Movie Review: Mr. Woodcock 7/10

Billy Bob Thornton, Seann William Scott, Susan Sarandon
Director: Craig Gillespie

Before taking out the DVD I had my reservations about watching this flick. More than one reviewer gave it a paltry 5.5/10. Why bother? Well, having seen it, I think it’s worth the bother if you still have a bone to pick with one (or more) of your teachers.

When I was in High school I had a mathematics teacher; we called him Flash Venter. He was almost always red-faced, sweating and smoked like a chimney. Flash was feared by all, despised by some, and universally respected for his ruthless mathematical precision.

I remember his opening speech on our first day in his class. We were so frightened the class was covered in frost on that January day. We were ordered to keep our eyes fixed on him at all times. No daydreaming. No distractions. I glanced down at my pencil tip 30 minutes later and suddenly found myself hanging by my own tie (literally). He said: “Van der Leek, what did I just say?” “Sir, do you expect us to look at you the entire time, every single day?” And so the scene was set for mortal conflict between us over the next 5 years. I would later have my school case emptied out the window for packing up a moment too soon.

At one point I found myself playing for the men’s second hockey team, but he was the coach, so I made sure I played badly enough to get dropped from the pressure-cooker so I could go back to playing for the third team. The kickers came in matric though. Just before an important swimming race, as I was about to mount the blocks, he said something like: “You may be useless at maths van der Leek, but you can swim all right.”
And after a matric exam a bunch of us were talking and from the front of the hall, and it was a big hall, he said: “Van der Leek, shutup, get up, and go to the office.”

Mr. Woodcock is basically about your mom hooking up with a teacher like Flash. Not something you would wish on your mom, or worse, yourself. John Farley (Seann William Scott) a young author of a successful self-help book (called Letting Go) find himself in exactly this position when he returns home to find mom (Susan Sarandon) getting cosy with none other than Mr. Woodcock (Thornton). There’s a classical scene in a diner when John informs his mates that their ex-teacher is going out with his mother.

The flick is hilarious and, it must be said, somewhat contrived. The worst thing about Mr. Woodcock is the title, but Woodcock isn’t called Woodcock for nothing either. The poster could have been better too – it makes one wonder: “Is this a movie about basketball?” It’s not.

Essentially it’s another brilliant comedy performance by Seann William Scott (Stiffler in American Pie, and opposite Keanu reeves in Dude Where’s My Car). Craig Gillespie directs with rib poking precision. If you have some awful memories of High school (I sure do) you will enjoy this film enormously, and learn to lighten up at the same time.

The Heartbreak Kid – Movie Review

Finding someone worthy - of making The Great Vow that is the marriage vow - that’s the trick

The New York Times calls it a 'lame, long, ugly joke of a movie'. The joke's on them. It's a fabulously funny flick, although some of it is in shockingly bad taste.

Count on Ben Stiller and the Farrelly Brothers (There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, Kingpin) to be involved in the show and tell for this outlandish but hilarious story. If you need a pick-me-upper, The Heartbreak Kid does not disappoint. It really does the job of handing out those deep belly, laugh out loud tickles, and maybe it does so because it slides so frequently across that line (on the way to opposite extremes of traditional decency) that some of us conventionally walk.

The Farrelly Brothers pump up the volume on what is probable, and then add their version of toilet humor – I’d dub it porno humor – to their captivating plot. There are some surprisingly daring nude shots, which made me wonder, for a few split seconds, if I was suddenly watching a blue movie, with Ben Stiller’s face chopped out and attached to a gyrating naked male torso.

But it’s not a bad story, and the characters, especially the Uncle Tito (Carlos Mencia) - the hotel’s Mexican sleazebag with the moustache, Stiller’s spineless brother Mac (Rob Corddry) and his his love interest’s – Miranda’s – baseball wielding cousin Michael (Joel Bryant) are spot on. Stiller’s blonde wife Lila (Malin Akerman) sounds a lot like Cameron Diaz, and she does transition to the ditz like a pro. The jellyfish scene will cause most people to do a huge double take. Good luck with that. Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) plays the attractive brunette who temps the luckless Eddie Cantrow (Stiller) on his honeymoon nogal. Is Eddie's surname a play on the words 'can't row' - as in, 'can't face confrontations'? Monaghan does her bit to charm, playing the comparative likable ‘good girl’ wonderfully well.

Subplots include a brilliant series of parodied attempts at crossing illegally into America and a pair of young brats who add elements of havoc at opportune moments. There’s a lot more besides.

I suppose what the movies message is that love is going to make a mess of your life, however carefully you approach it or try to insulate or insure yourself. Love will bring you warm and fuzzy feelings, it will rescue and restore important parts of you, but it will also wrench out your guts, vomit on them until you’re fully humiliated and embarrassed. Against this background we need to open ourselves, and move courageously forward, still able to be embraced for who we are, and to outward looking, sharing and embracing an important other .

The twist at the movies’ end is perhaps the most realistic moment of all. I felt it. At some point we have to realize that we have to choose between making excuses and making a commitment.

NVDL rating: 8/10

The Times Tomatometer gives this movie a 3/10 rating. I guess your enjoyment of this flick depends on whether your a Stiffler (as in 'Dude, Where's My Car?') or a Stickler (as in 'Stick in the Mud').

Memorable quote:

Doc: So, what's new Eddie? Anything exciting?
Eddie Cantrow: Ah, yeah, we just got those new Nike Sasquatch drivers in the store, so that's been kind of cool.
Doc: Let me rephrase the question. You been crushin' any pussy?

The next five movies on my list are:
I am The Legend
Beowulf
3:10 to Yuma
The Hills Have Eyes
The 11th Hour

Faith Like Potatoes

Put your faith elsewhere: this local film doesn't deserve it

October 27, 2006

By Theresa Smith

Director: Regardt van den Bergh
Cast: Francois Rautenbach, Jeanne Wilhelm, Hamilton Dhlamini, Sean Cameron Michael
Running time: 111 minutes
Classification: PG L
Rating: 5/10

It's been a while since a film with such an overt Christian message was released on the main circuit. The story is based on the life of Angus Buchan (Francois Rautenbach of 7de Laan fame), a Zambian farmer who left behind the land grabs and politics to set up a new farm in KwaZulu-Natal.

With the help of foreman Simeon Benghu (natural performance from Hamilton Dhlamini), he carved out a place for his family, but it is only once he asked the Lord into his life that things started going right.

The title alludes to the faith a potato farmer has to have that the vegetable is growing. Only at harvest time does he find out whether his faith was justified.

Unfortunately our faith in director Regardt van den Bergh is not justified. The film is beautifully filmed, but the wooden acting.and stilted dialogue let it down. Rautenbach's overblown acting is just too much.

The transition between his "I hate black people" Zambian farmer to "love thy neighbour" South African preacher is sudden, and while he goes melodramatic in emotional scenes, Jeanne Wilhelm (wife, Jill) is so impassive she might as well not be there.

The film is supposed to be about how faith has changed this man's life, but we never see how or why.

It would have made better sense if there was more about the process of change in his personality and less of the set up of how he got into this particular state.

If you can watch a televangelist faith-heal someone and not blink an eye but lift your hands to the Lord, you will love this. Otherwise, you are going to wince.

While the message of Christian love and tolerance is a beautiful one, hitting the audience over the head with it because your film lacks subtlety and character progression just turns them away.

Movie Review: Transformers

Movie Review: Transformers

Transformers is all spectacle. It’s a non-stop cigarette commercial, and in the same way that ciggie commercials are now banned (for being manipulative and inappropriate) Transformers is, for all the eye candy and distinctive Michael Bay action sequences, incredibly shallow.

A 7 year old boy sat three seats from us, on the edge of his seat for the WHOLE movie. He was shaking his little fist, crying “WOOOOW” and just totally taken in by it. I may not be 7, but I get it. As a kid I consumed every Robotech episode on TV, often recording and replaying the same episode over and over. I also had my own Zoid toys (not quite rip-offs of the original Transformers). And since Steven Spielberg was involved in the making of Transformers, I get the wish-fulfillment for children thing. Problem is, Transformers pretends to be all grown up when its primary audience is still barely out of kindergarten. Perhaps the idea is to say, hey, this is for all the children out there (even the children hiding inside grown ups). That’s fine, but even children need the value of a story well told. The messages In Transformers are dissident and dodgy.

Here’s a summary of the story:
Once upon a time there’s a geeky smart-mouthed loser boy.
Geeky loser meets sexy girl.
Sexy girl (understandably) not interested in geeky boy.
Geeky boy gets super toy and shows it to sexy girl.
Sexy girl likes super toy and accepts geeky boy.
Sexy girl and geeky boy live happily ever.

Director Michael Bay needs to go back to film school. Not to hone his skill as a filmmaker, but to learn how to tell a story. There is nothing wrong with Bay’s craft; he is the king of cool, doing great promotional work for the US Air Force, Burger King, Toys R Us and Cosmopolitan. But that’s what’s wrong with this flick. We don’t go to the movies (or expect young children) to watch beautifully crafted commercials, and that’s what Transformers is. Surprise surprise, Bay’s background is making commercials, but he really needs to move beyond that now and start making movies that tell a story.

Could this flick have been better executed using better actors? Doubtful. The actors, even the new faces, did a great job portraying one dimensional caricatures. There is no character development through the whole flick: the soldiers start off gung ho and remain gun ho, the parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are typecast as annoying ignoramuses, the sexy girl, Mikaela (Megan Fox) remains sexy - there’s an attempt to complicate matters with a criminal record, but then this is withdrawn - Sam, the geeky boy (Shia LaBeouf ) maintains too high pheromone levels throughout and the defense secretary (played by Jon Voigt) manages just one small step - making the predictable leap to trusting an Aussie blonde and one of the black genius sons from Me, Myself and Irene. The problem then is the story.

The story revolves around a machine face-off: the Autobots vs the Deceptogons. Any guess who are the goodies and the baddies? Exactly. Amazingly, they are able to draw energy out of thin air, and to top that, have inexhaustible weaponry. The laws of the universe are turned inside out here, where no matter how much the Transformers are battered, beaten and blown up, they always come through in mint condition; not a single scratch. Even small children ought to know better than that.

There’s an interesting scene where the father of young Sam takes him to buy a car; drives by a line of Porches, and offers to buy his son a second hand car (for around $5000). As in the real world, the son wants something for nothing, but his father didactically insists on a cheap, second hand car for a start. It’s one of the most immature elements of this flick, that while driving through a tunnel in the car, the girl makes a disparaging remark about the car, and voila, the car transforms itself into a shining dream car. A logical transition if your film audience is 7 years old and younger.

Another image that hints at an overly juvenile mindset is the protracted search through the house for a pair of glasses. While this scene had its moments, the most compelling image was really of a dolls house, with Transformer toys hiding under and around it, while the lego parent peeks out of the doll house window in the upstairs bedroom.

If the stars of the show are the Transformers themselves then why do we see, for example, Optimus Prime blinking? Do machines need to blink? Do they need to explain to each other why we are worth saving (machines telling us we are ‘good’, according to a machine code of conduct?)
The most damaging message in this movie is the idea that people (parents) can be replaced by things, and that things, can provide you with people (girlfriends). The parents in this movie are represented with scorn and disdain, the robots, with their deep voices, play the considerate, intelligent and warm protectors, and even a close friend is ‘expendable’ in the effort to ‘get the girl’.
There were some Machine World flashes from The Matrix, and if one wants to be extra critical, the yellow Chevy reminds us of something out of Fast and Furious, and I’m not sure if the hero LaBeouf was anyone’s cup of tea.

Steven Spielberg spent a lot of time on filmmaking larks, enjoyable but fanciful films like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then he made the transition to memorable and meaningful flicks like The Terminal, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich and Minority Report. Michael Bay is no doubt a crafted filmmaker, but he could do with a few notes out of Spielberg’s Moviemaking Guidebook.

Like Bay’s The Island, Transformers is an interesting concept, and possibly Michael Bay was trying his darndest just to entertain the whole family. A simple strategy then: simply unleash endless spectacle. It succeeds in being entertaining, it does, but for the amount of time, money and attention, it is outrageously devoid of anything meaningful or important to say. Today the messages conveyed by this sort of entertainment (like getting something for nothing) are particularly vulgar and distasteful.

The best metaphor for this story lies in the title, and the possibility was always there to write a deeper story about engaging the human condition, and demonstrating our need to upgrade our behavior. The writers could have maintained the action and spectacle, but added more convincing elements like multi-dimensional characters, characters with conscience, people who in the course of the story, truly change and learn and grow up. The movie critically avoids confronting the imperative we are currently faced with: to transform the world into a better place by first transforming themselves.

Running time: 2 hr. 24 min
Rated PG-13

Thor and Mjolnir*

I am a huge fan of DC Comics characters and as a small boy I thought after the first Superman movie we'd see something like what we're only seeing today. It's taken a long time for the Batman, Spiderman, X-men franchises to emerge. What about the Flash, and Green Lantern, Wonderwoman, Shazam, Thor etc etc. I still don't understand why the majority of movies aren't based on comic books (eg action with superheroes). Wasn't Spiderman 2 the most successful movie of all time? Doesn't that say something?
Instead we've had pretend comic characters like James Bond (super spy), recently XXX and Jason Bourne (super spies), and on TV, Knight Rider (super car) and Airwolf (super helicopter).

It's an old trick when introducing the genre that you save the best for last. In other words, you introduce the alien or the new character in the last 3rd of the movie.

Problem is in this film (Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer) you hardly ever see the Silver Surfer. The character himself is amazing, but unfortunately most of the time in this movie is spent preparing for a wedding. Yawn.... I've give this movie a 6, but if you're a tweeny, you might think it's worth a slightly more fantastic score.

*From Wiki.com: In Norse mythology, Mjolnir (also spelled Mjölnir, Mjöllnir, Mjollner, Mjølnir, Mjølner, or Mjölner) (IPA pronunciation: [mjolnər]) is the hammer of Thor, the god of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain.

"Mjolnir" simply means "mealer" referring to its pulverizing effect. It is related to words such as the Icelandic verbs mölva (to crush) and mala (to grind), but similar words, all stemming from the Proto-Indo-European root melə can be found in almost all European languages, e.g. the Slavic melvo (grain to be ground) and molotu (hammer), the Dutch meel (meal), the Russian Молот (molot - hammer), the Greek μύλος (mylos - mill) and the Latin malleus (hammer) as well as the Latin mola (mill).

The English meal, mill and maul are direct relatives, while mallet and molar arrived via Latin. It has been suggested that although the name reflects Mjolnir's awesome powers it might also allude to Thor's agricultural nature, as he was primarily worshipped by farmers. An alternative theory suggests that Mjolnir might be related to the Russian word молния (molniya) and the Welsh word mellt (both words being translated as "lightning"). This second theory parallels with the idea that Thor, being a god of thunder, therefore might have used lightning as his weapon.[1]


Overview
Mjolnir is the most fearsome weapon in the arsenal of the Norse pantheon and is used to slay any challengers to Æsir supremacy. While referred to as a club, an axe, and a hammer, Mjolnir was thought to be capable of toppling giants and entire mountains with a single blow.[2] Legend surrounding the war hammer’s origins vary: some relate that "The Black Elves" (that live under the ground where the roots of Yggdrasil begin to form, in Svartalfheimr; svartalf being a dwarf or "black elf"), Sindri and Brokk made it at the behest of the calculating Loki; other tales contend that it descended to earth as a meteorite. Consequently, many Norse pagans believed that lightning strikes were a manifestation of Mjolnir on earth.

Mjolnir is often represented with a bent handle (see the myth below). The rune Tiwaz, usually thought to be a symbol of the god Tyr, is thought by some to represent Thor's hammer. Mjolnir may also mean fertility, the phallus that impregnates the earth.

Sometimes Thor's Hammer is like a "boomerang". Usually, it is used as normal war hammer. There may be a connection between Thor's throwing hammer and the francisca throwing axes of the Franks.

Movie Review: Babel

A gritty flick about the fragility of human life just beyond our comfort zones

Director: Alejandro González Inárritu
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett
Script: Guillermo Arriaga

This flick is something like watching specific motorists on an expressway. At first it’s a bizarre thing to do, a strange selection of mostly unknown characters, and a bizarre place to be, until you realize each is heading towards their own private car wreck. It is frightening just how easily lives that may seem so safe and secure, can completely unravel. The lives in Babel have almost nothing in common, except of course the Expressway in this metaphor. In the movie, you’ll see how the characters are related and why.

This is an unconventional flick, just as the title suggests. Yes, it does have a golden thread linking Japan to the desert of Northern Africa, to Mexico and San Diego, but this cohesiveness, while sensible, isn’t essential. Each of the 4 stories are powerful stories on their own, and sewn together for an elaborate Cautionary Tale on how easily the easy lives we know in the West can be torn asunder.

What I enjoyed about Babel were the far flung settings, and the gritty reality. There is something tremendously disconcerting for Westerners to see themselves made so helpless and in fact terrified, to simply be in the sterile and hard environment other people live in every single day. The director places some of his main characters in the desert, where they fuss about wanting a Diet Coke, and argue about the purity of ice cubes clinking around in their cokes when they do arrive. Western values are shown in stark contrast to the absolute destitution that surrounds them, where people scratch a living among rocks and houses made with mud. The locals are about as poor as people can be; they trade in the carcasses of goats, and yet open their homes to complete strangers, wanting nothing in exchange.

It is interesting to see that after the ‘American woman’ – Susan – (played by Cate Blanchett) is shot, the local police race over the mountains in a convoy of police vehicles, while the poor woman practically bleeds to death because there are no ambulances available. Susan’s husband Richard (played by an understated and graying Brad Pitt) is desperate but helpless to get her to safety. Perhaps someone could have conveyed to the overeager police force that instead of hunting possible human perpetrators, instead of beating out confessions from innocent civilians, they might first try to save the life that is at stake. The Mexican maid who says she has worked for 16 years in America, faces a similarly crazy legal conundrum. So this flick stabs a finger at human sensibilities, in particular, at the absurdities behind our laws and punishments, and especially at our lack of humanity and common sense towards our fellow human beings.

In the end, one errant bullet creates a crack in the eggshell of safety that protects human beings from each other, and through that crack the monsters that lie within emerge to wreck what is left of the vulnerable yolk that is meant to connect us to each other. The director could have made this a much more tragic movie than it is. But yes, human weakness is exposed here on a disturbing scale.

The metaphor covers full circle when a prosecuting officer, whose job is to pursue the mere serial number of a weapon and apparently nothing else, encounters a naked, deaf girl in an apartment. He sees her first reflected in the glass of the apartment, and then he sees her more clearly. He is called to respond, but he is frozen; his portfolio prevents him from doing so. The Japanese girl is desperate for warmth and affection, yet the officer remains cold, and locked in his mandate and his uniform, impotent to her silent cry for solace and comfort, but somehow aware of his own impotence, and also his own yearning for the same.

It is a moving image, the young naked female form, hovering in the space high above the city, the same spot where her own mother jumped to her death. The question is put before us: will we reach out to one another in time to save ourselves and those around us?

Movie Review: Venus

It’s the end of an old man’s life, but the human heartstrings hum with the very last and best of this life’s beauty, humor and meaning

Peter O’Toole plays a veteran actor who although famous, respected and well liked, knows his life is coming to an end. It is a courageous role, perhaps not so far from the truth, but moments of austerity are tempered by moments of exquisiteness, subtlety, wit and funniness. Above all, this is an intelligent and evocative flick.

If you are reluctant to see a film about an old timer, don’t be. O’ Toole, who 3 years ago received an honorary Oscar (basically a lifetime achievement award), famously declared that he wasn’t done; that he had a lot of acting left in him. Well, here is the proof of the pudding.

It is a powerful film simply because you really do believe the old man doesn’t have long to live. And there is entropy setting in. In an early scene he is sitting on a bed, alone, in the quiet of his room. Then one is startled by Maurice, this elegant old man violently slapping his own face and bellowing, growling to himself: “GET UP OLD MAN.”
Will we grow old with a similar resistance to our own slowing down; will we resist our own systematic decay and giving up with such passion and vigor?

While some elements will deplore the subject matter of this flick – a very old man becoming obsessed, even falling in love with a young woman more than half a century younger, who moves in with his sometimes crotchety best friend – more discerning movie goers will realize that a much deeper message is conveyed. Values such as friendship, consideration and appreciation of fellow human beings are portrayed in an unusual setting: the gray and drab of London.

This flick is an important lesson, even a reality check. After all, everyone will get old and lose their attractiveness, but is anyone ever too old to be attracted to youth and beauty? In a sense we see the tremendous courage of an old man, who woos the young girl somewhat tongue in cheek (by offering to pay for her dress in an exclusive store by proffering a clipping of his friend’s toenail). We’re amused at his attempts to make some extra money (both for himself and for her). The old man is sometimes helplessly charmed, other times pathetically manipulated. One of the funniest scenes is him falling off a bucket (rather than kicking it) and into a room filled with painters and easels.

The scene where the old man waits for her on the pier is particularly poignant; we have all done that. Waited desperately for someone, even long after it is obvious that they are not going to arrive.

One aspect that irked me a little was his calling his muse (played by Jodie Whittaker) Venus. But having ruminated on this for a while, it not seems that it would hardly have the same effect if he called her by some other name. Perhaps the adoption of the name, and her acceptance of it, could have been done better. It’s arguable, because somehow the clever script may have made us intentionally uncomfortable with such a quick deification of what at first appears to be an ordinary-on-the-surface, obnoxious, always hungry, pretty but cocky young lady. Thus it is with artful flourishes that we see her transform into Venus, not only outwardly in the final scene, but we’re privy to powerful inward changes that reach out and touch, in delicate strokes, the empty spaces in us that most films never probe.

It’s regrettable that some people have dubbed this an ‘art’ film. Possibly, some young parents might not like the idea (having not seen the film) of their young daughters hanging around with the stereotypical ‘dirty old man’. But every man is the old man (or will be some day), and every woman is the beautiful young girl (at some stage). Although Venus may seem somewhat sinister, it’s really about the metaphor that this young woman represents. After all, Ian (Leslie Phillips) the old man she looks after (and Maurice’s best friend) cannot stand her, and yet the other old man sees so much, everything in her, and is desperate just to be in her company. And it is interesting to see how she responds to someone so mature, whom she can talk to about important and unimportant things.

Loneliness is an almost certain fate for old people, even if they have their spouses with them. Venus represents youth at its most pristine, beauty as a fragile source of tremendous power, yet she is introduced with her rough-around-the-edges charm, in a world similar imperfect, but also wonderful. It is this world that the old man, Maurice, must leave behind. But flaws are also charming, especially once we see how much a thing, a person, that is loved and cared for, can transform itself from what it is not, and into what it truly is.

Inside all of us is a lover, an athlete, a dancer, a poet, a teacher, a romantic, a husband or a wife, a fighter, a friend, a victim, a worker, and then, also, a dreamer. The film seems to suggest that it is the dreams of love that we must pursue, and the dreams of life we must set out to live while we are alive and strong. When the long years of our lives have gone, will we have the vigor to confidently acknowledge the beauty we see, that tugs as powerfully and as painfully as it ever did, and will we still act on it knowing how little life left is left in our bodies?

It’s likely that many who see this film will find themselves grateful for the beauty and power of their own youth, and pausing the next time they kiss a loved one, or touch another’s hands, or walk barefoot into the cold foam of a beach.

Released by Miramax, directed by Roger Michell; written by Hanif Kureishi,

Cast:
Maurice - Peter O'Toole
Ian - Leslie Phillips
Valerie - Vanessa Redgrave
Donald - Richard Griffiths
Jessie - Jodie Whittaker
Jillian - Cathryn Bradshaw
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.
MPAA rating: R, for language, some sexual content and brief nudity

Movie review: 'Venus'
By Michael Wilmington
Tribune movie critic

O'Toole achieves poignancy not by groping for our heartstrings but by honestly revealing Maurice's weakness and lost stature, by showing the raging charmer beneath the aging flesh.

Maurice, by contrast, is stooped and delicate, with a sneaky, crumbling little smile. He looks weak, weary. But this is a performance. We have only to recall last year's "Lassie," where O'Toole was the more robust and commanding Duke of Rudling, to realize he's playing fragility rather than succumbing to it on screen.

Movie Review: Venus

By Kenneth Turan, Times Staff Writer

Three years ago, Peter O'Toole expressed dismay at receiving an honorary Oscar, saying he was "still in the game." The transporting performance he gives in "Venus" proves that he was not kidding.

Told with wit, genuine poignancy and all kinds of humor, "Venus" (opening Thursday) charts the unlikely relationship between a man in his 70s and a young woman more than half a century his junior. This is a relationship unlike any we've seen, and it's a measure of the film's subtle gifts that it is easier to watch it unfolding than to precisely define what we're seeing.

For though it looks to be about things fleeting and ephemeral, "Venus" touches, without forcing anything, on what matters most in life: love, friendship, connection. It's about aging and what keeps you alive, about the getting and passing on of the wisdom of a lifetime. And it is done with such surpassing skill on both sides of the camera that we can't help but marvel at it all.It starts with the work of two of Britain's most adroit film professionals, screenwriter Hanif Kureishi and collaborator-director Roger Michell.

Kureishi, whose credits include "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "My Son the Fanatic," has come up with a smartly written script that excels in character-based dialogue so tart it is as much fun to read on the page as it is to see performed. And director Michell — previously responsible for "Notting Hill" as well as "Persuasion," the best of the Jane Austen adaptations — knows how to produce exactly calibrated line readings that get all the juice out of deliciously offbeat lines like: "Oh, just kill them, kill the young, exterminate their disgusting happiness and hope."

The main attraction on screen, obviously, is the seven-time Oscar-nominated O'Toole, who at 74 uses a lifetime of talent, craft and simply living to turn the part of an aging actor who forms a connection with a young woman into a master class of lovely and seemingly effortless screen acting.

Equally impressive though easier to overlook is the work of Jodie Whittaker, who graduated from London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama just a year ago. She brings a deft ability to play all the at-times contradictory aspects of a constantly changing character that the film would be lost without.It's O'Toole's character, Maurice Russell, a London-based actor who considers himself "a little" famous, we meet first, and it is something of a shock. Given our collective memory of the O'Toole of "Lawrence of Arabia," it is wrenching to see Maurice sitting on his bed, rumpled and fragile and without the will to get up until he slaps himself hard and says, "Come on, old man."

But though Maurice is having trouble with his prostate and is reduced to playing dead people on TV ("typecasting," jokes his ex-wife Valerie, an incandescent Vanessa Redgrave), he is still very much of a charmer, someone with a face that loves the limelight and eyes that retain a bright rakish light.

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Maurice is in the habit of spending time with fellow codger Ian (Leslie Phillips), comparing pills and trading sharp cracks. Then his friend announces that his grandniece is coming to London from the north to help look after him. Or so he thinks.For Jessie (Whittaker) turns out to be no one's idea of a caregiver, least of all her own. Surly, self-centered and willful, a prodigious drinker with a coarse tongue, she is the type that soon makes Ian "scream for euthanasia."

However, Maurice, who considers himself "a scientist of the female heart," is intrigued.

It is a given that Maurice and Jessie, who he soon dubs "Venus," are going to get along better than either one of them anticipates, but almost nothing else about their relationship goes the way either they or audiences can anticipate.For one thing, Maurice is too old to have anything more than what he calls "a theoretical interest" in the opposite sex, but that theoretical interest takes some potent turns. Also, neither one of this pair is a noticeably sweet person, and that shared prickliness and the bite of Kureishi's writing keep things from getting anywhere close to maudlin or sentimental.

Finally, it becomes evident that what motivates Maurice is not lechery but a kind of yearning envy of Jessie's youth and a longing for his own. Both Maurice and Jessie are, to borrow a phrase from the script, "in the habit of putting their own pleasure first," and to see them first clash and then go beyond their difficulties is, frankly, a marvel.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com"Venus." MPAA rating: R, for language, some sexual content and brief nudity.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Movie Review: World Trade Centre

Movie Review By Peter Travers

Oliver Stone has made a cautious, earnestly factual and emotionally unassailable film about two Port Authority cops, Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) and John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), who were among the last of the twenty survivors pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11. What he has not made is an Oliver Stone movie.

Good news for those opposed to seeing an inspiring true story in the hands of a nut-job conspiracy theorist (JFK, Nixon). But for those of us who recognize the rigorous talent in Stone (Platoon, Salvador) as well as his reckless abuse of it (Natural Born Killers, Alexander), there's little joy in seeing him morph into Ron Howard to play it safe at the box office.

Much has already been made of the fact that Paramount, the studio releasing World Trade Center, has hired Creative Response Concepts to curry favor for the film among conservatives and the Christian right. It seems to be working. Bad boy Stone is earning raves from right-wing pundits who once would have merrily burned him at the stake.

Is Stone going soft to revive his flagging career? Only in the sense that there's no politics in World Trade Center, except for the marketing, and that the trapped cops never curse their fates, and every American on view behaves honorably.

Though Stone has cleaned up his act, there is still a fire in him to italicize the profound significance of this intimate story. In one of the film's rare showoff shots, Stone and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (The Hours) have the camera rise from the rubble to take in the Manhattan skyline and then up and up till it reaches a satellite beaming the news that will shake the world.

Still, it's in the smaller moments that the film shines. Stone's focus on the men in the rubble is characteristically intense. And the actors perform beyond the call of duty. Cage is riveting and resonant as Sgt. McLoughlin , a veteran cop who has spent a dozen years patrolling the towers, though nothing, not even the 1993 bombing, has prepped him for this. He and his team of four volunteers, including Jimeno -- Pena delivers on his breakthrough in Crash with a performance of grit and grace -- are there to help. But how?

The question becomes moot when both are trapped under an avalanche of concrete and steel, barely able to move in a confined space. Lesser actors would be daunted by the task of conveying emotional nuance in the dark, immobile and covered with ash. But Cage and Pena rise to the challenge as McLoughlin and Jimeno keep themselves awake -- sleep could lead to coma and death -- by trading stories even as the hope of rescue fades. Jimeno, who has visions of Jesus, tells of wanting to be a cop since he was a kid watching Starsky and Hutch on the tube. Later, both men hum the show's jaunty theme to break the tension. The telling details -- McLoughlin's tardiness in building a kitchen for his wife, Donna (a quietly devastating Maria Bello), Jimeno arguing about baby names with his pregnant wife, Allison (a tightly wound Maggie Gyllenhaal) -- become a lifeline.

Stone cuts from the men to their families at home, waiting for news, any news.
This material could have played like a by-the-numbers docudrama. But the script, by newcomer Andrea Berloff, who worked with both couples to get the details right, has the sting of reality to work against any sugarcoating. For the rescue (the set was built in Playa Vista, California), Stone used medics and firefighters who were actually on the scene.

Among the actors, Stephen Dorff scores as EMS officer Scott Strauss. And Michael Shannon is indelible in the incredible role of Staff Sgt. David Karnes, a former Marine who quits his accounting job on a call from God to head for Ground Zero.

If Stone overdoes the rah-rah, it's hard to blame him. The film is a salute to heroes who could have easily walked away. Unlike Paul Greengrass' piercing United 93, which detailed the events of 9/11 with potent provocation, World Trade Center takes the point of view of two men with no clear idea of what's going on. "What happened to the buildings?" asks Jimeno when his rescuers lift him out of the hole. The deeper implications of those words raise hot-button issues that Stone has tabled for now. His film is undeniably affecting, but you leave it wanting more.
PETER TRAVERS

Meet The Robinsons

from www.worstpreviews.com:

Theatrical Review:

When it looked like Disney and Pixar were about to part ways a few years back, Disney decided to ramp up its own 3-D animation studio in order to keep putting these lucrative movies on the market. The results (Chicken Little, for example) have been lackluster so far, but after years of effort it finally looks like Disney has again figured out how to make animated movies that work... just in time to complete its multi-billion dollar acquisition of Pixar.

Now that they're all one company, I'm not sure what the future holds for Disney's in-house animation studio, but Meet the Robinsons will probably be the best thing it ever produces, no matter what happens at this point. But that's not damning with faint praise: Meet the Robinsons is really a great film that I unilaterally recommend.

Based on a children's book from William Joyce, the story tells us of an orphan named Lewis who's far more interested in inventing crazy things than playing baseball with other kids. Sadly, his inventions never work right, and various mishaps have conspired to keep him unadopted on the eve of his 13th birthday. Lewis decides to create a machine that can recall lost memories (so he can track down the mother who gave him up), but his science fair unveiling ends with the predictable room full of chaos.

Then things get really nutty: An evil genius (well, not so much a genius) from the future arrives to abscond with the invention, as does a young boy named Wilbur Robinson, who brings Lewis with him back to the future. Here, the adventure continues, with Lewis meeting Wilbur's eccentric family, and battling the evil "bowler hat guy" who stole his experiment. (One of the best villains ever, he keeps his master plan in a unicorn-logo binder.) Eventually he'll discover the meaning of all of this and what it all has to do with him.

For a kiddie flick, it's actually a complex little film, with shades of Back to the Future and The Matrix running throughout. However the movie never feels derivative. By keeping things light and avoiding such concerns as what could happen when you meet your future/past self, Meet the Robinsons remains a pretty feathery adventure. And yet, surprisingly, the movie has plenty of depth that will resonate with grown-ups. Robinsons humor is far more intelligent than the juvenile puns of, say, Finding Nemo: A T-Rex bemoaning his "giant head and little arms" -- in subtitles -- is a highlight, as are crooning frogs that are subtly revealed to be gangsters, complete with a dark suits, a Cadillac, and a tire iron in the trunk.

More importantly, its messages about failure being a learning experience (and something to be celebrated) and the importance of a good support network put most animated movies to shame. I was actually touched by Lewis's emotional journey while being thrilled by the film's actual adventure. And to think... this movie might actually get kids interested in science.

My focus on the film's few non-human characters shouldn't make you think the movie is replete with talking beasts cracking wise. Wilbur's extended family stands in for the usual movie sidekicks, and for the most part they're (animated) flesh and blood. That said, the future is obviously a weird place -- and a curvy, '50s-inflected, pastel-colored utopia -- so giant octopi and lanky robots are par for the course. And while the film might very well have been better off without the surfeit of excess characters that parade throughout the movie's second act, it would be hard to imagine Meet the Robinsons without, well, the Robinsons.

Technically speaking, the movie is crisply animated and pretty to look at. It doesn't push any CGI boundaries, instead settling into a hyperrealistic cartoony style, which works just fine here. That said, you'll see plenty of fine detail in Lewis's spiky hair and myriad places where you can get lost in the futuristic eye candy. I also had the luxury of seeing the film in Disney Digital 3D (it'll be on about 600 screens in this format) and was extremely impressed with its effectiveness. Frankly I can't imagine seeing the movie in regular 2D now.

The celebrity voices are kept to a minimum, and all the major characters are nobodies. Adam West, Tom Selleck, and Laurie Metcalf have a few lines each in smallish roles. Otherwise, director Stephen J. Anderson, with his first non-direct-to-video feature, does an impressive job keeping the focus on the story and the grand adventure. Did Pixar really do a script touchup, as rumored, to keep the movie from bogging down? If so, that just might be the best $7 billion anyone's ever spent.