Redbelt is about martial-arts instructor Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is content to run a small school and not worry about money or competitions. A string of events one night changes everything -- Mike has to ask his brother-in-law for money to fix some damage to his school, and while in his brother-in-law's bar he ends up protecting action-hero movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen) from a potentially nasty fight. Next thing you know, Mike is lured into unfamiliar scenes and deals and commitments and faces the possibility he'll have to do the one thing he finds truly repellant: competing in a fight for money.

Fortunately, Ejiofor's strong performance helps make the film seem less scattered. I've enjoyed his performances in Children of Men and Dirty Pretty Things and he's a pleasure to watch onscreen. Other actors have more trouble with the non-naturalistic Mamet dialogue and make it sound almost like a parody of itself: during one scene, my husband started laughing and I guessed correctly it was because the lines were too over-the-top, too stereotypical of the writer to be taken at all seriously. Supporting actors Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay and David Paymer also fit comfortably into the Mamet world, but Tim Allen is jarring, too familiar, too much a fish out of water. However, that may have been the desired result.

Redbelt contains some fun-to-watch fight scenes, which provide some respite from the dialogue. I especially liked a scene on a movie set where a friend of Mike's is training stuntmen in how to stage a knife fight, and Mike gets drawn into the action. And I've seen a second trailer for the film that is a lot less obviously Mamet-ish, which focuses on the fighting and on Mike's relationship with Emily Mortimer's character. The movie looks much more mainstream and commercial in this trailer. Is Redbelt Mamet's attempt at a traditional Hollywood film? If so, it doesn't succeed -- the story is too fragmented to keep audiences engaged and interested.

The focus of this documentary is fairly straightforward: Young At Heart, a choral group of senior citizens, has changed their repertoire in recent years to rock music, with new arrangements of a variety of songs like "I Feel Good," "Forever Young," and so forth. The filmmakers follow a few of the group's members in their daily lives, getting to know them and understanding how important Young At Heart is to them in terms of friendship and so forth. We see rehearsals in which the group struggles with some songs and arrangements, like a tongue-twisting Allen Toussaint tune. These sequences are interspersed with music videos of the group, showing us that older people can be feisty musicians too. Inevitable tragedies occur, but the show must go on.

I also felt Stephen Walker's direction was too intrusive. His narration often gets in the way, and he adds a tone that I've encountered on other British films and articles about the U.S. (America Unchained, for example): that sense of surprise at the antics and crazy politics in this country that just isn't quite as wonderful as theirs. I'm sure we do the same thing in American-made films about the UK, but that's no excuse for this irritating style.

In addition -- and I know I just made the same complaint about Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- Young@Heart is too damn long. The last third drags terribly. Throughout the film we've seen the group rehearsing several songs that are important to them, and some suspense is built on how well these songs will do in performance. So in the final concert sequence, every single one of these songs is performed in full. You'd have to love this group madly to want to sit through all these songs one final time, and I didn't feel that invested. (The exception was a moving rendition of the Coldplay song "Fix You.") I kept thinking, "Oh no. Not that song again. Can't they just show us the one relevant passage that kept getting messed up in rehearsal?" But no. It seemed to drag on for hours -- the movie is an hour and 50 minutes long, but a nice round 85 minutes would have kept me more engaged.

I feel like a heel for not liking an upbeat documentary like Young@Heart, which is currently pulling an 86 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the movie takes the obvious sentimental route and yanks heartstrings in the most blatantly manipulative ways. I also feel like an elitist -- the movie is obviously targeted for as mainstream an audience as possible, and is that one reason why I don't like it? Because it seems too simple and dumbed-down, and has no real message other than the great powers of music for people of any age, or the great and complex spirit of the elderly.

That brings up another question: does a documentary need to send us a message, or can we simply enjoy watching other human beings and their lives? I rail about some docs being too propaganda-y, so it's perhaps surprising that I wouldn't enjoy a movie entirely in the other direction. But the combination of a long and repetitive third act, heavy-handed direction, and lack of depth meant that Young@Heart simply didn't click for me.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a little difficult to review because I enjoyed the experience of watching the film at a packed Paramount theater, and it made me laugh a whole lot, but it wasn't very good. If a film makes you laugh that much, shouldn't it be "good" even if the plot is lame? On the other hand, if I'd seen this movie at a sparsely attended press screening, or watched it alone on DVD, would I have enjoyed it nearly as much? Judging by the fact that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to see it again, I think the experience itself contributed greatly to my enjoyment.

The humor in this movie isn't in the plot, however, it's in the gags that fly thick and fast and just keep hitting you until some of them stick. Peter has been working sporadically on a puppet rock opera about Dracula, which sounds like one of those quirks stuck in a movie in lieu of any kind of character depth or distinction, but the excerpts from the rock opera had the audience howling. They were unbelievable. We also see more male nudity than you usually get in a film, all in the name of comedy.

The problem is that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is at least 20 minutes too long and the plot, such as it is, starts to feel tired and forced. Even the funniest gags cannot compensate for the fact that you sit there wanting these people to decide already what they're going to do, which you already know what it is, because every romantic comedy in the universe does the same damn thing. In addition, it was mighty difficult for me to empathize with Peter, whom I felt needed a good smack in the head. I had more of a tendency to sympathize with the title character, who gets treated a bit shabbily as the film progresses. Mila Kunis plays the other love interest, who's one of those free-spirited wage slaves who turns out to have intellectual ambitions underneath, so it's okay for the hero to like her (like in Sideways).

Paul Rudd, one of my big crushes, has a delightful small role as a surfing instructor. But I was also very much taken by Russell Brand, who plays the sex-crazed rockstar, and is funnier than the other three leads combined. The other actors were unable to overcome the thinly and inconsistently drawn characterizations. I need to see him in more movies, immediately.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a funny movie, especially if you watch it with a lively crowd that gets into the humor. And you know, it's hard enough to find movies playing in theaters that make you laugh. So maybe it doesn't matter that the movie is overlong and the story is eyerollingly dumb. See it with a bunch of friends, maybe have a beer first (or during, if you go to the right kind of theater), don't expect a lot, and you'll have a good time.

"How come when a kid is trying to travel from Mexico to California, it's a heartwarming story ... but when a kid is trying to travel from California to Mexico, it's a party movie?"

We got to Midnight, Easy Living and The Major and the Minor and I read out the titles to my husband to look up on Amazon, although I noted it was futile because who knows when those movies might ever get to be on DVD.

April 22, 2008, as it turns out. I was stunned. Midnight is getting a DVD release! I wondered if someone might remember it, since it's supposedly being remade (please let the remake be a victim of the writers' strike, please please). And the other two movies will be released too, all as part of something called the Universal Classics Collection. No details are available yet on extras and so forth, and I suspect the DVDs might be bare-bones, but I don't care because I would just like to see the movies. All I want is a pretty good transfer -- all three videotapes were taped from AMC or TCM in the distant past, so a DVD can only be an improvement.

The thing about these three movies is that I don't think any of them are especially great, but they're charming Thirties/early Forties light comedies with witty dialogue, wonderful actresses in the lead roles, and familiar, funny supporting character actors. More details about the movies are after the jump, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Now, can we have A Foreign Affair next? That's the comedy I really want to see on DVD, and my videotape is barely watchable. It was one of the few videotapes I didn't throw/give away on Sunday, but I'd like to toss that TCM-recorded, noisy tape in the trash by the end of 2008. I'd also like to cross it off the still-populated 20 Gaps on DVD list, which incidentally I've updated with the info about the three upcoming DVDs.

Easy Living was made a couple of years before Midnight and it's always being held up as a fine example of Depression-era comedy: a young woman's life changes drastically when a mink coat falls out of a building and onto her head. She's fired for "loose morals" but along the same lines, because she's suspected of being the mistress of the guy who threw the mink coat, she ends up with a fancy hotel suite. Jean Arthur is the poor working girl who gets the coat, and you know she's probably going to get the rich man's son by the end of the movie. This is another Mitchell Leisen film, but the script was from Preston Sturges ... another writer who decided he'd rather direct his own films. A couple of character actors who were later regulars in Sturges films, Franklin Pangborn and William Demarest, are in Easy Living as well.

The Major and the Minor is a strange film -- it flirts with pedophilia and you can't imagine this film would ever, ever be remade. It's also Wilder's directorial debut. Ginger Rogers decides she's had enough of sexual harassment (by Robert Benchley!) in NYC so she decides to take a train home to her mom, but she can't afford full fare. So she disguises herself as a 12-year-old to get the child's fare, and ends up befriended by Ray Milland, who at least has the excuse of poor eyesight in one eye. Because otherwise it's impossible to believe she gets away with it. My favorite scene is the dance with the girls' school in which every single student and all the teachers have the Veronica Lake "flip" hairdo, but otherwise it's more bizarre than genuinely funny. I think it's a movie you should see once if you like Thirties comedies or Billy Wilder, but the froth of the 1930s is giving way here to a pre-WWII patriotism, and that doesn't help matters much.

Update: We had more than 300 sites last year. Wow. We're not promoting it as heavily this year, so we'll see what happens.

I felt guilty about liking such a violent and sexist movie, but fortunately Roger Ebert liked it too (and wrote a much better review than I did, natch), so that helped a little.

Finally, my little brother the film geek called me this morning* to tell me he saw Shoot 'Em Up last night, and he may have summarized the movie better in one line than I did in an entire review:

"More grindhouse than Grindhouse."

He has a point. If you're into this kind of film, I suggest seeing Shoot 'Em Up this weekend at night in as crowded a theater as you can ... audience reaction won't keep you from missing anything and can only improve the experience of watching this cheesy but fun film.

*My little brother only ever calls me to talk about the movies he's seen. I have no idea what's going on in his life, but I can tell you which movies he's enjoyed lately.

I was looking at the new Bardot collection on DVD at Amazon (I wanted to see the cover after Dave Kehr referred to it in his article on the films) and noticed an Amazon link to "Save 60% on Celebrity DVD Boxed Sets." I certainly like saving money, even though I am not really supposed to be buying new DVDs until I watch the ones I have, so I took a look.

For the most part, the page of sale DVD sets was what you'd expect -- a combination of old and new stars, all of which you'd probably recognize on sight. You could get Gary Cooper or George Clooney, Pam Grier or Cameron Diaz, Steve McQueen or Chuck Norris. You get the idea. But smack in the middle of the page, surrounded by Drew Barrymore and Natalie Portman's boxed sets --

The Errol Morris DVD Collection.

I was so tickled by this that I almost bought the boxed set right then and there. (I may still ... after all, it's on sale.) I had never thought about Morris as having the same type of celebrity following as Sandra Bullock or Nicolas Cage, but I'm glad to see that someone at Amazon thought so. Next time I hope to see Barbara Kopple on the page too.

While everyone else in America was watching the movie adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of the John Waters film Hairspray last weekend, we decided to watch some unadulterated Waters. I rented Pecker awhile ago and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and hoped that Cecil B. Demented would be the same way. It's not as good a movie as Pecker -- in fact, it's not really a very good movie at all. But it made me laugh, and it was so much different than the cookie-cutter movies I've been watching in theaters that I'm willing to overlook its flaws.

I didn't know anything about this movie going into it except that my editor at Cinematical Indie has frequently quoted one of its lines, "Power to the people who punish bad cinema!" From that and the title, I expected the movie to be about movies, but I didn't even know it starred Melanie Griffith. I am still wondering how Waters convinced Griffith to take this role -- we may have to watch the commentary track later today to try to find out. (The commentary track on Pecker was excellent.) I didn't realize the actress had the type of sense of humor to play a self-mocking character like this. Her character Honey Whitlock starts the movie as a petulant, mean-spirited star ... who is kidnapped by a ground of rebellious teenage filmmakers (led by the title character) who want to use her in their "new cinema."

The teenage filmmakers are all unusual characters that fit right in with the John Waters universe. Everyone has a tattoo of a filmmaker's name on his or herself (my only carp: what, no female directors? Couldn't someone have had Ida Lupino or Penelope Spheeris tattooed on herself?). The tattoos range from William Castle to Pedro Almodovar to Herschell Gordon Lewis, so you know these are not your average teens. The group includes a drug addict gone to extremes, a Satan worshipper (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), an ex-porn star who specialized in anal scenes, and a hairdresser who hates being straight. The plot reminds one, in an amusing way, of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and this being a John Waters film, naturally Hearst herself shows up in a role as the mom of one of the teenagers.

Cecil B. Demented has a lot of in-jokes for film buffs; the coded messages for the kidnapping are lines like "Hey, hey, MPAA, how many movies did you censor today?" When the filmmakers run into trouble, they run into specialty movie theaters where the audiences help them out. The teens are determined to eradicate multiplexes and the kinds of movies that play there; they attack a theater that is showing Patch Adams: The Director's Cut, face a crowd full of angry moms at a theater that refuses to show R or unrated films, and sabotage a Maryland Film Commission luncheon full of Hollywood execs. I liked the opening credits, which showed the marquees of what I assume were a number of Baltimore-area theaters, over a song that spoofed overwrought cliched movie music.

Cecil B. Demented is a fun movie for people who like to see movies in theaters, especially older theaters -- it was a treat to see all of the theaters in the movie, including the drive-in. It's not a great movie -- the plot doesn't make much sense, some of the acting is flat, and the teen characters' quirks sometimes become tiresome (Gyllenhaal's Satanic devotions get old fast, although I did like her makeup). Summertime is the perfect time to see this movie, because if you have been watching nothing but multiplex fare, especially summer blockbusters, this movie does prove its point: the latest "tentpole" film seems bland, dull, and annoyingly predictable compared to the glorious chaos of Cecil B. Demented.

My last night at Alamo was ... last night, and well into morning, at the Half-Ass-a-Thon. I'm still half-asleep, but I had a wonderful time and am missing the old theater already. I'm looking forward to reading lots of Alamo-related entries tonight, so please indulge me by writing/sending yours.

Witherspoon will be taking the Claudette Colbert role (this is almost as bad as writing "Ice Cube plays the Cary Grant role"). No word yet on who will take the roles played by Ameche, John Barrymore, or Mary Astor. On the positive side, does this mean the movie will finally, finally see a DVD release? One can only hope.

I need a cold compress and a drink, and then maybe this weekend I will go watch my sad little VHS copy of Midnight taped off TCM years ago. All that lovely snappy dialogue ("from the moment you looked at me, I had an idea you had an idea"). If anyone decides to remake Ball of Fire or any Preston Sturges movie this week, it's probably better that you don't tell me about it. I don't care about The Women so much, although I don't see how you can keep it from being terribly dated.

[News item found via Nerve's ScreenGrab blog. Credit to Martha Fischer, the former queen of "Dear God, No" entries at Cinematical, for the headline inspiration.]

If you've made a short film yourself -- it doesn't have to be recent -- and it is available to the public online, please send me a link. Or if you haven't made a short film but you saw one online the other day and loved it to death, send me a link. You can email me (address in the right sidebar) or post a comment with the link. I've been getting some good responses so far, but I need to build up a little library of films I can use in the Eat My Shorts column so I can sustain it weekly. Good publicity for your short film, good material for my column, good films for everyone to watch ... we all win.

"Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you."

"Hell, I can get you a toe by 3:00 this afternoon... with nail polish."

"Put it on a plate, son. You'll enjoy it more."

"Now listen up, you primitive screwheads. See this? This... is my boomstick! The 12-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart."

"Let's go do some crimes." "Yeah, let's get some sushi and not pay."

"Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!"

"It's a trick. Get an axe."

"Dr. Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess that I cannot take away."