Monthly Archives: August 2010

‘Eat Pray Love’ Makes Me Want To Go On A Diet, Abandon My Faith And Become A Hermit

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Julia Roberts has a radiant smile and stars in 'Eat, Pray, Love.'

I hate the new film Eat Pray Love.

I’ll tell you why in a minute. But, first, a disclaimer: I haven’t seen Eat Pray Love. I didn’t read the book. I haven’t even read any full reviews of the book or the movie.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ll get on with thrashing the movie.

I’m 100 percent positive that I hate it. Not that I would hate it, but that I already do hate it. In fact, I’m going to go out a limb here and say that it’s the worst movie of the year, probably the worst film of the decade and possibly the worst motion picture of the 21st century.

Oh, and the book’s not any good, either.

Why?

Because, as I understand it, and I admit I might not understand it well, Eat Pray Love is about a 32-year-old unhappily married woman from New York City who embarks on a torrid affair, initiates a bitter divorce, ends up lonely and unhappy anyway, quits her job, and then travels to Italy, India and Indonesia for a year so that she can “feel something again” and “find herself.” Along the way, she samples some good food, bits and pieces of ancient religions, and a healthy plateful of wealthy Brazilian businessman that she later regurgitates and shapes into the book and movie we now know as Eat Pray Love.

Before I go on, yes, I’m fully aware that middle-aged women everywhere loved the book and love the film. I’ve seen groups of them standing in line at the theaters with their floppy hats and their chi-chi purses and their white capri pants, chattering and laughing and touching one another lightly on the shoulders with the tips of their professionally painted nails and adjusting their hats and checking their reflections in windows and talking about their new shoes and giggling while they dig around in their purses for change to buy their tickets, and generally detracting from my movie-going experience in a way that exasperates me as much as it makes me queasy.

And yes, I know that Oprah enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love the book–the one that has a title with proper commas instead of the one that reads like a Sunday Word Search for morons–so much that she invited the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, to discuss it on not one, but two, one-hour episodes of her enormously popular television show, which is, I ought to mention, ending next season, and not one virtual group hug or dewy drop of teary-eyed advice too soon.

Now where was I?

Oh, yes, I remember, although only God knows why given the brain-killing distraction that is Oprah and middle-aged women in floppy hats giggling because they’re having a ladies’ night out with white wine at the Macaroni Grill, and perhaps just one small piece of chocolate cake drizzled with homemade ganache and topped with pralines, and, hey, Mr. Gorgeous Young Waiter with the curly blond hair, could we have five spoons to eat it with please because we’re all on diets and this is very, very naughty of us but not as naughty as what we’re thinking about doing to you as you walk back to the kitchen in those tight black slacks to get our cake?

Where was I again?

'Eat, Pray, Love' author Elizabeth Gilbert found herself--and a bazillion dollars--by taking a year off from work and going on vacation.

Yes, I was telling you why I hate Eat Pray Love, the worst movie of the new millennium and quite possibly the precipitating event that will send the world spiraling toward Armageddon.

I hate, hate, hate Eat Pray Love because I hate all books and movies about self-absorbed wealthy men and women or even hermaphrodites who are able to take a year off from their horribly tedious, humdrum lives of luxury and go to Italy, India, Indonesia or any country that stars with an “I” so they can stay in five-star hotels and eat gourmet food and borrow just enough happy thoughts from spiritual leaders until they start to “feel something” and eventually “find themselves” and then go home to write a book about it and make a bazillion dollars so they can travel and eat some more to keep themselves from getting bored and listless.

Malarkey, I say, metaphorically pounding my metaphorical fist on my metaphorical desk until my metaphorical fist metaphorically hurts from all the metaphorical pounding that I’m doing!

Gibberish, I metaphorically shout without reservation until I’m metaphorically hoarse because you know what, where do all of those poor middle-aged women in Italy, India and Indonesia who glue our shoes together and sew the flowers on our floppy hats go when they lose their excitement for life and want to have an affair and travel the world to taste other people’s food and see beautiful places and talk about lofty topics with wise people and meet handsome Brazilian businessmen but can’t even think about it because they’ve got kids to feed and dresses to sew and prayers that need to be said?

Nowhere, that’s where they go, because they’re not rich and they’re never, ever going to meet rich Brazilian businessmen unless those men show up at their doors asking for permission to build dress factories in their villages so that they can get dresses made for a dollar a day and then have them boxed up and shipped to New York City to be sold for $300 along with a new pair of shoes and a matching floppy hat so that they can travel the world and have romantic affairs with wealthy authors.

And that’s why I hate Eat Pray Love.

But there is one thing going for Eat Pray Love: It’s stars Julia Roberts, and she’s got a radiant smile.

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My Top 21 Favorite Movies Of All Time: The Final Three

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Maria Menounos

“Hi, I’m Maria Menounos and I hope you’ll join me here on the red carpet tonight as Entertainment Tonight covers the most-anticipated movie event of  2010, the long-awaited unveiling of the top three films in the critically acclaimed list, My Top 21 Favorite Movies of all Time. Oh! The crowd’s going wild! Here’s the author now!”

*Maria shoves her way to the front of a cheering crowd just as Mike stumbles out of a long, black limo*

“Michael, hi, I’m Maria Menounos and I’m beautiful and articulate! How about you?” *shoving microphone into Mike’s face*

“Uh, I dunno. What?” *blinking sleepily, perhaps a bit drunk*

“Tell us about your favorite movies! Can you give us a sneek peek of what we’ll see tonight?” *perkily bobbing*

“Uh, I can hardly remember how I got here, let alone what I wrote about these movies. Look, nobody asked me to publish a list of my favorite movies, but I thought, ‘Hey, I like movies a lot, maybe I should publish a list of my favorite movies. I’ll call it My Top 21 Favorite Movies of All Time and people can comment on the reviews, add their own favorites to the list, or ask me what kind of idiot would forget to add Tom Laughlin and Billy Jack to his list of the world’s greatest films.’ ”

“That’s so wonderful, Mike! We can hardly contain our excitement!” *turning to the camera* “Well, our producers are telling me the big show’s about to begin! Let’s head inside and find out what Mike thinks!”

Previously on My Top 21 Movies:

21. Kung Fu (1972)
20. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
19. The Terminator (1984)
18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
17. Valdez is Coming (1971)
16. The 13th Warrior (1999)
15. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
14. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
13. Blood Simple (1984)
12. Blade Runner (1982)
11. Raising Arizona (1987)
10. Bad Santa (2003)
9. The Killing Fields (1984)
8. No Country for Old Men (2007)
7. Manhattan (1979)
6. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
5. Gladiator (2000)
4. Hero (2002)

My Top Three Picks:

Robert DeNiro plays a Sicilian gangster who finds redemption in "The Mission." Or something like that.

3. The Mission (1986)
The Mission has three strikes against it: First, it’s British, and we all know that low-budget British films are often about as appetizing as overdone peas (rent Gosford Park, one of only two movies I’ve walked out on, and see if you don’t agree); Second, the storyline focuses on Jesuit priests in 17th-century South America, so you know there’s going to be a lot of itchy slogging through the steamy jungle; Third, it’s a film that explores the nature of sin, repentance and forgiveness, and nobody wants to be halfway through a tub of hot-buttered popcorn and a 64-ounce Coke when they figure that one out.

But The Mission also has a few things going for it.

Directed by Roland Joffé, the film’s Academy Award-winning cinematography is breathtaking. It’s haunting soundtrack—one of my all-time favorites—was written by Ennio Morricone, who also penned the unforgettable scores for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Clint Eastwood’s other spaghetti westerns, which are among my favorite films. Also, the acting is as good as anything we’ve come to expect from Robert DeNiro, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons  and Aidan Quinn.

Yet it’s the movie’s thematic triptych that moved me so deeply.

Based loosely on true events, there is a panel depicting a Cain-and-Able-like conflict between two brothers, Rodrigo and Felipe Mendoza, which ends when Rodrigo kills Felipe in a duel. That leads to the spiritual reformation of Rodrigo, a slave trader and mercenary soldier, as well as what may be the most powerful visual representation of repentance and forgiveness ever captured on film. And then there is another panel about the conflict between the Jesuits and the government of Portugal, which is out to subdue and enslave the indigenous Indians of the region, the Guaraní. And finally, there is the main central panel describing the climactic philosophical conflict between the worldviews held by the fresh convert Rodrigo, who organizes the Guarani into an army to fight the Portuguese, and his spiritual mentor, a committed pacifist named Father Gabriel.

If I was an art professor charged with leading a discussion of The Mission, I’d unfold this triptych and point out to my students that there are three great themes in literature: Man’s relationship to man, man’s relationship to society, and man’s relationship to God. The Mission attempts to cover them all, and, remarkably, it succeeds.

I won’t tell you how the movie ends because that would be mean, but suffice it to say that it not only greatly affected my view of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost, but also forever changed my feelings about the necessity of war.

Batman had an anger management problem in "Batman."

2. Batman (1989)
How would you grow up behaving if you witnessed your parents being murdered by a couple of thugs?

It’s hard to say, of course.

But you probably wouldn’t put on an ill-fitting Halloween costume and form a crime-fighting duo with an ambiguously gendered kid wearing pantyhose and a bright-yellow cape. Nor would you ever be heard having conversations like this one Adam West and Burt Ward had as Batman and Robin in the 1966 movie Batman:

Robin: You can’t get away from Batman that easy!
Batman: Easily.
Robin: Easily.
Batman: Good grammar is essential, Robin.
Robin: Thank you.
Batman: You’re welcome.

Funny, sure.

But that first Batman movie and television series nearly ruined my appreciation for one of America’s great comic-book icons by turning him into a campy parody of himself.

Then Director Tim Burton came along and put together his dark film about a seriously angry, emotionally dysfunctional wealthy playboy named Bruce Wayne, tautly played by Michael Keaton. Disguised as a bat-man, Wayne secretly patrols Gotham City at night avenging his parents’ deaths, and he’s nearly as disturbed as his parents’ killer and arch-nemesis, the Joker. Keaton’s Batman is the polar opposite of West’s Batman, mostly because this script recognizes that to fight evil, you often have to live in a murky zone between good and evil, becoming something you loathe in order to defeat the thing you hate.

Now nobody’s smiling except the Joker, whose acid-scarred face is stretched into a perpetual grin that becomes the on-screen personification of coulrophobia thanks to devilish acting by Jack Nicholson.

Batman isn’t a dashing superhero with superpowers, another invincible Superman with a black cape. He isn’t even an upstanding citizen, a version of Dudley Do-Right or the Lone Ranger on a batmobile instead of a horse. He’s a very mortal, hooded vigilante. He is the Dark Knight, and he scares everybody, from criminals and the police to the general public and a reporter-turned-love interest named Vicki Vale. In one pivotal scene, Vale, seductively played by Kim Basinger, confronts Batman about his increasingly troubled behavior:

Vicki: Some people say that you’re as dangerous as the Joker.
Batman: He’s psychotic.
Vicki: There are some people who say the same thing about you.
Batman: What people?
Vicki: Well let’s face it, you’re not exactly…”normal” are you?
Batman: It’s not exactly a “normal” world, is it?

No, it’s not, and we get that message not only from the angry gaze and muscular actions of Keaton’s Batman and the frenetic chatter and dangerous mind games of the Joker, but also from the grimy art-deco set of Gotham City itself, which oozes mid-1930′s gangsterism. It’s even echoed in the monumental score, one of the most memorable from composer Danny Elfman.

Batman is the pulp masterpiece that spawned a pulp franchise, including successively less interesting films like Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997). Those productions were followed by two excellent films, Batman Begins (2005), a master expansion of Batman’s twisted psychology that rivals the original, and The Dark Knight (2008), which features the late Heath Ledger playing the Joker so convincingly that the movie’s uncomfortable to watch, and arguably makes it a better film than the original Batman.

But it was Batman that resurrected a cultural icon by retelling a mythic story in a way that unveils an uncomfortable truth: That we all live in Gotham City and Gotham City lives inside us all, that however normal we might look in the daylight, our spirits are all occluded–at least occasionally–by the same shadowy darkness that cleaves Batman’s mind and smothers the Joker’s soul.

Elves, it turns out, aren't all fun and games in "The Lord of the Rings." Here, Legolas, played by what my daughters assure me is the dreamy Orlando Bloom, prepares to put out an Orc's eye with an arrow.

1.The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)
It’s amazing Director Peter Jackson didn’t destroy his career making The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. So much could have gone wrong, starting with screwing up the script for one of the world’s most beloved books, that Jackson could’ve easily gone down in filmmaking history as the man responsible for the biggest cinematic flop since Director Michael Cimino spent $42 million on Heaven’s Gate, a 1980 disaster that earned $3 million at the box office and destroyed the original United Artists studio.

Instead, the Lord of the Rings turned Jackson into one of the most successful directors in the history of film.  Combined, the three films have so far earned nearly $3 billion on an initial investment of about $285 million.

And they should have.

It took English professor J.R.R. Tolkien 12 years to write his literary masterpiece. To do it, he invented languages and borrowed some of the great themes from Christian, Norse, Finnish, Celtic and Germanic mythology. It has sold more than 150 million copies since it was first published in 1954, making it one of the 10 best-selling books of all time behind works like The Book of Mormon, The Qur’an and the Bible.

Many people considered it impossible to commit the book to film, partly because it’s so complex, and partly because it’s peopled with otherworldly creatures like hobbits, orcs, ents, dwarves, elves, balrogs and giant eagles and elephants. And it would’ve remained a pipedream if Jackson hadn’t hired hundreds of computer programmers to create remarkable new advancements in computer-generated graphics. When 10,000 Uruk-hai warriors besiege Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, for example, the program’s designers were stunned to see that some of the characters were “thinking” for  themselves, doing things they weren’t programmed to do by reacting of their own accord to the ebb and flow of the battle.

It isn’t just good computer graphics that make The Lord of the Rings a success, however. Much  must also be credited to Jackson’s obsessive attention to every detail of the project, from the superb casting and lush soundtrack to the lavish sets and astonishing cinematography. He also deserves accolades simply for maintaining his focus during the six years it took to film The Lord of the Rings.

But it is Jackson’s faithfulness to the personal, political and spiritual messages of the book that propel the film into  the top spot on my list of all-favorite movies (like the book, it’s really one movie filmed in three segments, much as Tolkien’s book is a single tome written in six segments).

Remember that Jackson had only directed six full-length movies when he was hired to direct The Lord of the Rings. One of them was a documentary, three of them were horror films,  one was an indie film and one was a puppet show. Incredibly, though, he had the wisdom not to put his own stamp on the story by reinventing The Lord of the Rings for a modern audience, but to let it be what it is, one of the most monumental works of literature in history. In effect, Jackson channeled Tolkien, even though some changes had to be made to the storyline in order to turn the book into a movie.

“We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren’t going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies,” Jackson explains. “What we were trying to do was to analyze what was important to Tolkien and to try to honor that. In a way, we were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves.”

Today’s Thought Questions: What movies did the idiot you’ve come to know as Mike leave off the list? Which of the following movies were better than all of these picks: Saving Private Ryan, Stars Wars 1-17, Indiana Jones and Endless Quest for Mystical Treasure or Fargo? Do you prefer to watch movies drunk, or blind drunk?

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Please Sit Down. I Have Serious News To Share.

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Huguette Clark.

Please sit down.

Please, I’m serious.

I need to share what may be surprising—and perhaps sad—news with everybody.

All 11 or 12 of you who regularly read this blog, anyway.

Although my wife, Kerry, and I have been married for 30 years this coming Monday, we have decided to call it quits and get a divorce. It’s me, not her. Kerry’s a beautiful, loving woman, and I couldn’t have asked for a better wife.

Unfortunately, I recently fell in love with another woman. Her name is Huguette Clark, but I call her Huggy for short. I find her adorable in every way. She has long, blonde hair, and is incredibly feminine in a traditional way, a wearer of frilly frocks and lace, what you might call a woman’s woman. She’s fond of music, well educated, collects dolls, and speaks perfect English and French.

I’ve always been drawn to simple, intelligent women with foreign accents.

I first met Huggy through the newspaper. It sounds old-fashioned, I know, given the fast-paced world that we live in. But Huggy is a somewhat shy woman who clings to the best of the old ways. There I was, reading about her life—it’s interesting, trust me—when suddenly I just knew in my heart with unshakeable conviction that I had to talk to her, meet her, take her out to dinner, dance a slow dance with her. One thing led to another, and now we’re madly in love. It sounds silly to you, I’m sure, but inside I feel like a 16-year-old schoolboy who’s about to get his first kiss.

Huggy and I have much in common.

I love New York City, she lives in New York City. I’m attracted to mature women, she’s 104. I’m a dysfunctional co-dependent caretaker, she’s pretty much nonfunctional, bedridden and hospitalized. I love money—really, I do, and I mean a lot, more than I care to admit, actually—and she’s an outrageously wealthy heiress with no heirs of her own who single-handedly owns the titles to a $100 million estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, a $24 million country house in Connecticut and a $100 million, 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City that overlooks Central Park.

I don’t want to overemphasize the size of the vast, comprehensive ocean that is Huggy’s fortune, but she shells out $342,000 a year just for the taxes and upkeep on her Manhattan apartment, which is the largest apartment in that part of the city. $342,000! More than I make in, oh, forever. She’s fucking loaded. She probably uses $1,000 bills to wallpaper her guest bathroom, $100 bills instead of toilet paper, $10 bills in place of Kleenex tissues, and $1 bills to pick up kitty litter and dead bugs.

But we all know that money’s not everything.

No, everything is love, all you need is love, and love is what makes the world go ’round. Love, love, love, love, love. And that’s precisely what I’m looking for in a woman. I want a loving, passionate, highly profitable and extremely brief relationship. I’m sure Huggy isn’t looking for anything long-term, either, mostly because she doesn’t have much choice at this stage of her life and will take what she can get.

So, here again, we’re perfect for one another.

Love.

Love, love, love, love, love.

Michael hearts Huggy, and Huggy hearts Michael.

It’s a matchmaker’s dream, and I intend to marry Huggy just as quickly as the two of us can find a willing county judge with a liberal attitude about presiding over May-December nuptials and an experienced estate lawyer who’s prepared to make sure both our wills are in iron-clad order.

I know what you’re thinking–that I’m a cad suffering from a mid-life crisis, or that Kerry is emotionally devastated by this development in our lives.

But don’t worry about Kerry.

Kerry’s a modern woman, and not at all clingy. We’re still very good friends, and she’s extremely supportive of my relationship with Huggy.

Extremely supportive.

In fact, while I’m off taking a bite out of the Big Apple and making Huggy mine, all mine, Kerry’s going to keep the house and the cars and the flat-screen television while I wholeheartedly enter into the welcome bonds of matrimony with my darling Huggy. And Kerry’s promised to remain in close contact with me—very close contact—just in case my second marriage ends even sooner than I expect and I need to rebuild my life.

With Kerry.

In our new apartment.

In New York City.

Overlooking Central Park.

While we wipe our asses with $100 bills.

Good God, how I do love you, Huggy!

Love, love, love, love, love.

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American’s Not Number Two No Matter What The Finlandians Think

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That's right, this is an American Eagle, the proudest, meanest bird in the world. It could totally kick the ass of Finland's national bird, whatever that is.

Guest commentary by Earl Clement, Patriot

Americans are pretty damned proud of America.

And why shouldn’t they be?

As the great patriotic commentator P.J. O’Rourke pointed out, “We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners.” I couldn’t have said it better myself if I were drinking. Which I were, because this is America, and in America the United States Constitution guarantees Americans the right to drink our beer and fire our firearms and say whatever we want, however we want, even if we sound like idiots, or accidentally shoot our neighbor’s dog.

So I was pretty surprised when I sobered up this week and opened my copy of Newsweek magazine only to learn that America isn’t the best damned country in the world. It’s not in the top three. It’s not even in the top 10.

It’s 11th.

Eleventh, for the love of God!

At the Olympics, they don’t even put your name up on the television screen if you’re 11th. Not unless you’re that poor sap who finishes the marathon 17 hours after everybody else, and barely manages to crawl across the finish line so they can immediately rush you to the hospital in an ambulance. Then they’ll say your name, all right, but you don’t care, because you’re almost dead, and wishing you’d taken up an easier sport, like badminton or ping pong.

So is this what it’s come to? America has been reduced to being a pathetic 11th-place loser chasing the lily-white bare asses of European countries like Switzerland, Sweden and Canada?

That’s just sad.

Want to know which country was number one?

Finland.

That’s right, Finland. Finland is located…well, I don’t have any idea where it is, to tell you the truth, and I don’t care what they do there, to get right to the point, because I’m American, and Americans aren’t legally obligated to care about where other countries are or what they do in the privacy of their own borders unless we’re going to carpet-bomb them because maybe they harbor terrorists or we need them to build a factory so they can get to work making our shoes and flat-screen TVs for 10-cents an hour.

So fuck Finland.

Still, I was feeling pretty discouraged about Finland being number one and us being number one-one, and I was going to exercise my Constitutional rights and drink myself some more Bud lights and maybe pick the empties off my neighbor’s fence with my 9mm Beretta if his new dog’s not in the backyard, when I realized that Newsweek had probably made a mistake. Newspapers and magazines make mistakes all the time, which is one reason why nobody reads them anymore. That and they don’t run enough pictures of wholesome American women like Pamela Anderson and Maria Menounos. Nothing boosts subscriptions like pretty American women showing off their all-American charms.

And I’ll be damned if I wasn’t right.

Weren’t right.

Whatever.

My point is that Newsweek based their rankings on stuff like education, health care, how many people get shot to death every year, how long it takes to get out of bankruptcy, and voting.

Excuse me?

Americans don’t care about that.  What we want to know about a country is whether it’s got plenty of cheap beer and ammo, if it’s okay to exercise your free-speech rights by talking real loud even when you’re at the flea market, and how far you have to drive to get a good hamburger. I’ll bet they don’t even have hamburgers in Finland, wherever the hell it is. I’ll bet they eat roots and twigs, and wash it down with melted glacier water.

Fucking Finland.

So guess what Newsweek?

Even if America’s number 11 in your hoity-toity magazine, it’s still number one in my book.

No, strike that.

America’s better than number one, but I’m not going to tell you how much better because, to quote the great American patriot and former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “I am not going to give you a number for it because it’s not my business to do intelligent work.”

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My Top 21 Favorite Movies Of All Time: Part Six

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Nobody asked me to publish a list of my favorite movies, but I thought, “Hey, I like movies a lot, maybe I should publish a list of my favorite movies. I’ll call it ‘My Top 21 Favorite Movies of All Time’ and people can comment on the reviews, add their own favorites to the list, or ask me what kind of idiot would forget to add John Travota and Battlefield Earth to his list of the world’s greatest films.”

Previously on My Top 21 Movies:

21. Kung Fu (1972)
20. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
19. The Terminator (1984)
18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
17. Valdez is Coming (1971)
16. The 13th Warrior (1999)
15. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
14. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
13. Blood Simple (1984)
12. Blade Runner (1982)
11. Raising Arizona (1987)
10. Bad Santa (2003)
9. The Killing Fields (1984)
8. No Country for Old Men (2007)
7. Manhattan (1979)

Today’s Picks:

Yep, that's George Clooney pretending to be the lead singer for a band called the Soggy Bottom Boys.

6. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
I don’t know Joel and Ethan Coen, but I’d be willing to bet the farm it’s no accident they opened O Brother, Where Art Thou? with an empty black screen and a rhythmic chain-gang chant. Yes, I believe this is their subtle way of saying, “Pay attention to the music here, ya’ll, because this movie’s as much about the music as it is the story and images.”

Need further evidence? Consider just how deliberately ordered of the first minute or so of this film seems to be: It goes from a black screen to the chanting of the chain gang, to the shaky burned-in image of the following quote, which is in itself revealing on multiple levels:

O Muse!
Sing in me, and through me tell the story
Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending…
A wanderer, harried for years on end…

More musical references, this time in a direct quote from Homer’s epic Greek poem the Odyssey, which inspired O Brother. Yes, this is a film about three escaped convicts who go on a quest for treasure and find fortune in unexpected ways, and yes, it is a moving picture show of the first degree. But it’s also an expert exploration of American folk music that was encouraged by the Coen brothers and led by T-Bone Burnett, the songwriter who’s become the acknowledged king of producing roots music. Like it or not—I did, very much—this is one soundtrack you won’t miss and can’t ignore, from the plaintive dirge sung by the legendary Ralph Stanley to the plucky version of the bluegrass standard, Man of Constant Sorrow, performed by the fictitious Soggy Bottom Boys.

Even O Brother‘s dialogue fairly drips with the lullabies and grandiloquence of musicianship. For example, listen as Ulysses Everett McGill, the lead character delightfully played by George Clooney, speaks with the easy-going grace and charm of a Southern country bumpkin but also the heart and forceful intellect of a well-educated poet.

Asking hobos for help in cutting his chains, he says, “Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin’?”

Or when  describing the impact of dam-building in the South, he opines, “…the fact is, they’re flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn state. Yes, sir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes, sir, a veritable age of reason. Like the one they had in France. Not a moment too soon.”

And musing on his planned reunion with his estranged wife, McGill says, “Me an’ the old lady are gonna pick up the pieces and retie the knot, mixaphorically speaking.”

It’s lines like that, coupled with wide-angle, yellow-tinged cinematography that enhances the old-timey mood, that make this a right fine movie—and one that had me happily tapping your toes long after I left the theater.

This isn't Russell Crowe in a scene from "Gladiator." It's Crowe getting angry at a New York City hotel because he couldn't make a phone call to check on his bandmates in Australia. He looks even angrier in "Gladiator."

5. Gladiator (2000)
I like Gladiator so much that I’ve seen it at least four times, which is unusual for me because I get bored quickly, even when—forgive me St. Augustine—people are getting their heads lopped off at the coliseum.

But when I sat down to write about the movie, I realized that I couldn’t easily explain exactly why I think this grand, old-school-style epic from Director Ridley Scott is so good. Gladiator is grim and depressing, much more about loss than triumph, and the title character is so bitter and morose this film should be hard to watch.

But it’s not.

Masterfully played by Russell Crowe, perhaps my favorite actor, I find the Roman general who reluctantly becomes the gladiator Maximus likeable precisely because he’s not upbeat, determinedly charging into the fray with a look of exultant vengeance on his face and the sunlight glinting off his bloody sword. He is a deeply troubled, almost unenthusiastic hero, a jaded warrior who fights with the expertise of experience but has already been defeated by the time we meet him because the new emperor has taken away everything that means anything to him except his own life—including his leader, his country, his social status and, most significantly, his wife and son. That makes Maximus a much more intriguing hero than most Hollywood heroes, and when he finally enters the coliseum to face his greatest foe, the emperor, you realize he’s no longer fighting for honor or even vengeance, but for the rapidly fading memory of those things, which, like Maximus himself, have already passed into the next life.

It’s a sad premise, of course—one that’s more likely to bring a tear to your eye than make you stand up and cheer. But if you’re old enough to have experienced life’s many setbacks and disappointments, the idea that you can be beaten down yet still force yourself to get up every day and propel yourself forward into battle rings true. It doesn’t hurt that Crowe’s surrounded by a cast of talented performers, including Richard Harris, Joaquin Phoenix and Connie Nielsen, plus the astonishingly underrated Oliver Reed in his final stormy on-screen role. But it’s not good acting and cinematography that appeals to me in this film. It’s the darkly subversive, discomfiting idea lurking behind the images we see onscreen.

Jet Li's headdress is a little fruity looking in this scene from "Hero," but I'd never even think about saying that to his face.

4. Hero (2002)
The only reason the traditional Chinese martial arts film Hero didn’t rank higher on my list is because it’s hard for a 99-minute epic about love, betrayal, and a cultural revolution to top a mythic cultural icon, a spiritual masterpiece and a dark saga about…well, I don’t want to give my top three picks away too early, but about almost everything that’s important in this life and the next. Nevertheless, Hero is a wonder of storytelling, acting and cinematography.

Hero was directed by the legendary Zhang Yimou, the man responsible for The House of Flying Daggers and Raise the Red Lantern, which are both excellent films in their own right. But Hero is a grander film than either of those movies. It’s based on the story of the King of Qin in 227 BC, who subdued a succession of warlords en route to unifying China under a single flag and becoming its first emperor.

The subject matter alone makes this film worth watching, because it gives Westerners valuable insight into both China’s history and its current world view of itself as an emerging world power. But there are enough thought-provoking lessons here to keep late-night philosophers chattering for hours. Considering that Hero was marketed in the U.S. as a martial arts film by director/writer Quentin Tarantino and stars Jet Li in the defining role of his career as a nameless assassin, it’s surprisingly talky. That’s because the plot unfolds mainly through dialogue and ultimately becomes an apologetic for using ruthless political and military force to conquer your enemies and prevent further bloodshed resulting from anarchy or civil war.

Does society’s need for rule and order outweigh personal and local freedoms? That’s the fundamental question raised by Hero, and it’s one that many flag-waving Americans, unlike the Chinese, are likely to overlook or even off-handedly dismiss because our cultural bias for individualism and individual freedom is all-pervasive–so deeply imbedded in our thinking that we reflexively assume it’s true without really pausing to question it.

For all its depth, however, martial arts fans won’t be disappointed by Hero, and neither will anybody who likes an interesting love story. This movie has some of the most intricate and intense fight scenes ever committed to film, and the complex relationships between the characters is equally riveting. So is the filmmaking itself, which employs the best use of color, texture and imagery I’ve ever seen in a movie. It is, in a word, breathtaking.

Today’s Thought Questions: If you had to die at the hands of a Ninja assassin, would you prefer to go by throwing star, Samurai sword or the infamous “Five-Finger Death Punch?” What do you find more interesting about gladiator films, the climactic “win or die” thrills of arena battle, or the climactic shots of sweaty men in loinclothes wrestling? Do you think Southerners are stupid, or just ignorant?

Up Next: My Top Three Favorite Films Of All Time! Can you guess what they’ll be? Join me and Maria Menounos on the red carpet Sunday to find out!

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