Reeling Backward: "Minority Report" (2002)

"Minority Report" is the most un-Spielberg film ever made by Steven Spielberg.

There is plenty of heartbreak and sadness in Spielberg's movies. Certainly fractured families are a central theme. He's made movies about the Holocaust, D-Day and World War I trenches. The film he made right before this one was "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," in which bereaved parents replace their dying son with a robot who's been tricked into thinking he's a real boy.

And yet, there is an undercurrent of light and hopefulness in his oeuvre that I find (mostly) missing in "Minority Report," though "A.I." probably comes closest in its dystopian themes and dour mood.

In both movies technology has led to seemingly amazing achievements to benefit society, but there's an insidious bargain underneath that threatens to upend the balance. That's not surprising since it was based on a short story by the immortal Philip K. Dick, whose fears about the future essentially created its own film genre, tech noir. It was adapted for the screen by John Cohen and Scott Frank.

I remember liking the film when it came out but not being amazed as other critics were. One of the areas I still find it lacking is the sense of an entire world being built around star Tom Cruise. Instead, it seems like Spielberg and his team created just enough pieces to serve as a backdrop, and no more. He doesn't paint in the corners.

There are the automated cars that move both horizontally and vertically, but other than a chase scene where Cruise leaps from vehicle to vehicle, they're not really explored as a (literally) transportive societal evolution. Things seem... pretty well the same as they are now. They even have The Gap, in a self-reflexive bit of product placement.

Though maybe the sameness is a commentary in and of itself.

Set in the year 2054, the film has been pointed to as being prescient in its depiction of coming technological upheaval. We obviously don't have the ability to predict the future or record thoughts into a video stream, though VR headsets can do a pretty good job of putting you into a created reality. And the mind-altering drug people use in the film, neuroin, bears disturbing similarities to the opioid epidemic of today.

All the newspapers and magazines automatically update with the latest headlines, which if you were in the news business in the early Aughts, the talk of "e-paper" being the format of the future was all the rage. Instead we turned to reading on hard, graceless, 4-inch screens.

Most interesting is the ever-present eye scanners, taking a cool gadget that's a staple of the spy and sci-fi genres and turning it into an intimating facet of a world where our movements are continuously tracked -- ostensibly for consumerist purposes, but as we quickly see the government is piggybacking on the gaze.

We don't use "eye-D," as it's called in the movie, so ubiquitously or without consent. But think about how our online explorations are customized through cookies and trackable data. Everyone knows how they've searched for a product and then seen ads for similar wares plastering our web carousing. Or getting a report every month from Google Maps telling you exactly where you've been, and when.

Most of us would be mortified to have our browser history made public. In the world of "Minority Report," everything about us is on continual surveillance and display, up to and including the things we think about doing. Literally, people are arrested and punished for things they were about to do.

The story is at its root a meditation on free will and predestination. Usually such tales are set against a theological backdrop -- if God determines our path, how are we really free to choose?

As a good Catholic boy growing up, I was instructed that thinking about committing an act is just a much a sin as actually doing it. This was taught as a way to forbid sinful thoughts, but as any pubescent soon realized, they're as impossible to shut out as the old saw of "Don't think about elephants."

I think it was George Carlin who observed that the majority of Catholics who lapsed figured out that if you were going to be punished equally for thinking about doing something, you might as well experience the fun of actually doing it.

("I'll take glaring holes in catechism for $1,000, Alex.")

The film largely eschews religious issues, other than the decoration of some people considering the three "precogs" as deities unto themselves. They are children born of early neuroin users with psychic gifts, which used in conjunction can read people's evil intents before even they themselves are aware of them.

Of course, this also involves being imprisoned in a floating "milk bath" that heightens their powers, kept eternally pumped full of hallucinogens and fawned over by a quite possibly lecherous keeper, Wally (Daniel London).

Agatha (Samantha Morton) is the "most gifted" of the three, twins Dashiell and Arthur basically serving as assist men to the true genius. The three are named after famous mystery writers, and were trained by Dr. Hineman (Lois Smith), now living out her days in lonesome regret.

As is often the case in real life, the creative partner was outlasted and outmaneuvered by the business shark, in this case Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess, who is now desperate to take the "PreCrime" experiment from Washington D.C. to a national stage. This means jumping through small hoops held by big people.

Hence the arrival of the inquisitive mind of Danny Witwer, a wolf-like young assistant attorney general played by Colin Farrell in his breakout role in American films. He instantly focuses his attention on Chief John Anderton (Cruise), who is the heroic public face of PreCrime. John lost his own son in a bizarre abduction at a public swimming pool years earlier, tanking his marriage to Lara (Kathryn Morris) and turning him into a stealth neuroin user.

In early scene, John goes jogging through the shady part of D.C., his real purpose to obtain a fix, which he uses to heighten his mood while watching (crude) holographic home movies of his lost kid. The blind dealer removes his glasses to reveal cavernous empty eye sockets, seemingly revealing his very brains, with the admonishment, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!"

Watching the movie again, this line heralds a lot of high-contrast photography by cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, including a plethora of shots where one of a character's eyes are turned away or lost in shadow.

For me, the faster the movie's plot-stirring gets, the more I tend to lose interest as it gets into pure chase-chase mode. Neal McDonough plays Fletch, John's former right-hand man now charged with leading the hunt for him. "Everybody runs" is their mantra, leading to some slick action scenes with flying power suits and "sick sticks," glowing batons that instantly make their target retch.

In one of the movie's coolest but most inscrutable sequences, John goes to have his eyes swapped out in a black market procedure to fool the eye-D scans.

Peter Stormare plays the bottom-bucket doctor, who blows snot all over his hand right before sucking out John's eyeballs. In a riveting soliloquy, the not-good doctor reminds John -- now addled by anesthesia -- that the chief locked him away years ago for intentionally setting his patients on fire, and now back-alley eye jobs are the only medical work he can do.

It revs up to a classic "I shall have my revenge" declaration:

"For true enlightenment there is nothing like... well, let's just say taking a shower while this large fellow with an attitude you couldn't knock down with a hammer, that keeps whispering in your ear: 'Oh Nancy, Oh Nancy.' Now that was a lot of fun, thank you so very much John for putting me in there, thank you so very much for giving me an opportunity to get to know myself much better."

As near as I can figure, though, the doc never actually extracts any kind of revenge. He competently performs his job, at less than his usual rate, even. John has a nasty encounter with a putrid sandwich and spoiled milk placed in the fridge of his recovery flophouse, though they appear to be genuine accidents as he blindly reaches on the wrong shelf from where the fresh sustenance lies.

As much as I enjoy Stormare's effortless creepy presence and off-kilter line readings, this whole bit feels like a buildup to an important moment that never arrives. I believe the whole thing could be chopped down to quick montage and improve the pacing. Though this would maybe suck some of the life out of the subsequent house search by tiny "spiders," disc-like robots with wire-thin appendages deployed by the PreCrime brutes to infiltrate and forcibly eye-D people

Hence Cruise's green eyes become dark brown halfway through the movie. He keeps the old eyes in a plastic biggie to sneak back into the PreCrime HQ (no one thinking to lock out his profile, apparently) with the intent to have them put back one day, but comically loses one down a drain.

Tim Blake Nelson turns up as Gideon, the wheelchair-deployed officiate of the PreCrime "prison" where reside people judged and sentenced without actually committing any dastardly acts. They lie forever dreaming in plastic tubes, wearing coma-inducing "halos" around their heads like fallen angels as Gideon plays them orgiastic organ music to calm their prematurely damned souls.

As Nelson brings an innate disquieting anxiety to his roles, one instantly wonders if, like Wally, Gideon is supplanting his official duties with an occasional tug 'n' grope of his comelier charges.

John himself is briefly sentenced to the halo prison, his long run finally ending due to the machinations of Burgess, who is using his protege as the sacrificial pawn to ensure PreCrime is cleared for a national rollout. Lara springs him... surprisingly easily, and many have wondered if the film's entire last act is a big guffaw and everything we've seen is merely the imaginings of John, still trapped in his plastic prison on a never-ending high.

This would, of course, be a mirror of the finale of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," one of my all-time favorite films and a clear inheritor of Philip K. Dick's prescient, precious paranoia. His cinematic children were legion, even without an official credit.

And while I don't think "Minority Report" is among the finest of the adaptations, it's a film that has aged rather well in nearly a couple of clicks down the big highway. There was even a briefly lived TV series a few years ago that came and went without me (or anyone) much noticing.

Things end on a (somewhat artificial) high note -- Burgess slain by his own hand, PreCrime disbanded and the not-yet criminals released, Agatha and the twins relocated from their enforced isolation in the pool to a self-imposed one in a lonely cottage on a Scottish cliff or wherever, free to live in the now and not the future.

John even caresses the swelling belly of Lara, their love reborn with another life and shot at parenthood. It seems that free will does reign, along with happy endings in Spielberg flicks -- even if it takes two-plus hours of haunting parable to get there.

Reeling Backward: "Dreamscape" (1984)

"So Jane, what you do here in effect is count boners?"

If there was any better indication that a new Rubicon of filmmaking had been crossed, it was this quote from 1984's "Dreamscape," which was the second movie to be released with a PG-13 rating ("Red Dawn" being the first). It boasted enough gory violence, f-words and sex to earn it an R rating, but slide down to the next category with a few modest trims.

The new rating from the MPAA was designed to address a wave of films in the early 1980s -- "Poltergeist" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" among them -- that stretched the limits of the amount of blood and violence allowable in a PG movie. Steven Spielberg was actually among those who suggested an intermediate rating between PG and R.

But the studios soon realized the potential to nudge a host of other adult-oriented material into popular mainstream movies, while still selling tickets to kiddies. A new paradigm was established, and since then most big blockbuster films have carried the PG-13 classification.

The 13 part of the rating is simply a guide for parents. As a former assistant manager of a movie theater, I can tell you there was no actual restriction on under-age children buying their way into the movie, despite outraged assertions from any number of grown-ups.

As an almost-15-year-old when "Dreamscape" came out, I can also authoritatively declare that this fantasy/sci-fi/horror hybrid touched a whole lot of erogenous zones for people in my demographic. The story is about the ability of psychics to enter into the dreams of other people, and help or hurt them depending upon their motivations.

As was the case with the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and other cinema of the era, we were made to understand that if you die in your dream, you die in real life, too. Utter hooey, of course, and we all knew it back then, but it's one of those conceits you swallow in the course of a life of mainstream movie-going.

Dennis Quaid was the star, but the person most people remember from the movie is David Patrick Kelly, who steals the entire second half as "dream assassin" Tommy Ray Glatman. (As he also did in the latter portion of "The Warriors," plus other films.)

So intense in his portrayal of the psychopathic psychic, Kelly seems to be practically shivering out of his skin -- something he actually does later, turning into a snake-man for dream combat against his arch-foe, Alex Gardner (Quaid). He also conjures up fingernail blades to tear out the beating heart of a man, a scene that surely would not have passed muster under the banner of a PG film.

Directed by Joseph Ruben, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Loughery and Chuck Russell, "Dreamscape" was reputedly based on a short novel by Roger Zelazny, who sold a story outline to 20th Century Fox but did not receive a screen credit.

The tale is brimming with all sorts of Cold War anxiety about nuclear annihilation, coupled with paranoia that the government is invading our lives and shredding our freedoms. Generally I'm not one to go in much for political interpretations of movies, but the Reaganesque subtext is pretty hard to ignore here.

Eddie Albert plays the President, who is having bad dreams about nuclear war, including being attacked by radiation mutants, and resolves to pursue disarmament talks with the Soviet Union. Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), an old friend of his who runs a shadowy covert arm of the government -- "They're the guys the CIA is afraid of" -- opposes this, claiming the POTUS wants to "emasculate our nuclear deterrent."

He resolves to nip the problem in the bud by having Tommy Ray enter his mind as part of a secretive "dreamlink" research project housed at a fictitious college. Max von Sydow plays Dr. Novotny, head of the project and an old friend to Alex, whom he recruits to join the mission. Kate Capshaw is Jane, a fellow researcher who takes great pains to keep her relationship with Alex on a professional level.

Quaid, at the height of his brief initial stardom, is a smirky, charismatic presence, playing a guy with the soul of a con artist but who dresses like a preppy (Easter egg-colored cardigan vests aplenty).

George Wendt (Norm!) shows up briefly as Charlie Prince, a best-selling horror author whose vocation somehow gives him insight into the most secretive workings of the U.S. government. He's the one who clues in Alex that Blair is planning to use Tommy Ray to assassinate the president. How the hell does he know this? Unless he's a psychic, too?

The film's lowish-budget roots shine through during the dream sequences, which involve a lot of bad blue screen effects and herky claymation for the snake man sequences. The conception of Alex and Tommy Ray's psychic abilities is rather spotty, granting them the ability to predict the future -- Alex picks winning horses at the track -- but not much insight into other people's non-dreaming state of mind.

I don't think I had seen "Dreamscape" since its initial theater run 30 years ago (gulp!), but I was surprised at how well the movie remained fixed in my mind. I was struck by how much imagery of trains there is in the movie: Alex and Tommy Ray fight aboard a train, and then chase each other through a bombed-out underground station -- all of it bathed in a harsh red filter.

Alex also enters Jane's mind while she is dreaming and seduces her on board a train -- something they act out in real life in the movie's closing shot. Though it's a little creepy when you consider the act in its full context; it's basically psychic rape.

"Dreamscape" holds up well because it boasts a lot of imagination for what is essentially a summer action flick. And it's got a great villain who used the new MPAA rating to get exponentially more dastardly in his deeds.

Video Review: "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is probably the most disrespected film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

This challenging drama was directed by high-toned director Stephen Daldry ("Billy Elliot," "The Reader") and adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling novel by screenwriter Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"). Despite that prestigious pedigree, and the presence of major stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, "Loud" barely received a theatrical release. And reviews generally ranged from indifferent to openly hostile.

Me? I rushed it into the #3 slot on my Top 10 slot at the last minute.

Those lambasting the film seem to regard it as cynically manipulating the decade-old tragedy of 9/11, as a young boy searches the city of New York for clues to a game he played with his father, who died in the World Trade Center. I think these critics erroneously tried to force the label of "the definitive 9/11 movie" on the film, when really it's more a ruminative tale about a very specific, very unusual child.

As played with devastating effect by newcomer Thomas Horn, Oskar Schell is a brilliant but shy boy, possibly autistic, whose only substantial human relationship was with his dad (Hanks). When he dies, Oskar doggedly pursues the mystery behind one of the puzzle-like adventures his father would concoct for him, mostly as a ruse to force him to interact with other people.

As he traipses all around New York, encountering strangers and learning to come out of his shell, Oskar retraces the steps of his family life, and discovers that the mother he’d always kept at a distance is anything but uncaring. It’s a bracing, sad and joyous journey.

Video extras are pretty good, but not spectacular. The Blu-ray/DVD combo comes with a digital copy of the film and several featurettes.

The heart of the package is a making-of documentary that includes substantial participation by Daldry, his cast and crew. Other mini-documentaries focus on the search for an actor to play Oskar – Horn was, astonishingly, a total novice – and the lasting impact of 9/11 10 years later.

One of the more original pieces is a featurette about Max Von Sydow’s Oscar-nominated turn as a mute stranger who wanders into Oskar’s life, directed by Von Sydow’s own son.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is not the story of a conventional Everyman as a child -- Oskar Schell is no Everyboy.

No, Oskar is an extraordinary lad -- a smart, painfully shy boy. His only really deep human connection is with his father (Tom Hanks), who recognizes the specialness of his child not as a disadvantage to be regretted but an opportunity to draw him closer and nudge Oskar toward a rich life shared with others. Thomas Schell was a failed biochemist who became a jeweler, but whose real occupation was a Biblical sort of shepherd, tending to a flock of one.

But the elder Schell dies in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, and Oskar is left utterly alone. True, his mother (Sandra Bullock) is technically present, but Oskar correctly labels her an absentee parent. That's the sort of kid Oskar is: he knows what an absentee parent is, and he's hurting so badly inside he lashes out at his mother by telling her to her face that she's a failed mom.

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, adapted for the screen by Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump") and directed by Stephen Daldry, who has made four feature films, all of which I've loved ("The Hours," "The Reader" and "Billy Elliot" are the previous three.)

It is not a movie that consciously tries to be "the" film about 9/11 -- what Oskar refers to simply as "The Worst Day." But in its stark exploration of wrenching loss and the capricious way human lives collide with each other, it best captures the emotional vacuum felt by an entire nation more than 11 years ago, and to a lessening degree since.

Oskar's father often assigned adventurous tasks, or "expeditions" to him. Ostensibly scientific undertakings, they were really exercises designed to force Oskar to interact with new people and explore the real world around him. Precocious and earnest, Oskar recognizes the true meaning of these assignments, but still tackles them with enthusiasm because he so adores his father.

Shortly before his death, Oskar's dad set before him the grandest expedition of all: discovering the mythical 6th borough of Manhattan. This mission takes on new meaning when the boy discovers a key hidden inside a vase in his father's untouched closet. Unmarked, with only the cryptic word "Black" printed on a piece of paper, Oskar concludes this clue must unlock the puzzle of Thomas Schell's death.

With great deliberateness, Oskar sets out to the far reaches of New York City, attempting to interview every person named Black to see if they know about the mystery of the key. Since Oskar suffers panic attacks at the mere prospect of mass transit, he will walk everywhere he needs to go on his free Saturdays. He calculates it will take him three years, which in his unadorned narration Oskar recognizes is his way of extending the time he gets to spend with his father, or at least his fading memory.

With such a non-traditional protagonist, I was not surprised to learn that Thomas Horn, the amazing young actor who portrays him, came to this film project in an atypical way. This is his first acting credit of any sort; he was discovered after winning a tournament of "Teen Jeopardy" at the age of 12. Like Hailee Steinfeld in "True Grit" or Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense," this is the sort of performance that feels almost ethereal is its ability to tap such emotional depths and complex inner thoughts in one so young.

Other able performers turn up in supporting roles. Viola Davis plays the first woman Oskar encounters in his travels, one who has suffered her own recent loss. Jeffrey Wright plays a businessman mourning the death of his own father. John Goodman is the security guard at Oskar's building who trades good-natured insults with him. Max von Sydow turns up as the mysterious, silent man living as a renter in his grandmother's apartment right across the way, who takes an unexpected role in the boy's quest.

Bullock's role as the distraught mother struggling to come to grips with her son's odd acting out would seem to be a thankless one, but later on she shines a new light on their relationship that shocks even  young Oskar.

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" hasn't been in the conversation of the best films of the year, but it deserves to be. It's a viscerally enthralling story about a singular boy trying to find his place in the world when his only anchor is ripped away. What a journey -- Oskar's, and ours.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Robin Hood"

Here would be my one-word review of "Robin Hood": Unnecessary.

The fabled bandit of Sherwood Forest has been depicted innumerable times, almost since the dawn of cinema. Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland mix bits and pieces of the various Robin Hood legend for their own pastiche that never convinces us of its essential reason for existing.

Russell Crowe plays Robin Longstride, a humble archer in Richard the Lionheart's army, recently returned from the Crusades. He impersonates a dead nobleman to make good his escape, and finds himself stuck in the middle of a political battle over the throne.

Marian (Cate Blanchett), who was married to the dead guy, is forced to carry on the charade with this stranger playing her husband, and finds she likes him better than the old one.

The movie grows silly in the middle, and briefly is enjoyable for it. But then the heavy, portentous drama reasserts itself, and we're treated to dull speeches about nobility residing in the heart of the common man, yada-yada.

This bewildering film is schizophrenic: It couldn't decide which of the many faces of the Robin Hood mythology to wear, so it tries them all on.

Once again, the trend of underwhelming movies arriving on video with stupendous extras continues.

On DVD, a director's cut adds 15 minutes to the film's run time, and 10 deleted scenes add 13 minutes more. A 62-minute making-of documentary touches on all aspects of production, and includes the insight by producer Brian Grazer that they were aiming for "the 'Gladiator' version of Robin Hood."

A digital copy of the film is also included.

On upgrading to Blu-ray, you gain "The Art of Nottingham," which includes hundreds of still images documenting pre-production, costumes, behind-the-scenes and other goodies.

The centerpiece is a "director's notebook" that includes pop-up video with commentary by Ridley Scott, which includes an interactive feature that allows you to pause, view other extras, and then resume.

The extras for "Robin Hood" are right on target. Would that more good movies could receive such a splendid video release.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Seventh Seal" (1957)

The name Ingmar Bergman is like a dividing line in the cinematic landscape. To some, he is synonymous with ambitious foreign filmmaking -- movies at their highest plane of existence, unabashedly striving for art rather than entertainment.

To others, though, the Swede epitomizes the self-serving, "artsy" side of movies -- films that are made by, about and for those who consider themselves the cultural elite.

I trend much closer to the former side when it comes to Bergman, though I'll confess that after sitting through a whole slew of Bergman for a class on him at NYU, I developed a shorthand for mockery: Characters kneeling while facing the camera as they gaze upward slightly in the distance while contemplating the remoteness of God.

The remoteness of God is very much the central theme of "The Seventh Seal," perhaps the best-known of Bergman's films. Rather than being dull and self-important, though, the film is an exhilarating if allegorical look at the struggle between faith and reason.

Being away from Bergman for a long time, I was reminded how playful the great Swede could be. This child-like quality is represented in the characters of Jof and his wife, traveling actors who have a baby boy. Jof (Nils Poppe) plays a fool and mostly behaves like one, too, but has a spiritual purity that allows him to see heaven-sent visions. His wife Mia (Bergman favorite Bibi Andersson) adores Jof, but dismisses his stories -- such as seeing the Virign Mary teaching the Child to walk -- as nonsense.

In contrast to the unburdened acrobat, Antonius Block struggles to find God in his heart. A nobleman and a knight who has just returned from the Crusades to find his homeland infested with the Black Death, Block (Max von Sydow) has seen the worst that humanity has to offer. Finding no redeeming value upon the earth, he has little faith that something better awaits in Heaven.

Block's squire is Jöns, a cynical rapscallion who delights in upsetting his master's delicate sensibilities with his bawdy songs and behavior. He's played by Gunnar Björnstrand, who starred in many Bergman films.

Jöns has a horrible scar running from the crown of his head to his eyebrow, putting a strange unnatural part in his close-cropped hair, but seems ready to resume his old life if given the chance. While the squire bears the physical mark of 10 years at war in the Holy Land, his knight is a beautiful, almost angelic presence with a halo of white hair. But his soul has been indelibly etched.

The framing story is a game of chess played between Block and Death himself (Bengt Ekerot). The reaper has come to claim Block's life, but is amused by the knight's challenge to let him live as long as their game goes on. Block quickly gains the upper hand in their game, but Death disguises himself as a priest and hears the knight's confession, in which he reveals his strategy. From there, it is only a matter of time until Death prevails.

Block takes Jof and his family under his protection, not realizing he has brought his doom upon them as well. Later, though, he distracts Death long enough to let them make their escape.

The films ends with one of Jof's visions, the iconic image of Death leading Block and his party away on a far hillside in a forced dance of death. (Interestingly, crew members stood in for the real actors in that long shot, since Bergman captured it spontaneously at the end of a long day of shooting.)

For me the most affecting sequence of "The Seventh Seal" is when a group of flagellants wander into town, whipping and tearing at each other's flesh in the name of God. It stops the movie dead cold, but it's meant to, as we are presented with a stark depiction of the horrors committed in the name of religion. (The Flagellants were a very real and briefly popular movement in the Middle Ages.)

Block and Jöns also encounter a young girl who's been convicted of being a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. The knight talks to her to see if she truly has had congress with Satan -- if he can have substantive proof of God's negative reflection, that would at least serve as something to bolster his own faith. But he looks in her eyes and sees only terror at her fate.

Jöns contemplates killing the mercenaries hired to carry out her execution, but Block appears willing to let matters take their course. He does, however, take steps to ease her suffering.

The title, of course, refers to the Book of Revelations, foretelling the end of mankind. The seventh seal is opened, followed by a period of silence before God lets fall his Final Judgment. "The Seventh Seal" is a film not about the end of time, but the silence between man and God.

4 stars out of four

Review: "Robin Hood"

When I first heard they were making a new Robin Hood movie, I wondered whatever for. After 100 years of cinematic depictions, from Douglas Fairbanks to Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, from heroic icon to revisionism to parody and back again, what more is there to add?

Later I saw trailers for this big-budget extravaganza starring Russell Crowe, and couldn't puzzle out its purpose. Based on the grimy world depicted in the preview, I guessed it was aiming for that whole vérité man-behind-the-legend thing.

Now I've actually seen the film, and I'm still having a hard time figuring out what the hell it's about.

Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland deliver a befuddled fusion of Robin Hood mythology, history lesson and their own, mostly kooky, contributions. It starts out as a weary condemnation of war, briefly flirts with being a rowdy boys' adventure of looting and wenching (this is actually the most enjoyable part) and then grows bloated with Braveheart-esque self-importance.

"There's no difference between a knight and any other man, other than what he wears," Robin intones.

Instead of just "Robin Hood," you could have called it "Before the Hood," since it tells the story of how Robin came to be an outlaw, rather than what happened after. No robbing of the rich, and certainly no giving to the poor here.

(I have to add that Robin's looking a bit long in the tooth to be starting a new career. If I were feeling puckish, I might point out that Crowe is the same age Sean Connery was when he played the pathetic over-the-hill Robin in 1976's "Robin and Marian.")

Many other Robin Hood legends are given the boot. Instead of being the son of the poor but noble Baron Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow), our hero is an anonymous archer in King Richard the Lionheart's army named Robin Longstride. He only impersonates Robert Loxley, Walter's son, in order to escape to England after deserting from Richard's crusade.

Marian (Cate Blanchett) is no maid but Robert's wife, perpetually dour at having been abandoned a week after her marriage, now widowed and faced with a common yeoman usurping her husband's status.

Prince John (Oscar Isaac) is here, a preening metrosexual wannabe monarch, wearing an aura of luscious black curls and a perpetual pout, conspiring against Richard and flaying the people for their taxes. The Sheriff of Nottingham also shows up, but as merely a bit player. (This is actually a return to roots; over the years the character kept getting inflated into the main heavy.)

The chief evildoer is Godfrey, played by Mark Strong, who apparently has become to big-budget villainy what Sam Worthington is to protagonists: Everybody's go-to guy. Godfrey is a childhood friend of John's who's secretly conspiring with King Philip of France to foment trouble and soften up England for the Gallic invasion.

William Marshall (William Hurt), Richard's loyal regent, oversees an army of spies and may be playing the sides off each other. John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins), appears to be a major player, but then she abruptly disappears about halfway through the movie.

More frayed story threads abound. There's talk about the barons forcing John to sign a charter, which seems to be a reference to the Magna Carta (which the real King John did endorse in 1215). Walter entices Robin with knowledge about his long-lost father, but then a perplexing flashback throws his tale into higgledy-piggledy.

Oh, and Friar Tuck is raising bees to supply his underground booze trade, Walter asks Robin to impersonate Robert, and there's some unexplained feral boys running around the forest wearing masks and stealing food and generally acting as if they wandered out of the story of another guy in green tights.

When it comes to needless remakes of legendary heroes, Hollywood never wants to grow up.

2 stars out of four