The Screengrab : Rosario Dawson

Morning Deal Report: Rosario Dawson Meets the Zookeeper

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

“Rosario Dawson will star opposite Kevin James in romantic comedy The Zookeeper,” Variety reports. “Live actioner centers on zoo animals trying to teach the keeper their methods of dating and mating to help him win back the woman of his dreams.” Kevin James will keep the fat guy/hot chick genre alive as long as he possibly can.

Stan Lee teams up with Disney to bring his latest hero to the screen. Nick Ratchet is a “lighthearted mystery thriller centers on a Jekyll & Hyde struggle between a meek, ineffectual police officer and his online alter-ego, a tough avatar cop named Nick Ratchet who emerges from inside a video game to usurp the life of his creator,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Will Smith’s production company has enlisted John Lee Hancock (The Alamo) to bring a Hurricane Katrina story to the screen. The film will tell the story of “John Keller, an ex-Marine who orchestrated the rescue of 244 of his New Orleans neighbors after their building, the American Can Co., was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The five-story structure sat in 11 feet of water after the breach of the levees,” Variety reports.

"It's Great That My Friends Happen to Be Incredible Actors": Mark Webber Talks About Making "Explicit Ills"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

The 28-year-old actor Mark Webber (Broken Flowers, Animal Factory, and the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, which he describes as "Kill Bill meets Say Anything) made his debut as a writer-director last year with Explicit Ills, a semi-autobiographical, multi-character drama, with a cast that includes Rosario Dawson, Paul Dano, and Lou Taylor Pucci, in his hometown of Philadelphia. It showed at the 2008 SXSW Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, as well as awards for its terrific cinematography by Patrice Lucien Cochet. The movie has just started popping up in theaters, and Nerve/Screengrab contributor Bryan Whitefield's recent discussion with Webber, before a live audience at the Apple Store in New York City, is available as a podcast.

Click here to listen to Webber discuss his influences, his impressions of his talented cast, and the importance of art as a vehicle for social change.

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The Best:

THE SPECIALS (2000)

Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.

SIN CITY (2005)

All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.

BLADE 2 (2002)

After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.

HELLBOY (2004)

Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Screengrab Q&A: Mark Webber, director of Explicit Ills

Peter Smith — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

At twenty-eight, actor Mark Webber is already a recognizable veteran of the indie film-festival circuit. Using several years of valuable experience Webber took on a different role as the writer, director and producer of his first feature Explicit Ills. The semi-autobiographical film follows four interconnected stories within inner-city Philadelphia and focuses on some very relevant and timely social issues. It's been a big year for Webber. Aside from the release of his debut feature, he has been cast alongside Michael Cera in Edgar Wright's upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and also saw the birth of his first child. He spoke with us about the trials and tribulations of getting a movie from notebook to big screen as well as his muted optimism about America's current political landscape. — Bryan Whitefield

Obviously you've worked on a number of films as an actor and even a few as a producer, but how difficult was it to get your own film done from start to finish?
You know what? It's really hard [laughs]. I mean the turnaround from when I wrote the script to when we got it cast, then got financing, to up and shooting, actually happened in a matter of months. And even with editing and post it all came together within a year — which is really fast. But at the same time it's taken me almost twelve years to make this happen, in a way, because it's taken me working as an actor and meeting directors and learning from them as well as throughout that process establishing relationships with other talented, creative people. And because of that I was able to call Paul [Dano] and Rosario [Dawson] and [Jim] Jarmusch directly and get them to read my script, which for a lot of people starting out is the uphill battle that takes up a lot of your time and energy. So I was very fortunate in that way. Then the actual making of the film was just a series of constant highs and lows. We were working with a really small budget and not a lot of time and some really ambitious set-ups shooting-wise. Not to mention we were shooting on film and working with young kids in some not-so-great neighborhoods. But fortunately for me, the majority of the films that I've worked on have been shot in a similar way, so I was able to lean on some of that experience as a filmmaker myself.

Which directors do you feel like you learned the most about directing from? You already mentioned Jim Jarmusch, who was the executive producer on your film.
Jim is a big influence. His career as a filmmaker to me is awesome because he's just made the films he wanted to make the way he's wanted to make them. Ideally, that's how I feel all films should be crafted. Unfortunately, I've seen friends of mine essentially have films taken away from them and re-edited for the sake of making something that was more "commercial" — which is a really odd term to me, but one that permeates a lot of the talk outside of filmmaking. So Jim is really inspiring to me, and the fact that he was willing to be the Godfather to my first film was extremely helpful and beneficial.

I've done two films with Ethan Hawke now, and he's just a great person and an incredible actor, and has this really infectious spirit on set as a director that keeps everyone happy and willing to explore.

I also got to work with Todd Solondz on Storytelling and I was just blown away by the guy. In a way it was similar to when I worked with Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier, where you're working with someone who you know is incredibly talented and you think they might have some trick up their sleeve, as if you're part of some experiment, but you want to be there. That's really cool to me.

One thing that really impressed me was the film's strong visual language. I know that you worked with Patrice Lucent Cochet, the cinematographer from the film you did with Steve Berra, The Good Life.
Thanks, and it was really cool that Patrice got that recognition at SXSW (Best Cinematography) for his work on the film. But having worked with him before, even just as an actor, went a really long way. I think it would have been difficult to have to develop a relationship with someone that important to the outcome of the film because there were so many other aspects that I was trying to manage.

On a side note, how disappointing is it when you make a quality film like The Good Life that for whatever reason never ends up getting into theaters? And on the flip side how satisfying is it when you do get to see a project through and get it out there?
It hurts. With The Good Life in particular, I was really proud of that film and the people who were fortunate enough to see it at Sundance that year seemed to really love the film. It got a DVD release, but it was made for theaters. So yeah, that one stung. But then to write and direct and produce a film and have it play at the Angelika? That's really a dream come true. It's just a crazy climate for independent film right now and you're really fortunate if your film gets seen at all, which is why film festivals are so crucial for a lot of these smaller movies. But I'm ecstatic that we're opening at the Angelika because I've seen a lot of incredible films there throughout the years, so it's a proud moment for me.

When did you decide to get an actor to essentially play the "Mark Webber" part?
[Laughs] Yeah, I had thought at one point that I would be in it, but I really wanted to feel what it was like to be a director on this film Then I saw Thumbsucker, and I had been hearing about Lou Pucci for awhile, partly because he was the young guy vying for some of the roles I might have been up for. And then I got a chance to meet him and talk about the project and we really got along. Part of it too was that Explicit was already so personal that I felt like I needed a little distance so I could retain perspective on it.

The film addresses some serious social issues. Do you feel more optimistic now with President Obama in office?
I feel like the very PC answer to that question is yes, but unfortunately I don't entirely feel that way. I think Obama is the first person in office in a really long time that actually feels like a real person and he has a good heart and he means well, but I'm still a believer in people coming together to change this world. I just don't think that it's possible for one man in a very corrupt system to be able to create real change. At the same time, I think President Obama is an eloquent speaker for change and an important catalyst for it even just in inspiring people and making them feel like they've elected someone who represents them. I just don't want people to lose the perspective and the faith in their own ability to create change and remain committed to actively trying to make this world a better place and not think it stops with electing someone. I am very happy that he got elected, but I'm also a little worried that it might take the wind out of people's sails. I don't want the empowerment that people felt in coming together and electing him to go away because he won. I want them to use that energy to help make their own lives better.

I know you already have some films lined up to act in, but will you write or direct again?
Definitely. That idea was cooking while I was shooting Explicit and then it just reached a fever pitch during post-production, because I always feel as soon you're done with something, all of a sudden you really know how to do it. Part of it is just accepting that idea and as an artist trying to learn from it for the next time. Making Explicit Ills was phenomenal for me because I love storytelling and filmmaking and the collective effort of making a movie, and now I feel like I could do it better. I've got some ideas that are just chicken scratch in a notebook right now, but I'm excited about starting this whole crazy process all over again.

Frank Miller Gets Into the Spirit at Comic-Con

Phil Nugent — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:04:00 GMT

Frank Miller, writes Kevin Scanlon in The New York Times, "exudes comics cred." This week, Miller will be at the opening of the San Diego Comic-Con International, where comics professionals will be honored with the presentation of the annual Eisner Awards, named for the legendary writer-artist Will Eisner. According to Scanlan, "few outside fandom have any idea" who Eisner-- who died three years ago at the age of 87, though he seemed to have been around for much longer than that and to have been active in his field for most of that time--was, and I will take his word for it, since I've spent most of my life in the company of people, myself not excepted, who were more likely to be able to recite Eisner's bibliography chapter and verse than to know how to add fractions. As the creator of the urban detective strip The Spirit (and, later, one of the first producers of a "graphic novel"), Eisner was always hailed for his "cinematic" style, his way of bringing the mood and feel of an action-packed film noir to the four-color page. So was Miller, when he first made a splash with his own take on the crime comic disguised as a superhero comic, Daredevil. (It was to humor those publishers who thought that a comics hero had to be a costumed crimefighter that Eisner drew two horizontal lines across the Spirit's face and called that a mask.) However, Eisner, who spent the last thirty years of his life trying to make a case, through his own work, for the artistic validity of comics, never made the leap to actual filmmaking. Miller did, when he collaborated with Robert Rodriguez on the 2005 big-screen version of Miller' Sin City. At that time, Rodriguez would up resigning from the Directors' Guild after they refused to let him share full credit with this uncredentialed, pen-wielding upstart. Several million dollars at the box office later--both from Sin City and the movie version of Miller's 300, a movie that is its look, and whose look was transferred complete and intact from the paper version-- Miller had little difficulty getting the go-ahead for his first solo directing project, and that project is The Spirit.

Another connection between Eisner and Miller is that, having made their names telling stories in a medium over which they had more or less complete control, neither readily took to Hollywood's free-and-easy approach to intellectual property, or its dismissive attitude towards whoever does the writing. Miller, whose Daredevil comics and origin reboot Batman: Year One are drenched in the spare imagery and dark, tilted shadows of basement-budget noir, and whose Dark Knight miniseries gave the world an older, crustier Batman recast in the mold of a Clint Eastwood hero, first dallied with Hollywood in the late 1980s, when he worked as a screenwriter on some RoboCop sequels. That experience sent him screaming back to his drawing board unti Robert Rodriguez showed up at his door, on bended knee. Now Miller is in the driver's seat, and out there selling his baby. (Also at Comic-Con this year are the movie's star, Gabriel Macht, and co-star Samuel L. Jackson. (Those who know the comic will be either relieved or sorely disappointed to learn that Mr. Jackson does not play the classic strip's most prominent African-American character, Ebony White, the Spirit's biggest male fan, and a constant source of embarrassment to contemporary readers: in keeping with the standards of the time, Ebony looked like a blob of ink with big rubber lips. He is not featured in the movie, having been cast into P.C. oblivion to keep the cast of Bob Clampett's Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs company.) As for Eisner, he fought to maintain control of his characters rather than score a payday by selling them off to the movies, and reportedly had to be talked in off the ledge after seeing a 1980s TV movie allegedly based on The Spirit. Producer Michael Uslan pitched the idea of a Spirit movie to Miller, and recalls that at the suggestion, "Frank looked at me like I was out of my mind. He said: ‘Touch the work of the master? How could I do that?’ About 10 minutes later he tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘I can’t let anyone else touch it.’ ” Early trailers for the movie have done their best to make it look like Sin Cty 2--which is coming, and which Miller hopes will ultimately be the second film in a trilogy--but Eisner's world was very different than the bleak, monochrome vision reflected in the recent Miller comics that have made it to the movies, and Miller knows that. “The only ways [Sin City and The Spirit] resemble each other," Miller says, "are the ways that I learned from Will Eisner: the use of black and white, certainly the rapturous approach to women.” Visually, Sin City, with its hyperbolic black and white design, certainly represented some kind of apotheosis of such performers as Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Jessica Alba, and Jaime King, and the cast of The Spirit includes King, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega, upcoming Bond girl Stana Vatic, Sarah Paulsen (as the daughter of Police Commissioner Dolan, which means that in this company, she's the closest thing to the girl next door), and the future Mrs. Ryan Reynolds. So, you know, let the rapture begin.

The Jailbait Sweet 16 (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

This modern day take on Lolita, reviled by some, adored and Academy-Awarded by others, tells the story of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a miserable hen-pecked middle-aged loser reinvigorated by a surge of life-altering lust for the sexually aggressive friend (Mena Suvari) of his mopey teenage daughter (Thora Birch). To attract Suvari’s character, Angela, Burnham starts working out, pumping up his body while channeling happy memories of his irresponsible, pot-smoking youth. Eventually, Burnham gets his wish to have sex with Angela...but, upon learning that the allegedly promiscuous girl is actually a virgin, he pulls back from the brink at the last moment, suddenly remembering that he is, in fact, an adult. And then he gets shot in the head...a nice, throwback moment to the old Hays Code days when moral transgression always led to a grisly end, cautioning the rest of us against stepping over the line. Yet transgression is part of the film’s DNA, and while I can appreciate the reasons why certain people hate this movie (the artifice, the middle-aged lust thing, the Spacey Smarm Quotient), I nevertheless enjoy the message of the smart Alan Ball script that we are not defined by our age, our possessions, or the way we’re perceived, and lying to ourselves about who we’d rather be instead of accepting who we really are leads to heartache, rage, bad relationships and, occasionally, bullets in the head. Like many dirty old men before him, Lester Burnham thinks he wants sex with a much younger woman, but what he really wants is to simply be much younger, with all of life’s possibilities ahead rather than fading away in the rearview mirror.

AMERICAN PIE (1999)

And speaking of fin de siècle movies with “American” in the title co-starring Mena Suvari...this raunchy-sweet comedy was a throwback to 1980s teen sex comedies like Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Risky Business, Porky’s, Screwballs, Losin’ It, The Last American Virgin, Zapped! and etc., etc. etc. Yet somehow, despite scenes of adolescent pie-fucking, discussions of inappropriate relations with a flute at teenage band camp, tons of high school sex and the deflowering of a pubescent boy by a predatory Mary Kay Letourneau-esque older woman, American Pie barely raised a flicker of controversy upon its release, possibly because it was simply too funny and ridiculous to get all het up about...but also perhaps because of the genuine affection writer/directors Chris and Paul Weitz had for their characters, male and female, as opposed to presenting them as figures of scorn and/or inflatable sex dolls (or just so much bloody meat, like the unfortunate young victims in any number of slasher flicks from Halloween to Hostel, where sex literally equals death). As the esteemed Mr. Pierce’s notes in an earlier post on Lolita, Nabokov’s book, for all the controversy surrounding it, was actually funny...and American Pie, a kind of classic in its own right, proves once again that sometimes the best way to deal with the scary issue of sex is simply to laugh.

FREEWAY (1996)

And then there’s the less funny side of sex: molestation, prostitution and violence against women, all of which is faced and overcome by a modern day So-Cal Red Riding Hood in this astonishing exploitation film by jailbait auteur Matthew Bright, whose fetish for pigtails and ponytails drove him to personally style the hair of his actresses...which must make him a creep, right? And yet, despite Bright's seemingly shady fascination with underage sexuality, this is one of the most empowering, ass-kicking girl power movies I’ve ever seen. Reese Witherspoon leaves this one off her resume, and yet her portrayal of the indomitable white trash warrior Vanessa Lutz is, hands-down, the single best performance of her career, promising a future of nitro-fueled intensity that (Tracy Flick aside) pretty much fizzled into perky romantic comedy fluff. Remember how cool Emilio Estevez was in Repo Man before he became...y’know, Emilio Estevez? Yeah, it’s kinda like that. The story pits Witherspoon’s illiterate, underage Lutz against a crack whore mother (Amanda Plummer), an abusive stepfather, the L.A.P.D. and, most notably, Kiefer Sutherland as the story’s Big Bad Wolf, Bob Wolverton (get it?), a leering bogeyman of a sexual predator. The escalating verbal and physical warfare between Lutz and Wolverton taps into something downright primal and possibly Freudian, as if Bright is investing all his forbidden love for the raw sexuality and electric vitality of youth into Lutz and all the self-loathing shame surrounding his secret, twisted obsessions into Wolverton, then letting the two duke it out in a steel-cage match. The result is the greatest B-movie John Waters never made, a loud, raucous, thriller with jaw-dropping stretches of pitch-black comedy and a truly startling cameo by the queen of Jailbait Cinema, the one and only Brooke Shields, who shows up (along with Mr. Bright’s even more peculiar sequel to Freeway) in part three of this list.

KIDS (1995)

In Kids, the first feature directed by the legendary photographer Larry Clark, a bunch of teenagers spend a day and a night wandering around New York City in the summer. They have sex, shoplift, beat the crap out of somebody, take drugs, and have an orgiastic party. There's no plot to speak of, but there is a suspense hook: Jennie (Chloe Sevigny) has just learned that she's contracted AIDS from the mushmouthed, seventeen-year-old lothario Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a serial deflowerer of girls who imagines that his sexual partners will always remember him if he's their first but who loses any interest in them after that, and she sets out to try to find him before he can rack up his next intended victim, Ruby (Rosario Dawson). (She is unsuccessful in this.) The whole movie is sunk so deep inside its obsessions with selfish teenage kicks that it gives the feeling that the screen could use a bath. When it first appeared, Kids was THE controversial indie film of its season, and it was defended by some moralists who argued that Clark and his twenty-two-year-old screenwriting partner Harmony Korine were obviously showing us these youngsters acting like animals--which is the closest thing they have to an interesting quality--as a "wake-up call" to parents. Please. Clark's subsequent films (Bully, Wassup Rockers), and for that matter the photo collections with which he'd made his name (Tulsa, Teenage Lust) have only served to confirm that Clark likes to film teenagers babbling incoherently, acting out nastily and fucking because he likes to watch teenagers babbling incoherently, acting out nastily and fucking; pointing a camera at it gives him an excuse to indulge in his hobby, which he is of course entitled to share with others who have similar interests. Those of us who used to get bored with such things after about three minutes even when we were teenagers need to look elsewhere.

HARD CANDY (2005)

At 21, Ellen Page sure is a hard-working gal. Juno may have made her a star when it opened late last year, but in recent months we've seen the arrival of three other movies in which she stars or has prominent roles (Smart People, The Tracey Fragments, and An American Crime, which played at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival but recently premiered on Showtime cable). In fact, the success of Juno was the explosion coming at the end of a long fuse set by the cult home video success of Hard Candy, a two-character drama that uses the then-teenaged actress's mixture of seductiveness and spikiness for all it's worth. She plays a 14-year-old who has struck up an Internet correspondence with an adult photographer (Patrick Wilson); when she meets him for the first time, she invites herself back to his place with the promise of hearing a Goldfrapp mp3 he boasts of having. Once they get back to his place, it turns out that she's springing a trap; taking him prisoner, she informs him that she knows that he's a pedophile who's involved in the murder of a girl, and she proceeds to torture him, threaten him with exposure and castration, and cajole him to do the right thing and commit suicide. It's to Page's considerable credit that, by turns enticing, alarming, and outright scary, she remains fascinating throughout, even though she can't make her character believable; she has a degree of infallible self-assurance that would be hard to buy in a SWAT team leader, let alone a 14-year-old girl playing cat and mouse with a psycho on his home turf. Her choicest moment of degradation for her prey may be when, having gotten him where she wants him, she casually reveals that she actually thinks Goldfrapp is pretty lame. Other movies (such as The Professional) know that the viewer's inner pedophile will be flattered by seeing a young girl insist that she wants the older man even if he has the nobility (and the box-office savvy) to not follow through; Hard Candy knows that, while castration threats are pretty bad, the best way to make the older man shrivel up is to let him know that, when he thought he was being cool and up to date, he was actually sounding like an old fart.

For more jailbait: Part One, Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent