My blog is not an African Swallow

And therefore it can be migratory. New stuff will be posted at http://eickereviews.wordpress.com because no one can remember the name of this one. So if you happen to be subscribed or something (Al) , you might reconsider.

Just the name changed. Still the same deal.

Boston Illegal

Okay, Boston. I get it. You are loyal, you are proud, and you are segmented as an ant’s thorax. Some of you don’t pronounce your R’s, most of you don’t take shit from anyone, and all of you worship your Sox.

It’s a funny place. It steeps in the brain fluids and doesn’t drain out. Everyone is vocal about his hometown, but Bostonians seem especially so. And Ben Affleck, for better or for worse one of its most famous alumni, can’t seem to let it go professionally. All three of his major non-acting credits—as director for “Gone Baby Gone”, co-writer for “Good Will Hunting,” and now director for “The Town”—have been not only set in Boston but are very much about Boston. What’s next Benny? It’s going to be hard to find someone ugly enough for the Larry Bird biopic.

Apparently, though, despite the prevailing pride, the whole point is to get out.

Just as Will Hunting skedaddled to see about his lady, Doug MacRay (Affleck), flawed hero of “The Town,” is all set to depart as well—with his lady. He just has to do it without dying. Tougher than it sounds.

You see, Doug is a bank robber—a pretty good one. He decided to be that because his daddy was that, and that’s just the way things are done in Charlestown. The movie opens with his biggest score yet. He and his boys, dressed in menacing crypt masks and robes, knock off a bank and wind up taking the assistant manager (Rebecca Hall, “Vicky Christina Barcelona”) as an “insurance” hostage. They let her go, but she’s shaken up.

The score is big enough that the FBI rears its ugly head—well, I guess not so ugly in this case, represented by Mr. Jon Hamm—and is soon breathing down Doug & Co’s necks. Then, in an unlikely and perhaps dispensable turn, Doug falls into a romantic relationship with the assistant manager he’d abducted and finds himself in the old “Do I tell her I’m a bad guy?” predicament we’ve seen in “Heat” and “The Departed.”

His newfound love as impetus, Doug suddenly wants out of the racket, out of the city, out of his life of beer with his buddies and comically unfulfilling sex with his increasingly violent best friend’s slutty sister (Blake Lively, her attempted Boston accent sounding like the gauzy, drugged-out expulsions of someone who’s just had her wisdom teeth removed).

However, “The Florist” (Pete Postlethwaite, excellently), the man financing these crimes in exchange for a cut, is not prepared to just let his best money-making mule go and see about a girl. Emerging as a very effective villain late in the film, he threatens Doug into doing one last job for him by invoking the fate of his fair lady.

This is going to sound wacky, but what “The Town” lacks in plausibility, it makes up for in realism. It runs into plausibility issues with the romance and with Doug’s ability to, as an ex hockey player, outsmart the FBI. But these are plot points. The actual execution of the action is very well done, the car chases riveting but not frantic, the robbery scenes full of real-life problems, and the dialogue brimming with profanity. Affleck doesn’t go for the slick, improbable caper as the Ocean’s movies did.  He asks himself, “How would this really go down?” and he shoots it.  

The issue that prevents Affleck’s latest effort from being an excellent movie is character development. Despite its length, none of the characters is fleshed out enough to care about him. For example, I would not have been upset if Douggie had gone down at the end–to jail or otherwise. In fact, it may have made a better film.

Because of the overarching lack of real connection to the people on screen, most of the suspense of the movie came not from “Oh my God, is he going to get shot?” but “Oh my God, if she found out he was the skeleton dude who abducted her it would be soooooo awkward!” That’s not cops-n-robbers suspense. That’s rom-com suspense. And Boston is the wrong place for that.

Machete cuts everything but his hair

The beautiful thing about Robert Rodriguez is that he’s figured out how pointless it is to grow up. “Machete” is the kind of entrails-and-bone-chips film one might storyboard with markers in a treehouse with one’s fellow chock-faced hee-haw hormonals. Markers, yes, and we might need a few extra red ones.

It may sound like I’m about to give this movie a bad review. But in truth, it was a love letter to suppressed inner pubescents everywhere, and it was much appreciated by the seventh grader who lives in me, shouldering all my dirty jokes to the surface. And it was also a love letter to a genre that Mr. Rodriguez obviously adores. “Planet Terror” was the first such love letter, but ended up as more of a spoof than an homage to the grindhouse style. “Machete” strikes a better balance.

But who is this…”Machete”? Well, you know that Hispanic guy in all those Hispanic movies who plays the giant, leather-faced, ostensibly evil enforcer? That’s him. Danny Trejo. Blossoming into a leading man and putting up a Bond-worthy sexual tally despite his face looking like it’s been rototilled. His character, as any self-respecting teenage-boy fantasy would have it, is a loner, a military-trained hero whose family has been murdered by this dirtbag trafficker Torres (hilariously, Stephen Seagal). He tends to choose his machete knife over guns when it comes to killing bad guys, but he will kill with whatever, if there is no machete around. That’s how committed he is to killing people.

Attempting to mind his own business doing roofing and septic work, Machete is selected to be framed in a political stunt to turn the people of Texas against Mexican immigrants and get a hard-liner on the issue elected. This stunt sets off a series of borderline-insane events during which Machete and his friends have to kill and maim hundreds of people. That’s just how these things go. After all is said and done, the evil men will find that they have, as is plainly spelled out for them in Machete’s first text message to anyone, “fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

The movie is almost worth seeing for the casting. Aside from Mr. Seagall’s high-comedy turn as the ex-Federale Mexican drug lord, Robert DeNiro plays an evil immigrant-shooting Texan gubernatorial candidate, Don Johnson plays “Von Johnson,” a vigilante border policeman, Cheech Marin plays Machete’s hermano who’s gone into the priesthood but retains his impressive artillery, and Lindsay Lohan plays the wayward & rarely clothed daughter of the governor’s right-hand man. Score one for the team.

[On a side note, I’m disappointed Cheech and Don Johnson didn’t interact in some kind of special Nash Bridges reunion moment. But my heart may not have been able to take it.]

While this movie won’t be getting any five-star reviews for its Intelligent Commentary on the Arizona Situation, it may at least do the favor of bringing the issue back into the American consciousness, from which it seems to have fallen ever since the Lakers knocked the Suns out of the playoffs. No, this movie is more about a different kind of Freedom–the one that allows a writer/director to have his hero swing, by another man’s unfurled large intestine, from one story of a hospital to another. It’s the freedom of the movies, and this Mexican knows more about that than you.

Step Up 3D: Popper releases balloons, gets discovered.

I actually went to an open casting call to be an extra in this movie. Unfortunately, work got in the way of my dreams, and I could never make it to any of the shoots. Upon seeing it, however, I realized I was much too clean-cut and White to be an extra in this movie. Instead, I would’ve had to have been the main character. Ah well, there’s always “Step Up 4D,” where the dancers become unstuck in Time and Space.

Yes, it’s strange to have every film in this franchise star a pair of pretty Caucasians when it’s safe to say that most great hip-hop dancers are, um, not that. But what’s that saying? “If it ain’t broke…” And we can’t exactly cry Racism, because the man at the helm of all this, John M. Chu, is also not white. So it’s obviously a strategy to sell tickets, which I’m okay with if it can keep what is probably my favorite ultra-stupid, ultra-entertaining franchise afloat.

They’re great for DVD, these movies. I don’t own very many DVDs in general, but I do own Step Up, Step Up 2, Stomp the Yard, How She Move, You Got Served, Breakin’, Breakin 2: Electric Bugaloo, Planet B-Boy, and Rize. With the exception of the last two, which are quality documentaries, they’re all what I call “chapter movies,” which means, when you pop them in, you don’t hit “Play Movie.” You hit “Chapter Selection.” Because no one who isn’t out of his gourd is watching these for plot, acting, or wit. You watch these movies for the dancing. There’s torture porn, right? We’ve all heard of that. And then there’s this: dance porn. My cup of tea.

Step Up 3D delivers exactly what any reasonable person would expect it to deliver. Moose (Adam G. Sevani), the lanky, mop-headed, logorrheic dancer from the last installment, is going through Freshman Orientation at NYU when he’s distracted by a pair of Nikes and finds himself accidentally in a dance-off with ‘Kid Darkness’ (Daniel “Cloud” Campos from this ridiculously sexy Shakira video), a member of the “evil” crew, the Samurai.

During his spasms, he inadvertently releases about a hundred helium balloons from a vendor’s cart. When the cops chase him for his blunder, he’s “rescued” by Luke (Rick Malambri), our prettycracker hero and Captain of the “good” crew, the Pirates. Luke leads him to his secret warehouse space, where a community of talented street dancers lives and rehearses together.

The rest of the <airquotes> plot revolves around this space, which his parents bought for him before they died. The bank is threatening to sell it, the rent having been neglected for months, and the only way to pay for it is by winning World Jam, which is “like, the biggest battle ever.”

In their way are the evil Samurai, led by evil Julien, another over-muscled white guy with a Cleopatra neck. But on their side is fetching newcomer Natalie (Sharni Vinson), the female lead and apple of Luke’s eye. After some cat & mouse, the two blow Slurpees out of straws atop what appears to be a giant subway vent under the Brooklyn Bridge and then make out. Romantic. Must smell great up there.

Will they be able to win the World Jam and save the Dance Lair from Richie Rich Cleopatra Bad Guy? I don’t know. Whatever. There’s going to be some impressive dancing. Everything else can go to Hell.

The talent of the movie is in the supporting cast, which includes two spindly Argentinian twins (the Lombards), a brightly bespectacled dancer/electrician (the amazing tWitch from SYTYCD), an archetypal Wise African Guy (Keith Stallworth), the tall, boneless Asian guy (Glee‘s ‘Other Asian,’ Harry Shum Jr.), the inhumanly talented popper (‘Madd Chadd’ from LXD), and even cameos from choreographer Dave Scott and former SYTYCD champion Joshua, who play evil-crew people. These are the folks who can really dance.

These guys all showcase their stuff in three main performances. (Don’t worry: there are minor ones too, to get you through.) The first round is against a dirty crew–like, literally covered in dirt. The second round is against “the champions of Asia,” and is just downright hilarious. (And we learn this: Asians can’t dance in water.) The third and final round is against the Samurai, of course, and I’ll let you watch that one. It’s a spectacle of spectacles.

Structurally, “Step Up 3D” went the way of “You Got Served.” The two previous installments centered around an Arts school in Baltimore, where hip-hop and ballet were fused into some kind of ferociousness and teenage hormones felled class barriers. This one centered around a straight-up Battle for money, territory, and pride, a la “Served.” No real classist issues or style fusion going on here. But they were expendable anyway.

Also, unlike the previous two, it takes a small time-out to pay homage to dance films of yore. Moose and his childhood friend (Alyson Stoner) launch into a Singin’ In the Rain-style ditty accompanied by music playing from an ice cream truck. That’s what I’d like to see more of: spontaneous dancing for which there is no valid context and for which all logic melts away. If there were just some way to remove the singing from musicals…

You’re going to read some bad reviews of this movie, and this is understandable. Not everyone is going to realize that reviewing John Chu for coherence and narrative makes as much sense as reviewing Von Trier for the dancing. Ever seen “The Perfect Human“? Turns out he can’t do air flares.

Good “Day” for a Cruise

I asked a couple people if they wanted to join me for “a movie” after work today. It turned out they both had plans already, so, as I often do, I went alone. It’s just as well. I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I was seeing “Knight and Day” anyway. “It had a funny preview,” I would have choked out. But that would have been disingenuous of me. The real reason I went to see “Knight and Day”—aside from having an AMC gift card to burn—was that I wanted an excuse to write about Tom Cruise.

There are very few celebrities bigger than Tom Cruise. I would wager that more people know his name than Beyonce’s. I would wager that more people know his name than Meryl Streep’s. Than Wolf Blitzer’s. Than Salman Rushdie’s. Think about that line from “Gone in 60 Seconds”: “Impound them all. I don’t give a damn if it belongs to Tom Cruise!” They could’ve chosen any L.A.-based celebrity for that line. And they chose him. There’s a reason for it.

He’s just been so big for so long. (t.w.s.s.) Find me someone who’s never seen a Tom Cruise movie and I’ll give you $10 (blind people don’t count.) And yet he’s the reason—let’s be real here—for my lack of disclosure today: “You’re going to see that Tom Cruise movie?” my friends would’ve said, “Why?! He’s nuts!”

I’m just going to say it: I enjoy Tom Cruise. I always have. I don’t think he’s the greatest actor of our time. I don’t think he’s a particularly awesome person. I don’t think I’d really want to have a coffee and scone with him. But you can’t deny that he’s made some classic-ass movies. He has an on-screen quality that one doesn’t see every day. I don’t care about all the shit people say about him—that…

a)…he’s crazy! Did you see when he was jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch shouting about how much he loved Katie Holmes!? Yeah, I did. Did you see that time Ozzie Osbourne ate the fucking head off of a bat in front of 10,000 people? Did you see Christian Bale go off on his production team? Did you see the way Dave Eicke ripped off his belt and threw it across the room at karaoke the other night? People do crazy things. Especially entertainers. Especially when they’re in love or trying to fake it. Jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch and declaring love for your lawfully wedded wife is not an offense punishable by loss of respect as a performer. It was actually refreshing to see someone not turn into The Orphan Oliver in front of Oprah.

b)…he adheres to a crazy religion! Do I even need to deal with this? Let’s say an alien landed on Earth and we all took turns explaining our belief systems and the lore involved therein. Scientology would not sound any crazier than any of the other religions (see George Carlin). Perhaps it would even sound less crazy. At least he’s not bombing anyone or holding Inquisitions.

c)…he brainwashed Katie Holmes! Bullshit. Katie Holmes did not drink any Kool-Aid. She chose to become Mrs. Cruise. She chose to be a Scientologist. She chose to towel off after Dawson’s Creek. No one brainwashed her but herself.

d)…he’s a bad actor! No he’s not. Watch him in “Magnolia.” Watch him in “Jerry Maguire.”  Christ, watch him in “Tropic Thunder”! When he wants to, the man can act.

e)…but he’s playing the same crazy character in all those movies! So is Jack Nicholson.

A friend of mine said, after seeing the preview, that it “looked like Tom Cruise playing a secret agent guy—playing Tom Cruise.” All right, I’ll give him that. Cruise didn’t really “dissolve” into this character as the great actors do. He didn’t become Roy Miller. It was more like demonic possession.

But, you know, if was fun to watch.

“Knight and Day” knows exactly what it is. The action is so hyperbolic that it would almost qualify as a send-up of the Bond Genre. What makes the movie work, I think, is the dialogue during the action scenes. (I would call it “banter,” but there’s too much screaming.) Cruise plays an action hero that also doubles as a sort of life coach, full of smiles and compliments and positive reinforcement for Cameron Diaz’s horribly incapable character, which, amid the car chases and gunfire and helicopters, is somehow hilarious.

Diaz and Paul Dano also pretty much play themselves, Diaz a spastic, goofy, leggy, and  occasionally moronic blonde named June and Dano a geeky boy-genius named Simon Feck, inventor of a Certs-pack-size battery, code-named Zephyr, that never runs out of energy.

The plot of the movie revolves around the Zephyr. Everyone wants it: Spanish arms dealers, the CIA (once again portrayed as corrupt) and of course Roy. Roy’s the only one left who wants to protect & preserve the inventor and the invented for honorable purposes, and June gets wrapped up in it all unwittingly. Action scenes ensue, along with a running gag of people getting drugged. Solid. Gotta love GHB jokes.

I love it when movies like this don’t take themselves too seriously. It embraces its physical impossibilities, its Dad jokes (“I have to be there. My little sister April is getting married. She’s April. I’m June. She’s Marching down the aisle…”) and its subtle references (Tom Cruise’s opening scene is him eating an ice cream cone–a nutty one–wink!). Sure, there’s not much chemistry between Cruise and Diaz, but how is anyone going to have chemistry with Cruise these days? It’s like having chemistry with Gary Busey. Frankly I would worry. Chemistry is overrated anyway, when there’s ridiculousness to be had. And with these reactants, plus Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, there’s perfect chemistry for that.

This is John Galt?: An editorial

The headline came up in my Google Reader a couple days ago: “Paul Johansson is John Galt.” What could this mean? Certainly they aren’t trying to make Atlas Shrugged into a movie. That would be stupid and ridiculous.

But of course, one should never underestimate the stupidity of their fellow countrymen. Because yes. They’re actually doing this. It’s not even “being optioned” or “in pre-production”; they’re currently filming the 1000+ page, ranting, philosophical magnum opus of a novel by probably the most controversial figure in literary history.

You know the one? It’s that one. The one with the 50-page speech that took me, in its denseness, about three days for me to read. The one whose overt ideology clashes head-on with that of almost every major Hollywood star. The one atop Modern Library’s “Readers List” of the 100 greatest novels of all time but nowhere to be found on the Board’s List. The one the Tea Partiers quote and misquote endlessly. The one hipsters fillet at every opportunity without having read it. The one whose main character was the inspiration for my best friend’s parents’ dog’s name. The most polarizing non-religious text in modern history.

But hey man, free speech, right?

I really hope I eat these words, but I think this thing is Doomed. Yeah, that’s right. I used a capital D there. Hope you like that. Why? Here’s the list:

A. It’s way too long. Supposedly, they’re cutting the book into parts, but, even in installments, it’s still going to require some major abridgment. No one has the attention span for 6 hours of movie anymore. Especially if the source material is a thinly veiled infomercial.

B. There are two giant speeches. Rand’s purpose in writing the book was to get the whole of her Objectivist philosophy across—something she didn’t quite do in The Fountainhead (which I personally think is better). There are two major speeches, one 20 pages long, and one 50 pages long (which I mentioned up top), that lay out that philosophy for the readers. If you take out those speeches, you miss the point of the whole thing. If you don’t take out those speeches…well, I’m sure as hell not watching that. To put it another way, leaving it in would be like making a Moby Dick movie and including all that shit about whales. Not putting it in would be like adapting Tropic of Cancer and leaving out all the sex.

C. There is a scary cult of Objectivists that will be scrutinizing every detail of this film. As was the case with “Watchmen” and “Harry Potter” and a few others, there are some rabid fans of this book. Insane, shortsighted fans. This is epic material that they’re working with. Whether you buy into Ayn Rand or not, the woman changed the world. Bio after bio has been written on her, study after study done on her work, and if you oversimplify or fuck up her philosophy, you’re going to be in serious shit with your core audience. Oversimplification is also dangerous in that it’s an extremist philosophy and if misunderstood, it could make people who buy into it do crazy things (but the movie will probably tank anyway, so we don’t have to worry too much).

D. The director is the One Tree Hill guy. No offense, but, as great as One Tree Hill is, it sucks. (And don’t call me a snob. I’m Supernatural’s #1 fan.) If the guy directing it is famous for acting in—not even directing—One Tree Hill, there’s no way he should be in charge of this epic-ass material. Especially if

E. There are no actors I’ve heard of in it. Not necessarily a terrible thing, but chances are better that they’re not very good actors. The woman playing the main character of the book, Dagny, has only a steady role in TV Drama Mercy under her belt. The other major roles are to be played by Johansson, the director himself; Grant Bowler, who was in several episodes of Ugly Betty; and Nick Cassavetes, whose credits include bit roles in the modern classics “Face/Off” and “Farticus.”

F. The movie is being rushed. I read a report that the anonymous CEO who bought the rights to it several years ago realized that the rights were about to run out, so he’s forced it into production and put it in the hands of someone who has no experience making truly ambitious films. If this little back story leaks, it’s going to spark off a super-annoying debate on whether or not it’s ironic.

If Ol’ One Tree can produce something fro this source material that’s non-idiotic and mildly entertaining, I will eat my CD case. This project would be too ambitious for Spielberg or Cameron or Nolan, let alone someone with 16 episodes of a CW program under his directorial belt.

I realize that I sound like a nasally antagonist in an underdog biopic right now, and I really hope I end up like one. Really, please, Johansson, prove me wrong. Clean the Augean Stables. Leave me speechless. Maybe I’ll start watching your show more often.

So this Rabbi walks into a club…

I don’t know if it’s racist, but my roommate and I sometimes refer to the Hasidic Jewish men in my neighborhood as “cowboys” because I once saw a group of them walking down the street at around sunset, and their hats and long jackets made their silhouettes look particularly Texan. Hopefully they’d take it as a compliment. Cowboys are cool, right?

It goes without saying, then, that the premise of “Holy Rollers” was especially fascinating to me; living in Crown Heights, I see Hasids every day, and yet I know very little about them.

The movie is based on the true story of a Hasidic smuggling ring, active in 1998, who imported over a million Ecstasy pills before they were caught. Basically, the ring leaders were using unassuming Orthodox Jews as “mules” to get past customs, exploiting their reputation for penitence and respect for law. How a movie was not made about these guys sooner is beyond me.

The expectation is that this movie will be funny. Orthodox Jewish drug smugglers. The kid from “Adventureland.” Justin Bartha. Q-Tip. A titular pun. All signs point to comedy. But the movie (fortunately) wasn’t straight laughs.

In the beginning there is God. That’s pretty much Sam’s (Jesse Eisenberg) life. He’s going to be a Rabbi. He’s engaged to be married, and he’s meeting with his future wife to discuss how many children they will produce. But before all that can happen, Yosef (Justin Bartha), his close friend Leon’s fractious, Nike-sporting older brother, offers Sam an opportunity to make “a bit of side cash” transporting “medicine.” Then it’s not too long before Sam is fully dissolved into the velvet-lined, strobe-lit, high-income trafficking world and lopping off his peyos, or what I, in my ignorance, call “dangle dreads.” But it means giving up everything else in the process–including his family.

This collision of two vastly different worlds had the potential to be very funny. So I respect the filmmakers  for their decision to not let this play out as a full-on comedy. There’s too much rich fodder to give it an ultra-lite treatment. In fact, in the end, I would’ve appreciated even more sobriety.

My only problem with this movie is that, with so many laughs thrown in, I wasn’t sure how seriously I could take the characters. About halfway through, we discover that this movie wasn’t really about its plot and its amusing premise, but about the pressures and tensions at work inside this very insular and enigmatic sect of Brooklynites. But it’s meant to be funny, so are these people I’m watching caricatures of the real thing? If I’m watching a cartoonified cultural study, what can I safely take from it? How much is real and how much hyperbole? Because of this film’s double identity, you never quite know. I went in to this movie knowing very little about my beardy neighbors. And unfortunately I’ve come out the same way.

Realistically, though, for this movie to have even the slightest chance to make money, it had to be what it is.

And, of course, it had to have a couple recognizable faces in it. One, Jesse Eisenberg, does an excellent job with his role of Sam. He plays the dramatic scenes with surprising believability—a feat his counterpart “name” actor, Justin Bartha, doesn’t quite carry out. Mr. Bartha is effective and funny in his rebel-Jew role, but when things get extra-sticky, he doesn’t let you forget that you’re watching a movie.

The fact that it’s based on a true story makes me want to see a documentary on it. Really, I just want to know more about these cowboys’ lives, and I don’t feel like I can rely on anything I’ve learned from “Holy Rollers.” It was a worthy appetizer though. I may have to resort to local espionage. Or maybe not.

Even Banksy is totally speechless

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”
—Mark Twain

I can see now why all the reviews I’ve seen of “Exit through the Gift Shop”  have been so vague.

You’ll read that this film is about a French guy who chases down the elusive, renowned British street artist, Banksy, and gets him on camera. But then Banksy cleverly turns the camera on the Frenchman, whom he regards as “more interesting” than himself.

All this is true. And this is probably the knowledge you should have when you buy a ticket for this one. No more, no less. You should be thinking, oh, a documentary on a documentarian. That’s clever, in a sort of postmodern, “meta-” way.

Then, when the movie takes a turn that, if made in fiction, would make everyone cry, “Implausable!”, you can be amused or horrified or saddened or embittered or whatever it is your heart presses you to be–with the rest of the audience.

Bansky says he directed the film the way he did because Thierry (the Frenchman) was more interesting. But really, while the obsessive, capricious Thierry is clearly lacking a chair or two from his dinette set, the most interesting thing Banksy was able to capture was the phenomenon of Thierry’s eventual “accomplishments.” (Epigraph.)

Just go see it. As I mentioned, Banksy turns the camera on the cameraman. But really, as you will find, it’s more like he turns it on us.

“The Losers” vs. Bucho Jr.

Max wears a white suit. Most of the time he wears a matching glove on one hand. He’s evil. He’s in control of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he wants to start wars. He plans to do this by…dissolving?…Los Angeles with some kind of new weapon that turns land masses into pixels and swirls them into non-existence. The effect they use would’ve made an awesome screen saver in the 90s.

In his way, though, is the titular assembly of screwed-over special-ops soldiers thought to have been toasted in a Bolivian-jungle helicopter “accident.” However, instead of killing the Losers, Max’s missile kills 25 or so children that they’d just saved from a bombing. Good thing. Otherwise, there’d have been no movie. (Unless you want to make a movie about Bolivian kindergartners, and who’s going to see that?)

So, you know, vengeance unto Max would be nice—he having tried to kill them and he having framed them for the death of 25 children—but they’re kind of stranded in Bolivia. So, like, whatever. The Losers get jobs as mechanics and place bets on cock fights. That is, until they meet the lithe and enigmatic Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who promises to get them out of there and back to the States as long as they can help her “get” Max. Shortly after her appearance, she exchanges roundhouse kicks with Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the hairy, barrel-chested leader of the gang, then later has slow-motion hair-tossing sex with him. As one would expect. (I’m beginning to think she only goes for white guys. Not that, as one, I have a problem with that.)

From here, it essentially turns into a caper movie. Each of the guys has a particular talent, a la the “Ocean’s” integers and “The Italian Job“—Pooch does heavy ballistics, Cougar does “long-range-elimination,” etc. And thus equipped, they take on the CIA. Or something. Normally, I love caper movies. But this one lacked the charm of its predecessors. There are a few chuckles, but the majority of the jokes fall flat to the point of me cringing alone in the dark.

What ruined this movie for me, though, was not entirely the bad dialogue. It was the fact that Max, the villain, was about as complex as a beach ball. I saw this same guy in “Desperado” didn’t I? Bucho? Anyone?

While he admittedly had some funny lines, his character is written with such blatant laziness that one just becomes insulted after awhile. There’s no psychology to him. At least Magneto and Ozymandias had semi-coherent motivations, and the Joker…well…he had clearly swum way out beyond the safe harbor of the Sanity Fjord. This “Max” was essentially a Captain Planet villain: directionless evil. A demon on a lily pad.

And of course, for the sake of posterity, he gets away at the end.

So it is not without grounds to expect a follow up. I’m hoping they don’t make their money back, or if they do they simply smile and thank the Higher Powers and run. “The Losers” wasn’t terrible, but still, we don’t need any more of them. Polluting and polluting is not the way.

“The Ghost Writer”: This way to the beef.

Rejoice! There’s a new Roman Polanski film! And everyone is singing and dancing. Not without good reason, either. It’s not every day that this particular talent makes something just for us. Epileptics beware…it’s a wink-fest.

In the great director’s latest, Ewan McGregor again plays the Embroiled Straight Man  (a la “Deception,” only his character isn’t as bright here), this time as the eponymous ghost writer for Adam Lang, a handsome, charismatic, but ostensibly vacuous former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan). Lang recently sold his memoirs for 10 million to a big NYC publishing house, but his original ghost writer has “drowned” in an “accident.” McGregor’s character, who remains nameless throughout the film, takes a lucrative offer to replace the dead guy and flies out to a nearby Martha’s Vineyard-esque island where Mr. Lang is staying. But thanks to some clues left behind by the original ghost writer, he finds himself knowing a little too much about Mr. Lang’s dubious past.

To further complicate things, word is getting out in the media that Lang is guilty of torture-related war crimes and is avoiding his return to England, where he would face prosecution in international courts. News cameras and protesters are now flooding the island—including one furiously vengeful old British vet brandishing a poster of his dead son.

Sounds good, right? It is.

“The Ghost Writer” is an entertaining, taut, suspenseful, well acted, and even occasionally funny thriller about international politics and corruption. The dialogue is smart, the pacing is on par, and the movie uses one of those annoying personal GPS units in a way that might be worth the ticket price by itself. Watching it was a good time. I can say that without any hesitation.

But here’s what I can’t say about it. I can’t say—and these are recycled words from one of the great dance critics of our time—that the meat was in the sandwich. No, the meat of “The Ghost Writer” was all over the kitchen. Let me explain what this means, and why it may not even be a bad thing to have let a few cold cuts escape the ciabatta.

Although I can’t claim to comprehend 100% the unfathomable depths of JC Chasez’s critical commentary on Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew, I took his phrase “The meat was in the sandwich” to mean this: everything this dance crew wanted us to see, they had just lain before us.

Now if you take out “dance crew” and replace it with “Polanski” this judgment would not hold up regarding this movie. Everything Polanski wanted us to see has not been lain before us. There were prerequisites.

The real clout and richness behind this movie–that is, what the critics have responded to–lies in knowing about what happened to Mr. Polanski himself in real life. Having pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in Los Angeles in 1977, he went into a sort of self-imposed exile in Europe to avoid sentencing, and has pretty much been there ever since. This whole situation is obviously mirrored by Adam Lang’s reluctance to return to England to face the courts, so this movie can be viewed as Mr. Polanski’s commentary on his own situation.

And the exophoric shin-kicking does not end there. There are also obvious parallels between Adam Lang and real-life Tony Blair and subtler references to real-life scandals involving Dick Cheney’s Halliburton corporation as well.

So is this bonus material? Extra credit? Read any of the reviews of this movie and this is what they talk about—Polanski’s coy subversion. There’s something to be said for it, for sure. That same sort of subversion is what made “District 9” so well received last year. There’s art in threading your message, or your plaint, or whatever it may be, into a slick, commercially successful package and disseminating it to the public.

I don’t want to give anyone the idea that this wasn’t a good movie; it certainly was. But I think Mr. Polanski may have overdone it this time. There’s too much pointing and nudging. So much that “The Ghost Writer” starts to feel like a vessel for Mr. Polanski to discuss his politics and personal problems through allusions, and I can’t help but wonder what this movie would have been if the focus weren’t so much on the things outside of the movie’s world. It’s hard to evaluate this film without certain prior knowledge about the director, and that very fact makes me question its foundations. It could very well be hollow in there.

Personally, I prefer more of my meat in the sandwich. Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s something conceited about requiring an audience to know something about your personal life to fully appreciate your movie. But then again, there’s that old dictum: “write what you know.” And then there’s the assertion that true art makes its audience work…

I’m just saying that the work shouldn’t be “Google me.”