Pirate Radio

I don’t know. I mean… is it a sin to expect a decent movie based on its talented cast, hip trailer, and rockin’ soundtrack? My hopes weren’t even that damn high, I was just hoping for a good story to accompany the classic rock tracks. Jesus, what is wrong with 2009?

Because it’s a formality: the plot revolves around a ship anchored just off Britain circa 1966. Pop music is illegal to play, you see. So certain “pirate” ships broadcast this music for people all over the country to enjoy. The powers that be want to shut it down, of course. because too many people are enjoying it. True story. Cool concept. Rock ‘n roll.

So where does this go wrong? I’m not sure. Maybe its complete lack of narrative. Maybe in its lead character, a kid who got kicked out of school and is sent to the ship by his mother as punishment. Punishment? To drink, smoke dope and get laid all day at age 17. That’s punishment? Huh?

Maybe it’s when the lame who’s-my-daddy subplot gets introduced, by which point, you don’t even give a shit about any of the characters. So somehow, Pirate Radio plays like a bad Almost Famous meets an even worse Mamma Mia.

But even though the plot is lame, the music makes up for it… right? Not a chance. Put aside the fact that it’s the same songs you’ve heard thousands of times, but music in film is supposed to complement images evenly. Better put: the film simply isn’t good enough for this music. I’d rather skip this dud and create a playlist on my iTunes: Great Songs from that Shitty Movie. Hmmm. D

2012

First big action scene: a limo narrowly escapes an earthquake swallowing Los Angeles. Second big action scene: a plane narrowly escapes a natural disaster. Third big action scene: a plane narrowly escapes a natural disaster. Fourth big action scene: a plane narrowly escapes a natural disaster. You following?

This is my issue with Hollywood clusterfucks of films. There… is… nothing… to… them. I’ve been accused, more than once, of not accepting blockbusters for what they are: mindless entertainment. But I disagree. Independence Day, the first film in which director Roland Emmerich destroyed the world, is great, cheesy fun. Get enough pizza and beer and Michael Bay’s The Rock is actually pretty damn cool. The Dark Knight, Jurassic Park, Iron Man; all exceptional action films.

But come on. 2012 is a farce, plain and simple. The action is excruciatingly repetitive, and resembles that of a high-quality video game. The acting is beyond horrible (Danny Glover as the President… really?), the climax is anti-climatic, and the running time (nearly 3 hours) will have you bored before the second act.

Emmerich said he doesn’t plan on destroying the world via film anymore. Yeah, right. Just like Michael Bay said he wasn’t going to do another Transformers farce. As I always say, with a movie like 2012 you know damn well what you’re getting yourself in to. So… if you’ve got three spare hours to numb your brain into oblivion, then by all means. D

The Fourth Kind

Originally, Paranormal Activity was going to be remade into a Hollywood feature film. Fortunately for all of us, it wasn’t. But if it was, I imagine it would look something like The Fourth Kind.

Okay, I have to give a little credit to director Olatunde Osunsanmi for trying his damndest to convince people that this movie is “real”. That it seamlessly mixes “real” footage with dramatized footage. That actress Milla Jovovich (as she tells the audience in the opening scene) is playing the “real” Dr. Abigail Tyler, who claims to have been briefly abducted by aliens in 2000.

So, yes, Osunsanmi does a good job intercutting in “real”, grainy, home-video footage with the pretty, steely Hollywood stuff. But come on. Seriously dude. Anyone with an internet connection can disprove this hoax via a simple Google search.

Okay, if it were real, what the hell kind of shrink would release footage of her patients levitating, breaking their backs, and screaming bloody murder… to a horror film crew? Also, wouldn’t we have seen the footage from the police camera that “caught” a UFO flying over a house on one of those WORLD’S CRAZIEST COP SIGHTINGS shows?

Clearly, I’m more concerned with bashing the film’s narrative technique than discussing its content. That’s for good reason, because, the content pretty much sucks. The “real” footage under-delivers because every time shit goes down the camera conveniently becomes fuzzy and distorted. So, basically, there is no payoff. The acting is as good as you’d expect (except by Will Patton, playing the Sherriff as a laughable caricature).

Those still suckling at the tit of Paranormal Activity, crazed for their next fix in horror fun, should skip The Fourth Kind. Maybe… maybe if the movie was only grainy, “real” footage it could’ve been creepy. Maybe. D

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats is just as bad as you would expect a movie titled The Men Who Stare at Goats to be. Which is a shame. With names like Clooney, Bridges and Spacey (10 Oscar nominations among them) it’s not unfair to expect something decent.

I’m wasting precious seconds of my life typing the next few sentences, but here is the plot. A reporter (Ewan McGregor) gets wind of a super-secret sect of the military, a group of soldiers who fight with their minds. They can walk through walls, turn invisible, put animals to sleep by thinking; real Jedi shit. McGregor goes to Iraq and meets up with Clooney, the main dude behind the Jedi mind tricks. Clooney is on a mission, I think. I don’t know. Jesus. This movie is so damn bad.

Honestly, I had no idea what was going on for most of the movie, and no I wasn’t tripping on acid like the characters do for a bulk of the film’s excruciating 93 minutes. Kevin Spacey shows up at some point, as a guy who is jealous of Clooney’s powers. But this is just pure, wasted talent.

I know why Clooney did it. The director, Grant Heslov, is Clooney’s production partner (Good Night and Good Luck) but you probably know Heslov best as the smart-ass CIA agent opposite Tom Arnold in True Lies. Either way, Heslov is saying nothing with his directorial debut.

I get satire, it’s actually one of my favorite comedy styles, but this is a mess. The film clearly wants to be compared to Dr. Strangelove but falls so flat that it’s nearly invisible. Perhaps I’m bashing too hard, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was actually excited about this movie. Having expectations shattered typically makes for a dreadful movie-going experience.

I’ll explain. I know Transformers 2 is going to be shit when I walk into the theatre. But a movie like Men Who Stare at Goats, with its witty trailer and powerful ensemble of actors, is the worst kind of film. You want it to be good, but it lets you down in every way. Because of that, this will surely be one of the very worst, most disappointing films of the year. F

Antichrist

It all began in 1929 with Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou where we see a man slit a woman’s eyeball with a razor blade (actually a calf’s eye). Since then we’ve been given such brazen shock cinema milestones as Salò (Pasolini, Italian), The Night Porter (Cavani, Italian), Funny Games (Haneke, German), and Irréversible (Noé, French), but that’s just to name a few.

Hmm, no American directors there. That’s interesting. I may stretch a little to consider David Lynch’s Eraserhead, but that’s more surrealist than shock.

Each of these films are appalling, sure. But they’re also kind of brilliant, if you take a step back and consider the scope of film in general. However, a film isn’t poetic “art” just because it pushes the limits. The hipster-intellectual crowd may bow over backwords for a fresh slice of shock cinema, but just because a film has gratuitous sex and deplorable violence, doesn’t make it great, or even worthy of cult status.

Enter Antichrist, the next feasible step in Lars Von Trier’s personal shock factory. And may I say, the auteur behind bold, innovative films like Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville, has surely outdone himself this time.

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as a married couple who in a steamy, bravado prologue lose their infant son in a tragic accident. Gainsbourg blames herself as she falls deep into the wallows of grief. Dafoe, a professional shrink, steps in with his very odd, hands-on tactics to “correct” her sorrow.

All is good and mundane while the two work out their issues in their trendy loft apartment, but once they head to Eden, their cabin in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, the movie starts to seriously drift into delirium.

I’m not really sure how to describe the plot from there. Expect extremely slow-motion shots of a deer giving birth, talking animals, falling acorns, graphic masterbation, and a bit of the ol’ ultra-violence that would make any person squirm. By the end, I wasn’t really sure if the film was about anything in particular. As is the case with most shock cinema, Von Trier seems more interested in… shocking us, than delivering solid content.

But that argument goes both ways. On one hand, Antichrist deeply disturbed me. It is one, if not the, most gut wrenching movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. The violence gets over-the-top, sure, but it is definitely believable. On the other hand, Antichrist provokes some damn fine post-film chatter. There is a lot going on here, it just feels like Von Trier is the only one in on the joke.

So, all in all, I guess I can recommend this film. If for no other reason than the performances, both of which are brilliant (Gainsbourg won Best Actress at Cannes). But know what you’re getting yourself into. Antichrist is a test. A challenge. It just may not be one you’re willing to accept. B

Afterschool

Whoa. Where do I begin? Afterschool, the super small indie that barely got a theatrical release, is a rare film that transcends a movie theatre screen (or a TV set) and knocks the wind right out of you. I watched this film via Comcast OnDemand because I liked its trippy preview. And damn am I glad I did.

Let’s get plot out of the way: a lonely teenager at a swanky private high school enrolls in an audio/video afterschool program. His first assignment is to create a nice promo video for the school. One day, shooting B-roll of a hallway, he videotapes the school’s two most popular girls dying from bad drugs. After, everyone has questions. The cops, the head master, the parents, the fellow students. Everyone.

So there's your brief dissection of the plot. But that isn’t really what the movie is about. No way.

Afterschool, better than any film from recent memory, successfully displays several pertinent teenage issues. Obsession with money, with drugs, with being popular, with getting laid. The need to feel wanted by your parents, be respected by your teachers, bend the truth for a little advancement, and so on. The film goes deeper, of course, touching on issues such as upper-class favoritism and the fascination (domination) of the internet over our youths.

While these themes may seem similar to other American-made films, I haven’t even started talking about how the movie is presneted. Its slow, deliberate beauty. Its delicate, off-kilter pace. Know it going in: this is an odd looking film. Young director Antonio Campos (he was 24 when he made it) often shoots out of focus, out of frame, out of mind. A face will be in extreme close-up, but we may only see them from the eyes up. Many shots are unbroken and extended, the camera lurking back and forth in conversation, never breaking away the tension. In writing, these shots sound annoying, but they aren’t at all. Campos has successfully found a way to deliver a simple story using unconventional methods. It’s Michael Haneke’s Caché, mixed with Christian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, mixed with Gas Van Sant’s Elephant. Pure indie bliss.

I’ve never heard of Campos or most of the actors in the film. But there isn’t one second of one performance that I did not completely believe. The film’s focus, Robert, is played by Ezra Miller, who gives one of the most haunting performances of the year. There’s a lot here, for both sexes, to identify with. Several times during the movie I thought to myself, “Wow, that is exactly how a 15-year-old kid thinks.” There are scenes that feel so personal that we actually feel like we are intruding. We are eavesdropping in on a conversation we aren’t supposed to hear, or an event we aren’t supposed to see.

You probably haven’t heard of Afterschool, and for good reason. It only made $3,000 at one New York theatre, it stars no one you know and it doesn’t have a scheduled DVD release date. This is a real shame, because this is one of the best movies of this or any year. Simply put: Afterschool is best, most realistic film about adolescence that I’ve ever seen. It’s an all-encompassing, unsettling, all together remarkable film that you’re likely to never see. If you have OnDemand, rent it. You won’t be sorry. This will be in my Top 10 of 2009. A+

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

I can’t even begin to describe how god awful this movie is. With its atrociously over-the-top acting, its horribly clunky editing and its amateurish dialogue, as is evident in the following passage, which took place during the film’s climax:

Man: I love you.
Woman: You mean like a buddy? Like a pal?
Man: No, I don’t want to make love to my buddies. I’m in love with you. I’m ready to love you but you have to be ready to give it back the right way.
Woman: I want to learn how to love the right way, will you show me?
Man: Yes, I will show you.

I respect Tyler Perry, I really do. He’s made like 40 movies in the past seven years, and asserted himself as the forefront filmmaker of African American-produced films.

But the fact that Entertainment Weekly called I Can Do Bad All By Myself Perry’s best film yet is beyond me. This is the first Perry film I’ve seen and likely the last. About 20 minutes into the movie I stated keeping track of all the ridiculous, laughable scenes. After a half hour, I had completely lost track. With a record like that it makes it all too easy to give this film a quick, hard F.

Michael Jackson's This Is It

Imagine watching your favorite musician half-ass song and dance numbers for two straight hours. It’d get pretty boring, right? The whole time, you’d want to hear them fully belt out a song, or break it down with some flashy moves. The whole time, you’d expect a payoff, something to make all the waiting worthwhile. If you expect that payoff with This Is It, Michael Jackson’s swan song of a film, then you’ll be waiting for a long while.

I get it. I understand all well that a singer can’t wear out their voice during rehearsal, they need to save it for the big show, for the fans that forked out all the dough. So my criticism is not aimed at Jacko at all, it’s more towards director/choreographer Kenny Ortega, for even wanting to release the film. Originally, as we’re told in an extended opening disclaimer, the footage for This Is It was shot for Jackson’s personal video library. So basically, no one was ever supposed to see it, and now we know why.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic set pieces here. The best of which has Jackson shooting it out with Humphrey Bogart via digital imaging. It’s a real treat to see Jackson dressed in ‘40s threads, running through lavish black and white set pieces. I’m sure it would’ve worked great as an opening to ‘Smooth Criminal’.

But don’t expect to hear the songs you love, the way you want to hear them. Instead, Jackson sort of croons on, or shuffles about; giving hints at his lasting greatness, but never showing us his all. Also, those expecting any insight into Jackson’s warped mentalities should look elsewhere. For the most part he comes off as earnest and tenderly controlling.

In the end, I was bored with the film but found it an appropriate end to a miraculous career. It leaves you wanting more, which of course, we’ll never get. Throughout most of the film I kept thinking, “Damn, I wonder what this would’ve looked like as a finished show.” That would’ve been a hell of a sight to see. C

Law Abiding Citizen

I’m not even gonna lie: the first act of Law Abiding Citizen is pretty good. I liked how things kicked off right away, no backstory, no tireless exposition, just send the goons in and get the movie going. I liked how the film subtly jumped ten years in one shot. I liked the fast pace and the dark tones. I was really surprised, at one point I thought, “Is this movie actually going to be good?” And then, sure enough, everything went to shit.

Gerard Butler is a loving family man who turns vengeful psycho 10 years after his wife and daughter are brutally murdered (that opening scene, by the way, is actually shot tastefully). Jamie Foxx is the assistant DA who gave one of the intruders a slim sentence due to cracks in the system. Foxx’s character is a noble guy, you see, but Butler could give a fuck. In his words he wants to “kill... everybody”.

This is where things go wrong. Okay, the dude spends 10 years masterminding this elaborate plan? I can roll with that. But why take it so far? The film may have been saved if, one: the guy only sought to kill the main people involved in the murder case (not dozens of innocent people). And two: Jamie Foxx either passed on the project or actually looked like he gave a shit. Foxx is a talented guy, as is evident in Ali, Collateral and Ray, but here it looks like he is remembering his lines at the last second, delivering them in an “ah whatever” manner.

Butler, one of the most overrated actors working in movies, caught a break with 300. But when are movie producers going to realize that 300’s huge box office draw had nothing to do with Butler? Anyone could’ve played that role. Watching him here as he desperately tries out an American accent is, to say the least, laughable.

And poor Viola Davis. An Oscar nominee for Doubt, and the scene stealer in World Trade Center, Solaris and Antwone Fisher is just wasted talent here as the mayor of Philadelphia. Someone give Davis her own movie.

But oh well.

Most young males want to see shit blow up, not analyze plot development or an actor’s timing. So as an action film, director F. Gary Gray (who’s done a much better with Friday, The Negotiator, and The Italian Job) delivers what the base wants. I guess. D+

More Than a Game

A few years ago, film student Kristopher Belman heard that a local high school basketball team that was kicking ass and taking names. After managing to get in good with their tough coach, Belman soon found himself privy to all the footage he could tape. Games, locker room arguments, practices, road trips, sleepovers and on and on.

Belman had a sneaking suspicion that the team’s star player was going to make something big of himself. The player: LeBron James. The result of Belman’s taped footage: tender brilliance.

It’d be rough to edit down hundreds of hours of footage, and not have the focus be on the NBAs most popular player. But don’t worry, this movie isn't The LeBron James Story. Instead, Belman presents a heartfelt, honest portrait of five kids with immense talent, who still struggled with everyday adolescence.

Belman began taping the “Fab Five” of Akron, Ohio’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High School basketball team during their junior year season, several years after they had already been playing together. You can guess what happens for the most part. The high ups of teenaged stardom, the lows of surprise loses and disqualifications. But beyond the basketball, what really moves you are the individual stories behind each of the five players. There’s the coach’s son, a short kid with a fearless temper, the pudgy guy who was just as good at football, the loner who never fit in off the court and the star-maker who soon let fame get to his head.

The star of the film, however, is not the players, but their loyal, stern coach, Dru Joyce II, who took over after the previous coach moved up to college ball. Joyce talks often with admiration of his boys, but sometimes ventures into regret. When he speaks of his son (the hothead player), Joyce’s tone becomes remorseful, knowing he pushed him too hard as a player, and was hardly ever there as a Dad.

This is genuine, passionate filmmaking. It’s taking a chance on an idea, and following through with it, outcome be damned. More Than a Game ain’t no Hoop Dreams, but it does a damn good job living in its shadow. A-

Good Hair

There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with Chris Rock’s new documentary vehicle, Good Hair, but there isn’t anything special about it either. People could say I wasn’t interested because I’m not a black female, and I have no idea what it’s like to live with weaves and wigs and hair relaxer and naps and so on. But that’s bullshit. A film is a film; I view each one objectively, no matter what it’s about.

In answer to his daughter’s question: why don’t I have good hair?, Chris Rock set out to trace the history of African American dos. Interviewing a slew of people, celebrities and regular barbershop attendees alike, Rock does his damndest to get a feature film out of a pretty weak premise.

One thing I found interesting: Rock travels to India and discovers that the source for most weaves and wigs is human hair from Hindu women, after shaving their head for God. But even with that information, Rock makes slight of the news by going from hair shop to hair shop trying to sell people “black” hair. The gag is lame, and besides… didn’t Borat already try a variation of the same joke?

I give Rock credit for seeming genuinely interested in what he learns. But I’ve always felt that Chris Rock thinks he is way funnier than he really is. Sure he’s had a few good stand-up specials on HBO, but here his jokes fall flat, and they make for a boring, unnecessary documentary. C-

Saw VI

What’s the tagline… if it’s Halloween, it must be Saw? Bet your ass. For the sixth year in a row, the torture-porn phemon is releasing another installment. The game is the same. Part six is just as bad as the previous ones (excluding the first, of course). I saw the movie 13 hours ago and couldn’t, for the life of me, tell you what the hell happened. I see these movies out of tradition, I mean shit, why stop now?

You may wonder why they keep making these. The answer is simple:
Total budget for six Saw films combined: 46 million.
Total US gross of six Saw films combined: 342.3 million (and counting).

Expect more of these (they’re already developing parts VII and VIII). Let’s take bets for how long this will go on. I’ll put $100 that it reaches Saw X. Hell maybe Saw XX.

Why would you see this? I have no idea. Go see Paranormal Activity instead. D-

Where the Wild Things Are

So now then. Welcome to the most complicated film of the year. How do you adapt one of the most beloved children stories of all time - a 10 sentence, ascetically beautiful masterpiece - into a feature film? A better question: how do you bridge the generational gap of fans, so that everyone can enjoy such a film?

Spike Jonze, the director responsible for two of the best, most original films in contemporary cinema (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) answers both those questions with his bold, beautiful, remarkably told new film, Where the Wild Things Are.

Or.

Spike Jonze, the director responsible for two of the best, most original films in contemporary cinema (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) falls short with his aimless, misguided, beautiful-looking new film, Where the Wild Things Are.

Truth is, Jonze’s film falls somewhere in between.

At its heart, Where the Wild Things Are is a passion piece, plagued by eight years of production hell, that is a thrill to look at, but hard to comprehend. If I were making a pros and cons list - which, ahem, I have – both columns would come out about even. At the top of the pros list would be the look and sound of the film, which is flawless.

Cinematographer Lance Accord, a Jonze regular, creates a vision that is unlike anything I’ve seen in recent years. From its rambunctious prologue, to its smooth grace once the Wild Things show up, you’ll actually find yourself grinning at how gorgeous this film is shot. Sound is three fold. Thank the sound engineers for their crisp clatter, Carter Burwell for his delicate score, and Karen O for her rowdy songs.

Next on the pros is the brilliant, eclectic cast. In the lead role of Max, actor Max Records sets a new standard for child actors. Jonze made it his goal to form a close, personal relationship with Records, and the trust has paid off. It would be a difficult role for an actor of any age, but the fact that it’s an 11-year-old kid is astonishing. It’s a tough role, and Records nails it. He’s backed by Catherine Keener (who’s just that good) as his struggling mother, and a slew of actors lending their unique voices as the Wild Things. It’s standard for actors to record their dialogue separately when voicing an animated character, but here, Jonze had the cast, including James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, and Catherine O’Hara, sit in the same room and record together, as if they were actually in the scene. The difference pays off, as the Wild Things talk and argue over one other, while maintaining their individual identities.

Now the bad news. First off, even with its PG rating, Where the Wild Things Are is not a kid’s movie. At all. There are themes and situations that kids simply won’t understand (or enjoy). So that’s first: the film is marketed as a children’s movie, but it’s actually for adults. Next is the awkward (or sloppy) shifting in tones. I know what Jonze is doing, I think. He wants the viewer to feel like a child, where we’re happy one minute, sad the next, explanation be damned. It works initially, but grows old quickly. You’re still feeling moved from the scene before when suddenly everyone is screaming at each other over thrown dirt. It’s hard to follow, and harder to care.

I can’t call Where the Wild Things Are a “bad” film if it is the best shot, scored, art designed and sound engineered movie of so far this year. But I also can’t call it “great” if I am unable to find any distinguishable, coherent tone from one scene to the next.

Bad films leave your mind the minute you walk out of the theatre, but Where the Wild Things Are was a film I thought about for days after I saw it. This is a movie that demands your attention while you’re watching it, and refuses to leave long after you’ve exited the theatre.

Do I recommend it? Hell yes, it’s bound to be the most original piece of American cinema this year. But can I guarantee that you’ll like it? No way. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I must admit that it’s the only film so far this year that I’ve gone back to the theatre for an immediate follow-up viewing. That says something. B+

The Boys are Back

Here’s the kind of rare film that should work on every level, not fall just short of being a melodramatic soap opera. Put a respected director (Scott Hicks, who made Shine) in with a talented, ferocious actor (Clive Owen), give them a plot involving insurmountable grief, mix it with a seasoned crew, and you should have greatness, right? But instead we’re left wondering, “Where did it go wrong?”

Certainly not with Owen, who, like always, makes the best of whatever material he’s given. Owen plays Joe Warr, a talented British sportswriter living in Australia who suddenly loses his wife to a hellacious bout of cancer. Now Joe, who was gone on business most of the time, has to care for his young son, and keep his career going. (Who knew those pesky dishes were such a hassle?)

Joe’s ex wife hears of the recent tragic news and immediately demands that Joe’s older son come out from the UK to stay with Joe and his young boy. Now this is where things start to go wrong. I didn’t buy, for a second, that Joe’s ex would just ship their son off so that Joe, deep in the throes of grief, could take care of him. I mean seriously, what kind of bitch would do that? How could she possibly think that this guy could take care of a teenager, let alone a ten-year-old, after losing his wife?

Oh well, it is what it is, given its small release most of you probably won't see the film anyway. No worries, it’s not going to get any Oscar love. Which is a shame, if worked a little differently, Owen would be at the top of the short list for Best Actor. C-

New York, I Love You

I’ll never forget the closing segment of Paris je’taime, the wondrous anthology of short films that encapsulated the city of love. In that final vignette, directed by Alexander Payne, character actress Margo Martindale aimlessly wandered around Paris, independent of task and duty, her purposely poor-spoken narration fitting the tone perfectly.

Resting on a park bench after a day-long trek, she finds herself in the midst of a melancholy revelation. I won’t reveal anymore, but in those final moments, Martindale’s face expresses a lifetime of emotion. Her tender nuance, her subtle comfort; it’s all remarkably beautiful. Never have I seen six minutes of film fit together so seamlessly.

And while that segment helped make Paris je’taime one of my favorite films of 2007, I can’t say I’m surprised that its predecessor, New York, I Love You, doesn’t live up to the same standards.

Going with the same concept he used before, producer Emmanuel Benbihy enlists a handful of talented directors to tell individual stories of love in the city that never sleeps. The first major problem is the shifting from one segment to another. In Paris je’taime, each segment began with the location of the city and the director of the short. But here, not only do we get no title cards, it’s actually hard to tell when one short ends and another begins. This is done on purpose, I think. And believe me, I’m all for experimental editing, but this is silly. At times, the film as a whole feels like it was cut by an NYU film student with a shitty GPA.

As with Paris je’taime, some segments are better than others. Highlights include Yvan Attal’s shifty short which has a sultry Robin Wright Penn teasing a kind Chris Cooper outside a restaurant. In the sexiest of the bunch, Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo separately recall their recent one night stand together. But the transcendent highlight is the segment I still can’t fully figure out. Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) casts Julie Christie as an aged singer in a hotel room with a disabled Shia LaBeouf. The outcome of their conversation is warmly haunting, yet mysteriously guided.

There are a few other slight delights, sure. But for the most part, the rest of the segments aren’t nearly as engaging. I’m surprised by a couple things. First, with such a racially vast assembly of directors, I find it hard to believe that 90% of them chose to make their films starring straight, white characters. Second, why didn’t more filmmakers venture away from Manhattan? I guess Brooklyn, I Love You, isn’t as exciting.

Although I have to admit, as tired as some of the segments feel, there is great reassurance in knowing that in a few minutes, you’ll be given a brand new story. I wonder what’s next. IMDB says Shanghai, I Love You is set for 2011. Benbihy says Rio will be next. Either way, I’m always in the mood for love. B-