What the Flick

GREENFINGERS... is the probably the best movie you've never heard of produced by Trudie Styler (Mrs Sting to you). It stars Clive Owen as a hardened prisoner whose life is changed by a garden. It's one of those based on a true story, quirkly feelgood Brit films that also stars Helen Mirren. Clive is just one of the most manly men around (did you see him in King Arthur?), making almost anything he's in worth it, but this transcends its Clive-itude to be a fine movie on its own.

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE... a second effort from the director of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, this singing & dancing take on the classic Pride & Prejudice sets the story in Amritsar, India, where the Bakshi family's 4 daughters must be married off... according to their mother. Enter handsome American Mr Darcy (Martin Henderson), and the wealthy Bingleys, Indians who live in London. Sparks fly between Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) and Darcy, while her older sister falls hard for Mr Bingley (LOST's and Barbara Hershey's Naveen Andrews) and vice versa. It's more light-hearted and Bollywood lovable than full of deep emotion, but this story is evergreen. Of course, lately I love everything Indian so much that I don't even care that my dentist's answering service is in Bangalore, but I found this a fun movie for a hot summer night.

KISS THEM FOR ME... from 1957, stars Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, and Suzy Parker in what is billed as a "hilarious romp" involving Navy airmen on leave in San Francisco from Pearl Harbor and the women who love them. Though directed by Stanley Donen, the film feels like 3 different stories patched together, Grant has one of his very rare off performances, Mansfield just comes across as "poor man's Marilyn Monroe" (she may have been a dumb blonde in real life, but she couldn't play one half as well as MM), and Suzy has the thankless role of love interest. Skip this trip down memory lane.

GREENFINGERS... is probably the best movie you've never heard of produced by Trudie Styler (Mrs Sting to you). It stars Clive Owen as a hardened prisoner whose life is changed by a garden. It's one of those based on a true story, quirkly feelgood Brit films that also stars Helen Mirren. Clive is just one of the most manly men around (did you see him in King Arthur?), making almost anything he's in worth it, but this transcends its Clive-itude to be a fine movie on its own.

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE... a second effort from the director of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, this singing & dancing take on the classic Pride & Prejudice sets the story in Amritsar, India, where the Bakshi family's 4 daughters must be married off... according to their mother. Enter handsome American Mr Darcy (Martin Henderson), and the wealthy Bingleys, Indians who live in London. Sparks fly between Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) and Darcy, while her older sister falls hard for Mr Bingley (LOST's and Barbara Hershey's Naveen Andrews) and vice versa. It's more light-hearted and Bollywood lovable than full of deep emotion, but this story is evergreen. Of course, lately I love everything Indian so much that I don't even care that my dentist's answering service is in Bangalore, but I found this a fun movie for a hot summer night.

...could make me like FRIENDS WITH MONEY, which was seriously off key. I just didn't get it. I mean, I get the title, but the movie was mostly nonsensible.

Set in LA, it's the story of 4 friends, 3 married and with money (and now I'm wondering, is that some sort of not so subtle social commentary?) and one without (Jennifer Aniston). The married friends are a clothing designer (Frances McDormand) married to a fey but not gay guy, some sort of family money (Joan Cusack), and half of a husband and wife screenwriting team (Catherine Keener). Each was essentially a selfish bitch in her own right (they were so annoying and interchangeable that I never could get their names straight) who spent most of the ride home from any group event talking about one or all of the other's husbands (or, in the case of single Jennifer, bad life choices). Meanwhile, the one without money deserved to be that way: a pot-smoking underachieving housecleaner who quit her private-school teaching job because the parents were annoying. I hated them all and -- I'll go ahead and say it -- wanted them to die in a wildfire or earthquake or some other California natural disaster, which sounds harsh but in retrospect seems really too good for them.

Remember, oh, last year, when THE SQUID AND THE WHALE came out and you were asking yourself, what is that about? Is it some horror movie about a battle to the death between Orca and some many-tentacled denizen of the deep? Is it some heartwarming animal story like MARCH OF THE PENGUINS? Is it the story of a petit bourgois literary-type family living in Park Slope in 1986 as the marriage falls apart and the kids take it hard? Oh, I bet you were so not asking yourself that last question. And yet, if you had, ...

Before I get back into the fall theater-going, I have to pass along a few DVD tips. Two to catch if you missed them in theaters are 16 BLOCKS, starring Bruce Willis and Mos Def, and INSIDE MAN, starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster.

I thought 16 BLOCKS was the more compelling drama. It revolves around a crew of NYC cops and detectives, one of whom (Bruce Willis) is for the most part a broken down alcoholic who commands no respect from his colleagues...

You know that whole "do see, don't see DVD" I tried to accomplish? It got kind of behind, particularly because some of the DVDs were just so wretched that I couldn't even bother (I'm looking at you, Rumor Has It). Well, here are a few new ones that may be of interest. Or not.

First up, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Wanted to like it, enjoyed some of it (especially Robert Downey Jr.'s performance), but overall it's a big fat B. There is a fine line to be walked mixing dark humor and lots of violence, and writer/director Shane Black has tried -- and come close -- before. His Last Boy Scout was so loud,

A Scanner Darkly is a druggy tale based on another identity-questioning story by Philip K. Dick (others, if you're interested, are Blade Runner -- the best -- along with Paycheck, Total Recall, and most recently, Next). Directed by Richard Linklater and shot in a crazy style that animates the real actors...