Deep end

Jack Goes Boating

Crit

Wow--I know it ultimately causes a shitstorm and all, but I want that hookah, yo!

Four good but incomplete and damaged people try to make contact, or even just get by. Critics have not been particularly kind to Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, but I found it smart and sensitive, and I couldn't help but notice the difference on the vanity scale between Hoffman's self-exposure of his own whalish form and Ben Affleck's ripped, shirtless pull-ups in his current film.

Howl

Crit

Another one not much loved by critics, but to me it's a quirky, brilliant jazz-quartet, riffing between Allen Ginsberg (James Franco, looking maybe not quite Jewish enough) composing the poem, Ginsberg reading the poem in a San Francisco coffeehouse, Ginsberg reading the poem over wild animation, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's lawyer (Jon Hamm) arguing against the appropriately square prosecutor (David Strathairn) in the notorious obscenity trial.

Some critics have found fault with the animation, some have suggested that the courtroom scenes drag, some have even objected to the iconic appearance of Don Draper as Ferlinghetti's lawyers. Well, I how do I put this diplomatically? Those complaints are all fucked. I would go so far as to suggest that this may be the best way to experience a work that is better than I remembered it (and if it's not, then all the higher praise for the film). As to Don Draper, hey, Madison Avenue is one of the dark forces of the poem, and of Ginsberg's life--what better play on that fact than to bring the face that we connect most intimately to the Mad Ave of the era onto the side of heaven?

Trailers

• Somewhere--I'd be all in for Sofia Coppola's new one even if it hadn't already won the Golden Lion in Venice.