The Wire Season 3 Episode 5: Straight and True

The Wire Season 3 Episode 5: Straight and True. Irish actor Aidan Gillen dellivered a consistently outstanding performance in The Wire as Councilman / Mayor Tommy Carcetti an essentially principled though conniving and adulterous politician. While certainly not as pivotal as the role of Detective Jimmy McNulty, Carcetti's journey as the white renegade councilmember wanting to unseat an entrenched black mayor in Baltmore adds further complexity to an already complex narrative of the city's efforts to save itself. Gillen, known best in Britain as the star of the original Queer as Folk and now as member of the large cast of characters in Game of Thrones, is a fine actor who is given one of the most dramatic speeches (and the series has quite a few such moments) as he dresses down the city's police brass for their inability to defend and protect the citizens of Baltimore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vmWkJ8hLoE

21 Jump Street

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller offer a singular comedic vision in the motion picture parody of the deservedly lampooned '80s undercover cop series 21 Jump Street, which starred Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco, both of whom make cameos in the last reel. The film, which stars uber-schlub Jonah Hill and pretty boy du jour Channing Tatum, is a gutbucket laugh riot of genuinely clever pop culture references, unceasing penis jokes, and the kind of profanity and vulgarity that evokes guffaws because it's so excessive. Hill and Tatum play recent police academy graduates who are pulled from park patrol to infiltrate a high school drug operation. (The ridiculousnes of the premise has not diminished over the years.) In a fresh turn of a familiar storyline, the new world of high school clique-dom is ruled by geeks and Hill's character is suddenly the cool one and the former jock (Tatum) has to play "smart" with the chemistry club to crack the case. (I won't write that hilarity ensues but it does.) Ice Cube delivers several moments of scowlingly unhinged obscenity as the undercover detail's captain, and Dave Franco (younger brother of James Franco) is a standout as a vegan dope dealer. I wouldn't call 21 Jump Street a bromance but it's probably the gayest straight action film currently playing in the theaters.

The Wire Season 3 Episode 4:Hamsterdam

The Wire Season 3 Episode 4: Hamsterdam. David Simon poured undiluted menace into the character of drug lord Marlo Stanfield, a ruthless sociopath who reigns over the bloodiest crew of drugland enforcers in Baltimore. Much of the body count that has sent the BPD scrambling to solve or conceal can be traced to Stanfield and his insatiable lieutenants -- Chris (Gebenga Akinnagbe) and Snoop (Felicia Pearson). They make for a deadly trio of characters so removed from civil society and social conventions that the dread they elicit whenever they're screen radiates long after they're gone. They're a palpable threat to the life of the city, a disease that Major Colvin hopes to quarantine to a Free Zone where dealers and users can transact their business without fear of police harassment. The Free Zone is referred to in passing as Amsterdam -- the Dutch capital where some drugs can be purchased legally -- but the name is unwittingly converted by the corner boys to a ruefully ironic Hamsterdam. In short order, however, the warmth and fuzziness of that appellation will ill-fit the unrelenting social decay in the Free Zone.

Flowers 5: For You

The Wire Season 3 Episode 3: Dead Soldiers

The Wire Season 3 Episode 2: All Due Respect More than any of the other law enforcement characters in The Wire, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin epitomizes Simon and company's conflicting views of the general ineffectiveness of modern day policing and the general decency of police officers. Colvin is in charge of a district that is swirling down the toilet with heroin being sold openly and law abiding citizens barricading themselves in their homes while warring gangs pull their children into their criminal operations to replace those killed defending their turf. This is not the community Colvin remembers as a boy or even as an officer on foot patrol back in the day. He's despairing and counting the days until he can retire. But pressure from City Hall to clean the street of dealers and druggies and lower the murder rate leads Colvin to philosophize about the nature of the crime they're asked to police and prevent. Running low-level drug dealers off the street is not an efficient use of police time, he reasons, but he knows his elected bosses won't understand. Toward the end of this episode, Colvin gives a speech to the officers in his district in which he describes the corner as the poor man's lounge, a place where he could go and drink a beer as long as it was in a paper bag and the police would look the other way. It's a resonant moment that is just the opening salvo of one of the most intriguing narrative threads the writers of The Wire will concoct over the five seasons: Hamsterdam.

The Wire Season 3 Episdoe 2: All Due Respect

The Wire Season 3 Episode 2: All Due Respect More than any of the other law enforcement characters in The Wire, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin epitomizes Simon and company's conflicted view of the general ineffectiveness of modern day policing and the general decency of police officers. Colvin is in charge of a district that is swirling down the toilet with heroin being sold openly, law abiding citizens barricaded in their homes while warring gangs pull their children into their criminal operations to replace those killed while defending their turf. This is not the community Colvin remembers as a boy or even as an officer on foot patrol back in the day. He's despairing and counting the days until he can retire. But pressure from City Hall to clean the street of dealers and druggies and lower the murder rate leads Colvin to philosophize about the nature of the crime they're asked to police and prevent. Running low level drug dealers off the street is not an efficient use of police time, he reasons but he knows his elected bosses won't understand. Toward the end of this episode, Colvin gives a speech to the officers in his district in which he describes the corner as the poor man's lounge, a place where he could go and drink a beer as long as it was in a paper bag and the police would look the other way. It's a resonant moment that is just the opening salvo of one of the most intriguing narrative threads the writers of The Wire will concoct over the five seasons: Hamsterdam.

The Wire Season 3 Episode 1: Time after Time

The Wire Season 3 Episode 1: Time after Time. When the series left the harbor docks to focus on the sullen streets of West Baltimore, many fans no doubt breathed a sigh of relief. Simon and company's expansion of their tale of a city on the verge of moral collapse to the waterfront in the second season seemed to be just a foray, and not an entirely successful one. (I thought Year Two had some weak moments but overall was enormously entertaining.) Opening the new season with the demolition of the Barksdale organization's beloved highrises signaled changes coming, but as the dust from the crumbling wreckage indicated, there would be stifling fallout. It was a clever visual effect.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 12: Port in a Storm

The Wire Season 2 Episode 12: Port in a Storm. Harbor police pulled the body of Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer) out of the bay the day after the Greek (Bill Raymond), Vondas (Paul Ben-Victor) and their henchmen were informed the union boss was about to turn state's evidence on the drug, smuggling and prostitution syndicate. It's an agonizing opening sequence that mirrors the scene from the first episode of the second season -- the harbor patrol pulling the body of a murdered woman from the water. Both bodies were deposited by the Greek's crew and despite huge expenditures of material and human capital, the Baltimore PD didn't appear to be any closer to arresting "Mr. Big" than when the season started. And that would be a recurring theme throughout the series. And yet, the program was not entirely cynical. Small victories were marked and celebrated and there were signs that a storm, stirred by the work of the major crimes unit, was on the horizon. The appetites of the members of the major crimes unit under Lt. Daniels (Lance Reddick) had been whetted and they needed to be fed. They would be in Season 3.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 11: Bad Dreams

The Wire Season 2 Episode 11: Bad Dreams This episode features the fateful encounter between two celebrated gunmen -- renegade Robin Hood Omar Little and Barksdale hired gun Brother Mouzone of NYC. Stringer Bell, in a move that will ultimately lead to his downfall, tells Omar that the torture and murder of his young lover Brandon was not done by the Barksdale crew, though it was, but by Mouzone, as vicious a killer as ever walked the earth. Omar bites and tracks down Mouzone with the help of his associates Kimmy and Tosha. He shoots and wounds Mouzone in his downtown motel and tries to extract a confession from him before putting him away permanently. Mouzone denies the charge that he killed Brandon but accepts that his time has come and tells Omar to do what he wishes. Omar lets the wounded Mouzone live and calls 9-1-1, believing he's been had by Bell. It's a wonderful scene. And is among the best in the series as it is both terse and tense and probes provocative questions like definitions of honor and loyalty and goodness.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 10: Storm Warnings

The Wire Season 2 Episode 10: Storm Warnings When Nick Sobotoka tells his uncle, union leader Frank Sobotka, that Frank's son, the irrepressible Ziggy, has gunned down two members of the Greek's smuggling and prostitution syndicate, Frank asks Nick, "Where were you? You're his cousin." And Nick responds, as if just becoming aware of the fact he's about to share, "But you're his father." Dysfunction runs through all of the relationships on The Wire, and Simon and company explores the dynamic of several interesting father / father surrogate and son pairings over the course of the series' five seasons. Detective Jimmy McNulty's tenuous grasp on paternal responsiblity was a central element in the writer's development of his character in Season 1. (The McNulty boys, for all intents and purposes, disappeared after Season 3.) In Season 4, the flinty exchanges between incarcerated Barksdale trigger man Wee-Bay and his thuggish son Namond (and Namond's ghetto fabulous mother, De'Londa) were comic highlights and one of a handful of representations of a complete family unit among the Barksdale crew. When Frank meets with the beaten Ziggy downtown, he clearly is staring into the face of his own failings. His attempt to boost his son's confidence that all will work out fall on deaf ears. "You're a Sobotka," Frank tells his son. "Fucked, is what I am." And there's no denying that.

Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard's Cabin in the Woods is a cinematic feast for those of us who love horror movies and understand that the tease "don't look in the basement" is an inevitable invitation to do just that. But the wonder of Cabin is that that hackneyed warning leads to a fantastic array of outlandish terror/slasher genre tropes and tricks all in the service of ... well, I'll leave that alone. The story, written by wunderkind Joss Whedon (Buffy, the Vampire Killer and Firefly) and first-time director Goddard, is a bloody moebius strip, twisting in and around itself after introducing the four comely college kids (slut, jock, geek and virgin) and one unrepentant stoner who go off for a weekend in a remote cabin, without Internet or cellphone access. The film is brimming with vitality and smartness and humor and is, not a little bit, inspired.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 9

The Wire Season 2 Episode 9: Stray Rounds. In what was, at least for me, a stroke of dramatic genius, David Simon and company chose to bookend this unsettling episode with Janus images -- two faces of drug dealing enforcement. The episode opens with ragtag incompetence and chaos as Barksdale's street level enforcer Brodie (J.D. Williams) tries to push interlopers off his corners with a show of firepower. A young boy getting ready for school catches a stray bullet and is left dead in the bedroom of his apartment. His mother's screams close the opening sequence and offer proof positive that change is needed. When Stringer Bell and Brianna Barksdale tell her brother Avon, who is still behind bars, of the trouble they're having holding onto their portion of the West Baltimore drug trade, he tells them he'll take care of it by pulling in some muscle from New York. Little do they or the viewers know what that portends, not just for the disputing drug slingers but for Stringer and Avon. The episode closes with the introduction of the new enforcer -- the unassumingly bespectacled and bow-tied Brother Mouzon (a terrific Michael Potts) looking up at the towers that he has been summoned to tame.

The Hunger Games

Gary Ross's The Hunger Games is a highly watchable amalgamation of classic dystopian texts -- 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Wizard of Oz (?) among others -- that sets the child-in-peril trope front and center to uncertain effect, IMO. I'm not familiar with the source material -- Suzanne Collins' novel of the same name -- but expect that it develops the back story of the insurrection that resulted in the creation of the 12 districts from which two children are pulled every year to fight to the death in an elaborate war game. The children, a boy and a girl, are chosen in a lottery and shipped off to the Capital -- imagine the Emerald City without it's stylish sensibility -- to be schooled. The children -- some of them ringers -- are fawned over by garishly attired nabobs and trained in the fine art of evisceration. The film has several winning performances, most notably Jennifer Lawrence, a young bowwoman who volunteers for the Games when her little sister's number is called, and Woody Harrelson as her drunken mentor, whose job it is to make her a likable and bankable warrior. Despite the quality of the performance, inventive camera work and intriguing set design and costuming, this is still a pretty dismal and barbaric affair. I'm not a fan of the notion of turning animalized children onto each other as broadcast entertainment and don't understand the message I'm to take away from this film. It's entertaining enough, I suppose, but I left the theater sure the film wlll make a mint but I'm not certain if that's such a good thing.

Game Change

HBO's Game Change was illuminating and entertaining but a fairly safe affair overall. Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was a spot on duplication of the Alaska governor's distinctive manner and cadence and only in the last reel began to evolve into the annoying diva that the left loves to hate. The story itself was not wholly unsympathetic to John McCain or the men and women who forced the political marriage between the unlikely pair and who suffered the ignominy of tapping a candidate for vee-pee who was wholly unqualified. There are no villains in the film unless you count a political system guided by expediency, damage control and polling.

Sunshine

Reading dire reports of solar flares interrupting earthy affairs, I was reminded of Danny Boyle's intriguing but not totally satisfying foray into science fiction, Sunshine (2007). Boyle is better known for his wholly satisfying Slumdog Millionaire and his indispensable cult hits Trainspotting (1996) and Shallow Grave (1994). Sunshine tells the story of an international crew of astronauts on a mission to deliver an explosive payload the size of Manhattan island to the sun, where it will reignite the star, which is diminishing and threatening life on Earth. This will be the Earth's second attempt, as the previous effort failed mysteriously. As with the best science fiction with which I'm familiar, this adventure is merely backdrop for more existential musings. Some of which, admittedly I could not parse. Still, the visuals are kind of amazing. It's well worth checking out, IMO.

The Wire Season 2 Episode 8: Duck and Cover

The Wire Season 2 Episode 8: Duck and Cover. From end to end, The Wire was a character study of a city, David Simon's beloved Baltimore, and the individual troubled lives of cops and robbers, pushers and politicians and the innocents who were too often caught in the crossfire (literally). Det. Jimmy McNulty is a tough character to pull for because he's an ill-tempered braggart (an Irishman, through and through) who suppresses the better angels of his conscience with alcohol and cheap sex. McNulty opens this episode by driving his car into bridge underpass supports -- several times. It would be disturbing and puzzling if viewers hadn't already witnessed McNulty's self-destructive and self-pitying tantrums. When he ends up bloodied in an all-night diner ordering eggs and scrapple and picking up the waitress, we might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as Jimmy being Jimmy, and it certainly is that. But it's also Simon's way of reasserting McNulty's aching need to be needed. As McNutly's best friend says in his defense, "when he ain't policing he's a picture postcard of a drunken, self-destructive fuck-up. And when he is policing... he's pretty much the same motherfucker. But on a good case, he runnin' in front of the pack. That's as close as the man comes to bein' right." The show's resident sage Lester Freamon will eventually get fed up with McNulty's shenanigan's and urge him to get a life away from the stakeouts and the wiretaps. It's great advice that McNulty never embraces ... and the show is better for it.

The Artist

Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is a rather surreal silent treatment of the classic old dog / new tricks conceit set in 1920s Hollywood. It was a terrific gamble that was spot on. The film is a wonder. Hazanavicius delivers a picture that is not only fresh but refreshing even for those of us who see a lot of movies. The film's vibrancy radiates from the screen in ways I haven't felt in years. It's compact and precise, like a exquisite timepiece, but with heart. (More on that later.) One immaculately staged scene is representative of the artistry that's in every scene of this film. It takes place on an open stairway in the fictitious Kinograph studios where veteran silent film star George Valentin (a stellar Jean Dujardin) runs into the young starlet he discovered, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, what a marvel she is). Valentin has just had an upsetting meeting with studio heads in which it was announced that talkies were the future; the silent age essentailly over. The stairway exchange between George and Peppy moves elegantly from George's anxiousness to Peppy's ardor. It's poignant and pure perfection.

The Artist is a flawless film that bests that other truly flawless work released last year -- Scorsese's Hugo -- in that the meticulousness of the Artists's acting, camera work, staging and design do not compete with one another for the audience's attention or awe. At the end of Hugo, I felt I seen an important work by a master director. At the end of The Artist, I felt the same but also enriched and better for having seen it.

Post-Oscar Thoughts

I was saying to a friend just before last night's Oscar telecast that I could not see both Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis winning for their performances in The Help. I won't say it was naive of folks to think that both of these fine actresses would walk away with the gold (especially in light of Streep's singular leading lady performance in The Iron Lady, the kind of picture the Academy loves ... biopics) but it was overly optimistic of fans of The Help to think it possible. It just wasn't going to happen. I would not diminish neither Spencer's nor Davis's performances by saying that while different they were still quite similar and maybe too similar for Academy voters looking to make a statement. Those folks would have prefered the spiky Minny to the more resigned Aibileen, I think. (Hollywood loves to reward roles that stand up to the man ... remember Denzel Washington Oscar win in a supporting role for his performance as the beaten but never bowed former slave in Glory?) Also, in terms of pure heft of performances, Davis's Aibileen was essentially a crucial but supporting role. The star of the film was actually Emma Stone, the narrative was told through her and it was she who defined the action. The film producers wanted to recognize Davis (as resourceful and reliable an actress as Hollywood will allow) with a nod and helped build the buzz about a possible win. They could not put both Davis and Spencer up for supporting actress -- they would have cancelled each other out. But I think putting Davis up for leading actress probably was in the end unfair to her ... in light of the weight of not just Madame Streep's performance but the other three women who OWNED and were the FACES of the pictures they were in. Davis, though important to The Help, didn't really own that film. In the end, as a nominee, Davis will be considered for membership in the Academy. They would be fools not to issue that invitation today for the mileage the motion picture industry got and will continue to get out her and The Help.

The Grey

Joe Carnahan's The Grey is only incidentally about a group of men who survive a deadly aircraft crash in the Alaskan wilderness. For me, that event is only backdrop for a fascinating exploration of what it means to be alive and our relationship with our present ... not so much about what comes next. Liam Neeson is on camera for 90 percent of this film and much of that time his face fills the frame -- brows knit in concentration, indignation, terror. He is Ottway, the leader of a dwindling group of oil field workers who walked away from the crash. He leads their efforts to fend off the attacks of menacing wolves (which are to be read more as metaphorical representations of life's exigencies) and the night's numbing cold (that long last sleep that awaits us all). Yes, members of the small band fall one-by-one but that's not the story ... it's how the men are changed by each of these deaths that was far more interesting to me. One of the most powerful scenes -- there are a dozen enormously thought-provoking moments in this picture -- comes just after the plane crashes and Neeson's Ottway gently guides a fatally injured oilman into the warm arms of death with his voice. It's a masterfully crafted scene, played in extreme closeup, the camera trained on eyes, scraggy beards, bloody hands. It will be imprinted on your brain.

I'd put off seeing this film because I found the trailer so unappetizing -- another survivor adventure. But The Grey is actually Carnahan's poetic essay on the meaning of life. Do see it.

Shame

British director Steve McQueen's Shame is wonderful in the conventional sense -- intensely artful directing and powerful performances -- but it is unconventionally wonderful, as well, because it expertly mixes static resignation and frantic discomfiture. It's a movie about people not being comfortable in their own skins, even as they bare that skin to the world. The lead characters, Brandon Sullivan (a mesmerizing Michael Fassbender) and his sister Sissy (an equally terrific Carrie Mulligan), are driven by some unseen and unspoken past events into lustful rages that make them toxic to others, each other and to themselves. Brandon is a sex addict who works in an office with computers and lots of glass (it doesn't really matter what he does; he's just brilliant at it) and he spends a great deal of time scrolling the Internet for porn and stalking the streets of New York for willing sex partners. Sissy is a needy and clingy possible nymphomaniac just arrived in the Big Apple from L.A., where she was involved with a man who, apparently, she can't live with or without. McQueen films Mulligan in extreme close up singing the entirely of New York, New York in a lethargic meter that, like so much else in this film, will test the viewer's patience but will reward that patience when something will click and the device will become apparent. It's voyeurism. McQueen films interactions between characters so deliberately and at such great length (think John Cassavetes if he'd stripped his casts naked) that what at first is enticing eventually becomes distasteful. An early scene between Brandon and an unnamed female passenger on the subway transpires without a word being uttered, just glances between the two. The woman is at first flattered by his attention, then she's allured, but as Sullivan's gaze is unwavering, she loses her seductive pout and feels menaced by him. It's a brilliant scene in a film loaded with them but because Fassbender's prominent member is on display in a few scenes it will not be for every taste. It's a film about sex but it is decidedly not sexy.

Safe House

Denzel Washington fascinates me. More accurately, Denzel Washington's career fascinates me. He's one of a handful of A-list Hollywood African Americans who have maintained their box office appeal through savvy choices. He's done TV (St. Elsewhere) and Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing) and Spike Lee (a lot) and has never, in my opinion, appeared in, backed or directed a truly bad film. Many of his films are thoughtful explorations of human relations and weakness (Fallen) and many of them are richly textured examinations of black life in America (Antwone Fisher) more than a few are have the military as a backdrop. Some are decidedly weaker than others but each is boosted, considerably, by the sheer discipline of Washington performances. He's a force of nature -- but not an earthquake. He's more like a Hurricane. (Couldn't resist.) In the last decade or so, he's paired up with good to excellent B to B+ list Hollywood heartthrobs -- Ethan Hawke in Training Day, Chris Pine in Unstoppable and now Ryan Reynolds in Daniel Espinosa's Safe House, a good film with a mountainous body count and a story that is frustratingly incomplete. Washington plays a rogue CIA agent who for about a decade has been acquiring and selling secrets about undercover operations sponsored by the U.S. and its allies. Reynolds is the safe house "housekeeper" in Cape Town, South Africa, charged with delivering Washington's Tobin Frost to Langley when Frost turns himself in to the American consulate after a failed attempt on his life. The action is pretty much confined to Cape Town but there's plenty of it, maybe more than is actually needed. The story -- which owes a huge debt to the Bourne trilogy -- desperately needs more quiet moments between Washington and Reynolds, who is splendid, so that the audience can actually feel what's happening between these two men because that's where the real spy vs. spy story is. As a side note, who knew Berg of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place would turn into such a fine actor? I didn't but Reynolds delivers.

Chronicle

Josh Trank's Chronicle is not an easy film to assess. It succeeds on a couple of cinematic levels -- as well-crafted sci-fi / teen angst -- but it falls short on other more elusive levels, I think. It's the story of a trio of friends who find a mysterious glowing rock in a cavern in suburban Seattle and subsequently develop the ability to move objects through force of will. The boys (played winningly by Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordon) have fun videotaping (chronicling?) the exploration of their new powers. They bond and win some much needed affirmation for damaged young Andrew (DeHaan), who is brutalized by his drunken father even as his mother lies slowly dying in the family's living room. Trank's narrative is tight and fresh and the early super power sequences are clever and seamless. But, then, matters turn, jarringly dark. It's not so much that the outcome is unforeseen; it's telegraphed well and often from the beginning. It's more that it's unrelentingly, terribly grim. Chronicle is well made, no question, but it's so dark it's hard to see the point it's trying to make. I would NOT recommend taking young children to this film.

The Wire Season 2 Epsiode 7: Backwash

The Wire Season 2 Episode 7: Backwash. The relationship between dock worker Nick Sobotka and his feckless cousin Ziggy is one of the more interesting in the second season and mirrors the familial tragedies found in the Barksdale clan. Casting the towering Pablo Schreiber as Nick and the comparatively diminutive James Ransone (whose acting was often too cartoonish by half) as Ziggy was smart and the stark difference in their physical presence signalled (perhaps to pointedly) the differences in their personalities, as well. Nick's physicality demands respect; Ziggy's, derision, which he receives in mounds. When Nick takes over the little piece of drug dealing action that his cousin tried to foster, Ziggy fumes and pouts. Ziggy has been bested by his tall, handsome cousin, and moves on to more reckless dealings that, inevitably, lead to his downfall. And, to add injury to injury, the loyal and industrious Nick is closer to Ziggy's father, union boss Frank Sobotka, than Ziggy is himself. What's a boy got to do to get his father's attention? Kill somebody?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I'd never seen Mike Newell's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before last night and enjoyed watching the Brit who went on the direct the nightmare that was The Prince of Persia deliver some decent thrills in what is pretty much a pudgy transitional film in the ordinarily lean and mean Potter series. Having not read the book I don't know if the problem lies in the source material, the screenplay or Newell's interpretation of either or both but it's not as nimble as the other entries -- particularly the cappers released last year. Still, the film moves the saga of the wizard boy / messiah along responsibly and we finally get a look at "he who must not be named" -- a scenery chomping Ralph Fiennes in his now-familiar Lon Chaney skeletal death mask. But in the final analysis, I found it entertaining though unremarkable.

The Woman in Black

Surely someone with Daniel Radcliffe's star power could have picked a weightier post-Potter vehicle than James Watkins' beautifully art directed but amateurish period ghost story "The Woman in Black." Radcliffe (how many hundreds of millions of dollars is his face worth?) plays Arthur Kipps, a young London attorney during the early years of the last century who receives an ultimatum from his boss to get his act together or move on. Kipps, the widowed father of a 4-year-old, accepts the challenge to travel to the remote home of a deceased client, read through her papers, and get the estate, Eel Marsh, ready for sale. Kipps leaves his son in the care of the nanny and travels by train to the village of Crythin Gifford, where the residents tell him there's no room in the inn, he's not welcome and that he should take the first train back to London ... or else. Kipps refuses, preferring to stay employed, and, of course, the disquieted, bitter spirit of the lady of the title runs amok killing villagers as she goes. Aside from the predictability of the narrative, problems with the film begin with Kipps holding out a shilling to bribe a carriage driver to take him out to Eel Marsh. After cutting to the driver, the camera returns to Kipps who is now holding a significantly larger coin. It's a bush league continuity gaffe but when combined with nonsensical points of view, inexplicable 5 o'clock shadows on Radcliffe's boyish cheeks and mysteriously vanishing pets, it's scary how bad this movie is.