SPARTAN (DVD)

Director: David Mamet (Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, one of the most notable writers in US)
Starring: Val Kilmer, Derek Luke

I often find David Mamet's dialogue stilted and obtuse. I also find that good acting turns that stilted dialogue into something special (please see Glengarry Glenross if you haven't already). I mean, who can argue that Shakespeare's dialogue wasn't also stilted and obtuse, and few would argue that his stories didn't turn out pretty well. Here Mamet turns a lame-brained special agent movie into a Greek tragedy merely with his dialogue - and a few solid bits of plot construction. At it's heart, though, the plot was nothing more than a Secret Service agent trying to find the President's daughter who has been unknowingly kidnapped by an international sex slave ring. I mean that's just absolutely absurd and awful, just terrible - but somehow Mamet makes it more. Where at first glance we see only Val Kilmer shooting bad guys, we soon see kings plotting against their own children and the Spartan soldiers of everyday society learning to be more than simple "worker bees" for their kings. I'm surprised, but this was quite a good movie.

Standouts: Wonderful script. Fine acting job by Val Kilmer.
Blowouts: Nothing really missed too badly.

Grade: B+

HIDALGO (DVD)

Director: Joe Johnson (October Sky, Jumanji, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer)
Starring: Viggo Mortenson, Zuliekha Robinson, Omar Sharif, Adam Alexi-Malle

Hidalgo was a surprisingly robust and enjoyable little Hollywood picture about a horse race in Arabia. In a nutshell: An American cowboy riding a tamed mustang beats a bevy of blueblood Arabian horses at their own game. I.e. The American everyman mutt beats foreign aristocracy. Yeah, that's one overdone theme if ever there was (Horatio Alger was writing this stuff 100 years ago), but it's still valuable. What's more this film had enough other interesting aspects (the cowboy's Sioux blood, the 3000 mile race across the desert itself) to overcome the basic theme. Unfortunately, the Hollywood studio execs also put in a silly love interest side story that only roughly fits in to the main plot. Fortunately Omar Sharif is interesting even as a silly Arabian Emir. This was a pretty darn decent popcorn flick.

Standouts: Solid acting and not as dumb as Hollywood usually behaves.
Blowouts: Still has some silly Hollywood conventions.

Grade: B-

COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (DVD)

Director: Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, more)
Starring: ensemble cast in vignettes

Ah, Jim Jarmusch. So true to his art. So doggedly condescending to mainstream audiences. So dedicated to offbeat independent filmmaking. So full of crap. Coffee and Cigarettes is a short series of vignettes, little conversations over coffee ... and cigarettes. Many are pointedly useless absurdities masquerading as art, such as the Jack and Meg White discussing Nikola Tesla. One is simply great, with Steve Coogan discovering he is the distant cousin of Alfred Molina, but that greatness is entirely due to the fantastic presence of the two actors. Mostly this film was an expensive and unfulfilling ego project. Although that sounds bad, it's not really meant to be. Many times ego projects are originally derived from noble goals. This movie fails, but at least it tried to do something, even if that something was nothing more than "something different".

Standouts: An attempt at a new kind of movie. Vignettes of My Dinner with Andre.
Blowouts: A failed attempt at a new kind of movie.

Grade: C+