McBone Presents: The Fourth Annual McBoner Awards

As the Middle East boils over with popular uprisings and public workers fight for their livelihoods in the Midwest, it's time to step away from such goings-on and steep ourselves for a few hours in our favorite cesspool of privilege and excess: the Academy Awards.  Yes, fellow moviegoers, it's that septic spectacle we call Oscar Night.  We at McBone annually wade our way through the Versace frocks and endless dark glasses to see which motion pictures are deemed worthy to enter the Academy's canon.  Yes, I will watch every second, and yes I'll come out feeling like I've bathed in (and drunk from) the Ganges (minus the sacredness).

But before I begin weeping for civilization, I'll offer my own take on the year in cinema.  This year's McBoners go to:

Get Low--Best film.  My early favorite withstood an onslaught from some stiff competition, and just edges out Winter's Bone, (an obvious choice for the McBoner), True Grit and the mesmerizing documentary, Catfish.  I'm not sure what this exquisite picture did to deserve complete and utter indifference from the award givers of the world.  I suppose I'm biased in my love of grizzled old men with beards, but so much of Get Low was done with love and care by director Aaron Schneider, who, unlike the Coen Brothers (hellbent on crafting a masterpiece of quirks), sticks with authenticity in the name of good storytelling.  Throw Sissy Spacek into the pot with some apt screenwriting and magnificent cinematography and you get this folkloric tale of regret and redemption.

Geoffrey Rush--Best Actor, The King's Speech.  Sorry Colin; your convincing stutter earned our sympathy for King George, but Geoffrey Rush owns this movie as his irreverent mentor.  Rush (in this leading role, in spite of what the Academy says) is perfection as he unceremoniously does away with all the pomp and ceremony that goes with being King, using patience and great humor to free his pupil from the stifling weight of his position. Apologies to: James Franco.

TIE!  Michelle Williams, Jennifer Lawrence--Best Actress, Blue Valentine, Winter's Bone.  The superiority of these two performances made it impossible for me to decide.  Both women enact their parts with understated artistry.  Both deserve the prize.  Apologies to: Hailee Steinfeld, who should have been nominated for the Oscar in this category.

Barry Pepper--Best supporting actor, True Grit.  My inclination with this award is usually to choose the smallest performance that makes the biggest impression.  Pepper makes the most of his five minutes on screen, letting the spittle fly from his green-toothed gape.  Apologies to: Get Low's Bill Cobbs.

Rooney Mara--Best supporting actress, The Social Network.  The quick-tongued Mara puts on a clinic on how to broom a d-bag boyfriend.  Apologies to: Amy Adams, who atones for her awfulness in Doubt, and Chloe Moretz of Kick-Ass.

Debra Granick--Best director, Winter's Bone.  Granick makes us see the perils and pitfalls of back-woods poverty.  Her portrait is terrifying and she weaves a nearly perfect story without the benefit of major studio backing.  Apologies to: Christopher Nolan.

Aaron Sorkin--Best screenplay, The Social Network.  I admire films that resist the urge to load up on dialogue, but I tend to give this award to the more talkative films.  The Social Network has too many memorable lines to ignore, particularly: 'I'm 6'5" 220 and there's two of me.'  Apologies to: Coen bros.

Get Low--Best art direction.  As much as Tron and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World were awesome spectacles, I applaud how director Aaron Schneider makes the most of a small budget to transport us back 100 years to erstwhile Tennessee.

Crushing disappointments of 2010: Tron: Legacy, Iron Man 2, Never Let Me Go, Love and Other Drugs

For those of you who think me a hopeless imbecile, we offer you the Alex Awards:


Best film: My heart this year belongs to Winter's Bone.  From the very first frame I was both insanely tense and transfixed by this gorgeous, hard-hitting story and its characters.  Blue Valentine comes second, and, although the awards ignored it completely, I thought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 took what in the books is a tedious journey and turned it into a mesmerizing story about growing up and coming to terms with who we are while the world is falling apart around us.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence owns Winter's Bone. Whether she's skinning squirrels, battling the meth mafia, or protectively looking after her siblings, Lawrence makes Ree into a hero for our postmodern times.  Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine comes a very close second, handling the beginning and the end of love with no tricks or mannerisms, just pure, authentic emotion. 

Best Actor: Blue Valentine's Ryan Gosling makes for the most charming and lovable drunken fuck-up in years, so much so that you almost, but not quite, forgive him when he loses it.  Gosling makes clear how a woman can be with someone like him and manage to find happiness in the midst of the chaos and sadness he brings her.  Kudos to Collin Firth and Jesse Eisenberg as well.

Best Supporting Actress: Dale Dickey from Winter's Bone.  As the terrifying meth world matriarch, Dickey is the only worthy match for Jennifer Lawrence's Ree.  With one of the most expressive and sorrow-filled faces I've ever seen on the screen, Dickey gives us an awe-inspiring picture of female power and pain.  Melissa Leo, another frightening matriarch comes a close second.  Mia Wasikovska made the stress, confusion and hopefulness of the pre-college months with their uncertainty and impending family separation look beautiful and tangible in The Kids Are All Right.

Best Supporting Actor: Winter Bone's John Hawkes makes loose cannon, creepy and good-hearted (in a twisted, fucked-up way) find new meanings with his performance as Uncle Teardrop. 

Best Director: Debra Granick makes magic with her actors and eerie storytelling in Winter's Bone, all while keeping her amazingly capable hands wrapped around our hearts.  The authentic, lyrical way in which she weaves her tale visually should be studied by directors with much larger budgets.  A close second goes to Derek Cianfrance, who spent 12 years working on Blue Valentine and created the most profound exploration of relationships I have seen in years.  Lisa Chodolenko also created something beautiful in the relationship department with The Kids Are All Right, going beyond couples to explore how the nuclear family can come together and fall apart as they try to find their own personal happiness within the larger family structure.

Best Original Screenplay:  Blue Valentine for having some of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking dialogue this year.  The Kids Are All Right's wit and emotional power comes second.

Best Adapted Screenplay:  Winter's Bone for bringing to life such a visceral tale into a story that looks like it could not belong anywhere but on the screen.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, I would argue, improved on the book and created some truly enchanted moments like Harry and Hermione's dancing scene, that, although not in the book, perfectly belong in the story.

Best Art Direction: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, for finding the most haunting places in England and creating a whimsical, painful space for our three favorite wizards to find themselves, and, in the process, maybe run into a few Horcruxes.

Previous winners:

2010
2009
2008

nwb and AHA

McBone Mini Reviews; Award Season Edition

Black Swan - Unsettling, overwrought ballet thriller about a dancer's descent into mental illness.  Director Darren Aronofsky seems to want to craft his magnum opus, but just about everything feels a little over the top, from the overbearing mother to the overwhelming feeling that nothing is as it seems.  Aronofsky has made a career of twisting the knife handle.  Nothing wrong with seeing Natalie Portman peel the skin off her own finger, but the director is too single minded in his devotion to intensity, and thus takes the tiniest of steps back after his masterful The Wrestler.  Natalie Portman does fine, at times masterful work, but often looks as though she's clutching her bowels.  She will win the Oscar, though.  3.5 McBones

The Fighter - A lively portrait of family drama that ultimately devolves into Rocky III.  Relationships are the strength of this one.  To reach glory in the ring, boxer Micky Ward must first survive his family.  Watch Mark Wahlberg navigate a gauntlet featuring seven trashy sisters, a chain-smoking control freak of a mother (Melissa Leo--sublime!) and a 98 pound, crack-addicted brother (Christian Bale, looking the part).  Fun!  Along for the ride is girlfriend Charlene (the sometimes-insufferable Amy Adams is outstanding), willing to go to the mat for her man and take on the whole lot of them.  These characters are so well drawn, and the actors tear into their parts with such gusto that it's a real shame this isn't the masterpiece it could have been.  As in all boxing movies, the boxing looks super fake.  Mark Wahlberg has a sexy torso, btw.  What can I say?  3.5 McBones

True Grit - Will not occupy a place as one of the great westerns, and probably won't be considered one of the Coen brother's masterworks.  That said, this tale of revenge and unlikely friendship is a top candidate for the McBoner.  Hailee Steinfeld is a force of nature as a vengeful daughter and Jeff Bridges grunts and growls every last shred of dialogue as her cyclopic hired gun.  Along with cheeseball Texas Ranger Matt Damon, they form the most dysfunctional set of Old West comrades imaginable.  Don't miss the climax, one of the most astonishing 15-20 minute sequences you'll ever see in film--with snakes!  4.5 McBones


127 Hours - Claustrophobic, bone-crunching agony.  Rarely have I squirmed and flinched in a theatre like I did with 127 Hours.  James Franco is perfection as a hiker trapped in a cave, and Danny Boyle, pulling no punches, gives us a film that, unlike Slumdog Millionaire, is award-worthy.  Falters when Boyle tries to craft too tidy a cinematic package out of a true event.  4.0 McBones

Catfish - A New York City photographer gets involved with a uber-talented family of Minnesota bohemians.  That's all I'm giving away.  Stop wasting time and go watch one of the finest, funniest and most baffling pieces of documentary filmmaking I've ever seen, a must-see for anyone who has spent one second nosing around Facebook.  4.5 McBones

The King's Speech - An inspiring story of triumph against a backdrop of looming war.  I'm not much of a Colin Firth fan, but he and Geoffrey Rush are dazzling as pupil/mentor trying to rid a king of a debilitating speech condition and save England from the clutches of Nazi evil.  Also, I love Helena Bonham Carter.  Her presence is worth at least one McBone in any movie.  4.0 McBones

Blue Valentine - You know why Michelle Williams is about the best actor out there?  Because she never appears to be acting.  Contrast her performance with Ryan Gosling's in this small, eloquently spun tale of curdled love.  Gosling turns in a fine performance in his own rite, but one so self-conscious and full of affectations it hardly seems to belong in the same movie.  Somehow, someway, the contrasts balance and together the two leads make sweet music.  Literally.  Derek Cianfrance shows a deft touch in weaving two narratives, past and present, to show us how, in love, things change, people change and Hollywood endings are total bollocks.  May not appeal to those who dislike reality in film.  4.0 McBones

Winter's Bone - Faced with eviction and starvation, a young woman sets off across Missouri's meth country in search of her father.  A survival story anchored by the strength of Jennifer Lawrence's haunted and flawless performance, Director Debra Granik puts on a clinic in storytelling that the big studios need to observe.  Forced into the breadwinner's role, Ree traverses the remote corners of back country society in a desperate, last ditch effort to save her family from total collapse.  There she encounters characters menacing (a local clan of meth cookers), kind (an Army recruiter) or both (her uncle Teardrop, played by John Hawkes with a perfect combo of villainy and compassion).  With so much Hollywood pomp and flash bombarding us--I'm looking at you, Iron Man 2--Winter's Bone is a frightening and much needed glimpse into the lost crevices of America.  4.5 McBones

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McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 - After Chris Columbus manufactured a pair of total duds in debuting the first two Harry Potter adventures to the big screen, Alfonso Cuaron gave the third effort an artist's touch, a welcome breath of sexiness and a sorely needed sense of humor.  HP 3 remains my favorite adaptation in the series, and is the chapter that all subsequent films have had to live up to.  Most have done so.  Happily, the first half of the finale does not disappoint.  I'm not sure there was any good cinematic reason that JK Rowling's lousy final installment of her septilogy should have been split in two, but Potter diehards can rejoice over studio greed since the material has found its way into the competent hands of director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves. The book, which features a gaping 300 page dead zone sandwiched between a fine beginning and end, could have easily been sliced and diced into a single feature film.  That said, 7.1 is a supreme upgrade over the book, in spite of the paucity of the best stuff, namely: Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith.

So, here we are in year seven and the bad guys are winning. HP and friends are on the run and trying to piece together the puzzle that will destroy You Know Who once and for all.  Director David Yates gets my applause for making something suspenseful out of Rowling's mess.  The kids (never better as actors, by the way) are dodging Death Eaters and trying to keep out of sight in a world where Harry has been labeled 'Undesirable no. 1'.  Stripping away dialogue and musical scores gives the film an unsettling kind of quiet as the three amigos tiptoe across Great Britain in search of Horcruxes.  Sound boring?  Well, what some might find slow, I found spooky, and there's just enough action to keep things moving along.  Another deft touch is a breathtaking animated sequence that explains the book's rather ponderous plot line about the Deathly Hallows. If Horcruxes and Hallows sound like too much mumbo jumbo, just know that it's really seeing the kids grow up together (and seeing Helena Bonham Carter wreak havoc as a classic villain) that strikes a nerve. This is the third Potter project undertaken by the Yates/Kloves team, and it marks their third success.  Thus I look forward to their next/last effort.  3.5 McBones (my outraged sometimes popular wife disagrees with my rating so much that she wants you to know that she gives it 5.0 McBones)

Elephant - A strange application of Gus van Sant's admittedly formidable artistic talents to a subject of the utmost sensitivity: school shootings. This to me felt nothing like the high school experience and nothing like tragedy, but rather a stringing together of strong visuals and Hitchcockian long takes.  Van Sant builds up to the event in the way Titanic builds up to the sinking.  I don't get it and I didn't like it.  1.0 McBones

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McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

Friday - Touted as a bizarro Boyz in the Hood, Friday is actually three movies rolled into one big fat doobie.  What begins as an amusing go-nowhere comedy about smoking weed on a lazy Friday suddenly becomes a High Noon-inspired race against the clock when our two heroes Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (Chris Tucker) are ordered to deliver the local drug dealer 300 dollars by 10 PM or face getting 'dealt with.'  Another swing brings us home with a coming of age story when Craig faces a tough decision: whether to use his fists or his firearm in dispatching the neighborhood bully.  Annoying fat and fart jokes abound, but Friday overcomes its infantile leanings to deliver a smart comedy loaded with classic characters (notably Tiny Lister as hulking, villainous Deebo) and an important condemnation of the gun violence that plagues many black neighborhoods in LA.  4.0 McBones

Serenity - Summer Glau is a refugee telepath on the run from a government assassin.  She's also mentally unstable and prone to fits of deadly violence.  What makes her so compelling that a crew of misfits would risk almost certain doom in transporting her across the galaxy?  I was told I needed to watch the TV series Firefly for this Joss Whedon flick to make any sense.  I didn't, and I had a hell of a good time anyway.  Jaunty, jokey and imaginative, this sci-fi romp steals from Star Wars, Star Trek and zombie movies in the best ways possible.  Though the acting is roundly bad (Chiwetel Ejiofor, cool and menacing, is a notable exception) and the cgi cheesy as hell, Serenity shows us how a great story (and an ass-kicking young woman) trumps all.  3.5 McBones

Let Me In - Speaking of women kicking ass, Chloe Grace Moretz knocked it out of the park as Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass, and she's at it again as a 12-year-old vampire in an adept yet pointless remake of a genuine modern masterpiece.  Director Matt Reeves treats his material with an artist's touch, but don't dilute your experience with the vastly superior original by watching this first.  3.5 McBones

nwb

McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

The Town - Ben Affleck is good actor, not a great one.  He is handsome, yet not quite Cary Grant handsome.  He is a skilled director, but not quite the auteur.  So in a way, it is perfectly fitting that an effort written, directed and starring himself culminates in The Town.  As far as crime dramas go, The Town ranks as almost excellent.  It also seems like one of those films that, no matter how entertaining, is doomed to be forgotten (no thanks to an utterly forgettable title) in the ever growing pile of very good crime dramas.

Set in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston and touting that hood's proclivity for turning out bank robbers, the film begins with a heist orchestrated by four townie buds sporting skeleton masks.  The caper goes off without a hitch, except that an alarm gets sounded.  The crisis situation leads the gang to take a precautionary hostage in the form of assistant manager, Claire (played to perfection by Rebecca Hall*) for whom our hero, Doug MacRay develops an instant fascination.  Well, Claire comes through shaken but mostly unscathed and little suspecting that she's being stalked by Ben Affleck.  Meanwhile the crime gets the attention of the FBI and soon crack agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) is on the case.  Frawley doesn't take long to link our quartet to the crime in question.  All he needs is time to build his case, as in just enough time for Doug and Claire strike up a romance!

Part of the problem with The Town is how closely it sticks to formula.  Aflleck, the thug with the heart of gold, sees a better future and wants out.  You've seen it before.  And he tries!  Yet no matter how fast he runs, it's never quite fast enough for his past.  This is a guy with a LOT of monkeys on his back, namely his partner (Jeremy Renner as the gang's loose cannon), a drugged up ex (Blake Lively, slutty and all but unintelligable), his imprisoned father (Chris Cooper, grufflly superb in his 5 minutes) and his de facto crime boss (Pete Postlethwaite as the most terrifying florist you'll ever encounter).  Doug wants nothing more than to book it out of town with his best lady, but it seems like there is always that one last job to do...or else.  Oh, and the last job is worth sticking around for, by the way.  It's a doozy. 

Affleck manages to breathe relatively fresh life into a oft-told tale, and his costars do their part to elevate the film to near excellence.  I want to rave about this movie, and my rating is a good one.  If only The Town weren't so, I don't know, Afflecky.  4.0 McBones


The Devil's Backbone - Loved Pan's Labyrinth?  You'll love this just as much!  Taking place in an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, Guillermo del Toro uses this setting to spin one of the spookiest ghost stories ever crafted.  As a horror piece, TD'sB is masterful, but del Toro always gives your brain something extra to chew on.  Hit up Netflix, turn off the lights and wait for the one who sighs to come a-calling.  4.5 McBones

nwb

*Rebecca Hall meets my 3 criteria for supreme beauty:
1) Long, brown hair
2) Brown eyes
3) Fucked up teeth

McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Zombies

Survival of the Dead - I don't want to say his best days are behind him, but George Romero's long creative peak seems to be on a slow downward descent.  That said, I will see any Romero movie you put in front of me, and Survival of the Dead is a decided improvement over his previous ...of the Dead entry, the lackluster Diary of the Dead.  Two feuding families have philosphical differences on how to handle the zombie problem on the island they inhabit.  One patriarch is exiled to the mainland.  On his way back, he makes a few friends who are, conveniently, armed to the teeth.  Without giving away too much, the opposing parties meet, sparks fly and people get eaten.

I love how dependable Romero zombies are, like old friends who show up every few years (and want to eat your intestines).  Slow, lumbering, decaying and dumb, their strength is in numbers.  Oh, one of them will occasionally exhibit some rudimentary intelligence, but ultimately a Romero zombie exists to show us how depraved and despicable humans are as a race.  As long as people are assholes, Romero will have a job.  The Hatfields and McCoys theme of Survival may not be the most current, but it does hearken to some of the dipshit bickering seen daily on Capitol Hill.  Keep 'em coming, George.  Official McBone Rating: 3.0 McBones

Also seen

Resident Evil: Afterlife - Generally speaking, I prefer zombie movies in which people actually get eaten.  Unless some entrails are being pulled from a gaping abdomen, I usually come away disappointed.  Not this time!  Milla Jovovich is back as Alice (I hope I keep getting to say that for a long time), the ass kickingest zombie killer alive.  I'm not sure how to explain the plot, other than she and a handful of other survivors are holed up in a prison and trying to escape.  Did I mention the prison is under siege by...the living dead?  Oh, and Alice has lost the superpowers she had acquired as a guinea pig for the vile Umbrella Corporation, though you would never know it by the way she makes those dead folks deader. By now the continuity of this franchise is a wreck. More or less it feels like they're just doing whatever tickles their fancies. I don't care, just as long as they keep doing it and Milla is involved.  Ooh, and I almost forgot!  RE 4 is filmed in spectacular 3D.  Watch out you don't get splattered!  3.0 McBones

Seen for the umpteenth time

Spider-Man: Highly competent comic book movie with an annoying villain (Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin).  This series is a delight to watch if only for the luminous Rosemary Harris as Aunt May. 3.5 McBones

Spider-Man 2: Comic book movie nirvana with an awesome villain (Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus). Sits atop the list of greatest comic adaptations ever. 4.5 McBones

nwb

McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

Get Low: Before I go ahead and call Get Low the best movie of the year (and I will), let me first admit several biases I took into the film:

1) Hermits (one of several subcategories of Old Men with Beards) are awesome.

2) Robert Duvall is awesome (cases in point: To Kill a Mockingbird, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I and II, Lonesome Dove).

3) Bill Murray is awesome (Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation).

3) Sissy Spacek, perhaps the most underrated actor of her day, is awesome (Badlands, Carrie, Coal Miner's Daughter, Affliction).

With all that talent gathered, expectations entering the cineplex were high.  To date, I call Get Low the best movie of the year.  Generally, critics have been flattering.  That they haven't been positively beaming is baffling to me.

The premise of the story is simple and based on true events.  An old hermit (Duvall), in a fit of affability, wants to throw a living funeral for himself.  The town undertaker (Murray) is nearly broke and sees an opportunity to cash in.  Along the way, we learn the hermit has a dark secret (what self respecting hermit doesn't?) involving Sissy Spacek and a portrait of an old flame he keeps by his bedside.  That's all I'm saying about plot.  The point of Get Low is to provide an excuse (and a flawless script) for gifted actors to do their respective things on the way to revealing the secret.  Duvall is perfection as the wheezing, bearded recluse, Felix Bush.  Murray, a borderline sleazeball who keeps a flask handy, is a used car salesman before there were used cars; watch him show off a collection of coffins like a fleet of dressed up Ford Pintos.  Spacek timidly navigates much of the film (in a good way), until old memories finally get her guns a-blazin'.  And hand the McBoner for best supporting actor to Bill Cobbs for his part as the preacher who knows the secret.  Felix wants him to lead the service, and it's a joy to watch these lumpy, grizzled old buzzards go at it.  Tying the characters together is the somewhat innocuous Lucas Black, who gets the uneviable job of playing the straight man among eccentrics.  I tip my hat to him not being too vanilla as the undertaker's assistant.

Well, all of this hubbub leads to the preemptive funeral, complete with a raffle (the prize is Felix's property), a bluegrass band and throngs of townsfolk.  The 'climax,' which fails to deliver the shock we may have been waiting for as an audience, is not so much a letdown as a natural conclusion, an overdue answer that shuts the door on one life and opens another.

Get Low features some of the best sets I've laid eyes on in a movie.  Never for one moment did this rustic Tennessee town and wilderness look anything but authentic.  Credit director Aaron Schneider for populating it with pros working in rare form.  Official McBone Rating: 5.0 McBones.  Get Low easily merits a McBone Must See.

Also seen

Mrs. Henderson Presents: No one (with the possible exception of Maggie Smith) plays a snob with more gusto than Judi Dench.  Snobby, however, should not be confused with stuffy.  In Mrs. Henderson Presents Dame Judi, in diametric opposition to the role she played to stuffy perfection in Pride and Prejudice, is a vivacious snob who is immediately bored with her recently acquired status of widow.  To combat ennui, she buys a theater and hires Bob Hoskins to produce a stage show.  When their collaborative efforts sputter, Mrs. Henderson suggests that the ladies, like at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, shed a few superfluous garments.  Voila!  The show is a smash, especially among G.I.s.  World War II is raging, and the show is sweet refuge for horny soldiers.  Mrs H. Presents is a worthy comedy with 'delicious' (if slightly hammy) chemistry between its two leads.  The backdrop of war gives the film a welcome gravity, but the intrusion of melodrama surrounding Kelly Reilly (the show's star performer) and an amorous private undermines an otherwise delightful film.  Extra credit for having the guts to show not just breasts, but the male member as well.  3.0 McBones.

nwb

McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

Enter the Dragon (1973): I'm not going to say this is the one that started it all, not with decades of westerns, spy, gangster and kung fu flicks behind it.  Nor will I call it the end all, be all of its genre.  There have simply been too many great subsequent films.  Still, Enter the Dragon certainly helped transform our perceptions about martial arts movies.  No longer did we have to see them as grainy-looking imports.  Now they could operate on a big budget and be produced by American studios.  This is not to say American acceptance legitimized what the Asians had been doing perfectly well all along.  Rather it opened a broader market in the west, especially among fans who already liked spaghetti westerns, Bond movies and the like.

So, how does it rate as a movie?  E the D is nothing short of a masterpiece.  A Shaolin monk (Bruce Lee) is recruited by British intelligence to infiltrate the island of renegade monk, Han, who operates a heroin/prostitution ring.  Lee reluctantly accepts, but finds his own motivation when he learns that his sister was killed by some of Han's men (cue requisite revenge narrative).  His ticket to the island comes in the form of an invitation to Han's martial arts tournament, really a means for Han to import new talent to his crime empire.  Along the way, Lee meets fellow participants Roper (John Saxon, sporting a toupee for the ages) and Williams (Jim Kelly), ass kickers with hearts of gold.  Together they take on Han and his minions.

All right, so the acting is hammy, the dubbing is the worst since The Good the Bad and the Ugly and there is a definite pervasive camp factor.  None of that is bad.  All of it works.  And throughout, we have Bruce Lee, who performs an explosive two hour ballet in his rise to superstardom.  In a movie with much to recommend it, he is the gravitational center.  From his physique to his facial expressions to his epic battle against the island guard, you simply cannot take your eyes off of him.  Credit director Robert Clouse for pointing the camera at his star and letting it roll.  That Lee died before the film's release remains one of the great damnable shames in cinematic history.

I've watched E the D 20 times in my life at least.  It keeps getting better.  Official McBone Rating: 4.5 McBones (loses a half point for killing off the cool black character first).  Enter the Dragon is a certified McBone Must-See

Also seen

Cashback (2006): A young artist breaks up with his girlfriend and suddenly can't sleep...until he finds a shiny new girlfriend.  Along the way we learn of his obsession with the female form.  Oh, and he has the ability to stop time. If you're thinking that doesn't sound like much of a plot, I'm with you. There are some truly poetic moments in this movie, and some nice comedic touches.  Overall, Cashback is little more than a male fantasy and a thinly veiled excuse to denude women on screen, stop time and ogle.  2.5 McBones.

nwb

McBone Mini-Reviews; The McBone Week in Movies

McBone Mini-Reviews are back!  Hopefully on a more permanent and regular basis. 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Anyone who has ever played too much Mario Bros. will revel in watching dweeby Michael Cera take on seven evil exes in the name of scoring a babe who is way (way!) out of his league.  In a character-driven tale, the acting is uniformly pretty awesome.  Cera is reliably awkward as the hero, but the real stars are the scene-chewing Kieran Culkin as his sage gay roommate, Jason Schwartzman as the seventh boyfriend and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is merely the gorgeous, acid-tounged girlfriend with hair that is pink, then blue, then green (think Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine), until she pulls a sledgehammer out of her handbag and starts swinging.  

I'm not going to say this one is especially profound or important.  I don't think it will change the course of cinema or make you rethink your life.  What it does is exhilirate.  Get your ass to a theater, nestle it comfortably into a seat and enjoy the ride.  Official McBone Rating: 4.0 McBones

Also seen

Resident Evil - Speaking of video games, who wouldn't want to see Milla Jovovich kick some zombie ass in an underground research facility nicknamed the Hive?  Best of all is the computer program who runs the place.  Bent on containing the virus and letting no one out alive, the Queen (voiced in the creepy, cherubic prepubescent voice of an English girl) is the most murderous disembodied voice since HAL.  This film is everything it should be, but most of all shameless.  3.0 McBones

Synecdoche, New York - Philip Seymour Hoffman is an anxiety-ridden playwright whose wife (the transcendent Catherine Keener) up and takes off with their daughter.  Subsequently, he earns a Macarthur Fellowship and begins work on his magnum opus. The work slowly consumes him and becomes a parable for the way we construct and reconstruct the story of our lives.  Watching Hoffman navigate his love affairs recalls Fellini and 8 1/2, but the ghostly dream state that our protagonist inhabits is all Charlie Kaufman, making his directorial debut.  While certainly intellectual, Kaufman and Synecdoche skirt pretension and always entertain.   4.5 McBones

nwb