“I’m afraid that Bruno feels hopelessly complicit in the prejudices that it presumes to deride,” writes New Yorker critic Anthony Lane. “You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior. A schoolboy who watches a pirated DVD of this film will look at the prancing Austrian and find more, not fewer, reasons to beat up the kid on the playground who doesn’t like girls.

“There is, on the evidence of this movie, no such thing as gay love; there is only gay sex, a superheated substitute for love, with its own code of vulcanized calisthenics whose aim is not so much to sate the participants as to embarrass onlookers from the straight–and therefore straitlaced — society beyond.

“How efficient, though, is embarrassment as a comic device? It’s a quick hit, and it corrals the audience on the side of smugness; but its victories are Pyrrhic, and it tends to fizzle out unless held in by a plot — as it was in Fawlty Towers, which, from its base on the English seaside, fathomed the most embarrassable race on earth.

“Baron Cohen, in exporting his japes, comes up against a people much less devoted to the wince. I realized, watching Borat again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere.

“Borat’s Southern hostess didn’t shriek when he appeared with a bag of feces; she sympathized, and gently showed him what to do, and the same thing happens in Bruno, when a martial-arts instructor, confronted by a foreigner with two dildos, doesn’t flinch. He teaches Bruno some defensive moves, then adds, ‘This is totally different from anything I’ve ever done.’ Ditto the Hollywood psychic — another risky target, eh? — who watches Bruno mime an act of air-fellatio and says, after completion, ‘Well, good luck with your life.’

“In both cases, I feel that the patsy, though gulled, comes off better than the gag man; the joke is on Baron Cohen, for foisting indecency on the decent. The joker is trumped by the square.”

There are three obvious questions about Let The Right One In director Tomas Alfredson intending to direct a feature adaptation of John Le Carre‘s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — why, how and who?

Why remake the perfectly satisfying 1979 BBC miniseries based on Le Carre’s 1974 novel? How could the story be satisfactorily compressed down to a typical feature length of 110 or 120 minutes, given that the original series ran 290 minutes? And who under the age of 45 would be interested in seeing it?

Bruno‘s Sacha Baron Cohen “has been accused of indulging in gay minstrelsy,” writes Dennis Lim in a recently-up pro-Bruno Slate piece. “Oh, It’s true that he does not ‘play gay’ in the respectably stoic, square-jawed manner of Tom Hanks and Heath Ledger. But Bruno is less a character than a button-pushing social experiment in locating the tipping point of tolerance: How much can he get away with? What does it take to unleash the inner bigot?

“For his merciless ambushes to work, Bruno needs to be this flamboyant — and this moronic.

“The most discomfiting — and incongruous — aspect of Bruno’s pinkface masquerade is the character’s over-the-top sexual voracity. An early outre-sex montage that features a dildo rigged to an exercise bike establishes that we’re not in Kansas anymore. Bruno is a far cry from the prim and prissy old-school sissies, who were all innuendo and no libido. We have long been conditioned to regard effeminacy as a neutered, negative stereotype, but there are moments when Baron Cohen’s extravagant prancing — playing out amid what Bruno’s trailer calls ‘real people, real situations’ — seems not grotesque but defiant, forcing his foils (redneck hunters, straight suburban swingers) to recognize the screaming presence of Otherness.

“In that sense, Bruno could be considered an homage to the proto-gay-lib classic The Naked Civil Servant, a 1975 film based on the memoirs of Quentin Crisp, the author and actor who called himself the ‘stately homo of England.’ An exhibitionist flamer in oppressive early 20th-century Britain, Crisp (played by John Hurt) is a magnet for persecution, but he holds his hennaed head up high. “The world is full of Aborigines who don’t even realize that homosexuality exists,’ he declares. ‘I shall go about the routine of daily living making this particular fact abundantly clear.'”

There’s something about Emma Watson‘s accent that’s just…I don’t know, perfect. It sorta does something to me. And last night’s deadpan delivery of “I hate it” wasn’t half bad. She should consider playing an adult one of these days. “Hey Paul…the kid just gunned me!” “Put that in your little liberal arts program.” “I don’t know what happened.”

We all need to at least half-salute the people who cut the trailer for I Love You, Beth Cooper (20th Century Fox, 7.10) because (a) they make it seem like a grotesquely unfunny, off-the-charts high-school relationship farce and (b) to judge from the reviews so far the movie pretty much is that, so in a way they’re doing people a favor by not concealing anything. They’re saying, “Do you like comedies that are aimed at dumb beasts ? Do you want to be tortured? Do you want to experience the sensation of life itself draining out of you? Then you definitely want to catch Beth Cooper.”

The review quotes so far are so bad they’re thrilling. “If watching this makes you want to be young again you probably grew up in an Algerian prison.” — IE’s Amy Nicholson. “Usually the quality gap between okay and movie isn’t the size of Texas.” — Matt Pais, Metromix. “Did erstwhile John Hughes protege and Harry Potter progenitor Chris Columbus fall behind on his payments on a sub-prime mortgage? Even if so, I’m not sure it fully excuses this joyless, offensively stupid end-of-high-school farce, which is about as funny as a hit-and-run.” — Scott Foundas, Village Voice.

Why does I Love You, Beth Cooper currently have a 34% positive Metacritic rating instead of a seemingly more fitting zero rating, which is what it has right now on Rotten Tomatoes? Because Entertainment Weekly‘s Lisa Schwarzbaum gave it a B plus.

My original trailer take was that it “suggests that the film is coarse and vulgar and way overcranked. A ludicrous teenaged horndog wish-fulfillment plot, gross stupidity, a hissing raccoon, insanely overdone foley effects, every cliche out of the tits-and-zits high-school handbook. Truly repellent. An unfortunate comedown for Chris Columbus, whom I was starting to learn to like after the invigorating Rent. The screenplay is by Larry Doyle, based on his book. I mean, I wanted to throw up.”

I don’t know about all the blisters and leprosy-bubbles in Park Chan-wook‘s Thirst (Focus Features, 7.31), which I saw last night, but I know about Kim Ok-bin, who plays the lead. In my opinion she’s the true star of the film — the reason you need to see it. She actually is the star in that this Korean-made vampire film is based on Emile Zola ‘s Therese Raquin, with Ok-bin playing the Therese role.

In my head I’ve begun calling her the Korean Isabelle Huppert — the crazy Huppert, I mean, by way of My Mother and The Piano Teacher.

The actual lead — the part of a priest who becomes infected with vampire blood — is played by Song Kang-ho, who’s described in a line in the press notes as “the Korean Tom Hanks.” The story is about Song’s vampiric nature leading him into an affair with Kim’s character, who sees herself as trapped in a grotesque and confining relationship and dying for release.

To me, Kim (her first name is Ok-bin) is the stand-out because she completely gives herself over to the film’s mood of erotic insanity. Boiled down, Thirst is a grotesque and bloody love story with a lot of slurping and toe-sucking and two or three very hot love scenes. It’s not so much a vampire film as an “oh God, I can’t help myself” drama.

If I were marketing Thirst I would emphasize that these scenes have some of the panting urgency of the sex scenes in Last Tango in Paris and In The Realm of the Senses. And that Kim Ok-bin’s impish live-wire acting is something of a discovery in this context. In the early scenes her expressions of disgust (at her family situation) and hints of inner perversity are quite alluring. She ends up convincing you that her desire to escape on a wave of abandon has brought her to a state of ecstatic madness.

Kim Ok-bin

The Hurt Locker “is a great film, an intelligent film, a film shot clearly so that we know exactly who everybody is and where they are and what they’re doing and why,” says Roger Ebert in a 7.8. review. “The camera work is at the service of the story. [Director] Kathryn Bigelow knows, unlike the pathetic Michael Bay, that you can’t build suspense with shots lasting one or two seconds.

“Frankly, I wonder if a lot of Transformer lovers would even be able to take Bigelow’s film. They may not be accustomed to powerful films that pound on their imaginations instead of their ears.

“We live in a depressing time for American movies. Half the nation seems hellbent on throwing itself at the horrible Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The movie’s fans inform me that I don’t ‘get it,’ that what they want is mindless violence and stuff blowing up real good. They like the explosions. It’s entertainment for the whole family. I get it all, all right. [Except] two years from now, no one will quite be able to remember its name.”

In his 7.8 Hurt Locker review, Roger Ebert writes that Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James — a Zen master at defusing IEDs — is who he is because of the following core beliefs: (1) bombs need to be defused; (2) nobody does it better than James; (3) he knows exactly how good he is, and (4) when he’s at work, an intensity of focus and exhilaration consumes him, and he’s in that heedless zone when an artist loses track of self and time.”

Bingo! There are dozens of columnists out there who can out-Sgt. James me with one tied behind their back, but I know the lay of the land. Every day I grapple with the upside of doing this column — the intensity of focus and the occasional exhilaration — as well as the downside of living in that “heedless zone,” which means putting off or forgetting to deal with necessary and rudimentary day-to-day stuff and having to constantly pay for these delays and omissions in small and large ways.

The essence of right-wing conservatism is an opportunistic social Darwinism. All righties believe, to quote an old barstool homily, that “the world is for the few.” It follows in their philosophy that capitalism — God’s chosen economic system — is hallowed and sacrosanct because it allows for society’s hungriest go-getters (i.e., the brightest entrepeneurs and most aggressive ladder-climbers) to live rich and abundant lives — to profit handsomely from the fruit of their talent, vision, inititative and opportunism.

This, many righties believe, is the natural order of things, which is why many of them (certainly the political righties) profess an affinity with God and Christianity. They see the Christian faith as a kind of moral/philosophical support system for free-market determinism, objectivism, laissez-faire capitalism, and constitutionally-limited government. For them it’s all about the goodies that God in His wisdom wants them to have — about their right to live flush and get richer and to help like-minded homies do the same. This is the view that binds Ayn Rand and Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin and all the other buccaneers out there who believe in “me first and applications of socially progressive and compassionate policies second.”

And if anything gets in the way of this God-sanctified entitlement — anything, say, like the need to deal with global warming or develop green or non-polluting energy sources — conservatives will always stall, dispute, denounce, block, argue against, and generally do everything in their power to deny the communal reality of life on this planet. Because they don’t care about the communal reality of life on this planet. Because dealing with same tends to bring about regulations which, they believe, tend to mess with their freedom to romp around and profit handsomely and live lavishly.

Conservatives care about their own world and their own opportunities. They believe in their right to mine, exploit and profit from the backyard minerals that have always been and always will be “for the few.” That is who and what they are.

Capitalism: A Love Story — the just-announced title of Michael Moore‘s global financial meltdown doc — works for me. It’s a little beside-the-point, a little bit of a “come again?”…but it’s fine. I mean, why squawk about it? Why be a contrarian by suggesting that a more accurate (and arguably catchier title ) for Moore’s film would be Reagan: A Love Story?

The crisis that kicked in last fall and which will, in all likelihood, submerge this country in a Japanese-styled recession slumber for many years to come, is not, of course, a creation of capitalism per se. It’s a result of a pattern of free-for-all economic speculation and debt-splurging and wild-west profiteering that began with the policies of Ronald Reagan.

N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman explained it all on 5.31, in a piece called “Reagan Did It.” “The more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

“Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

“On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

“The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.”

Moore said yesterday that Capitalism: A Love Story “will be the perfect date movie. It’s got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.”

Heck, let’s just really say it: it’s unbridled yeehaw Reagan- and Dubya-styled deregulation . It’s “let’s make the opportunities as lavish and imperial as possible for our rich Wall Street buddies so they can take care of us while we wrap ourselves in the flag and old-style Christianity and family values and stir up the yahoos by railing against gay marriage and abortion, etc.”

Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture) will open on 10.2.09.

In a 6.13.09 posting called “Barnyard” I described a confrontation with an obnoxious popcorn muncher at Loews’ Lincoln Square during a first-anywhere showing of the trailer for Michael Moore‘s financial-meltdown doc (the title of which, Capitalism: A Love Story, has just been announced). This morning I found video footage on Moore’s site of crowd reactions to this very same first-anywhere viewing — including brief footage of myself and this guy. It begins around the 19-second mark and goes until 23 or 24.

You can see a blurry image of yours truly (wearing a white shirt) standing along the wall in the right-rear section, and you can see the ugly bald guy — glasses, white T-shirt — sitting in my immediate vicinity.

The 6.13 story read as follows: “Last night around 6:45 pm I walked into Leows Lincoln Square and a mid-sized theatre playing The Hangover to see the Michael Moore teaser. Except I made the mistake of sitting behind an ugly bald guy whose seat was leaning way back, in the same way that thoughtless people in coach lean their seats right into your face. He was short and bald and rocking in his seat as he stuffed his face with popcorn. It was like sitting behind a rambunctious seven year-old. I hated him on sight.

“The feeling was apparently mutual because he kept half-turning-around — i.e., the universal gesture that means ‘hey, quit what you’re doing because you’re bothering me.’ I crossed my leg to re-tie my shoe and this asshole turned around. He bounced his seat back and it hit my left knee and this asshole turned around. I was sitting behind him doing nothing (except thinking what an asshole he was) and this asshole turned around.

“After the fifth or sixth turn-around I said, ‘What…? What’s your problem?’ He said I was breathing on his head and it bothered him. Nostril breath, he meant. ‘Well, you’re gonna have to deal with it, pal, because I’m not gonna stop breathing,’ I said. ‘You wanna sit on my lap?’ he said. No, I said, and why don’t you try just sucking it in and shutting the fuck up? ‘Just go…just get outta here,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said. ‘Find a way to live with it.'”