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The ever so pretty Kamilah and her stars
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I wanted to see six films today, but the Gasper Noe extravaganza Enter The Void was not the estimated 150 minutes but almost 180 minutes (without credits, no less), so I only saw five. Too bad they were all bad, to one degree or another. On the plus side, one of my picks of the fest -- Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother -- won three out of the four available prizes at the Directors Fortnight. I had already requested an interview so hopefully we'll be chatting Saturday or Sunday. And now, sigh, the five movies.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS * 1/2 (out of four) -- This modest fantasy feels like a mishmash of the usual Terry Gilliam obsessions, but less so. A traveling troupe led by Christopher Plummer as Dr. Parnassus scurries around central London of today hoping to lure people into their magical mirror. On the other side? A fantastical world of the imagination where you are tempted with a choice between your basest desires (a one night stand with Johnny Depp; a drink at the bar for an alcoholic on the wagon) and a more challenging journey towards true and earned happiness. People usually choose the base desires. Tom Waits is lingering around in bohemian mode as Ole Scratch himself waiting for the lovely daughter of Dr. Parnassus to turn 16 so he can claim her. (They made a deal: immortal life in exchange for his first born child.) The appealing Andrew Garfield is a foundling they took in that is hopelessly in love with her. Heath Ledger is a disgraced public figure/con man hiding out from the Russian mob. When he travels into the imaginary world, he transforms into Depp or Jude Law or Colin Farrell -- a seamless way of making up for Ledger's tragic death that doesn't seem awkward or affect the film in the least creatively. The story is slight and uninspiring; you know you're in trouble right from the start because virtually every actor other than the leads is broadly cartoonish. But for me the biggest letdown of this mild movie is the special effects. Gilliam has been a standard bearer of sorts for old-fashioned special effects. You can feel the handmade complexity and detailed modeling that make Baron Munchausen, Brazil, Time Bandits and others so delightful. But almost all the effects in the Imaginarium are poorly detailed digital affect. You could call them dream-like but they're really just lazy and uninteresting. Ledger is fine in an unmemorable role with little resonance. We'll remember nis final triumph as The Dark Knight and celebrate the comradeship of the industry illustrated by the actors who stepped in to make this film happen.

THE SILENT ARMY * -- The road to cinematic hell is often paved with good intentions. This noble, purposeful film highlights the horrific trend of child soldiers throughout Africa: kids kidnapped by rebels/terrorists and forced to commit atrocities while being shamed/frightened into denying your past life. Numerous other films have been made and more are in the works but none yet have been artistically satisfying in the least. This one is typical: little black boy is best friends with little white boy. Black boy's family is slaughtered and he's taken to be a child soldier. White boy shames dad into idiotic journey into jungle to get the boy back. (I've reduced the characters to their racial identity because the film is so simple-minded. That's how it plays; no one comes alive as an actual living and breathing character.) Virtually all the actors are weak. An NGO worker spends all her time making a bemused/frustrated/admiring expression on her face when it comes to the dad. In perhaps the most bizarre plot twist, the dad reaches the rebels, gets the boy, and is allowed to leave with two armed guards accompanying them. Cut to them walking through the jungle and the dad jumps the guards and tries to knock them out, figuring he won't be let out alive. But then they pull back the camera and instead of waiting till he was a mile or two away from the armed camp filled with trigger happy rebels, the dad has made his big move literally feet away from the cruel and vicious leader and all his minions. Because why wait till you're out of sight of the enemy before jumping your armed guards? Laughable doesn't begin to cover it.

ENTER THE VOID * 1/2 -- Gasper Noe's follow-up to his terrific Irreversible is a nearly three hour glimpse at a young man who is shot by the police, arguably has his life flash before his eyes and then gets reincarnated as his sister's baby. It's technically proficient, but once you've seen a fly-over shot of Tokyo or rather once you've seen it eight or ten times the point of seeing it yet again begins to pale. Two orphaned siblings are at the heart of the story: a sister who strips at a Tokyo bar and a brother who is dealing drugs. At the very beginning of the film, overly aggressive police trying to bust him shoot the brother in the chest. We soon get loads of flashbacks showing how he became a dealer, seeing their parents die in a car crash, watching the brother sleep with a friend's mom to get money, getting drugs from a dealer and on and on, all while our hero refers endlessly to The Tibetan Book Of The Dead in order to prepare us for the reincarnation. The show-stopper here is certainly the shot of a penis entering a vagina

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