One difficult thing for a film critic to do can be captured in a two-part question: How do you review a film that, 1, is more of a mood piece than an example of narrative storytelling and, 2, resists your every effort to describe it without giving too much away? Faced with that challenge, I came up with the following for my review of Terrence Malick's “To the Wonder,” for Spokane Public Radio.

My review (which can run no longer than three minutes):

At its very essence, fine art isn’t for everyone. And that opinion applies especially to the work of those artists whom critics have labeled genius. You can find such work challenging, confounding, absurd, ridiculous, profound, enigmatic – or, at the best of times, some combination of all the above. But here’s the thing: You don’t have to like it.

Do a Google search for the 10 most important paintings in history and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Do you recognize the finer points of Jackson Pollock’s drip method, as exemplified in “No. 5, 1948”? What is the significance of Kashmir Malevich’s simple landscape “Black Square” – which captures exactly what the title describes? How about the geometric shapes in Vastly Kandinsky’s “Composition 8”? And let’s certainly not forget Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans.” Is there, you may very well ask, a point to all this?

If you were to respond with a resounding shrug, I couldn’t blame you. And yet, and yet … many of us have stood in front of one or the other of these paintings and wondered: What am I seeing here? What am I meant to see? What am I missing? Am I missing anything?

In some cases – Pollock, for example – I enjoy that interior dialogue. In others – Malevich in particular – less so. But, again, as to the actual question of enjoyment? The far more accurate word to use is … appreciation. For the work, and for the creator of the work, sure. But mostly for the process that pushes you to search for other, larger perspectives about the significance of art and, in the best cases, the literal meaning of life.

Enter Terrence Malick, the filmmaker whose unique vision, in such movies as “Badlands,” “Days of Heaven,” “The Thin Red Line,” “The New World” and “The Tree of Life,” has reflected all of the best, and worst, of the demands that art makes on we who, for our individual reasons, seek it out.

Malick is the consummate anti-mainstream movie director. Instead of literal narrative, he favors the kind of free-form storytelling format that is fueled by stunning visuals and philosophical implications. Oscar-nominated, “The Tree of Life” stands as the essence of Malick’s ever-evolving style, posing BIG philosophical questions that to some viewers are weighty, to others are woefully pretentious.

“To the Wonder” unfolds in similar fashion. Malick follows four characters – a Parisian woman, the American man who brings the woman back to Oklahoma, the man’s former lover and a priest who is confronting a crisis of faith. Similar to “The Tree of Life,” “To the Wonder” reveals itself like a two-hour meditation, augmenting a barely discernible storyline with set-piece images and voiceovers that merely hint at both plot development and character motivation.

“To the Wonder,” then, may cause you to marvel at Malick’s way of exploring life’s essential question regarding love, faith and the possibility of connection in a toxic world. Then again, it may cause you to shrug and – as those who saw “The Tree of Life” will understand – ask, “Where are the dinosaurs?” Either, or both, is an appropriate reaction.

As for me, “To the Wonder” is a double bonus: I appreciate it, AND I enjoy it. Then again, that’s understandable: I like Jackson Pollock, too.

If you're a fan of movies — and why wouldn't you be? — then you might be a fan of Public Television. And if you're a fan (read: supporter) of Public Television in Spokane, then you likely have tuned in once or twice to KSPS's “Saturday Night Cinema.”

One of my former bosses at The Spokesman-Review, Shaun O'L. Higgins, is one of three hosts who took over for longtime movie presenter Bill Stanley, now retired. You can catch the inside scoop on the show by going to the channel's blog. Even better, you can catch Shaun's hosting of Henry Hathaway's 1948 journalistic thriller “Call Northside 777” at 8 p.m.

So, here's my review of “Mud,” which will play at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow morning on Spokane Public Radio. You can catch podcasts of my other reviews, along with those of Nathan Weinbender, by going here.

But for those who like to read, here is “Mud”:

Since the first time he stepped onto the big screen – which, if you don’t count his performance as Guy No. 2 in the 1993 film “My Boyfriend’s Back,” was as David Wooderson in “Dazed and Confused” that same year – Matthew McConaughey has been one of the most magnetic actors in Hollywood.

David Wooderson, by the way, was the guy who drove a muscle car around Austin, Texas, and was famous for saying, “That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”

For a time, McConaughey appeared in such serious-minded films as John Sayles’ “Lone Star” and Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad.” But then, maybe because he thought he needed to or maybe because he just wanted some easy paydays or maybe because he had bad representation, he began to settle for one forgettable mainstream project after the next.

Count them: “The Wedding Planner,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Two for the Money,” “Failure to Launch,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.” The list goes on.

Most of these films are so … well, not bad, exactly. But certainly minor. And certainly not the kind of movies that serious actors pursue. It got so that when McConaughey would star in a decent film – “Bernie,” say, or “Magic Mike” – his work would get panned. Or, worse, go unnoticed. Now, though, all that might change with a little film by Jeff Nichols called, simply, “Mud.”

Mud, actually, is the name of McConaughey’s character, a guy so desperate to reconnect with the woman he loves that he’s resorted to camping out on a remote river island, hiding from men who want him dead. Yet he’s charismatic enough to charm two teenage boys into helping him pull a battered boat out of a tree, a boat that he hopes to use as his get-away.

To play Mud, McConaughey uses every bit of his innate charm to ensure his character has the qualities needed to outshine the work of a cast that includes Sam Shepard, Reese Witherspoon, Ray McKinnon and Michael Shannon – not to mention the two young actors, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, whose story makes at least half of the overall movie seem like a variation on the 1986 teen flick “Stand By Me.”

The talents on display here, plus writer-director Nichols’ ability to delve below stereotype and capture an authentic sense of the contemporary south, is what makes “Mud” worth watching. Nichols, who explored a more mystical vision in his emotionally charged 2011 film “Take Shelter,” doesn’t meld his different plot points in a way that’s completely satisfying. And the ending he leaves us with offers both too much, and too little, of a resolution.

Yet it’s clear that Nichols has skills. I shudder to think what any number of other, more mainstream, filmmakers would have done with “Mud’s” different parts. How they likely would have keyed more on the boys, converting the movie into another Stephen King cliche. Or how they would have underlined McConaughey’s every utterance while rounding off his natural edges, making him into the one thing that he – the consummate character actor – was never destined to be: a classic example of a Hollywood leading man

If you're going to see “42,” you might want first to read the review that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio:

Of all the professional sports, baseball is the most hallowed. From Ernest Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat” to Lou Gehrig’s dramatic farewell speech, baseball – to many of its fans, at least – isn’t just a game played by men. It’s a whole mythical spectacle played out not on a field, not on a court, a rink or even a pitch – but on a diamond set, of all places, in a park.

Not that baseball hasn’t demonstrated its dark sides. Ty Cobbs’ spikes, for example. The Black Sox scandal. Pete Rose’s gambling. The steroids era. Yet as bad as all that is, none of it compares to baseball’s race question – and how that question affected the man known as Jackie Robinson.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the man who, when he donned a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform on April 15, 1947, became the first African-American to play major league baseball. For the record, that’s almost 80 years after the Cincinnati Red Stockings fielded what is considered the first professional team.

If you go and see writer-director Brian Helgeland’s movies “42,” you’ll get a version of Robinson’s story. You’ll see how Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, decides – for reasons that were mixed and not merely noble – to bring a black man to the major leagues. Not just any man, however. But the one with enough talent to dazzle the crowds, and with enough self-control to control his reactions to the humiliating harassment that was bound to come.

As come it did. From the crowds, both in the south when the Dodgers did their spring training in Florida, and from the north when the team played in such cities as Philadelphia, Cincinnati and St. Louis. From not just the opposing players but some of Robinson’s own Dodger teammates, a number of whom signed a petition saying they would not play with Robinson.

To Helgeland’s credit, he doesn’t dodge the worst of this. One grating sequence features the Philadelphia manager, Ben Chapman, saying unbelievably insulting things to Robinson every time he comes to the plate. At the same time, Helgeland felt obligated to invent a scene in which Robinson reacts to Chapman’s provocations by smashing a bat in a stadium tunnel – and is, almost immediately, consoled by owner Rickey. Never happened.

Helgeland can be forgiven both for this and for the movie’s overall tone of reverence. This is a baseball movie, after all, and gritty realism typically gets called out when sliding into the second base of sports mythology. Which is likely why the movie “42” covers only two years of Robinson’s life. Helgeland goes on to mention how Robinson played for 10 years, saw the Dodgers win several National League pennants and the 1955 World Series title.

But he doesn’t deal with the afterword. How Robinson ultimately became a spokesman against racial inequality, for a number of years chairing the NAACP. How for a time he affiliated himself with the Republican party. How he endured the death of his son, Jackie Jr., dead at age 24 in a car accident. How his health declined and his athlete’s body, debilitated by diabetes, gave out in 1972 when he was just 53 years old.

Addressing reality of that kind calls for a whole other kind of reverence that Hollywood just doesn’t equate with movies about baseball.

Of all the films being offered this week during Spokane's annual Japan Week celebration, the one I had never seen was Paul Schrader's 1985 curiosity “Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters.” I fixed that by going to the Magic Lantern last night where, with about a dozen other movie fans, I sat through the whole 121-minute … uh, ordeal.

It's not as if I'd had an excess number of opportunities to see the film before this. I can't even be sure it ever played Spokane. And with so many other films vying for my attention, I haven't been driven to go back to see a 28-year-old biographical study based on the life of a Japanese writer who - though boasting a high reputation in international literary circles - ended his life in such a bizarre fashion.

Read about the incident here. Schrader's movie follows this scenario almost literally, though it stops just short of Mishima's death.

What Schrader has done is meld Mishima's work with bits of his autobiographical musings and staged it all as a kind of memoir-drama. What Schrader doesn't do, to my satisfaction at least, is explain why the man was so obsessed with what he saw as a trademark samurai sensibility. Or, to be honest, why I should care. Schrader's film, in the end, is as inexplicable as Mishima was himself - even to the Japan he wanted so desperately to influence.

Ah, well. The Japan Week series continues tonight at the Magic Lantern with a showing of Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film “The Hidden Fortress.” I do remember seeing that film, back when the Magic Lantern still sat atop the Atrium Building, next to the train tracks.

It's a bit of a puzzle, too. But nowhere near as puzzling as “Mishima.”

I've spent most of my moviegoing life watching horror films. From low-rent slasher flicks to those directed by filmakers of higher status, I've watched them all - including the most recent remake of “Evil Dead.” But nothing, and I mean nothing, scares me as much as the four and a half minutes of video that I have embedded below. Not movies about giant spiders nor spider invasions. This, instead, is the real thing.

It happened, apparently, last February in Brazil (you can hear the videographer and others speaking Portuguese). Go here to learn more both about this spider invasion and a number of giant animals that may be making their way to your back yard.

Regardless, I will be having nightmares tonight. It's a good bet that someone in Hollywood is trying to think of a way to exploit this very arachnophobia in a way yet unseen in the movies. Good luck. That's one movie I won't be seeing. 

It's no secret that Harrison Ford, like a number of other actors, can be a difficult interview. As somebody who actually had a life before he began play-acting on screen for a career, Ford can be forgiven for not buying into the whole celebrity scene. And, in fact, as the embed below shows, he can actually display a sense of humor about the whole media-driven star-flocking craze.

My thanks to my friend Travis Knight for sharing this with me.

If you're thinking of going to see “Evil Dead,” which - depending on who you are, might not be a particularly bright idea or might be one of the most fun weekends of your year - you might want to read the review that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio. It follows:

It used to be that you had to struggle to become a filmmaker. Sam Raimi did, making Super 8 films with his childhood friend, Bruce Campbell, and dropping out of college to film the 1981 horror-fest, “The Evil Dead,” which was largely financed by money borrowed from friends, family and the odd investor or two. It took Raimi the better part of a decade to make it to Hollywood.

Come to think of it, that career trajectory compares well – at least at first – with that of Fede Alvarez. The Uruguayan native did make stop-action films as a kid. Unlike Raimi, though, Alvarez graduated from college, then worked as an advertising director. It wasn’t until 2009, after he had formed his own production company, that he made an international stir with a four-minute-and-48-second short titled “Ataque de Panico” (or “Panic Attack”). Literally a few days later, Alvarez was inking a Hollywood deal that would lead, ultimately, to his directing the remake of Raimi’s 1981 exercise in cheap but effective horror.

So, two things about that: One, when we refer to Raimi’s “The Evil Dead,” let me re-emphasize: cheap but effective; two, when we refer to Alvarez’s “Evil Dead” – for some reason we seem to have lost the definite article – let me emphasize not particularly original, but still effective.

Oh, some originality exists in the notion of what brings five 20-somethings to a lonely cabin in the remote woods: one of their number, Mia, is attempting – not for the first time – to break her addiction to drugs. Mia is supported by two friends, Eric and Olivia, her brother and the girlfriend brother dear has unaccountably brought along on this horror-show of a weekend outing.

That aside, events plays out as expected. As Mia struggles through withdrawal, battling emotional demons that have to do with a crazy mother, the death of said mother, and the abandonment of her brother in the midst of said death, Eric does what any reasonable friend would do: He finds a book bearing a cover of human skin and recites out loud from it. Uh-oh, here come the demons. See what I mean about originality? Or the lack of?

But to merely dismiss Alvarez’s remake because it follows the path of any number of teens-in-peril horror flicks would be a mistake. It doesn’t have any of the cleverness of, says, Wes Craven’s “Scream” series. But neither does it fall into the creative trap of the overly clever Joss Whedon-written “The Cabin in the Woods.” Alvarez’s intent is merely to scare us, and for the most part he succeeds. If, that is, your idea of being frightened is being subjected to more gore than a bedpan full of severed tongues. And I have to admit, though my favorite in the “Evil Dead” series is Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2” – which benefits well from his partner Campbell’s talent for physical humor – Alvarez can direct. And as Mia, Jane Levy, of the WB show “Suburbgatory,” can do wide-eyed terror with the best of them.

I just wish Alvarez had struggled a bit more. The thought that instant riches can be earned through a YouTube short may not give anyone an ataque de panico, but for some of us it does bring on an ataque de depresion.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back into the theater, here comes a story from The National Post revealing that movies are … wait for it … fake! No, seriously. And some of them aren't even very good fakes. Movies such as “Gladiator.” Or “Pretty Woman.” Or even “Jurassic Park.”

But then maybe you alread knew that. As for me, I'm going back to television where things are far more believable.

Below: A YouTube collection of movie flubs.

Usually Mondays kind of suck. Not this Monday. Because for $5 you can spend a couple hours in the mind of Forrest Gump, a guy who knows how to make everything better … simply.

The Bing brings thisheartwarming film to the big screen on April 8 at 7. Plus they'll have beer, wine and snacks (not peas & carrots)  for sale. Take that, Monday. 

You'll find the Bing Crosby Theater at 901 W. Sprague, downtown.

Roger Ebert, the longtime Chicago-based film critic, died today. He was 70 years old.

I'd be lying if I said that Ebert was a major influence on how I look at movies. I credit my film education to those who came before him, among them James Agee, Richard Schickel, Pauline Kael and, most of all, Manny Farber. I will admit, though, that anyone who has wrtten about, discussed or even thought about film over the past 30-odd years has been, in some way, affected by Ebert and his opinions.

Long before I even went to work for The Spokesman-Review, where I wrote film reviews between 1984 and 2009, I was familiar with Ebert. I ate up the Public Television show that he first did with fellow Chicago critic Gene Siskel, though I loathed the thumbs up/thumbs down school of reviewing that they popularized. I just loved seeing the movie clips and arguing at the screen when my own opinions diverged, as they so often did.

But I always respected him. He always took film seriously, even when he championed movies I couldn't stand or trashed films that I loved. And in this day of anybody-can-be-a-critic, he knew how to get at the truth of a film, to hold the filmmaker up to high standards, and to point the spotlight at something other than the Hollywood blockbuster of the moment.

I ran into Ebert twice. Once was at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, during a press junket for Steven Spielberg's 1989 film “Always.” I walked into the press room and had to push past two short guys who were engaged in intense discussion. It was only afterward that I realized the two guys were Ebert and Spike Lee.

The other time was about a decade later, when I was making one of the annual treks that I made to Sundance for a decade. I was walking toward him on a Park City, Utah, sidewalk, and I decided to stop and introduce myself, to thank him for being an advocate for cinema. Then, when we were about 10 feet apart, he turned suddenly and walked across the street. Essentially shy myself, I didn't pursue. Opportunity missed.

And now he's gone. Others are still around. Anthony Lane, for example. Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott. Kenneth Turan and Richard Corliss. But Ebert's passing ends an era.

I never got a change to tell him how important he was, how much he would be missed. That, I guess, is what I'm trying to do now.

FROM THE BING'S FACEBOOK FEED:

Today is Quentin Tarantino's 50th Birthday! Come celebrate by watching “Pulp Fiction” at the Bing tonight. 7pm, in HD and surround sound. Only $5.

That's 30 minutes away. I'll be there in 10 …

One of my favorite directors is Stanley Kubrick. Big surprise there. Anyone who has a scintilla of movie sense feels the same. I mean, you can have varying opinions about Kubrick (I, for one, think he had far more of a visual sense than he always had control over his plot points), but you can't deny that his best films — “Dr. Strengelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange” and so on — were powerful and influential and definitely worthy of belonging on any list of the greatest films ever made.

So, I was happy to head to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (which goes under the bizarre acronym of LACMA) to see the special Kubrick exhibit. The filmmaker's whole career was outlined, from his first barely-better-than-amateur efforts to his final flawed effort, 1999's “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Movies clips, essays, testimonials, display of costumes and screenplay representations, all give evidence to the man's genius (yeah, sure, a word that is thrown around all too often but in this case applies).

The exhibit has been up since Nov. 1 and will run through June 30. If you've planning a trip to L.A., you chould check it out. Movie fans especially won't regret it.

 

When I started writing my review of “Oz the Great and Powerful” for Spokane Public Radio, I didn't plan to write about my dad. Sometimes, though, that's just the way things go. Especially when you're writing about a rather ordinary prequel to one of the greatest films ever made:

Like many men of the so-called Greatest Generation, my father wasn’t comfortable being around his children. A career naval aviator, my father spent a lot of time away from the family. And when he would come home he tended to bring a no-nonsense service-inspired attitude with him. Weekend inspections, duty rosters, spit-shined shoes and beds made so tautly that quarters would bounce off them: This was my father’s notion of what it meant to be a parent. Until late in his life, the idea of just being, just playing, with his children simply never occurred to him.

My brothers and I benefitted from our father’s parental dysfunction in a couple of ways: One, he would take us to movies, and we would all sit in the dark, together but not forced to interact. Or two, he would take us to the base library where we would spend hours browsing the stacks, filling our heads with whatever we wanted to read.

And among the books that all three of us did read were the works of L. Frank Baum. We knew Baum, of course, from the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz.” So we read the inspiration for that movie, Baum’s 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” But, too, we read “Ozma of Oz,” “The Patchwork Girl of Oz,” “The Scarecrow of Oz” and several other of Baum’s “Oz” novels.

So I was ready for “Oz the Great and Powerful,” Sam Raimi’s contribution to Baum’s world. Starring James Franco as a young conman/magician working the backroads of Kansas, “Oz the Great and Powerful” is a prequel to Baum’s first “Oz” novel – and Victor Fleming’s 1939 movie. What I wasn’t ready for was how ordinary Raimi’s movie would be.

Silly me for being surprised by this. During its glory years, Metro-Golden-Mayer made some of the most magical movies in history. And “The Wizard of Oz,” thanks to its being broadcast on television every year between 1959 and 1991, ultimately became the most seen movie ever. Everyone knows about birds flying over the rainbow and “lions, tigers and bears, oh my.” I’m not sure, though, anyone will remember lines such as “How hard can it be to kill a Wicked Witch?” or “You don’t know much about witches, do you?”

As with most other blockbuster movies made today, “Oz the Great and Powerful” is an impressive exercise in computer graphics. So much so that fully visual creations such as a talking monkey and a ceramic girl make as much an impact as do live actors such as Franco or the three witches he encounters played by Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams. My suggestion would be to see it in IMAX 3D, despite the elevated price (I paid $27 for two matinee tickets), because that format best renders the film’s best features: its visuals.

And, now, you may be thinking, “Oh, Webster’s just stuck in the past.” Please. I don’t automatically think the past is better. In the case of the “Oz” tales, though, the past isn’t just better. It’s magically better. I think even my father would have agreed – if – unlike the great wizard he impersonated – he’d ever have stepped from behind the curtain and let his true self be seen.

Most people who lived through the late 1980s recall the shocking story of the Central Park Jogger rape case. It involved a young woman who was beaten and raped in New York's Central Park in April 1989. Five young men ended up being arrested, convicted and sentenced for the crime — even though, after another man confessed to the crime, the convictions of all five men were eventually vacated.

Now the wife of filmmaker Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, has teamed up with her husband and David McMahon to produce and direct a film about the case, titled simply enough “The Central Park Five.”

The film, which has already screened in Spokane, will be shown again at 7:30 tonight at the Magic Lantern Theater. The showing is cosponsored by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane and the Gonzaga School of Law. Mary Pat Treuthart, a professor at the law school and cohost of Movies 101, will present the film and lead a follow-up discussion.

Tickets are $7. For more information, click here.