'The Pillow Book'

Is there a top 25 actor in Hollywood today that we've seen more of his penis than Ewan McGregor?

In his early films, you couldn't keep McGregor's picker out from in front of the camera. Do you watch Star Wars or The Ghost Writer and see McGregor and think, "I've seen his penis; multiple times." You can't say that about George Clooney or Brad Pitt.

The Pillow Book, frankly, is kind of a brain screw. Based on the Japanese tradition of keeping a "pillow book," a sort of journal. The narrator and main character connects sexual pleasure with her earliest memories of her father's calligraphy painted on her body on her birthday.

From that time onward, she tries to find a man that can fulfill this Electra-like sexual need by allowing guys to write on her to the point that she starts writing a novel on her lovers.

McGregor becomes one of her favorites. He's also a homosexual favorite with the publisher. Naturally, we see McGregor's penis quite a bit. We thought Trainspotting was his edgiest film? No way.

'Odd Man Out'

My favorite part of the film is when James Mason's Irish accent comes and goes.

An interesting production note about this film is that it featured a lot of unknown actors from the local Irish theatre scene to portray a group of people that probably existed within their lifetime.

It's hard to truly figure out Ireland. It's two countries -- the Republic of and Northern Ireland. It's a country divided and that's being kind.

They can't even fight the British well or long enough for it to matter without them fighting each other as to whether they should be British or Irish or Catholic or Protestant. Why the religion thing matters so much is a mystery.

I'm a spiritual guy. I get religion. I don't necessarily begrudge anyone worshipping as they see fit. But I do not understand religion as a means of turmoil and violence. Nor do I understand why one's form of religion should matter to anyone else. Why it's such a hot topic amongst people baffles me, honestly.

It's more than relgion, however. It's all about the idea of sovreignty and freedom, too. Why they can't all agree that those two are pretty cool things and they're easily attainable is, too, a mystery.

At least it gives us James Mason films.

'Raise The Red Lantern'

I don't go expecting much from a bunch of these Asian films and, yet, I come out being very impressed by their acting, cinematography and direction.

Raise the Red Lantern details the lift of a young girl taken as a concubine at the house of a warlord. She quickly learns that the battle for the lord's attention amidst the concubines is pretty rough. She must capture and keep the man's attention in order to receive the perks such as foot massages and food.

The competition for attention heats up and goes overboard after our heroine rats out a fellow concubine for having an affair. That concubine is executed. Discombobulated by grief and guilt, our heroine goes crazy in the meantime in an uncertain emotional state that we assume she stayed in for the rest of her days.

'Shadows'

This is John Cassavetes' first film. Technically, his first and second.

He filmed the first version of Shadows in 1957 and then another version in 1959. By all accounts, Cassavetes preferred the second version (otherwise, why would you redo the first?) and the first was all but lost even when Cassavetes died in 1989.

Then in 2004, some Cassavetes scholar found an almost pristine copy of the first Shadows that was logged into a lost and found on a subway. It's odd how often this happens. You always hear about some film, photos or letters being found and it wind up being significant or include significant people.

Film are the oddest. How do you forget that you have game 7 of the 1951 World Series in your attic? How does a copy of a film get lost to especially the director only to be found by total randomness in a subway lost and found? It's ridiculous.

Also, the original soundtrack was to be that of famed jazz musicians Charles Mingus. However, he failed to meet deadlines and his music was not used.

It's also pretty significant that it deals with interracial relationships, which is still a sore subject 50 years later. Can't imagine it's reception in 1957.

'Klute'

I honestly can't imagine a more boring film being made despite the fact that watching Jane Fonda almost naked for two hours is very satisfying and the fact that I like Donald Sutherland.

Klute is Sutherland, the no-nonsense, small-town cop, who travels to New York City to investigate the yearlong disappearance of his friend. There he interviews Fonda, a call girl, who has an addiction to the lifestyle she's desperately trying to leave behind.

They become lovers and team up to investigate the friend's disappearance, Fonda's stalker, the death of some prostitutes and all kinds of other creepy happenings that turn out to be much deeper than we can imagine.

Sutherland's dry, but he's always kind of dry. Fonda is sexy as hell and she got a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal, despite not thinking she was all that good.

A year before the release of Klute, Fonda and Sutherland created Free The Troops, a vaudevillian traveling show along the West Coast, an anti-war USO. I expected this out of Fonda. Not so much Sutherland.

'Cabaret'

In college, I was quite the supporter of the arts. I went to dance and music recitals, I attended plays and musicals, and I went to art exhibits. All put on by my university.

Around my junior or senior year, I saw a production of Cabaret. Although a fan of the musical, I'd never seen or read about Cabaret so I had little to go on in terms of context or what the story was about.

I was floored. My jaw was wide open and fell to the floor. The influx of Nazis thrilled me beyond anything I could have imagined and I almost instantly went to Hastings to rent the 1972 film production starring Liza Minnelli.

I liked the stage production more. It had the emcee change into the striped uniform worn by Jews, Poles and prisoners of war and he walks into this door emitting this very bright light. It was harrowing, to say the least.

I like the film, too. Bob Fosse has a certain style. I noted it during my review of All That Jazz, which I found equally as haunting and dark.

Cabaret captures the same feeling. Not the death of a man, like All That Jazz, but the death of a people, the death of a time period and kind of a death of innocence. The death of a half century. The death of humanism. The Holocaust was more than the death of six million people. It was the loss of how we perceive global relations, politics and the role of the United States. It forever altered the way people act and think, the way leaders lead and the way philosopher's saw the world.

Everything changed. The only guy who knew this was the emcee, the grinning, mischievous Joel Grey. I've always perceived as being the devil, or Satan. Often, Satan doesn't always slither like a snake to tempt Eve with the forbidden fruit. I believe he stands by and wrings his hands together as catastrophe and mayhem ensue. He mocks the evildoers as he watches in glee as the innocent are destroyed.

We think the emcee as part of the solution. Instead, he's more of the problem.

Two very poignant scenes: Clearly when Max and Brian stop at the beer garden and the Nazi Youth leads a chorus of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." The vehemence and sincerity of which these people sing, a torn and angry people, is spooky and telling of where the mindset of the German in 1931 was.

Two, is the ending. It's the impish emcee staring into the camera sing-songy saying goodbye. A final swan song and wave goodbye of life as we knew it. All the future and all the lives are in limbo. Only the worst can be assumed.

'Saving Private Ryan'

My friend Rajesh has always stated that he hated Saving Private Ryan despite the first 24 minutes of the film being one of the greatest 24 minutes in film history.

He always points to beginning and end of the film: When an aged Private Ryan is visiting an Allied cemetery in Normandy, France and the camera fades from his wrinkled face to the faces of Tom Hanks at the onset of the D-Day invasion of France and then back to the cemetery at the end of the film.

Yes. This is extremely cornball and it's unbelieve that Steven Spielberg would even do this in such a heartbreaking film.

I always kind of defended Saving Private Ryan. Not that I loved it or even really liked it. I saw it twice in theaters and not once since. However, I thought at least it was OK.

Watching it again, 12 years after the fact, I completely understand where my friend is coming from and I was in shock and horror as I realized what Spielberg did to this film.

What sucked about Saving Private Ryan:

Adam Goldberg's A Jew!
Goldberg is overtly Jewish. He kind of flaunts it. In Saving Private Ryan, he portrays Stanley Mellish, as wiseacre private and a veteran of many battle. Well, for the next two hours, he wants you, every moviegoer in the world and every character in France to know just how Jewish he is. He seems very aware of the German's attitudes of the Jews. He seems very unconcerned about how the French, Polish or Americans thought about the Jews. Anyway, he continues to blet us over the head with his Jewishness to the point that you thought he had an inferiority complex.

Barry Pepper's A Sniper!
Like Golberg, Pepper's Daniel Jackson is a stereotype: The wise-beyond-his-years southern sniper, who quotes scripture while picking off German soldiers and who is probably more used to shooting dove or deer rather than Nazis. But he kinda enjoys all of it. Shooting, that is. And he's damn good. And he takes every opportunity to let you know just how good he is. By 45 minutes into the film, you want to take Jackson by the shoulders and scream, "OK, you're a good shot! We get it!"

Tom Hanks Is Mysterious!
World War II was just a sidenote to this story. Hanks is the grizzled veteran. Not cut out for leading, killing or making decisions that clearly weigh too heavily on his conscience. To cope, Hanks' character, John Miller, keeps his life a secret. He doesn't talk about home and only to the point that his mission is failing and his troops are rebelling does he pull the curtain back a little bit. Miller's mysteriousness is a simple plot tool for Spielberg in a thinly veiled attempt to making a two-hour film into a three-hour film.

Matt Damon's A Crybaby!
So, Miller and Co. are charged with going deep into France amid angry Nazis to find Private James Ryan, of Iowa, in order to escort him back to the front and a one-way ticket home. They find him helping guard a strategic bridge with tired, underarmed troops. Ryan refuses to leave. Miller acquiesces, but in order to carry out his assignment, he stays to defend the bridge. Ryan gives this spirited speech about staying with the only brothers he still had alive. Blah, blah, blah. The Americans are outmanned and outgunned by "50" German troops and tanks. I say "50" only because we're told it's "50" up until the point that they kill about 70 Germans and there's still a dozen left over. ANYWAY, almost all the good guys die and the remaining few run back to the other side of this strategic bridge in order to A) survive and B) blow up the bridge. While trying to blow up the bridge, Miller is injured in an explosion. He's in a daze. There's an onslaught. All seems lost. Then we catch "brave" Ryan sitting with his knees to his chest, crying like a big ol' baby. What happened to that big speech? Ryan wasn't near as brave as we thought. Then again, it's Spielberg. If he can betray a character's spirit to making something tear jerking, he will.

That's why Saving Private Ryan sucks.