This Brad Pitt vehicle seems likely to have been greenlit in the wake of Kevin Costner’s stunning Dances With Wolves. Aiming for a similar epic Western revisionist anti-hero result and adding the burgeoning star power of Brad Pitt backed with Anthony Hopkins as well as the fresh beauty of Julia Ormond, the execs at Columbia surely expected similar huge grosses and perhaps a few golden statuettes of their own.

Sadly Legends of the Fall (1994) was not in the same class as its model. Director Ed Zwick, still mainly known at this point for the hit TV series thirtysomething, was a bit too loose with his focus. Pitt’s Tristan had to contend with his father (Hopkins), compete with his two brothers (Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) for Ormand’s heart and disappears for a huge chunk of the second act after finding himself unable to deal with his feelings of responsibility for a tragedy that couldn’t, really, have been down to him at all.

This gets mixmastered by frequent narrations voiced by a native American elder and family friend (Gordon Tootoosis). Frankly, a movie that needs this much help explaining the on-screen action probably should have gone back to scriptwriters Susan Shilliday and Bill Witliff for another draft.

The acting is strong enough, though Quinn as usual does little for me, and the wide open territories in Montana where the  Ludlow clan have a ranch, the film’s primary setting, is awesome; that John Toll took the 1995 Oscar for Best Cinematography seem reasonable. Yet I wonder how much better Legends might have been if the younger brother and related subplots had been edited out.

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I really love having video on demand on my cable service. Not only does it give me new episodes of The Wire six days early, I can also find something to watch no matter what my mood. The other night I flipped through the free movie listing and found this 1954 classic tale of men at war and more in conflict with each other than the enemy–there’s only one battle scene and even that shows the Japanese only through the arrival of shots from their shore-based batteries.

The Caine Mutiny is primarily set on the minesweeper Caine in the Pacific Theater during the second half of WWII. Made from Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel, the movie was written by Stanley Roberts (who also adapted Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for the big screen) and directed by Edward Dmytryk, in his first job after spending several months in prison as one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to cooperate with the DC McCarthyism witchhunts of the early ’50s.

Producer Stanley Kramer (yes, the one who not longer after this became a very successful director) gave Dmytryk a first class cast. Toplining are Humphrey Bogart as the martinet Queeg, Van Johnson as the mutineer Maryk, Fred MacMurray (still a serious actor who had not yet turned to Disney tripe nor the father of My Three Sons) as the creepy comms officer Keefer and Jose Ferrer as Maryk’s Navy attorney plus Robert Francis in a very good performance as naive, audience POV character Ensign Willie Keith. Sadly Francis died in a plane crash the year after this was released.

The Caine is a slack ship, the crew just as sloppy and worn down, as Keith arrives fresh from training for his first posting. Shortly thereafter Queeg takes command and he’s unwilling to permit such unbecoming behavior and state of repair. We see him in a series of questionably petty decisions and confrontations, none truly favorable to him, climaxing in a ship-wide hunt for a purported food locker key used to abscond with a quart of strawberry ice cream.

Maryk, Keefer and Keith surreptitiously ride over to the newly-arrived fleet commander’s carrier, armed with Maryk’s diary of Queeg’s behaviors, to see if Admiral Halsey will  relieve their captain. They back out at the last minute, on Halsey’s doorstep, after Keener points out that much of what the three know is actionable Queeg can likely explain away as imposing discipline and the trio’s action as mutiny.

Finally the ship (and the bigger fleet to which it belongs) runs into a terrible storm that goes on for hours, causing them severe damage. Queeg refuses to deviate in the least from their ordered course despite the fact that doing so will alleviate the threat of capsizing.

The storm goes on and on and Maryk’s requests and suggestions to alter heading become more and more strident; finally Queeg retreats into himself, though physically remaining on the bridge, and Maryk assumes command, with the complicity of Keith, who is officer of the deck during this time. They return to San Francisco, the Caine’s home port, for the climactic trial of Lt. Maryk on chargs of mutiny.

While watching I came to really wonder how much of the story came from Herman Wouk’s own experience on the same kind of ship during the war. The performances are generally strong, with interesting small parts by very young Lee Marvin, Claude Akins and E.G. Marshall; I’m less clear on why Roberts and Dmytryk kept Ensign Keith’s subplot other than as a sop to the female audience.

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From the very strange mind of Terry Gilliam (Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and all those whack Monty Python animations back in the day) comes this darkly humorous examination of a man (Bruce Willis) who can’t decide if he’s insane or has been sent back in time to help humanity recover from a devastating virus unleashed by terrorist group that killed 97% of us. Brad Pitt co-stars as a fellow lunatic and putative leader of the terrorists.

In the dread future that opens 12 Monkeys (1995) the remainders struggle along underground in a strictly regimented society dependent on a strange steampunk-ish combination of technology with forays to the surface tightly controlled to avoid bringing the virus into their cramped quarters. Scientists have developed a (never explained) method for traveling back in time, though as its still highly experimental only long-sentence prisoners are used as chrononauts. Hence Cole’s (Willis) involvement.

The machinery lacks precision so travelers have been scatted across the centuries (indeed, the film implies the 14th century black death was triggered by one of Cole’s predecessors) and our boy requires several tries before surfacing any time close in 1990–the virus is unleashed in 1996. Naked and incoherent he’s immediately arrested and sent to a local loony bin where he meets Jeffrey (Pitt), who really is off his rocker but understands Cole well enough to help him attempt to escape.

The hospital is also where Cole meets Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe, who looks more appealing here than almost any other film in which I’ve seen her). Though unconvinced by Cole’s story his strange disappearance (the scientists pull him back to the future after his failed escape) inspires her to write a book and softens her response when he reappears in her life days before the virus’ release.

The main block of the film is what transpires from this point, with Cole attempting to convince himself he is insane and the ‘memories’ of the terrible future proof of his disease while Dr. Railly similarly moves towards believing the opposite. Pitt, meanwhile, has been released into the care of his world-famous virologist father but remains less than sane, having used some of dad’s riches to found the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

For me 12 Monkeys is the most successful of Gilliam’s trilogy of future fantasy comedies; it would have to be since I’ve never been able to sit through either Brazil or Munchausen. Roger Ebert once wrote that “[Gilliam's] world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail” and I would have to agree. The set designs, both in the underground of the future and mid-’90s Philadelphia, are worn-down and dirty and feature unlikely combinations of components, furniture and so on, while Willis’s mental uncertainty, Pitt’s vivid lunacy and Stowe’s growing belief offer complimentary psychology tension. Stowe, whose character clearly represents the audience point of view, is a useful guidepost as the film unfolds.

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Paul McGuigan takes an American spin on the gangster revenge flick he did so well a half decade earlier in Gangster No. 1. The result here is good but while it is no doubt funnier lacks the vicious edge that put the 2001 movie over the top. You will want to pay close attention, though, as almost nothing is as it seems.

Lucky Number Slevin has quite the cast. Josh Hartnett is the title character, Bruce Willis is a veteran mob hitman called Goodkat(?), Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley are partners turned rival gangsters called The Boss and The Rabbi (yes, Kingsley’s character really is a rabbi), Stanley Tucci is an NYPD detective, Mykelti Williamson is a dimwitted henchman, Danny Aiello has a cameo as a bookie, Robert Forster a cameo as one of Tucci’s colleagues and Lucy Liu is her usual sexy, gregarious self as Slevin’s accidental love.

The plot is a black humor twist of Hitchcock’s mistaken identity classic, North by Northwest, with Slevin standing in for Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill and Liu for Eva Marie Saint. Writer Jason Smilovic doesn’t leave the comparison to chance and has Kingsley’s character talk about taking his immigrant father to see it. But while we viewers know from the start that Slevin Kelevra is not the Nick Fisher the others seem to think, well, like I said at the top nothing is as it seems; Lucky Number has onion-like layers, an Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onion, fried and big and greasy and still so tasty.

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Ten years on and much Hollywood success later, Kevin “Silent Bob” Smith returns to bookend the original black & white indie comedy that launched him. Where are Dante and Randal now? Has Dante outgrown his indecisiveness or Randal his adolescent preoccupations? And did they ever see that fabled donkey show?

No, no and no, of course, not in a Kevin Smith movie. The opening of Clerks II is Dante (Brian O’Halloran) raising the metal grating one morning at the Quick Stop only to find the interior consumed in fire; Randal (Jeff Anderson), with typical thoughtlessness, had left the empty coffeepot on the previous evening. Fate finally put an end to their internment and not ambition or even pride (the boys are 33 years old, for crying out loud) but what do they do with the opportunity? Take jobs behind the counter at the local Mooby’s fast food joint.

Dante has found love, sort of, in the form of their hot high school classmate Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, married in real life to writer/director Smith) and, a year after the fire, the two are headed to Florida in 24 hours where they’ll move in with her wealthy parents for a few months until the wedding. Emma seems to have realized that the hunky guys she’s been dating before Dante have egos to match her own but Dante’s low self-esteem makes him her’s to control.

Randal is as foul-mouthed and misinformed as ever. One running joke is over the made-up anti-black slur porch monkey, that he never understood his grandmother was a racist and all the nasty names she taught him were offensive epithets. Another is his confusion of Anne Frank and Helen Keller, though not to quite the same effect. He isn’t happy with Dante’s plans. There’s a new younger character, sort of Randal’s opposite (virgin who’d rather wash his mouth out with soap than curse), played by Trevor Ferhman called Elias; the kid is the butt of many, many of Randal’s jokes.

Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) are here too, just returned from six months in rehab, hanging out back dealing drugs and dancing their weird dances. Rosario Dawson is Becky, the lovely younger woman who really loves Dante, though she won’t admit it and he doesn’t realize it. Jason Lee and Ben Affleck make their customary cameos though Lee has the better of it, playing a high school classmate of our boys who recently struck it rich after his internet startup was acquired for millions.

The best scene in C2, for me is when Becky tries to teach Dante how to dance for his wedding up on the Mooby’s roof (other than the open and close and a couple of brief scenes, the entire film takes place in or around the fast food joint). The song is the Jackson 5 classic ABC, played at blast volume by Jay down below, and after we see the blinders fall from Dante’s eyes at the girls beauty and charm Smith gives a terrific homage to the Ray Charles music store scene in Blues Brothers. First a series of quick cuts to the other leads toe-tapping or headshaking wherever they are and then a full blown coordinated dance scene out in the parking lot.

Overall funnier than I thought it would be, if (and this is a big if) you can get past the continuous stream of obscenities and general teenage level nastiness. And that donkey scene? Close but not quite what you’ll be expecting.

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This 2006 drama is a twisted, dark romance from writer Patrick Marber and director Richard Eyre and stars Dame Judith Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy with a meaty supporting role for teenager Andrew Simpson. Marber and Eyre are highly regarded for their theater work so it’s no surprise that dialog and body language are far more significant than would typically be the case.

Notes on a Scandal covers the term when Sheba (Blanchett) arrives as the new arts teacher at a London high school where Barbara (Dench) is an institution nearing retirement and 15 year old Steven (Simpson) is enrolled as a 10th Year student. Being so pretty and vivacious Sheba is someone everyone else wants to get close with, and her marriage to the much older, yet loving and caring, Richard (Nighy) doesn’t an obstacle to either friendship or romance.

Barbara, who also provides much needed narration, certainly doesn’t see Richard or Sheba’s two children as problems for the “special” relationship she wants with the newcomer. After all, her last intended young lovely friend scampered away rather than suffer the attention.

Sheba, well, she would have done just fine if she’d only stopped herself from acting on forbidden desires but temptation, as Greg Allman sang, “is a loaded gun.” So hard not to fire at least one bullet, then one more and another and another and then you get sloppy, which is when someone’s bound to see your mess.

Barbara, of course, has been paying Sheba special attention so we’re not surprised when it’s her eyes that do and that’s all this spider needs for springing her trap. Aging predators can’t catch prey as well or as easily; Barbara should’ve learned this from her last result but is desperate not to be alone for her last years.

As I said, this is a very dark movie but quite a good one: Dench, Blanchett and Marber all got Oscar nominations though they lost to Helen Mirren (who played another aging British monarch), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and William Monahan (The Departed), respectively.

Definitely worth watching now that Notes has come to premium cable.

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