In this presidential election year, the reality of our system has truly become clear to me. I despise the current Administration, their policies and practices but for all that I want John Kerry to win I wonder how much difference he can make.

Head of State is Chris Rock’s satirical take on the subject and it’s funnier than I’d expected; in fact if there was anything else on that remotely interested me I’d have switched the channel. That would have been a mistake. Rock is a funny, funy man and I should have trusted him to not screw us with his first outing as director.

In a nutshell: Rock plays Mays Gilliam, an alderman in Washington, D.C., who’s essentially hit bottom. Elsewhere the Democratic candidate for president dies in a plane crash and no ‘eligible’ politician wants to stand against the Republicans’ man, Vice President Brian Lewis, a war hero and “Sharon Stone’s cousin.” That night Gilliam is in the news standing up for some nobody in a local dispute and comes to the attention of the right people who pick him as a sure loser who’ll do some good for the party nonetheless.

Of course you can’t keep someone like that in straightjacket and Gilliam, frustrated at parroting the same meaningless lines over and over, goes off script. Cinderella movies have to go up from bottom and that’s where Rock’s script takes off. Once he goes natural and populist everyone loves him, his poll numbers start to go somewhere and the other candidate starts getting nervous.

The high point, for me, is the debate between them. Lewis gives us standard political speechifying; he calls Gilliam an amateur and closes with his standard campaign tagline, “God bless America and no one else.” This is truly where Rock makes the clearest political commentary of the movie, lashing out at the professional’s hypocrisy and insulation from reality. Sure none of it is particularly original but the words hit home, resonate and made me laugh.

State isn’t perfect, Rock makes too much of his blackness and wastes a romantic subplot with a sweet hardworking girl (contrasted with Robin Givens’ running joke of an ex- who wants her suddenly good thing back).

recommended if you’re in the mood

Life for this crew is all about the junk, the stuff you shoot into your veins, snort when necessary. Tell yourself you’re not addicted, that you can stop on a dime whenever that day comes. No problemo. Anyone who isn’t an addict can see immediately that self-deception of these people.

Anyway, Spun is essentially an attempt at an American version of Trainspotting but director Jonas Ackerlund doesn’t come close to the humanizing success Danny Boyle had with that film. Depending on Mickey Rourke for a major role is a good predictor, I’d say, and trampling too many storylines on top of each other is another. Ackerlund’s done some terrific work with music videos but not here.

don’t bother

Vampires and werewolves in a fight to the death, is that original or what? Not very, and neither is Underworld. Released last year, the basic idea is that vampires and lycans are each descended from one son of a European nobleman whose blood mutated when he survived the plague but passed it on differently to his children. Hundreds of years later, in our present, the vampire clan has nearly wiped out their wolvish cousins though the reason for the emnity is never really stated. Notice the parallel to the mythic story that Muslims and Jews are descended from Cain and Abel?

In director Len Wiseman’s conception, the creatures are all very stylish and very human in their emotions. One vampire is driven by ambition, another by hate, another by love; the only lycan we’re truly shown simply wants to save his people from extinction. And while the action and pace do finally heat up and drive to a conclusion, we’re left with all sizzle and no steak nonetheless.

not recommended except to see Kate Beckinsale (now Mrs. Wiseman) in tight leather

Okay, why would I see this? Sure the original wasn’t terrible but a sequel can’t be as good. It wasn’t, but TS1 wanted to see it as part of her birthday celebration and who am I to say no?

Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement brings us back to the story of Princess Mia of Genovia (Anne Hathaway, looking lovlier than ever). Five years have passed since she learned her true heritage and she’s finished high school and college; the time has come for her to move home and take up responsibility. First in line for the Genovian crown, by law, becomes the country’s ruler right after his or her 21st birthday.

Women, though, must be married and this gives director Garry Marshall his hook: John Rhys-Davies, who was so much better as Gimli son of Gloin, wants to put his barely-eligible nephew (Chris Pine) on the throne instead and so reminds everyone that the law also requires female rulers to be married first. The Parliament has given her 30 days to fix things.

Overall Marshall and writer Shonda Rhimes (low: Britney Spears’ Crossroads, high: Halle Berry’s Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) could have done much better but opted for a few extra easy laughs instead of working the material harder. For instance, the slumber party scene was cute and all but completely irrelevant to the plot and the time would have been much better spent deepening the connection between Mia and her arranged intended (Dead Like Me’s wasted Callum Blue) or having Pine see more of his uncle’s underhandedness.

recommended for girls age 8-13

Pam invited us to go see this film and, since we wanted to see it anyway, said sure. Always good to spend time with the lady with the funny hat even if she wouldn’t wear it to the movie house, plus we had some pretty tasty BBQ after.

Collateral comes from director Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat, Ali) and scripwriter Stuart Beattie (first big American credit) that rides a fairly standard Hollywood formula but turns many of these aspects against itself to succeed:

• Hit man hires a cabbie to drive him around one night while he takes out the witnesses planning to testify against a drug lord
• Weak hero (Jamie Fox) starts out scared of his own shadow but overcomes it through events and provocation, but mostly because of true–not needed by the script–goodness in his heart
• Tom Cruise cast against type as the bad guy, with gray hair and a scraggly beard, which only matters because Cruise has such a positive, pretty boy reputation and he confounds expectations in ways that less strongly-typed actors couldn’t
• A slick, stylish production, visually, sonically, even in the editing that will be no surprise to Mann fans

Pam said this was the best movie she’s seen this year and I’ll agree with her that this is excellent but I’d rank it second to, but not far behind, Bourne Supremacy.

definitely recommended

I can honestly say I never expected to watch Jamie Kennedy’s Malibu’s Most Wanted, the story of a rich white boy ignored by his parents (Ryan O’Neal and the barely onscreen Bo Derek) who turns to ghetto culture for fulfillment instead. Embarassed and scared his son will screw up his campaign for governor, Dad and an advisor (Blair Underwood, showing that actors understand where the cheddar comes from) cook up a fake kidnapping to “scare the black out” of Kennedy.

Although JK is far too old to be the high schooler his character is, the movie pretty much works. Anthony Anderson and Taye Diggs as the least black black men you ever saw really contribute and Regina Hall is smart and sexy enough for any man.

surpringly funny

Kenneth Branagh came blasting out of England in the ’80s, promising to be the next Olivier. One of the ways he chose to use his new-found clout is to bring versions of all of Shakespeare’s works to the screen. From 1993, Much Ado About Nothing is one of the comedies and probably one of my favorite movies ever.

Branagh, who wrote adaptation and directed, plays Benedick, a nobleman in the service of Don Pedro (Denzel Washington). Pedro and his men visit Seigneur Leonato, the Governor of Messina, and his family; in his party are his brother John (an evil Keanu Reeves) and Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard), a young, sweet, naive boy who is in love with Leonato’s daughter Hero (an enchanting Kate Beckinsale). Benedick is matched with Leonato’s niece, Beatrice, played by an amazing Emma Thompson.

The key plots are: Claudio and Hero’s love match, which John keeps trying to sabotage and Benedick and Beatrice’s pairing, a match that Don Pedro and Leonato conspire to arrange despite the sharp, antagonistic attitudes of the married in real life couple. The characters have complex relationships and with only eight major roles almost all are well developed, Hero and Don Pedro the main exceptions. Michael Keaton, in a minor turn, is a great Dogberry.

Beyond the sophisticated humor and terrific acting, Branagh as director has brought a beautiful, radiant vision of the Italian countryside on screen. Almost as if he had the lighting crew put a second Sun in the sky–which is something one of the digital FX houses might be able to do today but not a dozen years ago.

absolutely recommended

From 1963, husband and wife Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward play New Yorkers on an awkward collision in Paris in a lightweight comedy called A New Kind of Love. Written and directed by Melville Shavelson, Newman is a newspaper columnist sent to Paris as his boss’s idea of punishment (for sleeping with the boss’s wife!) and Woodward is in the city with her department store owner boss and co-worker to see the new designer lines. Woodward, though, has sworn off men and love after one bad relationship; the film’s challenge is to put them together and the mechanism is having her, in a wig and fake Eastern European accent, pretend to be a hooker who Newman, a man who has sex with every other attractive woman he meets, only hires to tell him Schehezerade-like tales. They’ve all done better.

not recommended

At first I was confused but after a few minutes realized that This Boy’s Life isn’t A Bronx Tale even though they both came out in 1993 and co-star De Niro– for some reason I though DiCaprio, who is in today’s flick, also played De Niro’s son in the other but he doesn’t. Lillo Brancato was the actor in A Bronx Tale.

Simple plot here, set in the late ’50s: Single mom and her teen son move around a bunch looking for opportunity and wind up in Seattle where somehow she meets a car mechanic who lives in a tiny town several hours drive away. They date a bunch and he’s just so charming, nice to her friends, friendly to her son. Meanwhile the boy’s getting in trouble time after time.

Solution? Boy moves up to live with the mechanic, who has three teenage children of his own (though we never learn where the mother is or went), and get straightened out. If the trial goes well, the adults will marry. They do and, of course, the mechanic is not quite so nice and charming. To sum up: he keeps telling the boy that “I’ll either cure you or kill you.”

Given that this film is based on the autobiography (best seller, written years later) of the son, DiCaprio’s character, I can’t say the story isn’t realistic. But like so many movies based on true stories, it isn’t great either. De Niro is terrific, Barkin and DiCaprio aren’t bad and that’s the best I can say for it.

not recommended

Hard to pass up a movie with Elena Eleniak and another hottie (Julie Du Page), late on a Sunday night with nothing much else on, and TiVo often knows what I like, so I watched Betrayal (issued on DVD and cable as Lady Jayne: Killer). Sadly, Eleniak never so much as took off her shirt and Du Page only got down to her panties and bra once, early on.

This is certainly a ‘B movie’ and the kind of film that makes you wonder about the business judgement of film company executives; in any case, director Mark Lester has certainly made a career out of such decisions. Here we have a basic plot: mafia hitwoman (Du Page) has the chance to grab a briefcase holding $1 million, she does but somehow hooks up with Eleniak and teen son for a road trip to Texas, the mafioso and a corrupt cop find where they’ve headed and the day is saved, sort of, when FBI agent James Remar makes his play.

not recommended