The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Whip It (2009)
Directed by Drew Barrymore
Screenplay by Shauna Cross, based on her novel Derby Girl
Produced by Barry Mendel, Drew Barrymore
111 minutes

Whip It is like a Burt Reynolds redneck comedy spiked with female empowerment. In terms of consistency, it’s a brew that falls somewhere between The Longest Yard and Hooper, capturing the essence of Burt in the outtakes over the end credits and the realization that the people who made the movie had way more fun than the audience did watching it. A co-founder of the Los Angeles based Derby Dolls, screenwriter Shauna Cross amassed so much material that fellow scribe Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith compelled her to write about it. Cross pitched both a young adult book titled Derby Girl and a screenplay, which were optioned by Drew Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen of Flower Films. Cross’s script nudged Barrymore into making her directorial debut. With Academy Award nominee Ellen Page attached to star, Mandate Pictures agreed to finance Whip It to the tune of $10 million.

Retaining the services of producer Barry Mendel, director of photography Robert Yeoman and editor Dylan Tichenor, Barrymore seems to have had the whimsy of Wes Anderson in her sights, but aiming for too many targets — sports comedy, high school comedy, mother/daughter comedy — she ends up hitting none. The compositions and set design are magnificent, but when it comes to writing about the misadventures of outcast teenage girls, Shauna Cross never gets around Diablo Cody’s Juno, which for better or worse, stood out from the pack, something Whip It never really manages. The consolation package includes the most talented cast any first time director could hope for. Set in the Lone Star State, proud Texans may be snake bit to realize that the picture was shot almost entirely in Michigan for tax breaks. In the end, setting the film in the 1970s might have given Whip It the glue it needed.

In the Texas Hill Country town of “Bodeen”, 18-year-old Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) takes the stage for a beauty pageant with radical blue highlights that her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) helped spike her hair with. The stunt upsets Bliss’s mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden), a former beauty queen pushing her daughter to excel. While on a mother-daughter shopping trip in Austin, Bliss encounters three babes on wheels handing out flyers to an exhibition roller derby game. Bliss convinces Pash to sneak out with her to see the show. Her friend returns the favor by shoving Bliss into the arms of a young punk rock musician named Oliver (Landon Pigg). Once the show starts, Bliss finds new heroes in the tattooed, surly Hurl Scouts: Maggie Mayhem (Kristin Wiig), Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell), Rosa Sparks (Eve) and Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore).

Speaking to Maggie after the show, Bliss is invited to do more than worship the Hurl Scouts by trying out for the team. Digging her old Barbie roller skates out of the attic, she begins training and on tryout day, impresses the team’s coach Razor (Andrew Wilson) with her speed. Adopting the name Babe Ruthless, Bliss discovers that bad attitudes are encouraged among her teammates but as a result, they’re consistently on the losing end of matches against the Holy Rollers and their sadistic captain Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis). Bliss refuses to change her can-do attitude and helps her team actually win a game. She keeps her roller derby activities secret from her mother and father (Daniel Stern) but as the Hurl Scouts head for the championship game, Bliss faces a dilemma when the beauty pageant that means so much to her mother falls on the same day.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 18,991 users: 73% for Whip It

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 68 for Whip It

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Pianist (2002)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
150 minutes

A tale of an urban castaway that’s as powerful as it is restrained, The Pianist was Roman Polanski’s finest work in two decades. Originally published in 1946 under the title Death of a City, Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of survival detailed the classical pianist’s six years under Nazi occupation in Warsaw. Seizing upon the book as his next film, Polanski selected South African born playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood — whose play Taking Sides also featured a composer caught in the maelstrom of World War II — to adapt a screenplay. France’s Le Studio Canal largely financed the €38 million (roughly $33 million) production in association with England’s Cadre Films and after Joseph Fiennes declined the role in order to remain on the British stage, Polanski arrived on Adrien Brody to portray Szpilman. The actor went from 160 to 130 pounds in six weeks to prepare for the part.

Filmed at Babelsburg Studios in Berlin, with additional shooting in the Braga district outside Warsaw, what sets The Pianist apart from WWII dramas like Saving Private Ryan or Enemy At the Gates is its simplicity and grace. Written immediately after the occupation, Szpilman’s story is resplendent in detail and confident enough in its truth not to employ artificiality or unearned sentiments. Turning genre conventions on their head, we meet Jews who are less than virtuous and at least one German who is more than pure evil, creating a landscape that provokes thought and feeling. A tale of genocide, the irony is that Polanski’s craftsmanship is so solid we wish the story kept going. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Adrien Brody (Best Actor), Ronald Harwood (Best Adapted Screenplay) and Roman Polanski (Best Director) all won Oscars.

In Warsaw of September 1939, pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp minor for Polish radio when German artillery shells hit the city. Szpilman’s violinist father (Frank Finlay), mother (Maureen Lipman), younger brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and two grown sisters (Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer) rejoice with the news that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but Poland quickly falls under Nazi control. Szpilman has time to take an adoring cellist named Dorota (Emilia Fox) for coffee before the city’s 360,000 Jews are evicted from their homes and sealed inside a ghetto in October 1940. Szpilman finds employment as a piano player in an upper class Jewish café and along with Henryk, rejects an offer from a family friend named Heller (Roy Smiles) to join the Jewish Ghetto Police.

When Henryk is arrested, Szpilman appeals to Heller’s ego to secure his brother’s release. He keeps his family from being deported by obtaining employment certificates for them, but these prove worthless when in August 1942, the Szpilmans are herded onto trains bound for Treblinka. Heller pulls Szpilman off the line, sparing his life, but the pianist never sees his family again. He survives by joining a Jewish work detail and buys enough time to arrange for his escape. Harbored by friends, Szpilman is reunited with Dorota, now married and expecting a child. Once the Polish uprising begins in August 1944, he’s near the brink of famine. Scrounging for food in the deserted city, Szpilman comes to face to face with Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann). Instead of being shot, the pianist is rewarded by an act of kindness after the German officer hears his music.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 107,318 users: 94% for The Pianist

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for The Pianist

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Ghost Writer (2010)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Robert Harris & Roman Polanski, based on the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
128 minutes

Humming with gleeful malevolence, The Ghost Writer could be considered a throwback to ‘70s political thrillers like The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor if it wasn’t so much fun. Robert Harris had wanted to write about the relationship between a ghostwriter and a politician for 15 years. He found a story in 2006 when Tony Blair became dogged by war crimes accusations on his way out of 10 Downing Street. Moving one step further, the author imagined a British prime minister who was installed by the CIA and the truth being stumbled onto by the ghostwriter of his memoirs. Envisioned briefly as a stageplay along the lines of Sleuth, it became a novel instead. When Roman Polanski’s $130 million production of the author’s historical thriller Pompeii was shelved in 2007 over financing, Harris sent the director his manuscript for The Ghost.

Harris & Polanski adapted the novel in Paris and Polanski and his producers were able to raise financing from private funding sources in Europe at a budget of €32 million (roughly $45 million). Collaborating with cinematographer Pawel Edelman for the third consecutive film and editor Hervé De Luze for the sixth, Polanski’s expertise with the thriller chimes The Ghost Writer along like a Swiss clock that strikes cuckoo at the top of the hour. Shot at Studio Babelsberg for the interiors and the German island of Sylt for exteriors, the compound and the coastal wilderness where much of the action takes place sets the film apart visually, but it’s insidious wit that makes The Ghost Writer so enjoyable. Not many directors of political thrillers would pause to focus on a Filipino gardener raking leaves in a windstorm. Alexandre Desplat composed the film’s playful musical score.

An unnamed British writer we’ll know only as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor) lunches with his agent (Jon Bernthal) and is put up for the job of rewriting the memoirs of former prime minister Adam Lang when the body of the previous ghostwriter — a loyal aide to the politician — washes up on the shores of New England. A political novice, The Ghost passes the scrutiny of publishing exec John Maddox (James Belushi) and Lang’s D.C. attorney Sidney Kroll (Timothy Hutton) when he promises a memoir that the layperson can relate to. Dispatched to the desolate island of “Old Haven”, where Lang’s publisher has lent him his American vacation compound, The Ghost meets Lang’s personal assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall), his cunning wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and the charismatic Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) himself.

As The Ghost interviews Lang — a student actor who became interested in politics when he met his wife — the International Criminal Court announces an investigation into the ex-prime minister on charges he approved the kidnap and torture of four terror suspects from Pakistan. As media and human rights activists descend on the island, The Ghost is moved onto the compound for security. He discovers proof that Lang was politically active two years earlier than he claims and that the previous ghostwriter was the one who leaked the human rights scandal to British Prime Minister Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh). Sneaking onto the mainland to interview Lang’s mysterious college mentor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), The Ghost unravels a plot indicating that Lang may have been recruited and run by the CIA.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 7,950 users: 70% for The Ghost Writer

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 77 for The Ghost Writer

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Produced by Charles H. Joffe
96 minutes

Of the 39 feature films he’s directed and written so far, neither the Oscar winning Best Picture Annie Hall nor the handful of other treasures in the Woody Allen vault have the timeless magnificence of Manhattan. Allen discussed the idea of shooting a movie in anamorphic widescreen with cinematographer Gordon Willis on the set of Interiors in 1977. Their ambition was to make a movie that captured an intimacy typically blown away by epic framing and since the story would take place in New York, use black & white film stock to express the vibe of the city. Allen — who grew up in Brooklyn and was introduced to Manhattan via Hollywood movies – began coming up with scenes as he listened to Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of George Gershwin. He then wrote a script with Marshall Brickman.

Manhattan is a valentine for the other 364 days on the calendar. Allen’s intent was to make a picture more serious than Annie Hall but funnier than Interiors, “a serious picture that had laughs in it”. Manhattan fits that bill better than just about any movie you could name. Allen’s one-liners aren’t the knee slappers they may have once been, but the film’s visual and symphonic splendor are as enthralling as they ever were. Expressing the resplendence of a city as it existed mostly in his own dreams, Manhattan volleys between Allen’s contention that we’re being too tough on ourselves, while in the moments that matter most, not being nearly tough enough. Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway — far sexier in other roles — have never seemed more beautiful than they are here, while Woody gives his most nuanced performance.

Four friends gather for supper at Elaine’s. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a 42-year-old writer working on a book set in the city he adores. His 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) has more intelligence and maturity than Isaac’s ego will give her credit for. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but leaving the restaurant, reveals to Isaac that he’s become involved with another woman. Isaac is unable to offer much relationship advice as his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has taken up with a woman and is publishing a tell-all memoir about their marriage, or as she calls it, “an honest account of our breakup.” While Tracy asserts that she’s in love with Isaac, he advises the teenager to view their relationship as little more than “a detour on the highway of life.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isaac and Tracy run into Yale and his mistress: journalist and neurotic dingbat Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). She offends Isaac by disparaging all of his cultural heroes — from Heinrich Boll to Ingmar Bergman — in under a minute. Nervous about his future once he quits a job writing for a hip sketch TV show, Isaac bumps into Mary at a benefit for the Museum of Modern Art and ends up wandering Manhattan with her until sunrise. Yale develops a guilty conscience after breaking off his affair and when Isaac maintains that he’s not serious about Tracy, compels his friend to give Mary a call. Isaac and Mary leap right into a relationship, which ends up being undermined when Mary confesses she still has feelings for Yale. Realizing he made a mistake by dumping Tracy, Isaac sets out to make things right.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 16,781 users: 92% for Manhattan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring high tech conspiracies in L.A.

Blue Thunder (1983)
Directed by John Badham
Written by Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby and Dean Riesner (uncredited)
Produced by Gordon Carroll
109 minutes

There haven’t been many movies about the LAPD’s Air Support Division. That might be due to logistics, or maybe the best picture you could possibly make in that milieu has already been done: Blue Thunder. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was so incensed by the ghetto bird buzzing his L.A. abode that he was inspired to write a thriller — with USC Film School buddy Don Jakoby — about a Travis Bickle type going AWOL in a police helicopter above the City of Angels. Columbia Pictures loved the ballistic third act, the crazed lone nut in the first and second acts not so much, prompting rewrites in which the LAPD became good guys and government spooks were invented as bad guys. O’Bannon & Jakoby at the time lambasted the finished film, a box office hit that inspired two TV series in the ‘80s; Airwolf on CBS and the short lived Blue Thunder on ABC, one even cheesier than the other.

Blue Thunder is wound like a Swiss watch and designed with almost the same level of craftsmanship, briskly introducing us to Los Angeles, the rigmarole of the Air Support Division (dubbed “Astro Division” in the film to avoid hate mail flooding the LAPD) and issues of privacy on the approach to the year 1984. The action is set up gracefully and executed tenaciously, while a post-Watergate malaise gives the film an edge. John Alonzo’s lighting and Arthur Rubenstein’s electronic score were cutting edge for their time and hold up well, while the casting is superb. It’s easy to forget how strong a leading man Roy Scheider was, while the magnificent Warren Oates — in his final movie — chews up scenery like a buzzsaw. Director John Badham shot the film back-to-back with WarGames and was in a zone, fusing high concept, high tech, compelling characters and fun without crossing over into cartoon.

Maverick police helicopter pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) breaks in a new partner, the baby faced Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern) who’s transferred over for some supposed peace and quiet in the haze above Los Angeles. While the men spy on a yoga practitioner in Encino known to perform in the nude, a city commissioner is attacked outside her home in Brentwood and shot. Reprimanded for his flight patterns by the loquacious Captain Braddock (Warren Oates), Murphy contends that the attack on the city commissioner was no attempted rape but a stakeout. A Vietnam vet compressed with PTSD, Murphy makes up with his oddball girlfriend (Candy Clark) and returns to the crime scene, where a memo he retrieves from the commissioner’s lawn has the cryptic word THOR written on it.

Assigned a special detail, Murphy accompanies Braddock and two feds to the demonstration of a prototype helicopter designed for crowd control in the Los Angeles ’84 Summer Olympics. “Blue Thunder” is equipped with a 20mm gun turret, turbine boost, whisper mode and surveillance devices that see and hear through walls. The test pilot is Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), a nefarious operator Murphy knew in ‘Nam. In an attempt to rub out his competition, Cochrane sabotages Murphy’s chopper. Staying alive long enough to take Blue Thunder for a test spin, Murphy and Lymangood discover the feds have big plans for THOR (Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response), instigating social unrest in L.A. to justify military expenditures. Framed by Cochrane and the feds running the project, Murphy commandeers their toy and takes to the friendly skies.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 147 users: 65% for Blue Thunder

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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A Perfect World (1993)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by John Lee Hancock
Produced by Mark Johnson, David Valdes
138 minutes

Thrown into theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in a bid to exploit the then box office popularity of its star Kevin Costner, A Perfect World wasn’t the movie that families who’d gobbled snowflake mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce were looking to order for dessert; Mrs. Doubtfire satisfied those cravings. A Perfect World began as screenplay Baylor Law School grad turned playwright John Lee Hancock submitted as a writing sample to Clint Eastwood, who not only loved the writing but chose to direct it as his follow-up to Unforgiven. While the action rolls across the picturesque Texas Hill Country and ropes us into believing that this will be a diverting caper, it offers little in the way of instant gratification, being a harsh but resplendent drama about an escaped convict and a boy slowing down the hands of time, both putting off their tenuous future to make something of the present.

Eastwood’s best work as a director uses the finest contemporary actors and technology while striking a contemplative, character driven tempo. These are the best 1960s movies being made today and A Perfect World is a wonderful example of that aesthetic, a cousin to Hud, with a no good bastard at its center, an impressionable boy on the edges and the wide open spaces of Texas as its stage. Costner never possessed the sexual charisma of Paul Newman and what charm he started with in movies like Silverado was beginning to dim here, but A Perfect World isn’t The Kevin Costner Show. T.J. Lowther was well cast and/or directed to a terrific performance for a child, while the lyrical pace permits us to feast on the vintage set design by Henry Bumstead and luscious camerawork Jack N. Green, revealing a time when escaping society and finding yourself seemed possible on the road.

In Austin circa 1963, 9-year-old Phillip Perry (T.J. Cowther) is prohibited from going trick or treating by his single mother, a Jehovah’s Witness. Meanwhile, convicts Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) and his cellmate Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka) escape from prison. Planning to go separate ways once they steal the Ford that Butch covets as a getaway vehicle, Pugh invades Philip’s home. The jailbird draws so much attention accosting his mother that Butch has to take Philip hostage to ensure their escape. The manhunt is led by Texas Rangers Chief Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood), who takes to the roads of the Hill Country in a state of the art Airglide trailer with a Texas Ranger (Leo Burmester), a slick FBI agent (Bradley Whitford) and a criminologist (Laura Dern) from Huntsville sent by the governor to assist.

Uncommonly bright for a ward of the state that grew up in a New Orleans whorehouse, Butch sees something of his own neglected childhood in Phillip and befriends him. When Pugh threatens the boy, Butch cuts his old cellmate loose in a cornfield. Given opportunity to escape, Phillip instead accompanies Butch west. They steal a car, evade an angry farmer and pick up new clothes and a Halloween costume for Phillip in a small town department store, where the duo is almost apprehended by the law. The pair runs across Garnett and company on a back road and in the chase that ensues, the Rangers ends up stranded in a thicket. Butch harbors the fantasy of heading for Alaska, but Phillip begins to miss home. Butch’s capacity for violence and the efforts of Red Garnett ultimately bring their fool’s errand to an end.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 26 users: 85% for A Perfect World

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In The Line of Fire (1993)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Written by Jeff Maguire
Produced by Jeff Apple
128 minutes

It’s once in a blue moon that Clint Eastwood comes aboard a production as an actor for hire, recommending a director but letting another company call the shots. If that arrangement results in a movie as sensational as Castle Rock Entertainment’s In The Line of Fire, it’s a wonder Eastwood doesn’t ride in the passenger seat more often. This A-class action thriller was the idea of producer Jeff Apple, who garnered studio interest in a movie about the Secret Service. Apple turned to a struggling screenwriter he knew named Jeff Maguire and while the resulting spec script was good enough to intrigue Dustin Hoffman and later Robert Redford, nothing happened until Maguire got the script to somebody who knew UTA agent Jeremy Zimmer. In the bidding war that ensued between Castle Rock and Paramount, the film and TV company co-founded by Rob Reiner won out.

The time In The Line of Fire spent baking may account for its richness of character, crispness of action and how organically the two blend. The novelty of a murder weapon coming together from a modeling kit is a nice touch, as is an aging hero trying to redeem his failure to protect one president by saving the neck of another. As Frank Horrigan, Eastwood seems compelled to bring out much more of his romantic side, and his randy chemistry with Rene Russo knocks years off his age. The central spoke is John Malkovich, a tremendous villain infused with more idealism and professional courtesy than typically afforded psycho killers in movies. The smaller the scale, the more energy and wit director Wolfgang Petersen seems capable of bringing to a thriller, of which this one ranks near the top of the form. Ennio Morricone employed a light but noticeably felt touch with his musical score.

After tangling with counterfeiters in a sting operation, Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) tickles the ivories in a D.C. bar. His new partner (Dylan McDermott) reminds Horrigan about a threat they were given to check out. The suspect isn’t home, but Horrigan discovers a wall devoted to the assassination of President Kennedy. Horrigan receives a call from the tenant, who gives the name “Booth” (John Malkovich) and expresses his admiration of Horrigan dating back to when he was JFK’s favorite agent. Booth announces his intention to kill the current president. Joining the hunt for the would-be assassin are Agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo) and the agent in charge of the president’s detail (Gary Cole). Convinced that Booth will make a try for the President, long in the tooth Horrigan asks to be placed back on protective duty.

Booth continues to taunt Horrigan by phone, sympathizing with his adversary for the blame he took over Kennedy’s assassination. Though unable to trace the calls due to Booth’s technical superiority, the White House Chief of Staff (Fred Dalton Thompson) refuses to take the President out of the public eye during the re-election campaign. Using Booth’s interest in model toys to pursue him, Horrigan discovers their man is named Mitch Leary and during a foot chase, lifts his palm print from a car windshield. Horrigan discovers the CIA is also hunting Leary, a rogue operative the agency tried to let go. Removed from protective detail due to his obsession with Leary, Horrigan manages to close in on him as the assassin infiltrates a fundraiser at the Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. with a handmade pistol invulnerable to metal detectors.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 35 users: 97% for In The Line of Fire

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 74 for In The Line of Fire

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Blood Work (2002)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Michael Connelly
Produced by Clint Eastwood
110 minutes

Watching a star of Clint Eastwood’s magnitude — whose anger can be as explosive as TNT and whose wit could turn as light as a feather — exiled in Blood Work with opportunity to do neither is like watching Michael Jordan come out of retirement in 2001 to play with torn cartilage in the drab prison blue uniform of the Washington Wizards. Yes, it’s The Greatest out there, but this isn’t anything resembling a great movie. Based on a crime novel by Michael Connelly, whose best cop procedurals filter darkness through his expertise on the LAPD as well as the City of Angels, this adaptation was either phoned in by Brian Helgeland or was already hackneyed to begin with. Either way, the results are inexcusable. Tailor made for somebody like Benjamin Bratt to star in for A&E, Blood Work adds up to one of the weaker efforts Eastwood has given in decades.

This is TV back when TV was bad for you. It’s T.J. Hooker without William Shatner or his hairpiece. There’s a conceit planted here involving an FBI profiler chasing the killer of the woman whose donated heart now resides in his chest. Sounds promising, but the script puts FBI profiling and the fragility of new organ recipients on the shelf to focus instead on killers and the clever clues they like to tease cops with. The suspense is nonexistent because the clues are obvious to everyone except the adults in the movie. Eastwood cast two great actors opposite himself in Jeff Daniels and Anjelica Huston, while Wanda De Jesus gives a strong performance as his love interest in a superficial script that doesn’t seem to care about the talent it’s stranding. Lennie Niehaus composed a superb retro lounge music score used far too sparingly.

FBI profiler Terry McCaleb (Clint Eastwood) responds to the latest murder show by the Code Killer, who taunts McCaleb by leaving numerical clues scrawled in blood. Barely tolerated by LAPD detectives (Paul Rodriguez, Dylan Walsh) envious of his media attention, McCaleb spots a pair of Converse sneakers in the crowd similar to ones that left footprints at the crime scene. Giving chase, McCaleb suffers a heart attack. Two years later, the now retired McCaleb recovers from a heart transplant and is compelled by his doctor (Anjelica Huston) to make the most of his gift. Living on a boat moored in Long Beach, McCaleb is approached by Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) and asked to look into the murder of her sister Gloria, who shared McCaleb’s rare blood type and ended up donating her heart to him.

McCaleb humors the LAPD into letting him review the surveillance tape of Gloria’s unsolved murder, which appears to be a random convenience store robbery gone bad. Seeking help from his protégé Jaye Winston (Tina Lifford) — a detective with the L.A. County Sheriff — McCaleb gets a look at the murder book. He discovers an assailant wearing a ski mask shot a victim at an ATM with the same weapon only two weeks before Gloria was killed. Employing dim-witted boat bum named Buddy Noone (Jeff Daniels) to serve as a driver, McCaleb searches for a connection between the two victims, much to the disapproval of his doctor. He gets to know Gloria’s young son and becomes closer to her sister, but it’s not long before the Code Killer resurfaces with a new message for McCaleb.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 147 users: 54% for Blood Work

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 64 for Blood Work

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Firefox (1982)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Alex Lasker & Wendell Wellman, based on the novel by Craig Thomas
Produced by Clint Eastwood
136 minutes

Arriving with fanfare in June 1982 and introducing Clint Eastwood to a generation of mallrats — who were either too young to get into R-rated movies or too busy pumping quarters into Q*bert to care — Firefox didn’t work then and today figures onto my list of the five biggest clunkers the screen icon ever made. Based on a novel that allegedly came to Eastwood by way of a helicopter pilot he contracted for aerial photography, it’s the exactly the type of high tech cloak and dagger business your barber might recommend. International thrillers like these can be compelling when written by Frederick Forsyth or Tom Clancy, but for starters, Craig Thomas is not in that literary weight class. His source material — as well as the adaptation and direction of the movie version — are cheaper and lazier than they have any excuse to be.

Whether or not it was conceived as Clint Eastwood’s response to the special effects extravaganzas of Lucas or Spielberg, Firefox manages one interesting conceit in a Russian Jewish underground and finds one fun moment, when Eastwood finally pilots the top secret fighter jet into the wild blue yonder. Nothing else elicits much more than a yawn. Visual effects producer John Dykstra held up his end adequately, but Eastwood’s explosiveness as an actor seems poorly suited to the spy genre or to acting in front of a blue screen. Blue Thunder — which followed Firefox into theaters by one year and would have been a classic with Clint in the lead role instead of Roy Schneider — infused excitement and an edge to a very similar storyline. Here, even composer Maurice Jarre turns in work that crashes on the test pad.

Somewhere in Alaska, U.S. Air Force major Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood) has his solitary jog interrupted when a young captain (David Huffman) descends on Gant and compels him to come out of retirement to pilot an experimental Mach 5 fighter jet not only invisible to radar, but equipped with a mind controlled weapons system. Known as Firefox, the jet is parked in a Soviet hangar in Bilyarsk. Fluent in Russian, Gant’s mission would be to infiltrate the base with the help of a dissident group and steal the aircraft. Traumatized by events in Vietnam — where Gant was shot down, captured and witnessed the death of a child in a napalm strike — and prone to panic attacks, he remains NATO’s best option for preventing the Cold War from tipping in favor of the Soviets.

In London, British intelligence expert Kenneth Aubrey (Freddie Jones) disguises Gant and issues him the identity of an American businessman trafficking heroin out of Russia. Proving a poor field operative, Gant bumbles into KGB checkpoints until being provoked into killing an agent in a train station restroom. His contact (Warren Clarke) manages to get Gant on the road to Bilyarsk, where the engineers who built Firefox (Nigel Hawthorne, Ronald Lacey, Dimitra Arliss) have suffered enough persecution from the KGB over their Jewish faith to sacrifice their lives to help Gant. Once in the air, Gant heads for a U.S. submarine on an ice pack in the Arctic Circle to refuel, but finds himself pursued by a prototype Firefox piloted by his Soviet counterpart.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 12 users: 42% for Firefox

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Changeling (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Robert Lorenz
141 minutes

Marketed as more than just “based on a true story” but actually “a true story”, there’s a great piece of pulp fiction lurking beneath Changeling, a breathtaking recreation of early 20^th century Los Angeles and a journey down a dark passage almost too lurid to support the claims of its advertising. That’s the dilemma of this highly touted spec script by J. Michael Straczynski, a career TV writer who was tipped off by a source at City Hall about a long forgotten case of a missing child and massive civic corruption. Ron Howard was eager to direct, until Frost/Nixon caught his attention. Howard’s name on the credits certainly doesn’t buy much critical cache these days, but as directed by Clint Eastwood, Changeling has a jeweler’s eye for historical detail and a rough edge that recalls James Ellroy, not Lifetime Television For Women.

Changeling moves through Los Angeles of yore by street car, where LAPD gun squads mowed through organized crime and women who threatened the department ended up branded as hysterical at best and in mental hospitals at worst. The drama is put into motion by a mass murder so gruesome it might have made Robert Stack piss himself, prime real estate for film noir, but promoted as a true life drama, the film’s intentions seems confused. The cast is superb, with Angelina Jolie’s exquisite features giving a silent film performance in a talkie and Amy Ryan doing work as her two-fisted friend. Unlike L.A. Confidential, the characters are unable to shake themselves out of the rigors of plot, but the fact that Eastwood chalks the sights and feelings of that noir classic so convincingly makes it worth visiting.

On March 10, 1928 in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is called to cover a shift at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, postponing an afternoon with her 9-year-old son Walter (Gatlin Griffith). Returning home to find Walter missing, Christine is unable to marshal the full resources of the LAPD, which according to the weekly radio address of a pastor at St. Paul’s Presbyterian named Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) ranks as “the most violent, corrupt and incompetent police department this side of the Rocky Mountains”. In July, police captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) notifies Christine that her son has been found alive in Illinois. With the press in attendance as mother and son are reunited at Union Station, Christine does not recognize the boy who gets off the train to be Walter.

Despite assertions by Capt. Jones that Walter’s appearance may have changed due to his ordeal, neither Christine nor her son’s dentist or schoolteacher believe him to be the same boy. When she refuses to accept the LAPD’s conclusion and takes her story public, Jones has Christine interned at a psychiatric hospital. There, a prostitute (Amy Ryan) reveals that most of the women have been committed to keep them from making trouble for the beleaguered LAPD for one reason or another. While Briegleb and powerful attorney S.S. Hahn (Geoff Pierson) rally to her defense, Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) begins to unravel the ghoulish case of rancher Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner) who appears to have kidnapped and murdered up to 20 boys before fleeing to Canada. Once captured, Northcott remains dubious as to whether or not Walter was one of his victims.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 191 users: 61% for Changeling

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 63 for Changeling

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