The Big Lebowski (1998)

To say that I'm a fan of the Coen Brothers is something of an understatement: they're among my favorite filmmakers, abundantly entertaining and deftly profuse. So to say that The Big Lebowski is my favorite Coen flick is probably also an understatement (though Barton Fink kind of muddles that statement).

There are two Jeffrey Lebowskis - The Dude (Jeff Bridges), amiable stoner hero extraordinaire prone to swilling White Russians, and The Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a prime mover in the L.A. region. When the two are confused by a pair of nitwit goons - and one micturates on The Dude's rug - looking for The Big Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) and the money she owes to one Jackie Treehorn, that's where the trouble begins. It only gets worse when The Dude tells bowling buddies Walter Sobchak (a perfectly over-the-top John Goodman), a Vietnam vet obsessed with his service and his religion ("Shomer Shabbos!"), and Donny (Steve Buscemi), who can't seem to get a word in edgewise, Walter convinces The Dude to petition The Big Lebowski for rug compensation. After all, "that rug really tied the room together."

That's all in the first ten or so minutes. The rest is a tangled web of mystery, blackmail, kidnapping, Creedence Clearwater Revival, pornography, deceit, and bowling. Eat your heart out, Raymond Chandler. Speaking of Chandler, this is the best adaptation of The Big Sleep since Bogart and Bacall bantered back in the Forties. It's also the most comprehensible, although I'll admit it took me a second viewing to fully understand just what had happened. This is a top-notch screenplay from the Coens, poetically profane and tantalizingly tangled.

Much as Sweeney Todd was for Tim Burton, this is the movie that the Coens have been aiming to make throughout their whole career. It's got all the Coen staples - both plot points and cast members - and it's their pinnacle film. Nothing before or since - not even No Country for Old Men, Oscar-winner though it may be - has matched The Big Lebowski.

The film takes place in a world populated by classic Coen characters, The Dude and Walter not least among them. There's John Turturro as pederast bowler Jesus Quintana, who talks a big game; Philip Seymour Hoffman as bootlicking sycophant butler Brandt; Julianne Moore as feminist artist Maude, who wants The Dude in more ways than one; Ben Gazzara as mysterious smut peddler Jackie Treehorn; Arthur Digby Sellers, a classic TV writer now confined to an iron lung; his son, a sloppy juvenile delinquent; and Sam Elliott as The Stranger, a narrator soothing enough to give Morgan Freeman a run for his money.

It's difficult to say much more about The Big Lebowski beyond "It must be seen." This is a wholly original movie that really escapes description. Relaxed and entertaining, The Big Lebowski is certainly my favorite Coen Bros. picture - and may even land a spot on my irregular-around-the-margins Best Movies of All Time list.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

I've been an unabashed fan of Edgar Wright since taking the advice of a dear friend and renting - later purchasing- his zombie (the Brits call it "the Zed word") spoof masterpiece Shaun of the Dead. So when Wright decided to go for the cop film's jugular, I was more than willing to go along for the ride.

And the team doesn't disappoint, although it's not as inspired a venture as Shaun was. Hot Fuzz is the story of Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a cop who's so good at his job that he's reassigned to a small hamlet for "making us all look bad." There he meets Constable Danny Butterman (Nick Frost, "Ed" from Shaun) and Danny's dad, Chief Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent, who's as creditable a casting choice as he always is). As a series of grisly murders seize the town, Angel begins to believe that these are not, as the rest of "the fuzz" believes, mere accidents (for instance, the florist may not have actually fallen throat-first on her enormous shears). He finds Simon Skinner (a delightfully suspicious Timothy Dalton), a local supermarket baron, to be Suspect Numero Uno.

Like Next, Hot Fuzz tries to be two things - simultaneously a cop film and a dissection of that genre. Unlike Next, Hot Fuzz succeeds in its endeavor to keep one foot in each sandbox, only it doesn't do it quite so well as its "Zed word" predecessor. Hot Fuzz, you see, certainly leans more heavily toward cop film than satirization. Though that's not to say the film suffers for it - Hot Fuzz is a great cop film; it's just not as funny as Shaun of the Dead. That's my lament. (Look for a parallel observation when I review the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.)

The cast is superb, from its aforementioned headliners to cinephile's-dream cameos from Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office UK), and even Cate Blanchett (apparently a big Shaun fan). As the exasperated Angel, Pegg does a firstrate job of bouncing between understandable frustration and guffaw-inducing cliche-bashing. Frost is more than comfortable in the shoes of dimwitted but lovable Danny; although at times he seems more like an overeager Ed than a totally new character, he's adorable - and funny - enough that it doesn't really matter.

Wright's direction is showy, calling more attention to itself than I remember in Shaun (maybe it's time to re-view and review?), though again - and here I invoke Jerry Seinfeld - not that there's anything wrong with that. Cop films are often showy spectacles, so why should this one be any different? The editing deftly works with Wright here, delivering an adrenaline shot of chuckles from a well-placed cut.

I've pointed out that the movie takes itself seriously - but fortunately not too seriously. That's why Hot Fuzz works at being of two minds and - oh, let's keep kicking Nic Cage - Next didn't.

Trailer Park: Disaster Movie (2008)

Continuing with the "God help us all" theme we've seen so far on this blog, I must warn you to stay away from what looks to be another steaming heap of cow... well, you fill in the blank with whatever scatological terminology best suits your moral vocabulary. Disaster Movie earns high marks for being the least funny trailer for a so-called comedy.

For starters, where are the jokes? Iron Man gets flattened by a cow. Um, what? Hulk's pants come off. Hancock hits a lamp post. Miley Cyrus is crushed by a meteor. Sarah Jessica Parker is played by a dude who gets beat up by Juno's baby in an even less funny version of a lame shtick from Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan (oh, trust me, I wouldn't dream of it). It's not that it's in poor taste. It's just not even remotely close to resembling humor. I got more laughs out of the trailer for The Day the Earth Stood Still. (Ha ha, I'm still giggly over that one.) The only time I sniggered was when the princess from Enchanted got hit by a car, probably because I've seen funnier movies where a character was involved in a motor-vehicular collision and was then reminded of them. I could direct this dreck, yet I won't - out of nothing less than pure altruism.

The movie stars Carmen Electra and Kim Kardashian. Do I need to keep going? It parodies High School Musical. It almost wasn't worth even linking to the trailer, although I suspect Disaster Movie is going to be added to several countries' "interrogation techniques" lists. Certainly falls under cruel and unusual punishment to me. Skip at all costs - this from a guy who regretfully sat through most of Scary Movie 4, despite every red flag to the contrary. (Hey, it was in HD, and I have a Y chromosome. You do the math.)

There's one good thing about the trailer. It warns you in advance that the movie you might be thinking about seeing is a complete federal DISASTER.

Disaster Movie limps into theaters on... oh, who cares. If you still want to see this movie, I won't help endorse it any further. Go do your own homework, Mr. and/or Mrs. Tasteless.

Next (2007)

It's almost blasphemous that this movie replaces The Dark Knight as the first article that my readers see when they log on, but here goes.

Next is the film that convinced me that Nicolas Cage has lost his edge. Granted, I had ample evidence - The Wicker Man and Ghost Rider among the most recent - but here I stand convinced that Cage is sadly incapable of making a good movie anymore.

On the surface, Next ought to be a reasonably intriguing movie. Cris "Frank Cadillac" Johnson (Cage) is a Vegas mentalist who actually possesses the ability to see two minutes into the future. Enter Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel), Cris's love interest and the woman who allows him to see farther (further, father?) into her future, and FBI Agent Ferris (the ever-intense - or is she just aggravated? - Julianne Moore), who's out to use Cris's ability to stop a terrorist cell from going nuclear.

If that plot thread seems out of left field, it is. Director Lee Tamahori (who brought us Die Another Day, arguably the least of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies) tries to make Next two very disparate things; at times a Nolan-esque examination of the fantastic in the real world and at other times a Jack Bauer-style counterterrorist actionfest, Next doesn't really succeed as either by fault of the other. If Tamahori had picked one or the other, the film might not have suffered as it does. Instead, the film waffles between genres without wholly committing.

I've beaten up on Cage for losing his edge, yet it's not as though the other actors aren't pulling their weight. Moore is serviceable as the stereotypical federal agent, making me a little nostalgic for her turn as Clarice Starling in Hannibal. And Biel seems determined to prove to me that she's an actress in her own right, because she seems to be doing more "acting" and less "eye-candying" the more I see her. And an almost-cameo from Peter Falk makes me lament that he's not given a bigger role as the comic relief sidekick. Still, Cage's performance led me to wonder (several times aloud), "Was that supposed to be funny?"

The villains are less than one-dimensional (they're evil, okay? that's all you need to know), but my most significant gripe comes with the ending of the fim. So if you wish to remain unspoiled, best to stop reading here and take away the nugget that I can't in good conscience recommend Next. Essentially, the ending of the film is the largest cop-out since Superman reversed the rotation of the earth back in 1978. Just as the film builds to some really cool stuff and instills a sense of hope that maybe - just maybe - Next is about to redeem itself, SURPRISE! None of it really happened! The last time I felt this cheated by a movie, I chucked a bowl of quinoa at Inland Empire. Thanks, David Lynch - and thanks to Lee Tamahori for completely invalidating ninety minutes of my life.