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'ROBIN HOOD'
ENGLAND BLUES
By Sean Chavel

By casting Russell Crowe, the filmmakers are in hopes that the public will prefer a rugged he-man as the titular Robin Hood. Crowe, still an obvious body-builder at the gym in the off-time, is robust enough to marshal an army. He also has the deadly thousand-yard stare to let you know that he's pissed off, and in this case, in the mood for a revolution. This is the realistic rendering of the Robin of Locksley tale, alas, pivoting on the times prior of him becoming a folklore outlaw.

Notably the film is directed by Ridley Scott, and the marketing and finished product angle is to make this the "Gladiator" version of "Robin Hood." But let's not forget that Scott directed "Kingdom of Heaven," which put some people into a three hour coma. Scott mimics the visual strategy of his earlier success, taking the gritty old-world terrain and desaturating the colors even further, while also using flickering candlelight as a seeming natural source.

But Scott's serious-mindedness, along with screenwriter Brian Helgeland (whom wrote two overlong pics "Man on Fire" and "The Postman"), suck the juicy adventure out of the classic tale in favor of boring smart talk that stinks of "Kingdom of Heaven" waste. Kings and clergy have many verbose conversations on the meanings of politics, the servitude of the common peoples, and such. So much said about honor, justice, valor, nation's pride. So obtusely strung together that minutes later you won't remember who said what or care.

The question remains as to whether you are the kind of moviegoer that can hang in there and wait for the exciting 20-minute finale, where cool bow-and-arrow stuff happens. The raiding and persecuting of the denizens of Nottingham has a cruel serpent suspense to it. Supremely, the climax is filmed in hyperspeed, with army men unleashed from watercraft boats, in a way that recalls the Normandy invasion that opens "Saving Private Ryan." Scott doesn't skimp on the shots where you see a thousand arrows shot high in the air, only to plummet at lethal speeds at an army desperately raising their shields to protect their faces while the vertiginous camera bursts over the action.

The ending comes alive in a way that almost makes you forget what you had to slog through to get there. Crowe is more brooding than merry, and that's alright (but it's far from his best performance on film). But the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen) is almost an afterthought. Robin's Merry Men - four of them - are valorous but offered to make only a couple of amusing, ribbing remarks. Danny Huston does good work as the fallen King Richard the Lionheart, his majestic aplomb is bigger than anyone else's and we admire his stature even if we don't care for his methods of making examples out of lesser men.

Then there is Maid Marion, more here known as Marion Loxley, is played by Cate Blanchett ("Elizabeth," "The Aviator"). What studios, filmmakers and audiences have found virtuous in her is a mystery. She lacks the very ability to express that quintessential quality called… emotion. When Robin enters her life at Nottingham, and is given hand to him by her father (Max von Sydow), she goes into cold, don't-touch-me mode. Somebody out there is defiantly angry with this review (I know, she's supposed to be like that). But even when Marion kisses he-man Robin for the first time, she conjectures a melting heart look that still reminds one more of the Tin Man than of a blossoming woman swept away by the possibilities of love blazing on fire.

This is a busy, scene-shifting historical drama that offers few familiar pleasures, but Scott, a master of zooming lens, does make the forests into an emerald-colored visual feast. But the speechifying gnaws on your willing patience. One has to fear if Scott puts out a future DVD of "Robin Hood: Super Deluxe Extended Edition with More Endless Speeches." If that ever happens, I'll go as far as to take back every mean thing I ever said about Kevin Costner's "Prince of Thieves."

'ONDINE'
THE IRISH WATERLOGGED
By Sean Chavel

Why is there an absence of wonderful imagery in the opening minutes of Ondine and why does the picture quality have such a damp-looking visual style? Colin Farrell, as fisherman Syracuse of Ireland, captures a human body in his nets while out at sea. But she's alive, it turns out, and the miracle that she's alive leaves Syracuse, and everybody else in the audience, wondering if she is a mermaid.

More certain is Syracuse's daughter Annie (Alison Barry), a handicapped girl who recites passages from mermaid fairytales, with such shameless joy this little girl gets you believin'. There are rules of human and mermaid love, Annie tells her father, and more than anything she wants this girl from the sea, Ondine, to live with her dad forever. Annie belongs in her mother's custody (Dervla Kirwan as the mother), who left dad due to his bad drinking habit.

As Ondine, the girl or mermaid in question is played by a beautiful, earthy actress (Alicja Bachleda) except that you wouldn't know she is beautiful until about the third scene because director Neil Jordan (who also scripted) bungles any sense of clarity in the opening images. But Jordan (famous foremost for "The Crying Game") finds many luscious green pastures and blue seas to showcase by shooting in the real Irish village of Castletownbere. Most days (scenes) are overcast, but Jordan here and there, with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, finds a pretty mist to work into his shots.

With the help of mist, the adorable little girl Annie, the mystique of actress Bachleda as Ondine, and the steel-eyed commitment of Farrell, the film succeeds in creating many lovely scenes (all that's missing is a decent wistful musical score, the movie, alas, does not offer a good audio soundtrack). Stephen Rea (virtually in every Jordan film) co-stars as the priest that offers discreet advice on how Syracuse should live his affairs, and his scenes with Farrell crackle with Irish zest.

The actors get some good scenes but they are stranded in Jordan's unfinished idea of a movie, or perhaps it would be more congenital to call it a squandered idea. The mood set forth by Jordan is mistakably sodden, letting his actors go droopy-faced with their "predicament." While waterlogged with "accident" clichés it is at least not inept like "Lady in the Water" but the problem primarily is that Jordan is willing to let the magic leak from the story.

Mixing in a drug transport gone bad, Jordan decides to go real world (if you can call it that) and drop the fantasy for his third act drama. I found the anger and the unexpected violence disgraceful. Jordan must consider the fantasy stuff that people dream up as wishful thinking, and while he had an idea, he wants to invest himself instead in recycled crises. As a result the heart doesn't soar while watching "Ondine," it sinks.

The Human Centipede
By Scott Mendelson

The Human Centipede is a textbook example of a film peaking too soon. At its core, it's a standard horror film about pretty young people who get lost in a foreign land and fall prey to unspeakable evil. The film works, up to a point, due to the matter of fact presentation of said deviousness. Alas, after a stunningly strong first half, the film has nowhere to go and nothing of interest to say, leaving the remaining running time to simply observe unimaginable suffering and seemingly pointless cruelty.

A token amount of plot - Jenny and Lindsey are two young Americans who are road-tripping through Europe. Like all such creatures, they end up with a flat tire in the middle of the night, in a part of Germany with no cell reception and no plausible avenues for rescue. Instead of simply staying in the car until daylight, they choose to trek a short distance and take refuge with an odd but helpful doctor who claims to specialize in separating Siamese twins. No sooner do they let their guard down do they find themselves strapped to gurneys in the doctor's basement, held captive alongside another apparent hostage. Needless to say, they really should have just waited in the car.

That's the entire plot you need, so that's all you get. It goes without saying that the evil Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) intends to perform some unnecessary surgery on his unwilling patients. In a move that resembles a similar suspense-building gambit in James Cameron's Titanic, Dr. Heiter explains in specific detail, complete with quaint visual aids, exactly what he plans to do with his victims long before the operation is scheduled. It's a sickening reveal that is brutally effective in creating unbearable tension as we await a seemingly inevitable date with a ghastly procedure. But once the much-anticipated event arrives, the film has nowhere left to go. Thus, after a powerful and frightening initial 45-minutes, the final 45-minutes can only linger on the aftermath of said horror, objectively and clinically detailed pain and misery for no real purpose beyond apparent shock value.

While the film smartly holds its gore in reserve, giving you only enough gruesome imagery to dread the gruesome moment, the fact remains that the picture has no real purpose beyond being 'shocking'. None of the characters, be they victim or villain, are the least bit developed. And the experiment in question produces such an appalling result that we basically sit there, sympathetically looking away as the patients endure several stomach-churning effects of the experiment, just hoping that the victims' suffering is almost over one way or another. I wasn't so much offended by the content as I was bored at the lack of any context or deeper meaning beneath the human misery on display. And said absence of any real purpose or even a forward narrative drive in turn bored me for much of the second half.

The first acts of the picture show a great deal of promise. The main location is creepy and clinical and Laser does much with little as the ice-cold and often off-the-cuff insane doctor. The slow build to the 'money scene' is genuinely dread-inducing and the film plays fair in terms of logic and character. But once the wait is over and the deed is done, you realize that you only have to look forward to watching innocent people suffering for no particular reason. At heart, The Human Centipede is a roller coaster where there is only one long, unending drop. The ride up the hill is nerve-wracking and skittish, but the plunge downward quickly becomes nothing more than stomach-churning and pointlessly unpleasant. Frankly, if you're going to revel in such debasement and agony, you really ought to at least try to have a moral or even a reason. Otherwise, I'm just watching a snuff film, and a relatively boring one at that.

Grade: C

Shrek Forever After
By Frank Scheck

Bottom Line: This fourth installment in the popular animated franchise demonstrates it may finally be time to let Shrek and Fiona live happily ever after.

You know that a film franchise is beginning to tire when its central character is in the throes of a midlife crisis. Such is the case with the lovable ogre in "Shrek Forever After," the fourth and promised final film in the animated series that has proven a moneymaking machine in its last three incarnations. Receiving its world premiere as the opening-night film at the Tribeca Film Festival, this installment should prove equally lucrative -- especially considering the extra coin that 3D and IMAX bring to the table -- but it also reveals a definite been-there, done-that feeling.

The film wastes no time in reintroducing its beloved characters, including the sassy Donkey (Eddie Murphy), the adorable Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), the suave Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) and, ever so briefly, Fiona's royal parents (John Cleese, Julie Andrews). Shrek (Mike Myers) is now a staid married ogre with three adorable ogre offspring who finds himself chafing at his rigid domesticity and his being embraced by the very villagers who once feared him.

In an effort to shake things up, he enters into an unfortunate pact with the devil or, more precisely, new villain Rumpelstiltskin (borrowed for the occasion from the Brothers Grimm and voiced by story editor Walt Dohrn). Suddenly, he finds himself in an alternate Far Far Away in which he was never born: Rumpel is king, Fiona is the fierce warrior leader of a band of rebel ogres, Donkey is in the employ of a band of cackling witches, and Puss, well, Puss has really let himself go -- he's now a pampered housecat with a serious eating disorder.

Desperate to reclaim his former life, Shrek attempts to woo back Fiona and extract a kiss from his "one true love" that will undo the effects of the spell.

Josh Klausner and Darren Lemke's screenplay creates some fun with the personality and visual changes the familiar characters have undergone, but as with so many sequels to sequels, "Shrek Forever After" has lost much of the simple charm, humor and heart that marked its predecessors. No doubt looking to exploit the sensory stimulation offered by 3D, the filmmakers have ramped up the action, most notably in a high-flying broom chase featuring Shrek and Donkey and the witches and an elaborate climactic battle sequence. (Tellingly, this is the first in the series to be presented in widescreen.)

The 3D effects are undeniably impressive, but like many other examples of this increasingly popular form, some of the visual quality is sacrificed with the inevitable image darkening. The fact that much of the story is set in a literally bleaker landscape doesn't help matters.

As per usual with the series, this edition includes numerous pop cultures references -- a nod to "The Wizard of Oz" got a big laugh -- and several musical montages set to classic pop songs, including the Carpenters' "Top of the World."

By this point, the estimable voice talents have their acts down cold, with each once again providing invaluable contributions (especially Banderas, whose hilarious Puss steals scenes with abandon). Newcomers include Dohrn, whose Rumpelstiltskin displays an amusingly hysterical edge; Jon Hamm, lending his stern baritone to his role as an ogre who makes Shrek look wimpy; and Jane Lynch and Craig Robinson as ogre rebels (the latter particularly funny as a chef whose specialty is chimichangas).

Nightmare Alley, the Musical
By Gerry Furth-Sides

“Nightmare Alley” has all the makings of an original dark and edgy show, all the more of interest since it has such an interesting pedigree. First a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the story of an archetypal American's rise and fall was turned into what was considered an ambitious if unfulfilled film noir movie starring Tyrone Power (then on his way down) and the inimitable Joan Blondell in 1947.

Nightmare Alley, the Musical at the Geffen Playhouse is also a world premiere of the musical with missed opportunities, only here there is time and place to improve it.

Jonathan Brielle's take on the story adds music as it follows the rise and fall of a con man, charming grifter and preacher's son, whose fate is sealed even though he seemingly has free-will.

John Arnone's colorful set, complete with circus-tent draperies set the stage, complemented by Daniel Ionazzi's very noir lighting and costumes by Christina Haatainen Jones. The set designers had big clown shoes to fill: the film producers built a full working carnival on ten acres of the 20th Century Fox back lot. They also hired over 100 sideshow attractions and carnival people to add further authenticity.)

Music director Gerald Sternbach, perched at the keyboards on one side of the stage, both plays brilliantly and conducts the small orchestra, all but hidden behind an oval cutout high on the set where he cannot see them, nor they see him. The trick is that he is being filmed and the musicians can watch him on a TV screen at the back of the theatre!

Stan (James Barbour) is master of the stage even before he takes a step onto it from the side aisle of the theatre, engulfing the theatre with his beautiful baritone. Stan is a preacher's son who has witnessed his preacher father taking over the will of his congregation and wants to do the same. After seemingly falling for the darling of the carnival, Molly, (Sarah Glendening), Stan talks her into running away with him. Their new life is even darker and lonelier than the one they left, with Stan using his charm and new talents for one scheme after another until he meets his match in another con artist.

Vaudeville stars down on their luck, and past their prime and time, are Tarot reader Zeena (Mary Gordon Murray, doubling as a biting con artist as a psychiatrist) and her alcoholic husband Pete (the scene stealing Larry Cedar - who is equally entertaining taking a turn as a wealthy old spinster). Michael McCarty's every move is perfection and he takes over the stage whether he is playing Carnival boss Clem or a wealthy old man with the strut of a gourmand with gout.

The razzle, dazzle of a carnival pop in song and dance by a rockin' Greek chorus played like a Motown singing group. "Tarot Ladies" (Melody Butiu, Anise E. Ritchie, Leslie Stevens, and Alet Taylor) and two roustabouts (Travis Leland and Burke Walton) ey are chock full of energy and seamlessly fit into the show, dancing Kay Cole's flawless choreography.

There are a number of missed opportunities in Brielle's version of this dark tale set against the shadowy world of the traveling carnivals and tented churches that dominated the Dust Bowl era. First it never takes into account the desperation of either the folks in the carnival or the folks coming to the carnival. The characters, who are so appealing through their songs and so believable are written in one-dimension. The score is bouncy but not memorable

But this play's fate is not sealed and there is plenty of time and a place with an encouraging audience to fulfill it's promise.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. April 21-May 23. Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. (310) 208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com

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