By KEVIN BOWEN - 
Grade: B Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen Director: Larry Charles How will you know if Bruno is your type of film? Answer this question. How do you feel about a running gag involving an exercise bike converted for use as a super-dildo? Funny? Or obnoxiously revolting?
Compared to Sacha Baron Cohen's breakthrough in Borat three years ago, Bruno is more outlandish, more perverse, more obvious, more rambling, more gag-oriented, more unfocused, much more outrageous, about as hysterical, maybe even more so, and missing a certain sweetness. It will be interesting to see how it plays to gay audiences - whether it is condemned or championed.
That's because Bruno is a gay stereotype taken to extremes, like a comic version of Shaft for homosexuals. This comic creation is a truly flaming Austrian fashion show host who comes to Los Angeles with the sole goal of ascending to stardom. His European flamboyance confronts and exposes the real and semi-real Americans that he meets in his travels. In England they refer to this as the art of “taking the piss.”
That approach, of course, is a repeat of the tactics of Borat. While there is a certain sense of easy targeting that keeps both films from being decisive social commentary (homoerotic clenching at a ultimate fighting venue is pretty easy material), they make consistently amusing set pieces.
There's a certain game you play while watching Cohen's films. I call it “Actor, Non-actor, or Playing Along.” The idea is to guess the status of any single “regular” American appearing. Some are normal people unknowingly confronted with the outrageous. Others are normal people aware they are in a movie and playing to the camera. A number of the apparently “real people” are probably scripted actors, I would guess. Do you really truly think that even the worst showbiz mom would swallow hard and let her toddler play a Nazi stuffing another baby into an oven? The result is a three-headed film. Occasionally you have to guess which film you are in.
Yet in its send-up of fame and its callous lack of taste, Bruno is profanely hilarious. His simulated imaginary fellatio on the dead member of Milli Vanilli in front of a shocked showbiz psychic is an unforgettably perverse gem. And just as you think the humor is running low on its gaydom, Bruno decides to go straight, which opens a whole 'nother can. It's a second wind for a film that seems to have seven of them.
BRUNO
MICHAEL MOORE'S NEW DOCUMENTARY UNVEILED
(by Dave McNary; previously published on Variety) Michael Moore's opting to spoof romantic conventions in titling his upcoming documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story," which addresses the causes of the global economic meltdown.
"It will be the perfect date movie," Moore said in an announcement Wednesday. "It's got it all -- lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It's a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let's just say it: It's capitalism."
Moore and Overture Films had announced previously that the film would be released domestically on Oct. 2 -- a year and a day after the U.S. Senate voted to approve a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Paramount Vantage will handle international distribution.
The film is described as focusing on "the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world."
Pic is Moore's first since "Sicko" in 2007. He's made three of the top six highest-grossing documentaries -- "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Sicko" and "Bowling for Columbine."
Overture and Par announced the project a year ago, during the Cannes Film Festival, but were vague as to the project's theme beyond noting that it was coming from the same filmmaker who had delivered "Fahrenheit 9/11." As the project took shape, Moore decided to focus on the financial crisis and issued an appeal in February for people working on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share what they knew.
"Be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history," Moore said at the time.
Overture CEO Chris McGurk and chief operating officer Danny Rosett previously worked with Moore on the release of "Bowling for Columbine" at MGM/United Artists.
WERNER HERZOG INTERVIEWED ON TIME
By ALI NADERZAD - Everyone (I hope) should know Werner Herzog (and if you don't, well, you should). He was mostly famous earlier on for films like 'Fitzcaraldo' and more recently 'Grizzly Man.' I see him (as anyone else) as the calmer alter-ego of that venerable (and schizo) German actor named Klaus Kinsky. Herzog directed him for several of his films, eventually making a documentary about their self-destructive friendship called 'My favorite fiend.' If you know what happened on the set of Terry Gilliam's 'Man from la Mancha,' during which everything that could go wrong does go wrong, then you might imagine similar circumstances but perhaps two times worse on the shoot for 'Fitzcaraldo,' (1981) an absolutely fascinating odyssey about a rubber baron (played by Kinsky) who sets out to build an opera--his favorite musical genre--in the middle of the Peruvian jungle. The gargantuan task is eclipsed only by what it will take to fund such an undertaking: dragging an entire steamship through to the jungle to bring it to the heart of rubber territory, in order to better exploit it. Herzog kept notes during the entire filming and it is only recently that he went back to re-read, edit and supplement them for a new book he called "Conquest of the Useless." TIME is currently running this video about Herzog giving a brief interview on the genesis for the book and some interesting anecdotes. Nothing new is revealed, but there's something that's always fascinated me about Herzog, a very quiet (and quieting person) inside whom some storm always seems to be gathering. And while he hasn't renewed his opus for ever, tour-de-force films like Fitzcaraldo, which earned Herzog Best Director award at Cannes in 1982, bear watching again. Herzog (pictured here on the set of Fitzcaraldo) has always struck me as enamored of himself as much as his craft but perhaps that's not such a bad thing after all when you have given the world such pleasurable and long-lasting works.
PUBLIC ENEMIES
By KEVIN BOWEN - 
Grade: B Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, David Wenham, Stephen Graham, Rory Cochrane, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi, Channing Tatum, Lily Taylor, Leelee Sobieski
Director: Michael Mann
While watching Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, I was reminded of a particular character in Heat, the getaway driver who drops his day job on the spot for the slightest hint of a heist. That’s the essence of a Mann criminal – they really know nothing else. Such is the case with his version of John Dillinger, aced by Johnny Depp, born only to rob banks and die young. Mann fashions the infamous Depression-era outlaw into a figure of charisma, ruthlessness and suicidal audacity.
Like a pop star with the lifespan of a bottle rocket, the Dillinger of history terrorized the Midwest for a grand total of one crazy year of bloody bank jobs, jail breaks, and shootouts with the Bureau of Investigation. Mann transforms Dillinger into a legendary self-made American Original being squeezed by an increasingly conformist and corporate nation. The cops are scientific and powerful. The mob is turning into a dull business. Robbing a bank is a childish joyride. He stands as an emblem of the times, yet he is already a charismatic anachronism.
Mann is so enamored of his Dillinger that he balances him with an FBI that, given the context, borders on the silly. The film links the FBI to Italian Fascism, suggesting that their tough tactics are the heirs of a spoiled legacy. It’s as if trying to stop a bloody crime wave were merely a bunch o squares harshing on an outburst of originality and initiative. Perhaps he would like to explain to Mexican citizens that they currently are experiencing a vigorous outburst of individualism.
Mann gets a quietly eccentric performance from his lead, backed with an excellent but miscast. Marion Cotillard as his gun moll Billie Frechette. Enamored with his central villain, Mann leaves Christian Bale to a series of mannerisms as underdeveloped G-Man Melvin Purvis, too large of a role to be the cipher it is. The failure to develop Purvis as an adequate balance keeps the film from reaching the epic weight that it seeks. Public Enemies won’t help any teenager pass a test. It conflates incidents, ignores others. At times, such as the parade-like trip to jail in Indiana, the film can seem too much like gangster movie porn – a director sating a childhood fascination with Tommy Guns, running boards and gun molls. At other times, such as the monster night-time shootout between G-Men and a group of legendary bank robbers, Public Enemies takes your breath.
WHATEVER WORKS
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - How does Woody Allen get actors of any shape, age, and origin to look and sound exactly like himself in film after film? How does he manage to have them make asinine, simplistic, and unending discourses on the pathetic nature of humanity and the sorry state of the world around us? How does he come up with these flimsy story lines and poorly sketched characters, always in the same context—warm brown-hued New York (and more recently, European cities) interiors, cafés, and art galleries? How can the gifted director who gave us “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Radio Days,” and a few others keep pouring these banal scenes in films totally undistinguishable one from the next? The real mystery is why we buy tickets and sit there, paying half an ear and half an eye as we would to a relative whom we still visit occasionally because of memories of better days but for whom we feel neither curiosity nor affection.
JAFFA
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - Newscasts and opinion eds tell us plenty about the headache and heartache of the relation between neighboring and intermingled Palestinian and Israeli communities and the sporadic efforts to bring a solution to a problem that doesn’t have any good one. But we know less about Israel’s Arabs, second-rate citizens who actually live in the country. Keren Yedaya’s “Jaffa” uses this context to tell us the story of the doomed love of a young couple. She, Mali, sensitively played by Dana Ivgy, is Israeli and pregnant, getting ready to elope with the love of her life; that would be Tawfiq, an Arab mechanic who works in her father’s auto shop. Lording it over all concerned is Mali’s brother, an unsufferable spoiled brat not a bit cowed by his parents’ constant admonitions to get a life. (Ronit Elkabetz, unforgettable in “The Band’s Visit,” plays the mother). Tensions, subtly developed, lead to a terrible incident that will tear apart the whole fabric, disrupt every plan and unleash emotions. Years later, an epilogue brings the message that some kind of hope can come out of utter hopelessness.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: STATE OF PLAY
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - Let’s be honest, no film experience is quite as satisfying as a good thriller—and “State of Play” is an excellent thriller, in the corridors-of-power genre. Set in Washington’s political world, it gives us the shenanigans and the dark doings that confirm everything we suspect from that particular area of human endeavor. Great, great acting by Russell Crowe. Ben Affleck’s congressman is appropriately wooden and noncommittal. This reviewer would only add that it may be time to give a rest to successive surprise endings that come at us, Russian-doll style, one after the other. Directors would do well to imitate legendary detectives of yore—Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot et al—who, at the end of the story, would seat everyone involved in a circle of chairs, look them sternly in the eye and proceed to tell them what was what and who did what to whom. Nowadays, at the end of every thriller, when we think all avenues have been explored and we’ve figured out the whole mess… no, no, no, we had it all wrong. Actually, what happened was… but wait, there’s more… and more, and more. But that’s a small nit to pick in two very enjoyable hours.
PUBLIC ENEMIES
By ETHAN SACKS - (previously published on Daily News) They may be murderous thugs and thieves, but it seems we can't help but root for 'em. Universal's "Public Enemies," which opened Wednesday, is the latest Hollywood movie to provide ammunition to the romantic mythos surrounding the American gangster. From James Cagney's sneering Tom Powers in 1931's "Public Enemy" to Johnny Depp's dashing John Dillinger in "Public Enemies," mobsters, both real and fictional, have offered up anti-heroes that moviegoers couldn't refuse.
"The guardians of the public good tried to stanch the flow of gangster movies in the early 1930s, but it didn't work," said Leonard Maltin, movie historian and film critic for "Entertainment Tonight."
"There's an ambiguity about these figures because in some cases they get away with things that we all secretly wish we could.
"And in a complex world, the bankers, police, the government are not always the good guys."
In director Michael Mann's "Public Enemies," Depp embodies a gangster whose spree of bank robberies from September 1933 to July 1934 - when he was gunned down by G-men outside Chicago's Biograph Theater - terrorized law-abiding citizens across the Midwest.
For many others who thrilled to his gang's exploits in newspapers and on the radio, however, the 31-year-old thief represented that era's Robin Hood, robbing from the banks that had forfeited so many hardworking Americans' savings. He was sticking it up to the man, a sentiment that may resonate with modern movie audiences stuck in dark economic times of their own.
"I related to John Dillinger like he was a relative," Depp said in a press release for the film. "He reminded me of my stepdad and very much of my grandfather. He seemed to be one of those guys with absolutely no bull whatsoever, who lived at a time when a man was a man."
Dillinger, himself, was cut out for the big screen: He wielded a Tommy gun like rock stars flash guitars. Even after he was captured by police, before one of his escapes, he would mug for the newsreel cameras.
"From now on when the American public thinks of JD they'll think of Johnny Depp," said Paul Maccabee, author of "John Dillinger Slept Here."
"Whoever Dillinger was in real life is going to be subsumed by the Johnny Depp version - which in the way is the best thing that could have happened to John Dillinger."
The real Dillinger, however, led a gang of short-fused gunman on a reign of terror that left 10 men dead in their wake.
"Dillinger wanted the money, he wanted the girls and he wanted the lifestyle," said Maccabee. "He wanted to have a good time. He wasn't doing it for anyone else." (previously published on Daily News)
LES PLAGES D'AGNES OPENS IN NEW YORK
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - Noirmoutiers, in northwestern France, is an island when the tide is high and part of the mainland when it’s low. A quirky, peculiar place, then, where Agnès Varda, a major figure of the French New Wave, has made her home these many years. Varda now uses herself and her life to give us a documentary/memoir of her eighty years. The movie is light and whimsical, yet deep in its quiet insights, precise in the use of words as of images, from her childhood in Belgium to her life with Jacques Démy, the director of the lovely and unclassifiable Umbrellas of Cherbourg among other classics. The author of many important films, among them Cleo de 5 a 7, the story of a woman who has two hours to kill while waiting to see her doctor who will deliver a verdict of cancer or not uses her signature style, moving lightly between cities, innumerable friends, and yet another beach, another seascape of those she has lived by and loved these many years. She is too serene, too open, too understanding to ever be called obsessed by anything but the sea and its relation to her home is central to the the new film, as it was to an exhibit last year at the Cartier Foundation. That exhibit, 'L’ile et Elle,' showed video montages, collages, sketches and photos all inspired by Noirmoutiers, the island where time slows down enough to allow the hours to pass dreamily, watching seagulls, listening to the roar of the tide, interviewing other widows on their fond memories. Varda says “If you open people, you'll find landscapes. If you open me, you'll find beaches.” Les plages d’Agnès, just released in France, is a thoughtful, gracious film about a woman who hides nothing about the fear of grief, aging and loss but comes through magnificently through the joy of creation, permanent intellectual curiosity, and the redemption brought by those we love.
Les Plages D'Agnes is currently showing at Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., New York.
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Grade: F Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Tuturro, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson
Director: Michael Bay
I won't judge you solely on the fact that you want to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
I'm sure there are good deeds in you past that can somewhat atone for it. But I'm not sure there is any level of sainthood that can fully cleanse yourself from this.
The sole innovation of Michael Bay's giant metamorphosing alien robot epic is somehow turning a Gremlin hatchback into a 40-foot tall racist caricature. It tests the American lower limit for the juvenile and finds it shockingly bottomless. It's such a miserable experience that it's not even fun to write about.
The plot is either unexplainable, besides that it involves an ancient race of Transformers, a Sun-destroying mega-weapon and something called The Matrix of Leadership. The Autobots (good guy robots) are fighting in an Earth-based war against the Decepticons (bad guys). It's a secret from the public, although how people haven't noticed the giant robots standing on top of their skyscrapers, I'm not sure. College-bound teenager Sa (Shia LaBeouf) gets yanked from college to the Egyptian desert with an elderly Transformer, where he must solve a series of rune symbols involuntarily running through his head in order to save the world. Now imagine having a group of mysterious symbols running through your head and having only Megan Fox to help.
The film could be partially redeemed if the action were strong. The first film was helped slightly by its final dogfight along the Las Vegas strip, presented with an interesting sense of scale. This one , not so much. The scenes are shot close in, to the point that it becomes just so many chunks of computer-generated metal. In one of the worst action montages that I've seen in a while, LaBeouf goes from shackled in a warehouse to running from the warehouse to speeding away in a car to suddenly running through the woods. It's worse that it sounds.
I've never understood why anyone would be interested in Transformers beyond an eight year old for whom they made pretty cool toys. The best that I can say about Megan Fox is that she knows the joke is on all of us. Shia LaBeuof has a tremendous amount of charisma, but will he ever star in a good movie?
