Hey folks, Harry here... Ya know... People often times ask me if Robie was dropped on the head, got hit on the head or worked in a glue or spray paint factory during those early formulative years.... But you know.... The truth is stranger than that. There is no reason why Robie is the way Robie is.... He simply is. Now I know the real John Robie, and I'm not entirely sure if his opening is creative fiction, the "God's honest truth" or a delusion that he believes to be fact. BUT, his reviews... well I guarantee they are his and his alone. Personally, I can't wait to see SEXY BEAST.... Here ya go...

‘Kay guys. It’s past midnight and I’m in a bar on the outskirts of Heber City, Utah getting drunk off weak beer as Willie Nelson smokes out of the jukebox. The table is sticky, and the guy at the end of the bar who had to sponsor me so I could get a drink just told all his friends that I’m John Elway. "Hey Elway, come say hi!" No, and now all his friends think that John Elway is a dick. I’ve single handedly tarnished the name of a national hero for a small pocket of men in a small town in Utah, and I feel great. The waitress just brought back my tip, telling me that I paid too much for my last beer. Beauty.

When I went to the young gal at the front counter of our motor lodge and asked her about this bar she told me it was open late. "Is it a gay bar," I asked. All the blood rushed out of her face and I swear to God her dog barked at me. "No, I’m not, it’s just the name…," and before I could get any of it out she said, flatly, "there are no gay bars in Heber City." Moriarty and I are staying in the same room. So now, as Heber City lore goes down, John Elway and his gay lover shacked up at the Hotel 9 Motor Lodge in mid-January of 2001. Hell yeah.

I thought there’d be more cursing in this bunch of pieces seeing as the 3.5% beer is slowly climbing up my wall of sobriety but, as I go over them, they actually sound a lot more refined than my usual piss drivel. Then again, maybe not. So here you all go. Day four of the Sundance Film Festival. Sexy Beast, Double Whammy, Lift and L.I.E.

How spoiled are the Brits? While cockney-tinged, uber-modern crime capers are a dime a dozen over there they’re still a relatively new treat in the States. We Yanks can also appreciate the added charm of the accent; gangsters just seem that much cooler when telling someone to "fook uf" or calling him or her a righteous cunt. It’s kinda the same appeal of kung fu flicks. When everyone is Chinese and all the dialogue is subtitled it’s like a window for us Americans to look into a different world. When American guys try to do kung fu, it’s a lot harder to capture that feeling of other-wordly magic. Steven Segal sure ain’t Chow Yun Fat.

So that sense of appeal through distance is a great part of the fun of Brit crime flicks. A simple charm point can’t get you through a whole movie if the movie is bad, though, and thankfully Sexy Beast is both charming in this sense and exceedingly well made thanks to director Jonathan Glazer, a Brit commercial and video director. He’s done clips for everyone from Jamiroquai to Radiohead to the Olsen Twins (their new, going-for-something pop ballad "Feel these Jugs"). Glazer’s a guy that knows how to embrace all the tricks made possible in modern film, and he never lets those tricks get in the way of telling the story. Very much like contemporary Guy Ritchie he uses these tools to tell the story because he has to; to do it any other way would be to rob the movie of the ragging, energetic life it so well snaps off the screen.

The Ritchie comparison follows in Sexy Beast’s story as well. If you took Turkish from Snatch and aged him about 20 years you’d have Gal (Ray Winstone), a gangster that’s left the life behind him and retired with his wife to a villa in Spain. When Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) comes along "things come to an ugly, darkly comic end as Gal tries to break ties with the past he so strongly tried to escape." The PR guy told me to say that.

The film wouldn’t have worked if the performances hadn’t been this strong. Both Winstone and Kingsley are incredible. Winstone is like a Brit Gandolfini, funny in a disturbing way yet still endearing. Even when he’s sweating bullets he’s wink-wink charming. Kingsley is an evil, evil bastard, just sick and scary and freakish. He takes the character to such an nth degree that it’s funny in that oh my God this is sick kind of way. You’re never sure if you’re supposed to laugh or be scared. It also bears mentioning that critic Jeffrey Wells pops up as an evil crime lord and does surprisingly strong work.

There is a difference between this and Ritchie’s work, and it’s that this is more emotionally resonant. There’s a real reason to care here, and when things get violent it’s real, real ugly. No Tarantino laughs. The film ends a little too quickly, tying everything up way before all the emotional gut punches have healed over. In the end it’s a strong, small little character study of a gangster film. Hopefully this will be the springboard for a long career from Glazer. Hopefully we’ll get to see a whole lot more of Gladstone in the future. Hopefully this finds some success when it’s released in the spring.

And hopefully I’ll never have to sit through Double Whammy again, because it’s a dreadful, plodding, unfunny affair. Lemme take a couple of breaths and get my head back on right. I’m still being thrown off by the crud waves that seeped out of the projection booth during the film and burrowed their way into my grey matter. Tom DiCillo turned my brain to jelly.

Characters who dress in garish yellow and red suits because "the 70s is back, yo" are not funny. They’re not funny if they shave their eyebrows like Vanilla Ice. How timely. While you’re at it, why don’t you whip out those Viagra and Riverdance jokes too?

Lame is the word that comes to mind. Over and over and over. Everyone seems to be phoning in favors here. Steve Buscemi is wasted. Elizabeth Hurley looks hot and that’s about it. Luis Guzman has such a great voice and mannerisms that he’d be good reading the phone book. Maybe that should be DiCillo’s next project. It’d certainly have more heart than Double Whammy.

Ray Pluto (Dennis Leary) is a cop with a bad back and said bad back gives out during a hold up at the local Burger Barn. Jesus…9 times out of 10 a movie with a generic fast foot joint in it is a bad movie. It’s the Ernie Hudson rule; 9 times out of 10 Ernie Hudson being in the movie sends up the flares that you’re watching a bad, bad movie. Pluto’s back goes out, a kid grabs his gun and saves the day, Pluto is publicly embarrassed, he goes to see chiropractor Ann (Hurley), the two fall in love yadda yadda yadda and the "double" in the title comes to life because the super in Pluto’s building gets knifed while Pluto and Ann are making love. The funny suit guys inadvertently make the thugs that knifed the super think they witnessed the murder and I’m not going to talk about the plot anymore because I’m not fuckng Variety. Oh I heard that.

The film isn’t funny, it’s not charming, it’s grating and it never once deals with the issues at hand. Guzman’s daughter pays off guys to kill him. Well, shoot, shouldn’t we maybe see why? Because she’s the typical, disenfranchised little daughter? Because there’s one scene where she screams "I hate you daddy" and then storms away? Isn’t this maybe something that should have been developed because, wow, having your dad killed is kinda, like, you know, a major thing?

It’s not that I can’t stand DiCillo. I like Living In Oblivion quite a bit even if the "comments" it makes on the indie film world have all the wit of a six year old that’s been held back in the second grade twice. "Hey, I’m an idiot and I can’t hold a boom mic!" Yeah, but the film was funny and, at times, clever. Double Whammy is neither. Not because it’s a romantic action drama and I’m against DiCillo trying to branch out. Not because it’s too tame, and not because everyone ends up happy and everyone ends up well. Not because I don’t think Leary can carry a film. On the contrary; he deserves a hell of a lot better material than he’s given here. No, I can’t stand Double Whammy because the charm is as fake as half the women in Park City, because the jokes fall flat as Florida, and because the story is as lacking in bare, honest emotions as….

….well, as Lift. Not I’m not going to beat up on the film too bad because it’s still looking for a distributor at the time of this writing but Christ…look, if you make a film that’s ostensibly a gripping drama about a black, inner-city family deeply caught up in the world of shop lifting it should be a) a gripping drama and b) be about the world of shoplifting. Lift is neither. It’s a premise that never gets fleshed out.

The cliches drip out thick like honey. Of course there’s a shooting, of course someone’s pregnant and they’re not sure if they’re ready, of course all the guys who have money are corrupt and evil. The mother/daughter relationship that’s supposed to be at the heart of the film is more concept than realization. The only thing that holds the two together is shoplifting; daughter steals stuff for mom and mom is happy. Why? Why did the relationship get to this point? There’s no real background to it; it’s just an idea.

All I’m looking for at this festival is honesty, and honestly there’s not a genuine moment in the entire film. All the conversations are tightly constructed bullshit save one; there’s a wonderful scene on a stoop between lead Niecy (Kerry Washington) and her boyfriend Angelo (Eugene Byrd) during which she tells him she’s pregnant. If the rest of the film had 1/100th the heart and sad honesty of this scene Lift would’ve been the kind of unflinching study of young black men and women that so many films strive for and so many films fail at. Though Washington is an appealing lead – and she’s going to go places once she gets her teeth into better material – she can’t hope to help this mess. This is dishonest, insipid stuff, the kind of film where a lifetime’s worth of problems are solved in a simple "I’m here for you" reaching out of the hand, the kind of film where what should have been a sad, tear-jerking funeral scene turns into a fashion show. Literally, and it’s one of the silliest, most ham handed attempts at showing just what the character is going through that I’ve ever seen. I’m sure the filmmakers would argue that the fantasy/nightmare fashion show scene shows us the audience just how painful the shoplifting lifestyle is for Niecy, how self-destructive it has become. Well great, but that’s a pitch meeting concept; when you actually go and make the movie, you’ve got to convincingly show the pain building up to that moment. If you don’t, you’re turned what should be shattering into something silly.

Lift is the kind of film where the main character’s friend calls up and tells her, over the phone, that her boyfriend is dead and then, just to let you know how much of a dolt she really is, says she’ll be right over. Right over?! How about, I dunno, maybe waiting until you come over to tell your best friend that her boyfriend has been shot and killed? That couldn’t happen, though; if it did we wouldn’t get the tension of having Niecy on the phone while the man who killed her boyfriend stands before her. Lift is the kind of movie where the big, thought out shoplifting heist is the most ridiculous caper you or anyone else has ever seen. Lift is a deeply flawed film, and it never once attains the raw honesty it promises in its premise.

Honesty isn’t too much of a problem for the last film of the day, L.I.E. Here we go; time for the big controversy to start about this, a film that deals with an old man/young boy relationship.

My biggest problem with L.I.E. is that it’s doesn’t have enough balls. It doesn’t tread far enough into the dark, scary territory that it promises to explore. It’s still a strong film – more so in the 2nd half, much less so in the 1rst – and one that’s buoyed by two damn near incredible performances. It is ugly? Yes. It is disgusting? Yeah, parts of it are. Is it moving? In a way…in a definite way, yes, yes it is. It’s the most difficult kind of moving, though, because to get to the heart you have to be able to see past mountains of heinous behavior.

The main thing a film like L.I.E. should do is find the soul of people that many would be right in calling monsters. It kinda sorta does succeed, but it’s at a loss to the backbone of the movie itself. By pulling back, by trying too hard to justify the old man/young boy relationship, the film breaks its own legs. It’s easier to show and old man as a human if you don’t see him doing things to little kids and man…do we really want to see that? Ever? It’s not so much an argument about right and wrong as it is an argument about the power of the film itself.

L.I.E. is a story about an old man, Big John (Brian Cox), and a young boy, Howie (Paul Franklin Dano), and a relationship that develops between the two. It’s not love; it’s very pointed and lecherous on Big John’s part. He knows what he’s doing. A quick shot of a young boy on his laptop donning a bunny bonnet and nothing else pretty much confirms this. Howie isn’t so sure what he himself wants. There aren’t many 15 year old boys that are. Big John comes on to Howie, and he plays nice, insisting Howie call him Big John because hey, everyone does. He’ll even let Howie drive his sweet old Olds’ 442, replete with a license plate that reads "BJ."

The film is the growth of Howie and the growth of his relationship with Big John. It’s too corrupt from the beginning, though, and that’s my big problem with the movie. Not corrupt because I think it’s sick. Corrupt because the movie goes to such great lengths to justify the relationship. Howie’s mom dies, his dad is a schmuck that hits him, his best friend pins a crime on him and leaves him high and dry, his dad is carted off to jail; it’s hammered home again and again and again that this kid’s life is shit and that he’s got no one to care for him. So of course he goes to the old man, and of course he mistakes the attention for genuine affection.

That’s the easy way to go, if there is an easy way to go with this. The ballsy way would’ve been to just let the relationship happen, to give the kid a happy, healthy home life and to let him to go Big John not because he has to but because he wants to. That wouldn’t justify the kid’s actions; kids want to drink bleach on dares and beat the shit out of each other. It doesn’t make it right. It just makes it more of a choice. In L.I.E. the relationship with Big John is Howie’s only option, and that’s what really hurts the movie. That and the fact that the end of the film is completely, totally obvious right from the first frame Big John’s young, disenfranchised grandson shows up. Hello American Beauty…

It’s an intense film, one that’s going to spark a lot heated discussions. Good. I like material that makes people think and riles them up. Cox is excellent in his role, just ballsy in how totally he gives himself over to the part and really going out on a limb. Dano is just as good, playing the confused, angry kid better than many that have come before. I just wish that the movie had left these characters alone enough to act on their own and not pushed them together so conveniently.

Well it’s closing time so now I’m going home. Hopefully Moriarty is sleeping, and hopefully he’s not snoring. Rush just came on over the stereo. I’ll leave as Geddy gives me a closer to the heart shout, and maybe if I’m lucky the thrice-divorced 60-something at the bar will pat my ass on the way out. Why wouldn’t she? Everyone here loves John Elway. Even if he is gay.

John Elway out.