POWDER BLUE (now playing at home where your dog has just chewed the buttons off your favorite shirt)

Powder Blue is and indie film that has the key elements an R-rated feature SHOULD have-- that's nudity and cussing--PLUS an interesting cast, and a fairly compelling story to tell. It's sort of a poor man's Crash, as it follows the exploits of four lonely souls whose lives intertwine in L.A. during the holidays.

Forrest Whitaker is Charlie, an individual so messed up that he goes around offering strangers money to shoot him and put him out of his misery. If I see one more movie about somebody who wants to die because he screwed up his life (like this one and the disturbing Seven Pounds with Will Smith) I"m going to go jump off a building! Each of us needs to play the hand we were dealt, otherwise what kind of a damn Texas Hold 'em poker game would this be? Anyway, there's more to Charlie than what's revealed in the beginning. Whitaker, with an Oscar already resting on his mantle, works for his supper as a tortured soul who's reached the end of his rope.

Rose-Johnny (Jessica Biel) is a stripper, (and also desperate...for love) with a young son on a life support system and near death. On top of THAT, she loses her dog! Qwerty Doolittle, ( Eddie Redmayne-- and I think "Qwerty" must stand for quirky here) who works as an embalmer at a funeral home, finds the pooch and that initiates his connection to Rose-Johnny. By all appearances they're an unlikely pair, but my uncle Viggo used to eat cucumber and marshmallow sandwiches, so there's no accounting for taste.

Ray Liotta plays Jack Doheny, an ex-con whose poor health may send him to an early demise. Jack has a thing for Rose-Johnny and goes to see her at the strip club. He obtains a private session with her, then pushes her off of him when she's just doing her job by trying to get him all hot and bothered. Because the film did hold my interest, I'm giving Powder Blue a pass on some of its unrealistic elements--but THAT scene, and all the others like it in dozens of movies I've seen over the years where some guy "nobly" rejects the advances of a sexy woman because he just wants to TALK...well, I just sit there and yell at the screen: ARE YOU A MAN, OR WHAT? Of the four primary characters, Jack's motivations are the most baffling. He becomes a kind of sugar daddy to Rose-Johnny, who reluctantly relents to it, for a while. It seems that Jack may be trying to vicariously re-live his past with an old love through Rose-Johnny.

Patrick Swayze, Lisa Kudrow, and Kris Kristofferson all have minor roles. You've never seen Swayze as such a blatant stereotype, and may not recognize him at first. And I hate to say this, because I've always liked him as a song writer, but Kris Kristofferson is a crummy actor.

Besides the obvious comparison to Crash, Powder Blue also borrows from The Shining-- in a scene that I won't give away--but you'll recognize it.

In the end, some of these quirky folks find redemption and a chance to move on, while others end up face first in the crapper.

But that's L.A. for you.

GRADE: B-

DISTURBING TREND

Summer's here and the time is right for dancin' in the street. Might as well, cuz the current crop of movies from Hollywood leaves a lot to be desired. That's if you're like me and prefer mature themes and at least some semblance of realism in your films. By that standard, you could say we're in a movie recession right now.

Hollywood's made a disturbing shift toward the PG-13 film, for purely economic reasons. Butts in the seats is the name of the game, so to hell with artistic vision and realism--that's potentially offensive and might get us slapped with the dreaded R rating, and that means fewer butts...

So the bulk of your PG-13 flicks are now silly, illogical, fantasy based pap--17 Again being a prime example. What you're getting for your nine or ten bucks is stuff that's barely above the level of the TV sitcom. Yeah, there may be some profanity, and sexuality may be ALLUDED to, (not shown) but that's about the only difference.

As I peruse the listings at one of our local cineplexes, I observe that twelve films are currently showing. ALL TWELVE of them are either PG-13 or PG...not an R-rated feature in the bunch. Yes, it's gotten THAT bad.

Thankfully, independent film makers are still turning out creative work--like Synecdoche New York-- and as a backlash toward Hollywood's capitulation to mediocrity develops, and it surely will, serious film fans will migrate toward intelligent independent fare, which means more of those kinds of films will get made.

Now, let's look at some of the individual flicks I haven't reviewed and don't intend to review, along with a couple of things I'm actually looking forward to. I didn't see Duplicity because I'm tired of Julia Roberts always playing such likable characters. It's basically the same character across the board, just different circumstances. No matter who she's portraying--she's likable. Even when she was a hooker in Pretty Woman, she was the most adorable hooker you'd ever want to meet. Just once, I'd like to see her challenge herself and play an axe murderer or something without being likable.

I'm not going to see Dance Flick--it looks like it will be wickedly funny-but again, too silly to be satisfying. Night at the Museum 2, same thing. Paul Blart Mall Cop. Observe and Report. Same thing.

Here's another category I will not bother with: The PG-13 horror flick. Are you kidding me? There was a time when virtually all horror films were R-rated, and for good reason. They were truly SCARY...like The Exorcist. Somebody popping out from behind a curtain and saying BOO isn't quite going to cut it.

And I don't want to see--generally speaking--a film based on the exploits of a historical figure everyone's familiar with, such as John Dillinger. I don't care what kind of reviews the forthcoming Public Enemies gets...I STILL KNOW THE ENDING. I don't think I'll ruin anything for you by revealing that Dillinger gets caught!

Here's what I AM looking forward to in the immediate future (and what you can expect to see reviewed on this site): The new Transformers movie. It looks like a hoot. Yeah, I know it's fantasy--but it's not going to PRETEND to be real...that's what I hate the most.

And I'm always a sucker for a good romantic comedy. Got to see Sandra Bullock in The Proposal. Don't know how good it will be, but Sandra actually has a nude scene...something to tell your grandchildren about.

TIMMY'S RANT OF THE DAY

If people put as much time, effort, and care into their MARRIAGES as they put into their gaudy, extravagant, drunken, wasteful WEDDINGS--divorce would be virtually nonexistent.

Idiots--what are you celebrating? You haven't accomplished ANYTHING. Stay together for a couple of years and THEN have a celebration...you've earned it.

And wouldn't it be nice to have that money you blew on a ONE day celebration when it comes time to send your kids to college?

Duh...gee...WE NEVER THOUGHT OF DAT!

DUM DE DUM DE DUM...dat's why were getting divorced now...cuz we never thought dat deeply about ANYTHING!

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (now playing at home where you may be wishing you HADN'T gotten married)

Rachel Getting Married marks the coming of age of Anne Hathaway as a serious actress, in this down and dirty examination of dysfunctional family dynamics that got her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Her cursing is reminiscent of an uncensored George Carlin routine, and she appears topless in a bathtub scene (view partially obscured by arm placement--but hey, I'm just sayin'). Anyway, it's a far cry from The Princess Diaries and all that other G-rated crapola she was in early on.

Hathaway is Kym Buchman--outwardly a spoiled, acid-tongued attention whore (she's from Connecticut, though, so we'll have to give her a pass). Inwardly, she's a young woman dealing with tremendous guilt over a tragic incident she precipitated when she was sixteen. She's the black sheep of the family, on furlough from her latest stint in drug rehab to attend the wedding of her sister, Rachel. And since Kym is clearly the one we're supposed to regard as being screwed-up, it's tempting to marginalize the rest of the family's problems. But mom (Debra Winger) and Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) are both in need of some kind of therapy--they're both harboring long-standing, unresolved grief issues--the source of their thinly disguised contempt for Kym. Rachel-- going for her PHD to become a psychologist--ironically reveals herself to be an unrelenting, unforgiving shrew towards Kym for most of the movie. Dad(Bill Irwin) is a well-meaning but inept kind of guy--also crippled emotionally--and the only one who tries to defend Kym.

Upon arrival at the family home, Kim finds that Kieran, (Mather Zickel) a guy she just met at a 12-step meeting, is there to act as best man for the groom. Kym and Kieran immediately slip away to make it with each other, and nothing surprises us about her behavior--given her track record. The film proceeds through an overly long wedding rehearsal dinner, and all the preparations for Rachel's big moment. As the multi-racial assemblage at the dinner (Rachel's betrothed is African-American) is toasting and yukking it up--many trying a bit too hard to come off as hip and clever--Kym delivers a self-deprecating speech, an attempt at humor that falls flat with the group. Despite their pretense of cool, they're a pretty uncharitable bunch.

If you enjoy the banter of childish sibling rivalry, punctuated by lots of F-bombs, as Kym and Rachel try to heap blame and guilt upon each other for past failures and misdeeds--you'll love Rachel Getting Married. (As I've learned from personal observation, this is the way sisters often demonstrate their affection for one another.)

Kym is desperately trying to come to terms with, and to make some sense of her life--and when she draws her mother into the blame game, the cat fur really flies. As tensions mount for her, Kym gets behind the wheel and becomes Lindsay Lohan on acid.

Who's to blame for a young life gone out of control? Bill Irwin gives a stellar performance as the dad, who dotes on Kym too much. Debra Winger--already a legend--doeesn't disappoint as Abby, the estranged mom who is present for the occasion, but not really there.

Bottom line, Rachel Getting Married is about forgiveness, and how pitifully few of us in this world are willing to embrace it.

GRADE: B +

TERMINATOR SALVATION

Going in, I figured this to be a film with plenty of potential to insult my intelligence, (what's left of it) but I'm delighted as duck doo doo to report that IT DIDN'T! I'll explain why in a moment.

Terminator Salvation is the fourth in the Terminator series. I saw the original 1984 film with "Ahnuld," but missed the next two, so I had some catching up to do. Fortunately, the blanks were pretty well filled in so that someone totally unfamiliar with this series could get his bearings early on.

The year is 2018, and the war between the humans and Skynet (the machines) has been raging, with the machines having decimated most of humanity. The likely here-I-come-to-save-the-day hero is John Connor, (Christian Bale) leader of The Resistance. The UNLIKELY co-hero is Marcus Wright, (Sam Worthington) a criminal who is executed in the beginning of the film, but gets resurrected (didn't insult my intelligence) to become Connor's ally in the fight--but not until Connor overcomes serious doubts about the guy. Wright has received an "extreme makeover" courtesy of Skynet, and is now a cyborg--part human and part machine (didn't insult my intelligence). Connor is thinking: Whose side is this dude on? Luckily, though, Wright's heart is still human--which is not lost on Blair Williams, (the exotic Moon Bloodgood) Resistance fighter pilot who recognizes the good in Wright from the get-go. This is where the film makes the case for reverence for ALL life--even if you don't know what category to fit it into.

Skynet has a crapload of human prisoners--they plan to develop a new kind of Terminator using live tissue. It's up to Connor to lead the resistance into a climactic attack on Skyynet's headquarters without killing the captives in the process--even though his orders from headquarters (which he rejects) are to bomb the place to smithereens, no questions asked. I like a movie--no matter what the genre--that deals with philosophical issues, and some of them in Terminator Salvation seem to reflect on the Bush-Cheney regime's handling of the Iraq war. There's the issue of "collateral damage,'' innocent civilians being killed as a result of a war strategy that assumes the end justifies the means. And there's a clear poke at the Bush-Cheney policy of torturing prisoners, when Connor balks at some of the tactics he's asked to use by emphatically stating that if we become just like THEM, what's the point of winning?

Now, here's the part where Terminator Salvation COULD have insulted my intelligence, but didn't. Blair Williams, the fighter pilot, is accosted by a number of men. She's a tough cookie--she gets her licks and her kicks in and puts up a good fight, but the men eventually overpower her. Not like that stupid character Jennifer Garner played in that stupid espionage TV series she was in, where she would routinely kick the crap out of half a dozen men all at once without breaking a sweat. That's cartoon stuff--and I can only think that the writers who try to patronize women in this silly kind of way must be hoping that once their wives or girlfriends see it onscreen they'll be extra nice to them in the bedroom.

Terminator Salvation is like the sensory overload of Christmas morning. The clanking bogeymen on the Skynet side--whether on foot, on wheels, or in the air--are such imaginative creations that you can only sit there with your mouth hanging open. It's a thrill ride of immense creative genius, and if there were ever a prudent reason for strapping moviegoers into their seats--this is it.

The only "huh?" kind of thing I can point out is that the movie is set in the year 2018. That's only nine years from now, and I highly doubt that the machines will be ready to challenge man for dominion over the planet by then. Then again, we've already come out with the "Smart Car," so you never know.

GRADE: A-

SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK (now playing at home where you can watch somebody else's bummer life and be thankful for your own)

In Synecdoche New York (pronounced "sin-ECT-do-kee," it's word play on Schenectady, where some of it's filmed) stage director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a man so self-obsessed that he builds a replica of New York City inside a gigantic warehouse in Manhattan, populates it with a multitude of actors, and creates an ongoing and all-consuming performance piece about his own life.

The first thing we learn about Cotard is that he and his family have a morbid fascination with their own feces. And since I'm the one interpreting the metaphors here, I'd say that sets the stage for what follows--his life slowly turning to sh*t. Cotard's artist wife, Adele, (Catherine Keener) absconds to Germany with their young daughter, Olive. Finding his child becomes his initial obsession going forward. He develops bizarre psychosomatic symptoms and his health slowly deteriorates. Through another marriage that produces another daughter, Caden's unrequited love for Hazel, (Samantha Morton) the box office girl, never wanes. Reality mixes with magic realism, as at one point Hazel moves into a house that is literally on fire--smoldering slowly throughout the movie--stating that she hopes the house doesn't do her in.

Caden receives a MacArthur grant and suddenly possesses the means to create his self-indulgent "play," which never opens--it just drones on in endless rehearsal. At one point, one of the actors inquires as to when they might get an audience, noting that it's been seventeen years already. His life becomes the theatre piece...the theatre piece is his life. The serpentine plot continually folds in on itself until finally you give up trying to keep track of where Caden's real life ends and the play begins. Screenwriter/director Charlie Kaufman intimates that since we're all the stars of our own stories in real life, (all the world's a stage) there's really no difference between the two.

The real tragedy of Caden Cotard's life is had he thought about anything but his OWN pain--perhaps empathized with someone else's--the whole thing could have turned around for him. (See "Mother Teresa.")

No synopsis can capture the intangibles that must all hang together to make a film a great work of art: soundtrack, dialogue, and cinematography. But most of all, the ability to connect with the audience at the core emotional level of our common humanity.

Despite its heartbreakingly sad tenor, Synecdoche New York is undeniably a DARK COMEDY. Kaufman (who wrote the screenplay for the quirky Being John Malkovich) understands that comedy stems from pain. That's why so many comics have had really screwed-up childhoods. Kaufman once wrote for TV sitcoms, and going for the laugh (bizarre though it may be) is where his instincts lie. Here, he has assembled an accomplished cast to deliver the goods-- including: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis, Emily Watson, and Dianne Wiest. Hoffman delivers the bravura performance.

Synecdoche New York is a comedy in the way that the human drama is a comedy--one day we will wake up and comprehend the cosmic joke. It seems that Charlie Kaufman already gets it. And while Caden Cotard may have ultimately failed at creating the masterpiece he intended...Kaufman did not.

GRADE: A

BULLETIN: TOM JONES NO LONGER SPLITTING PANTS ONSTAGE!

Tom Jones, at age 68, says he's no longer going to attempt the same gyrations that used to drive the ladies wild at his live shows. Thinks it would make him look silly. Well, it hasn't "dampened" the enthuiasm of his female fans (who've grown a little older themselves).

Instead of tossing their panties onstage...they're now throwing adult diapers.