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Now Playing: The Sunday update.
BEING JULIA (2004, Istvan Szabo)- Annette Bening's highly theatrical acting style has made her difficult to pigeonhole in Hollywood (for every wonderful GRIFTERS turn there's an unbearably shrill performance in AMERICAN BEAUTY), but she's ideal here as a British stage diva within sniffing distance of middle age and, by extension, obsolescence. The callow film around Bening doesn't live up to her performance, but every time she's onscreen one is almost willing to overlook that. Rating: **.

THE BROWN BUNNY (2003, Vincent Gallo)- Pretty awesome overall, with Gallo's direction fresh throughout- the film's 70s feel, meditative pace, and striking framing feels defiantly anti-textbook and is almost always pleasurable. Likewise, the awkward sincerity of the story, and Gallo's performance in particular (the irony-steeped audience laughed at his quiet pleading early on), pays off well in the end, in spite of some small issues I had with the narrative wrap-up in the final reel. Rating: ***.

NATIONAL TREASURE (2004, Jon Turteltaub)- This on the other hand was strictly by the book- a knowledgeable but misunderstood hero, his wisecracking sidekick, a de rigeur love interest, a seemingly history-altering quest, and occasional pit-stops for pro-American sentiment (here presented not with flag-waving or patriotic songs but extensive quoting of the Declaration of Independence). Alternately silly and boring, with not enough of the former and too much of the latter for it to be an interesting failure. Rating: *.

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD (2003, Mike Hodges) [seen on DVD]- After a crackingly good opening half-hour, this film settles into the rhythm of an effective but hardly stellar revenge thriller, with Hodges revisiting much of the same territory he mined so well in 1971's GET CARTER. Clive Owen is awesome as usual (let's forget KING ARTHUR, shall we?), and the editing is superb. Rating: **1/2.