Nothing But the Truth
  Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon
  3 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

Ripped from the headlines... Is it another episode of "Law and Order?" No, it's "Nothing But the Truth," a thriller centered around a reporter's sense of integrity and the high price she pays to keep it. The truth is, "Nothing But the Truth" is a taut, tense political puzzle with bravura performances by Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga, and Noah Wylie, as well as judicial journeyman Floyd Abrams.

The plot bears a striking resemblance to the government's case against C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was outed by New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Miller's articles claiming Iraq had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) were cited as a catalyst for Bush's decision to turn Iraq into a Middle Eastern sinkhole. Complicating Plame's plight was her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had written an op-ed piece for The New York Times accusing Bush and his cronies of trumping up information in order to justify the "war" against Iraq. When questioned about her source, Miller refused to name Plame, even though Plame's involvement was considered a fait accompli. Wilson claimed the Bush administration had exposed his wife's identity as payback for the article he'd written, and the steadfast journalist wound up doing time in order to protect her source.

Writer/director Rod Lurie has taken the "Plame Affair" and flipped the details. In "Nothing But the Truth," reporter Rachel Armstrong (a focused Beckinsale), is told that Erica Van Doren (vexing Vera), a seemingly innocuous soccer mom who spends her spare time reading to children, is really a C.I.A. operative. To Rachel, it's the equivalent of finding out Natasha Fatale from "Rocky and Bullwinkle" is your kid's den mother. Digging deeper, Rachel discovers that Van Doren was sent to Venezuela on a fact finding mission following a failed assassination attempt on the President. Van Doren was the only agent to determine the Venezuelans had nothing to do with the botched presidential hit. Rachel realizes that if Van Doren is correct, the President's order for retaliatory air strikes inside Venezuela was a colossal international blunder. The government is more concerned there might be a traitor in their midst than who's right, and they want someone's skin, whether they're the security risk or not. Coincidently, Van Doren's journalist husband, Oscar Van Doren, has been critical of the President's regime. Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. Nice way to deflect attention from your spouse.

  Passengers
  Anne Hathaway, Andre Braugher
  3 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

"Passengers" is a fulfilling ride, but I'll warn you -- it's also a slow one. (Ironically, "Passengers" passed through theaters faster than the snack cart on a Jet Blue flight.) It's been pigeonholed into the suspense/thriller genre - but most of the action is psychological, although the nail-biting airline crash is retold in a series of Dragon Coaster rides that will leave you clutching the arm rests on your Barcalounger. "Passengers" is more the story of love transcending life, and it has a supernatural twist at the end that outshines anything M. Shalmar Night has concocted lately.

Therapist Claire Summers (elegant Anne Hathaway) is asked by her mentor Perry (benevolent Andre Braugher), to treat a group of survivors from a fiery plane crash. One of the passengers, Eric (bland, Patrick Wilson, purely on display as eye candy for the ladies), doesn't display the typical damaged emotions of a survivor. Unlike the others, he's euphoric, intent on turning his second chance at life into a series of suicidal stunts. The flashbacks Eric has been having of the crash are responsible his irrational behavior and have lead him to the realization of where he is and what's happened to him. His fears are supported by several appearances by a haunting, blue-eyed Husky:

Eric: That's my dog.
Claire: What?
Eric: That dog. He's buried in my back yard. He died when I was six.

When Claire's patients tell her conflicting stories about the crash she questions Arkin, an airline official (a deceitful David Morse), who emphatically blames pilot error. As Claire's patients begin to disappear one by one, she starts to believe the airline is hiding the cause of the crash and wants the witnesses wasted. The answers that Claire unearths about the crash shake her to her core and will take you on a twisting ride into Twilight Zone territory.

Best of Friends and Foes  3.5 out of 5 stars
Best of Love and Marriage  2.5 out of 5 stars
Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

Boy meets girl... Boy meets boy? Doesn't sound like the basis for a hit show. But "Will and Grace," a sitcom about the misadventures of two best friends living together as roommates in New York City, ran for eight laugh-filled years.

What separated "Will and Grace" from other shows was not only its witty one liners, but its controversial, nontraditional story line. Roommates Will Truman (Eric McCormick) and Grace Adler (Deborah Messing) were a sexual yin and yang; he was a gay lawyer, and she was a straight interior designer. The show also showcased Will's unfettered gay lay about buddy Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes), and Grace's caustic, pill popping privileged assistant, Karen Walker (Megan Mullally). Throw in Karen's bulldog maid, Rosario Salazar (Shelley Morrison) to keep Karen in check, and stir in generous portions of over-the-top guest stars, and you have the makings of a self-sustaining hit series.

Lionsgate has released two 2CD compilations, "Best of Friends and Foes" and "Best of Love and Marriage." There aren't any extras and the episodes don't run in chronological order (so a lot of ex-boyfriends get to be ex-boyfriends again), but the cutting dialogue between the deliciously neurotic Messing and the amply endowed Mullally shows they were as potent a comedy team as Lucy and Ethel.  

  The Day the Earth Stood Still
  The Remake
 2.5 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

"Klaatu Barada Nikto..."

Those words, uttered by British actor Michael Rennie in the 1951 science fiction classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," remain one of the most instantly recognizable movie catch phrases. The fact that the fabled phrase is garbled and has been rendered unintelligible in the 2008 remake sums up the new version's overall effect. The remake has enough stunning special effects to occupy the eye, but not enough plot to placate the mind. In an attempt to be separate itself from the original, yet pay homage to a movie that defined a genre, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" winds up resembling a film version of a comic book. The script is dumbed down, and instead of characters from the fourth dimension, we get a stiff, one dimensional Keanu Reeves in the title role.     

The original film played into America's fears of a doomsday cold war with Communist Russia (then the U.S.S.R.). Michael Rennie played Klaatu, an alien emissary from the United Federation of Planets sent to earth with a warning: stop your flirtation with atomic energy or you'll be "eliminated." Klaatu is shot by a soldier before he can deliver the message to the United Nations. Gort, a metallic robot built to protect Klaatu, demonstrates his superior technological power by liquefying the Army's guns and tanks, then mysteriously shuts down, keeping everyone on the planet wondering when the silver sentinel will wake from his slumber and strike again. Klaatu is taken to a hospital under heavy guard, but is eager to learn more about the human race and to find out for himself if we're worth saving. He escapes, assumes the name "Mr. Carpenter," then takes a room in a boarding house run by working mom Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) who has a young, inquisitive son, Bobby (Billy Gray). "Carpenter" attempts to keep his identity a secret, but his ignorance of earth customs (and being observed going into his spaceship), leads to his being chased down and killed by the Army. Gort exacts his revenge and reanimates Klaatu, who warns earth to stop the violence or risk retribution: "The decision rests with you."

Instead of atomic energy, the cause for concern this time around is the earth itself, which is dying from our abuse and neglect. Instead of a flying saucer, Klaatu emanates from a luminescent blue ball that looks as if it belongs getting kicked around a public school playground in the Bronx. As in the original, Klaatu is shot just as he is about to make contact with the scientists assembled at the landing site. The act of unprovoked violence activates mile-high robot Gort, who aggressively seeks retribution until he's stopped by Klaatu. While recovering from his injuries, Klaatu is questioned Regina Jackson, the Secretary of Defense (an overbearing and annoying Kathy Bates). Jackson believes Klaatu is part of an invasion force. She later changes her mind (aha, a true politician), convincing herself that Klaatu is an intergalactic Noah sent to gather us up two by two. (Here's some Hollywood irony for you. As a favor to Jonathan Harris, who co-starred with Michael Rennie in the "Harry Lime" adventure series from 1959-65, Rennie played a character called "The Keeper" on Harris' hokey Sci Fi TV series "Lost In Space" in 1966. The Keeper, who collected animals from around the universe, was a veiled version of Klaatu.)

  Doubt
  Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
 4 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

No doubt about it, this is one powerful film.

"Doubt" is a no nunsense tale of morality played out by a troupe of actors blessed with divine talent. The script occasionally lags under the weight of Catholic guilt, but it's not hard to see why "Doubt's" four leads were blessed with Oscar nominations.

"Doubt" takes place in 1964, the year after John F. Kennedy's assassination, in the midst of The Beatles' ascension, when the winds of social change were slowly beginning to blow. At St. Nicholas in the Bronx, Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, projecting a man-of the-people image), is a liberal-minded priest respected by students and faculty alike for his progressive ideas, topical sermons, and pleasant demeanor. Sister Aloysius, the school's principal (Meryl Streep, effectively portraying every Catholic student's nightmare), rules through fear, believing that transistor radios, ball point pens, and a loosening of the school's strict rules of conduct will erode the very fabric of the nation. Neophyte Sister James (a wonderfully astonished Amy Adams) notices Father Flynn is paying an usual amount of attention to Donald Miller, the school's first and only black student (who's also an altar boy). She shares her concern with Sister Aloysius, who concludes Father Flynn is a pedophile in priest's robes. She seizes the opportunity to rid herself and the school of a man she believes to be a free-thinking fraud. Is Sister Aloysius championing a witch hunt, or a righteous crusade? A war of wills ensues between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius that tests both faith and fortitude:

Father Flynn: I will fight you.
Sister Aloysius: You will lose.
Father Flynn: Where's your compassion?
Sister Aloysius: Nowhere you can get at it.  

What brought "Doubt" so eerily close to my heart were my own experiences in a Catholic School in the mid-60s as their lone "Negro." I attended public school, but our administrators got the bright idea to start an exchange program - some of the Catholic school kids would get to experience the freedom of a public education, while some of us commoners were selected to try and deal with the terror and rigidity of St. Francis of Assisi. My experiences during that year weren't exactly like Donald Miller's, but there were enough similarities to make me wonder if writer/director John Patrick Shanley had probed my mind for his plot.

Like Donald, I was granted the privilege of being an altar boy. I lost my prestigious position when my fellow altar boy and I decided to experiment with the house wine. We nearly faked our way through the service until my partner practically flattened Father O'Brien with a six foot cross. Both of us were terminated after the service -- in the midst of being questioned, my partner deposited his portion of the wine on Father O'Brien's buffed Brogans.

  Make 'Em Laugh
  The Funny Business Of America
 4 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

The funniest joke ever told? It's here, along with a century's worth of prat falls, parodies and punch lines. Rhino's "Make 'Em Laugh," a 6-episode 3-DVD set, traces comedy in America from Chaplin to Carlin and beyond. A fast-paced funfest, "Make 'Em Laugh" is the Sistine Chapel of comedy - the more you look at it, the more you notice its intricate beauty. Or as comedy writer Anne Beatts says, "Make 'Em Laugh goes beyond the 'pie in the face' to the 'face behind the pie.'

Billy Crystal hosts the series, and it's painfully obvious from his first routine - a lampoon of Ken Burns' cinematic style - that he could have used some help from Mel Brooks, Neil Simon or Carl Reiner, three of Sid Caesar's writers. Amy Sedaris serves as narrator but she's incidental, never saying anything worth remembering. But don't worry about Billy's jokes not being crystal clear or Amy being less than amiable. It's the clips that count. Thankfully, they're plentiful.

The segment that doubled me over the most was episode three, "Slip On a Banana Peel: The Knockouts." I know, physical comedy is sophomoric. It plays off of someone getting clobbered or embarrassed to the point they need psychiatric help or a suit of armor. But after a humorless day staring into the mechanical glow of my Dell computer, someone falling off a ladder into a fountain is a helluva lot funnier than trying to decode Jon Stewart's political puffery. Sometimes you want an immediate payback without having to fire up too many dormant neurons to figure out what's going on -- and guys like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges were masters at delivering punches as well as punch lines.

Chaplin is rightfully recognized as the foundation of comedy as we know it. As ageless talk show host Joe Franklin, the king of nostalgia notes: "At one time people didn't say 'Let's go to the movies." They said, 'Let's go see Chaplin. Chaplin was the movies.'"  Buster Keaton never smiled in his movies, but his audience did, and his death-defying scenes - done without the benefit of a stunt man - such as having a building collapse around him, or falling head first off a water tower, are still worth marveling at. Keaton was the Jackie Chan of his day. He broke nearly bone in his body for the audience's amusement.

Actor Michael McKean ("Spinal Tap") accurately paints a picture of Laurel and Hardy by saying, "Ollie was the dumbest man in the room, and Stan was his stooge. They were two minds without a single thought." Clips of the rotund southern gentleman and the clueless, baffling Brit trying to push a player piano up an endless flight of steps or battling comedic foil James ("DOH!") Finlayson are as fresh and funny as they were 70 years ago. As for The Stooges, few comedy teams were funnier or more destructive on a pure visual level. True, they owed much of their appeal to Joe Henry's sound effects, but they also made "soitinely," "numbskull," and "why you, I oughtta," part of our daily dialogue (okay I grew up with a rough crowd), and they gave a certain redhead who later teamed up with a Cuban bandleader a part in one of their short films.

  In The Electric Mist
  Ned Beatty, John Goodman
  2.5 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

Strange things seem to happen down New Orleans way... I once dated a beguiling bayou beauty whose brother discreetly told me if I broke her heart, what was left of me would be hauled out to the swamps for the gators to feast on. Guess he must've been a consultant for "In the Electric Mist," because that's one of several potentially absorbing plots that sinks deeper than a shrimper's net.

Dave Robicheaux (the always riveting Tommy Lee Jones), is called to the scene of a murder. The victim has been sliced and diced, and the local law enforcement admits her death may be another in a long string of killings by a serial swamp slasher. Robicheaux lines up his suspects. At the top of his list is his old baseball buddy, the local gumbo godfather, Julie "Baby Feet" Balboni (John Goodman, having a bayou blast). Baby Feet recently invested in a film being shot in the area, and Robicheaux's convinced his old teammate is up to something more than just being a patron of the arts.

Award-winning actor Elrod Sykes (a totally miscast Peter Sarsgaard), is the seldom on set star of the local film project. Sykes is a barfing, irresponsible mess who's somehow managed to win the love of his co-star Kelly Drummond (Kelly Macdonald, so disposable they didn't bother changing her first name), who wants nothing more than to save Sykes from himself. Much to Robicheaux's dismay, Sykes also happens to be his daughter's favorite actor.

Robicheaux first encounters Sykes and Macdonald when Sykes' nearly crashes his expensive sports car into him while trying to negotiate a routine turn. Robicheaux threatens to hang a DWI charge on Sykes until he blurts out he saw a skeleton wrapped in chains submerged in the swamp. Sykes' tall tale brings Robicheaux back forty years... When he was young, he saw a black man, bound in chains, being chased into the swamp and shot... You should be able to see through the mist immediately - somehow the young woman's murder and Robicheaux's suppressed memory of seeing the black man's demise are going to connect.

  Quarantine
  Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris
  2 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

Fans of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" can now rejoice. "Quarantine" continues the tradition of wobbly, hand-held "You are there" fright films. Depending on whether or not you've taken your Dramamine, you'll think either think "Quarantine" is a fast-paced hair-raiser, or a stomach churning, frustrating mess. As far as I'm concerned, "Quarantine" should be buried beneath the set's fake cobblestone floor with a "do not dig up until hell freezes over" sticker on it.

 "Quarantine" is never dull; it's just difficult to follow. The premise is a good one, but the film isn't. It's lifted from the Spanish film "Nec." Well, senorita, mucho cohesion was lost in the translation.

It all beings innocently enough (as most horror films do) with television reporter Angel Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, whose performance degenerates as people's vitals are being torn out) is filming a documentary about a fire company in New York City. It's all risqué jokes about poles and hoses until the company responds to an emergency call in an apartment building. Mrs. Espinoza (Jeannie Epper, growling like a distempered Terrier), a reclusive old woman, was heard screaming in her apartment and her neighbors fear she's hurt. High-strung cop Danny Wilensky (Columbus Short, successfully alternating between don't-f-with-me and hysteria), leads a police/fire department detail into Mrs. Espinoza's dimly lit living room to find out what's going on. Mrs. Espinoza attacks an officer, tearing at his neck as if it was a pork chop, leaving Wilensky no recourse but to shoot her. Wilensky rounds up the tenants, who rapidly begin to exhibit the same signs Mrs. Espinoza displayed before she turned into a foaming at the mouth buzz saw. It's not long before the vestibule looks like a Bronx ER on a Saturday night.

  Appaloosa
  Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger
  4 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

The American western is a dying art form. Once the cinematic canvas for red-blooded heroes like John Wayne, Kurt Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood, and Trigger, the world of men of few words, dead-eye shootin' sheriffs and sanctimonious sodbusters ran smack into the reality of the turbulent 60s. The public's thirst for characters reflecting the imperfections of the human condition turned the humble, aw shucks cowpoke into hard-drinking, icy killers and damaged loners. On television, cowboys went from the clean-cut Cartwrights to the F-bomb slinging Al Swearengen in "Deadwood."

Every so often a western comes along that combines the thrilling shoot 'em up action and white hat morality of the genre from yesteryear mixed with the reality based dialogue that harnesses the good, the bad and the ugly in all of us. Well, pardner, "Appaloosa" is such a film. It's sagebrush bonding without the uncomfortable touchy-feely undertones of "Brokeback Mountain." Even if you don't like westerns, the dynamic between old pal peace officers Virgil Cole (veteran character actor Ed Harris, who also wrote and produced the film) and Everett Hatch (Viggo Mortensen, conveying cowboy cool), will leave you glued to your saddle.

It may surprise you to know that my litmus test for westerns is a relatively modern one - 1993's "Tombstone," which starred Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, ubiquitous western character actor Sam Elliot as Virgil Earp, Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday and Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo. (For the record, I'll mention that some of my other favorite westerns are "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck in a rare bad guy turn as...Johnny Ringo; "The Ox-Bow Incident" with Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan; "The Magnificent Seven," the inaccurate, but entertaining "O.K Corral" with a hearty Kurt Douglas as the tubercular Doc Holiday and a pre-"Star Trek" DeForest Kelly playing Morgan Earp; and Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josie Wales." Please note there are no John Wayne films mentioned, pilgrim.) "Tombstone" had the rare quality of being true to the events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral as well as the consequences that followed. Unlike Kevin Costner's leaden, angst-ridden American hero portrayal of Earp the same year, Russell imbued his Wyatt with the hint of a sense of humor and let the audience see one of our most celebrated peace officers wasn't very peaceable after all. Biehn was a tortured, vengeful villain, and Kilmer gave Holiday an authentic Georgia accent as well as a sense of tragic humanity Dennis Quaid's excellent but bloodthirsty portrayal of Doc didn't have.

  Linewatch
  Cuba Gooding Jr., Omari Hardwick
  2 out of 5 stars
  Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson


What's happened to Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s career?

Does winning a supporting actor Oscar automatically condemn an actor to obscurity? Ask the immortal George Chakiris, Haing S. Nor, or Brenda Fricker. Yep. It looks like "Linewatch" is going to push Gooding further down the frickin' road to obscurity alongside Brenda. In "Linewatch," Gooding plays non-nonsense border cop Mike Dixon, a devoted family man. In a previous life he was "Mad Dog" Dixon, a deadly L.A. gangbanger. Even though he's lording over a vast, desolate and sleepy expanse of the U.S./Mexican border, far away from L.A., you can bet anybody two Gila monsters and a cactus cocktail the plot centers around his past catching up with him.

Dixon and his overanxious partner, Luis DeSanto (under utilized Omar Trujillo), come across a van of nine dead men, women and children who tried to sneak across the border. The pair begins a pursuit of the "coyote" (broker/dirtbag) that arranged the ill-fated attempt. The subplots -- the pursuit of the coyote, the hassles and dangers faced by the border patrol, and the confrontation between border crossers and vigilantes posing as homemade homeland security would have made a much better picture. Instead, we get a weary drug smuggling plot dressed up as something new because the bad guys are fish out of water inner city black gangstas making a drug deal in the desert.

Dixon and Luis track their "coyote" travel agent to a trailer. Luis offers to rush the door and gets a chest full of lead for his enthusiasm. Dixon plugs two heavily armed dealers who suddenly lose their ability to shoot straight when he they fire at him. The remaining reprobate, a razor thin, skitterish black man with jagged teeth, escapes from the side of the trailer. Dixon and the dealer in need of a dental plan lock eyes, but neither one fires. Whaaa?