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At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller. Based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, it's built on a relatively stock movie premise, the revenge plot: innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay. But director Steven Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence. The movie starts with a rush. The opening portrays the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Olympics with scenes as heart-stopping and terrifying as the best of any horror movie. After the tragic incident is over and several of the terrorists have gone free, the Israeli government of Golda Meir recruits Avner (Eric Bana) to lead a team of paid-off-the-book agents to hunt down those responsible throughout Europe, and eliminate them one-by-one (in reality, there were several teams). It's physically and emotionally messy work, and conflicts between Avner and his team's handler, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), over information Avner doesn't want to provide only make things harder. Soon the work starts to take its toll on Avner, and the deeper moral questions of right and wrong come into play, especially as it becomes clear that Avner is being hunted in return, and that his family's safety may be in jeopardy.

By all rights, Munich should be an unqualified success--it has gripping subject matter relevant to current events; it was co-written by one of America's greatest living playwrights (Tony Kushner, Angels in America) and an accomplished screenwriter (Eric Roth); it stars an appealing and likeable actor in Eric Bana; and it was helmed by Steven Spielberg, of all people. While it certainly is a great movie, it falls just short of the immense heights such talent should propel it to. This is due more to some questionable plot devices than anything else (such as the contrived use of a family of French informants to locate the terrorists). But while certain aspects ring hollow, the movie as a whole is a profound accomplishment, despite being only "inspired by true events," and not factually based on them. From the ferocious beginning to the unforgettable closing shot, Munich works on a visceral level while making a poignant plea for peace, and issuing an unmistakable warning about the destructive cycle of terror and revenge. As one of the characters intones, "There is no peace at the end of this." --Daniel Vancini

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Victor Borge was a master at combining two seemingly disparate elements: comedy and classical music. While the Dane's dapper dignity fit the image of "longhair" music, Borge undercut it with broad physical comedy, clever spoofs, and off-the-cuff wit. A pioneer in the field of live comedy recordings, Borge is nevertheless best appreciated on video, and The Best of Victor Borge Acts One and Two captures a 90-minute concert that includes many of his most famous routines. He chides late-arriving members of the Minneapolis audience ("I come from Copenhagen and was here before you!"), falls off the piano bench, and reads his sheet music upside down. There are a few unwitting guests: a stagehand drafted to turn Borge's pages, soprano Marylyn Mulvey who tries to sing a Verdi aria through Borge's teasing and scolding, and Sahan Arzruni as he and Borge play a two-piano Hungarian rhapsody on a single piano by climbing over and around each other. Borge also presents an opera "written by Mozart but credited to Salieri" ("so you can imagine what kind of opera it is") and proves that he's not merely a clown by skillfully performing a set of waltzes and lullabies. In addition, two of his best-loved sketches are nonmusical: Inflationary Language, in which numbers in language, like the economy, are increased ("I'll go back to Elevenessee.... Three-dleoo."), and Phonetic Punctuation, in which a period is read aloud to sound like fft and an exclamation point fsss fft. Like Anna Russell and PDQ Bach, Victor Borge helped make classical music accessible to a wide audience by showing that it could be laugh-out-loud funny. --David Horiuchi

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Great routines, but truncated recording disappointing

Victor Borge is as funny as ever in this 90-minute live performance. He is thoroughly engaged, very lively, and manages to deliver even his most common routines with such energy and humor that you feel as if you're seeing them for the first time.

That said, the recording has some flaws. The first you will notice is that the video quality, though not distracting, is nevertheless poor. It's painfully obvious that this DVD was mde from a VHS cassette. The one that most disappointed me most, though, is that "The Best of Victor Borge Acts I and II" is just that--the best of them, not the whole thing. Seven years ago, I purchased a videocassette of this same concert. Since the tape has gotten worn to the point of being unusable, I purchased this DVD expecting to have all of Acts I and II. Sadly, several routines are fully removed, including Borge's birthday sketches and his performance of the Moonlight Sonata. His performance of "Clear the Saloon" and several other pieces have also been cut from the recording. For this reason, although I don't outright regret the purchase, I'm profoundly disappointed with it.

A musical upstart - Excellent

Comedy with a difference. What!? No swearing????
Todays comedian often resort to expletives to get their humour across. Victor is old school, very talented musically and is funny to all ages. For the young a very funny introduction to the classics.

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William Marshall, a Shakespearean actor with a rich baritone voice, enriches this otherwise bland blaxploitation vampire film with his strong, seductive performance. He's Manuwalde, a European-educated 18th-century African prince who appeals to the Count Dracula for help in ending the slave trade. Dracula, never known as a great emancipator, puts the bite on Manuwalde's troubles, dubs him "Blacula" (the only time the name is uttered in the film), and imprisons him in a casket. Stirred to life, so to speak, centuries later in Los Angeles by gay antique hunters, he steps into the soulful '70s and splits his energies between feeding his bloodlust and wooing a young beauty (Vonetta McGee), a dead ringer for his long-dead wife. Thalmus Rasulala (Friday Foster) is a modern medical professor turned urban Van Helsing, and Elisha Cook Jr. has a bit part as a coroner with a hook for a hand. The potential for a clever urban black twist on the European vampire myth is lost in this dull, thoroughly conventional tale. Marshall is under enough sloppily applied facial hair to make him a wolfman, and his victims walk around with a plastic blue pallor. But despite the limitations, Marshall creates a magnetic, aristocratic character and infuses his monster with a sense of loss and sadness in the climax. It was followed by a sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream, and inspired Blackenstein. For a more interesting and thoughtful African American take on the vampire legend, look to Ganja and Hess. --Sean Axmaker

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Yes, he's back, and he's still hungry. Ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, reprising his Oscar-winning role) is living the good life in Italy, studying art and sipping espresso. FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, replacing Jodie Foster), on the other hand, hasn't had it so good--an outsider from the start, she's now a quiet, moody loner who doesn't play bureaucratic games and suffers for it. A botched drug raid results in her demotion--and a request from Lecter's only living victim, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, uncredited), for a little Q and A. Little does Clarice realize that the hideously deformed Verger--who, upon suggestion from Dr. Lecter, peeled off his own face--is using her as bait to lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding, quite certain he'll capture the good doctor.

Taking the basic plot contraptions from Thomas Harris's baroque novel, Hannibal is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it forces you to take it on its own terms. Director Ridley Scott gives the film a sleek, almost European look that lets you know that, unlike the first film (which was about the quintessentially American Clarice), this movie is all Hannibal. Does it work? Yes--but only up to a point. Scott adeptly sets up an atmosphere of foreboding, but it's all buildup for anticlimax, as Verger's plot for abducting Hannibal (and feeding him to man-eating wild boars) doesn't really deliver the requisite visceral thrills, and the much-ballyhooed climatic dinner sequence between Clarice, Dr. Lecter, and a third unlucky guest wobbles between parody and horror. Hopkins and Moore are both first-rate, but the film contrives to keep them as far apart as possible, when what made Silence so amazing was their interaction. When they do connect it's quite thrilling, but it's unfortunately too little too late. --Mark Englehart

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With a voracious trio of mako sharks wreaking havoc, Deep Blue Sea dares to up the ante on Jaws, but director Renny Harlin trades the nuanced suspense of Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster for the trickery of the digital age. In other words, why build genuine terror when you can show ill-fated humans getting torn into bloody chunks? The aforementioned makos have been lab rats in an effort to harvest a miracle cure for Alzheimer's disease from the brains of sharks, but the research has an unfortunate side effect: the sharks get smarter, and they're determined to break out of Aquatica, the deep-sea complex where they've been penned.

Model-actress Saffron Burrows plays the researcher; Thomas Jane pulls double-duty as shark expert and action hunk; Samuel L. Jackson's the corporate sponsor who chooses the worst time for an Aquatica tour; and rapper LL Cool J is nicely cast as Aquatica's cook and comic relief. Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie, and Stellan Skarsgård round out the cast, most of whom are turned into shark food as the makos turn Aquatica into a floating junkyard. Harlin takes devilish pleasure in providing sudden, unexpected shocks--no small feat in such a derivative thriller--and as a series of action set-pieces, Deep Blue Sea never disappoints. It's inevitable that Burrows should end up in her underwear like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, but even then the movie offers a credible reason for the strip-down; that Deep Blue Sea can be simultaneously ridiculous and sensible is just another one of its shlocky charms. --Jeff Shannon

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An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., power and profit)--ad infinitum.

The Corporation defines this endlessly mutating life-form in exhaustive detail, measuring the many ways it has not only come to dominate but to deform our reality. The movie performs a running psychoanalysis of this entity with the characteristics of a prototypical psychopath: a callous unconcern for the feelings and safety of others, an incapacity to experience guilt, an ingrained habit of lying for profit, etc. We are swept away on a demented odyssey through an altered cosmos, in which artificial chemicals are created for profit and incidentally contribute to a cancer epidemic; in which the folks who brought us Agent Orange devise a milk-increasing drug for a world in which there is already a glut of milk; in which an American computer company leased its systems to the Nazis--and serviced them on a monthly basis--so that the Holocaust could go forward as an orderly process.

The movie goes on too long, circles too many points obsessively and redundantly, and risks preaching-to-the-choir reductiveness by calling on the usual talking-head suspects--Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore. And except for an endlessly receding tracking shot in an infinite patents archive, there's scarcely an image worth recalling. Still, it maps the new reality. This is our world--welcome to it. --Richard T. Jameson

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Pernicious nonsense

I know I am going to be pilloried for this, but nonetheless, someone has to say it: This documentary is slickly edited but all the same simple-minded, misconceived, rubbish.

The film's political perspective seems to be something like anarcho-syndicalism: the view that a society should be free of all compulsory rules, where all individuals will voluntarily work towards the common goals of the community, unconstrained by the imposed hierarchy of government or capitalism.

Well, it's an idea that has its merits, and some obvious difficulties too, to the point that while the film makers are prepared to raise accusing fingers at their capitalist adversaries, they're notably short of ideas on what to do instead. The best they can come up with is some Froot-Looped Californian backwater which decides, municipally, to discuss whether "whether democracy is even possible when large corporations wield so much wealth and power under law." The collective gripe, it seems, is with Chain Restaurants which are opening unchecked in the town (and, presumably, doing steady business with the very same locals). A town meeting is called where these well-intentioned but basically stupid people are confronted with some fairly obvious truths:

Quotes one local businessman: "if you don't like Pepsi-Cola, Bank of America, well, if you don't like what they do, don't use 'em. That's the way I see the people's power is."

That's it, in a nutshell. That answers the question absolutely, and pretty much every substantial point this documentary has to make. A subsequent participant, who still hasn't understood it, intones (to loud cheering): "People that say that they fear their government. I really hope that they understand that they're allowed to participate in their government; they're not allowed to participate in anything the corporations do."

Well, nothing could be further from the truth: every transaction with a corporation is a direct, financial, participation in what it does, and represents a benefit that it wants and needs, just as a conscious refusal to transact with a corporation represents a lost opportunity. You can participate as often or as rarely as you like, but most people participate many times every day. In the political system, by enormous contrast, the vast majority get a solitary "participation" every fours years, a single tick supposed to represent the complicated system of political views held by that single voter; a vote for a candidate who doesn't win is ignored altogether, and even a vote for the winner, does not guarantee its mandate will be carried out. Some participation in the system *that* is.

In any case, in their assault on "The Corporation", the filmmakers engage in some fundamental discombobulations. Consider this: "Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, The Corporation is today's dominant institution".

Stop the tape right there, 0 minutes, 25 seconds on the counter. In these "other times and places" there was only *one* Church. There was *one* Monarchy, there was *one* Communist Party. They had each was indeed a dominant institution in the community, able to exact compliance by compulsion.

There are *millions* of corporations, big and small, good and bad, high-minded and scurrilous, and they're all competing against each other for your dollars. If you don't like what one does, another will be in like Flynn. That is a colossal difference. Unless you accept Chomsky's view (and given the amount of airtime he gets, it's reasonable to assume the producers do) that all capitalists are secretly acting in collusion with each other to systematically oppress the masses - you will note there *is* no "The Corporation".

The irony is that, if you use your imagination, individual Corporations aren't un-reminiscent of anarcho-syndicalist communes: each is a voluntary assembly of individuals, all of whom share a common purpose, and who are voluntarily acting in accordance with agreed rules with to the betterment of all in the collective.

I'm sure the filmmakers would rebut this by pointing to the sweatshops in El Salvador, and the anecdote might well implicate a particular corporation - but it doesn't implicate *The Corporation*. And let it not be forgotten that corporations - such as those publishing and distributing this film, and Chomsky's and Naomi Klein's books, were instrumental in identifying and, through the power of the market, discouraging unconscionable practices, in a way that Governments (let alone anarcho-syndicalist communes!) manifestly have not been able to do. In the end it was the market, not the Government, that found Enron out; and the market which bore the losses.

Corporations, like guns, are no more and no less than a reflection of the people who use them. And here is the big point missed, or ignored, by the makers of this film: "the people who use them" means, predominantly, the people who consume their products. That is, US. The great, downtrodden masses. If you don't understand that, you have no hope of getting any purchase on the political debate this film attempts to engage in. Apparently, the makers of this film don't understand that. If it is true that all Corporations are bad apples, then we need to be looking at ourselves, as owners, shareholders, customers and counterparties of corporations. Blaming the form itself won't do any good whatsoever.

Finally, to sum up with a populist punch, Michael Moore is wheeled out to congratulate himself, which he does in fine style. But in identifying what he sees as an irony, Moore misses the much larger one in what he is saying:

"it's very ironic that I'm able to do all this and yet ... I'm on networks, I'm distributed by studios that are owned by large corporate entities. Now, why would they put me out there when I am opposed to everything that they stand for? ... It's because they don't believe in anything. They put me on there because they know that there are millions of people that want to see my film or watch the TV show and so they're going to make money ... I'm driving my truck through this incredible flaw in capitalism ..."

No, Michael, that's not ironic, and that's not a flaw in capitalism. It's the very point of capitalism. That's all the evidence you should need of its democracy, it's willingness to admit of participation, of its agnosticism, of its openness to any perspective that "the masses" will be interested in. If it will sell, the market will sell it.

The real irony is that Michael Moore - and the makers of this silly documentary - don't appreciate that very point.

Olly Buxton

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For its seventh edition, The Amazing Race welcomed two familiar faces. Reality TV vets Rob and Amber were one of eleven teams competing for the million-dollar prize. The other contestants covered the spectrum, like boyfriends Lynn and Alex, brothers Brian and Greg, married couple Uchenna and Joyce, and mother/son duo Susan and Patrick. The latter decides he'll do whatever it takes to beat Boston Rob. As he notes in the season premiere, "I watched Survivor. He's as dumb as a rock." The show’s top-rated installment spanned five continents and 40,000 miles, from Long Beach, CA to Fort Lauderdale, FL. Other pit stops include Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and London. Some of the more colorful challenges include llama herding in Peru and cave rappelling in South Africa, while the emotional high point is a trip to a Soweto orphanage, an experience that reduces Uchenna and Joyce to tears. There will also be sacrifices along the way, as when Gretchen, the second oldest contestant--after her 69-year-old husband, Meredith--has a frightening fall and Joyce says so long to her hair. The seventh season of The Amazing Race is broken into 12 episodes, including three two-part programs. This boxed set features a mini-documentary, chatty commentary from four of the highest-ranked teams, and over three hours of deleted material. After the race aired, Lynn and Alex and Rob and Amber--on network TV, naturally--tied the knot. It was also revealed that Joyce once had a recurring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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The 2003 debut of Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central marked a high point for the cable channel, and now the entire, wildly creative first season can be seen, with hundreds of bleeps removed. That's not to say Chappelle's Show is perfect entertainment: there are too many moments among the 12 episodes here that descend into pointless scatology and booty fever. But for the most part, Chappelle, a talented comic slowly growing into greatness, is trying to push the sketch-humor envelope and succeeds at surprising us with original concepts and merciless execution.

The merely clever material includes "National Geography's Third World Girls Gone Wild," basically an update on those topless-native-women gags of yore, and Chappelle's "Educated Guess Line," in which the sage comic eschews psychic powers to logically deduce racial insights from his callers' questions. Far more wicked is an in-your-face satire on such autobiographical film fare as Antwone Fisher and 8 Mile, in which Chappelle plays himself ascending from street hustler to rapper-comedian to bona fide savior of America. The best thing here, however, is a parallel-universe version of The Real World, in which the usual racial proportions on MTV's workhorse series are reversed, thrusting a token white guy into a Hoboken houseful of crazy African Americans. There are also laughs in "Ask a Gay Guy with Mario Cantoned," as well as a sketch about an "inner-thoughts cam" and a nasty piece about Chappelle's Make-a-Wish visit to a dying child, which decays into a cruel video game competition. Overlooking the series' weaker material, this is outstanding television comedy. --Tom Keogh

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Movie critic Roger Ebert made this amusing observation about Malice: "This is the only movie I can recall in which an entire subplot about a serial killer is thrown in simply for atmosphere." He's referring to the fact that this hokey but highly charged thriller is so packed with plot twists and red herrings that you'll soon find yourself so confused that you just have to sit back and hope that it will all make sense by the time the credits roll. It never does make much sense, but the movie at least has the look, feel, and twisted momentum of a really good thriller, and the talent on both sides of the camera is pretty impressive. Alec Baldwin plays a hot-shot surgeon who meets up with an old med-school buddy (Bill Pullman), whose wife (Nicole Kidman) has no objections when Baldwin moves into the upstairs room of their New England Victorian home. The situation's ripe for intrigue, suspicion, temptation, emergency surgery, legal proceedings, and just about anything else you'd find in a movie that desperately struggles to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock. Talk about McGuffins--this movie's chock full of 'em! When the plot thickens to the consistency and clarity of quicksand, you can still enjoy the darkly stylish work of master cinematographer Gordon Willis--or you can check out director Harold Becker's more coherent thriller Sea of Love. With Kidman and Baldwin working up a steamy lather, this one's just fun enough to be an agreeable waste of time. --Jeff Shannon

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Spring, 1864. The air is filled with exploding gunfire and the awful sounds of men collapsing in agony as they march forward into Hell. Relive the most vicious fighting of the Civil War, in which General Ulysses S. Grant forcibly reversed the tide of the conflict by paying with the blood of thousands. It was a desperate time for the Union. For three bloody years and despite their greater numbers, the troops had frequently been outmatched by the brilliant strategies of the Confederate leader, General Robert E. Lee. As General Ulysses S. Grant took charge of the Army of the Potomac that spring, he was determined to gain the upper hand in the war once and for all - no matter what the cost. Grant's relentless tactics led to furious clashes, including the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle at Laura Hill and the fighting at the Mule Shoe and Cold Harbor. In a few short weeks, Grant sacrificed 50,000 men, more Americans than were lost during the entire Vietnam War. But his brutal strategies worked. By the time of Lee's surrender a year later, his own army of 60,000 had been decimated, reduced to a mere 7,500. These crucial weeks are authentically dramatized, using over 10,000 Civil War re-enactors, 2,000 horses, 50 cannons and heart-rending text from letters of those who were there. Filmed on hallowed ground and with riveting commentary by author Jeff Shaara (Gods and Generals) and noted Civil War expert, Edwin C. Bearss, it's a chillingly realistic experience of the final, desperate hours between North and South.

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