Dear Vanessa --

It had been four months since I last went to see a movie in a movie theater -- my longest stretch away from movie theaters since I became a moviegoer, back in the late '60s. Who needed 'em? DVDs are adequate, movie theater audiences don't know how to behave, corporate multiplexes make me feel like data that's being crunched ... I was getting pretty smug and perverse about staying away from movie theaters, if the truth be told.

But over the weekend the August heat and humidity KO'd the apartment's air-conditioners, so the time had come: it was off to the multiplexes for The Wife and me, to see Collateral the first night and We Don't Live Here Anymore the next. And y'know what? It wasn't so bad, really. There was some rude cellphone behavior, but not too much. The theaters' staffs were pleasant. The films themselves were beautifully projected, with sound systems that weren't too, too crushingly loud. The print of "Collateral" especially was so pristine that I watched it convinced that I was watching a digital projection. Imagine my filmbuff chagrin when I learned I was wrong.

The pictures themselves? Well, the air conditioning deserved an Oscar. Collateral, a Michael Mann thriller, wasn't half-bad for a Michael Mann movie, by which I mean that I enjoyed it more as something to analyze than as something to be enjoyed. I'm duty-bound to report that The Wife loved the film, and that the rest of the audience seemed perfectly content with it too. But to me, the movie was a case-study in how a good B-movie premise can be overwhelmed by production values, star power, and pretentious directing.

But I'm also duty-bound to say that I have a problem with Michael Mann. I haven't enjoyed a one of his movies; some voice in me screams "pretentious TV director" the moment his films begin. Though he's obviously talented and competent, I find his work studied and oppressive; I think of him as Michael "Watch me direct!" Mann. And I find his meanings and his approach as banal as what might be found in a car ad. I should have loved his version of "Last of the Mohicans," for example: romance, sex, history, and Madeleine Stowe in a major role. What's not to love? But I had a hard time sitting through it.

"Collateral" was more bearable than usual, for a Michael Mann picture. Much credit goes to a shrewdly conceived and executed B-movie premise that you've probably heard about -- hitman (Tom Cruise) hires nice-guy cabbie (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around L.A. to a series of assasination assignments. Decent performances, too: Cruise did "demonically-charming baddie" surprisingly well; he's like a roguish, human version of the Terminator. And Jamie Foxx gets some firstclass warmth and audience rapport going ...

But that ol' Michael Mann drear got me down. Striking angles, impressive lighting, careful control of tone -- but why such a belabored approach to what's basically a hardboiled two-hander? (Mann used to love using Tangerine Dream to compose scores for his movies, if you know what I mean.) What's sometimes great about crime stories, for my money, is that they have no obvious importance, but Mann can't help directing with the kind of sumptuous solemnity that are usually meant to signal that something metaphorical is occurring. You go on the alert for statements about America, at the very least. Mann seems to direct with one eye on the critical monograph that he hopes will be written about the film.

Interesting to learn that Mann filmed much of what takes place at night in and around the cab on HDTV, while shooting the rest of the movie on film. The HDTV footage works out OK, mostly. Some of the video footage is moody and effective; some of it's a little grayed-out and distancing. But some of it, I gotta say, looks flat and dead -- no better than an episode of "Cops." During these shots, you're thrown out of the fiction, and find yourself watching mere footage instead. Hey, what are Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx doing in that cab together, pretending to act?

A maybe-this-is-just-me reflection? What I mostly spent the movie thinking about was the plausibility question. I simply wasn't buyin' a lot of what the movie was sellin', although the script (by TK) struck me as savvy and well-done. Well, there was a third-act development that had me raising an eyebrow, but since the audience generally seemed to have no problem with it, I rolled with it too. Still, I struggled with much else. This is a problem I almost never have with unpretentious B-movies. Watching them, I almost always accept without protest that I'm in a make-believe, fairy-tale-like world where unlikeliness is just a fact of life. Melodrama? Coincidences? Bring 'em on!

But when a genre story gets the full-dress treatment, as it does here, I often find that I start wondering about contrivances, even quarreling with them, and in a dopily-realistic way that just isn't like me. In this movie, for instance, I even rebelled against the premise. I mean, why in the world would a pro hitman hire not just a cabbie but any ol' cabbie to drive him around on his chores? Even if he isn't a driver himself, wouldn't he at least have the sense to dial up a hitman limo service? Of course, this shouldn't have bugged me; I should have been able to grant the film its premise. But it did bug me. I guess I'm less generous watching an A/B movies than I am watching a true B movie: I want to know why we should be accepting what we're being offered.

One other reflection? The overproduced-small-idea thing ... When I first noticed that overproducing tiny ideas had become a major trend in popular culture, I disapproved. It was wrong, that was all; people should grow up and get their acts together. Incidentally, I wasn't alone in reacting this way. I once talked to the ad great Milton Glaser about ads and computers, for instance. He was eager to make the point that computers are dangerously-seductive tools that are lowering the quality of advertising, because they enable people to get their ideas up on their feet too damn fast. Leaping into production -- and giving that production a high level of gloss -- has become too easy, and too fun, Glaser thought. People are leaping into production long before they've finished honing their ideas. The upshot is lots of overstuffed half-baked semi-ideas.

But as time has passed, I find myself wondering about this. It's certainly true that we do find ourselves surrounded these days by a lot of overdone non-ideas. But on the other hand, audiences have gotten accustomed to a certain level of overproduction. They've come to expect it -- and perhaps the time has come for fogies like me to adapt to the new realities. Also, perhaps one genuinely good consequence of recent developments has been that whimsical, silly, and small ideas are getting more chance than they once had. I rather like a lot of whimsical, silly and small ideas; they can deliver at least as much pleasure as big ideas, god knows. And now, since it's become relatively easy to mount anything in a fulldress kind of way, charming and small and mischievous ideas can now find a kind of media expression that, practically speaking, they never could before. Why not applaud?

Not that any of the above has anything to do with these movies ...

The other film The Wife and I took in was the infidelity drama We Don't Live Here Anymore. Michael Blowhard says: Flee screaming! Now!

The film was adapted from a couple of Andre Dubus short stories, and if that doesn't clue you in to the nature of the project, I don't know what will. Dubus, who died a few years ago, was a talented, diligent, award-winning guy, a worthy writer of grueling and painful short stories. Or make that "short fiction" and not "short stories," since Dubus wouldn't have recognized a "story" idea if it had fallen on him. I'm being generous here, by the way; there's also the possibility that Dubus thought that what he wrote was superior to storytelling. He was, in any case, one of those serious writers who wasn't about to let not-having-a-story-idea get in the way of doing a lot of painful and heavyweight writin'-writin'.

The film's set in a Northwest college town and concerns two young academic families, both of them miserable in a perpetual post-grad sort of way, and all four of the parties toying with infidelity, as academics will. (As The Wife said: "Acadmics! They've just got too much time on their hands.") Self-consciousness ... Spats ... Silent recriminations ... Betrayals ... The occasional once-we-had-hopes-and-dreams flashback ... The Wife and I would have split after 15 minutes had it not been for the air conditioning, and for the fact that the movie gave us a case of the giggles. Cool and whispering jokes to each other, we made it through the two hours in a good mood.

I suppose you could say that the film avoids cheap melodrama. You could also say "alas" to that, and spend time musing about how "cheap melodrama" and "storytelling" seem awfully closely related. I amused myself inventing alternative act structures for the film.

* Act one: guilt. Act two: misery. Act three: anger. Or, maybe ...

* Act one: they argue. Act two: they rehash. Act three: they argue about arguing.

In other words, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" (sigh: that title -- doesn't it have "literary fiction" written all over it?) is like "Wonder Boys" minus the zooming-around-town hijinks; or like "Affliction" minus the Old Testament grandstanding. (Since I skipped "In the Bedroom," I can't make a crack about that film.) It's wan misery, pure and simple -- someone's idea of "the truth," I suppose. The Wife was betting that one of the characters would develop a terminal illness. Me, I was gambling that one of the couple's children would die a senseless death. Alas, no such luck.

The film's pleasures include a cute college town with some nice craftsman bungalow houses. Naomi Watts looks incredibly pretty, and is quite an actress too. She seems to have erotic mischief built into the turned-up corners of her mouth -- but then she crumples convincingly into blotchy, pink-blonde despair. I love watching Laura Dern too, whose combo of passionate intensity and outright goofiness I find winning, not least because it resembles The Wife's spirit closely; both women combine the emotional, the ridiculous, and the touching in ways I can't resist. Both women bump into things a lot, too, and also get flustered easily -- hmm, I wonder if this is a type. The guys -- Peter Krause (breezily self-centered) and Mark Ruffalo (guiltstruck) -- did well. As a matter of fact, the film featured a lot of the kind of acting ferocity and commitment that I adore; I really, really love watching actors rip it up, and god knows these four did just that. But, next time: some real material, please?

Here's an interview with Naomi Watts; here's one with Laura Dern.

Best,

Michael