THE LAST LOVECRAFT: a perfect excuse to work in a bunch of fish puns

This year's Toronto After Dark festival played host to a variety of crazy movies, most notably THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE. And while I was nowhere near brave enough to enter a world of terrifying German surgery, I did score some free passes to the opening night film, THE LAST LOVECRAFT.

For the first few minutes, I was terribly worried that this was going to be an overwrought RELIC HUNTER episode, complete with hooded villains, questionable effects work, and middle-aged actors trying way too hard to justify their lifetime of shitty work (and the word "relic" being thrown around way, way too often). And while elements of The Carrere Effect remained throughout the entirety of the film, its charm ultimately won me over.

The basic setup is that the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft was actually a warning of real dangers, and that a group of nerds, including the last descendant of Lovecraft, have to band together to save the world from Cthulhu, the sea-dwelling Megatron of Lovecraftian fiction. With this kind of material and this kind of a budget, there's bound to be some problems with the film. The baddies in the film are all clearly wearing masks, and some of the effects work is, well, fishy, but the script knows what its strengths are and plays to them, principally keeping the dynamic between the nerds front and center.

The other key is that THE LAST LOVECRAFT never takes itself too seriously. While it isn't an outright comedy, the film's tongue is never too far from its cheek (although, really, how far could a tongue get from its corresponding cheek?) Anyway, there's quite a few laughs thrown into the proceedings, which helps when the film gets dragged down by it's plot.

THE LAST LOVECRAFT just picked up a distribution deal, so there's a chance that you might see it in a DVD bargain bin sometime soon. If it's a $5 and Under bin, I'd say go ahead and pick it up. There's enough there for you to enjoy, and like the 2003 Florida Marlins, it just might surprise you.

Review: Fin.

DINER is one of my all-time favourites

When you press play on the DINER DVD, you're subjected to a five-minute introduction to the film by the cast and crew. It's incredibly smug and arrogant, a boast of the film's timelessness and quality. The first time I watched the film, I almost turned it off right after Steve Guttenberg, that fine purveyor of quality products, guaranteed me that I would love the film.

But if you manage to make it past this incredibly crass piece of promotional fluff, you'll find a wonderful piece of personal filmmaking that backs up all its talk. DINER is an exceptional film, something that feels so true to its characters that they cease to be characters. The basic set-up is that it's the last week of the 1950's as a group of old friends re-unite for their friend's wedding on New Year's Eve.

Barry Levinson's script is impeccably crafted, witty and personal and seeped in period details that makes me feel nostalgic for an era that I wasn't even remotely close to alive for. The film is saturated with a love for the innocence of the fifties, and a faint feeling of dread for the coming turbulence of the sixties hangs over everything. I think what makes the film so accessible is that it's actually about the past, about the memories that make us who we are, a theme Levinson further explored in the great LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Levinson is able to tap in to our fondness for the past, and DINER feels like hearing your grandfather tell you How It Really Was.

I watch DINER at least once a year, and I always see new things in it, and relate to it differently as I mature. My relationships with the characters are always in flux, and I see pieces of myself and my friends in the dynamics of the film. What never changes is my love for the dialogue-heavy script, which revels in the art of conversation, basks in the power of words.

The cast of DINER is the other great strength of the film, bringing a depth and realism to the characters that isn't necessarily on the page. Kevin Bacon gives the best non-Paul Veerhoven performance of his career as the troubled alcoholic fuck-up Fenwick, a loyal friend whose simmering anger belies his goof personality. Tim Daly (yes, the ill-advised remake of The Fugitive's Tim Daly) brings a lot of the heart to the film, as Billy, the friend whose ambition has taken him away from home, but is back for the wedding and another purpose. Daniel Stern is a revelation, playing a man-child trapped in marriage and avoiding any ... y'know, Daniel Stern-ness. Guttenberg's persona has never been utilized better than in this film. Paul Reiser is hilarious. And it's amazing to see what Mickey Rourke can do with a role when he's actually trying.

I'm curious if any of the ladies out there share my love of DINER. The most memorable scenes of the film exist in a strange sexual ethics zone, and how the men relate to it individually. For me, so much of the film's power is in it's depiction of male friendships, in the things that are said and unsaid, what is public and what is left private. I think it's a pitch-perfect depiction of the boundaries of those friendships, and it hits me in a deeply personal way.

But I want to hit that DVD intro in the balls.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE vs. Lil' Dizzy

I had a day off yesterday. This is what I did with it.

BLACK DYNAMITE and the Trial of Mike Myers

I think we can all agree that, in general, the genre of spoof film is in a tired state. The Scary Movie series (the definition of tired). Meet the Spartans (yes, that is THE WIRE and Wu-Tang alum Method Man). Not Another _____ Movie (which is one of the first series to start the trend of having the title mimic your reaction to finding out about it). Not since I watched a massive load of ejaculate plaster Anna Faris to a ceiling while sitting next to my dad have I felt so ashamed to watch a spoof. And we all know who to blame. It may not be pleasant to turn on one of our own, but it's something we have to do. Mr. Michael Meyers, please step to the stand.

Mr. Myers, you have been called here today to be judged. Not so much for what you've done, but more for what you haven't done. But we'll get to that in a moment.

But first, let me set the scene of the crime: the summer of 1997. A muggy summer, the kind of heat that gets into a man's soul; makes him crazy, drives him to the dark, lonely corners of his mind. Not to say your intentions were anything but pure when you released AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY into the world that fateful summer, but as we have so often seen in our history, the noblest of intentions have a way of twisting us, perverting us from what we started as.

Now, I'll admit it: I liked your spoof. You distilled the essence of Bondian intrigues and combined it with terrifying puns, Seth Green at his wise-assiest, and Elizabeth Hurley. In my defense, I was eleven years old. I had just finished writing a James Bond movie with my brother where the main villain had swords for arms and was called Dangerhands (still awesome, IMHO) But I'm not on trial here, Myers, you are!

No one could really blame you when you released the sequel. I mean, you hadn't touched on the outrageousness of hollowed-out volcano bases and midget henchmen yet. So I got it. The commentary wasn't complete yet. But there were also a few, um, troubling inclusions. I don't know what the fuck Fat Bastard was supposed to comment on, but every single time I think of him I want to strap you to the electric chair myself and throw the switch.

But the third one ... well, to be honest. I don't remember much about the third one. Whether it was through the rarely-heard-about benefits of some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, or a conscious attempt on my part to subjugate the memories of the film through sheer willpower, everything about those ninety minutes remains gauzy. I do remember you co-opted cameos from Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, and Britney Spears, in the sure-fire mark of a tapped-out well of ideas. Oh God, Beyoncé was in it too, wasn't she? Jesus Christ, the memories are coming back...

The less mentioned about The Love Guru, the better. For everyone. That list looks like the goddamned docket for a Nuremberg courtroom in 1945.

Mr. Myers, the charges are simple: you ruined the spoof film. And you have not apologized.

So when I see hilarious scenes like this in a movie like BLACK DYNAMITE, there's a sour after-taste. I want to think about Zucker-Abrams-Zucker and the awesomeness of a spoof film with a point and story of it's own, but I can't help but flash back to this kind of shit.

Mr. Myers, all you have to do is apologize. And then maybe we'll get into reparations. In the meantime, we'll always have Mel Brooks.

If I say INSOMNIA is nowhere near Robin Williams' worst film, am I actually saying anything?

Do you ever have those moments where memory plays tricks on you? Where you change the shape of a room or the color of a car? Or maybe the end of a movie?

I've done it twice now - a few years ago, I could have sworn CASABLANCA's last shot of Ingrid Bergman was of her looking tearfully out an airplane window at Humphrey Bogart, but then I saw Alfred Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS again and realized I had added a shot from that film into my memory of CASABLANCA. And I just realized I did it with INSOMNIA, too.

My recollections of INSOMNIA were very fuzzy, but I hadn't realized just how fuzzy they were until Nicky Katt showed up and started making with the awesome (as he so often does). For years, I had operated under the assumption that the conclusion of the film was a nicely tied bow that linked two separate cases together under Robin Williams' guilt.

Turns out, that completely doesn't happen. At all. There isn't even a second case. So either there was some sort of unfortunate BLOOD WORK-related crossed-wire-in-my-mind thing, or I'm a fucking idiot.

It's still not a great film, or even a good one, really, but it's nowhere near the travesty I remember it being. Hilary Swank is given a pretty thankless role and she does very little with it, but Pacino has some nice moments here that, again, I didn't remember. He plays a nicely understated guilt through most of the film that is especially effective when you compare it against his more standard scream-loudly-and-wave-my-arms approach. The examination of a cop under investigation by internal affairs feels real and well-researched, as does the actual detective work in the film.

The real problem with the film is, sadly, Williams. Now, I love HOOK as much as the next man. I do not love THE FINAL CUT or ONE HOUR PHOTO. He's just not well-suited to playing creepy. There's too much cultural baggage for him to shake. He's the goddamn Genie, for Christ's sake. But even if we purposely deprived a child of such classics as ALADDIN, JUMANJI, and MRS. DOUBTFIRE in some sort of cruel social experiment, that poor, damaged child still wouldn't believe Robin Williams as a credible foil to Pacino. From the very first moment Williams comes on screen, we know what the end game will be. Williams might weaken Pacino, chip away at him, but in the end, there is no doubt about who the winner will be. The film steadily trails off from the point his character is introduced, which is unfortunate, as his relationship to Pacino is really the film's raison d'être.

Has anyone seen the Swedish original? Is it worth checking out? If it is, there might be a better option than just trying to forget this version - or imagine a version where Jeff Daniels plays the Williams role.

BABIES is the Justin Bieber of movies

Do you remember where you were when you first heard of Justin Bieber?

My memory is particularly vivid, because it's also when I realized the world was not the one I used to know. When Usher came in to that eleven year-old's party and gave him props, I realized a torch was perhaps literally (given Usher's history of STDs) being passed, and that I belonged to those who no longer carried the torch (or gonorrhea).

So away with our destroyers (of sexual virtue)! They have no place within our tween world. But this new world carries with it disturbing questions and moral quagmires of its own. Like is Justin Bieber actually a robot? And what is he hiding behind those bangs?

All of this brings me to BABIES, which is terrifyingly hypnotic in much the same way Bieber is. You're never really sure if you're watching because you're fascinated by what's happening, or wondering why you're fascinated by what's happening.

The tagline for the film is "Everybody loves babies", which has to stand as one of the laziest advertising attempts I've ever seen. I was worried this was going to be the film equivalent of an eating-Rolo-ice-cream-out-of-the-tub YouTube cute binge, complete with kittens, orphans, and ridiculously adorable renditions of "Tomorrow".

And while BABIES doesn't have any hits from the Annie soundtrack, it does coast an awful lot on the cuteness of babies doing baby stuff. But there's also some really interesting stuff about competition, survival, and the essence of humanity in there - but I might be reading too much into it. The film is like a fascinating semiotic exercise, where you're constantly debating the meaning of every little gesture and look.

Which brings me back to Bieber. I'm never really sure if I'm looking at a savvy scruple-less media manipulator or an innocent dreamboat, but I do know I'm watching.

Fascinated.

MYSTERY TEAM is the future of cinema (kinda)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, INCEPTION is mind-blowing. AVATAR will keep us fucking around with 3D for the next decade or so. But when we're talking about the future of cinema, any serious discussion will have to include MYSTERY TEAM.

The brainchild of Derrick Comedy, an online comedy troupe who have brought us such viral classics as Girls Are Not To Be Trusted, Bro Rape, and this hilariously crass send-up of the National Spelling Bee, MYSTERY TEAM is a charming film with no budget and a ton of very, very funny ideas. The basic hook is a team of kid detectives have grown up without ever leaving the whole kid detective-thing behind. They don't swear. They charge a dime for a case. But when a murder case falls in their lap, the kids have to solve the case, get the girl, and maybe grow up a little bit.

If I were Peter Travers, I would paraphrase the EPK synopsis like I just did, and then say things like "MYSTERY TEAM is fall-down funny!" and "deliciously warped!", but I'm not trying to get on a box, so fuck that guy.

But MYSTERY TEAM is truly fall-down funny, and marks the emergence of a true talent with Donald Glover. This kid is blowing up - he's written, starred in, or scored three of the funniest network shows in recent memory, he's self-producing and releasing killer hip-hop albums ("I can Say Anything, call me John Cusack / keep my dick wetter than the bottom of a cruise ship"), and he recently launched a Spider-Man petition that cleverly got people talking about the role of race in comic books - not bad for a guy who probably has to put up with every third person he meets asking him for PREDATOR 2 merch.

But here, Glover is just part of a devastating ensemble that completely gets the material (probably because most of them helped write it). The film is playing with the conventions of all those Encyclopedia Brown-Hardy Boys-Nancy Drew novels of our childhood, and combining them with coke dealers, strip clubs, and horrifying diarrhea jokes. The result is something that's, well, deliciously warped, that feels almost infinitely re-watchable.

The real drawbacks of the film are with it's obvious budget (or lack thereof), which occasionally gives the film a cheap feel. Which brings me back to that whole "future of cinema" thing. In a world where the Old Spice guy is getting an NBC show and The Whitest Kids U Know are on basic cable, we've all become casting directors, with the web as our version of headshots, and YouTube as our generation's casting couch.

And we've done a hell of a job with MYSTERY TEAM. Now we just need to get them some money.

CRANK had too much to drank

Five minutes into CRANK, it was so blatantly clear that I was dealing with a wannabe DOMINO clone that I began to wonder how I could write this review. I mean, how could I express how bored I was with most of CRANK, but defend DOMINO, my favourite film of the last decade? Everything was so similar, from the over-saturated visual style to the zany side characters to the attempt to make the story seem like a half-remembered nightmare through a cracked mirror of regret, that I felt helpless to like one and not the other.

To conquer these problems, I came up with the following proof:

Using the universally-accepted equation that:

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE > everything

we might then surmise that:

dudes (or mutated amphibians) with handheld weapons > other dudes/mutated amphibians/Power Rangers

but a more accurate surmise would be that:

nunchucks > everything.

Observation: The film DOMINO has several scenes with nunchucks.

Observation Two: The film CRANK has zero scenes with nunchucks.

Conclusion: I drew it:

A Deliriously Infatuated Love Letter to THE MUMMY (1999)

Dearest THE MUMMY (1999):

Oh, how I missed you. It had been too long since I saw your Egyptologist-melting, fortune-hunter-dissolving, scarab-beetle-eating beauty.

I still remember our first time - the Erin Mills Town Centre Cineplex, long since closed down and turned into an Old Navy, on Canada Day, 1999. I'll be honest, I only remember it was July 1 because we had to go to a family event afterward, but it was still special because of you. I don't remember what we ate that day, or what set of directions my family argued about to make conversation (although it probably went something like this: "Who takes the 407? What are you, some sort of a Spanish consortium economic booster?"). No, my memories of that day are all about you - of Brendan Fraser shooting two pistols and makin' with the quips, of Rachel Weisz's stunning eyes and deadpan comic timing, of your stunning effects. It was new, it was beautiful, and it was scary.

Yeah, I'll admit it, you scared me. But I think what we shared that day would make anyone a little scared. You got inside me, THE MUMMY (1999). You changed me. I know this might be a little surprising to you. I know I tried to play it cool, treat you like I treated any other film. Or did you see right through my charade? Did you see how I got a little obsessive, daydreaming about you that whole summer, playing your video game and listening to your score?

Now, I probably should have realized that summer lovin' couldn't last. But I didn't see GREASE for another two years. We were both young, THE MUMMY (1999). Let's not pretend we were smarter than we were. Admittedly, our relationship soured at times. There was that sequel that barely deserved your name, and that time the man who played your titular character turned in the laziest guest spot in ALIAS' notorious history of lazy guest spots. Then there was that sorta-prequel with that guy from THE TOOTH FAIRY and then, of course, the infamous VAN HELSING "break". Oded Fehr did RESIDENT EVIL 2. And then there was that final sequel. I think I lost you, THE MUMMY (1999). I think I lost what I loved about you.

I know it's a cliché, THE MUMMY (1999), but I think those tough times might have just made us stronger. Because when I saw you the other day, I saw you. I mean, really saw you. I saw the obvious green screen work, and the horrifying beginnings of CGI animation. I saw the questionable ethnic stereotypes and the way you basically steal things from much better movies.

And I don't care.

Those aren't ugly green fuzzy halos around your actors' heads: they're love-green-screen-lines. You're not a pale imitation of others: you're full of homages to other classic beauties, and you make it your own. And if someone said that your effects weren't hot, I'd say they're cute.

I hope you can forgive me for ignoring you on my shelf for so long, THE MUMMY (1999). I know I've forgiven you for the six hours of MUMMY-related films I've been forced to sit through, and the considerably longer amount of time it's taken to remove any tainted memories those films have left in my mind about your purity.

So, since no love letter is complete without some bad poetry, I'd like to present you with some lines from one of our great poets, who can truly express my feelings. Hear Cassie's words, THE MUMMY (1999), and try to ignore the strip-club favourite undertones:

It's me and you, now

I've been waiting

Think I wanna make that move, now

Baby, tell me if you like it.

It's me and you, now

I've been waiting.

Death Is Only The Beginning,

Brandon

THE KING OF KONG may, one day, make a great documentary

What makes a great documentary? Is it the question of access, of gaining interviews with all the principal players? Is it how close the documentarian can get to their subjects, a question of intimacy? Or one of scope, examining all the facets of a subject? I think THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS shows that what separates the good from the great is the ending.

Like Brian Cox (as Robert McKee in the brilliant ADAPTATION) would say, "Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end." The problem with THE KING OF KONG is that the film doesn't have an ending. I mean, it ends, but it doesn't conclude. The story is still ongoing, still in need of documentation, and by no means does the story feel like it's over.

It's pretty straight-up quest movie, as the innocent everyman Steve Wiebe fights to achieve supremacy in the world of Donkey Kong and beat the smug and conceited world champion, Billy Mitchell. There's several twists and turns presented in the film, as Wiebe comes at the throne several times and thinks he wins, only to not be recognized, or be disqualified, or have Mitchell snatch the title right back.

The first half of the film is great, character-driven stuff, as we're presented with the cause of the conflict and the backstory of the main two guys, but as the film goes on, it becomes more obsessive about documenting the events and the scores. And while that may be interesting in that it seems to mirror Wiebe's character as his life becomes increasingly about beating Mitchell and nothing else, I definitely felt like the movie was losing focus.

My favourite documentary is HOOP DREAMS, a film that took over a decade to film and edit. It must have been infinitely infuriating for the filmmakers to film for years, never knowing when the film would be fit to be finished. They managed to find an ending to that film that was narratively satisfying, while still allowing for the main characters' stories to progress. I hope this movie is re-edited in ten years, allowing for a clearer perspective of what was truly important to the story of these two men.

Until then, THE KING OF KONG will merely be a good doc, not a great one.

61* and the Battered Image of Billy Crystal

Y'know, I try not to hate on people. I generally try to give people like 50 Cent and Kristen Stewart the benefit of the doubt. But one could be forgiven for thinking that Billy Crystal is the cinematic Antichrist.

ANALYZE THAT

THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE

FATHER'S DAY

These films stand like demonic, blood-crying statues over the graveyard of a once-promising career. I would defy you to sit through any of those trailers, let alone mount some kind of defence for the hours of work some innocent carpenter put into making sets, or a craft services person put into slicing bagels, to help create these monstrosities. But then again, the man brought us some of the finest movie magic of the 1980s, from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY to THE PRINCESS BRIDE to his cameo in THIS IS SPINAL TAP (all Rob Reiner films, interestingly enough).

Maybe Reiner's got nothing to do with it, or maybe he just had a bad decade, because his work in 2001's 61* is fantastic. Crystal directs this period piece about a hallowed era in American sports history, the fall of Babe Ruth's hallowed single-season home run record to fellow Yankee Roger Maris. Thomas "I Just Want My Kids Back" Jane plays Mickey Mantle, the great American hero, and Barry Pepper plays the cold, professional Maris, whose chase of Ruth's record makes him as notorious as it does famous.

When a sport like baseball is at its best, it reveals something about the human spirit, about our tenacity, our refusal to accept defeat. As part of the game, athletes become symbols rather than individuals, and while there is a certain nobility to this mythmaking, it can also be a ruthless and uncaring process.

Crystal, the director, completely understands this, even if his own career path as an actor seems to prove the opposite. The film is fascinated by the construction of a media image, about what the public wants to see and how the public is fed what it craves (side note: no one "craved" to see ANALYZE THAT, Billy). It's a refreshing perspective for a baseball movie, a genre that often gets caught up in romanticizing the fairest game and finding poetry in its heroes.

Not to say that I dislike those kinds of films. In fact, every year around the start of baseball season, I brush off my copies of ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, LITTLE BIG LEAGUE, and THE SANDLOT and sit in child-like joy at the purity of America's pastime. But this is a baseball movie more in the tradition of EIGHT MEN OUT or COBB, the ones that show us the dark edges of baseball.

Honestly, 61* is probably only of interest to baseball enthusiasts anyway, so if you came this far for some sort of film criticism, or to watch me take another shot at Billy Crystal, you could probably just skip down to the last line of the review. But if you're still with me here, let's get into some baseball talk.

The film is framed around Mark McGwire's race to beat Maris' record, essentially told in flashback, but this choice unintentionally adds a really interesting layer to the film's questions about why there was such a backlash against Maris attempting to break Ruth's record. With McGwire's name tarnished in the hearts of millions of fans since his steroids non-admission admission, there's an implicit question being asked about how pure any of our heroes are. Ruth was certainly no saint himself, adopting a child that he had fathered with another woman with his wife, and there are widespread accusations that amphetamines were a common part of the game back in his day. History has continued to chip away at the images of the heroes of the game, and will continue to do so.

On that note, I just remembered that Billy Crystal is in THE TOOTH FAIRY. 'Nuff said.

GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE redeems the phrase from Bill Paxton's terrible performance in ALIENS

I'm currently listening to Xzibit's Man vs. Machine album (which features two songs from the DOMINO soundtrack!), so it seems appropriate to talk about a great little doc I saw a few days ago entitled GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE.

And while Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is no Xzibit, he's still a compelling figure who makes for a great documentary.

The film traces Kasparov's rise from Azerbaijani boy genius to "the greatest player in the history of chess", but it's primarily interested in Kasparov's highly publicized loss to Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that defeated him in 1997. I remember hearing something about it when I was in elementary school, and about how this was basically the beginning of Skynet, but I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I sucked at chess. The school computers beat me all the time, and I had learned long ago that they were much smarter than me. I had long ago accepted that it was a matter of time before a muscle-coated exoskeleton knocked on my door, asked "Brandon Forsyth?", and blew me away with a double-barreled shotgun. Some Russian guy losing a chess game to a computer didn't seem to be a big deal.

Popping the film in, I was worried that this was going to be a dry, "Then Deep Blue moved a rook to C6" recreation of the match, but I needn't have worried. This is a film rooted in conspiracy film conventions, as Kasparov attempts to persuade us that IBM rigged the match and used human tampering to prevent it from falling into predictable patterns. There's a great whispered voice-over that opens the film talking about how IBM's stock rose rapidly after their defeat of Kasparov, and this perfectly sets up the tone of the film. There's a lot of camera flashes, tilted angles, and brooding close-ups of darting eyes, and the film succeeds at making these matches an exhilarating showdown of maneuvers on and off the board, with plenty of behind-the-scenes intrigue.

Occasionally the film reaches a little too far, especially in finding ways to dramatize the events, with a lot of repeated footage and the same set of stylized tricks. There's only so many times that a lingering shot on Deep Blue's unfeeling eye cut against Kasparov's eyes staring back can express something about the match. There's also an ill-advised attempt to tie in footage of The Turk, a chess-playing automaton from the 1800s that was revealed as a human-operated hoax.

There's not a lot of actual evidence presented to support Kasparov's claims, other than the fact that he crushed Deep Blue in the first match before drawing or losing the next five, but the film actually becomes more about paranoia and ego than about if the match was rigged. It's clear to see that Kasparov truly cannot believe that the computer beat him, and it's fascinating watching such a methodical mind unravel on camera. He simply cannot accept even the possibility that the computer beat him, and his search for answers provides a fascinating commentary on the man vs. machine conflict that drives the film. The frailty of the human mind and our self-limitations are what the film is actually concerned with. It's stressed several times that Kasparov defeated himself, with people describing the final match as "a mental breakdown" and "implosion".

GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE is a fascinating document about how even the smartest human mind is limited by its humanity. Oh, and Kasparov should totally listen to the Dr. Dre song "What's the Difference" featuring Xzibit. I think he'd like it.

AIR FORCE ONE is the reason I love CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

I once wrote that CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was "like a super-comfortable blanket filled with secret wars, double-crossing drug lords, and Willem Dafoe." I stand by that. It's one of my favourite films, a unique cocktail of political dirty tricks, paramilitary operations, and the afore-mentioned Dafoe (often bedecked in a variety of amusing Panama hats and being creepy), which appeals directly to my interests. But my love for this hallowed piece of blockbuster cinema has a disturbing backstory: at first, I never really understood it.

Consider the following exchange of dialogue from the film:

RITTER: You are *such* a Boy Scout! You see everything in black-and-white.

JACK: No! No! No! Not black-and-white, Ritter! Right and wrong!

For years I never understood this line. I mean, did Jack not understand that black and white represented right and wrong? I was 13 the first time I saw it, and it seemed pretty clear to me. I could tell cool shit was going on here, but this line always puzzled me. And, as has so frequently happened, a late night TBS viewing of AIR FORCE ONE came to my rescue.

You see, before AIR FORCE ONE came into my life and exposed me to the wonders of Gary Oldman attempting to play a Chechnyan, I had always thought of Harrison Ford as the Scoundrel - Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Even that guy from American Graffiti was kind of a charming jerk. But when I saw AIR FORCE ONE, that all changed.

It had honestly never occurred to me that Harrison Ford might be able to play a square-jawed moral simpleton until this moment. Then it all became clear to me: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was actually about obfuscation.

Consider this line, when Dafoe learns of the codename for the mission:

CLARK: "Reciprocity." That's a clever name for it. Revenge is a very, very, very dangerous motivation.

Both this line and the one that so confused me are actually about doublespeak - and politics. About using a euphemism instead of a truth. About saying one thing and meaning another. About saying nothing. When Ritter talks about "black and white", he doesn't actually mean anything - the words have no real meaning to him. And Harrison Ford is reminding him what they're actually talking about.

I'll be honest, I'm not really sure how I missed this. I mean, the poster has Ford literally draped in an American flag next to the words, "Truth Needs A Soldier". Sure, it's corny, it's naïve, it's on the nose, but really, it's kind of beautiful.

Plus, it ends with a character screaming at the President while calling him "sir". Deal with it, America. You're beautiful and a little stupid.