I knew that RENT was in trouble from its first scene, a rendition of "Seasons Of Love" (whose chorus consists of singing "How about love?" a bunch of times) set in an empty theater. Note to director Chris Columbus: the goal of making a musical film is not to duplicate the experience of watching a stage musical. That's why we have film and theater. There's both, you see, because they are different.

But RENT's problems go deeper than a misguided director's attempt to recreate a theater atmosphere in a movie. None of the characters leave much of an impression, because actual characterization has been reduced to mere labels. Mimi? Heroin-addicted stripper. Tom? Anarchist, HIV-positive, um, professor? Grad student? Something academic. I'm still unsure. Mark? Jewish filmmaker. Roger? HIV-positive, former addict musician... You get the idea. These peoples' passions, fears, attitudes, and motivations remain largely unexplored, reducing them to one-dimensional caricatures. At the end of the film, I didn't feel as though I really knew any of these people nor had much investment in their fates.

If a character succeeds at distinguishing themself from the pack, it's usually due to an actor being likable rather than having the opportunity to show much depth. Tom has almost nothing of a storyline, but Jesse L. Martin is charismatic so he is enjoyable to watch. I like Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson from other work, so I had more interest in their characters, though I struggled to remain interested in Dawson's storyline for which I fault the script and a miscast romantic foil rather than her. Idina Menzel is the only actor previously unknown to me who really caught my attention with her energetic and fairly nuanced performance as Maureen.

Thoms and Dawson are the only actors who did not appear in the original stage production, so many of the actors have been occupying these characters' skins for years. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they can make the transition to the big screen. While Adam Pascal is the only actor carried over from the play who seems completely out of his element, Anthony Rapp and Wilson Jermaine Heredia are only decent, and Taye Diggs is fine but unexceptional in his very small role. Pascal offers at best a lukewarm performance as Roger and fails to generate much screen presence. But as I said, I think Martin and Menzel are good, the former perhaps benefiting from his years on Law & Order. The chemistry amongst the ensemble is pretty good – the cast fares better when they are all together – but it fizzles between some of the pairings. Thoms and Menzel have great chemistry, making Joanne and Maureen one of very few fictional couples who manage to seem like they would have some fun in the sack without the inclusion of a sex scene. Martin and Heredia never really sell the romantic aspect of their relationship but do seem genuinely affectionate. Pascal and Dawson, however, couldn't generate heat with a flame thrower.

I cannot say much that is positive about Jonathan Larson's music and lyrics. Granted, most of the songs are catchy and fairly memorable, but I find the lyrics poorly written, often saccharine, mostly melodramatic, and in some cases laughable. They offer some modest character moments, but Joanne is the only one who actually gets some character development out of a song (and, indeed, in the entire film) when she walks down the stairs singing, "Take me for what I am," shedding her insecurities about needing and keeping Maureen. The music sounds straight out of the early nineties, which may not be inappropriate given that the story is set in 1990, but the music does really date the musical, which I found to be detrimental. Larson based RENT on Puccini's opera La Bohéme, which might explain the melodramatic tenor of many songs. But that operatic emotion never really gels with the grim realities of addiction and AIDS that color the film, resulting in an uneven tone and giving an artificial quality to the weightier scenes.

Part of me wants to love RENT, because it's the only musical that features HIV-positive characters, lesbians, gay men, even a drag queen. But even though those types of people might make up my community, it doesn't mean that I find these characters relatable or even recognizable. Visibility in the media does matter to marginalized groups, but I'm still not going to embrace every shallow, inadequate portrayal that comes along.

Like Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Jesus Camp or Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen, Kids is one of those movies free of monsters, blood, and gore that is absolutely terrifying. In fact, Kids is like the Thirteen of the last decade, a wake-up call to youth and adults alike of how some adolescents lead their lives. These kids are portrayed as self-involved, amoral, and hedonistic, willing to beat a man nearly to death out of boredom with little afterthought and even less remorse. The film garnered as much controversy as critical acclaim upon its release, earning an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, due to its depiction of teenage drug use, explicit sex acts, date rape, and graphic violence, and director Larry Clark films this content in a very matter-of-fact, documentary-like manner. I've noticed from reviews I've read that some people have mistaken this tone as Clark condoning this behavior, but those who draw that conclusion may have seen the film but didn't really watch it.

Kids depicts 24 hours in the lives of New York teenagers. For two of the main characters, Telly and Casper, it's a seemingly average day, but for Jennie the day is anything but. On first glance, Telly probably would seem harmless to both girls and their mothers: he is pasty, skinny, and a little nerdy-looking. But Telly uses his innocuous exterior to hide the fact that he is an adept liar, mostly employing his skills to sleep with young virgins, whom he prefers because he doesn't like to use condoms. During the course of the movie, he seduces two young girls and brutally deflowers them, completely ignoring their discomfort, health, and well-being in his unswerving pursuit of pleasure.

One of Telly's many conquests, Jennie discovers she has HIV when she goes with a friend for moral support to get tested. Since she has only had sex with Telly, she knows that he is also infected and spends her day trying to tell him and to save his next partner, a 13-year-old girl named Darcy. A shy girl, Jennie seems to have become immersed in a world of which she wants no part. She is constantly being coerced by boys to do things she does not want to do.

Like Telly, Casper also pursues self-gratification, spending the entire day drunk, high, or both and always looking for his next fix. Because he lacks much of his own, Casper envies Telly's sexual experience, oblivious to the moral repugnance of how Telly obtains it. Even though he cruelly attacks a man with little provocation, Casper (unlike Telly) still shows a spark of humanity, giving a stolen peach to a little girl and his last few coins to a legless man in the subway. Even as he rapes Jennie, he misguidedly assures her in an almost tender way that, "It's just [him]," as he takes advantage of her in her disoriented state.

Kids could have easily been called Boys. Though girls certainly play a part in the proceedings, the film ultimately provides a detailed portrait of these teenage boys' lifestyle and explores how they become indoctrinated into a culture that turns them into sociopaths. All of the conversation between two or more boys in this movie has something to do with sex. Young boys, nine- or ten-years-old, are grilled by older boys on their sexual experiences, ridiculed if they admit or even insinuate that they have none. They are audience to older teens' and early twenty-somethings' discussions of sexual conquests and assessments of girls' attitudes toward sex, all of which encourages them to understand that masculinity is completely tied up in having as much sex with as many girls as possible and that girls are merely objects with which to have sex. During the few minutes that they are not talking about sex, the boys talk about drugs and alcohol, which they get with ease from stealing or from older acquaintances, and the booze and drugs are then passed down to even younger boys. All of the posturing, proclamations of sexual potency and experience, denial of homosexuality through the harassment of gay men, all of it is for the sake of other males. The boys spend more time with their shirts off around each other than around girls. They have created a culture in which they constantly have to prove their virile heterosexuality lest they fall victim to the mob mentality that nearly kills one man in the film.

When interacting with the boys, most of the girls seem like guests, and sometimes more like prisoners, of this different culture. In fact, Jennie's search for Telly to tell him about being HIV-positive could also be seen as a journey into the treacherous underbelly of the boys' world. She starts in the relative safety of a friends' bedroom full of other young girls talking about their sexual experiences. In comparison to the boys' rap session about sex, the girls seem less like they are performing a codified sexuality for each other and less like they are keeping each other's femininity in check. Jennie says that she has only had sex with one guy and Ruby admits to more sexually promiscuous behavior than the other girls. Ruby is teased a little, but neither girl is humiliated or rebuked in the way that the boys keep each other's sexuality under control. Ruby and Jennie are able to take action to take control of their sexuality by going to a health clinic together, but this trip precipitates Jennie's traverse into Boys' World, which slowly takes away her power to choose. During her first interaction with a male in the film, the boy tries to coax Jennie into coming up to his apartment, his sexual interest apparent in his voice coming through the intercom, but Jennie, separated from him, is able to say no with relative ease. In her first face-to-face contact with a male, a middle-aged taxi driver makes demands of Jennie in a way females of the film do not, asking if he could cheer her up so that her pretty face would not look so sad. His comments suggest that rather than having a real concern for her well-being, the driver wants her to stop being sad so that she would be better to look at. Her journey only grows darker and each encounter with boys more sinister as another harmless-looking, nerdy boy feeds her Special K. She finally catches up with Telly as he is deflowering Darcy and, defeated, leaves them to their business without saying a word. Having failed to save Darcy, Jennie passes out on a couch only to be raped by Casper in her drug-induced stupor. In the boys' world, girls are victims, objects that are acted upon and incapable of action.

To fit with the documentary tone, the actors were picked by Clark for their naturalness and had limited, if any, acting experience. All of the actors succeed in giving very candid performances, and probably for many of the supporting actors there is little distinction between where their character stops and their true self begins. Of the cast, Chloe Sevigny has catapulted to the biggest stardom, and Rosario Dawson has achieved similar success. Leo Fitzpatrick and Justin Pierce, who probably receive the most screen time, have not been as lucky, though Fitzpatrick has done regular work over the years, most recently in television. Pierce sadly committed suicide after making a dozen or so films to little commercial success. I don't know if Sevigny shows any more talent in Kids than her two fellow leads, but her look is certainly more "studio-ready" than Fitzpatrick and Pierce, which might explain why she was more quickly cast in lead roles. Even though Dawson appears in maybe 10 minutes of the film, she really does distinguish herself from dozens of supporting actors, with the energy and intrepidness that she brings to every role on full display.

Even though I am just now seeing Kids for the first time, I have owned its soundtrack for years because I'm a big Lou Barlow fan. One of Barlow's many side projects, Folk Implosion provides a lot of the "score" and it's some of Barlow's best work. The official soundtrack also includes tracks from Daniel Johnston, Lo Down, Slint, and one of Barlow's other bands, Sebadoh. It's an excellent collection of lo-fi tunes from the early nineties. In addition to these great songs, the film's soundtrack also features songs by the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and other New York hip-hop groups from that period.

All kids are not like these Kids, but this perhaps heightened (perhaps not in some cases) portrayal of youth culture makes very astute observations about how gender roles become codified and reinforced and about adolescent culture in general. As uncomfortable of an experience as it might be, parents should watch this movie with their teen-aged kids. The discussion it would provoke could change people's lives.

I couldn't do it. I made it to 1:26 and I had to stop it. I was annoyed, repulsed, and just plain bored. Of course, the film is a beautifully rendered, completely unique blend of film and graphic novel, and I thought that I could watch all 126 minutes of Sin City just to see the cinematography, make-up, and effects. But ultimately I just didn't have the desire to slog through any more glorified violence, victimized women, and gratuitous female nudity.

I made it through Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton: fine. Bruce Willis: whatever. Mickey Rourke: jesus, will this ever end? Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, and all the gun-toting hookers managed to get my attention because the story was actually something different and interesting. And Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson are hot. There are very few actors whose physical beauty distract me while I'm watching them act, but Clive Owen is one of them. And he looks so boyish and sexy with the long bangs in his eyes. I got to the scene where the hookers are shooting the hell out of the mobsters, and I thought, "Good. It's near the end and I like the end." But then fuckin' Bruce Willis shows up again. And I realized there were 40 minutes left.

I mean, what the fuck? How is it that all the men in this movie are like fuckin' Rasputins and the women die if they're stabbed with a thumbtack? And I don't think that having empowered female characters, namely bad-ass hookers with arsenals, excuses Miller and Rodriguez from all of the weak, victimized women and needless naked lady-ness. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the empowered women are hookers to justify more semi-naked lady-ness.

And the lesbian dies. No, wait, she is mostly naked, naked and maimed, and then she dies.

When I first read about Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's grindhouse movies, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't like them, that I wasn't part of the audience for them. I mean, violence, gore, and objectified women? Hardly sounds like my cup of tea. I shouldn't like Death Proof. I know that I shouldn't like Death Proof. And yet there is something extremely gratifying about watching three women beat the crap out of a misogynistic, mass-murdering psychopath.

But again, Tarantino disappoints with his inability to create effective pacing. He seems to have embraced the double feature element of his Grindhouse project with Rodriguez in his own film because Death Proof feels like two movies stuck together. One of those movies is fun and the other is almost coma-inducing. As is, Death Proof is an uneven two-hour movie, but with some generous editing it could be a very entertaining 80- or 90-minute movie.

The initial half with the first set of "girls" (Sydney Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd) should and easily could be almost cut completely. If I understand the concept of grindhouse movies, they are supposed to be full of sex, action, violence, and gore, not aimless, lifeless conversation. Granted, Arlene does a little lap dance, which I suppose is intended to be sexy, but I'm of the opinion that lap dances are only interesting if you're on the receiving end. Death Proof is not a film about character development. It sounds crass, but it doesn't really matter if we "know" Stuntman Mike's first victims because they are merely the set up for the real meat of the film. And booty dances aside, Arlene, Julia, and Shanna just aren't entertaining enough to merit the amount of screen time that they receive, especially in comparison to the women who populate the second hour of the film. I find that I enjoy the film more, and don't feel like I'm really missing anything, if I start the movie with Stuntman Mike giving Pam a ride home.

Tracie Thoms, Rosario Dawson, and "newcomer" Zoë Bell bring Death Proof to life. Admittedly, I think they have better material to work with, but their chemistry sparkles, finally kicking the film into gear after nearly half its running length. Bell first worked with Tarantino on the Kill Bill films as a stunt double for The Bride, and Death Proof is her acting debut as a lead. While she is playing a version of herself, Bell proves to be energetic, likable, and funny, which is more than many actors with resumés twice the length of hers can say. And she does all her own stunts, which are pretty bad ass. Thoms fills the Samuel L. Jackson slot with plenty of attitude and profanity – but no blaspheming – and Dawson gamely goes along for the ride as the good girl who goes a little bad.

As Stuntman Mike, Kurt Russell effectively fills the villain role, returning to a more bad-ass persona that propelled him to A-list status in the 1980s with films like John Carpenter's Escape from New York. He doesn't particularly stand out here, but I cannot fault him any misstep either. He seems to understand the material and he delivers.

Tarantino has provided plenty of filmic evidence of his fetishes, using shots of bare feet and rear ends to sexualize (and objectify) his female characters. His use of these shots in Death Proof interests me because their context differs greatly in the two halves of the movie. In the first half, the first shot of Jungle Julia tilts up from her bare feet to her backside, clad only in underwear, as she pulls a t-shirt over her head to cover her bare back. A subsequent shot starts behind Julia and dollies in and up over her head as she leans out her window to call down to her friends outside, her rear end pushed out toward the camera, making her body more accessible to the audience. Similarly, the introductory shot of Arlene is a close up of her cupping her crotch in effort to keep from peeing herself, I guess, and Arlene later performs the above-mentioned lap dance. The first half just has more of this kind of stuff – bare feet, bare legs, physical affection between two beautiful women – all of which serves to make these women's bodies objects, accessible to the audience and to the male gaze.

In comparison, the second half really doesn't have much. In the ostensible first scene, Stuntman Mike touches and licks via proxy Abernathy's bare feet as they hang out the window of Kim's car. After that initial encounter no shots of similar quality happen until almost the very last one, and that shot defines the difference between Tarantino's treatment of his first set of "girls" from his second. (I suppose one could consider the footage of Stuntman Mike photographing the women in the airport parking lot to be similar, but I think it serves a different purpose. And it's not body part specific nor as sexualized as other shots.) After Kim has plowed into Stuntman Mike, sending his car rolling off the road, the Challenger pulls to a stop and Zoë emerges from the car. The camera follows her, pushing in on her rear end, and Kim and Abernathy soon join her in the frame so that the camera can follow these three women's backsides as they advance toward Stuntman Mike, bloody and howling in pain in the wreckage of his car. This shot is not about sex – it's about these women's power, the culmination of their transformation of their earlier victimization by Stuntman Mike into predatory instinct.

The stark contrast between Tarantino's treatment of Jungle Julia's crowd and Zoë's film industry cohorts reminds me of that "rule" from horror films about the girls who have sex in the movie are always killed. Jungle Julia et al. don't have sex with anyone, but their bodies are far more sexualized than Zoë et al. The first group dies and the second group lives. But with the exception of Arlene's lap dance, which Stuntman Mike goads her into doing, their sexualization seems so much more involuntary than if they had just chosen to have sex with someone. Tarantino's objectification of this group seems to offer them up for slaughter, and yet only the fact that they are slaughtered seems to justify their objectification. So what is the difference between Jungle Julia and Zoë? Even though they ride the white horse to Stuntman Mike's dark one, Kim, Zoë, and Abernathy fall much more in a moral gray area than Jungle Julia and her companions. They leave their friend to be possibly molested by the Challenger's owner so that they can go for a joy ride, and they pursue Stuntman Mike so mercilessly that they cause the injury of a motorcyclist and probably other motorists as well. To put it plainly, these women survive because they can kick Stuntman Mike's ass. They can out bad ass the bad ass, and Tarantino's shot of their backsides celebrates that display of, for lack of a better term, female machismo. It's as if Tarantino really can't sexualize these women in the same way that he objectifies Jungle Julia because they are too masculine, maybe not in appearance but in attitude, and yet they are still too feminine to sexualize them for their power. Their sexuality is tied too closely to their female machismo that it cannot be fully expressed until they have offered a legitimate display.

I was very surprised/a little disappointed in myself that my list of 20 favorite actresses was composed completely of white, straight, able-bodied females. The list was made only slightly diverse in that it included seven non-American women (eight if you include Natalie Portman), two of whom speak English as a second language. A couple of women of color almost made it onto the list but didn't make the cut mostly because I didn't feel like I had seen a large enough chunk of their body of work.

So I decided to adjust my criteria a bit and have another go at it, this time including only women who belong to one or more, er, non-dominant groups. (You know, "minorities" only not that word because I hate that word.) Although I may not have seen most or even much of these women's oeuvres, their work has made an impression on me and I'm always pleased to see them.

Rosario Dawson
(Death Proof, Sin City, RENT, Kids)



America Ferrera
(Ugly Betty, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Real Women Have Curves)



Jodie Foster
(Silence of the Lambs, Nell, The Brave One, A Very Long Engagement, Taxi Driver)



Leisha Hailey
(The L Word, All Over Me)



Irma P. Hall
(Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Collateral, The Lady Killers)



Salma Hayek
(Frida, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Fools Rush In)



Marianne Jean-Baptiste
(Secrets & Lies, Without a Trace)



Lucy Liu
(Ally McBeal, Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2, Charlie's Angels)



Marlee Matlin
(Picket Fences, The L Word, Law & Order: SVU)



Parminder Nagra
(Bend It Like Beckham, ER)



Sandra Oh
(Sideways, Under the Tuscan Sun, Grey's Anatomy)



Michelle Rodriguez
(Girlfight, Lost)



Grace Park
(Battlestar Galactica)



Queen Latifah
(Living Out Loud, Chicago, Set It Off)



Tracie Thoms
(Wonderfalls, Cold Case, Death Proof, RENT)



Gina Torres
(Serenity, The Matrix Reloaded, Angel, I Think I Love My Wife)



Gabrielle Union
(Cadillac Records, Bring It On, 10 Things I Hate About You)



Ethel Waters
(Pinky, The Member of the Wedding)



Vanessa L. Williams
(Ugly Betty, Eraser, Soul Food)



Michelle Yeoh
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tomorrow Never Dies, Memoirs of a Geisha)

A Guide to Returning Your Saints has a very odd and disparate collection of reviews attached to it.

"The film's strongest performances come from Chazz Palminteri, who avoids slipping into the gangster role into which he has been stereotyped; Channing Tatum, whose Antonio is equal parts charisma and violence; and Melonie Diaz, who's a firebrand. It's hard to make much comment about the acting of Robert Downey Jr. or Rosario Dawson, since their screen time is limited. (Dawson, for example, is in only two scenes.) Shia LaBeouf doesn't always seem to 'get' Dito; there are times when his acting strikes a wrong chord." -James Berardinelli

"While ambitiously set in two time zones, the past comprises the bulk of Montiel’s autobiopic, with superb performances by Shia LaBeouf as his younger self and Martin Compston as his tearaway Scottish pal." -Empire Reviews

"The director exhibits less interest in narrative than in allowing his cast to create their own loose, impressionistic 'truths,' which amounts to a great deal of mumbling, cursing and fighting. I can't recall a movie in which improvisation has been so wildly and ruinously indulged: it's the actors' workshop from hell. The bittersweet atmosphere that Montiel aims for as Downey Jr walks around his old stamping ground would be so much more effective if we didn't fear the big set-piece barney between father and son waiting round the corner. Giving actors freedom is one thing, but Montiel has allowed them so much rope that some have gone right ahead and hanged themselves with it." -The Independent

"Also infuriating is the tendency of the performances to swing wildly out of control; Montiel instructs his cast to overact, leaving some scenes, including a cringe-inducing moment of teenage lust in a humid stairwell, resembling an acting workshop for 9th graders. Occasional moments are decimated by this directorial mandate, because, to be blunt, it’s uncomfortable to watch a limited talent like Tatum try to improv or attempt to convey complexity." -FilmJerk.com

"Sometimes it seems like Dito's father Monty -- played by Chazz Palminteri, trading his usual gangster menace for a heartbreaking fragility of body and spirit...Tatum is vivid as this tragic jackass, though it's hard to tell if the actor's range extends beyond wounded brutes...The gifted Downey, a sleazy American's Johnny Depp, makes the most of his screentime..." -filmcritic.com

So what did I think?

Downey – eh. Tatum – good. Palminteri – good. Dianne Wiest – amazing. LaBeouf – decent. Diaz – good. I've only seen Shia LaBeouf outside of this film in a brief guest starring role on Freaks & Geeks and a small (and annoying) role in Constantine. While I was not overly impressed with his performance in this movie – often it doesn't seem like there's much going on inside – I do see potential. The scene between him and Chazz Palminteri after Mike's death is heartbreaking.

I'm not in love with the flashback structure of the film -- I think that it could take place completely in the 1980s. I do love the underdog group of main characters. These kids are not the tough guys of the block -- they constantly have new wounds appearing. And they seem very real. I also like that this film challenges the notion that escaping an oppressive childhood home is heroic and courageous. In the case of this film, Dito's escape is an act of cowardice.

The critics panned some of the cinematic techniques that Montiel used, but I liked some of them. I thought that the dialogue displayed on screen was effective for the message from Antonio and the conversation between him and Dito. I think that the film is very much told through Dito's eyes. Because of how he left things, Dito has refused to think about Antonio, to form a picture of how his friend has turned out. Seeing a representation of Antonio on screen before their face-to-face meeting at the end of the film seems appropriate. Yes, a one-sided conversation would have served the same purpose, but I also like that the audience did not see Dito's reaction to an adult Antonio until late in the film. The to-the-camera confessions were a little heavy-handed. I didn't mind the surrealistic camera tricks used when Mike and Dito met, but I thought that they suggested a bit of homoeroticism between the pair, but Montiel never followed through.