Stephen Whitty on Film

A blog from the Star-Ledger's movie critic

(WARNER BROS)Rorschach looks for justice.

I have seen next year's blockbuster, and it is "Watchmen."

I haven't seen the entire picture yet - just half-an-hour or so of what is promised to be a nearly three-hour movie. And it's a safe bet that the 30 minutes or so that Warner Bros. was willing to show were the very best of what's been shot.

But Zack Snyder - who last made the fevered fan-boy hit "300" - has clearly approached this with zeal. The main characters -- Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Silk Spectre, the Nite Owl - are all here and perfectly realized. (Although Ozymandias' new nippled costume is a little too, well, fabulous.) The backgrounds are beautifully detailed, and the action scenes are strong.

And yet as successful as this movie will clearly be, there's one nagging flaw.

It's still a movie.

STAR-LEDGER FILE PHOTO"I love character-driven movies," Jonathan Demme says. "Films that walk away from the usual formulas and entertain us in a whole other way."

Jonathan Demme was ready to call it quits.

He had already directed hits, from "Married to the Mob" to "Philadelphia." He had already won an Oscar, for "Silence of the Lambs." He was 60, well-respected and well-off.

But his last couple of features -- "Beloved," "The Truth About Charlie" -- had not done well, with critics or audiences. And his most recent movie, the 2004 remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," had been another disappointment, opening and eventually disappearing in a crowded summer.

"I was just getting more and more frustrated at the gap between the tremendous effort all the people making a movie put into it, and the way it's treated afterward," he says. "It gets dropped on this conveyer belt, and if you don't wow them on Friday night, it's pushed off, and replaced by something else."

KERRY HAYESGreg Kinnear stars as a professor whose "Flash of Genius" is the intermittent windshield wiper, an invention that leads to a seemingly endless series of lawsuits against the Ford Motor Co.

Flash of Genius (PG-13) Universal (120 min.) Directed by Marc Abraham. With Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham. Opens Friday at theaters in New Jersey. TWO STARS

You see him sometimes, sitting at the dark end of a cheap bar, or clinging to the loneliest corner of a party. Just don't make the mistake of making eye contact. "I had a million-dollar idea once," he'll blurt out. And unless you move away, right away, his long story of crooked corporations and incompetent lawyers begins.

A story sort of like "Flash of Genius."

It's a movie based on the life of Bob Kearns, an engineering professor and part-time inventor who got an idea one day for what he called the "blinking-eye" windshield wiper. He worked up a model, brought it to Ford and explained its adjustably intermittent, stop/start concept. They said no thanks.

SONY PICTURES CLASSICSAnne Hathaway, left, and Rosemarie DeWitt in "Rachel Getting Married."

Rachel Getting Married (R) Sony Pictures Classics (114 min.) Directed by Jonathan Demme. With Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger. Opens Friday at theaters in New York. THREE STARS

Jonathan Demme is a director of tolerance.

That's not just a description of him politically (although it's hard to imagine another white director so interested in the problems of Haiti, or so at ease directing "Beloved"). It's really a description of him aesthetically.

Many filmmakers are ruthless about plot and character, always keeping their eye on the mood and their camera on their heroes. Demme, generously, lets things develop as they will (or won't), and pays everyone the same mind.

MIRAMAXJulianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo in "Blindness."

A driver suddenly stops at an intersection, unable to see.

A prostitute loses her sight -- and is abandoned, naked, by her client.

One by one, a cosmopolitan city is filled with sightless doctors, thieves, secretaries, children -- all stumbling about, groping aimlessly toward they know not what.

This is the beginning of "Blindness," and it's a pretty weighty metaphor.

COLUMBIAMichael Cera, Ari Graynor and Kat Dennings in "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."

If the title "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" makes you think, vaguely, of some terribly sophisticated Manhattan couple mixing martinis, pampering their small dog Asta and elegantly solving mysteries -- well, you are so not this film's target audience.

Because this couple -- and that's Norah with an H, thank you -- are not a pair of art-deco detectives, but a couple of alt-rock high-school seniors. And the only mystery their movie is concerned with is whether or not they can find true, hip happiness together.

(UNIVERSAL)Ready when you are: Eastwood on the set of "Changeling"

Manhattan's Walter Reade Theater was so crowded with movie critics this morning that if the place had burned to the ground -- well, a lot of directors probably wouldn't have minded at all.

But the turnout wasn't surprising. Film-buff favorite Clint Eastwood's latest job as a filmmaker, "Changeling," was about to get its North American premiere. And Eastwood was scheduled to amble by afterward, and answer a few questions.

Star Angelina Jolie wasn't there -- unfortunately, because the film (based on a 1928 child-kidnapping case) seems ready to launch her into the front ranks of Oscar hopefuls this year.

But Eastwood gamely held the stage, giving typically terse but funny and straightforward responses to everything from working with Jolie to modern politics. And once he started talking, people didn't miss Jolie at all.

Well, at least not too much.

(GEORGE MCNISH/THE STAR-LEDGER)A blond Rourke, back in action in a match filmed in Dover.

One of the strongest films at this year's New York Film Festival is "The Wrestler," the story of an `80s star who flamed out in willful self-destruction and wretched excess - and now, 20 years later, is doggedly trying to put his life back together, and patch together his relationship with his peers, his fans and, ultimately, himself.

That's the story onscreen, anyway. But it's also the story offscreen, as well, as the movie marks the amazing - hell, the miraculous - return of Mickey Rourke.

And he's the first one to marvel at it.

(MIRAMAX)No vision: Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore star in "Blindness"

Here are some of the emails I've gotten over the last few months:

-- From a Hindu organization, protesting the gross inaccuracies of "The Love Guru."

-- From a disabled-rights organization, protesting the use of the word "retard" in "Tropic Thunder."

-- From an Islamic organization, protesting the film title "Towelhead."

-- From an organization for the blind, protesting just about everything in the movie "Blindness."

And I'm starting to wonder: Have American movies really become that offensive all of a sudden? Or have Americans suddenly become that easily offended?

LIONSGATEBill Maher outside Vatican City in "Religulous."

Religulous (R) Lionsgate (100 min.) Directed by Larry Charles. With Bill Maher. Opens Wednesday at theaters in New York. TWO STARS

Bill Maher is a believer -- in the lethal effects of belief.

His new film, "Religulous," is an impassioned, mocking, sarcastic and, at points, enraged sermon against faith. "Religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity," he declares at one point. Following the Bible or the Koran doesn't just entail thinking about the end of the world, it actually hastens it.

"The plain fact," he says, as he fulminates toward his conclusion, "is that religion must die for mankind to live."

"Hey, Mr. Redford, I loved you in `Star Wars'!"

Just a small note on the transitory nature of fame:

I'm at the Sony/Columbia offices the other week, where a screening of "Nick and Norah's Ultimate Playlist" is about to start. And someone's guests -- a gaggle of 14-ish-year-old girls -- are wandering up and down the hall, where there's a long line of beautiful, framed movie-star photos.

They recognize, barely, Julia Roberts. But the others leave them wondering, or worse.

A Rita Hayworth glamour shot: "I think I've seen her before. I dunno."

Peter O'Toole, in full "Lawrence" dress: "Ohmigod, I have no idea who this is."

Humphrey Bogart: "Eeuuu."

Robert Redford, in a fedora: "Oh, no, wait. Wait. I know. Harrison Ford!"

Of course, it's a good guess their parents might have trouble naming Michael Cera or Kat Denning, too. Every era makes its own stars. But a generation that has no connection to Jimmy Stewart or Grace Kelly is missing something very important, and kind of sad.

Newman at his cocky peak (and, yes, that's a bottle opener he's wearing around his neck).

Some parts of this job are harder than others. Some you do almost by rote (unless you catch yourself, and remember to make it fresh).

But I've never liked writing obituaries, and the one I had to do for Paul Newman left me honestly saddened -- as if I'd lost a friend, too.

Which, like every other movie fan, I actually had.

Because for a rough half-century of movie-making, Newman did more than deliver one great performance after another. He steered his way through the Hollywood race with grace and good humor. And when he crossed that final finish line, he left behind not only an amazing career, but a pretty wonderful life.