Regretful Film Reviews

This is not a regretful review per se. In fact, this is less a review than a well-intentioned plot analysis. Nothing cynical going on here -- can you believe it? But do not assume right away that that means I am a great fan of this film -- you know, one of those persons who got into the cult following of Richard Linklater's little hit.

Why do they say that films have "cult followings"? Granted it is technial jargon. Just like "sleeper", which they also say about movies (sometimes the same ones). What they do not realise is that most persons probably do not know what these industry terms mean. Persons like me, for instance, who nevertheless have been devouring film reviews since sometime in the 1970s. But they use these terms anyway, as if it were standard currency. I can guess, from the usage, that a film with a "cult following" did not have a big audience at its opening, but that there is a select group of persons who like the movie a lot, and watch it repeatedly. The group develops a strong loyalty to the director or writer or whoever, and with word of mouth the popularity slowly grows. Unfortunately, this usually happens after it is taken out of the box office.

I still cannot figure out, even going on usage, what exactly a "sleeper" is. (Here is some trivia, which you can safely skip: I remember that one of the first ever movies to be rated PG-13 was Red Dawn. TV Guide constantly referred to it as a "star-spangled sleeper".)

[Searching...]

Okay, there was the Woody Allen flick by the name Sleeper in 1973. Did it lend its name to a genre?

[not satisfied; searching again...]

Okay, I think this is the best we are going to get from now: a two-buck answer from Google.

Back to the proverbial "cult following". I really hope the expression is proverbial. I don't know about you, but where I came from, a cult or a follower thereof was not such an admirable thing. Remember David Koresh? (In his own words.) Remember Jonestown? I saw a film about that mass suicide when I was a child, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. (But later on, I saw an episode of the A-Team in which they rescued several members and wreaked havoc on the cult, so I felt much better.)

I am willing to guess that in the case of a movie or a director that has a cult following, it is just a metaphor. A hip metaphor, used by those of us who can get past any suspicion of religious charlatanism, brainwashing, and congregating in filthy conditions to perform rituals. Just as James Lileks can speak of "Mac fanatic cultists who slosh with [Steve] Jobs’ Kool-Aid" (see Jonestown link, supra), we can speak about a film as if it its fans are living in squalor and abusing children. But in reality we are just talking about persons who really like a film, and want to see it many times, learn all about it, and share the experience with their friends. The Shawshank Redemption was such a film. Death Becomes Her was one. The original Matrix was such a film. Whit Stillman has a cult following. Kevin Smith has one. It's all good, clean fun (The Rocky Horror Picture Show notwithstanding).

I mentioned Whit Stillman on purpose. Remember him? Maybe not. Ever see Metropolitan (1990)? Doubt it. Barcelona (1994)? More likely, but still doubtful. Last Days of Disco (1998)? More likely still. But if you did see it, you may have been disappointed if you had not been prepared already set up by the previous two. Stillman has the gift of writing quirky and almost thoroughly unrealistic dialogue. That's the funny part, you see: seemingly shallow people are caught up in their mundane situations, but then they start to talk about problems that are on their mind. And then you realise that what they are discussing goes far beyond the bounds of barroom chatter. Is it more virtuous to choose only to date unattractive women? Are you shaving in the right direction? Barcelona will not give you the answers, but it will give you a much better idea of the question than you ever thought of before.

Stick with me, I am going somewhere with this.

The television series Northern Exposure was in the same genre. It ran from 1990 to 1995, which you may notice encompasses the same time period as Stillman's first two films. This programme championed the kind of banter that I just described. It was a great time. I loved this stuff. You know, if Northern Exposure had had a cult, I probably would have been an easy inductee. Would have eaten the whale blubber and everything.

I think the genre petered out by the time Whitman's last film was released, which is why it has more variety in it (e.g., disco dancing). The wretched "comedy" Denial was also released in 1998, with Jonathan Silverman and Jason Alexander trying to carry the torch. Well, that movie signaled to me that the party was over.

Back to the subject at hand, which is Before Sunrise. The year was 1995, which is why it was possible for a film to be mostly this scattered kind of witty and off-kilter romantic dialogue, plus scenery.

Because it looked sappy, and because I did not like the way Ethan Hawke had scruffified, I did not see it when it was first released, although I was tempted to because of the European theme, and mildly because of the plot. It did not help that Julie Delpy had previously been the cruel wife in Trois Couleurs: Blanc, or that she had been the Aryan Hitler-worshipping girl who cruelly dumped her Jewish boyfriend in Europa, Europa. I was incapable of aesthetic distance back then, so I did not like her. (And I may not be capable of it still: when my family doctor told me, in the course of a checkup, that I phycially reminded him of Ethan Hawke in Gattaca, I was instantly a fan of Mr. Scruffy.)

This year the sequel, Before Sunset, was released. It follows the same pattern, except that now the characters are ten years older and are meeting again for the first time in Paris.

Say no more. I am there the first day it is available.

On DVD, that is. (There is a little hitch that is preventing me from going to theatres at the moment, but we won't go into that now.)

So I wanted to brush up on the story. And now I stand corrected. Watching Before Sunrise is a moment well spent. It is not too sappy. The dialogue is not cumbersome, and even smacks of realism.

But I am glad that I waited several years to see the film. Why?

Because by now, this kind of experience has happened to me, with variations, a few times already.

Had I seen Before Sunrise in 1995, being young and impressionable, I may have projected that somewhat unrealistic scenario on my own travels and potential meeting of women. I may have measured my own experience with that one.

Now, the story tugs on my heartstrings in a way that is almost embarrassing. I don't want to be manipulated by Hollywood, but geez! The memories! The feelings! When Céline and Jesse are obliged to leave each other at the end, I can honestly say, "I know just how that feels". In fact, I don't need to think it; my heart informs me immediately. Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?!

And this, I suspect, is how the film managed to hook viewers, who fell into two categories:

• those who thought, "Wow, how romantic! I hope I can encounter such a situation someday", and


• those who thought, "That feels just like it felt when I met X, and we got to know each other over the course of Y, and then..."

Of course, it never happened like exactly like that, because this is fiction. One cannot make a film about this and be entirely documentary-style. Or at least, Linklater can not. If you want to know about an author's concept of poetics, read the preface. In this case, Linklater announced his principles at the beginning, with Jesse's idea for a cable-access show, comprised of 365 episodes, each one a "24-hour document of real time" following one person's life. The idea is scoffed at and dismissed.

The dialogue is not even so spectacular -- far too many "um"s and "y'know"s. But I guess that is noise that adds to the realism. They keep changing topics, running the gammut of the factual and the emotional.

They kiss way too prematurely. And on the other hand, they really never tell each other so much about their "normal" lives: where they are going with their life plans, for example, and whether those plans are going to be called into question now that they found this... how does one put it?... connexion.

"We share some sort of connexion" is a line that should be retired by now. I have heard it used too many times by too many guys on the girls they are trying to woo, and I know what they mean when they say it. Uh, huh, I think. (Because I am a guy who has found myself, a few times, lucky enough to keep a girl's attention for more than a few moments, and who needs a plausible reason to keep it going.) I wish Jesse and Céline had figured out what that means. They both seem bright, but they are too giddy with the process of discovering another person to stay on topic.

I wish, for once, that they had tried to find a big answer to a big question. The reincarnation problem that Jesse has, for example. (I have an answer to that one, by the way. But then, my deck is stacked because I have a few centuries of mystical teachings from my own religion. And yes, Judaism believes in reincarnation, heavily.)

Watching this film reminded me of two diametrically opposed kinds of matchmaking, which sort-of meet each other at the extremes. I have participated in both:

• Two perfect strangers meet, start a random conversation, hit it off, find they have that "connexion", realise that this moment holds significant import and, depending on their circumstances, either (a) become bosom buddies for life, or (b) are ripped apart, and feel their hearts detaching from their chest (rather like that guy in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).
  
• Two perfect strangers meet, because they have been set up by an intermediary, spent a couple of hours together, never touch, keep the conversation on track, and try to figure out if they should (a) marry each other, or (b) part ways and never see one another again.

Officially, I am supposed to tell you that the latter method is the better, and that it is, in fact, the most preferable of all possible ways of dating.

The former is risky, but it has something going for it, y'know.

This posting has a risk of being as long, confusing, and lifeless as its subject, but I will try to keep it to the point. Unlike the patience demanded of you in this movie, your patience in reading this posting will pay off.

I am a patient man. If a film about Orthodox Jews living in downtown Jerusalem hits Cannes, I will eventually see it when the right moment presents itself, even if I have to keep a mental post-it note for five years. Even though I was living in France at the time and could just go to the cinema when the film was released, to see what the beaux arts community was giddy about, I am glad I waited till now. I would not have known as much about what I was watching as I do now.

I'm also a pretty tolerant man. Tolerant of the outside world, that is, which this film will give you the impression is not possible. I may be an Orthodox Jew living in Jerusalem among other Orthodox Jews, but I came in from the outside, so I probably have a higher appreciation for the "the Other" than the kinds of people depicted in this film. But that's mostly because I have known and have even been the Other, and they have not.

The subject of this film hits close to home -- but only in a surreal and amateurish way. It is about the lives of a few characters living in the Meah Sha'arim reighbourhood on the northeast side of modern Jerusalem (close to the Old City). My snapshots in this posting will give you an idea of the landscape. The residents of this community are devoutly religious, close-knit, and somewhat sheltered. The preceding link was on an official Israeli website, but a bit more information can be found here on the Ohr Somayach website. Though they are by and large descendants of some of the original zionists, they distance themselves firmly from the modern zionist philosophy and government.

The truth is that I am more than somewhat wary of the Meah Sha'arim residents, whom non-Jews tend to label "ultra-Orthodox". It is not the kind of society that I would consider ideal, and I would not want to live there. They appear to live by an ethic that does not agree with me. There are probably some things that go on there that are not so pretty. But not many. There are probably some unhappy marriages. But not many.

I am also pretty tolerant of them, since they are bound to live by the same Torah as I am. Is there any wrongdoing? Then it should be punished. If not, then leave them alone. Their strangeness is not in and of itself enough to castigate them.

There really is no such thing as "ultra-Orthodox", by the way. This term is just a lazy sobriquet under which to lump together everyone who is more ma'hmir (stringent) than ones self or whose life is incomprehensible. We who are Orthodox live by different philosophies of life, and in different societies, but the particular philosophies practiced by these kinds of people do not make them any more (or less) devoutly religious than people who live in other communities, like mine, where there is a mix of Orthodox and secular, with all shades in between. They are not as likely to have gone to a movie theatre, or to look at something in the internet, have a blog, to listen to the radio, as I am. Not many of them have sat ouside watching the world go by or studying at Blue Sky Coffee in Athens, Georgia, as I have. In fact, they have perhaps never sat at a coffee house. It does not make them better than me, any more than my worldliness makes me better than them.

And the impression that a person may get by the use of that term, combined with one's impressions of other religions, may lead one to think that the "ultra-Orthodox" are religious zealots who are out to convert other people to their lifestyle, or to overthrow the government. I once had a Turkish friend (a Muslim) who, when she saw me with a beard, implored me to trim it because I looked like a zealot. The fact that I was studying in yeshivah probably only compounded that fear. Well, I have news for you who harbour similar prejudices: these people are overwhelmingly underwhelming.

If you were to ask them why they choose to live in such a neighbourhood, why they don't enjoy such luxuries as television and internet, why they don't read mainstream newspapers, or get engaged in affairs of international import, or why they do not at least go to university and study some feminist theory, they might tell you by way of response that they do not want to be corrupted by the outside world, or bring such corrupting influences into their homes. And if you suggest they do otherwise, they might suggest you have no business to tell them how to run their lives.

Case in point, this from today's news:

HAREIDI PAPERS CANCEL CELL-PHONE ADS
The hareidi newspapers have decided to stop all advertising for the cellular phone companies until the problem of the inappropriate content services is solved. The decision was made in accordance with a ruling handed down by "The Rabbis Committee of the Torah Giants." So reported leading hareidi newspaper Yated Ne'eman today, and HaModia newspaper and Mishpacha magazine are also "included" in the decision.

The rabbis recently ruled that cell phones represent a spiritual danger, in that they afford easy access to content that stands in contrast to a Torah lifestyle. "The goal is to establish a strong fence," Yated Ne'eman reports, "that will protect the generation of the future, and the community of those who follow Torah, from a grave spiritual blow that is already being felt now and that is expected to get stronger in the coming years. The spiritual dangers are multiplying in keeping with the tremendous investments being made by the cellular companies who wish to take advantage of every means to enrich their coffers by upgrading their content services."

A solution to the problem, say the rabbis, will come in the form of cell phones programmed not to receive content, but to be used only for phone calls.

Yated Ne'eman reported that both hareidi and national-religious media praised the decision - although a representative of at least one of the latter said that no decision had been made. "If our rabbis instruct us not to accept such ads, we won't," he said. "As it is, we don't accept ads for cigarettes, vacations abroad, and businesses that are open on the Sabbath that have competitors that are not [as opposed to, for instance, Ben Gurion International Airport]."

Okay, so they are especially cautious. So are monks in many religions, and so are many religious specialists -- be they priests, gourous, or mullahs. What is tricky here is that they appear to be Westerners, so we expect them to blend in. Since they do not, we get irritated. We become determined to find a flaw in their lives, and punish them for it.

It will probably not come as a shocker to you that the way of life depicted in this film is not 100% accurate. It's a play after all, with about six cast members, just filmed mostly on location for a realistic look. Those who see Kadosh and are convinced that it is telling things the way they really are, is suffering from a particularly hallucinogenic form of wishful thinking. The events in this scenario are ugly, and the audience probably wants them to be ugly. Because the audience is often antisemitic (even latently) or, if Jewish, anti-Orthodox.

Eliette Abécassis is French, Sephardic-Moroccan, and lovely in photos, and she is even an industrious author. I imagine she would be fun to talk to and probably carries on witty and thoughtful conversation. But if this script is any indication of her knowledge of the lives of Orthodox Jews, she is intellectually lazy. She researched her book La répudiée, sure, probably asking a lot of tough questions to two or three people. This is the novel that she adapted with Amos Gitai for the screenplay of this movie. And although I only read the first chapter, I could tell that it was already better than this stinker.

The plot of Kadosh: Two sisters, Rivkah and Malcah, confide in each other as they live their lives in their oppressive and male-dominated world. Rivkah has been married to Meïr for ten years, yet they have not yet had a child, a fact which weighs heavy on her husband's mind. Meïr and Rivkah are nevertheless deeply in love. But Meïr listens to the insane advice of his rabbi, who says that after ten years with no child, it is time for him to divorce his wife and start over with a new one. Rivkah's sister, Malcah, is going through her own crisis: she has a boyfriend (in a society that strictly forbids such relationships), and what's worse, he has been in the army. No chance they can marry. So Rivkah is set up with several men, and refuses to marry each of them. But now she is getting tired and decides to wed the next one who comes along, although he is a zealot and, as it turns out, abusive.

Even though the world they inhabit is filled with family and friends, we never see beyond the dingy walls of their one-room apartments or synagogue. It is also not clear to which world they belong: in reality, there are many sects of Orthodox Jews, observing dress codes and traditions. We use these symbols to distinguish between one another. Yet the characters of this film appear to be a blend of different groups who in reality would hardly associate with each other. At one moment you may get the impression they are in the particular sect of 'hassidim (who shall remain unnamed) who have bizzare rules marital relations; but at another moment you notice they are sporting black hats or displaying a portrait of the Ben Ish 'Hai (a Sephardic authority, with no relation to 'hassidic groups) on the wall. There are no large community events here: no Shabbat dinners, no tishes, no engagement parties. The wedding itself is a deplorable farce. A little more under the 'houpah, maybe?

Shall I go on? I don't know if this is Abécassis' fault, or Gitai's, or just the cumulative stupidity of the actors and crew involved. These people are trying to look like authentic Orthodox Jews, warts and all, but they can't get it right. The Meïr character can't put on tefillin. The rabbi looks like he just finished selling radishes in the shuk rather than spending decades in talmudic study, and the women sound like they have been reading an awful lot of Naomi Ragen. The scenes of them dipping in the mikveh (immersion pool) are beyond preposterous: they hold their noses, one hand is out of the water holding onto the side of the pool, and the balanit (immersion supervisor) is pushing them down with her hand. All three details render the immersion invalid. This is proof enough that none the writers, actors, or crew knew squat about a religious life. What's more, the men conduct business in the synagogue, during a service, as if it were a church: they walk over to the side quietly, debate, conclude, and then go back to their places. Absurd! It is forbidden to talk during prayers, and there is no chance one would speak with someone else during his own prayers, which is what is going on here.

And a couple would never have relations in the presence of a bookshelf of holy books. And yet that is the focal point of the climactic scene. Ridiculous.

Oh, I appreciated the cinematography. I enjoyed seeing local sights that I walk through on a nearly daily basis sometimes. We don't get that much on film. I appreciated the LONG takes: the waking-up sequence at the beginning, and the long walk down Meah Sha'arim street, which swivels around when Meïr walks by and still gets some local colour and characters for several more moments. But besides this, it was long where it needed not be, and short on details. There is a scene near the end in which Rivkah, now separated from her husband, recites a traditional prayer for an easy childbirth. She is gazing dreamily at the cieling, and her luscious lips pass slowly over her teeth. What we wonder is, "is she really pregnant?" What the film answers is, "Look at those lips! Aren't they luscious passing over her teeth as she recites some random traditional prayer, having something to do with the subject?"

The last scene shows Malcah walking on a hill outside of the Old City of Jerusalem, opposite the Temple Mount. Only those familiar with the geography here can realise that she is on the Mount of Olives, and why. (If I told you why, it would be a spoiler, so research it yourself.)

Nice camerawork? Yes. But the ignorant depiction of this world, even adeptly filmed, does not deserve any praise. Want an interesting story? So describe the people the way they are, and the exact issues that they are facing in their lives. Truth is stranger than fiction.

This is a snapshot of the video store, to which I just returned this DVD. It is frequented by many 'harédim and 'hassidim, and is located in a neighbourhood called Na'halaot, which is no less fascinating than the one depicted in this movie. But it's also beautiful and filled with a variety of interesting people of different origins. Some are devoutly religious, and some not. It is in the heart of Jerusalem, making it a prime spot for what could be an interesting novel or film, one based on reality. But I don't expect to see that one at Cannes anytime soon. You see, truth in this part of the world is complex and difficult to navigate, but it is heady and exhilirating to appreciate. Fiction, in comparison, looks like a cheap fur hat. But if you appeal to antisemites, they will accept the fur hat as authentic.

One thing was realistic in this movie: when men celebrate, they really do dance around in a circle, and they really know only three songs for such occasions. That's right, only three. What a glimmer of authentic silliness in this otherwise humourless movie.

The Hebrew translation of "Bad Boys" in Hebrew, as you see on the left, is "Evil Boys". That's not an inappropriate choice of words. The anonymous translators could have chosen the word shovav (or shobab) instead as the translation for "bad", since it means something like "mischievous" or "rambunctious". And that sentiment would have perhaps more accurately reflected the spirit of the first Bad Boys flick. The conscience-reggae song by Inner Circle, which became the Cops theme, provided the original 1995 movie title. Ian Lewis's lyrics are about taking responsibility for your misdeeds. But ironically, the title of these movies refers to the policemen, who in this case do not take any responsibility for their reckless behaviour. So we lucked out here with one of those unintentionally funny translations that ends up nailing the true meaning in the film. It's not just the criminals that are bad boys in this one; it's the cops. These guys are evil.

Let me make this clear: I don't know what happened here. I expected this flick to be a good one, in the sense of a fun, buddy-cop action movie, like the 1995 Bad Boys... Actually, I have a suspicion that it had to do with a change of personnel between the first and the second. Granted, Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay are responsible for both, and perhaps they have simply turned cynical and greedy over the years, but the rest of the writing and producing team is different.

These are guys who, if they were shooting a scene set in a library, would have explosions going off among the stacks, with books flying and stained-glass windows crashing down, for no particular reason. These are guys who, if they set a scene in a monastery, would have monks leaping out of their cells and stabbing passers-by on their way to the chapel, for no particular reason. These are guys who would film a scene set at an opera and have the set crash down on the singers, who would (if they were women) take off their clothes in their panic, or (if they were men) would be impaled by Neptune's fork and eject guts all over the stage... and we're just talking about an opera scene whose purpose in the film would be to demonstrate that the main characters are classy and sophisticated -- not as the scene of the showdown.

There is one scene in this movie, I kid you not, in which overweight "businessmen" push desks and file cabinets out of the windows of their office, which is some floors above ground level. I think they were trying to hide evidence or something. With much thought and contemplation, I still could not figure out what the purpose of this scene was. Except, of course, to show what a giant desk falling out of a building looks like.

There is a grotesque scene in a mortuary, which involves uncovering a dead woman's body. Of course, she is undressed, perfectly preserved, and voluptuous. A few minutes later she is referred to as a "bimbo". No one questions this terminology. Are mortuary workers really so misogynist?

And here is an example of how bad the writing is: the F-word is tossed about carelessly, losing all meaning. Okay, nothing new there. But what's funny is that Lawrence uses it at least twice in its literal meaning. Of course, once it has lost its meaning, it is useless for him to try to use it literally. But he does, both times highly inappropriately: once to a young boy who is coming to take his daughter out on a date, and once to remark that rodents copulate in the same fashion as humans. (Note to moronic script-writer: no, animals don't.) What bothered me more in this was that Marcus is supposedly controlling his anger, and taking compassion on other human beings, even on criminals. And yet when they visit a prison, he curses at the inmates, pointlessly.

And most notably, there is a scene of the police officers driving a humvee over and through countless shanty homes in Cuba, with no conscience. There is no point to this, except to see a humvee driving over big stuff. But these are people's homes!

I somehow remember enjoying the first Bad Boys. I remember getting past their language and enjoy the humour. I don't remember it being excessively violent, as action flicks go. I remember the chemistry that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence had, the ongoing good-natured buddy rivalry that kept their job interesting and their relationship with the bad guys clear. It didn't hurt that we liked them anyway from their previous television characters -- keep in mind that Will Smith's biggest film so far had been Six Degrees of Separation, and that this was well before Independence Day and, best of all, Men in Black. In other words, he was basically still the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in most people's minds when this came out, and Martin Lawrence was still a UPN and House Party funny man (remember Kid and Play? no, I don't either).

And I remember Téa Leoni, who I thought was enough of a reason to watch the thing, no matter how it turned out. (Even though I knew it was probably a sin to think so, since she was married to David Duchovny.) She played the friend of a prostitute or stripper or something who had been killed; I think she was a witness to the crime, so the guys had to put her in homemade witness protection, for some reason pretending to be each other. And I remember realising at about this point that in Hollywood's simplistic mentality, an action movie with black heroes necessitated most of the bad guys being white (a theory that has demonstrated itself ever since: references upon request). But the guys were essentially protectors of justice and punishers of wrongdoing, and were therefore good policemen who got the job done. We thought we were seeing what comedians became when they grew up. Good will abounded.

Not so, lo these eight years later. The Lawrence and Smith characters are now pure evil. I hate to say it, but you can see for yourself. They have burned out with their job and taken opposite directions: no longer interested in justice, Mike (Smith) just wants to strut his style and kill witnesses, while Marcus (Lawrence) is intent on putting the finishing touches on destroying their already crumbling friendship and crying about how bad his life is. It is bad: he has a beautiful wife and family, a beautiful home and yard by the water in Miami, a veranda, a pool, a big dog, a barbecue grill, etc. No, what really is the problem is his partner, who is psychopathic. So he is about to leave him.

The plot is (a) extremely complicated and (b) makes no sense. It is about fifteen different possible action plots woven together, shot in about three hundred different locations. But this is no Magnolia, folks. This is Frankenstein's monster (just before someone opens up his cadaver to stuff it with a loosely-sealed plastic bag full of X). You see each location for about ten seconds, and then it's on to the next one. And the cast of thousands means you are going to have to pay attention to minor characters, since they will be introduced for a few seconds, disappear, and come up later in the "story".

Speaking of which. There are some drug importers, the head of whom is Cuban (i.e. major bad guy). There is an ecstasy lab in Amsterdam. There is some connexion with a mortuary, which launders their imports, so to speak. There is a KKK rally, which is of course full of white bad guys, but ridiculous ones. There is a Russian rave-club owner, who is not quite a whiz at business, but who at least has the good sense to throw a guy out from the midst of fabulously beautiful dancing women, if it looks like he is about to overheat and die of an ecstasy overdose. (Interestingly, he could take them straight to the mortuary for use in importations: now that would be character economy!) There is Joey Pants, playing the stereotypical raging police chief who must both chew out Marcus and Mike, and let them do their stuff. And finally, there is Martin Lawrence's sister Syd (Gabrielle Union), an undercover NYC police officer who is moonlighting in the drug trade -- oh, right, trying to arrest someone.

If you decide to throw caution to the wind and watch this piece of drek, it will be for the thousands of pointless action sequences, for the beautiful colours and scenery, for the well-orchestrated sound track, or for the "humour". But I cannot help throwing out a few questions that leaped up in my mind while I was trying to keep up with the whole mess, in hopes that it would redeem itself by the end.

• Why does it seem that Syd -- Marcus's sister and Mike's love interest -- is a little too deeply undercover? Clues abound that she is not really working for the police... but they never pay off. Is this just bad writing?
  
• There is a funny scene in which Mike and Marcus discuss the latter's being shot in the rear end the night before, which is causing him impotence. Everyone around thinks they are homosexuals, while Mike explains to Marcus in vivid metaphors that he doesn't want to hear about his malfunctioning equipment. He uses the metaphor of burying this discussion at the bottom of the sea. This is clearly a reference to the case they are trying to solve, as it is the answer they are looking for concerning the smuggling methods used by the X importers. This is obviously a chance for Mike to hit up on the answer serendipitously. But he doesn't! Is this just bad writing?
  
• Why does the redneck klansman double as a boat captain and trusted sea watchman during a stakeout?
  
• Who is the Cuban guy who double-crosses them at the end? Is he the cousin of the Miami police officer who is always kidding Mike and Marcus (that's either Yul Vazquez (as Mateo Reyes) or Jason Manuel Olazabal (as Marco Vargas))? If so, why does he do that? Was he bad from the beginning or just trying to save his own skin?

And this list could go on, but I am sick of thinking about this two-hour-plus waste of an evening. Plus, I suspect it really doesn't matter.

Yes, that last post was a bit pre-dated. The reasons is that it had been in the works since before Yom Kippour but I wanted to put the appropriate linkage everywhere. The holidays are over; I'm back to work tomorrow. Please send me your comments and opinions. Thanks for reading.

It's the new year in my part of the world. And what's more, we are starting with a clean slate (metaphysically speaking). This refreshing cycle makes it possible to access a higher state of consciousness -- which we immediately put to work by building an outdoor thatched-roof hut. Glass of havdalah wine in hand, we head outside following 26 hours of no food and drink, to start work with power tools.

It seems appropriate to stop focusing on negativity for once. Instead of roasting another movie that did everything wrong, I am going to talk about a few that did something right. (Don't worry, we'll be back to the harsh stuff next week.) Hence, the most memorable moments in cinema...

Pretty daring, huh? Obviously what follows is a subjective list of the film moments that were most memorable to me. This is based on no survey, although you are free to suggest your own. And I am not even claiming they were great moments. These were the moments that stuck in my mind for some reason, for a long time, and in some cases had a profound effect on my aesthetic. I cannot always say exactly why. But these are moments when, in my opinion, a filmmaker was doing something right. Something amazingly right. Something that makes me glad I sat through the whole film.

You might notice a trend or two. The sometimes skewed nature of the choices is just due to the selection of movies that I have and have not seen. One more thing: most of this is from memory, so there may be a few factual errors.

Here they are, in no particular order.

• Mark Walberg (as Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler) slowly realises he really needs to get out of his current path in life, while waiting in a dealer's living room for a bag of fake heroin to be bought, in Boogie Nights.
  
  
• Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thompson) discovers her mistake about Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant)'s marital status in Sense and Sensibility.
  
  
• Tom Cruise (as Frank T.J. Mackey) holds the telephone on which Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Phil Parma) has managed to call him, and hesitating to talk to his father ,in Magnolia.
  
  
• Warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton) opens up Andy Dufresne's (Tim Robbins) Bible in Shawshank Redemption.
  
  
• Gérard Depardieu, as Cyrano de Bergerac, composes a sonnet while sword-fighting in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's film named for that character.
  
  
• Robin Williams goes back into the crumbling house with his wife Annabella Sciorra in What Dreams May Come.
  
  
• Jean Réno taking the NY subway after his day job in Léon (a.k.a. The Professional)
  
  
• Jacques Mayol (Jean-Marc Barr)'s underwater dream in Le Grand Bleu.
  
  
• Sean Connery eating steak in The Hunt for Red October (and calmly stating, "Personally, I give us... one chance in three").
  
  
• Neo getting up off the floor in The Matrix.
  
  
• "The Frog" Jean-Baptiste (Cris Campion) and Princess María-Dolores de la Jenya de la Calde (Charlotte Lewis) floating apart in separate boats at the end of Roman Polanski's Pirates.
  
  
• Mel Gibson realising his daughter's glasses of water are not such a nuisance, in Signs.
  
  
• Depardieu, as Christopher Columbus, beginning to dictate his memoirs to his son in 1492. ("I remember...", he says, and drops of ink fall from his son's pen.)
  
  
• Marcel Proust (Marcello Mazzarella)'s face liquifing, from sobreity to grief, in Le Temps Retrouvé.
  
  
• Mandy Patinkin declaring "My Name is Inigo Montoya", in The Princess Bride. Oh, and the Cliffs of Insanity.
  
  
• Jenny (Robin Wright Penn) throwing rocks at her childhood home in Forrest Gump.
  
  
• Tom Hanks losing Wilson in Cast Away.
  
  
• Depardieu, (again) playing a piano solo in Green Card.
  
  
• Braveheart (Mel Gibson, again) gets a chance to recant, and instead cries out "Freedom".
  
  
• André Ziman's wife Elise sings "I'm in Heaven" to her husband, along with the radio, in Claude Lelouche's Les Misérables.
  
  
• Wind in His Hair shouts to Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner) from a ledge above, as the latter leaves the tribe.
  
  
• Val Kilmer, as Doc Holliday, showing up at a duel with a marshall's badge, in Tombstone. ("I'm your huckleberry.")
  
  
• Bill Murray, in What about Bob?, cheerfully continuing to take Richard Dreyfus' advice as metaphor, after being tied with ropes to a chair in the forest.
  
  
• Jim Carrey, in the Truman Show, starting to suspect something.
  
  
• Kiefer Sutherland (as Dr. Daniel Schreber) refreshing a few childhood memories for Rufus Sewell (as John Murdoch), in Dark City.
  
  
• Bill Murray filming his whisky advert "with intensity", in Lost in Translation.
  
  
• Robert Duvall arguing with God in The Apostle.
  
  
• Winona Ryder writing furiously in her journal, in Heathers.
  
  
• Charles Berling (Grégoire) riding his horse across the French plains in Ridicule.
  
  
• Audrey Tautou leading the blind man across the block in Paris, in le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain.
  
  
• The Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close), explaining to Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (John Malkovich), how she trained herself to hide her feelings by stabbing herself with a fork under the table, in Dangerous Liaisons.
  
  
• Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, dictating his Requiem mass to F. Murray Abraham (Antonio Salieri).
  
  
• Steve Martin and John Candy think the drivers who are in the opposite lane on the highway cannot possibly know which way they are going ("Thank you!") (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles).
  
  
• Robin Williams (again), telling Matt Damon "It's not your fault", in Good Will Hunting.
  
  
• Steve Buscemi's opening narrative in Desperado.