Doubt

I've been kind of interested in seeing Doubt ever since it came out, but what with one thing and another, I never quite got around to it. When it popped up on TV a couple of nights ago, though, I thought I'd stay up and watch.

The titular doubt is what we have as a viewer over whether priest Philip Seymour Hoffman is up to a bit of cloister-room kiddy-fiddling, given that he apparently has taken an unhealthy interest in the only black boy in an Irish/Italian neighbourhood church school.

Meryl Streep launches a bit of a character assassination, even going so far as telling the boy's mother.

The story trots along well enough to keep you interested and guessing. And the performances are not bad overall, though it's far from the best performance I've seen from PSH. Amy Adams was fine, though, and Meryl was okay as a vile old nun.

The direction -- by the writer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning original play and this screenplay, Moonstruck writer John Patrick Shanley -- was a bit pedestrian.

For me, though, ultimately the film was let down by its ending, which kind of made me wish I hadn't bothered with the film at all.

Numbers: 44 out of 100.

25th Hour

As a longtime semi-fan of Spike Lee, I'd had 25th Hour on my "to watch" list ever since it first came out. I was interested in the setting in post-9/11 New York, keen to see Ed Norton, willing to pay money for another great Lee flick. So even though all the details added up right, for some reason it's taken until now for me to get around to watching this film.

The basic premise is simple enough: one evening in the presence of Ed Norton, who, the following day, is going to prison on a drugs rap. He hangs with his father, his girlfriend, a couple of old schoolfriends, his dog, his colleague... What we have here, ladies and gents, is a character study and a treatise on the value of relationships.

The performances are almost all strong, with really only one duff note. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper are good, as you'd expect, Brian Cox even better, and Rosario Dawson very appealing. The weak link is the drastically overrated (well she must be rated highly by someone since she gets so much damn work) Anna Paquin. Nothing of her character rings true -- from the oh-so-obviously-fake tattoo, to her role as a schoolgirl, to... well, it all sucks.

Paquin's appearance is a shame, because it really hurts what was otherwise a pretty good movie -- funnily enough, much as I felt Jodie Foster's did in Lee's Inside Man. Does Spike suffer the same problem as Tarantino, in that he can't write convincing roles for women? It's sure starting to look that way...

Scores
Acting: 12 (severely penalized for Paquin)
Story: 13
Direction: 15
Enjoyment: 14
Involvement: 15
Total: 69

Good Night, And Good Luck.

It was with a degree of trepidation that I approached the George Clooney-helmed Good Night, And Good Luck., so bitterly disappointed had I been with his directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. And on the surface of it, a parallel could easily be drawn between the two films.

Both movies deal with that classic perceived Cold War threat to America, Communism; and both deal with behind-the-scenes life in the world of television -- a world, of course, that Clooney knows only too well, albeit in another era.

That, I am delighted to say, is where the similarities end. Good Night, And Good Luck. is almost flawless if not always thrilling, telling a small story of CBS TV anchorman Ed Murrow taking on Senator Joe McCarthy at the time of his "witch hunts", seeking out supposed communists across the USA.

The film is beautifully shot; it has a message that is probably more relevant today than it was in the 1950s, when this true story is set; and the acting is perfectly understated by the strong ensemble cast, which includes Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey Jr, Frank Langella, and Clooney himself, and is headed up by the wonderful David Strathairn, who surely would have picked up the Oscar had it not been for Philip Seymour Hoffman's knockout performance in Capote.

And this film also knows how not to overstay its welcome, clocking in at less than an hour and a half once you take out the end credits. Perfect!

Scores
Acting: 16
Story: 16
Direction: 14
Enjoyment: 15
Involvement: 16
Total: 77

Capote

My knowledge of Truman Capote pretty much begins and ends with what I learned during Capote. Of course, I already knew that he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood and that both of those books had been turned into successful movies. But beyond that, zilch, zero, nada, niente. But I'd been looking forward to the Oscar-winning tour de force performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the eponymous scribe.

The plot is simple: It's 1959, and author Capote goes on a magazine-column mission to report on the shock random murder of an entire family in a small town in the middle of nowhere. But when the perpetrators are tracked down and arrested, Capote's involvement grows, as does the scope of his article, which turns into a book: "the first non-fiction novel".

But he can't finish his book until the legal process is over. The ending of the story dictates the ending of his story, you see. And a string of appeals drags the process out and tries Capote's patience. It is here that we start to see Capote as nothing more than a self-serving arrogant prick, and yet his charm and intelligence are such that you know he would be good fun to hang out with, as long as the booze supply was limited.

I thought this was a truly great film. Naturally Hoffman was a standout. But then he is probably the finest actor working in the world today. Catherine Keener, as Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was great, too. I think she is a fantastic actor, and time after time I get so pissed off at how underused she is in everything. People should go to the gallows for the talent they waste when employing her for a job, seriously. And Chris Cooper, too: great job.

In fact, this has landed a spot in my list of Films You Should Watch If You Want To Know How To Act: it's right up there with Citizen Kane and Raging Bull. Kudos to Hoffman.

The film doesn't fully hold up to the lead performance, but then how could it? But I do believe that in years to come we will ask ourselves, "How the hell did Brokeback Mountain beat this to Best Movie?"

The Such As They Are score for this flick is a shotgun-pumping 82 out of 100.

Last Party 2000

Capote star and Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman fronts Last Party 2000,
a documentary following the 2000 US elections, the ones that Bush and his brother rigged so that Dubya would win the presidency.

The film is pretty much what you would expect, given that we all know the outcome only too well, but it is interesting, and there are some great quotes, like this one from GWB himself: "If we don't win the state of Florida, my brother Jeb will be in big trouble." Oh, that plays great now, don't it, Georgie Boy? There are also celeb talking heads such as Noam Chomsky, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Bill Maher, and others.

Somewhat of its time, this film, but interesting nonetheless. 62 points.