Dwarves, soliders, and Muhammed Ali

This past summer was classified as a lackluster movie season with only a handful of memorable films. But with few exceptions, this winter's selection may be just what Hollywood needs to salvage the film industry. Here, in the first of a two-part series, the Daily takes a look at the best and the worst movies that opened over winter break.

<I>Behind Enemy Lines, 1 1/2 stars out of five

Behind Enemy Lines is a profoundly goofy military movie. It is to soldiers what Driven was to racecar drivers, or what Vertical Limit was to actual climbers. Over-the-top dialogue, completely unbelievable events, forced action, and overly "intense" cinematography make for a giant pile of cinematic crap. It'd make a great drinking game - players could easily get happy taking a sip every time the film either gets overly patriotic or blows something up. Damned if I don't have some kind of sick affection for it.

Loosely based on the real events of Lt. Scott O'Grady (in the same way that O Brother Where Art Thou was "loosely" based on the Odyssey), it tells the story of Owen Wilson as a hotshot, snot-faced pilot and Gene Hackman as his admiral. The tone of the movie is set early on, as Pilot Snotnose whines, "I want to fight a real war! I've spent the last seven years serving my country!" Admiral Hackman growls, "You wouldn't know the first thing about serving your country! Dismissed!" And so on.

Soon afterward, Pilot Snotnose and his co-pilot Mr. Doomed get shot down in what is a good mix of models, computers, and live action. It proves to be the movie's high point. It's Christmas Day, and the aggressors are the evil Serbs. Here's a handy guide to the villains in this movie: anyone who is not American is evil (unless if they are wacky and quote hip-hop lyrics- more on this later.) Seems our flyboys strayed from the flight path and photographed some mass graves, and the evil Serbs had to take them down. The pilots try to call for help, but are soon intercepted and co-pilot Doomed is killed by the Blue Jumpsuit Guy. He appears from out of nowhere, carrying a sniper rifle and taking orders from the Evil Serb Commander. He knows everywhere that Owen Wilson will go, and can appear and disappear at whim. In fact, he can do anything he wants except hit Owen Wilson with a bullet. Meanwhile, Hackman tracks his every move, clashing with the wimpy NATO commander and suddenly caring that Pilot Snotnose is in danger.

Wilson can be a wonderful actor in the right parts: take his spaced-out cowboy in Armageddon or his stint as Ben Stiller's fashion sidekick in Zoolander. Hell, the man even pulled off a Jackie Chan movie successfully. But when he's out of his element, he can sink faster then Kevin Costner in a certain movie with Elvis impersonators. He's majorly out of his element here. It doesn't help that the screenplay calls for him to do most of his running in broad daylight, making one dumb move after another. Or that it calls for him to meet the Wacky Hip-Hop Serbian guy. You see, he wears an Ice Cube T-shirt and loves Public Enemy! What a wild and crazy guy! He also gives him a bottle of Coke when he asks for water, and Wilson actually says, "This is really good." God, I love the movies!

Gene Hackman can bring credibility to any role, but he can also betray exactly what he thinks of the project he is working on. Here, he manages to wear the same expression, scene to scene: "My paycheck better not bounce, you bastards." While he was probably was able to buy a new house with what he got for this clunker, he probably has the same shudders at night that Halle Berry had after her peep show in Swordfish. You can almost see his eye twitch as he yells, "We've got a man out there! Behind Enemy Lines!"

I like a bit of patriotic silliness now and then. I maintain that Armageddon was a great trashy spectacle of America kicking some serious asteroid butt. But even a post-Sept. 11 environment shouldn't allow for crap like this, which takes something as serious as genocide and the military and reduces it to the level of a bad video game. Dumb action movies are fine, but don't expect me to take a mysterious assassin in a blue jumpsuit seriously.

<I>Ocean's Eleven, 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Many have written off Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven as an entertaining but otherwise "light" movie, unworthy of serious praise. Roger Ebert wrote, "I enjoyed it, but now it's time for Soderbergh to get back to work." To this, I say - Stuff it, Roger.

If, say, any of the popcorn movies this summer were as well made, well acted and as much fun as this new Ocean's Eleven, maybe you'd have a point. But no, this has been the year when the Epics sank (Planet of the Apes, Pearl Harbor), the Big Important Movies sucked (A.I., anyone?) and even the quality of the usual movie trash was poor (Tomb Raider, Behind Enemy Lines). This has been a year with a few very good movies and lots and lots of bad ones. This is a year that you treasure something as good as Ocean's Eleven.

Indeed, the spirit of the whole movie is "Why not?" Assemble the most talented group of actors since Magnolia, only without the seriousness? Why not? Bring in incredibly high tech gadgetry that makes James Bond look like a Radio Shack reject, only to have it all be throwaway gags? Why not? Bring in Julia Roberts for no reason other than she's Julia Roberts and should fall in love with George Clooney? Why not?

The movie is neatly divided: the first half sets up the heist; the second half is the heist. This is exactly the right mix - we learn enough of the plan to feel aware, but are still left with surprises by the time the movie ends. Hollywood's newly re-discovered star director Soderbergh, who knew it was time to take a break from seriousness after Traffic, assembles all of this with a steady hand. He pulls it off almost flawlessly. The buildup is great fun and the heist sequence is amazing. The only misstep is near the end, when things get a little over-sentimental. These guys are bank robbers, not heroes, and the movie forgets that.

But one false step can be forgiven for two hours of pure entertainment. Clooney has never been more self-assured, Pitt has never been more relaxed and Andy Garcia has never been a more perfect jerk. Everyone had fun making this movie; you can feel it in every scene. Ocean's Eleven is a giant party, and if a casino should happen to lose a few million dollars through its success, why not?

<I>Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, 5 stars

Whatever small complaints you may have- the film is a little long, slightly confusing at times- they have the same impact of chucking rocks into an ocean. Pick if you want, but it won't take away from the sheer enormity of the achievement that New Line and director Peter Jackson (The Frighteners) have accomplished. In the hands of another studio and director, costs might have been cut and egos might have gotten in the way - Spielberg would have ruined this movie. In fact, virtually every studio did pass on this project until New Line, which threw caution to the wind and spent $200 million to film all three parts of the trilogy back to back. It has paid off.

What vision and ambition it took to make this movie! There are shots of huge towers and caves, thousands of evil creatures working giant machines, a destroyed dwarven city... the visuals go on and on. They make every similar epic for the past three years look puny. The creatures are beyond amazing; the Harry Potter beasts look like Claymation comparatively. The battle scenes easily dwarf Episode I (or any other epic in a long time, for that matter) in terms of pacing and effect. The story delivers the promise of the book while moving along swiftly, captivating us for all three hours.

Most importantly, the actors disappear under their makeup and emerge as flesh and blood characters that are actually interesting. Compare this to Planet of the Apes, where good actors like Tim Roth and Helena Bonham Carter were reduced to walking make-up kits. Ian Mckellan embodies the wizard Gandulf so completely that he will be remembered for this role more than any other in his film career. (He also gets the best moment in the movie, screaming "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" at a demon.)

To call this the best movie of the year is inaccurate, and diminishes the impact the film will have. Memento or Moulin Rouge could be named better specific achievements in originality; Shrek or Monster's Inc. set new bars for what can be done with humor and storytelling in animation, and I had more fun with Snatch and Ocean's 11. However, with a few exceptions, those movies will be remembered specifically for 2001. Fellowship of the Ring will be remembered for the decade. This is a case where the achievement overshadows the individual take on the film. This is a Godfather, an Indiana Jones, a Back to the Future that is indicative of the era that spawned it. Partnered with The Two Towers and Return of the King (which I have no doubt will be of similar if not higher quality), Lord of the Rings will stand as an achievement that will spark endless dissection and imitation. (How long did it take after The Matrix for the first parody/rip-off of the 'bullet time' effect?) It will become a milestone for our popular film culture. I can't say everyone will love it or think it is great, but I will say they cannot easily forget it.

<I>How High, 3 out of 5 stars

How can you defend a movie like How High? How can something so aggressively stupid, so ineptly plotted and poorly made still be a good movie? Ask yourself this: would you actual want a straightforward, semi-realistic, and tasteful movie about two rappers smoking weed that makes them smart so they can go to Harvard University? Does anyone want to see this? All I ask of a movie like this is that it be a) funny and b) not too obvious. After a slow start, the movie keeps building in both the ridiculous and the hilarious.

The first five minutes of this movie are enough to make you turn and walk out. Method Man and Redman play two interchangeable losers/stoners who are about to make a last ditch effort to get into some kind of college. Between Redman's bossy mother and Method Man's even-bigger-loser friend, the movie is just as awful as it looks in the posters. Soon, however, one of their friends somehow becomes completely engulfed in flames, falls out of a window screaming, and gets hit by a bus. Method Man, so distraught over his friend's death, uses the ashes as fertilizer and... anyway, the point is, the friend comes back as a ghost and gives Method Man and Red Man the answers to the test and they ace it, but they can only see him when they're smoking him and... oh, never mind. At the 15-minute mark they're already at Harvard (which looks nothing like Harvard whatsoever, but who cares).

Who cares, indeed? Character, plot, editing - all of these are thrown aside in the name of the jokes. And the jokes are funny, some of them surpassing Animal House in terms of randomness and raunchiness. You don't see a lot of it coming: you expect the crew team captain to be a jerk and be snobby, but you don't expect the coach to say to our heroes, "I've hated this kid for years. Keep cutting him down and you'll make the team." You expect the guys to have the usual pot-smoking hallucinations, but not for other people to see them as well. (When Redman's mother appears to berate him, the crew team captain screams, "Who is that huge bitch in the sky!?") And when they lose their ghost-summoning stash, we get the predictable montage of lets-study-and-ace-this-on-our-own! But they fail anyway. And that's before the random pimps show up and start slapping the bejezus out of everyone in sight.

Look, was it trash? Yes. Was it stupid and tasteless? Yes. Was it funny? Oh, mercy, yes.

Ali, 2 out of 5 stars

Ali is an enigmatic failure. The film has a solid central performance and great actors filling in all the side roles. It had the budget, the backing and a bad-ass subject to study. And yet, the question keeps coming in your head: Why?

Why are important details left out? Why are we left confused and underwhelmed after so many scenes? Why does the film assume we already know who every character is? Events unfold with little impact as we are told little and shown less, and yet the film runs two and a half hours (and feels longer).

In the trailer, there was a scene where Jamie Foxx's character briefly introduced himself to Ali. That scene has been cut in half, and there is no further explanation of his character. He's lucky - most of the characters are all introduced in throwaway moments or not at all. It takes three or four scenes before we even catch their names. Jeffery Wright, Ron Silver, Joe Morton, Mario Van Peebles, and Jada Pinkett Smith are left stranded, trying to stay afloat even though we're not sure why they hang around. Only Jon Voight triumphs as Howard Cosell, managing to carve an impression through his accent and face makeup. But if the film is taken as the real story of Ali, then his closest friend and confidant was... Howard Cosell. None of his other friends get close.

Strangely enough, the problem isn't Smith - he does a good job of transforming himself into a credible boxer, and handles the newsreel footage re-creation scenes smoothly and passionately. He has the public Ali down. It is in the private scenes that the character completely falls apart, as he is sullen and unresponsive until he gets on camera. If this is true, why not draw attention to it and explore it? Was he really only alive when he is on camera? Or could they just not think of what he would say?

It seems as though director Michael Mann left out most of the back story in favor of artistic montages of Ali training and running. After two and a half hours, I have seen enough artistic montages to last a lifetime... and yet I know nothing more about the man himself. You learn he fought some people, became the champ, fought the courts briefly, had women problems and then went to Africa. And he was quite the card at press conferences. Then a title card comes up, saying he got divorced two more times. The movie ends.

If you've ever seen footage of the actual man (or better yet, the documentary When We Were Kings) you can see the impact Ali had as a public figure and icon. He would not compromise and would not back down to anybody. The movie shows no real insight into this public figure. It's not that the movie doesn't have the answers, it's that it doesn't even ask the questions.