Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Incorporating many elements of Wes Anderson's previous films, Moonrise Kingdom might be seen, even approvingly, as the director going through the motions. It has the childhood focus of Rushmore, the dollhouse intricacy of The Royal Tenenbaums, the paradoxical criminal innocence of Bottle Rocket, the outdoor adventurousness of The Darjeeling Limited, even the documentarian angle of The Life Aquatic. To be sure, Anderson's latest instantly betrays its maker, the camera tracking and panning through an ornate, rigidly compartmentalized island home and its aloof, eerily formal child inhabitants. Set on the fictional New England island of New Penzance, this house and its surrounding locale suggest one of the director's most arch removes from the world around him, a self-contained universe of stunted genius and vague but overwhelming regret.

But these same shots also display a rough quality not even evident in the director's first film. Shot on 16mm, Moonrise Kingdom's thick grain serves two main purposes. First, it aesthetically matches the film's retro 1965 setting, casting Anderson's usual world of bright, sunny yellows in dimmer, fossilizing amber and making the buildings, which look like a model village from a contemporary train set built 1:1 scale, seem lived in and worn. Second, it adds a primal, visceral edge wholly foreign to Anderson's canon, a reflection of the emotional immediacy he attains with the movie's tale of young love in open opposition to the calcified bitterness that defines so many of Anderson's frustrated, self-imprisoning characters.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay, 2011)

If there is any sliver of decency in this universe, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third entry in the most crass, vile and offensive big-budget franchise in Hollywood history will be its last. If it is any better than the series' previous installment, that is only because it sublimates its racial, gender, political and aesthetic travesties into an even longer, more interminable celebration of reactionary ideals. For a series predicated on the idea that some things are more than meets the eye, the Transformers movies represent one of the least varied, consistently shallow sagas to ever hit the big screen: Transformers 3, like its predecessors, is a masturbatory affair, perhaps even more so than the execrable Revenge of the Fallen. Whatever shred of humanity existed in these films is obliterated, leaving only an unadulterated tribute to He-Man masculinity in response to hysterical conservative perceptions of the Obama era.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf, whose increasingly greasy look in each film he does suggests he hasn't showered since Even Stevens got canceled) saved the world and brokered an alliance between man and Autobot, but no one will give him a job out of Ivy League college. The poor guy has to settle for an absurdly large D.C. apartment and being supported by his disposable new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), whose car-collecting boss, Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), openly flirts with her in front of Sam, further emasculating our hero. Compounded by the American government having locked Sam out from communicating with the Autobots, he needs a complete world invasion of Decepticons to let him prove his manhood, raising the question of just how many people need to die for Shia LaBeouf to feel comfortable about his dick size.

Almost Famous

Had anyone else directed Almost Famous, its syrupy sweetness would put its audience in the cinematic equivalent of a diabetic coma. But Cameron Crowe is no ordinary purveyor of the saccharine; his biggest influence may be Billy Wilder, but Crowe's ability to pen stories of endless optimism and idealism without drowning them in sugar edges him closer to Frank Capra than any other major American filmmaker. All of his earlier films contain some nugget of his own life, but Almost Famous is full-on autobiography, with names changed to protect the, well, anyone but innocent.

Crowe's doppelganger is William Miller (Patrick Fugit in his teenage years), whom we meet as a wee lad discussing his love of To Kill a Mockingbird with his mother Elaine (Frances McDormand), a supportive but firm matriarch who wants her son to be the country's youngest lawyer. Therefore, she skips him several grades but keeps this a secret from the boy, who doesn't realize anything is wrong until all his peers start growing moustaches and, frankly, look like they could babysit him. His sister (Zooey Deschanel) can't stand Elaine's restrictive parenting, so she runs away to become an air hostess; before she leaves, she gives her secret record collection to William, with specific instruction to play The Who's Tommy (the clear inference here being that the boy's about to head on an amazing journey of his own).

At age 15, he's a rock-crazed youth who writes articles for local underground papers, but his popularity has scarcely improved. One day, he has the good fortune to stumble across Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the greatest of rock critics. This moment draws a line in the sand for potential viewers, as it clearly establishes Crowe's sense of nostalgia. Anyone who's read but a single article by Bangs knows that Hoffman's teddy bear portrayal of the addled, tortured writer requires the sort of selective memory that normally comes only from years of hard alcohol abuse. If you can't accept this portrait of Bangs, just pop this out of your DVD player and watch something else, but if you find something charming about Crowe sifting through Bangs' various hangups to find the nice guy beneath, then you'll get along with this movie just fine.

Bangs sends William to cover a Black Sabbath show, where he meets some groupies, no, band-aids, who follow groups around for spiritual support, not sexual (though the two overlap frequently, it seems). He also makes the acquaintance of Stillwater, a fictional band that serves as a loose amalgam of early '70s guitar rock bands -- primarily the Allman Brothers Band -- who take a shine to the kid and invite him to follow them as they tour the country. As they never seem to answer his questions, he continues to tag along, hoping that they'll divulge information by the time they get to the next show and never quite able to outpace the long-reaching arm of his mother.

Crowe frames Almost Famous as a coming-of-age tale, of a young, virginal geek suddenly thrust into a traveling circus of hedonism. William cons Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres (Terry Chen) into believing he's an adult and paying him to get a story out of Stillwater, but Billy spends most of his time too bewildered by the world he's just discovered to jot down anything longer than a brief quote or random note. He's drawn to legendary band-aid Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a presence every bit as inspiring -- more so -- than the not-quite-stars Stillwater. She and guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) exchange sideways glances, obvious even to the naïve, lovestruck William, and he can only watch helplessly as the rock star lands the girl he can never have.

Mercifully, Crowe does not play William's virginity for laughs -- perhaps because William reflects the director's own life -- and when some of the other band-aids finally lay the kid down and make a confused man out of him, it's an anti-climax, merely another stepping stone in his maturation. Furthermore, William isn't the only subject of this coming-of-age story: lead singer Jeff (Jason Lee, who steals all of his scenes) and Russell are vainglorious, preening wannabes. Both possess the talent to survive and even thrive in the music climate, but they're too busy fighting amongst each other and blinding themselves in the vices of the road. The memorable scene in which Russell follows some teenage fans to their house for a part and drags poor William along for the ride. William can only stand by and watch Russell load up on acid and proclaim himself a "golden god" before leaping off a roof into a swimming pool, and for all the humor of the scene it clearly reveals Russell's self-destruction.

Perhaps the character most in need of maturation is Penny. Kate Hudson has spent her entire career fiercely chipping away at the clout this performance bought her, but it's a testament to the overwhelming strength of her work here that she still ultimately hasn't put a dent in it. She captures Penny's magnetic allure perfectly: there's a subtle debate among the band members who view her with alternate reverence and weariness if she's the Madonna or the whore, failing to realize that she's tapped into the unexplored balance between the two. But she's also just a girl whose vague pop-philosophical musings mask a deep insecurity and a lingering culture shock that never faded no matter how many miles she put between her and the normal life she left behind. Russell wants her around because he's confused convenient sex with love, which in turn convinced her that their relationship is meaningful, yet Russell quickly shuffles her out of the entourage when his wife joins him on tour. William overhears Stillwater literally trading Penny to another band as stakes in a poker game, he confronts her with the truth. "They sold you for a case of beer!" he thunders at her happy-go-lucky attitude toward Russell, and we see in her eyes the wheels at last turning, shaking off rust and grinding until the full impact of the lie upon which she's built her current existence hits her. But all Hudson does outwardly is shed a single tear and muster the courage to ask, "What kind of beer?" Later, she attempts suicide by overdose.

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be a cheery bit of nostalgia? Yes, but it works precisely because Crowe injects drama into the proceedings. Almost Famous is a snapshot of a watershed moment in rock history, when young fans like William/Crowe came of age and could fully appreciate the music just as the people who'd been since it exploded in the mid-'60s -- Bangs, Penny -- are victims of the post-Altamont comedown (well, Bangs probably didn't give a damn about Altamont, but he viewed the rise of art rock as an international tragedy). When William meets Stillwater outside the stadium and tells them he's with Creem magazine, Jeff calls him "the enemy," but they warm to him when he proves that he actually knows their names and songs. Crowe gently fashions the band into a symbol of rock 'n' roll on the brink: these guys clearly care deeply for their music, but they argue when a batch of T-shirts arrives with a photo of the band entirely blurred save an in-focus Russel. Their manager (Noah Taylor) is a close friend but a bit clueless in the actual performance of his duties, and the band faces the option of selling him down the river when an officious super-manager (Jimmy Fallon) arrives and promises heaps of money under his guidance. These guys adamantly told William that they "make music for the fans, not the critics," but they all change their tune when William mentions they might make the cover of Rolling Stone.

The way Crowe captures these moments of the uncertainty of rock's future provides the sweetness I promised all those paragraphs ago. The actors who comprise Stillwater are absolutely the most convincing fictional rock stars ever placed on the screen: Lee and Crudup channel the love/hate relationship that was all over the place between the two founding members of Anvil in this year's Anvil! The Story of Anvil, always at each other's throats but closer than blood relatives. (In some amusing additions found in the director's cut of the film, William interviews the bassist and drummer, both of whom are about as bright as shattered light bulbs and an inevitable but fun gag on the much-maligned rhythm section.

In my extended review of Adventureland I mentioned this film in relation to Mottola's use of songs to evoke a time period, and the simple purity of Crow's music selection fuels the nostalgia. I've gone off classic rock recently, shifting the age limit forward to around the late '70s and listening to post-punks like The Fall, Joy Division and Nick Cave, but Almost Famous never fails to make me break out Zeppelin, Sabbath and The Who (note: it's always a good time for some Who). The joy of Crowe's use of music is best evidenced in what might so easily have been an utter disaster of a scene, when the passengers on Stillwater's tour bus break into a spontaneous singalong of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." For Crowe to insert such a moment -- using a song I don't even like -- and make it one of the purest examples of movie magic in contemporary American cinema is an incredible feat.

Of course, Crowe's autobiographical, humanistic style of writing requires actors who can bring something to the table, and I can't find a bum note here. Hudson gives one of the best performances by an actress of the decade, an almost supernatural charmer who fools everyone, including herself and (I would wager) much of the audience with her hollow confidence and know-how. McDormand manages to portray the harping mother without ever making her a cliché, and she's actually one of the most likeable characters in the movie -- try not to laugh and root for her when she tells off Russell over the phone for keeping her son out on the road, reducing the smiling, cocky rock star to a timid mouse. Hell, you can hate Jimmy Fallon all you want, but anyone who cannot see how wonderful he is as the professional manager is simply blinded by irrational hatred. Perhaps the weakest note is Fugit in the lead, but his flat awkwardness strikes me as more human than the Hugh Grant stammering or Michael Cera ironic panic that seem to constitute the only actorly depictions of nervousness; plus, he's clearly a cipher for Crowe and the audience, channeling our own emotional connection to the story so well that even viewers like myself, born long after this film's '73 setting, can tap into its nostalgic effect.

Deciding whether Almost Famous best Crowe's other masterpiece, Say Anything..., is no easy feat -- my own preference depends entirely on which one I've seen more recently -- but if Almost Famous lacks the taut emotional impact of his directorial debut, it compensates in its variation: it's a coming-of-age tale, a road movie, and a nostalgic autobiography. It's also, despite the borderline saccharine feel of Crowe's reminiscence, somewhat of a eulogy: near the end, after Penny has left in disillusionment and the band turned on William for writing the truth of the band's vain infighting and thinly masked greed and killed his story, band-aid Sapphire (Fairuza Balk) talks to Russell about the new batch of girls who now follow the band. Even among the quasi-feminist band-aids, these new additions are nothing more but groupies; "They don't even know what it is to be a fan, y'know?" Sapphire rants wearily, "To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." Perhaps rock never was the same after this period in time. Indeed, Stillwater appears to be well on the way to commercialization. Yet they also have an epiphany and a self-reevaluation, and Crowe ends the film with the bright suggestion that some groups can retain integrity and love of the craft and play the big venues.

P.S. This review concerns the vastly superior director's cut, which is sadly out-of-print in the U.S. but can be acquired easily enough on DVD through used online vendors (I got mine through Amazon Marketplace) or in a region-free Blu -Ray UK import. The director's cut adds a whopping 40 minutes, but it scarcely feels longer. Some scenes are unnecessary but fun -- the bassist/drummer interviews, Kyle G as a stoned, narcoleptic late-night DJ conducting an interview with Stillwater -- while others are absolutely vital, such as a brief moment where Russell explains to William that the most memorable parts of music are the mistakes or the little asides, or the scene at the end where Jeff and Russell have a heart-to-heart about their crumbling relationship (why this was cut from the theatrical version is beyond me; in that cut, their dynamic is never resolved). The theatrical version is still a great movie, but the Untitled cut makes it look like a hatchet job.

Darkman

Sam Raimi spent the first decade of his career straddling the line between potential hit-maker and one-trick pony. After his over-the-top gangster pastiche Crimewave tanked, he ran back to his debut film, only to silence any cynics by creating the greatest horror-comedy in the history of the genre. It renewed faith in the director, who decided to throw his talents into another genre film, albeit about comic book heroes instead of criminals. Released a year after Tim Burton's Batman proved that the genre could be taken seriously (though that film still has one foot planted firmly in cartoonish abandon), Darkman built upon the raves the director received for Evil Dead 2 by showcasing his ability to make a good film outside of the horror genre.

That is not to say that Darkman fully breaks from Raimi's bread and butter. Based on his own short story, it pays homage to classic Universal horror films as much as it does the superhero genre. After all, the story of a man, hideously disfigured, inventing disguises that allow him to cover his wounds as well as seek revenge calls to mind The Phantom of the Opera and The Invisible Man more than Batman or Green Lantern. Comic books inform the dialogue, however, which is gleefully over the top without slipping off the edge as it did in Crimewave.

Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) receives his hideous wounds when mobster Durant (Larry Drake) confronts him in his lab. Durant wants an incriminating document held by Peyton's girlfriend Julie (Frances McDormand), and his thugs burn the poor scientist's face with acid before blowing up the whole place altogether. Peyton survives with massive burns that leave him with an inability to control his emotions and a thirst for vengeance.

He salvages his project, synthetic skin developed just for burn victims and the like, and finds that his overactive adrenal glands give him super-strength and a high tolerance for pain. The only downside to his fake skin? Something within it reacts to light, so his masks deteriorate after 99 minutes. Ergo, he becomes the titular Darkman, a mysteriously, bandaged hero who can also assume the identity of anyone he chooses with his skin molds.

Raimi, clearly still operating at the peak of his camp, has great fun with the movie. His offbeat style of rapid cutting and sudden, swift camera movement doesn't integrate into the story as well as it did for the Evil Dead movies, but it's a noticeable step up from Crimewave. The action is so slick and pulpy the frames might as well be cels of an actual comic. The final fight, on an unfinished building, contains all the joyous revelry that was so sadly lacking in the similarly constructed climax of Spider-Man 3. Its special effects should also be noted; some of the prosthetic make-up cannot be said to look realistic -- particularly around the skeletal mouth -- but the effect of Peyton peeling off a flawless skin mask to reveal a perfectly acceptable face underneath is impressive. Action scenes, though surprisingly few and far between, contain all the visual invention of Raimi's early films but on a budget that allows him to really display his acuity. What a shame that the director later turned to limp, unimaginative CG.

Raimi's dialogue is cheesy, but it works because the actors play it straight enough to give it some weight but light enough to lets us know they're in on the joke. Neeson can't help but ooze gravitas, and even with his face hidden in prosethetics and bandages and his voice altered for much of the film, he makes you care about this strange, frightening hero. McDormand has little screen time, but she establishes Julie as a capable person with her own drives, far removed from the two-dimensional Vicki Vale of the previous year's mega-hit. Casting "real" actors in action flicks doesn't always pay off, but it allows for the opportunity of that actor crafting a three-dimensional character with shades of moral gray, and Neeson and McDormand do a wonderful job.

Supposedly, the studios tampered with the film a bit after some test screenings went badly, though apparently it performed better after some crazier elements were cut and Danny Elfman's score was added. Even without whatever footage the studio hacked out of the film, Darkman remains a thoroughly fun ride. It obviously follows in the footsteps of Batman, but its embracing of old horror pictures made some comparisons with Burton's Expressionist vision inevitable. Far from perfect, Darkman nevertheless demonstrated that Sam Raimi could well become one of the most visually inventive directors to come out of the '80s, and you can see why someone might hand him the reins to a franchise as big as Spider-Man.

Burn After Reading

The Coen brothers have never been ones to take themselves seriously. The best part of the Oscars last year was seeing the uncomfortable looks on their faces as they had to collect award after award from their peers, like the kid who hides in the back of the class suddenly being asked to come to the board and do a problem. Whenever critics start to love them too much, they take a razor to the wrists of their careers, bleeding out any pretentiousness before it builds up and makes them cocky. Such is the case with “Burn After Reading,” the follow-up to possibly the best movie of the decade thus far, “No Country For Old Men.”

A subtle send-up of the spy thrillers by John le Carré, the film centers on four main characters: Linda (Frances McDormand), who wants plastic surgery so she can finally find the perfect man; her airheaded best friend Chad (Brad Pitt); Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), an alcoholic CIA agent who plans to write a scathing memoir after being forced to resign; and ex-Secret Service agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who’s having an affair with Osborne’s wife (Tilda Swinton). While Cox’s wife files for divorce, Chad finds a CD full of CIA secrets at the gym in which he and Linda work. Seeing a way to pay for her elective surgeries, Linda (with Chad’s help) conspires to blackmail Cox in exchange for the disc.

From here on out it’s standard Coens’ fare: dumb people try to pull off something far beyond their limited grasp and understanding, and a lot of people die painful deaths. The brothers are clearly influenced by the work of Flannery O’Connor; “Fargo” or “Barton Fink” are grotesque morality plays just as complex, esoteric, horrifying and (often) darkly funny as O’Connor’s short stories. We don’t really get anyone to root for, save perhaps gym boss Ted (Richard Jenkins), who longs for Linda just the way she is. Everyone else is a self-absorbed monster.

What really sets this apart from their previous screwball efforts is the acting. Swinton has a look of perennial exasperation, as if the totality of everyone’s idiocy is too much to bear. Malkovich brings all his snarling venom to the forefront as the misanthropic Cox; when he spits out to one character, “You’re in league with morons,” his words are so acidic they could burn through steel.

In the latest collaboration with the brothers, Clooney does a fine job of tearing down his leading-man persona for more character-driven work. A sex-obsessed, paranoid man, Harry generally stops panicking only long enough to run a few miles and bed yet another woman. Clooney has proven several times over his ability to carry a film, but it is when he takes a back seat that he really shines.

But the real stars are McDormand and Pitt. McDormand, in her best performance since 2005’s “North Country,” is the kind of person who thinks she’s humble and down to earth but is really elitist. She acknowledges (and greatly exaggerates) her own physical flaws but expects her soulmate to be perfect. Linda’s disposition is that of McDormand’s own Marge Gunderson (“Fargo”) mixed with a bitter edge brought on by age and loneliness.

Despite a host of great performances, Brad Pitt steals the show. He hops through the film with earbuds on, raucously dancing to music only he can hear, with facial expressions that look almost childish. His role is the smallest of the principal cast, but I can guarantee it’s the one you’ll be talking about the most.

“Burn After Reading” certainly won’t keep the attention of all the converts “No Country For Old Men” brought to these stylish cult directors, but people looking for another surreal, non-linear, brilliant mess in the style of “The Big Lebowski” should be quite pleased. At one point, a CIA superior (played by J.K. Simmons, who can always turn every piece of his dialogue into a one-liner) tells his subordinate to come back to him “when it all makes sense.” He’s in the wrong movie. A friend I saw it with said it dragged. I disagree; like all of the brothers’ films, it simply takes its time. Aided by director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki (filling in for a busy Roger Deakins), the Coen brothers have offered up 2008's best-looking comedy, and one of its funniest.

Blood Simple

There's something about the rather low-key intro of the Coen brothers that forever etches it into my mind. It's just a static shot from the backseat of a car as the driver and his lover ride along a highway in pouring rain, but it left me somewhat unsettled the first time, and only more so on repeat viewings when I knew what would happen. Though the film as a whole bears more semblance to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films than the rest of the Coens' oeuvre (Joel Coen was Raimi's editing assistant at this time), it established them as the chief modern purveyors of homage-ridden yet wholly original film noir.

Centered on a love triangle between Abby (Frances McDormand), her husband Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) and Marty's employee Ray (John Getz), Blood Simple starts well into Ray and Abby's affair, after even Marty has become suspicious. One of the cars that passes Abby and Ray in the opening sequence belongs to a private detective hired by Marty (he's unnamed in the film but listed as Visser in the credits). Played by the magnificent character actor M. Emmet Walsh, Visser subverts what could have been yet another Double Indemnity ripoff by setting the events of the plot into motion.

Visser snaps photos of the illicit couple and brings them to his client, who naturally fires Ray and threatens him never to come back to Marty's bar. In a rage, Julian heads to Ray's house and catches his wife there and tries to choke her (spot the Raimi-cam shot!), but is beaten down by his wife and ultimately warned off the property by Ray. Marty calls Visser back to meet him, and we know what the man will ask of the detective before the words come out of his mouth. "As long as the pay's right, and it's legal, I'll do it," chirps Visser. "It ain't exactly legal." Not a moment's hesitation: "Well, as long as the pay's right, I'll do it."

But Visser has plans of his own, and soon he double crosses and crosses back once more, a complete unknown suddenly thrusting himself into this triangle seemingly without reason, to the point that Abby and Ray come to suspect one another. Why wouldn't they? Even covering your bases you're bound not to think of a random stranger making you his pet project.

Eventually Ray gets indirectly sucked into Visser's game and figures out a third party is watching them when Visser slips up a bit, and it leads to a bloody showdown in the shadows between Abby and Visser exemplifies the most terrifying aspects of film noir. It's not a particularly action-packed scene, but by the end of it blood is all over the place and you've been scared witless.

Though Blood Simple follows tried and true noir tropes, it never falls into any one pigeonhole. Abby is not a femme fatale, cheating on her husband because she's a heartless dame who wants to get a slice of dough out of a weak-willed accomplice, she's a woman trapped in an abusive relationship who turns to the nicest man in her life for comfort. Likewise, Ray presents himself as strong and knowing in stark contrast to the weak but violent Marty.

Aiding this inventive script and the excellent acting is the cinematography courtesy of Barry Sonnenfeld. These guys didn't have a lot of money and because of it the Coens--who displayed a visual mastery even this early on--were still reaching beyond their grasp, but Sonnenfeld really stepped up to plate and captured some chilling images that mixed high-concept German expressionism with the stark natural feel independent films rely on due to their budgets. While the two moods don't always mesh perfectly, Sonnenfeld elevates the material far beyond what it might have been.

The Coens took the title of the film from noir master Danshiell Hammet's novel Red Harvest, and it refers to a state of mania caused by overexposure to violence and horror that leads people to make bad mistakes. Visser mentions it to Marty when he starts to get lost in his quest for revenge, and we see it later in Ray when he realizes that someone is watching him. In a way, "blood simple" is the foundation for all of the Coen brothers' subsequent films: in their dramatic noirs intelligent people find themselves involved with crime and eventually get in over their heads, while the characters in their screwball comedies start there. As a statement of intent, Bood Simple is one of the most auspicious cinematic debuts ever produced, and a lasting classic of neo-noir.

Mississippi Burning

I seem to forever be one movie behind when I review, always reviewing the film before the film I just finished. Well, I'm gonna play catch-up with this film, because it offers so very little. Mississippi Burning, the 1988 film concerning the actual murders of three civil rights workers in 1964, aims to offer up an intense look at race relations by way of a frightening look into our recent past, but instead plays like a Hollywood-ized thriller that only gets its "deeper" meaning out in chucks of stilted dialogue and tries to wow us for the other hour and half.

In the film, Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman play FBI agents who will stop at nothing to find and arrest the Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the murders. Dafoe plays the role of Not-Racist White Guy, the stalwart young hero who sits in the segregated sections meant for blacks, openly speaks in the midst of Klan members about their bigotry. And what better foil for Not-Racist White Guy than Initially Racist White Man Who Overcomes Bigotry Just 'Cause (also known as the "John Wayne in The Searchers" award). Hackman, to his credit, plays the IRWMWOBJC to a T, but his character seems to turn against bigotry out of spite for the KKK members, and while I don't look a gift horse in the mouth it rings hollow.

Because this is Hollywood, our heroes cannot deal with racism in its subtle, insidious form. Oh no. Now, you probably know Mississippi to be one of the more violently racist states during the period, but what you probably didn't know is that Mississippi is officially the worst place ever in the history of racism. The KKK members, some of whom are cops, are so racist that they threaten the FBI officers' lives. Never mind the fact that such an admission alone is grounds for a federal case, Dafoe and Hackman decide instead to wait it out while more black people are killed, because ending a killing spree comes second to-hey, look at that explosion!!

Yes, just as cars exploded left and right in the misogynistic The Last Boy Scout, so too do houses explode in Mississippi Burning. I assumed the title alluded to broiling racial tensions spilling out into a heat wave of violence that threatened to consume the South, but actually they meant literal fire. Damn me and my fancy college-boy type brain; that's what I get for thinking.

Eventually the brave FBI agents, all of whom hate racism just as much as our NRWG because they wear suits and men in suits are simply too fancy to be racist, swoop into the town and capture the KKK members using terror tactics. So, let me get this straight: at the beginning the KKK admits to their crimes and makes death threats to the FBI to their faces, but that's not enough for a trial. However, using flagrantly illegal practices to ensnare targets who aren't even hiding in the first place will mean swift and harsh convictions for those pillow-headed twerps. I could use a KKK hood right now, as a matter of fact. So I could soak up the tears of rage.

The only thing that remotely redeems this film is Dafoe and Frances McDormand. Dafoe has to play a ridiculous, inaccurate and manipulative role, but he really gives a good go at it. McDormand however, is the saving grace of the film. The abused wife of one of the Klan members, she offers up the film's only bit of subtlety as she tackles both issues of racial prejudices and spousal abuse. McDormand was nominated for an Oscar for the film and it was richly deserved.

The rest of it, however, is a wash. It's typical Hollywood Big Issue stuff, in that it entirely skirts dealing with the issue in question to reap the rewards of cheap exploitation. I know it's hard to get racism in film right, but why do we have to sit through all of these Oscar-baiting masturbatory exercises in one that actually works?