2)Make sure your ears are clean. Otherwise a glacial chunk of wax might crack loose mid-conversation, tumble out and land squarely on your shoulder. It does not make a good impression.

3)Even though you’re excited to be talking to a cute girl, be sure you’re sitting comfortably. If, say, your pants get bunched up there won’t be much room to hide if said girl brushes up close to you and you, to steal a phrase from the stage, press your face against the curtain. Try to keep eye contact with the girl, and try not to look down at the thing. If you do, she might follow your eyes and see it too.

And also, make sure that if these things do happen, they don’t happen within four minutes of one another. Man…

The Invisible Circus is a lame whimper of a film. And a film festival film? A Sundance film festival film? How? In what universe and what alternate festival? The "crappy studio movie" festival? The "all these movies are devoid of heart and shamless and don’t have an honest bone in them" festival? Maybe in the "Cameron Diaz gives a bad performance" festival, and if that was the case The Invisible Circus would be the opening night film, the closing night film and play every show every day of the festival.

The idea is sound enough. A young girl goes searching for her sister’s memory in Europe and in the process becomes the person her sister never could and could I raise a quick complaint? They handed out a copy of the book that the movie is based on as well as a copy of the soundtrack before the screening. Never has there been such a waste of paper and plastic.

Bad bad bad manipulative bad movie. I don’t know how much energy I can waste writing about it because I don’t know how much energy I have left but I will say this; way past shame on everyone involved at Fine Line for getting this dreck into theaters. The money alone spent on plodding around Europe (they go to friggin’ Amsterdam and we get one whole shot of a canal; anyone with 1/2th a brain would’ve faked the canal and shot someplace else and saved a shit load of money) could’ve given an enterprising young director – or hell, a smart, older director – the budget for an entire film.

Diaz is bad, wandering around terrorist headquarters (really and oh Christ…) and of course being way too hot to be anywhere near terrorists, even if their leader looks like an Abercrombe model. Evidently terrorist organizations in early ‘70s Europe only existed in blue filter; the places look like smurfs were ground up and the drippings pressed into the walls and the little particles blown up into the air. The only one that escapes unscathed here is lead Jordana Brewster. She’s undoubtedly gorgeous, and struggling against a weak script she shows that someday, with better material, she’s going to leave a mark. A great big dirty wet mark…oh I’m so sorry…

The title is lame, the movie is lame and the goddamn forest spirits should rise up and strike down the Fine Line publicity department for wasting all that paper on handing out books that’ll never get read. I’m sure it’s a fine novel (Kirkus is quoted on the jacket and they’re always right) but who’s going to want to read it after seeing this bland, empty film?

And that Kirkus comment was the Gibraltar of sarcasm. On to the next movie.

There are a lot of people flipping for The Business of Strangers. I don’t quite know why. It’s not that it’s an original story. It’s not that it’s well directed (it is well shot and there’s a difference between them and more on that later). It’s got a great performance by Stockard Channing and a best-yet one by Julia Stiles. Considering the other stuff Stiles has been in, that ain’t saying a whole lot. I do kinda like 10 Things, though…high school girls, man. High school girls rule.

The Business of Strangers feels like a play, and not just because of the contained location (the whole thing pretty much takes place in an airport hotel). I don’t know if it started out as one, but that’s the medium that would’ve suited this story best. A play would’ve allowed the energy from Channing and Stiles’ sparring to snap off the stage and electrify the audience. As a movie it’s pretty lifeless – partially the story’s fault, partially the director’s fault – and the big messages and the back and forth character snapping is too obvious.

I want to like the film more than I do because Channing is so damn good in it. She’s an actress that deserves her day. She always turns in good work, often great work, yet she’s still just outside the general public conscience. Say her name and 9 times out of 10 you’ll get a blank look followed by "oh…the Pink Lady." Well, yes, but also a whole lot more. She’s been doing tremendous theater work for years, and she’s…Jesus she’s beautiful here. She’s just got radiance to her, and she looks better in The Business of Strangers than she has in years.

Channing puts Stiles to shame in the class department. It’s got nothing to do with the characters they’re playing; it’s how you come across on screen. Channing has grace. Stiles still has that princesness that has come across in all her other characters. Though she’s pretty good in The Business of Strangers and finally shows just why she deserves any attention there’s still something missing. It might be something that comes with age but I don’t think so. Heather Matarazzo is the very definition of awkward in most of her roles yet you still get the feeling that the girl has balls, that she’ll totally give herself over to the role, scars and all. Kristen Dunst is the same way. Stiles has a lot of Greg Kinnear in her; you always feel like she’s always conscious that the camera is there. Kinnear, at least, is an actor that’s go the balls to play weak.

The film is shot incredibly well, especially for a low budget feature. It’s not directed well, though. Just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean it’s good, and all those beautiful, saturated images can’t make up for the fact that he first half of the film is deathly dull, dead-snail paced and both boring and obvious. The movie finds its legs as it goes on, but it doesn’t get any less obvious.

That obviousness kills any tension the story might muster, and it ends up making the whole affair inconsequential. There’s no real reason to care when you’re 1800 steps ahead of the people on screen. In the beginning, in the middle and in the end The Business of Strangers is a weak film that’s buoyed by another great Stockard Channing performance and a she-might-actually-amount-to-something-some-day one by Stiles. She’s definitely got the looks and the talent just might be there. If she’s really going to do it, she’s gotta learn how to leg go of herself and be that person in front of the camera.

I picked Brother as one of my top ten films I’d like to see at Sundance because I’ve never seen a Takeshi film. Everyone tells me he’s the bompity bomb….wait, no, that’s my 8 year old cousin describing gay porn. Wait, no…that’s my friend Jack describing gay porn. Wait, shoot, no…that’s my friend Jack describing my 8 year old cousin. Oh wait…yeah, I think that’s the devil knocking on the door.

Takeshi movies are supposed to be experiences, and Brother is definitely an experience. Never before has there been so hollow a sentence...It’s a very particular, not-sure-if-anyone-else-is-gonna-dig-this-but-I-do experience. I did dig it, but I know that it’s a film for a select audience.

Shoot, though, why should I couch it? I like that the film peels out slowly and I like that there’s no typical gangster flash here. I like that nothing is 100% clear and I sure as hell love the bad ass that Beat plays, a silent Yakuza banished to America after disgracing his clan in his homeland. I also like Omar Epps here, and I haven’t really cared for him before. I’ve found him bland in the past, but here he’s the perfect friend to Beat. Not foil, though. A lesser film would’ve played up the whole "he’s black, he’s Japanese" deal. Not this one; Beat and Epps are just two guys that grow into friends, and their relationship grounds the film, the real heart of the piece.

Lots of violence here, but it’s purposeful violence. When we see all the awful, heinous stuff it leaves an impact. It’s not gratuitous. It’s film violence in the best sense possible; it makes up shudder, shocks the hell out of us. It accomplishes what so few gangster films do; it infuses us with equal senses of wonder and disgust with the gang lifestyle. Brother isn’t for everyone but it hit me right.

John Robie out.