Quintet

1. "Cinderella Man." The ads have been trumpeting this as "The best movie of the year". Well, it's certainly not bad, and some of it is very good indeed, but best of the year? Let's just say it's no "Crash".

James J. Braddock was the real-life "Rocky" of the depression era, whose improbably rise to the championship is said to have given people all over the country new hope in troubled times. Certainly there's story material there, even if "Seabiscuit" (a better film overall)more or less got there first.
But for the film to be equal to its potential it would have helped if it had avoided more boxing movie cliches, and some dubious political observations.

Braddock is presented as a veritable saint of a man, with no real flaws or personal demons. This may well have been true, but it doesn't make for a very interesting movie character. It also necessitates turning his chief opponent, Max Baer, into an inhuman demon from hell in order to have dramatic contrast. Even apart from the questionable historical accuracy of this, Baer comes across as every foaming-at-the-mouth psycho you've ever seen on film. You can't really hate a character who's barely presented as human.

Then there's the film's take on the great depression... which, they would have you believe, had NOTHING AT ALL to do with big business, big banking, and greed. No, it was just plain bad luck that any American could overcome if they just buckled down to it. Braddock's best friend, played by the wonderful Paddy Considine of "In America", is used to depict the radical anti-government forces of the time as fools who rebelled against a government that only had their best interests at heart. Yeah, that's right...

So was there anything good about the film? Well, the acting is pretty uniformly outstanding, though Mr. Telephone-thrower isn't the highlight of the movie. THAT would be the perpetually overlooked Paul Giamatti as Braddock's manager, giving a performance of remarkable understated strength. He had BETTER get the Oscar for this that he should have gotten for "Sideways" (and "American Splendor", for that matter). And Ron Howard has never failed to come up with a TECHNICALLY well-made film.

But "Cinderella Man" is definitely not the movie of the year, or a personal best for anyone involved in it. It's the kind of movie that screams "Give Me The Oscar", though, and will probably get several instead of more deserving efforts. Did I mention "Crash" already?

2. "The Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants". Talk about a movie for which I am definitely not in the intended target audience! So this commentary will be brief. A quartet of high school girls, close friends, stay in touch over the summer by means of a shared pair of pants which magically fit all of them in spite of differing physiques, mailed from one of them to the other. It's basically an anthology film, and the stories involving the typically boy-hungry "vamp" is dull and cliched, with the segment starring "Gilmore Girls"'s Alexis Bledel is like a junior version of a romance novel. But America Ferrara's segment has some real power in it, and the section with Amber Tamblyn as an angry "goth" type documenting her boring life in a Walmart-type superstar manages to be genuinely touching. The movie doesn't say as much about the power of friendship as it seems to be trying to do, and a couple of the stories go nowhere, but there are still enough moments to make it worth a lower-priced matinee showing... or you could wait for the discount houses (you KNOW I would never recommend waiting for the video!). Especially if you're in, or know someone who IS in, the film's target age range.

3. "Save The Green Planet". There will have to be some MIGHTY strange films between now and December to unseat this movie's position as the flat-out weirdest movie of the year. In this Korean import, a mentally impaired man has come to believe that all the trouble in the world is being caused by aliens from Andromeda who live among us, only appearing to be human. He has somehow managed to figure out who they are, and will do whatever he has to do in order to... well, you can figure that from the title.

This film is a deeply disturbing, grimly violent drama. It also happens to be an often very funny and twisted satire of all sorts of things, political and social. And whatever it may happen to be at any given time, it is ALWAYS very seriously weird.

Those who are sensitive about violent content... and I certain ly respect that... will probably want to avoid "Save The Green Planet" (and those who ENJOY ultra-violent content, I don;t want to even know about you). But for those with an interest in the totally off-center science fiction of writers like Philip K. Dick (who would have loved this movie's exploration of what exactly constitutes "reality"), and doesn't expect conventional story telling techniques or conventional endings, this will be one fascinating experience that will have you alternating laughing and gasping, and leave you with more than a little to talk about afterward. It's another reason to be grateful that the Twin Cities has a theatre like the Oak Street Cinema (which old-timers will remember as The Campus): you know that THIS film would never have played at the same theatre showing the latest Ashton Kutcher flick.

4. "Howl's Moving Castle". The latest film from Japanese animation genius Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away") might be relatively minor Miayazaki... it's certainly not on the epic scale of his last few films... but even minor Miyazaki beats virtually anything American animation produces these days. And yes, I'm even including Pixar in that statement.

It's the story of Sophie, a teenage girl who becomes cursed by a witch and turned into a 90-year old woman. Seeking help to remove this curse, she encounters and befriends the mysterious wizard Howl, who lives in the moving castle of the title. Together with his friends and magical aides, they will eventually battle not only the witch, but the forces of society that insist on fighting meaningless wars that help the government but harm the country's people. Nothing relevant there, nope.

Although based on a novel by British children's author Dianne Wynn Jones, this is a totally