"LAKEVIEW TERRACE"

Serial slashers, creepy crawlers and evil spirits aside, there probably is nothing more unnerving than the security of your home being compromised, be it from natural disasters, intrusions, or a neighbor who is out to get you and has the wherewithal to inflict serious damage.

This is the theme of director Neil LaBute's "Lakeview Terrace," his first film since the seriously panned "The Wicker Man." In "Lakeview," a young interracial couple, Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington), move into what seems to be a nice neighborhood. Their next door neighbor is Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), a police office with the LAPD and a widower with a teenage daughter and adolescent son.

Turner at first assumes Chris is just one of the guys helping the new neighbors move in, but when he sees undeniable evidence that Chris and Lisa are a couple, he is disturbed and from then on seems bent on doing whatever he can to drive the Mattsons away.

Jackson again assumes that cool but menacing demeanor he used so effectively in "Pulp Fiction" as he battles wits with the Mattsons, more with Chris than with Lisa. Immediately the battle lines are drawn, and some sympathy for Turner is built, as Chris, with a smoking habit he is concealing from Lisa, carelessly flicks the butts onto Turner's property, then one night Chris and Lisa get intimate while in their pool and Turner catches his children watching the couple with understandable youthful curiosity. Meanwhile, Turner's house is a near fortress with glaring security lights that beam right into the Mattsons' bedroom, and he hosts a noisy bachelor party for a fellow cop.

Turner's objections to the Mattsons can be interpreted as racism, although, judging by some of the taunts he shoots at Chris, it also could be simple jealousy.

Turner is intimidating and has the ability to insinuate threats and then pass them off as casual, harmless comments. Clearly he has the advantage over Chris, a grocery store chain executive who Turner assumes is a wimpy tree-hugger who went to college at Berkeley.

LaBute and co-writers David Loughery and Howard Korder inject a little internal strife with the Mattsons in that Lisa wants to start a family now and Chris is hesitant. Also, they seem to be quick on the trigger in bringing up the racial component in their marriage when they are arguing.

The problem with "Lakeview Terrace" is that Abel vs. Chris is clearly a mismatch. Just when you expect Chris to finally go berserk, all he does is quietly cuss out Abel and walk away.

The writers blew a chance here by not having Lisa step up and take on Abel. She certainly has a motivation, as she begins to develop a friendship with Turner's daughter, Celia (Regine Nehy), and objects to Abel's disciplinary actions.

Thus blowing that opportunity, the movie soon moves into an absurd finale in which Turner, in control throughout the movie, suddenly loses it, along with his advantage. These sudden character changes can be annoying.

I have said before that Jackson has the ability to upgrade any movie he is in from bad to mediocre and mediocre to good, and once again he comes through here. "Lakeview Terrace" does have some good moments, particularly early in the movie as Turner slowly builds up the momentum in his objective to drive the Mattsons crazy. In the final 30 minutes or so, the movie dissolves into nonsense.

Wilson is a talented actor who has done some gutsy things ("Angels in America" and "Hard Candy"), and really cannot be faulted in his portrayal of Chris, a likable if bland character. The sad thing about "Lakeview Terrace" is that Washington, primed as Lisa to go head-to-head with the sinister Abel Turner, does not get the chance.

 

"ELEGY"

As the summer blockbuster season fades out, the movie industry now moves into the end-of-the-year serious mode in which Academy Award-caliber films are released. One of the early contenders has to be "Elegy," based upon the Philip Roth short novel, "The Dying Animal."

Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz headline a talented cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard. The movie's explorations of the complexities of love and sex ultimately provide a somber tone despite some witty observations by the Hopper character, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet George O'Hearn.

The script was written by Nicholas Meyer, who previously adapted the Roth novel "The Human Stain" featuring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. Meyer likely is more known to Trekkies for writing two of my favorite "Star Trek" movies, "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Voyage Home."

Kingsley could be lining himself up for another Oscar nomination (he won for "Gandhi" back in 1983) as David Kepesh, a cultural critic and college teacher who prides himself for his independence and ability to bed women without the commitment. The only person he can relate to is his best friend O'Hearn. Meanwhile, he has for years maintained a strictly sexual relationship with Carolyn (Clarkson), a 40-something businesswoman who stops by in between trips to have a few nights of uncomplicated physical workouts.

Kepesh's life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Consuela Castillo (Cruz), one of his students. Having worked in a law firm for a while before going to college, she is a bit older than most of Kepesh's students. Naturally, her beauty really puts the hook into him. He engages his patented charm and intelligence upon her, hoping to woo her into bed. It works, but something else kicks in. After years of being able to extricate himself from these sexual entanglements, he finds himself becoming possessive of Consuela and obsessed with the belief she will dump him for a younger man -- the confident, youthful person that Kepesh used to be. Suddenly, this sophisticated guy is following her around, thinking up all these scenarios in which she is seeing other men.

In addition, Kepesh must deal with his grown son, Kenneth (Sarsgaard), who still is embittered about Kepesh abandoning his family. Kepesh remains steadfast in his conviction that his marriage was a mistake and getting out of it was best for all in the long run.

Cruz is remarkable as Consuela, and if she does not end up with an Academy Award for this performance, or for her work in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," I will be very surprised. Consuela not only has the ability to enchant David, but also is grounded enough to step back and view their relationship and pretty much render Kepesh mute when she challenges him on just where he thinks he is going with her.

Hopper as O'Hearn does his best work since his Oscar-nominated role in "Hoosiers." While Kepesh claims to be the realist, O'Hearn is the one with the more practical view of things. He is the one who admits that men can get so obsessed over a woman's beauty they are never able to break inside that woman. In a way, O'Hearn's sage advice to Kepesh helps him come to terms with his own listless marriage to Amy (Deborah Harry).

Interestingly, Hopper played a role in "Carried Away" in 1996 that was similar to Kepesh-- Joseph Svendon, also a teacher who has a relationship with a younger woman (actually a high schooler played by Amy Locane). In that movie, Hal Holbrook played the O'Hearn role as Joseph's doctor friend who tries to steer him away from a potentially disastrous encounter.

It is sad when Kepesh almost in desperation tries to deepen his relationship with Carolyn, who dismisses his effort with "why start now?"

The tragedy of "Elegy" is that Kepesh realizes in his later years that he has built a existence around himself that is nothing more than a wall that prevents him from pursuing a more meaningful life. Consuela ends up as the teacher here, by doing nothing more than being a beautiful and smart woman who loves him despite his age and his flaws.

"Elegy" is directed beautifully by Isabel Coixet, a native of Spain. Meyer's script does get a bit confusing with a murky timeline, but the overall effect is a superbly acted and touching film. All the main characters enjoy at least one showcased scene revealing their very human frailties and strengths.

 

"BURN AFTER READING"

Leave it to the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, to concoct a story in which something as banal as a misplaced computer disc can explode into a bunch of absurd misadventures. In someone else's hands, who knows what kind of disaster such a tale would be? For these two brilliantly twisted guys, this madness is right up their alley.

"Burn After Reading" is the Coen Brothers' follow-up to their triumphant yet gloomy "No Country for Old Men." In "Burn" they once again display their dark -- some might say sick -- humor that marked some of their earlier films like "Raising Arizona," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Oh Brother, Where Are Thou?"

I would love to see outtakes of "Burn After Reading" because there has to be discarded parts wherein the actors break into unscripted giggles -- especially David Rasche and Coen project regular J.K Simmons as a couple of CIA executives in solemn and mostly clueless discussion about all the crazy incidents taking place because of the misplaced disc.

The disc in question contains the memoirs of Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a CIA analyst who quits after being demoted for an alleged drinking problem. With nothing else to do, he decides to write a book, which is put on the disc. How this disc ends up on the floor of the locker room of a fitness center is not explained until late in the movie, but by then it is almost a minor footnote.

The real story is that the disc is turned over the Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt, absolutely fabulous), a brain-dead personal trainer at the center. He and another fitness center employee, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand, also Mrs. Joel Coen), decide money might be made selling the disc back to Cox. Linda, an aging spinster trying to find love via Internet dating sites and hoping the sale of the disc will help finance cosmetic surgery she desperately wants, is the brains of the extortion operation, which isn't saying much.

Woven into the movie are other subplots, one involving George Clooney as Harry Pfarrar, a Treasury Department worker and womanizer who, in what appears to be a parody of Clooney's Oscar-winning role in "Syriana," is paranoid about being followed. There are other quirks in the Pfarrar character that are best left unrevealed, so as to not spoil the movie.

This being a Coen movie, expect some grisly violence that generally is followed up by laughs. These guys like to put the audiences on a roller-coaster ride.

"Burn After Reading," which takes hilarious pot shots at the intelligence community, shows that the Coen Brothers have not lost their touch. Their movies are not for the easily offended, and for those of us who walk out of theater afterwards with a smile on our faces, we have to wonder if we're as twisted as Joel and Ethan Coen.

 

"RIGHTEOUS KILL"

Aside from the long awaited screen-pairing (other than a couple of shared scenes in "Heat") of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, "Righteous Kill" is a standard cop drama with a supposed twist that really is not much of a surprise.

Still, it is great to see these two great actors playing off each other for a couple of hours. Pacino as Rooster gets to play the wise-cracking half of the partnered New York police detectives while DeNiro's Turk is the hot head.

The plot centers around a story line seen in "Magnum Force" in which criminals who manage to escape conviction soon end up dead -- and the killer has to be a cop. In another sub-drama that tends to pop up in cop thrillers, Turk and Rooster are forced to team up with another duo of detectives, Simon Perez (John Leguizamo) and Ted Riley (Donnie Wahlberg), with whom they do not get along (this was handled in a more entertaining way in "Running Scared" in 1986 with Billy Crystal and the late Gregory Hines pitted against Steven Bauer and Jon Gries).

The most interesting character in "Righteous Kill" is Karen Corelli (Carla Gugino), a forensics specialist for NYPD who is involved with Turk, shows a lot of initiative in her work and has a taste for rough bedroom play.

 

"TRAITOR"

Don Cheadle sometimes can look like the saddest person in the world. The characters he plays are good at what they do but are not always able to solve the problems in a satisfactory way. Often he has to deal with complexities and moral ambiguities that would have a lesser man throwing up his arms in dismay.

One of his more moving performances was as Det. Graham Waters in the Oscar-winning "Crash." Not only must he tolerate the less then forthright policies of the police department, he must accept that his addled mother thinks he is the bad seed while his drug-dealing brother is the better son.

In "Traitor," Cheadle again must confront the conflicts of his beliefs against the realities of life. As Samir Horn, he is a survivor but not a happy person. In his world, death is the by-product of the cultural and political struggles in a very complicated world.

"Traitor" was written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who previously wrote the epic disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow." In "Traitor" he tackles the current issue of terrorism and strives to present a balanced portrait of people very committed to jihad and those trying to prevent attacks that can claim many lives.

Cheadle's Horn is a man who from day one is a product of two different cultures. His father is Sudanese, his mother an American. As a boy, Horn witnesses the horrific death of his father in a car bomb explosion in 1978.

The movie then jumps to present day. Horn is seen in Yemen as a seller of detonators, a valued commodity in the world of indiscriminate bombings. Soon he is arrested and jailed there, where he is visited by a couple of FBI agents, Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough). We soon learn that Horn is a former U.S. Special Operations officer and seemingly a nightmare for U.S. covert shenanigans -- a man trained in lethal skills who appears to have joined the other side.

While in prison, Horn is befriended by Omar (Said Taghmoui), who is a member of a terrorist group that engineers a breakout of the prison. Horn escapes with Omar and is accepted as a new member of the group, which has some terrifying plans in the works.

Pearce's Clayton is very similar to the Det. Lt. Exley character he played in "L.A. Confidential," a by-the-book officer. Archer, his partner, is the edgier guy, prone to knocking around suspects rather than calmly interrogating them.

Since the movie gives away where Horn's loyalties are, "Traitor" becomes a thriller in seeing whether he will succeed in his quest and whether the FBI will track him down. The previews showed that Horn has an association with a shadowy U.S. operative named Carter (Jeff Daniels), but what Carter's motives are remain suspect.

Cheadle carries the movie as Horn, a devout Muslim but also a man driven to do what he perceives as his mission, even if it goes against his religious beliefs.

"Traitor" is a taut and smart thriller, and released just before the seventh anniversary of 9/11, a reminder that the danger still exists out there.