WITNESS

By Marc S. Sanders

Recently, I viewed The Last Emperor and one issue I had was that it was challenging to comprehend the in-depth culture of the people it depicted. I really wanted to learn and pass the final exam with flying colors. Sadly, this was an AP class that I just wasn’t qualified for.

Now that I have watched Witness for the first time in many moons, I can honestly say there is an approach where you can get absorbed in a thrilling crime drama while also appreciating the core values of the community the film focuses on, namely the Amish who reside in the state of Pennsylvania. It’s a much easier film to learn from. That’s for sure.

Peter Weir directed Harrison Ford to his only Oscar nomination to date. Ford plays police officer John Book, opposite Kelly McGillis as Rachel Lapp, a widowed Amish mother traveling by train from home to visit family. At a layover stop in Philadelphia, her young son Samuel (Lukas Haas, in one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen, so bright, observant and wide eyed) witnesses a murder committed by a decorated narcotics police officer (Danny Glover). When Book gets wind of who the cop is, all three of their lives are in danger and they are forced to flee and hide back at the Lapps’ home among the Amish community. Book, however, has taken a gun shot wound following an attempt on his life. The Amish see no choice but to heal him, especially at Rachel’s insistence.

Weir, with a marvelous script by Earl & Pamela Wallace and William Kelley, shows the intersection of two extremely different ways of life where an “Englishman’s” belief in aggressive tactics conflicts with the peaceful nature of people looking to never get involved with any other culture. A romance may seem inevitable between the two leads but it’s a difficult one to embrace. It’s truly forbidden, not simply by the elder Amish and their respective code, but both Book and Rachel know it can’t happen either.

Because we are aware of this forbidden romance that seems to break through anyway, there’s a terrific dance scene at night lit only by headlights within the barn. Ford and McGillis really shine through in this scene as it is the first escape from the fear they have for their lives and the code they honor and are reluctant to violate. It’s the best scene in the whole film. It presents possibilities for different people to interact despite the barriers that prevent such feelings and actions. They laugh and swing naturally. It’s a different kind of moment for Harrison Ford, unconventional when compared to a large majority of the action film roles he’s widely recognized for.

With a biting soundtrack of suspense from Maurice Jarre, Peter Weir also focuses on the theme of intrusion. When the climactic and certainly expected shootout sequence on the farm is to begin, it’s frightening and disturbing to actually see men in suits holding shotguns amid an unarmed society. There’s a masterful shot at dawn of the three men marching down the hill quickly approaching the farm. These aren’t cops being covert. These are cops storming a palace of peace and tranquility. It’s hard to watch because of the stain it leaves.

Josef Sommer is the lead dirty cop and he plays a great villain, truly an uncelebrated bad guy character, as the years have gone on. He’s a decorated officer who comes off with an intent that looks like it’s noble, until nobility will no longer work and intimidation has to set in. Weir shoots Sommer at a lower angle to give him an imposing height.

Ford is terrific. You see some of the Han Solo vibe in the character. He’s a tough cop after all, but then he transitions into an awakened man healed by the more primitive methods of the Amish and their drive to simply build and nurture. Another good moment occurs when Book contributes to building a barn with the other men. He shares lemonade with them. Assists with lifting the framework and hammering along. Two communities are no longer clashing. They are now blending.

McGillis is also very good in her role. She is determined to honor her background, but questions if she is capable of sin and defends her position later.

Witness gives an in depth look into the daily life of the Amish, literally how they farm, build and dress. Book wakes up with them before sunrise to milk the cow and he experiences what they endure from pesky tourists looking for photo ops. It makes for some funny moments as well as an opportunity to cheer for the stand he eventually takes.

Another funny moment is when Ford dons the Amish attire for the first time; it doesn’t exactly compliment him well at first. Book’s adaptability to his new community is awkward to grasp.

Witness presents a bird’s eye view into a very private way of living, and I saw a very large picture.

Beyond that, it’s also a crackling, good thriller.

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR

By Marc S. Sanders

Sydney Pollack is such a hero of Hollywood filmmaking. He was a terrific actor and a better director. As Three Days Of The Condor opens I got completely engrossed in its simple, yet frightening set up.

Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) arrives at his office where he works day to day as a “book reader.” He chats a little with his colleagues, jots a few notes down, and steps out the back door to pick up lunch for everyone. When he returns, he finds the entire office staff has been shot to death. This seems like a common day in the life of an Everyman, until it’s not. Alfred Hitchcock capitalized on this motif over and over again.

Turner makes a phone call and is asked for his code name, but before he reveals he’s known as “Condor,” he asks a very good question to the man on the other end of the line. Why is it so important that Turner reveals his code name, but the man he called doesn’t feel the need to share his own?

Having recently watched the film adaptation of The Firm with Tom Cruise, made almost twenty years after this film, I can see that Sydney Pollack knows how to not only build suspense very, very quickly but also how to maintain it too. Still, in both films the complications of the why and how become overbearing. With Three Days Of The Condor, it’s best to just watch the tight editing and well drawn characterizations all the way from Max Von Sydow as a disciplined assassin to John Houseman as the elder authority who relaxes himself with his tweed suit and bow tie behind a large table as the problems unfold. Cliff Robertson is Higgins, the contact for Turner. He’s serviceable in the part.

The entire first hour of the film is perfection; taut and gripping as we uncover what purpose Turner as a book reader serves, and for whom. The second hour found me feeling less engaged, regrettably. To aid himself, Turner kidnaps a woman shopping in a sporting goods store. Faye Dunaway plays Kathy Hale. He forces Kathy to take him back to her apartment where he hides out. Never would it occur to me that these two characters over the course of a day and a half would fall for one another and make passionate love. This is not that kind of movie, and yet there it is. Some producer must have said “Fellas, we’ve got Dunaway and Redford on screen. This is a no brainer.” Faye Dunaway is fine in the part. I bought that out of desperation Redford would hold her at gun point and force her to help. But, c’mon! Really? They gotta bang each other too????

As for the plot behind killing people, the film doesn’t work its way into car and foot chases. It relies on its wording. The problem for me is that Turner works it all out himself. There’s little reference back to earlier moments for an audience to connect the dots along with the hero. So when Turner realizes one of the motivations is in regards to oil trading, I was trying to figure when anyone said anything about oil to begin with. Revelations just seem to be pulled out of a rabbit’s hat at times. They could have said people had to be murdered because the price of milk went up by fifty cents, and that would’ve held about just the same amount of weight as oil. What ABOUT oil????? Nothing ever needed to be so explicitly discussed here.

Part of the fun sometimes in Hitchcock films, for example, is simply seeing the man unexpectedly on the run and then watching how he outwits his adversaries. Harrison Ford does that in The Fugitive. Tom Cruise did it in The Firm. Cary Grant did it plenty of times with Hitchcock. In this film, however, I never felt there was any need to explain. Once it tried to grow a brain, I thought sometimes less is more, because now I’m stuck feeling frustratingly confused amid a lot of convoluted mumbo jumbo, on top of an out of left field, unsubstantiated love sequence.

Three Days Of The Condor was one of the best, edge of your seat suspense stories I’d seen…until it wasn’t.

MEATBALLS

By Marc S. Sanders

Director Ivan Reitman with Bill Murray and writer Harold Ramis made a fantastic team. Their summer camp comedy, Meatballs, from 1979 is not one of the all-time greats but it’s still a fun romp through the life of young campers peddled off under the supervision of teen counselors for eight weeks.

Meatballs works as an excuse to allow Bill Murray to break free from his SNL restraints and allow his off the cuff humor to improv its way through. As the head counselor named Tripper, Murray gives hilarious loudspeaker announcements about the cafeteria lunch or daily activities. He also uses his CITs, with names like Spaz, Crockett and Fink to carry Morty (“Hi Mickey!”) the camp manager who’s sleeping in his bunk out into the woods, or the lake or high up in a tree for his morning wake up surprise. This is all Animal House lite.

A touching secondary story involves a lonely teen camper named Rudy (Chris Makepeace) to bond with Tripper. Though I enjoyed my summer camp days, I was much like Rudy, not an athlete. I was a fast runner though, and Tripper with the Bill Murray personality builds Rudy’s confidence during the film leading up to the climactic inter camp big race. It’s not necessarily a well-rounded storyline. It tidies itself up pretty neatly by the end, but it’s a break from the material shenanigans, in between. Look, even a film like Meatballs needs some semblance of story somewhere.

The fun comes in brief skits with Meatballs. There’s sing along songs like “Are You Ready For The Summer?” and the campfire favorite “We’re The North Star CITs!” There’s the hot dog eating contest, Spaz’ spoon water relay and the basketball game against the wealthy, neighboring camp who can’t keep their shorts up.

Meatballs is a movie that would be shot with better quality on an iPhone today, but the dated camp days of the late ‘70s remain cherished here, before we became reliant upon technology. It’s a time where we depended on the outdoors, without mom and dad, and getting into harmless trouble while making new friends and discovering our freedom and ourselves.

The original Meatballs still has some material that’s worth a watch, and it still makes me yearn for my cabin bunk days. It’s nice to reminisce and it’s all just fun.

THE BLACK HOLE

By Marc S. Sanders

In 1979, Walt Disney Studios must have felt compelled to respond to the resurgence of science fiction, following 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Close Encounters…, and even Moonraker, with The Black Hole. Their contribution to the genre falls flat however with shiny looking, helmeted, stiff robots that hardly use their joints and even more stiff performances from the human cast. If these actors didn’t have dialogue to speak, I would have thought they were dead.

Maximillian Schell is the deranged James Bond villain reject Dr. Reinhart, resigned to helm the mad plot of this film. His long-lost space craft is found at the border of the mysterious black hole. His intent, now that he has converted his entire human crew into mind-controlled humanoids, is to enter the unknown void that’s ahead and discover its secrets.

The small crew of another ship that discovers him consists of Robert Forster, Anthony Perkins, Joseph Bottoms and a poor imitation friendly robot named V.I.NC.E.N.T. who resembles R2D2 in shape and talks in cliche with C3PO’s voice. Their lack of personalities boards the ship simply to listen to Dr. Reinhart’s insane plan to fly into the black hole. Then in the final 30 minutes, the band of heroes run away across the pointlessly long platforms of the lost vessel as it crumbles apart during its slow-very slow-descent into the hole.

This is a film that lives up to its title. There’s no one to really rescue here. No romance or swashbuckling. No one for the villain to threaten. No reason to stop this nut job from committing his own mad suicide; Reinhart could care less if this band is with him or not. Even John Barry’s (“James Bond”) music lacks harmony, as the film contains at most two of his compositions to play over and over again.

When none of the mainstay ingredients for adventure carry any weight, then what’s the point really?

The Black Hole was Disney’s way of pushing action figures with the menacing razor blade bearing red robot Maximillan and the hardly lovable V.I.N.C.E.N.T. I recall when I was a kid the merchandising hardly made a dent in pushing the agenda for this film. A film catered towards kids, but barely entertaining for kids. There’s a lot, a whole lot, of speechifying going on here, mom and dad. What kid would be interested in listening to old farts like Ernest Borgnine or Maximillan Schell just yak away?

The Black Hole is as nothing as its title suggests. A void of a film. A franchise or cultural impact never came to be from this movie, and rightly so.

Though I do recall my mom buying me the pop-up book adaptation of the film. I wonder if that’s a valuable collector’s item these days.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE (1966)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Judi West
My Rating: 5/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 96%

PLOT: A crooked lawyer persuades his brother-in-law to feign a serious injury.


Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie reminds me of what it might be like to watch Jerry Lee Lewis play “Chopsticks.”  You sense it’s being done as well as it possibly can be done, but you wonder why it’s being done at all.  C’mon, man, let’s hear “Great Balls of Fire!”

Notable for being the first of twelve films Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred in together, The Fortune Cookie tells the story of a hapless TV cameraman, Harry Hinkle (Lemmon), who is covering a Cleveland Browns football game from the sidelines.  A burly punt returner accidentally runs him over during a play and knocks Harry out cold.  While he recuperates in a hospital bed, his thoroughly unscrupulous brother-in-lawyer, Willie (Matthau), concocts a very modern-sounding plan: Harry will fake serious injuries in the hospital so Willie can work his magic with the insurance company and get a big payout.  Harry demurs at first but is enticed to go along when he finds out his ex-wife, for whom he still carries a torch, is very interested in assisting with his recuperation from his “serious” injuries.

Meanwhile, the poor football player who knocked him down, Luther (Ron Rich), is wracked with guilt over the damage he thinks he’s caused.  He pitches in to buy Harry a motorized wheelchair and offers to assist with his rehab back at home.  This gnaws at Harry’s conscience.  Things don’t get any better when he’s brought a lunch of Chinese food at the hospital, and the fortune inside his fortune cookie bears a grim warning…

There’s nothing wrong with The Fortune Cookie that a rewrite or some editing couldn’t have fixed.  That might be considered sacrilege, considering the script was penned by Wilder himself and his legendary writing partner, I.A.L. Diamond, but in watching the film, I was struck by how many scenes involved a semi-static camera just watching people talk, and talk, and talk.  I don’t mind a lot of dialogue in a scene when the characters have something to say, or when the story is being driven forward.  But here, we usually get a five-minute scene when a two-minute scene could have done the job just fine.

Take one scene in particular that almost had me literally nodding off, when Harry’s ex-wife, Sandy (Judi West), has returned home to help with Harry’s rehab.  Harry is still feeling guilty about the sham he’s perpetrating, but he’s so besotted with Sandy that he’s willing to keep up the pretense just to keep her around.  They catch up a little, blah blah blah, he says he never threw away his ring, blah blah blah, she dumps out her purse looking for her ring, blah blah blah, he puts on a little music, he’s happy, she’s happy, and <snoorrrrrrre.>

I could list any number of films, including some of Wilder’s other films, where other characters talked for even longer than Harry and Sandy, but they were so much more interesting!  What happened here?  What went wrong?  Even in the scenes where Willie, the huckster, is rattling off his grand plans and needling the insurance company attorneys, Matthau just comes off as a two-bit hack that no sane person would pay any attention to.

I’m not saying he must be likable, that dreaded word.  There are movies that are very, very good and that contain nothing BUT unlikable characters. (Anyone wanna watch The Godfather?) But here, something is off with the tone.  When I wasn’t bored, I was inflamed with distaste for what Harry was being forced to do, both by Willie and by his own hormones.

The movie does have one saving grace.  The comeuppance, when it, er, comes up, is brought about with the kind of shock comedy scene that Mel Brooks might have loved.  I don’t want to spoil it, but it features the kind of language that would have been right at home in Blazing Saddles.  When I got over the shock of what I had just heard, I sat back in admiration and smiled, and thought to myself, a little ruefully, “Now what would this movie have been like if it had been this nervy all the way through, instead of just here at the end?”

But The Fortune Cookie even mucks up the ending with an “epilogue” scene that’s so gratuitously manipulative, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been tacked on by the studio who demanded a happy ending, or at least a happier ending.  If the movie had earned it, I’d have been on board, but everything that came before was so humdrum that it felt super-cheesy.

Billy Wilder’s résumé reads like the Pixar catalog: one hit after the other with only a couple of rare misses.  Double Indemnity.  The Lost Weekend.  Sunset Boulevard.  Ace in the Hole.  Stalag 17.  Sabrina.  Witness for the Prosecution.  Some Like It Hot.  The Apartment.  Even One, Two, Three, which may not exactly be his finest moment, but at least it had James Cagney to liven things up.  I ask again: what happened here?  Where is the dynamite chemistry between Lemmon and Matthau that would become legendary in later films?  Where is the zaniness of Some Like It Hot or the earned pathos of The Apartment or the edginess of Ace in the Hole and Stalag 17?

According to the trivia section on IMDb, the opening football game sequences were filmed during an actual Vikings-Browns football game, which the Browns lost, at home, 27-17.  After watching this movie, I felt like those Cleveland fans must have felt: always glad to see my boys play, but man, it would have been WAY cooler if they had won.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

By Marc S. Sanders

Exploring the science fictional context of parallel universes can turn your thought process into a tailspin.  It can leave you up at night trying to find the center of a never-ending spiral.  Maybe that is why this gradually more common story line is reviving itself in current films like the next Doctor Strange installment from Marvel, or DC’s The Flash with multiple Batmans, and the unexpected surprise of Everything Everywhere All At Once.

My first experience with a multi-verse concept happened one Saturday morning in the early 1980’s.  At age 7 or 8, my favorite cartoon, Hanna Barbara’s Superfriends, explored a Universe of Evil.  Following a volcanic eruption, an evil Superman exchanged places with the noble Superman that we all know.  They each found themselves in opposite universes.  For the good Batman, there was an evil Batman, dressed in pink.  (Pink is evil????)  Evil Robin had a mustache itching to twirl.  Aquaman had an eyepatch.  Later, I hypothesized that this simple plot catered for kids was likely inspired by the famous Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror.  (Evil Spock donned the evil goatee. Mwah ha ha ha ha!!!!!) These two storylines, which I highly recommend you seek out and watch, were very cut and dry in the concept of multiple universes.  There was a Yin and Yang structure of just black and white.  Everything Everywhere All At Once welcomes diverse complexity in its storytelling.  In this film, nothing is black and white.  Instead, everything consists of infinite shades of grey and gray.

The Wang family are Chinese immigrants buried in demanding and overwhelming tax obligations from the IRS while trying to manage a California laundromat.  Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is the matriarch who is married to Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and they have a daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu).  Upon visiting the IRS agent assigned to their case, Deidre (Jamie Lee Curtis, who finally found something else to do besides another Halloween retread), odd occurrences take place.  Evelyn is warned by Waymond with suddenly a strange and very different personality to act upon their current situation, like getting off an elevator and turning to the right, not the left.  Just trust me when I say that while you will likely be bewildered for a while as the exposition unravels itself, it will all pay off satisfyingly.  Somehow in another universe that is performing parallel to the one we first see in the film Joy is a villain bent on destroying Evelyn…and that’s not even half of what’s out of place.

I saw this film directed by the “Daniels” (Dan Kwan and Dan Scheinert) with my Cinephile colleagues, Miguel and Thomas.  After it was over, it was no surprise that they knew what I was talking about when I said this film is the reason why good editing is necessary in a film.  Because the Daniels introduce not one or two parallel universes, but SEVERAL, and there is so much happening…well…all at once.  I’d argue most shots in the film last no longer than an average 8-10 seconds because the multiple universe equivalents of Evelyn, Waymond, Joy and Deidre switch on a blink of your eye.  I warn you not to make a quick bathroom exit.  Quick flashes of scenes are relevant towards something else you may see in the next minute or an hour later.

Anyway, I’ll bet you never realized that there is a universe where the people have raw hot dog like fingers.  There’s also a universe where Evelyn is a street sign twirler, and a good thing there is an Evelyn like that to help another Evelyn fend off of a bunch of attackers in a different universe.  There’s also a world where humanity doesn’t exist.  Yet the equivalent of Evelyn and Joy are represented by two rocks.  That’s right.  Rocks with no limbs, no way of speaking vocally.  Yet, the film cleverly has the characters or products of its earth communicate with one another.  There’s even a different variation of the Pixar creation, Ratatouille.  Replace the rat with a racoon and see what transpires.

So, what does this all lead to?  Fortunately, there is a reason for these different worlds to collide and it leads to a valuable lesson in love and understanding within family.  Now that may sound hokey, but the film demonstrates that none of us are the same in what we are affectionate about, or what’s important to us.  How a daughter considers a girlfriend is not going to be easy for a mother to accept as any more than a friend.  The Daniels’ film carries much profoundness among its silliness depicted on the surface.

Having only seen Everything Everywhere All At Once one time so far, I could not help but laugh often and uncontrollably at what I was looking at, and the laughter becomes contagious when watching the film in a crowded theatre.  What made my movie going experience with this film quite fascinating though is that I responded in tune with the rest of the crowd.  Once you get past looking at Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis (two recognizable and accomplished actors) flap their hot dog fingered hands at each other, eventually you recognize the “normalcy” of that particular universe.  You are no longer laughing with them.  Now you are accepting the people and how they function in that specific environment.  Same goes for the rock universe.  The Daniels are brave enough in their direction to just show two inanimate rocks perched on a ledge and communicating with subtitles of very aware and well written dialogue.  It looks completely crazy at first.  Later, you yearn for the impending destiny of those rocks.

Much symbolism is tucked into the Daniels’ script as well.  The most telling is that it focuses on an Asian immigrant family obligated by law to honor American tax codes.  The Deidre character portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis is not so empathetic to the Wangs’ comprehension of resolving tax violations.  Basically, two different cultures are butting heads with no progress because they have a different viewpoint on how things function.  Wisely, this serves as a springboard to demonstrate how multiple universes will lack perfect chemistry as well when they collide.  None of this is written off as communication barriers.

I imagine on a second viewing, I likely will look at Everything Everywhere All At Once through a different lens.  I won’t laugh as much because I’ve grown acclimated to what were once very odd and strange environments for these characters that dwell within.  Instead, I’ll be even more observant and appreciative of the film as it presents different behaviors and cultures encountering one another.  This is a very good picture that is worth multiple viewings for sure.

In fact, this film is such a pleasant surprise, that I am comfortable suggesting this early on that I will consider it one of the best films of 2022.  If at least Everything Everywhere All At Once does not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, then it would be a terrible disappointment.  The imagination of its endless devices is just so inventive.  Heck, I’ll throw my hat out there and strongly suggest nominations for Michelle Yeoh’s performance, along with Best Editing for Paul Rogers (this guy should win the award) and Best Picture of the year.

See Everything Everywhere All At Once in a movie theatre with a crowd and/or a large group of friends.  You may just have a cathartic experience of how human nature responds when getting acclimated to what at first appears to be so foreign.

WEIRD SCIENCE

By Marc S. Sanders

John Hughes, as a writer, stretched his imagination far at times. Really far!!!!! You’d have to, to build up your confidence to make a ridiculous comedy like Weird Science come to life. The movie is blatantly absurd, outrageous, a little crude and outright nonsensical. It’s Frankenstein meets Pretty In Pink. It’s alive!!!!!

Double, maybe quadruple, Uber Nerds Gary and Wyatt (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith) spend their Friday night in front of the computer to create the hottest woman ever. With the help of a Barbie doll and some Playboy centerfolds, nothing on earth will compare to this creation for the XX chromosome community. They give her a brain as well by scanning in photographs of Albert Einstein, of course. From there, “Lisa” (Kelly LeBrock), with the toned body that SCREAMS SEX, plots out the boys’ weekend at a blues club, then the mall and later a party at Wyatt’s house where the boys’ reputations are enhanced almost as well as Lisa’s chest.

Lisa helps Gary and Wyatt overcome their insecurities with their popular girl crushes and teaches Chet, Wyatt’s idiot green beret brother, to lay off. Chet is played by Bill Paxton. Can you imagine anyone else playing Chet?

There’s a cuteness to Weird Science. However, the slapstick gags are what really wins. Either you like this silliness or you don’t. I get amused watching all the furnishings of Wyatt’s house, including the Baby Grand piano, get sucked out the chimney along with a half-naked girl. I love it when Lisa freezes the blue blood grandparents in the pantry closet or when she erases the memory of Gary’s father. I also like how Chet is reduced to a big blob of literal shit. Then there’s the nuclear missile that rises out of the floor, up through the roof.

Take off your cap of sophisticated maturity, and just appreciate silly, sophomoric comedy for a change. It’s all harmless, anyway. Lisa makes sure everything is back in its place by the end, only now it’s better and funnier than before.

NOTTING HILL

By Marc S. Sanders

Notting Hill written by Richard Curtis (Love, Actually) and directed by Roger Michell is a pleasant surprise of a romantic comedy. It’s not a perfect film but it certainly loves every one of its quirky supporting characters, as well as its two straight romantic leads played by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.

Grant plays Will Thacker who lives in the Notting Hill district of London where every proprietor is a charming little shop of some form or other; a quaint street where merchants appear on the sidewalks during the weekends selling their art or homemade jams or coffee products. Will owns a travel book shop located across the street from his flat that is whimsically recognized by its big blue front door. His wife left him for another man and now he’s relegated himself to living with a roommate called Spike (character actor Rhys Ifans doing a British equivalent of Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld’s neighbor).

One day the superstar celebrity Anna Scott (Roberts) simply strolls into Will’s store. They have a quiet moment and he sells her a travel book about Turkey that he didn’t recommend she purchase. Moments later they run into each other down the street when Will spills orange juice all over Anna. From there, a meet cute relationship begins to unfold. It’s not so simple for the pair though as Anna’s enormous celebrity is hard to negotiate; hard for Anna, not hard for Will.

Anna is at ease when she can have a quiet dinner to celebrate Will’s sister’s birthday with his friends or when she can escape her turbulent life of gossip magazines and paparazzi by taking shelter at Will’s flat, even if grungy looking Spike walks in on her taking a bath.

I like Notting Hill. However, the quiet moments shared between Grant and Roberts sometimes carry on too long. Oh my gosh!!!! Will someone say something already????? Hugh Grant has made characters that trip over their words and stumble with what to say into a master craft. Julia Roberts is one actress that a camera loves especially when she’s distressed. A crying moment in any one of her films will milk the scene for every blush, or glassy eye or tear and whisper she can offer. She’s a terrifically skilled actress in almost any film she does. Eventually, we have to move on from all of this though. My patience for some scenes were just running way too long for me at times. Kiss already!!!! Make love already!!!! Scream at each other already!!!!

Fortunately, there’s much escape to be had with the supporting cast, especially Ifans as Spike who is the most absent minded, lovable, dirty underwear wearing and sloppy prig imaginable. Emma Chambers is just as fetching with her scarlet pigtailed haircut as Will’s sister, Honey. Tim McInnery, Gina McKee, James Dreyfus and Hugh Bonneville round out this madcap collection. The birthday dinner party is a great scene for this ensemble as a comedic but relaxed chemistry blends nicely during a competition to see who is suffering the most to earn the last brownie on the dessert plate. The group is unsure how to include a movie star like Anna in their simplicity but Julia Roberts pulls off a trick that even had me fooled. Simply put, for the whole cast, there’s just that much more life and vibrancy when they are all together and it’s not just relegated to only Roberts and Grant in a scene.

Another special moment occurs later when the couple have split up once again. To depict time fleeting by, Roger Michell offers up a transition of Will wearing one outfit but walking through the hustle and bustle of Notting Hill as the weather and seasons seamlessly change all around him from sunlight to rain to snow and spring sunlight again. You even get a glimpse of Honey starting a flirtatious relationship at the beginning of the sequence and by the time it’s over a minute later Honey is breaking up with the guy. It’s a wonderful moment of wordless narration to show Will’s struggle with moving on as time continues to pass by. More importantly, it allows the titled setting to be a character of its own. This is a great example of showing a lovesick character unable to move on while life has no patience to wait for him to catch up.

I like Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts whether it’s in Notting Hill or one of their many other fine movies. I can’t deny the chemistry they have in this film. It works. I only wanted a little more life to the material that was handed to them. Still, Notting Hill is charming and simply a very sweet romantic comedy.

THE BOOK OF ELI

By Marc S. Sanders

Do you believe in the word of God?

The Book Of Eli directed by The Hughes Brothers will make sure you do.

Faith carries Denzel Washington’s loner character on a journey through a grim, sunburned post apocalyptic wasteland as he protects a rare, sacred text. He has been on a sojourn to reach a final destination out west.

Me, being the religious skeptic these days, might normally find the convenient episodes of survival that Washington encounters as far fetched. However, The Hughes Brothers direct a script penned by Gary Whitta that never mocks the purpose of the film presented. As a viewer it would be rude of me to laugh at how Washington continues to walk when it seems he’s getting shot in the back. I wouldn’t dare misbehave in that manner. Watching The Book Of Eli…well…I feel like I’ve gone to church.

The Loner carries a book he faithfully reads every day as continues his long walk through treacherous, barren and motorcycle pirated lands. If the sun doesn’t blind him and kill him, the various marauders might.

The worst adversary of this bunch is Gary Oldman in yet another treasured villain role. Oldman keeps a tight authority on an “old west” inspired town, commanding from his comfortable leather chair in the upstairs level of the town’s bar (saloon, perhaps?). He’s been tirelessly dispatching men to find a particular book and perhaps it’s the one that The Loner possesses.

Post-apocalyptic wasteland, a book, a Loner, a villain. That’s the structure of this film along with some side characters like an impactful Mila Kunis and Jennifer Beals. Very simple ingredients allow for well edited moments where Washington can display his unexpected fighting techniques with a gun or a shotgun or a forearm length sword. When he exercises these moments the scenes are outstanding. Oldman is the guy who sits back letting his own horde do the dirty work and only acts when he sees that he has an upper hand. He’s oily, scary and in this dense waste of a future he likely dreams of being a prophet or a high powered evangelical might.

I was so pleasantly surprised by this film. Post apocalyptic films wear on me these days. How much is there to show that I haven’t already seen like abandoned cars, skulls, and deserted highways?

This is different however because Whitta’s script offers a reason to live through this hellish void. I had to wait for it but the ending is a very satisfying conclusion. I loved it, actually.

The Book Of Eli is a great film.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM

By Marc S. Sanders

Steven Spielberg’s second installment in the Indiana Jones series of films deserves more credit than it has received, nearly forty years later. Spielberg isn’t even fond of his film, and I think he needs to reexamine his own self-criticisms.

By the time he’d make this prequel, he was already a master filmmaker (followed by Close Encounters…, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial). Temple of Doom almost seemed easy for Spielberg to construct. He just filled in the holes from one scene to the next and he’s so natural in his instincts that the thrill of adventure never wavers, and it always feels new and fresh.

Think about it!!! He accompanies a John Williams led rendition of a Busby Berkeley number while Indy tries to escape from machine gun toting baddies in a Shanghai nightclub (called “Club Obi Wan”; nice wink and nod there).

That’s followed by an unlikely jump out of an airplane with only an inflatable water raft to glide through the heights of the sky. Reader, I bought it, and only because Spielberg shot it. He just knows what looks good on film.

The main crux of the film focuses on rescuing the enslaved captured children of an Indian village from a bloodthirsty cult while also retrieving sacred stones. Over the years as we’ve approached an age of a PC climate, many take issue with racial prejudice overtones. Do Indians eat monkey brains for dessert, and rip beating hearts out of the chests of men? I don’t care, and I don’t associate these horror/comedy moments with people of a certain race. I’m not foolhardy enough to do that.

However, I do correlate this material with what inspired the Indiana Jones character in the first place, and that is the serial cliffhangers of a forgotten age. Ridiculous stunts and outrageous visuals kept the attention of the viewer and that is what Spielberg, along with creative partner George Lucas, accomplishes here.

So you are treated to thousands of icky, crawly bugs, a screeching, off the rails mine car pursuit and a “snake surprise” as a main course dinner entree.

It’s all in good fun and it’s all shown in the campy adventure thematics that Indiana Jones was always recognized for.

Just go get your jolts every time he cracks the whip. That’s all Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom was ever meant to be.