VOD/digital premiere for Milena Lurie's debut film, ENTANGLED

Early on in ENTANGLED, a film written and directed by newcomer Milena Lurie, our heroine/ narrator informs us that she used to be full but wanted to be empty, but now she is empty and wants to be full. Or maybe it was vice versa. Later she tells of a similar kind of situation in which she may be dreaming while awake, or awake while dreaming. By the point at which she informs us that, sometimes, she just wants to scream, you may be inclined to answer, "Honey, I know just how you feel."

Although it is being distributed via Samuel Goldwyn Films, Entangled has all the hallmarks of a vanity production -- Ms Lurie is writer, director and producer -- and I suspect from everything about this film that Lurie must be awfully young and untutored because she is telling us stuff we've seen and heard so many times before (told and shown much better) that she finally bores us silly.

For whatever reason, she has made her heroine a French ex-pat living in New York City (played by Ana Girardot, shown above, bathing) with an accent thick enough for us to need subtitles when she is speaking English). Ms Girardot is a good actress but she is lost here in the thicket of dreadful dialog she must intone.

The men in her life are played by Peter Mark Kendall (her current beau), Jonathan Cake (above, right: a pick-up at a local bar) and Grégory Fitoussi (below, right: her ex, who flies over from Paris for a one-night-stand). They all mutter dialog seemingly out of the discards of a class in Screenwriting 101. Oh, sure, miscarriage and abortions figure into things, but even they manage to seem about as shallow as all else. When miscarriage and abortion prove equal in importance to fashion, food and gossip, that, I suppose, is a very weird accomplishment.

I do hate dumping upon new filmmakers, but Ms Lurie should wait until she has something remotely worth saying that has not been said countless time previously before making another movie. It has been a long while since I felt that my time spent had been this wasted. Running 93 minutes, Entangled hit VOD and home video earlier this month. Your move....

Minimalism du jour: Julia Loktev's THE LONELIEST PLANET opens in New York

"A film you will never forget," trumpets a critic used in the current advertisement for this new film. He's right. I'm certainly not going to forget a film that made me angrier than any I've seen all year (maybe in this whole new millennium). Its maker, Julia Loktev, shown below, made a stir a few years back when she gave us Day Night Day Night, another minimalist movie that at least had a hook: Terrorism. Its protagonist might or might not be going to blow up part of New York City. Even that did not make the movie as interesting as it ought to have been, but it did keep your eyes on the screen and your mind engaged, off and on, for 90-odd minutes. Ms Loktev's new one THE LONELIEST PLANET, minimalist-unto-empty, does not begin to manage even that, and it goes on for an unconscionable nearly-two-hours.

Exactly one single event happens in this entire movie, somewhere around midway, as I recall. The event is a humdinger, all right, a game-changer, a truth-teller, a turning point. But while it surprised me, I quickly realized that I didn't give a shit because I had no idea in hell about the character of the people involved in the event. How can this be, since there are but three main characters in the entire movie and we spend almost our entire time with only them? I'll tell you. Ms Loktev has no idea whatsoever about how to create full-bodied characters. This was true of her first film, as well, regarding her main character (all others were mere satellites), but the suspense of that character's intention carried us along.

Her three characters here are a young couple, soon to be married, and the guide they've hired to lead them around the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. (I am told that the mountains are beautiful, but, as filmed here, they look like an exceptionally boring and repetitive landscape. And I won't even go into the dismal "look" of the night scenes.) Since we spend so much time with these three people, you'd think we might learn something about them, either by way of dialog or by watching all the tiny little bits of human behavior add up. Dream on.

The movie has very little dialog (neither did her earlier film, so I suspect Ms Loktev is not that adept at writing it) and what there is proves so extraordinarily mundane and character-free that I suspect that me and you and everyone we know (to quote a much more interesting filmmaker, Miranda July) could spout more specific and thoughtful verbiage in our sleep. This couple could be anyone at all, or more likely nobody at all, as folk this boring and character-free probably do not exist in our world.

Sometimes, if we're lucky in bad movies, strong actors can skirt lousy dialog and empty screenwriting. Not here. Gael García Bernal (above, right) is certainly a competent actor, but his perfor-mances tend to rise only to the level of what he's given, so expect little of him here. His co-star, Hani Furstenberg (above, left, from the Israeli films Yossi & Jagger and Campfire) seems likewise at sea so far as character is concerned. These two do what they can, which is simply to exist and bore us silly. The camera is often kept at a discreet distance, which holds us further from these people.

The third wheel, that guide, is played by Bidzina Gujabidze (above, center) in his first film endeavor, and he comes across as a less sensual and interesting Luis Tosar-type. He and Ms Furstenberg share the second best scene in the film, in which something actually, or almost, happens, and then, back to very little once again. Human beings are curious, inquisitive creatures, and the fact that no one would discuss the event that happened earlier in the film -- at least, why the initial event that inspires the reaction happened (I am willing to believe that these characters might be too embarrassed to discuss that reaction) is but one clue to the immense failure of this film.

Of course it is easier to leave out the more difficult and problematic. To the untutored eye and mind, this may make your movie look bold and uncompromising. In reality this withholding is just a cheat. And withholding on the kind of mammoth level that The Loneliest Planet achieves makes the movie a con game of epic proportions -- which has taken in, I must say, a number of our critics. The movie, from Sundance Selects, opens this Friday, October 26, in New York City exclusively at the IFC Center and hits VOD just four days later on October 30.

Disappointment of the Year: Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

How glad is TrustMovies that he waited for DVD and didn't waste any of his slowly disappear-
ing savings by rush-
ing to the theater to view Quentin Tarantino's tiresome INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS? Very. But now, having seen 1-1/2 hours of it on DVD (yep: he skipped the last hour and went back to blogging: time better spent), he admits he is flummoxed as to what all the fuss is/was about.

Starting at the beginning, with the scene between the French dairy farmer and the naughty Nazi, we get it, we know what's going to happen, and then we just wait. And wait. Past surprise, past suspense, past humor, past caring. Later, when we see both the Nazi and the escaped Jewess together again in the same scene, do we really have to be reminded of what happened earlier? Does Mr. Quentin, shown at right, believe his audience is that dumb?

I guess so.

Scenes like this first one -- lengthy, drawn out talk-fests during which we are reminded of things we already know -- keep happening over and over: the cute-meet via ladder, the restaurant into which every noted Nazi in Paris appears, the secret meeting at the how-come-it's-in-a-basement? bar (shown above). And then there is Brad Pitt (below), giving the absolute worst performance I have ever seen from this OK-to-sometimes-very-good (Burn After Reading) actor: one-note, one-expression, with the accent on the accent, an insult to himself and his viewers.

Take away the needless repetition and all the visual and verbal movie references from Inglourious Basterds and that first 90-or-so minutes that I watched might have been paired down to a swift and decent hour. Of course we expect and get over-the-top violence from Mr. Quentin: Here it's scalping, clubbing-to-death, various shoot-outs and the finger-in-the-leg-wound (kinda paltry, really, but I'm not complaining). Well, I am complaining, but not about the violence. Rather it's the film-making in general. This self-bred auteur seems to have lost not just his edge but his overall ability to tell what's funny (or dramatic, suspenseful, and/or necessary) from what's not.

The writer/director does gets points for casting international stars like Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Christoph Waltz and Daniel Brühl (shown, right). But the praise heaped upon the cinematography and sets seems a tad over-the-top. You'll find more creativity and the right "look" from Paris 36 than anything I saw in those first 90 minutes. I'll probably finish the film someday. I've certainly seen worse this year. But nothing as over-hyped, over-rated and obvious. I realize that I am in the great minority on this one. Over the years I've run hot and cold on the work of this particular filmmaker, enjoying some films (or parts of them), disliking others. Until now, however, I had never found myself bored.

Inglourious Basterds makes its DVDebut today -- available for purchase or rental.