versions is later) but I’d hazard a guess that a (near) universally-experienced event like this is the only way audiences would ever willingly endure a film in this style. Contrary to the preachings of militant-realists like Robert Altman, characterization, visual markers and musical-nudging aren’t just cheats for cheap manipulation: Most films require such simply to engage the audience, to give them a frame of basic reference to “anchor” themselves within the film. “United 93”, however, requires no such anchor: From the moment a waiting-hijacker glances out one of the plane’s windows and casually spies the Twin Towers still standing, the film has you’re attention by the throat. You remember where you were, what you saw, and what you must now prepare to see again…

…except for one thing. The film promises you that this time, at least, you will see something different. The outcome will be what you remember, but if you can endure it this time… this time… you’ll recieve a moment of catharsis. You’ll see one or more of the terrorists thrown to the ground, overwhelmed and (dare you hope) pounded mercilessly by one of his intended victims. That this eventually feels heroic is without question, whether or not it is truly cathartic remains in the eye of the individual.

The cast is largely unfamiliar faces, and much of the air-traffic and military-command personnel play themselves, so trying to talk about performance because nearly impossible. Suffice it to say that no one ever betrays the movie-ness of the situation.

In the end, there are no pauses for applause or instructions on how we’re supposed to feel; and that’s possibly what’s most remarkable: No traditional tropes of the heroic film are on-display, but the real-enough actions of it’s heroes provoke the gut-reaction of hope and support anyway. A more fitting tribute I cannot fathom.

FINAL RATING: 10/10