Coming Soon (and by "coming" I mean "cumming"):

Shortbus
Grade: B-

How kinky is Shortbus, one of the most buzzed about films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival?
Let’s just say that connoisseurs of hardcore pornography may find themselves blushing on multiple occasions.
A straight couple graphically demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of the Kama Sutra. A female dominatrix whips a young man as he masturbates on a bed. A naked man contorts his body, gives himself oral pleasure, and then ejaculates in his mouth.
And that’s just the first five minutes.
Shortbus is the brainchild of John Cameron Mitchell, who directed and starred in the wonderful 2001 film adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Here he forgoes acting and sticks to writing and directing duties.
In the tradition of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Mitchell boldly challenges taboos and opens up a new world of sexual possibilities for viewers. He’s not judgmental of his characters, regardless of their sexual orientation or their preference for monogamy, three-ways or full-on orgies. If there’s a bottom line, it’s that he really wants everyone to get their rocks off.
Mitchell proves that he’s a sexual pioneer, but unfortunately the rest of Shortbus rides on flat tires. Most of the characters are self-absorbed in a dull way, and much of the dialogue is wooden. For a movie that traffics in orgasms and erections, it’s baffling how unstimulating and anticlimactic the whole viewing experience feels.
Set in post 9/11 New York City, the film focuses on a group of people who converge at an underground sex club called Shortbus. Because the gay overseer sees his patrons as “gifted and challenged,” he named the establishment after the compact buses that transport handicapped and mentally retarded children.
We meet a gay couple named James and Jamie, their three-way buddy Ceth and a bisexual dominatrix named Severin. Sook-Yin Lee delivers the most nuanced performance as Sofia, a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm.
Shortbus starts off as a light comedy and goes off the deep end of melodrama by the end. The changes in tone feel arbitrary, as though Mitchell doesn’t really know what to do with the plot when he’s not using it as a playground for sexual experimentation. As a result, this bus feels like it’s riding on fumes by the time it reaches its destination.

Jackass: Number Two
Grade: A-

Are Johnny Knoxville and his band of merry pranksters complete idiots or sicko geniuses? You be the judge as you watch them ride on rockets, make a beard out of pubic hair, probe their penises into snake cages and funnel beer up their assholes. A few stunts are so disgusting they’re almost unwatchable. Otherwise this carnival freak show is a real hoot, and the gang’s boundless, demented glee is contagious. John Waters – the ultimate arbiter of bad taste – officiates a magic act involving a midget named Wee Man and a really, really fat woman.

Now on DVD:

Hard Candy
Grade: C+

Yikes! A friend warned me that David Slade's pedophilia revenge thriller was over-the-top, but I didn't expect to find myself cringing in agony for a good chunk of the running time. Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page are both excellent in the lead roles, but in the end no display of acting fireworks could justify the torture that the viewer must endure along with the characters.

Page stars as Hayley, a precocious 14-year-old who meets an 30ish photographer named Jeff (Wilson) in a chat room. The two meet for coffee, and in what seems to be an incredibly stupid move Hayley goes home with Jeff and slams down a few screwdrivers.

As it turns out, our pixieish Lolita has an uncompromisingly violent hidden agenda up her sleeve. She drugs Jeff, ties him up and confronts him with evidence that he's a pedophile. She then accomplishes her master plan - castration- in an endless, completely repulsive sequence that recalls sick-o Japanese horror films like Takashi Miike's Audition.

Hard Candy boasts impressive photography and editing, and it certainly forces the viewer to confront her own views on pedophilia and the ethics of vigilante justice. But the filmmakers certainly took the easy way out by exploring these themes in a such an exploitational and obvious way.

MRS. BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS

Retro Book Pick for September:

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
(Shoemaker & Hoard, $14)

Originally published in 1959, Evan S. Connell's phenomenal portrait of a Kansas City woman was one-half of the inspiration for the 1990 Merchant Ivory film Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (Connell published Mr. Bridge in 1969). Set in the 1930s and 1940s, the novel details the rather ordinary day to day adventures of the emotionally stifled matriarch of a well-to-do family. Constantly kowtowing to her kind but repressive husband, she leads a socially and politically conservative life that deflates her spirit to the point that her life becomes a positively Thoreauvian example of quiet desperation.
Mrs. Bridge is a short novel that deserves to be read very slowly because the writing is deceptively simple. You could read the book in a flash, but you'd miss out on the interwoven themes and much of Connell's subtle, dry humor. Considering its slim size, the book contains a whopping 117 chapters, many of which are less than a page long. We read about Mrs. Bridge's loving but strained relationships with her three children, her close friendship with a mentally unstable woman named Grace and her trip to Europe with Mr. Bridge on the eve of World War II.
Calling Connell's masterpiece by the plain old term "novel" seems insufficient. More accurately speaking this is a mosaic in which dozens of individually stunning passages come together to form an even more breathtaking final product.

Opening soon:

The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Grade: B+

David Leaf and John Scheinfeld directed this absorbing documentary about the U.S. government’s sleazy attempts to deport John Lennon in the early 1970s because he charismatically rallied peaceniks against the Vietnam War. The film’s insistence on sanctifying the egomaniacal Beatle is annoying, but there’s no denying Lennon’s epic role in the protest movement. Featuring interviews with Yoko Ono, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Gore Vidal, Walter Cronkite and G. Gordon Liddy.

The Voyage of the Shawn Treader

Five years after her last CD, Whole New You, Shawn Colvin is back in the saddle with These Four Walls. After a long stint at Columbia she has moved to Nonesuch Records, but once again she's collaborating with songwriter John Leventhal, her creative partner ever since her amazing 1989 debut album Steady On (Leventhal, by the way, is married to Rosanne Cash, and the song "I'm Gone" on Four Walls sounds suspiciously similar to Cash's recent track "House on the Lake.")

The new CD kicks off with the radio single "Fill Me Up." It's catchy while it lasts but the trite lyrics don't have any staying power. Most of the tracks that follow are originals by Colvin and Leventhal, with two cover songs thrown in (Paul Westerberg's "Even Here We Are" and "Words" by the Gibb brothers). The title track is lovely, and Colvin and guest vocalist Patty Griffin sound great together on "Cinnamon Road."

Despite these strengths, These Four Walls is a disappointment. The main problem is that it sounds incredibly familiar. My partner didn't even know I was playing Shawn's new CD when he got home because he couldn't distinguish it from Fat City or A Few Small Repairs. Don't get me wrong. I love Shawn's sound, and "Polaroids," "Shotgun Down the Avalanche," "Richochet in Time" and "Sunny Came Home" rank among my favorite pop/folk songs of the past 20 years.

But unlike her contemporary Suzanne Vega and her idol Joni Mitchell, Shawn has done little in the way of experimenting with new styles and genres, and her sonic sameness could very well stop her from attaining legendary status in the biz.

I don't doubt that Leventhal is a genius and obviously Shawn's partnership with him has yielded many yummy fruits, but it's time for Shawn to walk on the wild side and collaborate with someone outside her safety zone.

Opening September 15:

The Black Dahlia
Grade: B

Based on a novel by hard-boiled crime writer James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential), Brian De Palma's entertaining but ultimately ludicrous film details the investigation of the murder of an aspiring young actress (The L Word's Mia Kirshner, who appears in black and white screen tests and a naughty lezzie stag film). Featherweight actor Josh Hartnett is surprisingly convincing as Bucky, a boxer-turned-cop who pairs up with an officer played by Aaron Eckhart. Meanwhile Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank crank up the glamorous slut meter as the seductresses in Bucky's life.
Veteran cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond provides bravura camerawork. And when De Palma's hot, he concocts some of his most thrilling and intricate suspense scenes since Dressed to Kill.
Unfortunately the movie deteriorates into pulp trash in the final act. The solutions to the multiple mysteries in the story are so farfetched and unsatisfying that you can't help but feel like all the good work up to that point was a complete waste of time. Because it walks such a fine and awkward line between being an exquisitely crafted detective yarn and a trashy late night movie on cable, The Black Dahlia will undoubtedly find itself on the sidelines come Oscar season.

Now playing:

House of Sand
Grade: B-

This Brazilian drama easily qualifies as one of the most visually arresting films of the year, but from a dramatic standpoint it really ought to be called House of Bland. When the camera’s not capturing gorgeous views of sand and sky, we’re left to ponder the rather uneventful lives of a woman and her mother as they fend for themselves in the desert in the early 1900s. Fernanda Montenegro, an Oscar nominee for Central Station, headlines the capable but unremarkable cast.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
(Random House, $23.95)

Though I was a big fan of David Mitchell's 2000 novel Ghostwritten, I couldn't get through the British writer's widely praised follow-up effort, Cloud Atlas. Shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, Cloud Atlas is a hugely ambitious and daring experimental novel that left me cold - quite possibly because I wasn't patient enough to wade through the increasingly inscrutable language Mitchell employs as the narrative ventures into futuristic territory.

I thought I'd give Mitchell a rest, until I read that his new novel is an accessible coming-of-age tale that has garnered favorable comparisons to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. After a bit of a slow start, I fell in love with Black Swan Green and gobbled it down in five days. At this point, I can't decide if I want this year's Man Booker award to go to Mitchell or Sarah Waters for her yummy World War II novel The Night Watch (I recently read that Mitchell is favored to win).

Black Swan Green is set in 1982 in a swanless English village called Black Swan Green. Over the course of 13 chapters that represent 13 consecutive months, narrator Jason Taylor chronicles his stammering problem, his humiliating run-ins with school bullies, his crushes on girls, his parents' frequent squabbling, and his attempts to keep his poetry a secret for fear that everyone will think he's gay for dabbling in rhyme schemes.

A few of Taylor's "adventures" are dull, but Mitchell writes hilarious dialogue that keeps the book zipping along even when the plot wears thin.

Opening September 8th:

Hollywoodland
Grade: B+

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a mystery of superhero proportions!
In 1959, Superman actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck) was found dead in his Hollywood home. Veteran Sopranos director Allen Coulter does his damndest to prove that it was actually a murder engineered by the bigwig husband (Bob Hoskins) of Reeves' lover (Diane Lane in an elegant and seductive performance). The story of Reeves' life and death unfolds in flashbacks, with Adrien Brody looking as angst-ridden as ever as the private investigator who's trying to crack the case.
Hollywoodland doesn't hold a candle to L.A. Confidential, the film that set the gold standard for menacing Tinseltown film noir. But the extremely stylish production sucks you in even when story lags. Thankfully, Affleck is slightly less wooden than usual, and Robin Tunney (Cherish) is deliciously nasty as the deadliest femme fatale in Reeves' path.