Mysterious Skin (2005) 
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeffrey Licon
Sara's Rating: **** out of *****
Sara's Review: This is a movie about profoundly fucked-up things, with some profoundly fucked-up scenes and two profoundly fucked-up protagonists. It is not, however, a profoundly fucked-up film. There's really no way to talk about the plot without sounding cliche, but I'll try: the protagonists, Neil McCormick (Gordon-Levitt) and Brian Lackey (Corbet), are molested by their Little League coach at the age of 8. Ten years later, Neil is a hustler and Brian is obsessed with alien probes and abudctions. Both are indelibly scarred by the molestation, but while Brian, who doesn't remember it, is tormented by nightmares, Neil is jaded and aching to get out of their small Kansas town. "I've fucked every guy here...twice," he says, sitting in a gay bar with his best friend, Eric Preston (Licon). While all this sounds like the makings of a Lifetime Special or something equally tortutous, director Gregg Araki avoids sappy or maudlin convention masterfully. How?

...I'm not quite sure. The actors' uniformly excellent performances are definitely a factor, with Gordonn-Levitt playing far beyond his perviously demonstrated abilities and Licon's sensitive, affectionate Eric leaping off the screen. The only hole here is Michelle Trachtenberg as Wendy, Neil's other best friend. It's not entirely her fault, though. In the role of Wendy, Araki crumples under the genre conventions he had previously avoided: "Where other people have hearts, Neil McCormick has a giant black hole. And if you're not careful, you could get sucked in...and...never come out." Trachtenberg delivers these lines in the spirit in which they were written, which speaks equally to her ability as an actress and Araki's as a writer. Mercifully, her role is small, and her lines few.

When she's not around, the film is graceful but never delicate, portraying graphic scenes with an unflinching brutality that earned it an NC-17 rating (which it refused to accept). It's often scary and painful, but never gratutious. This is what, in the end, makes it so much better than other examinations of the material: the characters are hurt, but not irreparable. All who wander may not be lost, but they sure as hell need directions. In Mysterious Skin, we seee how maybe -just maybe- they can get some, and find themselves again.

there's a bunch of movies I haven't reviewed yet, and I don't really know where to start. so I hand it off to you, all three of my readers. what do you guys want to hear about? throw me a bone here.

The Aviator
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly, Matt Ross, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin
Rating: ****
Finding Neverland
Starring: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Freddie Highmore, Nick Roud, Julie Christie
Rating: ****
The Phantom of the Opera
Starring: Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Gerard Butler, Miranda Richardson
Rating: **
Shall We Dance?
Starring: Richard Gere, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Lopez
Rating: *** 1/2
Tarnation
Starring: Jonathon Cauoette, Renee LeBlanc as themselves
Rating: ***
The Incredibles
Starring: Voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Spencer Foxx, Sarah Vowell
Rating: ****
Sideways
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh
Rating: *** 1/2
House of Flying Daggers
Starring: Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau
Rating: ****
Beyond the Sea
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, John Goodman
Rating: ** 1/2
Vera Drake
Starring: Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis, Adrian Scarborough, Alex Kelly
Rating: ****
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston
Rating: *** 1/2
Meet the Fockers
Starring: Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Robert DeNiro, Blythe Danner
Rating: * 1/2
Hotel Rwanda
Starring: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Desmond Dube 
Rating: *****

Series 1: For Rentin'

Kinsey (2004) 
Starring: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Oliver Platt
Sara's Rating: *** out of *****
Sara's Review: If the film depicted in Kinsey's trailer had been the film released, we might have a masterpiece on our hands. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and we're left with a slightly less than skillful biopic of a fascinating character. That character is actually the main problem: there's a lot that can be said about Alfred Kinsey, the first person to research sex scientifically, and Kinsey tries to say it all, resulting in a fractured film that never really finds its sea legs. The last half hour dashes madly from plot thread to plot thread, attempting to tie them all up and getting a big ugly knot. What keeps it from being an utter catastrophe is, amidst the messy plotting, lots of good writing and acting. The cast's dramatic performances, specifically those of Liam Neeson as Kinsey and Peter Sarsgaard as Clyde Martin, his research assistant and sometime-lover, anchor Kinsey in choppy waters. It's an interesting film, often an edifying film, but not a particularly good film.

Alexander (2004) 
Starring: Colin Farrell, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie
Sara's Rating: ** out of *****
Sara's Review: Alexander contains exactly half of a tolerably below average movie. Therefore, it receives exactly half of a tolerably below average rating. It's the other half of movie that I'm going to concern myself with here, though, and that half is egregiously bad/bizarre enough to give Troy a run for its money. For starters, the entire cast has thick, rolling brogues except for Angelina Jolie (as Alexander's mother, Olympias), who seemed to be improvising her mangled Russian/Italian/Eastern European accent on the spot. Second of all, Alexander the Great was gay. He liked men. To depict a graphic sex scene between Alexander and his wife Roxane (Rosario Dawson) while not even showing a kiss between Alexander and Hephaistion (Leto), his lover, is not only historically inaccurate, it's ludicrous and cowardly.

But anyway! There's a lot more wrong with Alexander than accents and historical inaccuracy. It is long, almost exactly three hours, and bracketed by an agonising first hour and painful last half hour. It has a giant desert battle almost totally obscured by sand; poor overall cinematography; a hackneyed script that leaps from major event to major event without bothering to show their significance; an unstructured narrative with no climax; and a wealth of flat acting. While the middle hour and a half manages to be vaguely entertaining, it's absolutely not worth the price of a ticket.

Ray (2004) 
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix 
Sara's Rating: *** out of *****
Sara's Review: Yup, this one's long as well - Ray clocks in at 2.5 hours, and that's at least .5 hours too much. It's well-written enough, and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles is inarguably good, but there's not much here to set Ray apart from the current film crop except for a slammin' score. It's average. See it if you feel the need.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) 
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Nicola Cunningham
Sara's Rating: **** out of *****
Sara's Review: An English zombie movie that combines the best of horror films with the best of high drama and comedy, and no, I'm not kidding. See it now.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) 
Starring: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell
Sara's Rating: * 1/2 out of *****
Sara's Review: Things about this movie that don't suck: Slartibartfast, as played by the marvelous Bill Nighy (Billy Mack in Love Actually). Magrathea (Magraethea?). Sam Rockwell as Zaphod. Marvin the Paranoid Android, perfectly voiced by Alan Rickman and nearly good enough to redeem everything rotten about this movie. That list, however, is long and distinguished. Shall I start with Mos Def as Ford, whose single goal in the film seemed to be delivering his lines sans any elocution whatsoever? (Whose idea was it to cast him, anyway? I wouldn't call it miscasting, exactly - he wasn't wrong for the part. He just did nothing with it.) Or maybe I could talk about OPENING THE FILM WITH A FUCKING MUSICAL NUMBER. Singing dolphins, people. Maybe you'd like to hear about the head scratcher of a love story between Sam and Trillian, and speaking of which, Zooey Deschanel is hereby banned from film for the crime of sucking at it. Or were you wondering about the many, many additions of crap and extractions of quality? I am here and waiting to answer any of these questions. Trust me, they're a better use of your time than the  movie.

Sin City (2005) 
Starring: Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Nick Stahl
Sara's Rating: *** out of *****
Sara's Review: Cinematographically stunning, otherwise not so much. Sin City is mainly black and white, employing color for jarring effect: red blood; Alexis Bledel's eyes, so blue it hurts; Goldie's hair (Jaime King); Yellow Bastard, the bright yellow villian of Story #1 (Nick Stahl). It blends live-action and hand-drawn frames beautifully at key moments. It's a generally gorgeous film, top to bottom. It's when we look past the cinematography that things get sloppy.

Sin City is a panel-for-panel translation of three of Frank Miller's stories from his comic of the same name. The stark, beautiful visuals help soften the blow of an intentionally hard-boiled script -lines like "It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town" are somehow easier to swallow when paired with a hulking silhouette and a dirty window shade- but it's undeniable that some actors just aren't cut out for 1940s-Sam-Spade-style dialogue. (Witness Michael Madsen, a talented character actor, sounding like a strange robot.) It's also undeniable that, aside from a rather gratuitous lust for blood and its accompanying objectification of revenge (Lars! We hardly knew ye!), there's not much going on below the surface here. It's a fun film, a pretty film, but not ultimately a rewarding film. 

The Merchant of Venice (2004) 
Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons
Sara's Rating: **** out of *****
Sara's Review: Mmm. I always forget how much I love this play. (For the record: a lot.) Despite a somewhat draggy middle, it's one of Shakespeare's best. It's also perhaps his most controversial: Shylock (Pacino), the villian of the piece, is Jewish, leading many to call the play anti-Semitic. While an anti-Semitic reading is definitely the most obvious, I've never felt it's accurate. As I read Shylock, he is Shakespeare's way of combating anti-Semitism; one need look no farther than his impassioned "Has not a Jew eyes?!" speech for evidence of this. With these and other contrasting readings available, directors are free to choose the one they most prefer and stage it. Director Michael Radford has presented a more anti-Semitic Merchant than I like to see, but he did it well, and I give him credit for it.

Merchant can also be read as one of Shakespeare's more overtly homoerotic plays; the relationship between young Bassanio (Fiennes) and middle-aged Antonio (Irons) is almost certainly a romantic one, with Antonio willing to wager his entire fortune for Bassanio's happiness. Radford embraces this reading and thereby adds a fascinating element to his production. Irons' Antonio is stoic and heartbroken. It's a strong, solid performance from a marvelous actor. While Fiennes isn't nearly as powerful of an actor, he holds his own against Irons. However: Lynn Collins. Where the fuck did they find her, and can they go back and get more? Collins is revelatory as Portia, in her first starring role. It doesn't hurt that she's also show-stoppingly gorgeous.

The only weak point of this production is, astonishingly, Pacino, seemingly miscast as Shylock. Maybe this was just his voice (which always gets on my nerves), but he seemed to be trying to camoflauge his accent, rendering the dialogue stilted and awkward. If he embraced his natural speech patterns, this role would have been tangible. As it stands, he didn't seem genuine in the role that needs it most. Otherwise, this is an excellent production. Rent it now!

Stage Beauty (2004) 
Starring: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Tom Wilkinson, Rupert Everett
Sara's Rating: *** out of *****
Sara's Review: It says a lot about Claire Danes as an actress that it continually surprises me that I've seen her in a lot of movies  - five, at least. Her performance in Stage Beauty conforms to this standard comfortably. So, in fact, does most of Stage Beauty. However, despite a cardboard performance from one of its leads (Danes) and a disjointed, wandering narrative, the film still manages to be compelling, due in large part to Crudup's pure watchability.

Stage Beauty tells the story of Ned Kynaston (a real person, though the story's veracity is debateable), London's top actor in 1660 whose celebrity comes from playing women (Crudup). In 1660, it was illegal for women to appear onstage in England, and so their roles were filled by beautiful men. At the film's opening, Kynaston is at the height of his popularity, playing Desdemona in Othello. Unbeknownst to him, his dresser Maria (Danes) steals his wig after shows and scampers off to play Desdemona in a tavern production of Othello. But here's the film's first hole - is this a regular occurrance in Maria's life, or are we witnessing her first performance? We don't know. Small pieces of information like this would have proved vastly helpful in untangling the muddle that follows: Charles II (Everett) lifts the ban on women in theatre and, hot on its heels, issues a second ban precluding men from playing women. The film would have us believe he does this due to a combination of persuasions from Maria (how does she wind up at the dinner party?) and Nell Gwynn, his mistress, but the motives of the former are never delved into deeply enough for my taste. Is Maria doing this as revenge on Ned, for whom she harbors unrequited love, or does she merely want to act? Both are suggested and neither are corroborated, leaving the viewer somewhat stranded. Several other, smaller elements are introduced and never explicated, and while none are crucial to the plot, their resolution would have made this a much stronger film.

However. Crudup is quite a strong actor (and bangin' hot) who leads us fearlessly into Ned's gender issues, one of Beauty's strongest points. We're first led to believe that Ned is gay, but as the film progresses we find that Ned himself isn't sure what he is: transgender, a term four hundred years away from being coined? Homosexual, something three hundred fifty years (and many, many laws) away from being even marginally socially acceptable? Or just  incredibly confused, as only a man trained for years to pass as a woman (and never as a man) can be? Beauty never tries to answer these questions, handing us instead two unsubtle, frank, and touching scenes between Crudup and Danes ("What do men do?" "...With women?" "With other men."). By film's end, we still don't have an answer - but that's become okay. The straight-up brilliant climax doesn't whitewash anything. Instead, it postulates, some things just are, while some things can be fought for and earned. Both are worthy.

Fever Pitch (2005) 
Starring: Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore
Sara's Rating: *** 1/2 out of *****
Sara's Review: So, it turns out I like Jimmy Fallon. Dude's funny! Really funny! No, for serious. He is. He presents an uncommon brand of good, non-physical, non-scatalogical humor, and for that I love him. This is just one of the many little conventions broken by Fever Pitch, a warm, funny, and believeable romantic comedy by...wait for it...the Farrelly brothers. Yes, the "minds" behind Dumb and Dumber and Stuck On You have made something that doesn't include fat jokes, sperm jokes or any of their trademark antics. And it's pretty awesome.

Ben is a geometry teacher and a Red Sox fan; Lindsay is a high-powered somethingorother who knows as much about baseball as she does about geometry. The two meet right after the World Series and click. Their relationship is perfect until baseball season begins, and Lindsay discovers how deep Ben's Soxmania really runs. This isn't a bad concept, and it's carried out surprisingly smoothly. Ben and Lindsay aren't your typical romcom couple - there's no meet cute, no stupid misunderstanding or overreaction that leads to the inevitable (this is, after all, a romantic comedy) breakup. They make sense together and break up for a logical reason. The only concession to genre I can find is the climax, a traditional, over-the-top Happy Ending. The gods of fate seemed to like the movie too, gifting the Farrellys with the Red Sox' magical 2004 season to set their movie against. Awesome.