Review Revue

It's been media month at our house, which means I've been watching a lot of movies lately and not telling anyone about them. (If you're looking for music reviews, look at the next post.) So here goes:

You really should see Monster, if only to find out how ugly makeup can make the otherwise lovely Charlize Theron. The film is well-acted, well-conceived--and absolutely chilling in its portrait of a woman so screwed up by life that she thinks turning into a serial-killing monster is perfectly logical.

It'll help if the next movie on Showtime happens to be The Italian Job, which will remind you what Charlize really looks like and probably entertain you to boot. A combination caper film and extended commerical on the virtues of the Mini, it has just enough of a plot and just enough humor to make it worthwhile. And who can resist Seth Green claiming that Shawn Fanning stole the idea of Napster from him?

Also good for a laugh, if little else, is Dodgeball. Predictable, and Ben Stiller is a bit over the top, but just tell me you don't want to watch Rip Torn throw wrenches at a skinny kid whose nickname in the movie is the oh-so-very-not-PC "queer bait."

What, you don't? OK, then watch Super Size Me. For 90 minutes, you'll question whether you can ever eat again, especially when our "I'll eat McDonald's for a month" narrator pukes up his very first meal on his new diet and when, later, he discovers how much weight he's gained and how much damage he's done to his liver. (The effect is compared to Nicholas Cage pickling his liver in Leaving Las Vegas, if that tells you anything.)

Had something more upbeat in mind? The Bourne Supremacy is just the ticket. Picking up the trail of Jason Bourne a few years after The Bourne Identity left off, the fast-paced film sees him begin to figure out who he was and what he may have done, while the machinations behind the program that created him are slowly revealed. Joan Allen makes a nice addition to the original cast, which is missing Chris Cooper after his death at the close of the first edition.

An older film also hit my radar--for the first time, believe it or not--in the form of Four Weddings and a Funeral. I had no idea this 1994 film--nominated for Best Picture alongside such titans as Pulp Fiction, Shawkshank Redemption, and Forrest Gump--also featured a gay couple as its paragon of true love. No wonder people think Hollywood is liberal! Anyhow, watch this and remember when Hugh Grant was a fresh new face and Andie MacDowell was the flavor of the moment.

Also finally saw Bend It Like Beckham, which is every bit as charming as you've heard. The movie confronts stereotypes about women, Indian people, and homosexuality--and is still both funny and touching. Catch it on HBO while they're still running it every few days.

Amid all this cinema, I did find time to read a book. The Plot Against America is the single most interesting and important novel of 2004. It imagines what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh had run against FDR on an antiwar platform in 1940 and won, and it's written from the perspective of a Jewish child. Fascinating in its own right, it's also extremely timely, whatever Philip Roth says about his intent in writing it. Just ask William Safire, who in this morning's New York Times contemplated a similar novel based on an alternate reality of the Bush presidency. Safire's novel sounds like a snoozer--and who really believes any Democrat would appoint Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the end of it?--but Roth's work is that of a master, and not to be missed.