Shall We Dance, After the Sunset, National Treasure, Closer

Some mini-reviews today. I watched all of these from Wednesday to Friday, and tried to get the first two in on Thursday before the internet all over the midstate took a dive. Several of these movies are not this past weekend's releases, as you will see. Hollywood 27, for some reason, got Shall We Dance? back for one show a night until Tuesday, but didn't open Closer.

1. Shall We Dance? (Director: Peter Chelsom) Release date: October 15

Dance movies, by rule, need to be light and airy. The best film in the genre, I believe, is Baz Luhurmann's Strictly Ballroom, which has a bare minimum of conflict, or just enough conflict to have a story, which suits it fine. In Shall We Dance? the film is destroyed by two dramatic scenes that cut into the dancing-is-fun vibe. It's just hard to take those kinds of things seriously in a movie like this.

The story: Lawyer John Clark (Richard Gere) is down on his life, starts taking dance lessons in secret from his wife Beverly (Susan Sarandon). Conflicted dance instructor Paulina (Jennifer Lopez) inspires John to dance and learn to appreciate it for the right reasons, leading to the first dramatic scene that tortures the movie--Paulina telling John that if he's in the class just to get with her, then he doesn't need to come back. Beverly hires private detectives (Richard Jenkins, Nick Cannon) to see if John is straying from her, only to be told that his love affair is dance--leading to the second dramatic scene that bludgeons the film where Beverly, along with her daughter and already aware of the secret, goes to see John dance at a competition. The stupid daughter keeps yelling, "Way to go, Dad!" as if Dad wouldn't be perturbed by the sight of the loved ones he's lied to this whole time. I kept scratching my head at why his wife enjoys watching him dance, and Beverly only gets angry when John finds out that she knows his secret, rather than just being angry in the first place.

These kinds of things are why this movie fails to be good.

2. After the Sunset (Director: Brett Ratner) Release date: November 12

Proving that Ratner needs Chris Tucker and vice-versa to hit it big with audiences, the Rush Hour and Red Dragon director tries his hand at the caper movie, and figures that since he's got caper-vet Pierce Brosnan in on the fun, he can cash in on his earlier success. Well, maybe he doesn't actually think that...no one can really know what people think when they make these movies, but I'd like to imagine that he does.

This is a fairly enjoyable movie, but it's really a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and what I mean by that is that heist-meister Max Burdett (Brosnan) and his fiancee Lola (Salma Hayek) get the best of FBI guy Stanley Lloyd (Woody Harrelson) so much and so often and so one-sidedly, that there's really no surprise involved in the film's wannabe twist-a-thon. I couldn't suspend my belief enough on the final job Burdett pulls off, and if you ever watch the film and realize the logistics involved, you'll see why. I also dislike the idea of a retired couple of jewel thieves, where one character, such as Lola, plays the film's moral conscience and hence, steals away from the fun that could be had. There's also a who-needs-it local cop played by the extraordinarily pretty Naomie Harris, who, you may imagine by my use of adjectives is a pointless character.

Decent, cable-worthy flick.

3. National Treasure (Director: Jon Turteltaub) Release date: November 19

Movie vet Turteltaub teams with producer Jerry Bruckheimer in the top box office draw of the last three weeks, and the results are definitely crowd-pleasin', and I liked it, too.

Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) is a treasure hunter who continues the long line of the Gates tradition, looking for a storied treasure that the founding fathers left clues all over national monuments and documents to find. Gates teams with Riley Poole (Justin Bartha, whose claim to fame before this was being the best part about the movie Gigli) and later National Archives director Abigail (the hoooooot Diane Kruger, who played Helen in Troy). They go on their quest while trying to fend off former co-treasure-hunters led by Sean Bean's Ian Howe (who, everyone now, the Twister line, it never gets old! A one, and a two, and a three: he's in it for the money, not the science...er history, in this case).

What's good about a movie like this is that it makes a fun sort of history class treasure hunt, and even the villain has some smarts, even if he is evil. The movie is getting some low marks from most film snobs, probably because of Bruckheimer's reputation for making big, dumb action pictures. And as much as Bruckheimer can be blamed for that in most cases, he's produced some solid entertainment--my qualm with his style has mostly to do with his Michael Bay collaborations and the overly testosterone-fueled pictures where women function as worriers and little else. But when he dies, he'll have left some classic popcorn films behind. This movie does everything it needs to do to be fun--of course it could be a better (enter movie geek sniff here) film, but this is pop entertainment at its finest. It's "just a movie." Everything will be OK.

Oh yeah, let's compare it to Indiana Jones. I'd say Raiders of the Lost Ark totally beats this down, easily, but it's better than Temple of Doom and it's on par with The Last Crusade.

4. Closer (Director: Mike Nichols)

Lots of icons directing movies these days, aren't there? And we still have Scorsese's The Aviator left. Mike Nichols made The Graduate, and it's still one of the best films you'll ever see. Nichols has made a double-digit number of films you've heard of, but that's arguably his best.

This is a play turned into a movie, and while it really doesn't shake that stigma, it's a movie with solid scenes and very real people in them. The performances are out of this world. Julia Roberts is at her very best here. Clive Owen steals the show. Jude Law (movie #4 this season) plays the perfect guy to get screwed by love. Natalie Portman plays her second adult role, one that is completely different from her equally good turn in Garden State.

The good: It's the dialogue. The real effect this will have on you is the solid words that are being spoken, often hurtful, many times very funny. I can't shake Clive Owen's character Larry in this. Perhaps the most dramatic change belongs to him. Owen has had the problem of everyone saying he's great (from lesser-known movies) and then being stuck in crap like Beyond Borders or King Arthur. Well, this is his breakthrough. This is his movie to steal and he does so.

A movie like this, you could delve deep into the meanings of every word, and I have my own thoughts on it, but I won't include them here. It's a movie you must see and form your own opinion. It's not like, the end-of-the-Earth great, after all, it's more a play than anything (that's not a knock on plays, but films should realize a bigger world), but it's certainly worth a look to see four fine actors delivering these kinds of words.