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MILK [R]
review by Roger Brigham

Hope may be defined as the realization that we cannot change the way people are…but we can always work to change the way they will be. That was the essential political message and legacy of Harvey Milk’s life, and it is captured with a sublime performance by Sean Penn in Milk, director Gus Van Sant’s biopic of the former San Francisco city supervisor who changed the American political landscape.

“Milk” world premiered at the Castro Street Theatre in San Francisco - Milk’s old neighborhood. The film’s archival footage, location shots from a retro re-made Castro Street, and tight adherence to the facts result in a portrayal that accurately captures not just the very different social climate of 1970s San Francisco and the gay-ghetto Castro district, but as well as possible the personal and political idiosyncrasies that made Milk Milk.

The film begins where the story ends, with flashback news footage of the night Milk and Mayor George Moscone (played by Victor Garber) were gunned down in City Hall by disgruntled former fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin) juxtaposed with Milk recording his thoughts about his move to San Francisco from New York and what he hoped to achieve - thoughts to be shared only in the event that he was assassinated.

Milk’s initial futile forays into politics with then-boyfriend Scott Smith (James Franco) begin to pull together a solid activist staff, including the likes of Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch) and Michael Wong (Kelvin Yu) that yields results when the city begins electing supervisors by district rather than citywide, ushering a wave of new diverse faces, including White’s and Milk’s. As a wave of homophobic political setbacks sweep across the country on the skirts of Anita Bryant, Milk is able to get the city council to pass legislation protecting gay jobs, and spearheads through a series of debates with extremist John Briggs (Denis O’Hare) a successful rejection of a statewide proposition that would have prevented teachers in California ever from saying anything but evil about homosexuality. But White, an emblem of every cultural and religious value that felt threatened by increased acceptance of gays and lesbians and financially frustrated after Moscone refuses to re-appoint him after he ill-advisedly resigned, stalks each man down in City Hall during office hours and kills them.

It may be hard for younger viewers who visit San Francisco now to understand the depths of the darkness against which Milk was rebelling. Homosexuality was not merely the love that dared not speak its name - it also dared not show its face. Milk gave that love a face, a big homely lovable face, and showed it in political contexts where it had never been shown before. It was possible - likely, even - to disagree with Milk, but it was impossible to ignore him.

Rob Epstein’s masterful 1984 documentary “The Times Of Harvey Milk” does a far better job of sketching out the character of Milk and showing the step by step process by which he rose to power, was gunned down, and the immediate aftermath of injustice and anger that followed. The success of Van Sant’s “Milk” is more in the capturing the social sense of those dark and daring times.

Van Sant and Penn do not perform a whitewash on the sexual mores rampant on Castro Street at that time. Sex in “Milk” does not have the raw, explosive confrontational style of “Brokeback Mountain,” but the ubiquitous flirting, cruising and just plain going down on each other are shown in the context of the times: the acts of frustrated people acting out against repression, hatred and social damnation. Having no hope of getting what they wanted, people got what they could get. Milk gave them hope.

Oddly left out is any reference - even in passing - to the Jonestown massacre, the horror of which still shrouded San Francisco during those final weeks. Also left out is any mention of Milk’s notable work to improve city transit.

What is left in, thankfully, are Milk’s successful community support of the Teamsters in their dispute with Coors, which showed Milk’s eagerness to work with other segments of society, and his drive to rid city sidewalks of dog poop. The man most feared at the time for stirring up crap was also the most successful at getting rid of it.

Also what is captured is the degree to which Milk had to fight the “progressive liberals” of the time. Gay rights had been the right that was left off the Civil Rights bandwagon, and the wagon masters were none too keen to let anyone else back on board. Milk learns the importance of giving voters hope from Art Agnos during their battle for the state Assembly, and clashes over the cautious political tactics of Advocate editor and publisher David Goodstein.

Danny Elfman’s musical score is haunting, perfectly framing Milk’s private moments. Wonderful, too, are the returning musical insertions of Puccini’s “Tosca” - a bittersweet opera about the personal sacrifice of love in the fight for political justice. Milk loved opera and he knew all about sacrifice, justice, and the power of both.

Only those who knew Milk personally will be able to judge how accurately Penn captures the private persona. We see him as a man with appetites and a love of life, not seeking death as a martyr but unwilling to shy away from a resolute course merely out of fear. There is self-deprecation when he mumbles quips to friends, and a quiet, bemused mockery when he wittily barbs a political adversary. Memory clouds over time, but this performance makes us remember why Milk was so captivating.

Sacrifice and hope. “Milk” ends as it began, with the ending of an era and the birth of a new age.•••

Roger Brigham is the editor of EDGE San Francisco.

YES MAN [PG-13]
review by Padraic Maroney

Jim Carrey had instant stardom once he leapt onto the big screen with “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” His catered to the same slapstick-happy audience with another couple of films before trying to go the Tom Hanks route and become bankable and respected in Hollywood. En route, he began to lose his way.

Over the last decade, Carrey went from a guaranteed box office king to a spotty record of hit and miss comedic and dramatic roles. With the exception of “The Truman Show,” the actor has never really gotten his bearings on dramatic films. His comedic roles went from classic films to middling. Lloyd Christmas from “Dumb & Dumber” became Count Olaf in the “Lemony Snicket” film. “Ace Ventura” morphed into the remake of “Fun With Dick And Jane.” Now, though, we can all take heart in knowing that Carrey may have found his way back with Yes Man, which probably not coincidentally resembles at least a little one of his signature films, “Liar Liar.”

Perhaps it’s because Carrey has been going through the same journey as his “Yes Man” character that the actor can fully commit to the role. Since his divorce, Carl (Carrey) has become cynical, sarcastic and unwilling to live his life. He is going nowhere fast — that is until he finds out the power of saying “yes.” Accustomed to always denying people, and even his friends, Carl takes the advice to go to a seminar that teaches you the way of saying yes. By saying yes good things will happen for in your life, says Guru Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp). The more he says yes, the happier and more jovial Carl becomes.

Based on the memoir by Danny Wallace, who took on the challenge of saying yes for a year after an encounter with a stranger, the film takes the basic premise and tweaks the idea. The plot is flawed the most in that basic premise. Carl does just answers everything with a blanket yes without hesitation. Human nature would keep us from always saying it, though the film does a good job of trying to cover up this fact, as well as act as negative reinforcement, by having bad things happen whenever he says no.

With his merry band of friends, Carl’s problem is made worse. They try to break him by making him agree to a compounding list of requests. A lesser man would have cracked, but one of the problems the film has is that Carl doesn’t even blink before agreeing to their demands — a list that includes planning a fiancée’s wedding shower, doing laundry, and even going to regularly scheduled themed costume parties. Seeing such acts done so easily causes one to question whether he should see a therapist rather than just say yes to everything.

“Yes Man” has moments of laugh-out-loud comedic bits reminiscent of classic Jim Carrey movies that we haven’t seen him do right onscreen for sometime. Rather than resorting back to his schoolboy antics (which involved mocking the handicapped with the Wayanses and talking through his butt), the rubberfaced actor has finally found a mature role that works for his skill set. Playing closer to “Liar Liar” than “Dumb & Dumber,” Carrey has refound his comedic footing with this film.

Doe-eyed Zooey Deschanel is delightfully off-center as Allison, the film’s prerequisite love interest. Despite how young looking the 46-year-old Carrey looks, it is a little awkward seeing him paired with the 28-year-old actress. This may be another leap of faith, however, it’s easier to accept Carl’s rally against human nature to quit cold turkey on saying no than to understand how these two are getting together.

A lapse in logic like this is nothing new to director Peyton Reed, who has previously directed “The Break-Up” and turned awkward moments into uproarious laughter. With Deschanel anchoring the romantic aspects of the film, the casting may be awkward but the plot is not. Reed also helps by maneuvering the film around these somewhat problematic questions by keeping the pace of the film moving quickly. “Yes Man” is constantly moving forward so that we aren’t allowed much time to dwell on what just happened. Instead, we get to relish how good it is to see Carrey returning to his roots.•••

Padraic Maroney is a regular contributor to the national network EDGE.

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX [G]
review by Kilian Melloy

As far a animated pictures about brave little mice go, you can’t do better than The Tale Of Despereaux. But the film, being a curious cross-section of narrative complexity and top-flight CGI, may be a bit too complicated for little kids. Adults, on the other hand, are likely to enjoy the movie’s action-adventure heroics and dark palette of color and mood–not to mention its sense of humor.

“The Tale Of Despereaux,” based on a book by Kate DeCamillo, is a modern fairy tale set in an appropriately vague place (a kingdom where soup is the highest culinary art and everyone has British accents) and time (the Middle Ages, more or less; an age of three-masted sailing ships and talking rodents). The instructional subtext of the tale has to do with life’s difficult, complex emotional states: how grief can unhinge reasonable people, how forgiveness can heal wounds (Sigourney Weaver’s Narrator explains these things in a soothing, motherly voice).

The adventure begins not with Despereaux — who doesn’t enter the picture until things are well underway — but rather with Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), a sailor who happens to be a rat. Excited at finally landing in a kingdom famed for its gourmet soup (and on a high holiday where a new royal soup is about to be introduced, no less) Roscuro forgets himself, throws caution to the wind, and… well, let’s just say that he ends up in hot water, with all sorts of chaos breaking out around him. The uproar Roscuro causes leads to a tragedy so devastating that soup is banned from the very kingdom that once celebrated it as a national cuisine (even the King’s crown, you’ll notice, sports little spoons around the top).

On top of that, the King declares that all rats are to be banished from the kingdom, sending Roscuro (now stranded) scrambling for safety among unsavory company.

Sigourney Weaver’s Narrator asks us to consider what happens when a normal, and natural, part of life is decreed verboten by legal decree. Does she mean soup or rats? Perhaps both: in the case of soup, its banishment from the tables and cauldrons of the realm leads to drought and general depression (André the royal chef, voiced by Kevin Kline, is the most depressed of all).

In the case of rats, the result is a thriving, but terrifying, underground community called Rat World, where a villainous Mayor (Frank Langella) does his best to corrupt rat souls. The kind and upright Roscuro is the Mayor’s pet project; for the sake of pure evil, the Mayor seeks to twist Roscuro into as corrupt a being as the rest of the persecuted rat community, which lives in darkness and degradation: the ultimate Black Party.

Up in the light and air (both of which are heavy and dark with grief), Princess Pea (Emma Watson) mopes around the castle, a virtual prisoner to her father the King’s mourning, attended by her servant Miggery Sow (Tracy Ullman), whose jealousy and ambition are sparked after the princess dismisses her harshly.

Enter Despereaux (Matthew Broderick). He’s a young denizen of Mouse World, which is located in a disused store room next to the royal kitchen. Even though the royal chef has little to do these days and never ventures into their realm, the mice remain proudly fearful and timid… all except for Despereaux, that is, who is eager to see what’s out there in the world, rather than cowering from it.

This concerns Despereaux’s parents, of course, because what proper, upstanding young mouse doesn’t cower and scurry? No: their son, they come to realize, isn’t like the other mice: he’s brave. Every day brings fresh evidence that it’s not merely a phase and he’s not going to grow out of it. So they do what so much of the silent majority would: they turn their son in to the authorities, who, in turn, banish Despereaux to the underground darkness of the dungeon… and the tender mercies of Rat World.

Eventually, all the strands of the story do weave together, though it takes a while; I started to wonder if the children at the screening I attended were actually following all of this, or whether they’d eaten too much candy and lapsed into sugar comas. Looking around, I saw rapt little faces. The adults may have wondered whether all of this was actually leading to a point, but the kids had surrendered to the story, and they were right to do so: the animation is gorgeous, the voice acting is energetic and plummy without getting too hammy, and there’s enough going on with the characters to make their individual journeys engaging.

Courage, honesty, and faith in oneself: those are the usual cardinal virtues of a kid-flick, and of a fairy tale. In the case of young Despereaux, they are also the personal qualities that rescue a princess, restore a kingdom, and repair fractured families.•••

Kilian Melloy is the assistant arts editor of the national network EDGE.

DELGO [PG]
review by Robert Newton

Blurb scrawlers would be quick to come up with a quotable nugget to describe the animated fantasy Delgo, and might draft something like this: “A visually splendid alien ‘Romeo and Juliet’.” We would say the same thing, only if our review were to be cited in marketing materials, it would have to contain an ellipsis after the quote, those unimposing three dots denoting that some text has been excised. In this case, that text would be the words “with a story that is as uninventive as it is predictable.”

Delgo (voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr.) is a poor Lockni boy who falls for Kyla (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a Nohrin princess. The Lockni are a reptilian-looking race of peaceful people, but their oppression by the winged Nohrin is being seriously tested. With the threat of war looming, Delgo and Kyla must defuse the tensions while routing out the malignant element in their midst.

The film looks incredible. A barebones animation team has done a fantastic job in creating a world so rich in color and detail, from the age lines on the faces to the musculature of their flying steeds. While the movement of the characters feels just slightly mechanical, the eyes are alive, which is a tough task that even “The Polar Express” couldn’t accomplish. The world the filmmakers have created here is as complete as the one that Peter Jackson and company crafted for the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy.

It’s the script that drags “Delgo” down. We know from the beginning that Delgo and Kyla will end up together, and that the conniving Nohrin power couple General Raius (Malcolm McDowell) and shunned (and de-winged) Nohrin royal Sedessa (Anne Bancroft, in her final role) will be defeated and peace will return to the land. All the obstacles that are constructed to try our heroes are ultimately free of drama, as the sentiment throughout is too plucky and storybook. It’s a story that we would ultimately like to see end differently — or even fought a little harder to sell us on — but in the end, “Delgo” is really just a “gorgeous-looking…also-ran.”•••

Robert Newton is the editor of WorcesterMovies.com.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL [PG-13]
review by Padraic Maroney

As the holidays get closer, only two kinds of movies come out: those attempting to achieve Oscar gold (which for the most part aren’t seen by the general public until their New Year rollouts) and the brain candy that lets you forget about maxing out your credit cards at the mall. Which kind of movie is The Day The Earth Stood Still? Let’s just say that Meryl Streep isn’t going to lose any sleep.

Keanu Reeves has been mercilessly ridiculed for his robotic and monotonic acting style. Taking on the role of an alien that comes to save Earth and has no emotional capabilities would therefore seem like a role tailor-made for the enduring action star. In the remake of the 1952 sci-fi classic, Reeves uses the lack of emotions as a way to seem only more vacant than usual.

When surrounded by actors who are able to complement him, such as multi-film co-stars Charlize Theron and Sandra Bullock, Reeves shortcoming aren’t all that obvious. But here, he and Jennifer Connelly lack any kind of chemistry — not for a lack of trying on her part (and she actually has an Oscar). Connelly is actually the only actor who gives any kind of depth to the paper-thin characters. With accomplished actors like Kathy Bates, Kyle Chandler and Jon Hamm in tow, it is Connelly who is carrying the film and keeping us from tuning out completely.

In the remake, Atomic Anxiety is replaced with the ghoul that is Global Warming. Alien-in-human’s clothing Klaatu (Reeves) is sent to Earth to assess whether we are worth saving or if the universe is better off without humans. A slightly over-the-top Bates plays the Secretary of Defense who has obviously watched “Independence Day” one too many times and assumes Klaatu to be hostile. What they don’t realize is the robot named G.O.R.T. who came to Earth with him is the real foreigner to fear.

What serves this loose remake the most is that special effects have improved greatly in the last fifty years. Rather than getting a G.O.R.T. that looks like a robotic Power Ranger, the update has a robot that actually looks menacing. Not to mention when the G.O.R.T. executes his program, the CGI capabilities bring a hugely palpable sense of dread to the film.

In the last act when everything finally boils over is when the film finally gives audiences something on which to grab hold. Other than the general knowledge that the world is in danger, there isn’t really much suspense and Connelly’s Dr. Benson takes her time in actually finding out what are Klaatu’s intentions for the planet.

Before we get to the third act, a number of belief suspending moments occur. In some movies, it might be the kiss of death, but somehow, “The Day The Earth Stood Still” makes an illogical plot work because you get the feeling that the cast and director Scott Derrickson know they aren’t making anything for the ages. Perhaps it’s because there isn’t enough for us to heavily invest in, so we just go along for the ride hoping that things will make some kind of sense in the end; many of them don’t and you could have an hour long conversation discussing these issues if it were worth it.

Among the things that might make you question whether it’s worth it is the addition of the precocious kid this time around. Jacob, played by Jaden Smith (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith’s son) is supposed to be the cute, funny kid that eventually tugs on your heartstrings. Smith’s acting ability is not to be questioned (because the kid has skills), but the part just doesn’t work. The jokes fall flat, leaving him to come off as a bitter, angry child who feels abandoned by his dead father. When he finally has an epiphany and changes his ways, it happens so fast that we don’t have time to adjust. Instead it ends up just leaving a bad taste.

The movie limps into its third act before finally giving us the cool effects and sequences that we want to see. The sum of the movie’s parts are not enough to make you need to rush out to the theater. Since you’ll already be at the mall with throbbing feet, there worse things to see, but there are also much more entertaining ones as well. Is it worth making your mind standing still for two hours? The choice is yours.•••

Padraic Maroney is a regular contributor to the national network EDGE.

NOTHING LIKE THE HOLIDAYS [PG-13]
review by Kilian Melloy

The Rodriguez clan, a boisterous family of Puerto Rican-Americans, gather at the family home in Chicago for Christmas, setting in motion this sweet, though predictable, film by director Alfredo de Villa.

This is a genre picture through and through, and as such it obeys the rules of its formula. There’s a kindly, if physically imposing, patriarch, Edy Rodriguez (Alfred Molina); his wife of 36 years, Anna (Elizabeth Peña); and a brood of three kids, brothers Mauricio (John Leguizamo) and Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez), and their sister, middle child Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito).

The parents and children of the Rodriguez clan have secrets, significant others and traumas to sort through. Edy wants to put off such business until after the holidays, so as to be able to focus fully on enjoying the kids’ visits; what the script, by Alison Swan and Rick Najera points out is that messy private business is, sooner or later, family business, and there’s no time like a family gathering to air it out and neaten it up.

Edy, for instance, keeps taking mysterious phone calls that he won’t discuss with his wife; Anna leaps to the conclusion that he’s having an affair, and announces over an elaborate welcome-home dinner that she wants a divorce.

Jesse has just come home from Iraq. Eaten up with survivor’s guilt, he’s not sure how to reintegrate with his family and friends; seeing his ex, Marissa (Melonie Diaz), with her new beau Fernando (Ramses Jimenez) in tow only sharpens his sense of loss and confusion.

Mauricio and his Jewish wife, Sarah (Debra Messing), have bridged their own cultural divides, except for one: he wants kids, and she wants to hold off and concentrate on her career. For Sarah, a visit to her in-laws is a constant barrage of pressure to reproduce (”So when are you two gonna make some Sorta-Ricans?” is one typical query); to Anna, Sarah seems blunt and unfriendly — until sides start to take shape over the question of Anna’s wish for a divorce.

Roxanna, back from Los Angeles, where everyone assumes she’s got a lavish movie star life going on, has to ask similar family-versus-work questions, with handsome family friend Ozzy (Jay Hernandez) weighing heavily on the side of giving up her dreams of stardom.

The kids get drunk in the attic while griping about their parents; romantic rivals disrupt Christmas Eve with a brawl; a gnarled, indestructible tree symbolizes the heartiness, ugliness, and stability of family. It would all be so tedious if not for the film’s dialogue and characterizations, which are funny, witty, and win you over in spite of yourself.

Oh yes, and then there’s comic go-to Luis Guzmán as a maybe-gay sort-of uncle (or something); the film generally knows when to pull away from too much sweetness and happy sentiment, but when it doesn’t, Guzmán provides a light touch to keep things lively and energetic.

Freddy Rodriguez has finally got a decent movie role, one that offers him a chance to do some work of substance that isn’t Federico, his “Six Feet Under” character. He emotes pain, longing, and humor, and shares an electric chemistry with Melonie Diaz.

This might also be the film that rescues Leguizamo’s career: not counting the quickly-forgotten “Righteous Kill” and “Miracle at St. Anna,” when last seen on the big screen, Leguizamo was calmly cutting his wrists in the M. Night Shyamalan dud “The Happening” (and the audience felt like following suit). This movie will probably only have limited appeal, but its target audience is just the sort that can keep an actor going, much as a movie like this comes back into our consciousness year after year.•••

Kilian Melloy is the assistant arts editor for the national network EDGE.

CADILLAC RECORDS [R]
review by Robert Nesti

One of the pivotal songs in 2006’s “Dreamgirls” is “Cadillac Car,” a doo-woppish ode to the status of the luxury car to various cultures in 1950s America. There are plenty of Cadillacs in Cadillac Records, many used anachronistically as its story moves from the early 1940s the late 1960s in telling the story (as “Dreamgirls” did) of the rise of a record label for black artists and pop music. Certainly the cars perform the same function as they did in the song from the earlier film — sleek and elegant, ownership of the finned vehicles meant that you were indeed a star.

In the film, written and directed by Darnell Martin, Cadillacs and stardom are intrinsically linked in the career of Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), the great bluesman who established Chess Records with his raucous blues guitar. He was paid in Cadillacs by Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), the owner of the record company who got rich while Waters got famous. That is pretty much the story to this enormously enjoyable film, which lets plot and character development take a back seat to fine acting and copious musical interludes.

As it turns out, it isn’t a problem because there’s never a dull moment in Martin’s incident-filled scenario, which follows how Waters and Chess came together in postwar Chicago and formed an artistic collaboration that lasted two decades. In the film, Chess takes a chance on Waters, whose electrified blues was as close to rock and roll as music would get prior to Alan Freed; and the chance pays off: Waters churns out hit after hit and Chess pays him off with a string of Cadillac cars.

Waters also brings talented harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus Short) into the Chess family, as well as an electrified country singer named Chuck Berry (Mos Def), helping to establish a fresh, raw sound that would influence 1960s pop groups as the Beach Boys (who virtually stole one of Berry’s songs note-by-note) and The Rolling Stones (who make a cameo appearance in the film). Add to this roster such artists as Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) and, most tellingly, Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles) and there’s the making of a superb jam session of a movie.

And it is — the artful impersonations of these musical greats all but jump off the screen — Jeffrey Wright’s quiet, sensual take on Waters; Short’s hot-blooded Little Walter, Mos Def’s playful Chuck Berry and Knowles’s explosive Etta James. The story around them may seem old hat with a clichéd narration and sketchy characterizations, but it seems little more than an excuse to let these stars shine.

Wright conveys Waters’s transformation from naïve Mississippi sharecropper to sexy, urbanized pop star with considerable subtlety and force. He could easily be eclipsed by Short’s electrifying turn as the out-of-control Little Walter, but manages to bring a sense of gravity to the film that holds it together. Mos Def’s somewhat comic take on Chuck Berry may be another of the film’s numerous meanders, but it so much fun to watch that it hardly matters. There’s also an intriguing stand-off between Walker’s blues great Wolf and Waters when Wolf moves in on Waters’s girl during a recording session. Interestingly, it is Wolf who articulates that Leonard Chess may have exploited Waters over the years. “His job is to make money off you,” he tells Waters. “You’re from Mississippi. I thought you would have known that.”

Perhaps if Martin had more fully realized Leonard Chess (who is a composite of the real-life brothers Phil and Leonard Chess). She pretty much portrays him as a mensch, though one willing to indulge in payola to get his records on the radio; so when the question of his exploiting his charges finally comes to the film’s surface, it lacks much resonance. You like this guy, especially in the likeable person of Adrien Brody who’s laid-back charm makes a nice counterpoint to the more emotionally volatile performers.

The film is nearly two-thirds over when Knowles appears, but what an entrance — she’s set up to be Chess’s date for a night in a hotel room; that is until she starts to sing and a star is born. As the great blues singer Etta James, Knowles never stoops to mimicry, yet captures the fulsome rawness that the singer brought to her songs. Knowles offers an impeccable version of James’ biggest hit “At Last,” then tops herself with an amazingly felt “I’d Rather Go Blind,” a powerful blues that, oddly enough, serves the same function as “I Am Telling You…” does in “Dreamgirls”: pop star gets jilted by record label owner. Though her character isn’t as fully drawn as it might be (indeed, this film would have needed to be a mini-series to give its rich tapestry the depth it needs), she makes for a vivid presence. Anyone expecting the porcelain princess from “Dreamgirls” is in for a happy revelation: Beyoncé acts with the temperament of an operatic diva — volatile, passionate and wonderfully believable.

“Cadillac Records” has enough verve and power to fill in the gaps in its screenplay — it may tell a familiar story, but does so with such a high entertainment quotient that you’ll likely never mind.•••

Robert Nesti is the national arts editor for the national network EDGE.

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE [R]
review by Howie Green

Okay, so when you go to see a movie called Punisher: War Zone, about Marvel Comics’ vengeance-bent character The Punisher, you know you’re not exactly in for a feel-good date movie. Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) a.k.a. The Punisher is an all-out vigilante who, armed with an endless arsenal of guns and ammo, dishes up stacks of dead bodies and boatloads of violence, but, you know, it’s OK, because he’s one of the good guys. According to the Punisher’s back story, it’s OK that he kills or destroys everyone he doesn’t like because his wife and two small kids got killed by the mob after witnessing a mob hit and ever since then Mr. The Punisher has been on a rampage, a one-man army bent on personally killing every bad guy he can find.

This is the third movie featuring The Punisher, and unlike the previous two films that were comparatively light and airy, this one very closely follows the hellish look and feel and tone of the comic book. The film is dirty, grimy, dank, dark and filled with blood-soaked violence so extreme it make the old video game “Doom” look like a friendly game of Pong. The Punisher doesn’t just kill people — he blows their faces off, punches them right through their skulls and employs various other types of comic book violence in his never-ending search to kill all the bad guys. All the bad guys. Until they’re dead, dead, dead.

This installment is about The Punisher’s run-in with a gruesome villain called Jigsaw, né Billy Rissoti, until a Punisher-meted introduction to vat of broken, recycled glass made his face look like Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, only not as pretty. In the midst of his rampage to kill Rissoti and his gang, The Punisher kills an undercover Federal Agent and is racked with guilt, then taking it upon himself to watch over the agent’s wife and daughter because he knows the Jigsaw and his crazy brother will be coming after them to get revenge.

To put it mildly, the Terminator has nothing on The Punisher. Bullets fly, bodies explode, and blood flows, and of course, Mr. The Punisher saves the day and walks away into the night knowing that the dead agent’s wife and daughter are safe and the city can bury a couple hundred additional dead bad guys. Isn’t it romantic?

In the movie’s most surprising and revealing scene, The Punisher is in a church and confronted by an old friend from his long-gone seminary days. The priest warns The Punisher that his methods will not sit well with God, to which the Punisher replies, “Sometimes I’d like to get my hands on God!” This one scene goes a long way in letting us know that this guy is beholden unto no one, writing his own rules of behavior, the Golden Rule nowhere on the list.

With “Punisher: War Zone,” director Lexi Alexander (”Green Street Hooligans”) has fashioned an extreme, tough, dark movie that will no doubt please fans of The Punisher comic books, and given the questionable morality of everything he does, it makes one shudder at the thought of who might make up that peculiar demographic group (and what kind of access they have to heavy caliber weapons).•••

Howie Green is a regular contributor to the national network EDGE.