I’ve been stressing about how to handle the delicate subject matter within The Invention of Lying. One might assume based on marketing, that the new Ricky Gervais* film is merely a clever romantic comedy jam-packed with amusing cameos and self-deprecating humor, but it’s so, so much more. In fact, you so, so might walk out of the theater, even, and that’s because the Jim Carrey-esque premise is actually an excuse to wax philosophic about human nature.

And you may not be thrilled with some of the conclusions.

Let’s cover the less controversial ones first! Delay the inevitable! OK, so in the world Mark (Gervais) lives in, nobody has ever lied. Ever! And because it’s never happened, they can’t even fathom the concept. For some reason this also causes them to speak their minds at times when they should shut their traps, and I’m not sure if that’s just for the sake of comedy (imagine a waiter handing you your drink and letting you know that he took a sip on the way over) or if it’s our sense of well-intentioned deceit that we DON’T say exactly what we’re thinking.

It’s interesting to think about. Dumpy, depressed Mark is really into Anna (Jennifer Garner), who is not only beautiful but, we’re told, is also an angel inside. This is a little hard to swallow sometimes, because that woman sure thinks some shallow things – people wearing glasses (??) sitting on a park bench are “losers” and she can’t be with Mark simply because he’s not attractive enough to provide her with pretty kids. Even “I’m just not attracted to you and it’s important that I’m physically into a guy that I’m with” would have been better than “Beautiful genes are the most important thing to me, sorry.” It seems as if the writers (Gervais and Matthew Robinson) believe that in our world, Anna would be a perfect female specimen because she'd be keeping judgmental stuff to herself. I find that a little difficult to swallow.

However, the comparison of Truth World to Real World reveals a lot of things, usually humorously, occasionally poignantly, and sometimes shockingly. For instance, without lies, movies really blow. Fiction, you see, was never invented. Advertising’s purpose is to remind consumers that a product exists and to plead them to buy it. Life in general is a little drab, and the ability to lie is a good thing. That suicidal guy in your building would probably be relieved if you told him that everything was going to turn around for him one day. A part of a doctor’s bedside manner is largely based, we now see, on half-truths and hopeful expressions. We tend to think of lying as a bad thing, but Gervais and Robinson make it very clear that in certain situations, we do each other a disservice when we tell the truth. Or, at least, the truth as we see it.

All right, the time has come for me to grit my teeth and go for it, here. A huge part of this movie is about how religion is a lie. Mark develops the ability to say things that aren't true, and as a result can convince anyone to do anything he wants. This includes telling his dying mother that the terrifying eternity of nothingness that is her death staring her in the face will actually be a lot more pleasant than she thinks. It’ll be a place where you’ll go on living forever, he says. Where you can have your own mansion, and everybody you love will be there waiting for you. To Mark, the relieved look on her face as she finally passes away is worth the deception, but the unintended consequence is that the hospital staff members who overheard are very, very interested in this whole afterlife idea. Within 24 hours, he’s mobbed by an entire planet that has obviously been oppressed by the fear of death and is desperate to hear that there is something more to life than this. Under enormous pressure, he sits down at his desk and invents religion. The effects are hilarious and eye-opening. Or a little infuriating, depending on your views.

I figure there are enough movies with religious undertones that a blatantly (and literally) agnostic film shouldn’t cause any riots, especially since the movie as a whole is consistently both uproariously funny and sweetly touching. But who knows, maybe knowing about the subject matter before buying tickets will help those who may not agree to accept that this is one point of view and will allow them to sit back and enjoy the writing. And if they can’t, maybe they’ll just opt to see something else instead. Either way, you can’t say I didn’t tell you the truth.

*...whose position in the rom-com world is rising to a surprising prominence, don't you think?

All my pals responded with enthusiastic yawns when I said I had In Bruges at home from Netflix, so I put it off for like a month. What a dumb month that was. What was I doing all that time, playing Zelda and reading fantasy novels? Please. I could have spent that 30 days watching a delightfully bloody and weird black comedy (the best kind of comedy??), in which Mad-Eye Moody and Voldemort play around with guns while Colin Farrell makes Ron Weasley-like eyebrow movements.

But that's where the Harry Potter similarities end.

JK, they totally continue! Mad-Eye and Ron, otherwise known as Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (formerly-disgusting-but-suddenly-cute-as-a-button Farrell), may be hit men instead of wizards, but the Belgian town of Bruges, in which they are hiding out after a botched job, is bursting with medieval appeal, a veritable "Hogwarts," if you will. A f***ing fairyland.*

The contrast between bloody killers (with hearts of gold, of course) and a city that seriously looks like you could eat it for dessert provides much of the humor. To Ken, who's more seasoned and less skittish than the young, dashing, and idiotic Ray, this unplanned stopover in Bruges is something to savor. He drinks in the history and feasts his eyes on beautiful spires of1500 year old churches while Ray, who is in danger of unraveling with nerves, views Bruges as the worst sort of purgatory imaginable, a quaint one where nothing happens. That is, until he realizes that someone is filming a movie in Bruges - and one that involves a dwarf! Let the fun begin!

Martin McDonagh's first movie, In Bruges doesn't blow up traditional plot conflicts or anything. Putting unlikely people in an unlikely setting is pretty tried but true, and McDonagh managed to put together a great script and also to hire talent that you don't see every day. Especially from these blokes. I'm not saying these actors haven't earned their stripes (well, I sort of am saying that about Farrell), but let's admit that we've come to expect certain things from certain people. Ray and Ken's boss, the verbally inappropriate Harry (Ralph Fiennes), pays a nice visit to this charming town, in an attempt to clean up some messes and stalk around moodily. Fiennes is no stranger to playing a moody asshole, but folks seem to tend to ring him up when they have need of a terribly cold, snide, and undeniably evil moody asshole. Luckily for us, he took the job of protraying a tantrum-prone, cockney killer (killer-boss? boss of killers? it's not entirely clear what he actually does), who has a soft spot for children and edible, dessert-like towns.

McDonagh clearly shares that view. About Bruges, anyway. No matter how unlikable a character is, they seem to take on a sort of golden glow as soon as they set foot into town. Drug dealers, killers....everyone is a little more charming in Bruges. Unless, you're a fat American tourist, it seems. We can't catch a break.

*Inside joke with people who've seen the movie. Where my Brugies at??

I enjoyed this film. I know! I'm just as surprised as you are. Tom Cruise, wearing an eyepatch, speaks German, and I still like this movie. Director Bryan Singer is the reason, of course. You may know him best as the brilliant (yes, I said brilliant!) director of the first two X-Men movies, not to mention that old chestnut, The Usual Suspects. Some genius snagged Singer to direct Valkyrie, which, in case you are unaware, is about Tom Cruise vs. Hitler (finally!). The trailer almost looks fake, like one of those trailers before Tropic Thunder, poking fun at the careers of actors. This one looked like it set out to be Cruise's Braveheart. Period piece? Check. Heroic, better-than-you martyr? Check! Combine these elements with Nazis, and you are back in action. College guys will have you on their dorm room walls, tough guys will quote your lines to each other at parties, and everyone you know will tell you how noble you looked up on that screen with that eyepatch. Luckily, things took a different turn. Tom Cruise is dreadfully miscast as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who has had it up to here with the way the Nazi thing has turned out and is determined to be a dick about it until someone finally asks him to figure out a way to assassinate Adolf Hitler and end the war. His portrayal is predictably self-conscious (I can think of ten actors off the top of my head who would have been perfectly suited for this role, #1 being Viggo Mortensen and #2 being...I don't know, anyone else), but because the character is so underdeveloped in the script, it ends up not mattering too much. For instance, I said the Colonel and his pals are fed up with Hitler and the SS, but I didn't say why. "Oh, because Hitler is HITLER and obviously the most odious human being to exist ever ever," you say. Well, sure, but the rest of Germany thought he was OK, so why not these guys? Von Stauffenberg briefly mentions a couple of things that nettle him about the rest of the Nazis at the very beginning of the film, but it's glossed over, and no one ever speaks about it again. I'm betting the real reason is that it didn't really have that much to do with sympathy for the Holocaust victims and discomfort with the idea of taking over the world but was actually more about the methods being used. So skipping over internal conflicts and getting right to the plot was either very stupid of the screenwriters or very smart. Because unlike von Stauffenberg's plot, the film ends up succeeding despite these huge obstacles. Singer takes advantage of the fact that we all know Hitler wasn't assassinated and the result is such that we are practically sick with anticipation for the majority of the film. In a crowded theater full of teenage boys, hours of total silence has got to be some indication that a talented director of suspense is at work here. And don't worry, your heart is beating so fast that it drowns out the dumbest of the heroic speeches. While not a thinkpiece since no one's really wrestling with questions of ethics (surprising in a film about dissension in the Nazi ranks), Singer manages to keep it smart, attractive, quick, and very, very engaging, kind of like Tom Cruise in his early days. While Valkyrie won't launch him back into the cool guy spotlight, it's not going to hurt his career. If anything, he's lucky to ride on the Singer coattails, and we're lucky they didn't make him speak more German. Just sit back, focus on the good actors (Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard (!!), Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Thomas Kretschmann, and Carice van Houten, who is definitely an underused treasure, both in this film and in films in general), work on your one-handed Cruise impression, and allow yourself the singular pleasure of biting your nails and gripping your seat. Time will fly, I promise.

1. W is not a comedy!
I sort of assumed this from the ads, but luckily someone warned me before I went. I mean, sometimes it's funny that he says "misunderestimated" and sometimes it's funny that Stone expects us to buy Josh Brolin (who is 40) as an 18 year old W, but for the most part, Stone's biopic about George Walker Bush is an elegantly made interpretation of the life and career of our forty-third president. It is not a satire, it is not not an expose, it simply shows us a man who tries really hard but can't seem to get what he wants. And most of the time, it seems like what he wants is the respect of older, smarter men than he, starting and ending with his father. It's hard for me to really believe that W is so commanding and...well, I guess "manly" is the right word...of a figure as Josh Brolin makes him out to be. But what do I know, I guess. I've certainly never had lunch with the President, and I've only been to one or two top secret White House war room meetings. All I see of his demeanor is a guy who gives terrible speeches and tends to look around him with an expression of bewildered amazement. So for that reason, it's difficult for me to really fully connect this character with the actual Bush. This Bush struggles with his cabinet, really listens to his wife, and genuinely believes that he wants the best for America.

Eight years after his election, we're in a privileged position as moviegoers. We know the irony behind the Mission Accomplished banner, and we know to keep our eye out for his speechwriters' grimaces at the word "nucular." But what might be hard for some people to swallow is how W wants us to simultaneously sympathize and ostracize. I wouldn't call this film non-partisan. It certainly wouldn't make a hardcore Bush supporter chuckle through his or her popcorn (although if Laura Bush isn't flattered by her own portrayal, she's less cool than Stone makes her out to be). However, Bush is often shown taking the wind out of the sails of the movie's true villain, Dick Cheney, and he cries out sincerely that although he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he really and truly wants to be the best American he can. And although this is certainly topical, being election season in an election year, I still wouldn't call this anti-Republican. If anything, it reflects a now widespread desire for change, which both Obama and McCain of course use to their advantage. McCain is even shown almost rolling his eyes during a speech W gives to the Senate. That's not quite Obama propaganda! But perhaps that's not this film's MO.

2. W and its cast members will win at least one Oscar!
You've heard of the Jamie Foxx Effect* (the higher probability that an actor has of winning Best Actor and a film has of being nominated for Best Picture due to his/her/its portrayal of a real person, thereby giving the Academy something concrete on which to base their assessment of their acting/representation). Well, bust my buttons, W is jam-packed with good impressions of famous people, especially unflattering impressions of people we love to hate. Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney is alarming in its evil accuracy (and also in its confirmation that ol' Dreyfuss is getting old), and James Cromwell is spot on as George Herbert Walker Bush, a taller, sadder version of his son. Elizabeth Banks is cute, yet kinda boring as Laura Bush, who is cute, yet kinda boring, I guess. Brolin's Bush, as I mentioned already, comes across as too brash and swaggery instead of dumb and falling over things like I want him to be. Our Bush doesn't seem to have nearly as much energy as Brolin, but, again, that might be just a convenient opinion that my brain has formed. Either way, he'll win Best Actor, definitely, and James Cromwell will be nominated as Best Supporting Actor (or maybe Dreyfuss). The movie itself will be nominated for Best Picture, and Ellen Burstyn might just be nominated for Best Supporting Actress, because she's old and respected and wears that Barbara Bush wig well. These are my predictions, America. We'll see how it pans out.

3. Thandie Newton should never ever be allowed to play Condoleezza Rice again!
Luckily, there's unlikely to be a sequel. Newton's Condie was so accurate as to be distracting. Although perhaps maybe my lack of intimate knowledge with the current administration is to blame again for this opinion, but it seemed like even the camera found Condie's every move hilarious. Her ingratiating tone, her deferential nods, the way in which she charges around in the woods on command...all of it seemed so constructed yet eerily accurate. It's just like if you had a really good, bearded impression of Sarah Palin. Part of me wants to look at it and laugh for hours, but the other part wants to look far, far away and pretend like none of this is actually happening.

*No you haven't, and it's because I made it up!!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I read a folk story once about this guy who was lost in the woods for some weeks and found some old crone who gave him what he thought was the most delicious dish in the world but what turned out later to be something akin to Dirt Soup. Anyway, the point was that when we are truly starved for something, any sample of it – even of the poorest quality – will taste like the food of the gods.

At the risk of rambling on about personal stuff (although Matt White gets to do it every week), this weekend I embarked on a really ill-fated rat king of a trip. In fact, at time of writing, I am still on it. Now it’s just my old nemesis, JFK Airport, between me and my home and cats and allergy medicine,* but two days ago I had what seemed like an endless succession of effed up plans ahead of me. Yesterday, I ended up in Boston with my excellent friend from Chicago, who had run into her own personalized set of travel disasters, and we limply, exhaustedly staggered over to a movie theater, ready to sit for a few hours in the A/C and take whatever Ben Stiller cared to deliver.

Also, I ask you to remember that I was still smarting from last week’s utter Judd Apatow disappointment, and although the cold, dark lump that until this weekend had once been my heart still had enough life left inside it to muster up some tremors on behalf of Robert Downey, Jr., I wasn’t expecting to be mightily impressed.

But you know what? Screw all of this. I don’t need any excuses. I laughed more during the first five minutes of Tropic Thunder than I have laughed during all of the movies I’ve seen this summer combined. Except for a few parts that spent too long delving into male bonding territory (zzzzzz),** this film was just what I needed to get back on my feet.

You’ve seen the ads – Tropic Thunder is about the egos, insecurity, coddling, stupidity, self-obsession, and ass-kissing that is the commercial filmmaking industry. So we are led to believe, anyway, because theoretically, the makers of this film (Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux aka John Hancock) (yow!) are also products of this industry, yet they seem pretty self-aware. Most interestingly, the ultimate poster boy for the borderline crazy image-obsessed actor is part of Tropic Thunder’s cast (you probably already know who it is, but I won’t spoil it for you if you don’t).

If this were a political campaign, the stock in these guys (and they are ALL guys, which certainly indicates SOMEthing about the industry, whether or not that’s intentional) would be going way up. It’s funny how people can absolve themselves of their past tendency to be ridiculous, as long as they own up to how ridiculous they are. And holy crap! Nothing is more hysterical to me than the idea of, say, Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, or Colin Farrell (oh man, especially Colin Farrell) whining about TiVo while dodging bullets.

That’s the premise of Tropic Thunder, by the way – the action star, the comic buffoon, the respected actor, the hip hop star turned actor, and the newbie…all lost in the hostile jungle, unsure if they’re still making a movie about ‘Nam. Anything else I tell you will ruin the magic (don’t read any other reviews before you go, dude, they seem to be 95% plot summary and give away many of the surprising details), but I will say that more than once during the film I wondered how much my beloved Zoolander might have been improved with the addition of RD,Jr. The tone of Tropic Thunder is less silly than Stiller’s previous film, the characters more believable (it’s easier to recognize figures from Hollywood than from the male modeling industry), the acting better, the script smarter, and the lack of tired old Owen Wilson a blessing.

Now go see it before you hear too much about it and lose interest. To reap the maximum benefit, try to throw some missed flights, lost hotel reservations, awkward social situations, and/or sleep deprivation into the mix. Or just see Pineapple Express directly beforehand and you should be good. In fact, I’m starting to believe that this movie has turned my luck around. Everything’s been coming up Howson since I left that theater. My flight is actually boarding,*** I’ve finally been able to track down a Diet Coke, and some cute kid near me keeps shouting “THANK YOU!” over and over again. If I weren’t tired and covered in bug bites (long story), I’d be doing the same thing. Thanks, Ben Stiller. You’ve really made my weekend, which was no small feat.

*In fact, as I write this, I’m hunched on the floor near the gate, jealously guarding the one electrical socket I could find, and there is an older, maybe intoxicated lady who just walked up to where I am sitting on the floor and is just standing here, swaying dangerously in platform flip flops while I cringe in anticipation of the crash.

**OMG! The woman is back! I just looked up for a second and saw the flip flops come to a screeching, swaying halt in front of me. Then they turned around suddenly and lurched off to a nearby chair. Maybe she wants my power outlet?? OR MY SOUL?

***Drunk lady (it’s 11am, by the way) just got on a flight to Baltimore. Ahem.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
(yes! FOUR stars!)

So the other night I put my brand new marriage* in jeopardy during what began as a pleasant post-honeymoon dinner with my sister and her husband. I'd masterfully steered the conversation towards movies, a skill I've acquired to mask the fact that I'm generally oblivious to most other topics, and we touched on the early summer blockbusters. We cruised past Iron Man with a universal thumbs up and enjoyed discussing why the new Indiana Jones was so utterly disappointing (it's the skull), when my husband said with confidence, "And then we saw Sex and the City, and, ugh, was it awful."

My sister, who hadn't even seen the film, immediately protested, at the same time as my brother-in-law, who hadn't even seen the film, immediately agreed. The table erupted into rapid-fire arguments, men versus women, over whether or not this high fashion movie was anything more than a shoe catalog on the screen.

Take heed, ladies. Don't even bother trying to interest a dude in the SATC phenomenon. What my male saw as gratuitous, materialistic drivel with a side of chicks hugging a lot, I saw as a wonderfully accurate portrait of female friendships and how women rally around each other like instinctive bodyguards, with a side of some entertaining fashion choices.

And I wasn't even that into the show!

In fact, the big screen epilogue to the wildly popular HBO series seemed to me to fix a lot of easy cop outs with which the series left us. Carrie's rampant vanity is less cute now that she's in her forties, and, for lack of a better way to put it, it begins to come back and bite her in the ass. Miranda comes to grips with reality, Samantha accepts her own failures, and Charlotte...well...Charlotte suffers an embarrassing incident that dirties her pedestal a little. Sure, there's handbags and shoes and shopping. It wouldn't be Sex and the City without it. But the movie exposes the "happily ever after" message of the series finale as just a temporary high point. It's comforting somehow to know that these women have realistic problems and that they still need each other just as much to get through them.

Of course, a clever script helps. Carrie narrates, as usual, with her usual arsenal of tiring puns, but unlike the half hour pieces of candy that the series provided, her voice-overs are sparse and unobtrusive. To the best of my knowledge, Carrie gets through over two hours of screen time with only one "Three hours and four martinis later" segue. And she only sits pensively at her laptop once or twice. We even see her wear the same accessories more than once, if you can believe it. This theme of reaching maturity reappears throughout, as Carrie frequently passes groups of girls reminiscent of her own lighthearted twenties. Her pals have different epiphanies regarding middle age. Miranda had no problem accepting maturity long ago, but is now having trouble tempering it with emotion. Samantha, on the other hand, has been pressured into a maturity she's not quite prepared for. And Park Avenue Charlotte, of course, is still sitting around wondering why her friends can't just get with the program.

All this coming-of-middle-age stuff aside, the real meat and potatoes of Sex and the City is still relationships between women. Desperately needing to be able to talk out your entire life in a diner (or on a couch, or over drinks, or on the phone, or in a drugstore) with your friends is something to which I think most of us can relate. And so what if the series and the film rely heavily on couture product placement?** You guys have one of those shows too, as my brother-in-law pointed out. It's called Entourage.

*In case you're wondering where I've been, and I'm 98% positive you're not.

**I'm pretty sure Jennifer Hudson's entire purpose in the film is to promote Bag, Borrow or Steal.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

(from my review at RVAnews!)

It's easy (and fun!) to scoff away at films that recycle old devices and try to pass them off as new. Usually that sort of thing makes me furious...or at least annoyed and/or whiny. But sometimes a movie will follow a path that is so well-worn that we thought surely no one will dare to try to breathe new life into this dead horse, but dare they do. And they fail. Well, some of them do. They fail miserably! But you take a good screenwriter, pair them with a good director, cast some excellent talent, and it's possible that - storyline be damned! - the dead horse can leap to its feet and run a marathon. Michael Ian Black is the screenwriter in this case. David Schwimmer is the director, and Simon Pegg (among others) is the talent. The dead horse is the "boy wins girl back" romantic comedy trajectory, and the marathon, of course, is Run Fatboy Run. You've never seen a more predictable film than this London comedy about a flawed man who made a stupid move five years ago and now has to face his fears and win back the woman of his dreams from his perfect-seeming rival. This is High Fidelity without the ex-girlfriends. This is Mrs. Doubtfire without the disguises. Ocean's Eleven without the Cloonz. In fact, it's such a basic plot, that it's often secondary in other movies to more exciting casino-heist hijinx.

Whether or not they believed their film's plot to be super simple or groundbreaking and new (I'm going to give the Black/Schwimmer/Pegg combo the benefit of the doubt and assume it was the former), the filmmakers of Run Fatboy Run provided a comfortable, undistracting canvas on which to paint clever dialogue, sight gags, and solid characters. No one's going to gasp at the outcome of Dennis's (Pegg) attempt to challenge his ex-fiancee's new beau (Hank Azaria), nor will they really retain the life lesson that you shouldn't run away from your problems (duh). But I would bet my summer home in the Hamptons (had I one) that they will remember the naked ass that Gordon (Dylan Moran) randomly keeps hidden under his balcony railings, not to mention the face of Dennis's son, Jake (Matthew Fenton), when he tells his dad about how his prospective girlfriend looks like a tree-frog. This sort of writing could shine stretched over any basic plot frame: "boy goes out with girl on a bet, falls in love, girl finds out, disaster" or "stuffy teacher tries to make a difference in the ghetto" or "two police partners get over their differences to find out what teamwork is all about." *

Run Fatboy Run is light as air, just as a romantic comedy should be. It actually does everything a romantic comedy usually does (including a training montage!), only better and with more laughs. It's no different than its five billion underdog movie predecessors, just...enhanced. Britishly.

*Wait, Hot Fuzz!

Of course, I will tell you why. Michael Haneke is an Austrian director who made this exact film (in German) ten years ago. When I say exact, I mean shot-for-shot exactly the same, so if you’ve seen the original, you already know the deal and it’s probably not worth your time, dollars, or sanity to sit through it again. The fact that the guy makes the exact same movie twice just to be able to show it in a fully appreciable manner to multiple audiences is a perfect example of both the scientific manner in which Haneke is performing experiments on filmgoers but also the smug, self-satisfying, filmmaking that caused Roger Ebert to turn red, shriek like a train whistle, and smash his glass coffee table with his bare hands in a fit of rage.*

The funny game, you see, is not only the psychopathic torture game that two young men in pristine white golf clothes play with a wealthy, vacationing family, it’s a game that Haneke plays with US! This is where Ebert gets feisty. He resents the fact that he is the lab rat in this situation. And who wouldn’t? Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, of whom clean-cut torturers Peter (Brady Corbet ) and Paul (Michael Pitt) are certainly reminiscent, we’re being punished for our own sick fascination with violence by having our eyes pried open to view scenes of painfully tense anticipation of horror, with very little actual payoff. Sure, dastardly deeds happen, but they are almost completely off-screen. Haneke instead lingers endlessly on the faces of Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, who go from obstinate to angry to terrified to determined to defeated and back again. If you get uncomfortable, you can always ruminate on the fact that only excellent actors could have pulled this off, and thank goodness Naomi Watts was having one of her good days (let’s not talk about The Ring), because facial expressiveness drives this film. As a result, we spend a good amount of our viewing time aware of ourselves as watchers, wondering why we are disappointed when people die at times we don’t expect.

This is just what Haneke wants. The huge Ebert-enraging flaw, though, is that HE KEEPS TELLING YOU ABOUT IT. It’s like looking at a beautiful painting and wondering what it’s about and forming your own connotations and opinions and interpretations, until you notice that written across the bottom of the canvas is “IT’S ABOUT MY MOTHER.” It’s called telling instead of showing, and it separates good art from bad art a lot of the time. Unfortunately, Haneke chooses to tell us all about his plans via Paul, who looks directly into the camera and tell us how we want the film to end. Well, jeez, I was coming to that conclusion myself, you don’t need to spell it out for me. The worst part about this ridiculous device, besides the fact that without it the film would be near-perfect, is that not only did he do it once…the guy had ten years to mull over the film before making the same mistake twice. That’s double obnoxious.

Anyway, I believe these flaws can be swept aside. At least, the rest of the film is powerful enough that I think you’ll be able to forget about these moments as soon as they happen and dwell instead on the effect that Funny Games will most certainly be having on you. I sure as hell have double-checked my apartment’s deadbolts about fifty times since I saw this film, because the worst part of it all is that this sort of unsolicited, unmotivated, illogical violence seems the most realistic.

NOTE: After a closer look at rogerebert.com, it appears Ebert’s editor, Jim Emerson, is writing his reviews while he is recuperating from some surgery. I tried and tried to make this review work without my hilarious Ebert Going Insane theme, but I couldn’t give it up. So I left it there, but let’s assume that as Ebert’s official representative, Emerson would reflect his views. But hopefully not his fashion sense.

*Conjecture, but my new favorite mental video.

Darlings. I write this to you from my silken boudoir, perched on a heap of dressing gowns, money, and servants. Yes, that is correct. I have abandoned my boring, polyester world for a life within a screwball comedy from the 1930s. And who can blame me? It’s lavish, it’s droll, men are always wearing suits and offering you champagne, live brass bands play in every corner, and someone like Britney Spears would have been escorted out of the public eye long ago. And thanks to Bharat Nalluri, director of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (the latest step in Amy Adams’s ploy to charm us all so much that we just start spontaneously mailing checks), the fast-paced, irreverent, yet still somehow clean fun of the films of yore is newly resurrected in glorious color.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day begins very early on what will become a life-changing day for Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand ), Delysia Lafosse (Adams), and just about everybody they come across. Oh, lessons are learned, facades are destroyed, inhibitions are thrown haphazardly to the curb, that sort of thing. The plot itself isn’t really anything remarkable. No, no, this is a film that gets by purely on writing, performances, costumes, and directing. That’s entertainment! In fact, the only parts of the film that don’t slip seamlessly into the lush mood are the parts into which Nalluri tries to slip in some middle-aged, wholesome contrast (Miss Pettigrew has a habit of taking a breather when things get too heady, usually to think about war and loss and drab clothing or something). But even those moments are easily forgiven, thanks to McDormand’s effortless portrayal of a dowdy old maid fallen accidentally into the lap of luxury, much to our delight.

Amy Adams, of course, doesn’t shock anyone by pulling off yet another giggly, wide-eyed creature who, at key moments, allows her smile to falter just perceptibly to reveal The Person Behind the Glee. I don’t mean to be a cynic. I love her just as much as anyone else does, and I guess it is kind of surprising to see Princess What’s-Her-Name (Entendre? Chantilly? Bellisima?) manipulating several dudes using her (gasp) sexuality. All that sickening dependence on men (for few of them really care much about her) would get my Bryn Mawr up if the sound advice that steers her course didn’t come from another, stronger woman.*

There are probably a hundred more things to say about silks and dresses and Shirley Henderson, but it would be difficult to do so without spoiling everything for you. Plus my old-fashioned phone is ringing in its cradle. It’s probably my best galpal ringing to discuss girdles and the Depression. I’ll catch you all at Club Ipanema later on.

*Although, to be fair, Miss Pettigrew herself is eventually reliant on a man’s charity, but since she is instrumental in activating his common sense as well, and since everybody’s so adorable, and since, well, it’s the Thirties, I’m prepared to forgive.