Sometime before I started reviewing things, I saw a cool sci-fi movie in which Ashton Kutcher can relive his past, modify events to make things better, and then wake up out of his memories to find a world of improvements, right? Except, there’s always some kind of unintended consequence that makes things worse, and he just missed the intervening years, so he has to figure out what went wrong, and then go back and fix it better, which will work this time, right? And yeah, it’s pretty cool. You should see it.

I missed the sequel, but Butterfly Effect 3 was my second movie of the festival, and, well… if I wanted to have some minimal grasp of the underpinnings of the world, it’s a good thing I saw the first one. Plus, it’s not really much like they followed exactly those same rules anyway, but at least I knew in advance there’s a dude who came jump back in time and then wander around changing things if he feels like it, despite knowing that it’s usually a bad idea. Only, his murdered high-school girlfriend’s sister comes to him requesting assistance in discovering her murderer. And that can’t hurt anything, right? He certainly won’t accidentally create a serial killer for whom he is usually the police’s prime suspect! …right?

If you can ignore the physics-underpinnings part and just accept that he can go to whenever he wants, etc., the plot is a pretty nice mystery that I figure took me over half the film to work out. Watch for Rachel Miner as a threepeat Horrorfest actress. Good for her!

Remember back in November, when I didn’t go to the third Horrorfest and then review a massive pile of movies, and it was very concerning and you were kind of sad to miss out on an entire new batch of movies you will never, ever see yourself, but you at least kind of want to know what it would be like for someone who likes the idea of that kind of thing. Well, there’s good news! As part of an apparent line of mistakes made by the people in charge, whoever they are, it didn’t happen until this weekend instead. So, here we are.

The first flick, From Within, is a real improvement over last year’s mediocre opening. There’s this small generic town that’s dominated by a mega-church, which, come to think of it, is maybe implausible? And one day, a goth-looking guy reads some Latin out of a book, which everyone knows means shit is about to go down. Except, instead of doing anything cool and magical, he kills himself. And then, his girlfriend dies under apparently suicidal but certainly mysterious circumstances. The rest of the movie follows around a girl present at the first girl’s death who is trying to figure out what happened, the dead goth’s brooding brother with a dark past and a pretty plum role as a recognizable teen on the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and the holy war that is about to hit Grovetown. Mostly, though, the brooding! I’m pretty sure this was a fraction of what seeing Twilight would have been like, only without the irritating audience and with enough entertaining violence to balance the tweeness.

Best part, though, is the brooding dude’s cousin, who is sufficiently full of snark that she plays piano chords of doom when we learn about the horrible thing that is about to happen to our plucky heroine. I may be in love.

Except for the fact that I’m willing to see it again, this might get me in trouble with my father. But after several intriguing previews in front of all the art house flicks I’ve been seeing in the past couple of months, I went to see Clint Eastwood’s new movie, Gran Torino. And it’s good! Eastwood still sees himself as incredibly bad-ass, which seems ridiculous for a 79 year-old man. Yet, either through weight of history, gravelliness of voice, or sheer force of will, he can still pull it off. Hell, the gravelly moans were as much an extra character in every scene as the titular vehicle was.

So Eastwood lives in his house in Detroit, in the neighborhood he hasn’t left since the Korean War ended, and he has gradually watched his friends move away or die and be replaced by a bunch of Asians that basically all look alike to him. His family is useless and his wife has just died, which leaves him a bitter racist, alone with nothing but time on his hands and his sweet, sexy sports car that he never drives. Oh, and his dog who is old like him, but I’m sure nothing bad will happen to, right? Right?

The downside to all this, if you leave out his existential twilight, non-stop racist anger, and the Catholic priest who won’t stop hanging on the bell day and night, is that there’s a Ricer gang terrorizing the neighbors (well, really the neighborhood in general, but he probably wouldn’t know if it weren’t happening in his front yard), and once he’s scared them off, he becomes the last thing he wants to be: a hero. After that, things start to get complicated.

There are moments of cringe-inducing uncomfortableness, genuine warmth, understated hilarity, and raw-edged fury. But as much good acting and scripting as was crammed into the film, I think what I like best about it is that it isn’t a story of redemption where the crusty old racist learns a valuable lesson and loves everyone. It might be cool if it happened in real life, but the truth is, that kind of thing mostly doesn’t, and I’ve seen it often enough on screen that it was refreshing to see something different. I think Eastwood-the-director only took the easy way out of a scene once in the entire film, and more power to him for it. I like movies that aren’t perfectly easy to watch or perfectly easy to pin down and categorize.

I remember how absurdly pleased I was at the sneak preview of Tropic Thunder when the crowd mostly applauded for the gay couple.[1] Restored my faith in humanity, a bit. But, y’know, there’s always the other side of the coin. I’m not shocked by that; it’s all around the political landscape, right? And nevermind all the more personal examples. This stuff is pretty much exactly what Milk is about, which is why I could not have predicted an example right in the theater.

See, the first thing that happens in the movie is eventual gay activist Harvey Milk meets and hooks up with the guy who will be his long-time partner. Pretty much inevitably, this means dudely make-outs. Therein lies my surprise: you would have a hard time going to a movie about a famous gay politician during the first days of the gay rights movement, and not expect to see some gay men doing gay things, right? But as soon as Sean Penn and Harry Osborne started kissing in the subway (I want to reiterate that the movie had not been on for five minutes yet), a [straight] couple got up and left the theater. It was almost a perfect moment for underlining everything the movie was trying to say; thinking about it now, I could almost believe they’d been planted to bolster the rest of the audience into feeling good about themselves.

Anyhow, the flick itself starts off a little choppy. They needed to dump a lot of set-up information, but it never really came together until Harvey decided to get into politics, maybe 20 minutes in. After that, the acting shines through, and it really is an inspiring story. Maybe it could win a few people over. The only thing that bothers me about it is that I’m sad people still need to be won over to what seems like an obvious message: let people have their happiness where they can find it, instead of stealing it from them.

I know there’s more to do, but it really was a little horrifying to see how bad things were around the time I was born. I’m really glad it’s better, and I’m going to be more thoughtful about what I can do in small ways to keep it improving. ‘Cause, yeah, I’m a bit inspired. Not so much with the going activist or having my gay friends hook me up with the parade calendar or anything, but for sure I won’t be as quick to let things go that I’m used to ignoring for the sake of peace. This is important shit, right here. It’s peoples’ lives.

[1] Which, okay, that doesn’t exactly make sense, but I don’t want to ruin it, either; the point is, it was an overwhelmingly positive response to something that I would have expected my Dallas peeps to react to neutrally at best.
[2] Unreferenced footnote: I just want to apologize for my inability to write today. Sorry you had to read this, instead of just having the gestalt beamed into your brain.

It is the rare movie that arrives exactly as advertised. Assuming you’re aware of the Transporter series, I have nothing else to say. But since you might not be, a little more explanation is in order. There’s this guy, Frank Martin. He is an American expatriate who drives things from European places to other European places for people. Specialized things that said people think might have trouble arriving, such as a bunch of mysterious bags in the trunk or a red-headed Ukrainian party girl in the passenger seat. But Frank never cares what the package is, only that he does the job and gets paid. (Will he eventually break this rule in every single movie in the series, and discover that there are layers that might make him change his definition of the job? You betcha, but plot is so far to the side of the point of the movie that it has caught up to the leading edge of the Big Bang.)

No, what is important about Transporter 3 is that it includes the same signature car chases, explosions, sexual tension, and kung fu action that each of the other entries in the series has contained. And a shirtless Jason Statham is probably an important ingredient to some members of the audience; I will not begrudge them it. So, if you want to see a lot of over-the-top action sequences of the types described above, you’ll love it. It is exactly what it pretends to be, neither more nor less. And that’s kind of refreshing, even in a year where I have seen a lot of exceptional films.