FILM REVIEW OF ''SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" (1998)

Lately, when Hollywood produces war movies, they focus on the debacle of Vietnam. Not director Steven Spielberg! Instead, the incredibly versatile helmer of "Jaws," "Schindler's List," "The Color Purple," and "Jurassic Park" impales a patriotic chapter of American history on a bayonet with his graphically realistic but otherwise sappy "Saving Private Ryan." "Saving Private Ryan" (**1/2 out of ****) ranks as a second-rate World War II movie with a first-class cast and top-notch production values that pass inspection with some of the most savage combat carnage ever lensed. As demeaning as this criticism sounds, "Saving Private Ryan" is one of the top 25 World War II movies. Unfortunately, the film contains so many glaring historical inaccuracies as well as wholly improbable plot contrivances that you wonder what Spielberg was thinking when he made it. Since "Saving Private Ryan" swamped moviegoers with cutting edge combat action, Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" and Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" have eclipsed it with even greater cutting edge violence.

If the story had been as memorable as the kinetic, blood-splattered battle scenes, "Saving Private Ryan" might have been a classic. Essentially, "Saving Private Ryan" is a ten-star movie until the U.S. Army gets off the beach and into France where it devolves into just another standard-issue G.I. Joe war epic. Anybody who knows anything about combat movies will cringe the first time that they see the hero parading about in a helmet with the captain's bars painted on the front like a bull's eye. This is an egregious error! During World War II, officers didn't advertise their presence in this manner for fear that an enemy sniper would single them out for a bullet in the head. Okay, I'd dismiss this lapse of realism as a dramatic liberty except the filmmakers raise the same point. A seasoned dogface (Vin Diesel) warns a rank amateur to stop saluting the captain for fear that a sniper will shoot the captain down.

Dispersed throughout the movie is the usual quota of Hallmark speeches about valor, loyalty, and redemption. These platitudes add little dimension beyond the obvious to the purely physical rat-a-tat-tat. Spielberg could have trimmed much of this sappy dialogue and upgraded his movie. Running nearly three hours in length, this rowdy, often profane World War II melodrama creates a deeper impression with is grotesque special effects than with its drab, sometimes improbable tale. Consider the scene in the town when the wall collapses between the Germans and the GIs and they stand with their arms brandished screaming at each like a Mexican stand-off. Come on, give me a break, in real life, either side would have opened up on each other. Similarly, letting Steamboat Willie go is another incredible lapse of believability.

Told from the perspective of the infantry, "Saving Private Ryan" shares in the grand tradition of Louis Milestone's classic "All Quiet on the Western Front," Samuel Fuller's "The Big Red One," Lewis Milestone's "A Walk in the Sun," and William Wellman's "Background." Granted, none of them boasts the extreme combat that "Saving Private Ryan" commands, but they are solidly-made, engaging war movies with deeply personal stories. The muddled but high-minded screenplay by "Fly Away House" scenarist Robert Rodat follows a unit of U.S. Rangers on a dim-witted public relations mission to rescue an American paratrooper.

Captain Miller (Tom Hanks of "Forrest Gump") assembles a collection of stock characters to help him locate 101ST Airborne Paratrooper Private James Ryan of Iowa. Ryan (Matt Damon of "Good Will Hunting") has gotten lost behind enemy lines in the pre-dawn parachute drops that preceded the June 6th D-Day Normandy Invasion. When the War Department discovers that Ryan's two brothers bite the sand at Normandy and that the Japanese have killed a third sibling a week earlier, General George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell of "Fargo") decides to pull the last Ryan out of action. Along the way, Miller's G.I.s complain about the irony of risking eight lives to save one guy.

Before "Saving Private Ryan" grinds to its sanguinary conclusion, the Biblical theme of singling out an individual from a multitude for redemption grows tedious. Spielberg and Rodat, along with uncredited scribes Scott Frank and Frank "The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont, seem confused. Are they making a fiercely repellent anti-war movie? Or have the drummed up a gung-ho Hong Kong style, kick-butt actioneer? They pile on enough blood and gore for a platoon of war movies. Bullets zip and zing by the hundreds giving death an impersonal omnipotence. Presumably, the filmmakers hoped their grisly depiction of combat would eviscerate the memories of those flag-waving John Wayne propaganda sagas. The sadistic horrors that occur in "Saving Private Ryan" seems more commercially than philosophically oriented. We don't think so much about how terrible war is as how miraculous it is to survive.

The first 24 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" dwells on the famous D-Day landing at Omaha Beach. Spielberg shows the baptism by fire that befell the seasick G.I.s as they waded ashore into a murderous Third Reich shooting gallery. This is the best part of this movie and guarantees it an immortal place in the ranks of all great combat epics. The last 40 minutes are pretty good and Spielberg has a surprise awaiting us at the end, but you won't like that surprise. After the scary, visceral D-Day prologue, the film settles down long enough for Miller to receive new orders. Eventually, Miller locates Ryan with a bunch of paratroopers guarding a bridge behind Nazi lines. Ryan refuses to leave his buddies in the lurch. Reluctantly, Miller and his squad prepare for the worst. This part of "Saving Private Ryan" has a lot of action, but it cannot compete with the 1960s ABC-TV show "Combat." Tom Sizemore makes a credible sergeant, but the usually dependable Edward Burns plays a soldier that would have been shot by his own men for disobeying orders. Tom Hanks' former teacher turned combat leader is a little too sentimental to be believable as is his inevitable demise. Many soldiers have commented--among them retired Joints Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell--that Miller and his men should have blown the bridge and retreated. Of course, had our heroes shown this much common sense there would have been no climactic battle.

Spielberg relies on elaborate visual gimmicks to strengthen his screen activities. The astonishing combat sequences have the compressed look of a video surveillance camera. The only thing that saves Spielberg is the politically incorrect way that the G.I.s shoot the surrendering Nazi troops. "Saving Private Ryan," for all its obvious flaws, still qualifies a movie any die-hard World War II fanatic should watch at least three times. It is still difficult to believe that for such a serious film, "Saving Private Ryan" contains several mistakes that ultimately undercuts its impact.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JACKIE BROWN'' (1998)

If you’re expecting more of “Pulp Fiction” from writer & director Quentin Tarantino in “Jackie Brown,” the cult moviemaker’s first full-fledged cinematic opus since “Pulp Fiction,” then you may feel sorely let down by this extreme chick flick. Neither as sadistic nor as sexually bizarre as either “Reservoir Dogs” or “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” (**** out of ****) represents something of a departure for the talented filmmaker. Indeed, an initial viewing may leave you with the impression that “Jackie Brown” suffers from a sketchy plot and lackluster action. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While “Jackie Brown” covers familiar “Pulp Fiction” territory, Tarantino emphasizes characterization at the expense of ultra-violence and implausibility. Furthermore, “Jackie Brown” may be Tarantino’s most accomplished film in terms of visual storytelling and the performances are simply unforgettable. Clearly, "Jackie Brown" deals with the themes of women versus men, women versus society, and women versus women in that order.

Veteran African-American actress Pam Grier, who made a name for herself during the 1970s with blaxploitation movies such as “The Big Doll House” (1971) and “Coffy” (1973), plays the eponymous heroine. As a 44-year old woman, Jackie works as a flight attendant for the worst airline, a shuttle that flies between the United States and Mexico. Life has not exactly been rosy for Jackie. She resorts to smuggling large sums of U.S. currency into the country that belongs to a treacherous arms dealer, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”) who stashes his cash in Cabo San Lucas. As the film opens, prickly ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton of “Batman”) busts Jackie for sneaking $50-thousand in past customs. Nicolette and his LAPD partner Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen of “Iron Eagle”) put the squeeze on her, especially after they discover a two ounce baggie of cocaine hidden in with the bucks.

Jackie finds herself in jail, and Robbie posts her bond. Robbie hires bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster of “Medium Cool”) to spring her. Robbie follows an unmistakable pattern. Paranoid about going back to jail, Robbie ices any of his cohorts who come into contact with the law. Jackie got busted thanks to a tip the cops squeezed out of Robbie’s low-life henchman Beaumount (Chris Tucker of “Rush Hour”). After Cherry gets Beaumont out of jail, Robbie kills Beaumont and hides the corpse in the trunk of an abandoned car. Robbie is so leery of his buddies that he brings in an old-time convicted bank robber, Lewis Gara (Robert De Niro of “Goodfellas”) and uses him for his latest scheme.

Once out of jail, Jackie cooperates with the ATF. She plans to bring in more of Robbie’s dough and be a part of a sting against him. She tell Robbie what the law wants her to do and then presents him with a deal that will get him the rest of his money. She’ll bring in all his money at once when the cops aren’t expecting it, and they’ll pull a switch before the fuzz could figure it out. Robbie is leery again, but eventually he agrees. Meanwhile, Jackie pulls a fast one not only on the cops but also Robbie and get away with a fortune in cold cash. She devises another plan with Max Cherry.

While there are no overlapping plots, “Jackie Brown” is Tarantino’s best job of writing. He lays the story out in clear, simple terms and never needlessly complicates the action as he did in “Pulp Fiction.” You won’t get lost in the middle of this action comedy. Of course, the language is as corrosive as all get out. The F-word is used at least 131 times, and the S-word is heard as many as 69 times. Tarantino’s fans will appreciate the usual profane, inane dialogue that he writes so well, especially Robbie’s instructions to Gara about how to unlock his car.

Written and directed by Tarantino, “Jackie Brown” is based on best-selling novelist Elmore Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch,” published in 1992. Surprisingly, Tarantino removed two major shoot-outs that add bang-bang action to Leonard’s book. Robbie wants to kill a Nazi skin head and heist his huge arsenal of firearms. What might have made for a distinctively “Pulp Fiction” moment, however, Tarantino scrapped. Tarantino also eliminated a gunfight between Nicolette and Robbie’s gunmen. Usually, Hollywood filmmakers go out of their way to beef up Leonard’s novel. Consider the horrendous misfire that Burt Reynolds produced from Leonard’s entertaining novel “Stick.” While “Stick” boasted the trademark Leonard dialogue (he c0-scripted), the movie featured violence that the book did not contain. Although Tarantino doesn’t capture the quirky Leonard dialogue, he does a better job of transferring “Rum Punch” to the screen than either Reynolds did with “Stick” or Barry Sonnenfeld with “Get Shorty.”

As Jackie Brown, busty Pam Grier is ideally cast. Originally written for an Ann-Margret type (in “Rum Punch” she was named Jackie Burke), Tarantino has changed the racial composition of the heroine but retains the spirit of Leonard’s heroine. “Jackie Brown” is one of those pictures where the heroine isn’t fresh out of a Playboy centerfold, though Grier has the obvious endowments. Instead, Tarantino uses her as a woman caught in the middle that wants and deserves to get out of a bad situation. Compared with previous Tarantino efforts, “Jackie Brown” represents a definite feminist turn of the screw.

The supporting cast is both diverse and fantastic. Although Robert Forster has almost vanished from the screen, his performance as Max Cherry is so good and straightforward—in a poker-faced way—that you forget that Forster is acting. Cherry may qualify as one of the few tough-guy male heroes who could serve as a role model. Meanwhile, Robert De Niro brings his customary thespian skill to his bank robber thug and delivers a fastidious performance that relies on his physical presence. Lastly, Chris Tucker has only a few moments on screen, but he is hilarious as motor-mouthed Beaumont, especially when Ordell makes him climb in the trunk of his car so he can kill him.

“Jackie Brown” lasts over two hours, but nothing obstructs the straight ahead plotting. If you’re counting, only three characters get shot, and Tarantino stages each shooting incident off-screen or is shown from an angle that prevents the viewer from seeing much gore and violence. A sex scene between De Niro and Fonda is staged without nudity, too. The scenes from a video about machine guns is outrageously sexist. Feminists will be pleased to know that Jackie triumphs over all the bad guys and Max Cherry is the best guy in the world.

FILM REVIEW OF ''FRIDAY THE 13TH" (2009)

Jason is back with a murderous vengeance in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake director Marcus Nispel’s “Friday the 13th” (** out of ****), and he doesn’t aim to please. This invincible villain with his attitude toward pre-marital sex has changed. Essentially, the new “Friday the 13th” synthesizes Sean S. Cunningham’s above-average original along with Steve Minor’s first and second gratuitous sequels to deliver the maximum amount of mayhem. Nevertheless, despite its slick, ultra-polished production values, nudity, and carnage, this “Friday” lacks a shred of creativity. Clearly, nobody expected anything fresh from the new “Friday the 13th,” but Nispel’s remake shows more interest in Jason than Jason’s truly demented mother. Gorehounds weaned on the “Saw” sagas will gripe about the lack of brutality. Everybody else will feel like they’ve suffered through a nightmare in a hospital emergency room. Prudes will carp about the soft-core porno scenes and the voyeurism that panders to its lusty teenage audience. Bluntly, “Friday the 13th” generates no suspense, but does a number on your eardrums.

The original “Friday the 13th” dealt with a mom gone amok over the drowning death of her son while teenage counselors who were supposed to be watching him indulged in sex. Mrs. Voorhees vented her rage and cut a swathe with a machete through those amorously distracted teenagers. Indeed, Jason appeared only at the last moment in Cunningham’s 1980 original and he was only a boy. Incidentally, the first “Friday the 13th” helped launch the slasher genre a couple of years of John Carpenter’s mildly bloody “Halloween.” Mind you, Jason didn’t don the hockey mask that provided him with more personality than any other slasher stalker until the second sequel, “Friday the 13th in 3-D (1982) and by that time his immortality was taken for granted. After all, Jason is basically supernatural. He has more lives than a cat. He’s been frozen, blasted into outer space, and consigned to Hell with few ill effects. A mute, inexorable, slaughter machine with the mentality of a battery powered hare, Jason is Death personified. The new Jason, however, takes on some of the characteristics—not surprisingly—of Leatherface from the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise. Jason operates in and around Camp Crystal Lake, where he drowned as a youth, like a cunning Viet Cong guerrilla, living in a maze of tunnels with booby-traps galore. Boasting his usual god-like omnipotence, he is tall, dark, and deadly. You never know where he is going to strike and where his weapon of choice will penetrate you.

The problem with the new “Friday” is Nispel disposes of Mrs. Voorhees in the first few moments without giving the dame her due. The Damian Shannon & Mark Swift screenplay doesn’t take place in Camp Crystal Lake, and nobody is trying to refurnish the old campgrounds. Instead, the latest lambs for Jason’s machete are a half-dozen, college-aged hikers searching for marihuana growing wild on Jason’s stomping grounds. This subplot recalls the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach” where college kids swarmed into a pot field and died at the hands of machine-gun armed natives! Of course, these kids don’t have a clue that they’re trespassing on Jason’s bailiwick. Our deformed killer dispatches them with extreme prejudice in the first 30 minutes. In a throwback to an earlier Jason sequel, he bundles a babe into a sleeping bag and smokes her to death over a fire. Unmistakably, Nispel is paying homage to Jason bashing a girl trapped in a sleeping bag against a tree in “Friday the 13th Part VII—The New Blood” (1988).

In a departure from the norm, Jason takes one of these girls, Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti of “Role Models”), hostage because she reminds him of mom. He keeps her chained up in his subterranean lair. Later, to her credit, Whitney parlays her resemblance to Mrs. Voorhees to her advantage. Whitney’s motorcycle riding brother, Clay (Jared Padelecki of TV’s “Supernatural”), is scouring Camp Crystal Lake for her and handing out missing posters. Clay is reminiscent of Rob in “Friday the 13th Part IV: Jason Lives” (1986) who wanted to kill Jason for slaughtering his sister. Anyway, Clay encounters a group of obnoxious twentysomethings hanging out at a cabin on Crystal Lake. These kids look like they stepped out of a WB soap opera. They are pretty, but bland, except for Asian-American Aaron Yoo of “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist” who provides some comic relief. Eventually, Clay finds Whitney, but by then Jason has appropriated his hockey mask, whittled down virtually nondescript nitwits, and bears down on the hero and heroine. Nispel generates his scares with sudden bursts of deafening music timed with occur with Jason’s sudden appearances. Everything is rather dull when Jason isn’t slashing and gashing his victims. “Pathfinder” lenser Daniel Pearl’s atmospheric photography creates a modicum of mood. Incredibly, Nispel doesn’t take full advantage of Harry Manfredini’s memorable “ch-ch-ch/pa-pa” music. Comparatively, Nispel’s unsubtle remake makes Sean S. Cunningham’s original slasher look Shakespearean.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE PINK PANTHER 2" (2009)

The dreadful 2006 prequel/remake of “The Pink Panther” turned out to be a travesty of a once splendid slapstick franchise about the world’s most incompetent French detective. The late British comic Peter Sellers created Inspector Jacques Clouseau back in 1963 for director Blake Edwards in the original “Pink Panther” with David Niven and Robert Wagner. Watching Sellers mangle the language while performing his silly shenanigans made for a sidesplitting experience. Steve Martin tried to imitate Clouseau’s clowning in “The Pink Panther” and for the most part stumbled through the role. Indeed, he managed to salvage a moment or two with his bumbling bravado, ridiculous accent, and a naughty word. The biggest change between Sellers’ Clouseau and Martin’s Clouseau is that Martin’s Clouseau has moments of blinding brilliance that Sellers’ Clouseau never had. Surprisingly, three years later, Steve Martin has captured the comic spirit of both Sellers and Clouseau in the lively sequel “The Pink Panther 2” (*** out of ****) and “Agent Cody Banks” director Harald Zwart keeps slapping us silly throughout this nimble, 91-minute merriment with riotous pratfalls and sight gags galore. The 2006 “Pink Panther” looked abysmal, but it coined over a $158 million worldwide. Incredibly, the far superior sequel looks absolutely fantastic, but it isn’t generating the box office receipts of its predecessor.

Like most sequels, “The Pink Panther 2” plays for bigger stakes. A mysterious thief, the Tornado, has stolen the British Magna Carta, the Italian Shroud of Turin, and the Imperial Sword of Japan. The ingenious Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber screenplay has the world authorities assembling an elite team of crack detectives to catch the elusive Tornado. Included are Italian investigator Vicenzo (Andy Garcia of “The Godfather, Part 3”), British cop Randal Pepperridge (Alfred Molina of “Spider-man 2”), and Japanese policeman Kenji (Yuki Matsuzaki). It is only a matter of time before French Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese of the Monty Python troupe) is summoned by Joubert (Geoffrey Palmer of "Tomorrow Never Dies"), his immediate superior, and ordered to add Clouseau to the team. The envious Dreyfus volunteers to take Clouseau’s place. He tells Joubert that he has Clouseau on a special assignment to safeguard Parisians. In reality, Dreyfus has banished our hero to writing tickets for parking infractions. Joubert demands that Clouseau join the dream team. Initially, Clouseau is reluctant to leave France. He fears the Tornado will take advantage of his absence and pinch the Pink Panther diamond on display in a Parisian museum. Clearly, something must have changed because the diamond was set in a ring in the previous “Pink Panther.” No sooner has Clouseau walked out of the terminal to board his plane to Rome than the word hits the airwaves about of the Pink Panther’s theft.

“The Pink Panther 2” contains many memorable gags. In a restaurant in Rome, Clouseau selects a bottle of wine for his girlfriend, Nicole (Emily Mortimer of “Scream 3”), and winds up tipping the wine rack so all the bottles cascade out. Waiters scramble everywhere to catch these falling bottles. Only one bottle hits the floor, but it doesn’t break! Just when everything seems safe, Clouseau crosses the room, steps on that wine bottle rolling across the floor, falls and throws his wine bottle into the air. Clouseau’s wine bottle shatters on a flaming dessert dish, and the entire restaurant burns down! In another scene, Clouseau tries to sneak inconspicuously around a three story villa. He climbs onto the roof but falls backwards down the chimney, crashing through three fireplaces! In a duel of wits, Clouseau and Pepperridge display their powers of deduction. They observe things about each other that they have no apparent way of knowing. As the duel concludes, Pepperridge makes a comment about Clouseau’s trip to the airport. A puzzled Clouseau wonders how Pepperridge knew about airport as he holds up the back of his hand that the passport official had stamped by accident.

The lunacy in “The Pink Panther 2” compares favorably with the better Sellers’ “Pink Panther” movies. The martial arts hand-to-hand combat scenes in his apartment are hilarious. Director Harald Zwart and his writers have cleverly contrived events in advance so you are actually given clues about the villain’s identity before Clouseau unveils the guilty party. The trouble is that unless you’re vigilant, you’ll miss this bit of foreshadowing. Jean Reno returns as Detective Ponton, Clouseau’s right hand man, who is supposed to defend himself from any of Clouseau’s unexpected attacks. You see, Clouseau has trained Ponton to be constantly vigilant, and the best way for Clouseau to test Ponton’s vigilance is to attack him without warning. When Ponton’s wife kicks his two sons and him from their house, they move in with Clouseau. Ponton’s sons teach Clouseau a trick or two about vigilance. Not surprisingly, John Cleese is a lot funnier as Chief Inspector Dreyfus than Kevin Kline was in the 2006 “Pink Panther.” Lily Tomlin shines in a small role as a overseer at police headquarters who monitors political correctness. She busts Clouseau for his sexist and racist attitude toward women and foreigners. Canadian composer Christophe Beck does an excellent job of duplicating Henry Mancini’s unforgettable theme music. The Pink Panther cartoon that opens “The Pink Panther 2” is as good as any of the original “Pink Panther” cartoons. Happily, this “Pink” doesn’t stink like its predecessor.

FILM REVIEW OF ''CITY LIGHTS'' (1931)

The transition from silent films to talkies proved devastating for many movie stars. Some with thick European accents, like Teutonic actor Emil Jannings who won the first Best Acting Oscar, did not weather the conversion and returned to Germany. The silent clowns who practiced the art of pantomime became one group adversely affected by the advent of sound. Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd emerged as the first casualties of the talkies. Meanwhile, Chaplin had nothing but contempt for sound films. “Motion pictures need dialogue as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics,” he said. Indeed, Chaplin saw few advantages to sound, despite the sensation that the new technology created for the industry. Warner Brothers introduced sound pictures in 1927 with its quasi-talkie “The Jazz Singer,” and sound propelled Warners into the big leagues with exalted studios like MGM and Paramount. Chaplin did not rush to climb aboard the sound movie bandwagon. Instead, he hoped that “City Lights” (**** out of ****) would revive silent movies. As the popularity of sound waxed, Chaplin grew more anxious about sound. Nevertheless, he produced his greatest silent movie comedy “City Lights” in 1931. He took into account, however, the impact of sound and added a synchronized soundtrack as well as his own post-production musical score. Chaplin remained reluctant to convert to sound. When he made his next classic comedy Modern Times (1936), he made it as a silent. Eventually, Chaplin converted to sound with his classic anti-Hitler film “The Great Dictator” in 1940.

Chaplin’s survival is amazing since sound ushered in a new breed of comedian. These comics hailed from either vaudeville or the Broadway stage. As the silent comics vanished, the comedians who replaced them supplemented their slapstick with verbal wit. Although Chaplin maintained his popularity, these comedians who had polished their acts on stage for years entered the limelight as America entered the Great Depression and desperately needed wisecracking encouragement that these funnymen fed them. The Marx Brothers, Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo, with their peculiar brand of banter that emphasized puns reflected the changes in comedy. Paramount released their films beginning with “The Cocoanuts” (1929), “Animal Crackers”
(1930), “Monkey Business” (1931), “Horse Feathers” (1932) and “Duck Soup” (1933). Chaplin faced other formidable competitors, including Universal Studios’ curmudgeonly snide W. C. Fields and RKO’s buffoonish box office champions Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey.

Chaplin’s dismissal of sound grew out of his success as a mime. The former English music hall pantomimist created his life-long comic persona--the ‘little tramp’--for the 1914 silent comedy The Kid Auto Races at Venice. Chaplin rose through the ranks at various studios until his success with the little tramp enabled him to finance his own studio. Chaplin’s mute tramp appealed to everybody everywhere because body language constituted an international language. Asian audiences appreciated Chaplin’s comic body language as much as Scandinavians. “My own pictures will always be silent,” he assured his audiences. Although he added a synchronized sound track, Chaplin ridiculed talkies in “City Lights.” In the opening scene, when dignitaries dedicate a monument to ‘Peace and Prosperity,’ Chaplin pokes fun at these pretentious people with his use of squawky sound effects.

"City Lights" qualifies as a sweetly sentimental saga about Chaplin's trademark ‘little tramp’ character in his tattered evening clothes and a hat falling hopeless in love with a beautiful but blind flower girl played by Virginia Cherrill. Meanwhile, when the Tramp isn't buying flowers from the heroine and escorting her back to where she lives with her grandmother, he strikes up an on-and-off friendship with a real millionaire. According to the credits, mustached Harry Myers of "Getting Gertie's Garter" (1927) plays an 'eccentric millionaire.' He is eccentric because he lives alone without his wife and has only his butler to care for him. Unhappy, the millionaire either tries to commit suicide or gets plastered and goes from one party to another, even hosting them at his mansion. The Tramp runs into him late one evening when the Millionaire tries to commit suicide by drowning himself. The Tramp gets soaked for saving his new found friend and the friend reciprocates and becomes the Tramp's long-lost friend—that is—until he sobers up and has no memory of their friendship.

In any case, the Tramp learns about a treatment that a foreign doctor has used to help some blind people recover their sight and he sets out to earn the money so that the blind girl can see again. The Tramp tries to earn the money the old-fashioned way by joining the ranks as a city sanitation engineer. In other words, he scoops up animal droppings and hauls them away. In one amusing scene, he tries to avoid a street strewn with animals, only to have a couple of circus elephants stomp up out of nowhere. Eventually, he gets fired for being late back to work after his lunch break. Next door, at a gym, he agrees to box for a share of the purse and his opponent agrees to share. Things take a turn for the worse, when the guy has to leave unexpectedly. It seems that the police are after him. The guy who replaces the fleeing boxer is a dour tough guy who is a little afraid of the Tramp's efforts to ingratiate himself to him. Further, the new guy refuses to share the prize money. In one of the funniest scenes ever, we see the Tramp strenuously avoid blows with the rival boxer. The Tramp keeps the referee between them at times or gets behind the other boxer. This confusion is sheer side-splitting fun. Sadly, the Tramp loses, but he keeps trying to get the girl her money.

Charlie Chaplin does a flawless job directing this sappy love story. He alternates his love story with the friendship with the rich man. The way that he meets the blind flower girl is brilliant. The Tramp is walking along when he spots a cop (cops always scare him) and he ducks into a limo parked in the street. When he comes out the door on the other side, he sets foot on the sidewalk in front of the blind girl. The Tramp falls madly in love at first sight and the limo cruises away with the girl believing that she has sold a flower to a wealthy gentleman instead of a homeless transient. There is a pretty funny dance hall number with the Tramp setting fire to a woman's chair and then her dress. However, the crowning achievement of “City Lights” is its weepy ending. The Tramp has survived a sentence in stir and he meets the blind girl again, but things are definitely changed. Like the short story about the woman in the arena in Rome, "City Lights" asks you to decide for yourself if it has a happy ending or a cynical ending.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE PINK PANTHER'' (2006)

Former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Steve Martin behaves like a half-witted buffoon in “Cheaper by the Dozen” director Shawn Levy’s “The Pink Panther” (*1/2 stars out of ****),a juvenile, PG-rated prequel/remake of Blake Edwards’ seminal original with Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, and David Niven. Martin was a hoot on “Saturday Night Live” and he was hilarious in “The Jerk.” However, he isn’t as funny as either Peter Sellers, who created the accident-prone Inspector Jacques Clouseau, or even Alan Arkin, who stepped into Sellers’ shoes during the interim for Bud Yorkin’s “Inspector Clouseau.” Indeed, Martin isn’t even as good as the animated Inspector in the “Pink Panther” cartoons that David H. DePatie and Fritz Freleng created going back to 1965. Furthermore, even the worst Peter Sellers’ movie “Trail of the Pink Panther” is side-splitting stuff compared to this updated, deflated, kiddie farce. Martin plays the role so broadly that you have no sympathy for him. You don’t cringe when he makes a mistake. The physical gags, with the exception of when dainty but delectable Emily Mortimer winds up sitting on the shoulders with her pelvis in his face, are all laborious. Levy’s “Pink Panther” lacks the sophistication and wit of even the lesser Edwards’ “Pink Panther.” The gags are either recycled—such as the world globe that bounces across Paris creating mayhem—or just amateurish. Martin tries to imitate the Sellers’ pratfalls where the Inspector karate chops his way through imaginary interlopers. Meaning, he hacks away at curtains the shield nobody. Surprisingly, this leaden lampoon became an international box office hit and has now inspired a sequel.

The Len Blum and Steve Martin screenplay, based on the characters created by Blake Edwards and Maurice Richlin back in 1963, takes the storyline back in time to show us “the village idiot” that Clouseau was before Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline of “Wild Wild West”) summoned him from the provinces to Paris to recover the Pink Panther diamond. In the brisk whirl of vignettes, the uniformed Clouseau complete with a pencil-thin moustache, conducts himself like a colossal klutz, but the gags are flat. For example, the first gag has Clouseau and another gendarme careening down narrow streets with the siren going and Clouseau attaches a portable flashing light to the hood that flies off and strikes a woman on the sidewalk and knocks her down. Let me pause and laugh until I puke! The second gag has the gendarme behind the wheel pulling up to park at the scene of the crime, but he parks so close to the wall that Clouseau cannot get out. I’m still puking! Anyway, the gendarme pulls up farther so Clouseau can get out. Our hero finds himself at the scene of a traffic jam caused by an elderly man on a battery powered wheel chair that has stalled out because the wires have come loose from the post. Clouseau changes reconnects the wires to the wrong posts—they are clearly color coordinated--and the chair rockets off in reverse and the geezer slams into a sidewalk café. In the next series of vignettes, we see Clouseau barge through doorways to arrest the murderer of Pierre Fuquette. The first suspect is a basset hound, the second a baby in a crib and the third is . . . well . . . Pierre Fuquette himself! Clouseau quickly establishes that the case is closed. The only thing amusing about this is Pierre Fuquette’s risqué sounding name. The next scene shows a herd of goats chasing Clouseau through the streets. Is this comedy? No, it is contrivance that Shawn Levy’s “The Pink Panther” is hopelessly contrived.

Chief Inspector Dreyfus narrates these incidents from his office and observes, “I never thought I would have any use for him until that fateful day.” At this point, the plot kicks in at a soccer game where a celebrity coach, Yves Gluant (“The Transporter’s” Jason Statham in a cameo), appears before cheering crowds wearing the fabulous Pink Panther diamond ring on his hand and hustles into the stands to kiss his love Xania (African-American singing sensation Beyoncé Knowles) with whom he has had a high publicized romance. After the French team defeats the Chinese, Gluant is murdered. Somebody stabs him in his neck with a poison dart and he dies. When the authorities examine the body, they discover that the Pink Panther ring has disappeared! As it happens, Dreyfus is on the scene. He plans his strategy. He wants to find the Pink Panther diamond so that he can win the Medal of Honor that he has been nominated for seven times. Dreyfus tells his anonymous aide that he needs “an unimaginative, by-the-book, low-level, incompetent who will plod along, getting nowhere with the media watching his every move. And while he is getting nowhere, I will put together the finest team of investigators in France and we will hunt down the killers and retrieve the Pink Panther diamond and the Medal of Honor will be mine!”

Of course, the best laid plans are derailed when Clouseau arrives. He spears Dreyfus with his badge when they meet for the first time. Dreyfus lies to him and assures him that “a man of your talent merits greater responsibility than you have had up to this point.” Dreyfus assigned a second class detective Ponton (Jean Reno of “The Professional”) to keep him abreast of Clouseau’s every move. Poton becomes the equivalent of Peter Seller’s Asian houseboy Cato. Martin’s Clouseau trails Xania to New York City and gets into trouble at the airport and makes—not surprisingly—a fool of himself. In some ways, Martin's Clouseau is rather smarter than Sellers' Clouseau, but Martin has very few interesting scenes. The fight when Ponton wields his fists against the villains while Clouseau hacks frantically without hitting anybody is just too adolescent to be funny. The eleventh hour twists when Clouseau identifies the killer and recovers the diamond are virtually impossible to guess, so “The Pink Panther” cheats us. Again, Martin’s Clouseau lacks the inspired lunacy of Seller’s Clouseau and Shawn Levy cannot make this comedy of error look anything more than contrived. Kline isn’t half as funny as Herbert Lom’s Dreyfus. Clive Owen makes a cameo as a James Bond type British secret agent who designates himself as 006, but neither Levy nor his writers take advantage of his presence to beef up the action. The “hamburger” pronunciation scene is mildly funny. The cartoon title credits are fair, but this “Pink Panther” is more stink than pink.

FILM REVIEW OF "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY" (1953)

America in the 1950s developed into a land where conformity ruled. Suburbs with look-alike housing proliferated in the form of Levitttowns. People grew fearful of anybody who criticized the American way of life. These critics became easy targets for anti-Communist crusaders, like The House Committee on Un-American Activities, whose mandate it was to investigate anybody with suspicious activities that might threaten America. Meanwhile, the affluence and domesticity that swept America were reflected in lowered rates of divorce and homicide. Nevertheless, some Americans feared that people had sunk into a morass of complacency and conformity that came with the impetus of a consumer-oriented, materialistic culture. Novelists in the early 1950s challenged this ideology and dealt with individuals trying to maintain
their personality in the midst of mass culture that oppressed them. These problems had lain dominant since before World War II. Former soldier turned novelist James Jones unleashed them in his scandalous bestseller "From Here to Eternity" (1951) about the dehumanizing environment of peacetime military life at Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Hawaii on the eve of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The novel explored many themes including adultery, promiscuity, sadism, and racism. The climate of the 1950s virtually guaranteed that Jones' novel, which was very critical of the U.S. military, would never illuminate the silver screen. Nothing, however, could dissuade Columbia Pictures studio boss Harry Cohn would producing the novel. Cohn called on MGM contract director Fred Zinnemann to helm the project. They agreed that filming "From Here to Eternity" without the cooperation of the U.S. military would make such a production impossible.

Producer Buddy Adler, a former Army officer himself, helped resolve the conflicts between the military and the filmmakers so that a palatable version of "From Here to Eternity" could be produced. Columbia Pictures not only had to placate the military but they also had to contend with the repressive Production Code Administration, the industry's internal censors who objected to anything that did not portray American and its institutions in an idealized manner. Meanwhile, Cohn and Zinnemann argued about the casting, especially of Montgomery Cliff, who eventually won the role over studio contract player Aldo Ray, the man that Cohn originally favored for the role. Cohn and Zinnemann cast Deborah Kerr, whose reputation for playing prim women, went against the grain of the role she would have. The most notorious bit of casting involved the hiring of Frank Sinatra, whose career was tanking horribly, instead of Broadway performer Eli Wallach. "From Here to Eternity" (**** out of ****) is best remembered for the torrid kissing on the beach scene with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr that was later parodied in "Airplane!"

The first time that we see Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Cliff of "Red River") he is marching across the parade ground in the opposite directions of the soldiers drilling. Zinnemann deliberating staged the opening scene so that it would be clear that Prewitt differed from the rest of the men. Prewitt meets never-do-well Private Angelo Maggio(scrappy Frank Sinatra) and says that he has transferred out of the bugle corp. Maggio advises Prewitt that he has made a terrible mistake. Maggio states: "This outfit they can give back to General Custer." First Sergeant Milton
Warden (Burt Lancaster of "Criss Cross") lays down the law during their first encounter. "This here is a rifle company. You ain't supposed to enjoy yourself until sundown." Prewitt meets Captain Dana Holmes and explains that he accepted a demotion from corporal to private to transfer out of the bugle corps because his first sergeant transferred in a friend replaced him with the friend. Prewitt was the best bugler, but friendship counted more to the sergeant than quality. Holmes has pulled strings to get Prewitt into his outfit so that they can win the regimental boxing finals. Prewitt refuses to fight for Holmes. It seems that Prewitt blinded his friend Dixie Wells boxing and has since refused to don the gloves and enter the ring. "Looks to me like you're trying to acquire a reputation as a lone wolf," Holmes observes, and adds, "In the Army, it's the individual that counts." All of Holmes' sergeants, who do box, except for Warden, give Prewitt 'the treatment' to make him change his mind. Prewitt, however, doesn't capitulate. Meanwhile, Warden takes up with Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), and they secretly date behind her jealous husband's back. We learn that Karen lost a baby because her worthless, philandering husband was too drunk to take her to the hospital. They have an agreement not to inquire into each other's lives despite sharing the same house. Karen refuses to let Dana sleep in the same room with her. Warden is playing with fire because if he were caught, he could land in Leavenworth for twenty years.

Maggio introduces Prewitt to society in town at a place called 'the New Congress Club.' In Jones' book, establishments like these were really whorehouses, but the Production Code required that Columbia sanitize these settings into harmless social clubs on the level of USO Clubs. Prewitt meets a strikingly beautiful lady, Lorene (Donna Reed of "It's A Wonderful Life") and they fall in love. Meanwhile, Maggio clashes with a brute of a first sergeant, Sergeant Fatso Judson (Ernst Borgnine of "Marty"), who prefers to plink away on the piano with all the dexterity of a monkey. Judson's bad piano music interferes with Maggio's dancing with a girl and they confront each other. Prewitt pulls him off before Judson and he can fight. Holmes' sergeants redouble the hazing, but Prewitt holds his own against them, until the irritable captain wants to draw up court marshal papers. Warden intervenes and suggests that Holmes put Prewitt on double punishment duty. Eventually, Maggio goes
AWOL when he is supposed to be on guard duty, and he winds up in the stockade where Judson beats him mercilessly until Maggio escapes. Maggio dies in Prewitt's arms and Prewitt tangles with Judson in a back alley and they fight until Prewitt stabs Judson to death. Unfortunately, Judson stabs Prewitt who flees to the safety
of Lorene's house. Lorene came to Hawaii so that she could earn "a stocking full of money" and return to her small home town in Oregon to live out her life in style and respect. At the same time, Warden and Karen date and have to hide out from all military officers.

"From Here to Eternity" won Zinnemann the Oscar for Best Director. The film claimed eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Photography, and Sinatra, in his career reviving role, won a Best Supporting Oscar. The title of Jones' novel was derived by a Rudyard Kipling poem and the verb before it was deleted for obvious reasons, the complete line reads "Damned From Here to Eternity."
Although television made two remakes of this steamy soaper when censorship standards had relaxed considerly, neither of those remarks matches this sterling original.