The transcendent beauty of his acting in ON THE WATERFRONT, VIVA ZAPATA, JULIUS CEASAR (his delivery of Marc Antony's "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" speech is jolting....electrifying....and it's not even on DVD), A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, THE MEN...and then that brief one-two in the early '70s with THE GODFATHER and LAST TANGO IN PARIS...no one will ever forget his greatness. It will always burn through.

Over the last five and half years of doing this column I've written more than once about how Brando had become a sad paragon of rot, ruin and failed potential. He became this (or gave in to the syndrome) over the last 25 years or so. In my mind, the beginning of the sag started with GUYS AND DOLLS. The deeper degeneration period kicked in with SUPERMAN in '78. When I think of the metaphor of that white Superman wig he wore...

Marlon should have tried harder, gone back to the theatre, eaten a lot less ice cream, directed more films (I've always loved ONE-EYED JACKS, and I've always regretted that a remnant of the much longer and more experimental JACKS he originally shot had been saved somewhere), avoided being a recluse, hung with more people, gone back to school, worked out more, been a better dad....man, the things he seemed to do wrong! Endless!

He got rolling as a New York actor in '44 and had a ten-year run (until '54) when he could do no wrong... then he got caught in the muck of Hollywood and was in and out (mostly out) for the next 16 or 17 years. He restored himself with THE GODATHER and LAST TANGO, and then he began to spiral down again. He never again caught serious heat or wind.

In short, he was in a state of becoming for his first 19 or 20 years, an absolute God for 11 years, and a guy grappling with more than his share of disappointments, frustrations and pain for most of the other 48.

I can rattle off Marlon Brando movie lines from now until Monday morning, but one of the least interesting is the one everybody knows by heart -- "I coulda been a contender" from ON THE WATERFRONT. And that line he said in THE WILD ONE in response to some chickie asking him what he's rebelling against -- "Whaddaya got?" -- always seemed more noteworthy as a a generational quip than an indication of Brando's uniqueness.

I remember reading somewhere that his using the word "wow" in ON THE WATERFRONT was one of the most revolutionary improvs ever spoken in the 1950s. Up to that point "wow" was something you said when you sat on a blanket and watched the 4th of July fireworks. But Brando's "wow," spoken to Rod Steiger's Charlie character after he pulls out a gun and threatens Brando's Terry Malloy, his brother, was all about sadness... a stunned and wounded lament.

There's also that moment when Charlie urges Terry to join him inside a bar, and Terry, wanting to be alone with his feelings of grief for a friend named Joey who's just been killed for squealing to the authorities about the waterfront rackets, begs off. I don't know how Malloy's reply actually reads in Budd Schulberg's script, but all Brando says to Steiger is, "Well, I'll be around...." and he lets the rest of it trail off. The acting is in the incompletion. It's masterful.

I've heard a thousand guys try to sound tough and bruised in real life, but the way Brando, speaking to Eva Marie Saint's Edie character, recalls the pain of corporal punishment as a child in an orphanage -- "The way those sisters used to whack me, I don't know what" -- gets me each and every time, and I've been watching ON THE WATERFRONT for a good 30 years or so (especially since Columbia's remastered DVD came out two or three years ago).

Rent or buy this DVD if you haven't watched it, and watch it tonight or this weekend, and try to take the time to listen to the commentary track. The things that Time critic Richard Schickel and Elia Kazan bographer Jeff Young say about Brando and Terry Malloy, and particuarly Brando's impact upon acting styles in the '50s, are quite rich.

If anyone at MGM/UA is listening, please arrange for JULIUS CAESAR to be put out on DVD. It was released on a MGM/UA laser disc in the mid '90s, and on tape of course, but never DVD. Please.

It would also be nice if the owners of the rights to Brando's '62 MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY would put out a remastered DVD based on the Ultra Panavision 70 print that was shown in reserved-seat venues.

Spider Droppings

Last weekend was an upper with everyone going to FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and realizing the special communal quality of what was happening across the country, but where is the lift in SPIDER-MAN 2 rolling over everything and everyone during the 4th of July holiday? It feels like the beginning of John Milius' RED DAWN.

Don't get me wrong. Have fun with SPIDER-MAN 2...whatever. You're not misguided or "wrong" if you come out praising it. But Wednesday's $40 million haul signifies one thing only -- another feast for corporate Hollywood.

Because I zinged SPIDER-MAN 2 in Wednesday's column, some of the fans are telling me to show more respect, change my tune, get with the program. What I said stands. This nicely made, emotionally layered film is far from a bust, but watching it feels a lot more like confinement than anything else.

Not solitary, bread-and-water confinement -- it's not acutely dreadful to sit through -- but you're still shifting in your seat when it's on and lighter of heart when it`s over.

That 97% approval rate from the "cream of the crop" critics at Rotten Tomatoes is very, very disturbing. It's perverse to celebrate an acceptably well-made film to such a degree. The only big-leaguer who wasn't blown away was THE VILLAGE VOICE's Jim Hoberman, and even he didn't pan it with any particular venom.

"I get no kick from [Peter Parker's] angst," he wrote, "especially since in this incarnation, as opposed to the '60s comic book version, he's more innocuously depressed than defensively paranoid."

Depressed, he means, about Parker/Maguire not being able to get rolling with Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson because he fears that telling her he's Spider-Man will endanger her safety, etc.

"What relationship doesn't involve risk and the possibility of being hurt?," I asked two days ago. "Life itself is risk. There's no room in a super-hero movie for someone to say, `I want to but it's too threatening, so I won't.'"

Why haven't the guys who wrote in and told me I'm missing the point addressed this? The Alfred Molina stuff aside, the entire emotional payload of SPIDER-MAN 2 hangs by this Peter/Mary Jane thread, and, like Hoberman says, it's no fun at all. Timidity is a drag.

"The movie's first half is talky bordering on tiresome - endlessly rehashing the same mix of frustrated puppy love, survivor guilt, and identity crisis."

I give up. People are going to love this movie no matter what. It could get up and walk off the screen and take a dump in everyone's laps and they'd go, "Okay!" Freedom rang last weekend. This weekend the giant seed pods are back and lying on your living room floor. And next week...KING ARTHUR!

Evacuation

Everybody left town on Thursday so nobody returned calls. And I blew my last shot at catching a free look at THE CLEARING, the Robert Redford-Willem Dafoe movie out today, when I decided to go see KING ARTHUR Wednesday night. And three or four other things didn't pan out. So the hell with it. A shorter column today....only 2900 words. Kick back, open a beer, stay wet.

Clarification

Scott Rudin got back to me Thursday about THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and said the recent extra shooting didn't involve a new ending -- "no new writing" -- and was all about pieces and close-ups and whatnot. So the post-production guy who said a new ending was shot...well, let's let it go. I'm expecting to get a peek at the finished film next week.

Three Strikes

Every time new info emerges about Peter Jackson's KING KONG, I go "uh-oh." I don't want or need to, particularly. Jackson just seems to bring it out, or dish it out.

First it was Andy Serkis' casting as a Smeagol/Gollum Kong, which means the eyes of Kong are going to be awash in emotion sometime in the third act, mostly likely on top of the Empire State building. David Poland will dismiss this forecast on principle, but the rest of you know what I'm talking about. Jackson is a milker; the RINGS films are proof of that.

Then Jack Black was cast as Carl Denham, which means, of course, that Jackson isn't all that sincere about investing KONG with any kind of earnest reconstruction of the mood and flavor of the early 1930s. (He announced last year that his KONG will be a period piece.) Not with Black around anyway. He never conforms to a movie -- the movie conforms to him.

Black recently told an MTV interviewer he won't be performing the Denham character any differently than any other wild-eyed thing he`s done. "I'm approaching it with the same balls-to-the-wall attitude," he said.

The third "uh-oh" isn't an "uh-oh"...it's a "uhh-hmm." It surfaced when Black told the same MTV interviewer that Jackson's Kong "is going to be scary as hell, dude. He's not gonna be sweet and cuddly. It's not gonna be the cute kind [of movie]. He's a f***ing carnivore, as in, eats flesh!"

Wait a minute...is this new? Didn't the 1933 Kong put two Skull Island natives and a white guy from New York into his mouth? He didn't chew and swallow, but the idea must have been in his head.

I don't have a problem per se with a flesh-eating Kong. It's nonsensical, of course. For whatever rationale you might want to invent for there being a giant ape or two on Skull Island, you'd have to figure some kind of linkage between Kong and everyday gorillas, and there hasn't been a carnivorous ape in the history of creation. (At least, I don't think so.) But fine.

I thought "uhh-hmm" because flesh-eating is another form of milking. It's Jackson turning the knob on the console just a tad. It's an admirer of some classical master adding some rude original dabs to a canvas that's sitting on an easel in the Louvre.

This is allowable. It's Jackson`s movie. He can turn Carl Denham into a flesh-eater if he wants to. I just think it's time to really, really forget about Jackson's KONG being any kind of bowing-down homage to the `33 film and accept it's probably going to be more in the vein of the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis remake....even though Jackson has derided that film in interviews.

And The Point Is...?

Fox Home Video is releasing both an R and an NC-17 version of Bernardo Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS on July 13th on DVD. The NC-17 will be the version that went out to theatres after Fox Searchlight decided not to press Bertolucci for cuts to qualify for an R (although they said they wanted such cuts when the issue came up late in `03), and the R version will be...well, I'm not sure.

I asked Fox Video publicist Steven Feldstein why an R-rated version is being released since there was no R-rated version to begin with since Fox never requested Bertolucci to prune anything. Is it an arbitrarily edited version aimed at blue-noses? Is it a cut of a temporarily trimmed version that Fox Searchlight might have released if it hadn't opted to release the film un-rated?

Feldstein was a little vague, but the best I could figure is that putting two versions out is some kind of weird marketing decision. I guess it makes the NC-17 version seem like slightly hotter merchandise if you imply it wasn't viewable when it played in theatres, or strategies to that effect. If you come across the R version in your local DVD store, leave it there.

Both versions will have the same commentary track by director Bernardo Bertolucci, writer Gilbert Adair, and producer Jeremy Thomas. There's also an "Events of May' 68" featurette, a :Making of THE DREAMERS" featurette, and a Michael Pitt "Hey Joe" music video.

Agreement!

"I felt like Mugatu from ZOOLANDER while watching SPIDER-MAN 2. I felt like I must be taking crazy pills. What is so fucking great? What is everyone else seeing that I'm not? I didn't like the first one, and I think this one may be just as bad, if not worse. Ebert is going (or has gone) nuts. Same with every other critic who's creamed his shorts over this.

"The only positives for me were some okay laughs (I liked the scene in the elevator with Hal Sparks) and some okay action (the train scene got my juices flowing a little bit). And that's it. I was bored by or hated everything else.

"Is it a soap opera? Why is everyone talking to themselves, giving five-minute speeches explaining everything to the audience? Is it a pseudo-inspirational Lifetime movie-of-the-week? What's with all the longwinded `everyone needs a hero' speeches? This is from the writer of ORDINARY PEOPLE?

"It's too long by at least 15 to 20 minutes. Dunst gives an awful performance. I hated her line delivery and the way she constantly tilted her head to the side. J.K. Simmons is amusing in small doses. He only needs one or two scenes.` there's way too much of him here. Got on my nerves by the time his seventh appearance rolled around. Franco is a great actor, but he's given nothing to do. Same with Molina. Another standard villain. He says and does the typical villain crap. Nothing special about him.

"There were some okay effects and some very obvious CGI throughout. I'm sorry, but I really don't see what is so special. I'll take the BLADE series and the X-MEN series any day of the week. I dread the thought of sitting through another SPIDER flick." -- Paul Doro

"I just wanted to thank you for being the only sensible movie journalist these days. SPIDER-MAN 2 marks the third sequel this summer (following SHREK 2 and the latest Harry Potter) that has been greeted with unnecessarily ecstatic reviews.

"I read something today which mentioned that the SHREK and Spidey flicks would be on a lot of top-ten lists right now, if critics had to compile them. This is madness. Perhaps our nation's critics are thankful that they haven't had to contend with the drivel from last summer.

"I thank you for being the voice of dissent and recognizing that these sequels, while undeniably above-average and handsome, offer little more than an easy and pleasant way to escape the summer sun for a couple of hours. As always, the really good stuff is found in the art house theatres and at film festivals." -- Mike Ratterman

Respect Sam

"You said that SPIDER-MAN 2 `is about absolutely nothing except Amy Pascal and director Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and all the rest of the slicksters wanting you and me to buy tickets this weekend so they can get tipsy off expensive champagne and buy cool vacation homes and laugh even more loudly than usual at each other's jokes.'

"I call foul! While it's true that such a colossal money-maker as the original SPIDER-MAN would demand a sequel, and I can understand your cynicism at the amount of dough spent by Sony to coddle their golden goose, but I will not let you cast Sam Raimi into the same pit as lucre-grubbing financiers.

"Raimi is a unique and idiosyncratic action director, completely unlike Bay, McG, and the like. More importantly, Sam believes in this character, and his sincerity shows in every frame of this earnest movie. So it wasn't your cup of tea, fine. Dial down your vitriol for corporations and give this hard-working craftsman his due.

"And besides, you know perfectly well the only time Sam laughs hard is when Bruce Campbell gets a lit match thrown down his back." -- Jason K. Heiser

"I recall reading somewhere that Sam Raimi had a tough time deciding between Dunst and Mena Suvari for the Mary Jane role. The studio apparently liked Dunst better because of her box office record (Suvari had just done LOSER and SUGAR AND SPICE). Still, I think Mena would have been a much more interesting choice. Her googly-eyed stare matches up perfectly with Maguire's, she looks better as a redhead, and I have an easier time accepting her as a damsel in distress. Besides, Dunst can't play a victim -- she has zero vulnerability." -- Charles Hilton

Wells Missed It

"Curse my generation for liking comic book movies? Curse your damn generation for forcing untold numbers of young adults, teenagers, and young children to have to endure the mind numbingness of Fall Cinema! Where everything supposedly has meaning, but comes across as pablum and/or a vapid excuse for someone in their dwindling years to do something, that can only be brought to screen during the colder months of any calendar year.

"Not that I am opposed to all of these films. However, excuse myself and my generation for caring more about the exploits of Wolverine, Spidey, and other superheroes than the regular amount of baby boomer bollocks we've had to endure most of our lives.

"Finally we have films we have wanted to see since youth, but now you are cursing my generation because of it? All generations must endure the others, supposed crap. We endure yours, please try to endure ours. Funny thing though, Spidey showed up when you were probably a teenager. How odd it took the next generation to give him enough respect and admiration to garner a film.

"Keep on being your grumpy self, and have a nice day." -- Snake Eyes

"As long as comic book movies make money, they'll be out there. And -- here's a concept -- you don't have to go see them since you've basically seen them all anyway, right? We all know what your predictable reaction is going to be, and it is annoying to read your subtle and not-so subtle insults to people who happen to enjoy this movie for one reason or another.

"All your carping makes you sound old, trapped in an ivory tower, and pining for those golden ages when your peers were really sticking it to the man and taking chances.

"There is a huge audience for this movie -- not just Gen-Xers -- because of the appeal of the comic book character the movie's based on. And while it's not `Beowulf' or 'The Illiad,` SPIDER-MAN 2 continas a pretty remarkable and enduring mythology that deals with themes a lot of people relate to -- the confusion of aging, reconciling different parts of your personality, coming to terms with your calling in life, unrequited love and honor, for God's sake. Universal themes!

"In this particular film, if you stripped away all the CGI fireworks and made Peter Parker a soldier coming to grips with abandoning his life for a life of war, you might actually have a scenario that would yield a Christmas-time drama (with Maguire, Alfred Molina, Dunst and Franco, no less) from a studio fishing for Oscars.

"Everything I know and have read about Sam Raimi's motivations for continuing this serial doesn't indicate he's just cashing a check or trying to get into a new mansion. If that were the case, he would have loaded this flick with villains, thrown in an action sequence every five to seven minutes, and patterned the plot line after something like BATMAN AND ROBIN.

"Now CATWOMAN is another story, but Sam Raimi, I can tell by the craftsmanship and precision of this movie, loves every last detail of this world he's created.

It's fine if you hate the movie, but don't insult me because I happen to be a life-long lover of the character and really dig these movies. It's summer, and I want to see some imagination and vision on the screen that doesn't have to be derived from the long, bloody history of Cinema (with a capital C). I've got all winter to figure out who's the next Hartley, who's going to make the next BREATHLESS and which country will yield the next great film movement.

"And it's not Gen-Xers who are greenlighting these films. It's Baby Boomers, the same people that lived through that Decade of Influence one of you readers was talking about. You should insult them for not taking more chances, not us for liking genre movies.

"But thanks for writing the column each week. I really enjoy it more often than not." -- Joey Santos, Costa Mesa, CA

"I dig your prose but have to ask why the venom aimed at SPIDER-MAN 2? There were more films this summer worthy of such bile: THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, GARFIELD, SOUL PLANE, and perhaps the worst of all, THE STEPFORD WIVES. I enjoyed SPIDER-MAN 2 and didn't feel cheated out of my movie dollars like I did with most of the releases this season." -- Jeff Tucker

Maybe

"I'm glad you liked the L.A. Film Fest, but I disagree with your assessment that `L.A. is renowned the world over for being a spiritually afflicted place...' I agree with Werner Herzog, who was quoted as follows in a Creative Screenwriting magazine (Sept/Oct 02) piece, to wit:

"'Yes, I like Los Angeles because of its substance. Yeah. You shouldn't laugh, because you see it all around you. You just have to ignore all the Tinseltown aspects and all the riches and limousines and whatever. Under the surface, it has more substance that any other town in the United States." 'Right on, Werner. " -- Ron Cossey, Studio City, CA.

A Thousand Pardons

"Next time you go to a movie make sure you don't get some of your boyfriend's webbing in your eye. You missed out on one of the greatest movies of all time in SPIDER-MAN 2. Yes, Parker is a tortured soul. Yes, he and the villian both do not want their powers, but instead of dwelling on that Raimi switched to how he dealt with these powers. Instead of crying over them, Peter made some tough decisions amidst all the action.

"First you don't like THE MATRIX, then LORD OF THE RINGS, then SPIDER-MAN...but you loved MAN ON FIRE? I think you need to get a new job." -- Ellen Anolik

Wells to Anolik: I don't have a boyfriend, but even if I was totally celibate and studying to enter the priesthood watching SPIDER-MAN 2 would still feel like a night in the pokey. I loved THE MATRIX. Like everyone else of any taste or perception, I went cold on MATRIX RELOADED and I felt that MATRIX REVOLUTIONS was a turd. Yes, watching the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy gave me the sensation of serving a life sentence on the barren island of Iwo Jima....but I've always said I respect the scale of Jackson's achievement and especially the passion that went into it. Yes, I loved -- love -- MAN ON FIRE. I'm theoretically open to a new job if it pays well enough.

Risk

"You criticized SPIDER-MAN 2 for dwelling on Peter Parker's hesitancy about being Spider-Man and loving Mary Jane. You wrote, 'What relationship doesn't involve risk and the possibility of being hurt? Life itself is risk. There's no room in a super-hero movie for someone to say, `I want to but it's too threatening, so I won't.'

"There is a subtext to the film that, I think, agrees with you. Peter Parker is wrong about not involving himself with Mary Jane, and we see signs everywhere in the film that confirm this.

"His keeping the secret of Harry Osborn's father's death from Harry is wrong ... the consequence of which is Harry's psychotic break and eventual transformation into the new Green Goblin. If he'd risked telling the truth, could that have been avoided? Probably.

"His keeping the secret of Uncle Ben's death from Aunt May is another wrong decision. When he tells her the truth, it frees her from her past and her guilt, and enables her to move on. And she forgives and accepts Peter... in turn allowing him to give up his guilt.

"When he saves the subway car from destruction, I don't think it's an accident that he's not weearing his mask. He risks his life and exposing his identity to save those people. In turn, they reward him with their silence.

"In this way, I think we're supposed to see what Peter is doing with Mary Jane is wrong. That he is making the coward's choice, the wrong choice... and this is reflected in his losing his powers and in the unhappiness that results when he gives up the hero-life he was living.

"It's only when he gives in to being the hero, Spider-Man, and gives up on his dreams that he achieves them.

"Anyway, I think your observation is spot on... but the conclusion you draw from it is off. The film is about his hesitancy; it doesn't avoid it." -- Jason Langlois

Flesh-Eating Chimps

"In your KONG piece today, you state 'there hasn't been a carnivorous ape in the history of creation.' Wrong -- do a web search on 'chimpanzees' and 'red colobus monkeys' and you'll find a multitude of sites, academic and otherwise, about how African chimpanzees often prey on, and eat, the smaller red colobus monkey. (Much like King Kong could prey on, and eat, those smaller, smooth-skinned primates.)

"King Kong is not a chimp, but is he a (non-carnivorous) gorilla? He may resemble one, but gorillas aren't giant-sized. He's a Giant Ape. It's a stretch to believe that a Giant Ape exists, and far, far less of a stretch to think that his diet could be closer to a chimp's than a gorilla's." -- Stephen Freitag