Couple offbeat titles for you today...

Max - stars John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski

What a hodge podge this thing is.  Ok so you've got this German dude, Max Rothman (Cusack), who after losing his arm in the first world war has become somewhat of a cynic, but he's an art dealer so I guess that's ok.  And he meets this budding artist who he'd like to bring to prominence but just can't seem to motivate him enough to get new pieces onto canvas.  The budding artist's name is Adolf Hitler (Taylor).  Hitler is beginning to walk the fine line between sticking to his art, or following his new passion - public speaking.  I think we all know the rest.

This movie is set in 1918, a post-WWI Germany struggling to come to terms with the fact they lost the war, but that all spells backdrop really to the main players.  And what this movie tries to tell us is that if Max Rothman the art dealer, and lets not forget Jew, had've succeeded in talking Adolf Hitler into persuing art full-time, he would've quit the public speaking circuit and a different set of circumstances probably would've caused WWII to happen blah blah lardy dardy.  Trippy.  Yes this is based on a true story.

Ok, this film, as a film, sucked.  The only thing that keeps you there is the whole Hitler thing.  Cusack struts around all High-Fidelity like, reeling off diatribe after diatribe but having it fall on deaf ears.  This is probably because he is a German war veteran speaking in an American accent.  Now I understand when directors/actors/whateverers don't try and speak in an accent because they're speaking English anyway - and portraying a German (in this instance) in post-WWI Germany would undoubtedly see him speaking in German...look, I know it works and I can even name you examples.  You've got Sean Connery's Scottish accent being hardly noticed as a Russian submarine captain, and even closer to home here was the mini-series shown briefly, "The Rise Of Evil" I think it was called.  With a predominently English cast, they all just spoke English with their own accents, and emphasis was on their characters.  Ok, so yes I see where this can work successfully and I have no qualms with it, but here you've got Cusack speaking with his American accent, and Noah Taylor speaking English with a German accent.  Holy crap, sort it out kids, so that annoyed me from the outset.

Cusack can't do history, he probably can't even do true stories, in fact if he doesn't write the script or have it written for him, he shouldn't be cast in the role.  Cucack's a class act and one of my favourites, but even I can see where he's out of place.  Noah Taylor doesn't do a bad job all things considered, unfortunately his voice print doesn't suit someone of Hitler's stature - hey, hate him or hate him alot, Hitler was a man with presence, no matter how off the charts he was with the rest of the world.  So yeah, Noah struggles to emulate that.  And Leelee, well she shouldn't have even been in the credits, she didn't do shit in this flick.  I don't even know why I mentioned her.  She plays a love interest or something.

<Yawn> so I've seen better war films, better true stories, hell I've been more entertained watching grass grow.  You'd have to be totally intrigued with the Hitler story to sit through this, and even then you'd struggle.  The best part of the film is the reason Rothman and Hitler went their seperate ways on the whole art thing.  Unnecessary, 2 stars.

Secretary - stars James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Lee (Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental hospital and finds home a little, well, non-functional.  She is a masochist of sorts turning to self-mutilation for sollace.  Her mother is a bit of a neurotic who keeps the knives locked up in case Lee has a turn, her father is an alcoholic who wanders around the neighbourhood calling people from public phones.  Edward (Spader) is this tripped out lawyer dude who hires Lee as a secretary when she answers his ad in the paper.  What develops is more than your average boss/worker relationship, and I'm not sure who'd get taken to court if it had to go there, but best you make up your own mind.  And you'll have a good time doing it, trust me.

This is great, this is probably the best dark comedy I've seen since American Psycho came out, very much in that mould, just not violent.  Spader is absolutely priceless, you couldn't have cast anyone better in the role.  Gyllenhaal isn't familiar to me, but with titles like "Cecil B Demented", "The Pornographer: A Love Story", "Donnie Darko" and "Adaptation" then she was a shoe-in for the role, she's brilliant.

The dialogue, the situations, the manifest sexual undertones that drive this thing along are fantastic.  And there's a compelling side-plot with things around the couple looking up as they start to work things out, almost like if they're doing well then so is the rest of the world.  Look, if you got David Lynch in a mellow mood and he made kind've Donnie Darko crossed with American Psycho, but without that whole death thing, yeah this'd probably be a close effort.  Its quite close to Donnie in style actually, but Donnie wasn't funny, Donnie needed to lower the dose.

Bottom line, if you're into something a bit different, then leave Hollywood behind with this well acted, beautfully filmed, offbeat dark comedy about two people who find eachother.  Intrigued?  Good.  4 stars.

BH