Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast
New Releases 3/2/07

Zodiac (R)
Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Mark Ruffalo, Brian Cox
Directed by: David Fincher
San Francisco’s infamous serial killer wrote to the police through letters printed in the Chronicle’s front pages. What makes this one so interesting is the focus not just on catching the killer, but all the trying-to-steal-the-limelight jockeying by the detectives, reporters, lawyers and even a political cartoonist. Brian Cox as lawyer Melvin Belli, the self-proclaimed “King of Torts,” is worth the price of admission by itself.
3 and 1/2 pieces of true crime toast

Black Snake Moan (R)
Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci , Justin Timberlake
Directed by: Craig Brewer
With a white girl chained half naked to a black blues musician’s radiator, this film is exploitation plus–but, under all the tawdry stuff, there is a morality play going on. Think of it as Southern Gothic playing the Race Card
3 pieces of Jackson and Ricci make this work toast

Wild Hogs (PG-13)
Tim Allen, Martin LAwrence, William H. Macy, John Travolta
Directed by Walter Becker
I can’t recall the last Tim Allen movie that works and unfortunately surrounding him with very talented actors on a cross-country motorcycle trip only seems to drag them down too.
1 and 1/2 pieces of this sure ain’t no Easy Rider toast

Becket (1964)
Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit, Martita Hunt
Directed by: Peter Glenville
Two of the screen’s best actors, at the height of their powers, shine in director Peter Glenville’s intelligent and thought-provoking spectacle, for which both received Academy Award nominations. Burton fresh from wooing Elizabeth Taylor and starring in “Cleopatra” plays the Archbishop of Canterbury opposite Peter O’Toole, fresh from “Lawrence of Arabia”, playing the lusty, powerful and (very young) King Henry II O’Toole’s Oscar nominated performance makes a great contrast to his eighth “Best Actor” nomination as a dirty old man in “Venus.” (at the Rialto in Santa Rosa)
3 pieces of scenery-chewing toast

The Lives of Others
Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film!
Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muehe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme
Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the GDR’s secret police decide that a popular writer must be hiding something (everyone does) so they wiretap his apartment “every inch of it. Fascinating, entertaining and original, this one has a heart, soul and a brain. (at the Rialto in Santa Rosa)
3 and 1/2 pieces of imaginative toast

The Good German
Academy Award Nominee for Best Original Score!
George Clooney, Cate Blanchett,
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
This is a calculated noir version of “Casablanca,” mixed up with “The Third Man” only cursing and explicite sex has been added for today’s audiences. Except for the music, it simply doesn’t work.
1 and 1/2 pieces of exploitive toast

NEW ON VIDEO/DVD

Stranger Than Fiction (PG-13)
Will Farrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhall, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latiffah
Directed by: Marc Forster
Box Office: $40,137,776
IRS man wakes with a woman’s voice narrating his life (at least the boring bits) and discovers that she is a novelist who thinks the man is her fictional creation “which he may be. Sort of a Charlie Kaufman lite, with Farrell once again being the glue that holds everything together.
3 pieces of imaginative toast

A Good Year (PG-13)
Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Marion Cotillard
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Box Office: $7,365,004
A London bond-trader inherits a winery in Provence and has the difficult decision of deciding what his future life shall be (poor thing). Apparently the director and star wanted to spend a summer in Provence (which is almost as good as spending one in Sonoma County), so why not have the paying public finance the adventure by filming a fish-out-of-water, pratfall-filled, supposedly romantic comedy and have great fun doing so. It gives you something to chat about on all the talk shows “Oh, we had great fun filming that scene…” However, the end result is (to use winery terms) green, murky, thin, pedestrian, flabby, empty, and barnyardy.
1 and 1/2 pieces of short-legged toast

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (R)
Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Tim Robbins
Directed by: Liam Lynch
Box Office: $8,232,726
An ego-driven waste of film stock hopefully seen only by diehard Tenacious D fans. The rest of us should save our money.
1 piece of fatuous toast