Iron Man (2008)–***1/2 

Iron Man isn’t high art, but it certainly is high entertainment. It’s a savvy, slick summer film that all Hollywood blockbusters should aspire to emulate.

So few May-to-August action-taculars even try anymore, going through the CGI-driven motions or trying to discover their inner art film/soap opera. Iron Man, it turns out, is great because there is a dearth of movies like it – movies with the notion that sometimes entertainment doesn’t have to be overdone or over thought in order to be spectacular.

Oh, and Iron Man is a superhero movie. I mention that because while watching the most recent Marvel Comics adaptation I nearly forgot that it existed in a world — and a genre — outside the movie I was watching. Much of the credit can be given to Robert Downey, Jr., who may well have given the first Oscar-worthy performance in a superhero flick playing the gazillionare, genius, military industrialist, playboy Tony Stark.

Stark and his company Stark Industries have made a fortune from selling military technology that is used all over the world. Somehow (wink) those weapons end up in the hands of Afghan insurgents who attack the military convoy escorting Stark from a test of his newest weapons system in the country’s mountains. He survives the attack, but is captured and forced to work with fellow prisoner and native engineer Yinsen (Shaun Toub) to recreate this new missile.

During the attack, Stark’s body was pelted with shrapnel from a Stark Industries-built weapon. Yinsen builds an electro-magnetic device that must be hooked up to an energy source to keep the shrapnel from killing Stark. Yinsen, he tells Stark, knows about the deadly shrapnel because he’s seen it kill people in his homeland. With access to loads of technology and resources thanks to the insurgents want of a weapons system, Stark makes his own, self-sustaining energy source, along with a high-tech suit of armor. The insurgents have a bad day, Yinsen is unfortunately killed, and Stark makes a daring escape.

Upon his return home, Stark vows to quit selling military technology and to protect the people from the weapons his company built. On a forced leave of absence from the company thanks to Stark Industries’ ambitious Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Tony builds himself an upgraded version of the suit, with a little hot rod red to match his personality. But when Stark discovers Stane is more than just gunning for his job, the real battle begins.

Iron Man is the first film independently produced by Marvel Studios. Oddly, it’s only the second Marvel production to successfully break out of its genre and work on a purely cinematic level. The other film, X2: X-Men United, contains a more harrowing story, a notion Iron Man never seeks to entertain. Instead, Swingers director Jon Favreau and lead actor Downey address the dramatics with a wink and a nudge. And it works.

It’s been five years since any summer movie has succeeded in the same way Iron Man does. With little pretense and a commitment to shear cinematic delight, Pirates of the Caribbean surprised audiences. Its unexpected freshness and one commanding leading man, Johnny Depp, resulted in the must see film of summer 2003. Thanks to Robert Downey, Jr., whose arrogant, glib Tony Stark changes more in principle than he appears to change in habit, we are able to indulge in a character that thrives of being the center on attention.

Downey isn’t the only surprising cast member in Iron Man, though. As Pepper Potts, Stark’s dutiful assistant, Gwyneth Paltrow goes toe-to-toe with Downey, and often comes out on top. Combine her performance with those of Terrence Howard, as Stark confidant Jim Rhodes, and Bridges, and you get a comic book movie that is cast like a Hollywood prestige picture. For Marvel Studios, Iron Man is a picture to be proud of, one that we can only hope will encourage more films like it.

Baby Mama (2008)–*1/2

Let’s take a cue from Amy Poehler’s SNL Weekend Update bit titled Really?

Really, Amy? Really? You thought this gig in a tepid, tedious comedy was right for your first starring role? Really? That’s like saying heroin is the choice painkiller for you first experience with child birth. And really, Tina Fey? Really? Baby Mama, a second-rate little comedy about a 37-year-old business woman looking to be a mom, is really the film you want to make after lampooning the same character on 30 Rock for two years? Really?

From Fey, a Saturday Night Live alumna, and Poehler, the sketch comedy show’s current leading lady, comes a comedy that is unacceptably unfunny. Oh, true, like any mainstream comedy, Baby Mama has its moments of unsatisfying laughter, but there’s this suspicion that we’ve been hoodwinked. How can two comediennes the caliber of Fey and Poehler end up in a film that’s as edgy and smart as a JC Penny clothing model?

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a business woman in her late-30s who has spent her life climbing the corporate ladder and not having babies. Her legacy is in the mega health food stores she helped develop in trendy neighborhoods across the country. One day she wakes up and decides to have a baby. Adoption isn’t an option. Her fertility doctor says he doesn’t like her uterus. Kate’s only real option is surrogacy.

The best jokes in Baby Mama come when Kate meets with Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), the head of the surrogacy planning agency. “Chaffee Bicknell? I thought that was two people,” says Kate upon entering Chaffee’s office. It’s worth a solid chuckle. When Kate asks Chaffee if she’s going to outsource her pregnancy to a poor woman in the third world, and Chaffee writes down a note, we get a laugh line worthy of both Fey and Weaver.

Then Poehler enters the picture. Poehler plays Angie, the lower-class white woman from…ahem…a less affluent part of town. She’ll carry Kate’s baby. Poehler never really settles on making Angie a 100 percent comedic role or even a wholly sympathetic character, resulting in some terribly uneven comedic moments.

Fey, too, has trouble fitting into her role as Kate. She strains to be restrained and misses out on comedic gold. Moments where the class conflict could result in insightful belly laughs are turned into lines that are just, well, mean. Kate and Angie aren’t simply another odd couple, but the film settles on letting them be a mediocre Felix and Oscar.

By the end of the film, you kind of feel bad for Poehler and Fey. Instead of being in a film that was made for comedy fans, they’re stuck in a film made for the folks who watch Oprah. Sure, it may get the pair a wider audience then either one has ever seen, but the cost, losing comedic clout, may end up outweighing the benefit.

Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sigourney Weaver, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin, Romany Malco and Dax Shepard, directed by Michael McCullers, is in theaters now.  

Post-Juno, I decided to catch up on Ellen Page’s acting. Tonight I finally watched Hard Candy, the I Spit on Your Grave for the To Catch a Predator generation.

The film follows a girl named Haley (Ellen Page) who decides to play a little too rough with a 30-something photographer (Patrick Wilson) she meets online. This Lolita has a serious vendetta.

Word of warning: anyone who says they like this movie shouldn’t be left alone in a room with your young daughter. It’s a sick, masturbatory fantasy for anyone who ever wanted to be tied up by a 14-year-old girl. Much like a Saw or Hostel subjects us to grotesque violence, Hard Candy forces us to sit through the torture of a man who (spoiler alert) probably should have his balls cut off. If I cared one way or another for the characters, I wouldn’t be as repulsed, but this film is entirely devoid of anything. Even Saw made an attempt at having a moral.

Worse, it looks like it was shot by the type of high-minded, but tasteless graphic designer we see lampooned in sitcoms. In the immortal words of Roger Ebert, I hated hated hated this movie.

Romance & Cigarettes (2007)–****

It’s easy to see why John Turturro’s long-shelved movie musical Romance & Cigarettes never got a major theatrical release. This working-class battle of the sexes doesn’t even bother to sugarcoat the relationships between characters when they break into pop songs from the ’60s and ’70s. Sex, love and sad, funny truths come together in one of the most unique musical experiences I’ve ever had.

James Gandolfini stars as Nick Murder, a married bridge builder from Queens who deals with his midlife crisis by getting a little on the side. His wife (Susan Sarandon) finds one of the raunchy poems Nick wrote to his lingerie-selling mistress (Kate Winslet), sparking some serious introspection on the part of the married couple. What is love after so many years of marriage? Thankfully, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Connie Francis, and Dusty Springfield can help the couple, the mistress, and all the lovers and lovelorn residents of Queens figure some things out.

What a shocking joy it is to watch John Turturro unleash his male characters in a world where they and their ids can dance and play without concern for tact. Where there’s no tact, you will most certainly find honesty. In Romance & Cigarettes, honesty often comes in the form of a pop-infused musical number.

Don’t confuse Turturro’s film with Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge!, though. In fact, Luhrmann’s penchant for romantic overindulgence may very well be the antithesis of what we get from Romance & Cigarettes. With its surreal, lusty antics and a genuine, deeply affecting take on love and companionship, Romance & Cigarettes runs along an impossible line few musicals can even say they walked.

Musical veterans like Susan Sarandon (Rocky Horror Picture Show) and Christopher Walken (Hairspray, Pennies From Heaven) lend so much to the film, not as singers, but as performers. All of the pop songs play through with the actual vocal track of the original singer intact, demanding that Walken, Sarandon and the rest give caricaturish performances instead of just focusing on song and dance. I never felt that Turturro required much else from his actors. As writer/director, he retains responsibility for the emotional resonance, and does it well.

Romance & Cigarettes is classic and modern, sophisticated and uncouth, all at once. With little concern for the constraints of time, space or narrative convention, this pop musical dares to be different, even a little nonsensical. It doesn’t romance viewers like most films do. Yet, after my fourth viewing in two weeks, I can say without any tentativeness that I love this movie.

Romance & Cigarettes is now playing is cities with theaters willing to show the film. Check your local listings for showtimes.

The best Christmas presents I received this year were from Aaron Sorkin and Diablo Cody. From those two screenwriters came two screenplays. From the screenplays came two of the year’s smartest, most entertaining films.

Charlie Wilson’s War, a film about a Texas congressman who decides to wage a covert war against the Soviets by supplying the Afghans with weapons in 1980, is a lesson in geopolitics, probably a 400-level class. It’s not nearly as inspiring as either The American President or The West Wing, but Sorkin here has created three of the best characters he’s ever written. In the hands of Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Hanks (as Charlie Wilson), Charlie Wilson’s War is an ensemble comedy so smart and so fast you’d swear it came out in the 1930s.

Juno is not a 1930s comedy, though. No, Juno is an even rarer gem. It’s a film just as smart as Charlie Wilson, though a lot hipper, and one that utilizes and even defines certain contemporary American archetypes. Cody’s screenplay is a marvel, but like Sorkin, her words are only as good as the performers. Ellen Page is perfect as the pregnant 16-year-old who decides to against an abortion and instead plans to give her baby up for adoption. Show up for Cody’s sharp, savvy screenplay, but stay for Page’s performance.

I Am Legend starts out as a solid, suspenseful flick about the last man on earth after everyone is wiped out by a deadly plague. Well, almost everyone. There are some humans who turned into vampire/zombie things that are comically designed when compared to the solid setup the film gives them. They don’t really show up until the last third of the film, which like Castaway is pretty much a one-man-show. Smith is up to the challenge. The FX guys obviously aren’t.Then there’s Depp in Sweeney Todd, as hunk of coal number two.

Star power aside, Depp brings nothing to the role. Nothing. He can’t sing, or at least, he can’t emote. He lacks the power and theatrics demanded of a role in Sondheim’s operetta about a vengeful barber cutting throats in Victorian London. Director Tim Burton, as usual, gets caught up in creating the world of Todd, allowing everything to come to a crashing halt when Depp performs, weakly.

So that was my holiday. Today is the first day of 2008, and like most years, my location prohibits me from doing a 2007 Top Ten list right now. There are still a couple 2007 films to see. Check back in a couple weeks.

Holiday Recap Movie Ratings
Juno–****
Charlie Wilson’s War–***1/2
I Am Legend–**1/2
Sweeney Todd-**

The Golden Compass (2007)–***

It’s a great feeling to walk in to a theater skeptical of the movie you are about to watch only to have that skepticism wash away. The Golden Compass, the latest fantasy film released in a market awash in ho-hum genre releases, is the first film outside of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter that lives up to its promised spectacle.

Of course, part of the spectacle are the warrior polar bears known in The Golden Compass as Ice Bears. Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) dreams of meeting a real Ice Bear and of other spectacular adventures while living and learning at a stuffy formal university. The young girl is stuck there because her scientist uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig) is out doing his own adventuring, traveling to the arctic north to prove the existence of a cosmic material called dust that connects the different universes.

Asriel’s work, though supported by the scholars at the university, the Magisterium, a secretive body of doctrinal zealots, consider his work to be heresy. They’ll do anything to stop Asriel, including sending the luminescent, but ill-intentioned Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) to kidnap Lyra. She lures the young girl out of the school with the promise of taking Lyra adventuring. “I’ve had an audience with the King of the Ice Bears,” she tells Lyra, hooking the girl instantly.

What Coulter doesn’t know is that Lyra has possession of an artifact long thought to have been destroyed by the Magisterium: an Alethiometer. The dust-powered compass isn’t put to work until Lyra exposes Coulter as the head of the Magisterium’s G.O.B.-lers, a group that steals lower class kids to use in secret experiments. Lyra rejects the frills of her life with Coulter and runs from the evil woman, setting out on a compass-guided adventure she had long hoped for.

Lyra eventually does meet an Ice Bear named Iorek Byrnison (Ian McKellan) after she is rescued by gyptians, an group of water-travelling gypsies. There’s an aeronaut/cowboy played by Sam Elliot. And there are witches. And souls that live outside the body in the form of an animal. They are called daemons. Oh, and the daemons burst into sparkling dust when the person they belong to is killed.

Forgive me if that last paragraph started to sound a tad like a 5-year-old trying to explain the Golden Compass universe. It’s hard to approach the film without a child-like glee. The Golden Compass succeeds where other fantasy films, from Narnia to Terabithia, have failed when it envelopes the audience in a mystical world.

The Golden Compass, though not short on magic or myth, does jettison the superficiality that plagued recent fantasy films. Better still, it never tries to out visualize Lord of the Rings or out adventure Harry Potter, instead relying on its assets. One of those assets is the film’s Babe-like quality to inspire audiences to challenge conventional thinking, making The Golden Compass into a rare children’s film with a welcome intellectual bent.

Intellect aside, even the lighter weight moments in The Golden Compass have joyous quality to them. Whether it’s watching Lyra hold tightly to the back of her galloping Ice Bear protector Iorek or meeting Sam Elliot at a Norway port, The Golden Compass holds itself together and, under the surprising direction of Chris Weitz (American Pie), guides us to a delightful finish.

The Golden Compass starring Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Ian McKellan and Sam Elliot, directed by Chris Weitz, opens Friday, Dec. 7 in theaters everywhere.

No Country for Old Men (2007)–****

I’m writing this review about 20 minutes after watching No Country for Old Men because it’s a film that deserves to be written about when I still don’t have my bearings. I don’t know when I’ll get them back, but I don’t think it will be soon. No Country for Old Men has that severe an effect on the audience.

The characters in this film face something so incomprehensible that the immediate reaction is to call it insane. They are unable to process the horror and its the collateral damage. We the audience are lucky enough to have Ethan and Joel Coen co-direct No Country for Old Men, because these filmmakers, today worthy of being called veterans and masters, don’t make it easy for us to process either.

What are we trying to process? It’s the story of a Texas welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. He’s not a man you would expect to do anything exceptional, but he would most likely do the right thing. When he finds a case with $2 million in cash close to the shootout, he does something stupid. He tries to keep the cash.

Being a man who does what’s right and what’s stupid, Llewelyn returns to the scene that night to give water to a wounded Mexican man, a man who begged him for agua when Llewelyn first stumbled upon the bloodbath. But somebody else was already there looking for the money and they stuck around to wait for Llewelyn. If only drug dealers looking for the cash were the least of his problems. He gets away from them. The money belongs to someone who wants it back and that someone hires Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) to get it for him.

Anton Chigurh isn’t just a killer. He isn’t just a ghost, as Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) describes him. Chigurh is something so cold, so calculated, so confident in principles that he appears to exist on a different plane, even when he is bloodied and broken. He’s so indifferent to killing (using a cattle gun to murder humans) that it terrifies the characters around him. For us, the audience, watching those characters try to understand how they exist in the same world is just as unsettling.

It’s easy to keep an audience off-kilter with the idea of Chigurh alone. The Coens, who here produce their best film since the immortal Fargo, don’t settle just on ideas. With a Hitchockian sense of story and suspense, Coens manage to invert the notion of what an audience can expect from each individual scene, something they’ve been able to do in their best efforts. With No Country For Old Men, it creates an atmosphere of unease, making Chigurh and the other characters exponentially more effective.

After two complete catastrophes and a lukewarm film like The Man Who Wasn’t There, the Coen’s certainly have their mojo back. Shockingly, they do it without the supporting cast we expect to see in a Coen Brothers film. No Steve Buscemi. No John Goodman. No Frances McDormand. Still, with the pitch-perfect Jones and the virile Brolin, the Coens construct two of their staple characters (a small town police chief and an working class schmuck) with nuances they’ve never explored.

For the Coens, No Country for Old Men is all about the unexplored. And for the audience it’s about being shocked and surprised by their deep, unexpected venture into new territory.

No Country for Old Men, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, opens wide Nov. 21.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)–****

It’s not often I can say this about a movie, but when it comes to kiwi director Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I’d be lying if I said I’d seen anything like it before. Jesse James is a folk ballad turned into an epic poem. It’s a film that could have twitched and nerved its way through the sprawling paranoia, but remains controlled amid the chaos. It’s a beautiful Greek tragedy in the Old West, and, more than that, it’s a masterpiece.

Jesse James (Brad Pitt) is only 34-years-old but has the weary eyes of a retirement age cop whose seen too many bad days. His own legend wears on him, which is why he seems simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by the 19-year-old wannabe outlaw Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). Ford has followed the James gang since he was a kid and his youthful enthusiasm, in spite of obvious ineptitudes, leads James to bring him into the fold.

Ford makes James nervous. But there is a growing call for James’s head by the state of Missouri and he needs reliable hands to help him evade the law. Others begin to plot against James, and he takes care of them in his own heavy-handed way. James makes the choice to keep Ford and Ford’s brother Charlie (Sam Rockwell) close, even inviting them into his home until James finally plans to rob something.

Ford, who is secretly working with Missouri’s Governor, doesn’t want to wait around for a career as a criminal to make him as famous as Jesse James, something he feels he’s entitled to. He decides the best, fastest way to become a legend is to be a legend killer.

The unnerving thing about Affleck’s Ford is that he’s so meek. He’s so unassuming. When he is quick to finish the Beatitudes by reminding the person praying that blessed are the meek, we realize it haunts him. Though he talks big, it’s hard to believe it when he finally does pull the trigger. Affleck creates a portrait of a man so imprisoned by his own failings that the only way to break out is to blow up the jail.

Pitt is great too, portraying an edgy, paranoid Jesse James that lacks the mythic grandeur of portrayals past. He has help though. Much of the credit for the film’s mood, its controlled nervousness, belongs not with the actors, but with cinematographer Roger Deakins’s isolating, fragmenting photography. Much of the lighting, too, appears to be at least partly natural, reminiscent of the candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon. The scenes in Lyndon won Jon Alcott an Academy Award for cinematography, and Deakins turn at the podium should come in February.

Knowing the Academy, director Dominik won’t likely grace the red carpet. His poetic-style is reminiscent of the long-admired but perennially-snubbed Terrence Malick. Also like Malick, Dominik has taken the long road to completing is second feature, coming seven years after his first effort Chopper. One can only hope that in the wake of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford that we don’t have to wait too long for another Dominik effort. This master-in-waiting has created a film that will stand the test of time and one that in spite of its long runtime (160 minutes), I’ll be seeing again soon.

The Path of Most Resistance (2007)–***1/2

The Path of Most Resistance is a tremendous short film from writer/director Peter Kelley, one that not only sails by on first viewing, but also retains its momentum the second (or third) time through. The real test, in fact, was that second viewing. While the film has its issues, the things we enjoy the first time through are the things we flat out adore on subsequent viewings.

The film follows Tom (Tim Rouhana), a high-end cat burglar whose job is getting in the way of his romantic life. He can’t tell people, even girlfriends, what he does, so he’s rebuffed on his attempt to connect with an ex on New Year’s Eve. He has a job to do while everyone else is celebrating, meaning the promise he makes to show up at a party will likely be broken. His ex expects it.

The ex’s assumption is confirmed when Tom runs into a little problem. The house he breaks into has someone in it, someone who swings a mean toilet tank lid. Her name is Prudence (Spencer Grammer), and she is visiting her father, a collector of very rare Beatles items. After knocking Tom out, she ties Tom up, partly because she’s intrigued and partly because she needs someone to be with on New Year’s Eve. The two spend the evening together, learning each other secrets and quirks until the clock strikes midnight.

Clocking in a 50-minutes, The Path of Most Resistance isn’t a long film, but it certainly should be longer. That’s one of the few criticism’s I have. In fact, it’s not much of a criticism; it’s more a suggestion to anyone willing to revisit a short film and turn it into something bigger.

I say bigger knowing full well that this small film must stay confined in the house setting where most of the events takes place. Yet, The Path of Most Resistance could do well to recast with name stars and add about 20 or 30 minutes of Tom and Prudence banter. It has the all potential to be a classical Hollywood romance; it just needs Hollywood power burst.

In the hands of the current stars, the film is still solid entertainment. Grammer, whose natural charm will lead to a bright future in screen acting, gives the kind of bubbly, kind of sad performance we got from Natalie Portman in Garden State. Unlike Rouhana, Grammer can deliver all the lines with ease, even if the dialogue isn’t always the most natural.

I expected a better performance from Rouhana, especially considering Kelley’s history as an acting coach. Rouhana’s David Schwimmer meets Tobey Maguire acting style doesn’t fit the sophisticated criminal. Fortunately, he manages to find the chemistry with Grammer.

That chemistry is important, as it holds the film together in spite of the things I mention above. Rouhana is good at being charmed, and Grammer is good at being charming. Combined with a energetic original score by Kaz Boyle and production value that most television shows would envy, the performances make The Path of Most Resistance a gem of a short film.

The Path of Most Resistance, starring Tim Rouhana and Spencer Grammer, directed by Peter Kelley, was recently screened at the DGA Theater in New York City. For more information on upcoming screenings visit www.thepathofmostresistance.com.

The Kingdom (2007)–*

America kicks some major ass, but when it does, it contributes to an unending cycle of violence. That’s the basic idea behind The Kingdom, a disturbingly stupid political action film from Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg. While it targets the zealous fans of 24 and Tom Clancy, The Kingdom grounds itself in a reality it knows nothing about. Instead of trying to be obvious entertainment like the above mentioned works, it attempts to be an film that says something. It fails.

In the wake of a major terrorist attack on an American Housing Complex in Saudia Arabia, FBI investigative team leader Ronald Fluery (Jamie Foxx) insists on putting American boots on the ground. The State Department and the Attorney General are adamantly against having a U.S. presence on Saudi soil, knowing it will rile the Muslim fundamentalists who launched the attack.

Fluery (the Wise) decides he knows better than his superiors, even with the clouded judgment from the death of a colleague in the bombing. He decides to blackmail the Saudi ambassador into letting his team investigate for five days. With the help of a justice-seeking Saudi, Sgt Haytham (Ali Suliman), Fluery and his team (again, with only five days) set out to take down everyone involved in the attack, up to and including the enigmatic ringleader Abu Hamza (think little Bin Laden).

The Kingdom is a terrible, sentimental action film with aspirations of being a legitimate political thriller. It’s offensive to the intelligence of any thinking person, and in many ways reminiscent of Crash. The main similarities? Both films are ignorant of their own intentions.

I hate The Kingdom because of the naïveté one must have in order to find the film either plausible or affecting. Berg’s use of tired cliches to show that the good Saudis are just like Americans—shots of Saudi families reading books together or a Saudi son helping his sick Saudi father—don’t just only drip with sentimentality; they are pickled in it.

More excruciating is watching the likes of Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper, two talented, serious actors, contend with Jason Bateman and Jeremy Piven, two talented comedians. The comedy in this film is so inappropriate that I actually thank the terrorists for taking Bateman’s character hostage, if only to shut him up. Piven too seems out of place, playing the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia like his Hollywood agent character from Entourage.

Far be it for me to actually want my political thrillers be treated more like Bourne Supremacy than Team America: World Police. Hell, I would have even taken 24. But no. We get nearly two hours of parody taken too seriously and culture clash not taken seriously enough. Is it any wonder why some people hate America?

The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, directed by Peter Berg, starts Friday, Sept. 28, 2007 in theaters everywhere.

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