Black Water (2007) 4 of 4

** this review is free of spoilers **

This Australian thriller begins with text that tells us that the populations of both humans and saltwater crocodiles are increasing in northern Australia.  We're also told the movie is based on a true story, which is fine, but it also works fine as a revenge-of-nature film.

This theme with a long history in Australia, going back at least to 1978's Long Weekend.  The revenge-of-nature subgenre could be seen as anti-Tarzan movies, and Black Water especially so, with characters clinging to tree limbs that are never more than a few meters above the still, opaque waters.
It's set almost entirely in a saltwater swamp, an alien environment for almost everyone on the planet.  This is stunning use of hi-def photography: watching this film, you feel like you're there, which in this case is vastly preferable to being there.

There's good acting here (though if you're not Australian, mate, you might be tempted to use the English subtitles), but this is not a character study: it's a nail-biting thriller about a group of people who suddenly, unexpectedly find themselves fighting for life.  It reminded me of two films: Jaws, and The Wages of Fear.  That's high praise, and I do think Black Water deserves more attention than it's gotten.  Even with the Ozy accents, if Hollywood still remembered how to market its product this film could've had a decent run in U.S. theatres.  

The Killer Inside Me (2010) 3 of 4

** this review has no major spoilers **

In David Mamet's House of Games, Joe Mantegna's con-artist character explains that term: it's not that the "con artist" instills confidence, it's that he puts his confidence in you, and you feel honor-bound to reciprocate.  Granted this is a professional liar speaking, but he nevertheless has a point, one that helps explain how the protagonist of The Killer Inside Me stays out of jail.

This noirish crime film is an adaptation of the novel by Jim Thompson, previously filmed in 1976.  It flopped at the box office, but expect it to be a cult film in the future.  It will be loved and hated for the same reason: an unblinking look at psychopathic violence, so extreme that you don't know whether to laugh or cry -- or press "stop."  (By the way, that word is often misunderstood: a psychopath is someone who has no conscience but is able to pass as normal.  Norman Bates is a psychopath, so is Hannibal Lector; Tony Soprano is not, because everybody knows where he's coming from.)

Edit, 31 Jan. 2019: er, no.  According to Dr. Ramani Durvasula (YouTube interview), the difference is that psychopaths are born, not made, with sociopaths being the opposite.  Both are dangerous, but sociopaths are more likely to hold a steady job.  Thus, Norman, Tony and most comparable characters (including TKIM's) are implied sociopaths: we're given the genesis, to some degree.

As with I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, I was tempted to give up on TKIM, and if I'd been in a movie theater (remember those?) I may've walked out.  In both cases, the level of craft and conviction pulled me back to the narrative.

The Machinist (2004) 2 of 4

** this review contains mild spoilers **

In the extras, actor Michael Ironside says that Christian Bale "did what he had to do" by losing 60 pounds, thus exposing his rib cage, for the title role in this film.  And I said back to the screen, "No, he didn't have to.  We all could have done without -- the movie's not that good."  This is not Raging Bull (for which Robert Deniro transformed himself, getting into fighting form and then getting fat for the epilogue).

Look, everybody wants to be a legend, and Christian Bale just might get there.  But no matter how impressive Bale's dedication, this is just a shaggy-dog parable, the type of story The Twilight Zone used to complete in 24 minutes but it takes 101 minutes of your precious time.  For me, it never escapes the shadows cast by any number of millennial strange-trips, including Dark City, Identity, and Bale's own American Psycho.
   

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) 2 of 4

I think we can say that the bloom is off the rose for The X-Files.  It's so hard for popular celebrities, whether they be content creators or Sarah Palin, to keep it real instead of just drawing water from the same well.

** spoilers ahead **

I was never a regular viewer of the series, so I recently watched the best-reviewed episodes from Season 1, which is the only reason I know this second movie is a remake of the episode "Beyond the Sea": In both stories, a convicted felon claims to have psychic visions that can help solve certain missing-persons cases.  In both stories, we never find out for sure if he's telling the truth, or if his information comes from collaboration with (other) criminals, although Mulder, as always, "wants to believe."

Brad Dourif, "Beyond the Sea"

"Beyond the Sea" is a riff on existentialism and doubt.  I've never been interested in philosophy or ontology, but the episode was OK.  The movie is a faithful remake, and since it's the same franchise: what's the point?  The first X-Files film was also more of a remake than a progression.

Billy Connolly, I Want to Believe

This film tries very, very hard for gravitas: instead of a murderer, the "psychic" in I Want to Believe  is a pedophile priest.; Dr. Scully is distracted by planning the treatment of a boy with cancer; Mulder and Scully are finally lovers, but drifting apart; and as always, Mulder is estranged from the F.B.I.
And you thought science fiction and horror couldn't be adult drama.

** spoilers over **
  
There's nothing terrible about this film: the plot tracks fairly well and the franchise stays up to date (to our age of "torture porn") by including some truly disgusting, gory content relating to unauthorized organ transplants.  The problem is that none of it seems sincere.  None of it works.

The one demographic that may welcome this film is middle-aged women who complain that men get to look "more distinguished" as they look older.  Gillian Anderson's looking good here, David Duchovny is downright haggard.
Time to cancel funding for the X-Files for good this time.

Changing Lanes (2002) 2.5 of 4

This isn't my type of film, that is it's an unapologetic, button-pushing melodrama.  Still, I give it a marginal recommendation because it does what it sets out to do.
Ben Affleck is a hotshot Manhattan lawyer, Samuel L. Jackson is an AA member trying to get visitation rights to his kids even as their mother threatens to move them to Oregon.  When these two harried men get into an accident on the highway, it has profound repercussions for both, and as they find themselves linked and battling, both are forced to look in the mirror.

Unlike Lakeview Terrace, race is a fairly minor element here, except for one scene in which Jackson's Doyle Gipson goes off on some Madison Avenue types who've been glibly discussing Tiger Woods.  I respect the way the film sets up a dramatic situation and follows through, without getting distracted or flinching at the character flaws of these two men.  And this is very much a story about men and their challenges.
The film acknowledges American racism, but it doesn't use it as the excuse for Doyle's grave flaws as a father.  At the same time, it has some compassion for the problems of a monied, handsome, white lawyer.  Yes, Gavin Banek has had lots of advantages in life, but at the same time the film makes clear the people closest to him have him by the short ones.

** spoilers ahead **

Changing Lanes doesn't flinch, that is, until the ending, which I found unbelievable.  Maybe Gavin would confront his father-in-law with his misdeeds and demand change, but not in front of the latter's wife and daughter.  Stephen Delano (Sydney Pollack) has been portrayed as a hard-nosed, unsentimental man who does what it takes to get rich and stay that way.  Why would he suddenly let his son-in-law dominate him?  The ending just doesn't work as written, and it's unworthy of a film whose main strength is allowing its characters to suffer the blows of modern life. 

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) 2.5 of 4

** this review contains spoilers **

Disclosure: I've been a trekkie for about 40 years.

The thing that strikes me about this second film is that it's a lot less militaristic than the first (2008) film, causing me to wonder, is J.J. Abrams going soft?  This is his re-mix of the sabre-rattling 1982 hit Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but the real villain here isn't Khan, it's Peter Weller's Admiral Marcus, a rogue warmonger.  (Marcus is a variation on the part Weller played in Star Trek: Enterprise "Terra Prime.")

Perhaps we could say that if Abrams is the new Spielberg, Tarantino is the new Scorsese.  Both of the younger directors do lots of sampling/homage, both of them are ironic and self-referential.  Abrams is more mainstream, and inherently more conservative, but with this film he and his writers (his usual stable) seem to be resonating with the world's growing skepticism re: the war on terrorism.

Politics aside, this is an entertaining film with the expected action, spectacle, and humor.  I actually need to see it again: I watched it on amazon and wasn't able to appreciate the effects, which I suspect are thrilling given the right presentation.
I'll make two complaints, both of them from my "fanboy" perspective.  First, this film shows Kirk pushing Starfleet away from a military and toward a more exploratory role.  Even in an alternate timeline this makes little sense, since Starfleet was never purely military, and it was usually Spock or McCoy who argued the pacifist side, not Kirk and Scott as in this film.
My second gripe is more substantial.  Abrams wanted the hot actor Benedict Cumberbatch, and he wanted to do his version of Star Trek II.  Understood.  Still, why is this pale-skinned, British-accented man named "Khan"?
In the original episode "Space Seed," Khan is described as "probably a Sikh, from the Northern India area -- they make the fiercest warriors."  Fine, even today there are lots of South Asians immigrants to the U.K., and Khan is a genetically engineered superman, but nevertheless this struck a false note with me.  Someone needs to remind Abrams that not everything he touches turns to gold.

Speaking of Mr. Cumberbatch, his casting makes sense, since he and Martin Freeman are essentially playing an alternate-universe Spock and McCoy on the modern-day Sherlock.  Cumberbatch is a fine actor, but he doesn't match the manly menace of Ricardo Montalban in both "Space Seed" and Star Trek II.
What younger viewers may not realize is that Montalban had become something of a joke before the 1982 film, due to his trivial series Fantasy Island and a series of car commercials in which he repeatedly touted "rich Corinthian leather," which became a mocking catchphrase.
This makes it all the more remarkable that the actor, then 62, excelled in his return as Khan, quieting any titters with talent, force of will, and impressive pectorals.  And he had to hold his own against William Shatner, and say what you will about him as an actor, Shatner was a veteran scene-stealer.

It was never going to happen, but in retrospect, Montalban deserved an Oscar nomination for his work in Star Trek II.  Ever since, that franchise-saving film has been the model of what a Star Trek film should be, and it has only one element that no other Trek film has: Montalban.  His may be a scenery-chewing performance, but it's a great scenery-chewing performance.      

U.S. Marshals (1998) 2 of 4

Like most people, I thought The Fugitive was a great piece of commercial filmmaking, the kind that used to get called a "crackerjack thrill-ride."  And like most people, I paid much less attention to the sequel U.S. Marshals, although the film pulled a middling $57 million at the U.S. box office.

I remember questioning the wisdom of a sequel focusing on the secondary, standoffish character played by Tommy Lee Jones.  Still, through the years I'd hear good buzz on this film -- good score, better-than-you'd-think, etc. -- so I finally watched it.  My experience backed up what I've said thus far, bad and good.
This is very much from the age when movies were meant to be seen in movie theatres: it's a big, widescreen show, shot on locations in Chicago, New York, and along the Ohio River, the latter being an evocative location considering we're following a white lawman chasing a dark-skinned black man (Wesley Snipes).  It has that fine score by Jerry Goldsmith, and it also has a memorable opening involving Tommy Lee Jones in a chicken suit.

** moderate spoilers ahead **

The problem is that Jones's character, as drawn in the original film, is a human bloodhound: His job is to find and deliver people, not to investigate (thus his famous reply when Harrison Ford denies killing his wife: "I don't care!").  And so in U.S. Marshals, though we sense from the beginning that the Snipes character is being framed, there's a flabby midsection in which, despite lots of good story points, the plot stagnates (some of it's even set in a swamp).
It's too bad, because there's much here to like, but the film never overcomes this structural flaw.  It doesn't help that the resolution seems anticlimactic, blaming everything on minor characters we're not invested in anyway.