FILM REVIEW OF "THE BALLAD OF JACK & ROSE" (2005)

You either love “The Ballad of Jack & Rose”(**** out of ****) or you hate it. I loved it, but I hated watching it the first time because it is a genuine work of art with shocks and surprise that you cannot prepare yourself for and you shutter when you see what is going to happen. Furthermore, I can understand why some people would heap praise on this quirky bit of avant-garde filmmaking while others would condemn it to oblivion. The characters lack sympathy. They are all very selfish. The protagonist turns over a new leaf toward the end, but you don't see it coming. “The Ballad of Jack & Rose” is for people who take movies seriously and have no time to waste on Hollywood hokum. You don’t watch this film to relax and unwind. The story of the destruction of family is serious business despite some humorous interludes. Imagine watching a soap opera that could masquerade as social commentary about America after the 1960s. It is the kind of movie that would be terrific as the epilogue to class about the Hippie movement, Free Love, return to the wilderness, and it segues into the environmentalist movement. This movie is not suitable for children and if you cannot watch it in a single sitting, you are liable to feel like you are serving time just to get through its one hour and fifty-one minutes. The cast is extraordinary with Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis delivering a slam bang performance while Catherine Keener. Writer & director Rebecca Miller has helmed a film that is the American equivalent to an Ingmar Bergman film. Subtlety is the order of the day in “The Ballad of Jack & Rose.” The characters are neither stereotype nor are they unrealistic. There are times, perhaps best described as uncomfortable, when lenser Ellen Kuras makes her camera such an integral part of the setting with the characters that you feel like you’re eavesdropping on these two families and their troubles.

“The Ballad of Jack & Rose” takes place in the year 1986 on an island off the East Coast of the United States. Essentially, this is a soap opera about the theme of jealousy. Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis of “My Left Foot”) is a naturalized Scotsman who was once an engineer. Now, he is an ex-hippie turned environmentalist who sees no salvation in a future hard-wired by technology and growth has settled on this anonymous island where he lives now with his 16-year old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle of “Push”) since his wife went away. You can catch glimpses of the Slavins’ earlier lives during a scene about three-fourths of the way through it when Rose shows 8mm home movies about them. Jack’s wife left him and he has been raising Rose. Every quarter our protagonist leaves the island for the mainland and hooks up with Kathleen (Catherine Keener of “Living in Oblivion”) to satisfy his sexual needs. Recently, Jack has learned that he has heart disease and he isn’t getting around as agilely as he used to so he invites Kathleen and her two sons, Rodney (Ryan MacDonald of “Halloween: Resurrection”) and Thaddius (Paul Dano of “The Girl Next Door”) to join them.

Aside from an occasional guest, such as Gray (Jason Lee of “Mallrats”), nobody visits the Slavins. Gray shows up to bring Rose her flowers, otherwise, Jack and Rose are left alone entirely to themselves. This unconventional lifestyle has turned Rose into a near-sighted illusionist. She doesn’t want to share anybody with Jack. Indeed, when her father raises the subject of his imminent death, Rose notifies him that she plans to commit suicide after he dies because life won’t be worth living without him. Of course, Rose’s confession horrifies Jack, and he asks her to recant. The only other interlopers on the island are the construction workers who are building a series of apartments for a land developer, Marty Rance (Beau Bridges of “Norma Rose”) and Jack has a running feud with Marty. Marty knows that Jack is responsible for harassing his workers and creating acts of vandalism against his property, but he hasn’t called in the authorities. Jack holds the issue of wetlands over Marty’s head. You see, Marty is building his real estate on government protected marshlands and Jack threatens to expose him if he doesn’t cease and desist.

Meanwhile, matters reach a boil when Kathleen and her teenage sons arrive and set up house with them. Jack assures Rose that the presence of these outsiders is nothing more than an experiment. Reluctantly, Rose accepts them. Initially, nothing untoward occurs until Rose behaves like a voyeur and watches Jack and Kathleen hope in the sack for sex. As Jack and Kathleen have sex, Rose approaches Rodney with an invitation to have sex with her. Rose is a virgin. In fact, she has never been kissed and earlier she tried to persuade Gray to kiss her but he refused. Unfortunately, for Rose, she cannot seduce the paunchy Rodney who never removes his windbreaker jacket and has decided to become a hairstylist for women. Rodney agrees to cut her hair. Deliberately, she arms herself with a double-barrel shotgun and invades their privacy. When they pause to recognize her, she discharges the shotgun more out of shock than design. Indeed, Rose wants to share her father with nobody.

Later, Rose has a tryst with Thaddius who is a diametrical opposite of his younger brother Rodney. They have sex in her room in her bed. The next day Jack sees the sheets waving in the breeze with a blood stain on it and the words “This is an experiment” with an arrow pointing at the blood stain. Of course, Jack is furious. Rose is still trying to get back at her father for having sex with Kathleen. In fact, she has stolen one of Thaddeus’s cages to trap copperhead snakes and has put it under her bed. During her rendezvous with Thaddius, their bumping and grinding released the door to the cage and snake got out. Later, Kathleen freaks out when she sees the copperhead. Jack cannot find it. Jack has a showdown with Thaddius on the site of an old commune and they fight about his having sex with Rose. Jack knocks Thaddius out of a tree and breaks both legs and an arm. Kathleen takes her son back to the mainland, but before they leave, Thaddius tells her that Rose tried to kill her by releasing the snake in the house.

Writer & director Rebecca Miller doesn’t flinch at tackling uncomfortable themes. During one scene, Jack winds up being kissed by his daughter on the lips and he feels guilty. Eventually, Jack dies and Rose turns their house (they shun television) into a floral arrangement and sets it on fire while she curls up next to her death father. Just when you think that she is going to die with her dad, she breaks out and goes off on her own to make a life.

FILM REVIEW OF ''FIGHTING'' (2009)

The running joke about most movies made in New York City is that penny-pinching producers usually shoot spectacular aerial long vistas of the Big Apple and then lens everything else either in Canada or on a Hollywood back lot. If you're ever visited N.Y.C., you can spot the difference between the actual locale, usually unkempt and teeming with humanity, and the comparative tidiness of Toronto or an immaculate Hollywood soundstage. Award winning Sundance film director Dito Montiel of "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," shot his new movie "Fighting" (** out of ****) with Channing Tatum on the mean streets of ‘the city that never sleeps’ where Montiel grew up. The terrific authenticity of Gotham, however, cannot compensate for "Fighting's" punch-drunk plot about illegal street fighting.

If you've seen any of the dozens of movies since "Hard Times" (1975) with Charles Bronson," "Every Which Way But Loose" (1978) with Clint Eastwood, "Lionheart" (1990) with Jean Claude Van Damme," "Fight Club" (1999) with Edward Norton and “Snatch” with Brad Pit, about underground bare knuckles boxing, you've caught the cream of the crop. Generic from the get-go, "Fighting" amounts to little more than a sluggish knuckle-sandwich saga that telegraphs its every surprise far in advance.

Shawn MacArthur (Cullman, Alabama, native Channing Tatum of "Step Up") hasn't been in the Big Apple long. He earns his keep selling books on the sidewalk. The first time Shawn tries to pedal his product with other vendors on Broadway, several street hoods attack him and steal his money. He swaps blows with one of them and puts the guy down for the count. Watching this fracas from the periphery, eagle-eyed Harvey Boarden (Terence Howard of "Iron Man") admires the way that Shawn defends himself from multiple attackers. Not surprisingly, Shawn's assailants work for Harvey who earns his money by hustling the streets when he isn't selling fake Broadway tickets.

Eventually, Shawn and Harvey cross each other's paths. Initially, Shawn just wants the dough back that Harvey’s henchmen stole from him. Harvey convinces Shawn that he can earn $5-thousand and more by participating in illegal street fights. Gradually, Shawn and Harvey grow to trust each other, but beneath the surface simmers an unstated tension between them. Basically, Harvey sees Shawn as his ticket to prosperity. Harvey hails from Chicago. He came to N.Y.C. with the dream of opening an IHOP, while Shawn is fresh out of Birmingham, Alabama, after he parted company with his wrestling coach father following a family dispute. Shawn's past catches up with him in the character of arrogant Evan Hailey (Brian J. White of "12 Rounds") who was a member of Shawn's father's wrestling team. When Shawn and Evan tangled in a fight, Shawn's father tried to intervene and Shawn put the smack down on dad. Indeed, trouble with fathers is a theme that Montiel explored in depth in his first feature “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.”

Montiel choreographs each of Shawn's brawls with a sloppy, improvised realism so you see these goons grapple with each other more than swap old-fashion, John Wayne type right crosses. Unfortunately, these slugfests lack the ferocious intensity of last year's bare knuckled high school drama "Never Back Down." Instead, Tatum and his opponents engage in free-for-all bouts that resemble the fistfights from the second-rate survivalist saga "The Condemned" (2007) where the combatants pounded on each other, but we never saw fists smash flesh. What stands out about these fights is the locales. Montiel stages this fights in Gotham’s ethnic neighborhoods, such as the Russian enclaves in Brooklyn and the Hispanic hang0uts in the Bronx.

The villains are an anemic. Martinez (Luis Guzman of "Carlito's Way") and Jack Dancing (Roger Guenveur Smith of "American Gangster") are Harvey's old friends, but they show him no respect. They want to eliminate Harvey and take on Shawn as their own boxer. Meanwhile, Shawn and Evan talk tough to each other about old times in Dixie. Evan openly antagonizes Shawn. Nevertheless, these villains prove too lightweight to be intimidating. They never do anything really heinous to get our collective goat, so we have no reason to savor their demise.

Good fight movies make you want to shadow box, but the fights in "Fighting" lack any energy. Sadly, too, we are deprived of the inevitable training sequence that is part and parcel of any good Palookaville potboiler. Here, our protagonist engages in a quick workout on a subway. Later, in one of his bouts, Shawn takes on an opponent versed in martial arts with predictable results. As charismatic as our hero is, he never earns our admiration, because he never gets truly beaten to a pulp. He is just too lucky.

Montiel penned the script with Robert Munic of TV's "The Cleaner." "Fighting" qualifies as little more than an anthology of cauliflowered clichés and stereotypes from boxing movies. The relationship between Harvey and Shawn grows complicated when Harvey arranges a $100-thousand winner take-all-purse and struggles to persuade Shawn to throw the fight. This is one of those boxing plots as old as either "Golden Boy" (1939) with William Holden or "The Set-Up" (1949) with Robert Ryan and more recently Bruce Willis in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994). Naturally, Montiel and Munic provide our hero with some time out for romance. He meets cute, sexy Zulay Valdez (Zulay Heano of "Grizzly Park") who makes ends meet in a private club as an underpaid, overworked, single-mom waitress with a young daughter and a stern, drill sergeant of a mother (scene stealing 78 year old Altagracia Guzman)who never gives Shawn a break.

Tatum channels Marlon Brando, mumbling his dialogue and behaving so casually that he doesn't appear to be acting. Clearly, Tatum is an up and coming cinematic contender, a handsome but hard-bitten hero in the Vin Diesel mode. Terence Howard, who is usually very good, looks miscast. He doesn't look as desperate for success as his character complains about being, while Zulay Henao doesn't garner enough on-screen to time to make much of an impression despite her high wattage smile.

"Fighting" isn't a tenth as good as Montiel's first film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints." "Fighting" spends too much time pulling its punches to deliver any clout.