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'Brokeback Mountain'

By Dan Vinson

Many reviews of this film have begun with a joke. This one won't. "Saturday Night Live" skewered it, and even Nathan Lane too on "David Letterman." Is it because it's a big, beautiful love story featuring cowboys? Is it because those cowboys are Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal? No matter, director Ang Lee's grand work rises above it all, largely thanks to Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's screenplay, respectfully adapted from Annie Proulx's 1997 New Yorker short story. Mr. "Lonesome Dove," incidentally, has said frequently it's one of the best he's ever read.

The time is 1963. The place: Signal, Wyo. Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) - names only a short story writer could create - show up to herd sheep for the summer, and into the fall. Jack has worked for Mr. Aguirre (Randy Quaid) before, and knows how rough it will be up on Brokeback, especially because Aguirre's senseless rules, designed to keep his sheep safe, damn the herders. Jack and Ennis stick to work initially, talking mostly about their crappy jobs, dismal lives and growing hatred of baked beans. (Odd job man Ennis' parents died in a car accident, Jack's don't have much use for him or his rodeo antics.) It storms, it snows, there are bears, coyotes and other flocks, but there are also stunning days and sunsets. One night after too much whiskey, Ennis can't make it back down to the valley and rather than freeze, he shares the tent and more with Jack. In the morning, neither is quite sure what the previous night meant, so they say nothing. (Eventually, both state they "ain't queer.") For the remainder of the job, though, they grow closer, and when it's done, neither can bear it.

But Ennis heads off to marry Alma (Michelle Williams) and Jack goes back to rodeo. Both take jobs wherever they can. In Texas, Jack meets, and eventually marries, wealthy, stunt horse ridin' Lureen (Ann Hathaway). After four years, Ennis receives a postcard and the film takes another turn. The story covers another 16 years of their home life (or lack thereof) and planned monthly "fishing trips." (One wife suspects, the other doesn't, and the four certainly never get together with their families.) Over time the fashions, hair, and pickup trucks change, but their time together (and nostalgia for that first summer) remains a constant. Unfortunately, so do heartbreak and hard times. The movie begins and ends, curiously, in trailers, and everything that transpires between that first job and Ennis alone with his thoughts is quite the journey.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a classic love-that-can-never-be story, but also fits the non-traditional western mold. "Modern" westerns like "The Misfits" (an obvious influence here) and 1950s grim-period westerns like Budd Boetticher's complex "Comanche Station," or Anthony Mann's "The Naked Spur," with its "city" actors and James Stewart as a severe bounty hunter, are discussed much more now than John Wayne's.

From his early work in his native China to the American suburbs of "The Ice Storm" and up through "The Hulk," Ang Lee has focused on outsiders. Cinematographer Rodriego Prieto knows scenery and constantly mixes grit and grandeur, and the nomination-laden actors are all superb, especially Ledger. For 20 years his character is consumed, but mostly confounded by his love for another - man. Perhaps in another 20 years, most will have forgotten why that fact once mattered. CV

'Hostel'

By Jon Gaskell

People are sick, and "Hostel," written and directed by Eli Roth at the urging of Quentin Tarantino, proves it. Because not only is "Hostel" one of the more disturbing, over-the-top, gross-out movies in recent history, but it also did more than $20 million in ticket sales its first weekend despite a reputation for being more than a little hard to stomach.

It's just too bad it's pointless - unless, of course, you're in attendance to simply squirm in your seat: a bolt cutter to a person's toe, a blowtorch to another's eye, the slicing of a couple Achilles tendons, a cordless power drill to a knee cap. And then there's drug use, a roving band of aggressive criminal-minded children, tits, ass, bigotry and misogyny.

What's that? Good fun, you say? Well that's what two adventurous Americans, Paxton and Josh, thought when they decided to go backpacking across Europe with Oli, a skirt-chasing Icelander. And when a fellow traveler promises them that all of their fantasies would come true by simply skipping Barcelona and hitting a spot in Eastern Europe instead, the three are off like prom dresses for some "killer pussy" - literally.

Motivated by Roth's urge to shock - not terrify - an audience, "Hostel" is based on Thai urban legend that has billionaire businessmen flying to Asia in order to pay top dollar so that they can fulfill their most sadistic wishes - think bolt cutters and blowtorches. And as with Joel Schumacher's haunting work about the snuff industry, "8mm," there is apparently nothing more boring than being wealthy beyond one's own wildest dreams.

But what could have been a unique, imaginative film on exploitation that truly scared moviegoers - and not just the 17-year-old boy set - never gets past its own self delight with simply being disgusting. Barf bags, maybe. Jolts, none. CV

'Casanova'

By Erin Randolph

Much in the same way Heath Ledger's "A Knight's Tale" butchered any sense of historical realism, "Casanova" is extremely loosely based on the memoirs of Giacomo Casonova (also played by Ledger), a famous writer, adventurer and infamous ladies man. Abandoned by his mother as a child, Casanova knows no difference between lust and love, and recklessly pursues female conquests with the same frequency one might pursue a meal.

He spends just about as much time trying to evade the puritanical inquisitors (including Jeremy Irons in an amusing turn as Pucci, head inquisitor) as he does in women's beds. But when he meets feminist Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller), Casanova becomes infatuated with the one woman he can't have, as Bruni publishes pamphlets on women's rights under a pen name in protest of men like Casanova. When her fiancŽ, Paprizzio (Oliver Platt), a "rotund" lard merchant, shows up in Venice, Casanova uses convoluted mistaken-identity situations to his advantage in an attempt to get close to Bruni. Little plot surprises follow.

The costumes and scenery, of course, are beautiful, as it would be nearly impossible to make 18th century Venice anything but.

"Casanova" isn't as bad as it could have been - no, should have been - thanks to plot-saving performances by Ledger, Miller and Platt. (Ledger would do well to stick with roles like his one in the groundbreaking homosexual cowboy drama, "Brokeback Mountain," instead of taking roles in films like "Casanova" and "A Knight's Tale.") While none gives a particularly moving or hilarious performance, they're not really given the opportunity to do so, as the script doesn't do them any favors.

"Casanova" never quite becomes what it's attempting to be: an enjoyable 18th century, farcical film about the world's greatest lover. However, its attempts at being clever end up as mere juvenile humor, which might have gone over with its audience had it been rated PG - or even PG-13 - instead of R. Overall, "Casanova" just isn't as charming as its namesake was. He might have been able to seduce a convent of nuns, but the film does little to seduce its audience. CV

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