MTV News’ Josh Horowitz going through the usual paces with Couples Retreat costars Malin Akerman and Vince Vaughn. But if you want a moderately serious, honest, semi-fascinating and straight-up honest take on Universal’s Bora Bora junket, read this piece by MSN Movies’ James Rocchi. You know what…? I’m just going to paste the whole thing below.

Sun, Surf and Celebrity in Bora Bora

Our writer heads to French Polynesia to talk to the stars of ‘Couples Retreat’

By James Rocchi

Special to MSN Movies

“It is hard (if not impossible) to deal with the internal ethical, intellectual and professional contradictions you feel when you step onto a beach in French Polynesia contemplating how you’re there on a studio’s dime to conduct interviews with the stars of a movie you know, deep in your heart, that you’re going to give a mixed review. The great film critic Pauline Kael said there are two kinds of writing about movies: a good, honest review; and everything else, which is just publicity.

“And if you write and do interviews, set visits or other things that aren’t under the umbrella of good, honest reviews (and these days, if you’re lucky, reviews are just one part of your paycheck as a freelance film critic and journalist), then why not do them well, and with courtesy, and, in this case, for the upcoming Universal release “Couples Retreat,” in the Polynesian beauty of Bora Bora?

“The logic, for Universal Pictures, must have gone something like this: ‘We just made a comedy in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Why not do the press where we shot it, instead of in front of some fake palm fronds at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons?’ This is excellent reasoning (although I hope Paramount doesn’t apply it for its upcoming Shutter Island), and so, I (along with regional and network-level entertainment reporters from TV stations, networks and online outlets all over North America) was invited to Bora Bora to have some fun and, yes, work in the sun.

“It also should be said that there are plenty of things Couples Retreat gets right: From Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell‘s relationship to how there are jokes about marriage in it but that none of the marriages in it are jokes.

“And sure, yes, why not talk about these things with its stars on a fine-grained white-sand shore? I have friends who’ve attended festivals on that festival’s dime (as have I). Press accreditation as a critic means you see movies for free that the average moviegoer pays $12 a pop. And it also means you have to see films involving fat suits or talking animals or sexy assassins or Rob Schneider in ethnic garb. It’s already a complicated, privileged job. Going to Bora Bora is just one more cool, complicated privilege.

“And bear in mind that, even when you’re not in Bora Bora, interviewing famous people always involves a level of social and professional anxiety anyhow, as you wait for an hour to spend five minutes as calmly and as casually as you can under lights so bright they make you blink like a cartoon owl, talking to handsome leading men and elegant starlets so movie-star perfect and effortlessly charismatic that every body image issue or hesitant worry about your conversational skills you’ve ever had in your life swirls behind your eyes like a dark tornado.

“I have simple, uptight rules for how I deal with the social-professional awkwardness of on-camera interviews: You shake hands. You ask about the movie they’re there for, not their hypothetical or rumored upcoming next film. You call people ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’ and you use their last names, because they’re not your friends, and at the end you thank them for their time and courtesy. And the interview is not the place for your review, and vice-versa. These may all sound like rationalizations, and they are, but to quote Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill (playing, it should be noted, a journalist covering the world of celebrity): ‘I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations…ever gone a week without a rationalization?’

“And asking people polite, enthusiastic questions about a movie you’re mixed on isn’t any more or less hypocritical than, say, oohing and aahing over a picture of an ugly baby, or raising your glass at a wedding reception for a couple you don’t think is going to make it in the long haul. As a professional, you tell yourself you can talk to people passionately, intelligently and politely about any film under any circumstances. The only difference with doing it in Bora Bora was doing it under a thick layer of SPF 70 sunblock, applied not only to protect my delicate, raised-in-Canada pallor but also because I suspect no one trusts a tan film critic, much as no one would trust a clean coal miner, as it clearly suggests you’re not spending enough time on the job.

“Bora Bora is near Tahiti; I tried to use Google Maps to get a sense of the exact distance between Los Angeles and it, but my computer just made a grinding noise when I did so. Essentially, Bora Bora is almost twice as far away as Hawaii, and at least a million times more French. While Polynesians settled it in about the fourth century, the French formally made it a protectorate in 1842.

“Getting to the St. Regis resort, which was the main filming location for Couples Retreat, took a nine-hour flight to Papeete airport, then another prop plane flight, then a boat ride from the big island to the resort. This, I mused, is not an itinerary; it’s a dream date with Carmen Sandiego. This was also interrupted by being taken off the small intermediate prop plane because of ‘mechanical problems.’

“In the waiting area, Vince Vaughn waved his arms grandiosely and joked: ‘It’s a surprise — we’re not going to Bora Bora; we’re going to Gary, Indiana.’ I merely thought about how it would probably stink to pull a Buddy Holly on a plane ride with Vince Vaughn, Faizon Love and Jason Bateman, which would no doubt be enshrined in some horrible YouTube clip as The Day the Laughter Died for years to come, if Don McLean‘s lawyers didn’t quash it immediately.

“And, yeah, there are dangers in paradise even without getting on a small prop plane. The St. Regis resort features beautiful villas on piers over the water (you can see them in Couples Retreat, which, as this article and Universal Pictures would like to remind you, is coming to theaters Oct. 9), which means you can dive off your porch into clear, azure, warm water.

“It also means that you can be awoken, as I was one morning, by the 50-kilometer-an-hour winds and the waves they propel, making the whole villa shake, shudder and sway. And paradise is, in many ways, troubled: Tahiti’s only real manufacturing is pearls and panoramas, not petrol, paper products or plastics, so you’re walking around in flip-flops but your ecological footprint has steel-toed boots on. Almost everything you touched or ate had to cross water somehow, and it’s hard not to think of that.

“Aware of this, to be sure, the local government provided each room with a flyer on Bora Bora’s sustainable development practices, which contained enough good news to make you forget it, too, had come on a boat or a plane. And there’s a also a noble tradition of people going to Polynesia and going a little nuts, from Gauguin to Fletcher Christian to the guy who played Fletcher Christian, Marlon Brando. The only thing that edged me toward madness was Radio Bora Bora (or, as the announcers said it, “Rrrrradio Bora Boraaaaaa”), the local Euro-dance station with a six-song playlist I nonetheless couldn’t turn off, even with its affection for the oonst, oonst Cascada version of Bruce Springsteen‘s ‘Because the Night’ and O’Neal McKnight’s ‘Champagne Red Light,’ a rap song about the urban club experience, played every hour, ironically, for a radio audience at least 2,000 miles from the nearest urban club.

“The junket was a fairly unusual mix of activities and interviews; it’s hard to not feel odd when your schedule reads “Interview Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman. Interview Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell. Interview Ralphie from A Christmas Story. (Well, the itinerary didn’t say that about the interview with director Peter Billingsley, but it might as well have.) Oh, and ‘Feed Stingrays.;

“The stingray feeding was one of several activities, along with shark-watching and a picnic trip to Moto Tapu (literally ‘Taboo Island’), which used to be the private property of the Queen of Tahiti. And the shark-watching was fascinating; you’re in the water when the boat guide dispenses chum Richard Dreyfuss-style and then come tiny fish and then come 2-to-3-foot-long lemon sharks and you giggle and gulp. And then you look down to the bottom, through clear tropical waters, to see three lemon sharks the length of a four-door sedan swimming about to look into the hubbub. This, as was said of the prospect of hanging, wonderfully concentrates the mind: I immediately wanted a great meal and a make-out session, which I think was my brain’s way of saying I didn’t want to die. Then I got out of the water, as, really, 10-foot sharks don’t wander into my home to throw food in my direction, and I’d like to keep that level of courtesy reciprocal.

“These opportunities are so that TV reporters can have brief, colorful bits they can make part of their pieces. My working for an online outlet, where brevity is the not only the soul of wit, but also the savior of bandwidth, means it’s unlikely they’ll make it into the final piece. Still, why not go? Swimming with the stingrays was unusual to say the least. As they hustled and bumped over to say ‘hi’ and occasionally eat the offered fish, I told myself that their attentions were kind of like the nudging, gentle curiosity of my cat, if my cat were a scary, cartilaginous, 4-foot-wide leathery shape with a hungry, gummy mouth, dead, glassy eyes and a wicked-looking tail. Again, someone asks you: Stingray feeding, how can one say no? The rays get fed, and you get a unique experience. Some of you may already have extrapolated this principle out to my entire trip, as have I.

“And the trip ended Monday with a ride in an open-sided pontoon boat back to the airport through a torrential rain. A few hours after we left on Monday, a tsunami struck Samoa and killed more than a hundred people, causing property damage and, thankfully, no injuries in Tahiti. We got the first licks of it, and while it’s poetical to suggest that it’s not really an Eden until you’re driven from it by the wrath of an angry God, the fact is that it was just the luck of the draw. A few days earlier and Universal’s publicity weekend could have been a soaked-out mishap instead of what looked like a success.

“And Vaughn bubbled with excitement. And Bateman’s wit stayed mordantly dry in the tropical heat. And Love (who clearly knows how to live) enjoyed sips of something amber between his interviews. Akerman and I filled those awkward, let-me-undo-my-mike-and-go moments after the interview with talk of Canada; I got to ask Kristin Davis and Jon Favreau, in a pop-culture perfect storm moment, which was the more outlandish fantasy about amazing outfits and obscene wealth: Sex and the City or Iron Man?

“And then I flew back to Los Angeles to write my actual review, with the hint of a sunburn and beach sand in the cuffs of the dress pants I wore for my on-camera interviews. It’s normally a weird job, and this time around, it was a little (but not too much) weirder, a brief blast of sun and strangeness proving that these days, Hollywood is everywhere.”

“I found most of the content of Capitalism: A Love Story horrifying,” writes Matt Taibbi in a 10.6 posting. “It was also striking to me that the theme Michael Moore is addressing here, i.e. the rapid peasant-ization of most of the country, is basically a taboo subject for every other major media outlet in the country.

“The vast majority of our movies are either thinly-disguised commercials for consumer products (Law Abiding Citizen), remakes of old shows and movies designed to transport us back to the good old days when life was better (i.e., Fame) , or gushy nerf-tripe with no hard edges crafted to serve as escapist fairy tales for stressed-out adults wanting to dream of happy endings (Love Happens).

“What we call a ‘good movie’ is usually also escapism, and sometimes even also a nostalgic remake. And it jjust happens to be well-done and expertly directed, with great production values and acting performances (I haven’t seen it yet. but I assume Where the Wild Things Are will fall into this category).

“But we’re living in a time of extreme crisis almost nothing on TV or in the movies is designed to get us thinking about how to fix our problems. If anything, most of the stuff on TV is designed to jack up our anxiety level without offering any solutions except the short-term fixes of buying and eating — witness the endless reality shows in which ordinary people slave away and scheme against each other for weeks on end for a 1 in 12 shot at a (pick one) modeling job/date with a non-deformed, non serial-killing person/chance to be shouted at by Donald Trump.

“Now that stuff is cynical and monstrous. It is my sincere hope that the people who are producing these programs will someday be tried and executed by war crimes tribunals at the Hague.”

There’s just something clenched and curious in Ben Foster‘s features, and maybe in Foster himself. All kinds of odd currents seem to be running through the guy, like he’s thinking about pulling a gun or something. I know…that’s his selling point, his edge. But I don’t think he can do much else. I don’t think he has it in him to play sedate or easygoing, much less serene.

“The root of the matter lies in the whiff of popular justice that masks everything and transforms the commentators, the bloggers, the citizens, into so many judges sworn in on the great tribunal of Opinion — some weighing the crime, others the punishment,[and [many taking] an evil pleasure in replaying over and over the details of this sordid affair in order then to throw the first stone. This lynching is a disturbance of the public order more serious than Roman Polanski remaining free. This tenacity on the part of the gossips, and this desire to see the head of an artist on a pike, are the very essence of immorality.” — French poet and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in a 10.5 Huffington Post-ing.

The late Oliver Reed‘s infamous visit to the David Letterman show on 8.25.87.

From 10.23 through 11.9, BAMcinematek is running a series of 1962 films. It’s partially about celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, and also about making up for the fact that the NYFCC didn’t present awards that year due to a newspaper strike. NYFCC chairman Armond White, the apparent architect of the series, has written that 1962 “was equal to Hollywood’s fabled 1939 [so] we welcome this great opportunity to learn and revise film history.”

Glynis Johns in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report.

The films being shown are, for the most part, excellent choices — Jacques Demy‘s Lola, John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia, Sam Peckinpah‘s Ride The High Country, Robert Aldrich‘s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, George Cukor‘s The Chapman Report, Jerry Lewis‘s The Errand Boy (actually released in the fall of 1961), Howard Hawks‘ Hatari, Francois Truffaut‘s Shoot The Piano Player, Francois Truffaut‘s Jules and Jim, Agnes Varda‘s Cleo From 5 to 7, and Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Il Grido (which opened in Italy in mid ’57 but not in the States until ’62).

But if White and BAM are seriously trying to pay tribute to 1962 (which was an exceptional year) and they’re including mid-level pablum like The Chapman Report, why did they blow off Otto Preminger‘s Advise and Consent, Peter Ustinov‘s Billy Budd (an excellent film), John Frankenheimer‘s Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate and All Fall Down, J. Lee Thompson‘s Cape Fear, George Seaton‘s The Counterfeit Traitor, Frank Perry‘s David and Lisa, Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses, Pietro Germi‘s Divorce, Italian Style, Terence Young‘s Dr. No, John Huston‘s Freud, Don Siegel‘s Hell Is For Heroes, John Schlesinger‘s A Kind of Loving, Roman Polanski‘s Knife in the Water (actually released in the U.S. in ’63), Alain Resnais‘ Last Year at Marienbad, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’eclisse Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita, the great Kirk Douglas western Lonely are the Brave, Sidney Lumet‘s version of Eugene O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, the internationally-directed The Longest Day, Samuel Fuller‘s Merrill’s Marauders, Arthur Penn‘s The Miracle Worker, Lewis Milestone‘s Mutiny on the Bounty, Jules Dassin‘s Phaedra, George Roy Hilll‘s Period of Adjustment, Ralph Nelson and Rod Serling‘s Requiem for a Heavyweight, Serge Bourguignon‘s Sundays and Cybele (a.k.a., Les dimanches de ville d’Avray), Richard Brooks‘ Sweet Bird of Youth, Robert Mulligan‘s To Kill a Mockingbird, Orson Welles‘ The Trial, Robert Wise‘s Two for the Seesaw, Vincente Minnelli‘s Two Weeks in Another Town, Denis Sanders‘ War Hunt (which costarred Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack) and Philip Leacock‘s The War Lover?

That’s 36 or 37 films released in ’62 — ranging from fairly decent to good to excellent, no pikers in the lot — vs. a mere twelve showing at the BAM/NYFCC series. So the program is showing roughly 25% of the worthy films that opened in the U.S. that year. They couldn’t even manage half! A faux tribute, at best.

Yesterday a nervy idea hit me for an At The Movies type show. I was standing in a hotel room around noon yesterday and listening to critic Marshall Fine talk about having taped a pilot for one of these things, and it came to me in a flash. At The Movies hosted by critics under the influence.

I’m basically talking about a mixture of At The Movies and the Dean Martin variety hour that ran in the mid ’60s to mid ’70s. Martin always pretended to be slightly bombed on that show, and I don’t think viewers cared if he actually was or not. The point is that the show was loose and friendly and convivial, and there’s obviously one way to usher in that kind of vibe.

I don’t know what substance would work better, alcohol or marijuana. But if there was a weekly movie-reviewing show featuring fizzy-headed or moderately stoned critics, people would watch it like they watched Howard Beale in Network. Because they’d know going in that the critics wouldn’t be dispensing the usual-usual. It’s a catchy gimmick — you have to admit that.

Nobody wants to see respected critics make fools of themselves, so the trio we’re speaking of would need to be very careful with the intake. But they’d be just irreverent enough to loosen up and say what they really think about this or that film due to reduced inhibitions and being slightly more prone to using colorful language and…you know, not seeming overly poised and regimented, which is what every movie-critic show tends to feel like. Cold-sober people obviously have stirring discussions every day, but the liveliest ones — admit it — do seem to happen in the evening among friends after a drink or two. Or after passing a joint around.

I realize there are laws prohibiting on-camera imbibing, so such a show would have to be launched online. But you’d probably want your critics doing the show while sitting at a bar on stools. And the show would have to be lighted semi-darkly, like Charlie Rose.

Obviously a thing like this would send an unhealthy retrograde message to viewers, and there would be, I agree, a certain flirtation with public humiliation right around the edges of such a concept. I’m only saying that the numbers for such a show would almost certainly be exceptional because it would be something really different. I’m sure most people reading this think it’s a silly adolescent idea that challenges the already-tarnished dignity of film criticism. But I know something else — the best ideas for new forms of entertainment are often ones that conventional-minded types dismiss at the outset.

This is one of the better monologue kickoffs that David Letterman has ever delivered. That first line is perfect, and what a laugh it gets! And his facial expressions — his eyes especially — before he says the first word are brilliant.

I could write a small book about my selection of the 70 best films of the first 21st Century decade (i.e., 2000 to 2009), especially if I explain my reasons for listing each one. But this is just an article so let’s forego the whys and wherefores and get down to brass tacks, understanding, of course, that this is just a 10.5.09 moving-train assessment and 2009 obviously hasn’t played out yet.

(l. to r.) Elias Koteas, Anthony Edwards, Mark Ruffalo and John Carroll Lynch during a pivotal second-act scene in Zodiac.

And the brassiest tack of all is David Fincher’s Zodiac — my choice for the best film of the last ten years. (I’m speaking, of course, of the DVD/Blu-ray director’s cut.) Because it plays its game of obsession so exactingly and meticulously and with such staggering confidence, and with nothing but superb performances top to bottom. And because the film takes all this and amplifies it into a kind of infinite hall-of-mirrors equation by being as obsessive as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Robert Grayson character, if not more so.

But that’s it — I don’t have all day to do this and I can’t and won’t provide summaries of my reasons for choosing all 68 films. Some other time.

I decided I had to include 37 films in my final best-of-the-best list. Here they are in order of preference: (1) Zodiac, (2) Memento, (3) Traffic, (4) Amores perros, (5) United 93, (6) Children of Men, (7) Adaptation, (8) City of God, (9) The Pianist, (10) The Lives of Others, (11) Sexy Beast, (12) No Country for Old Men, (12) There Will Be Blood, (13) Michael Clayton, (14) Almost Famous ( the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), (15) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, (16) Dancer in the Dark, (17) Girlfight, (18) The Departed, (19) Babel, (20) Ghost World, (21) In the Bedroom, (22) Talk to Her, (23) Bloody Sunday, (24) The Quiet American, (25) Whale Rider, (26) Road to Perdition, (27) Open Range, (28) Touching the Void, (29) Maria Full of Grace, (30) Up In The Air, (31) The Hurt Locker, (32) Million Dollar Baby, (33) The Motorcycle Diaries, (34) An Education, (35) Man on Wire, (36) Revolutionary Road, and (37) Che.

The two strongest years of the last decade were 2000 and 2004, with 15 films of a great or near-great stature coming from the former and 14 from the latter. The weakest year of the decade, I feel, was 2008 with only three making the cut. Here’s the rundown, but understand that the films listed for each year are just tossed in and not listed in order of preference:

2000 (15 films): Sexy Beast, You Can Count On Me, Wonder Boys, Before Night Falls, Almost Famous (“Untitled” DVD director’s cut), Erin Brockovich, Amores perros, Dancer in the Dark, Girlfight, Gone in 60 Seconds (guilty pleasure), High Fidelity, In the Mood for Love, Memento, The Tao of Steve (2nd guilty pleasure), Traffic.

2001 (5 films): A Beautiful Mind, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Y tu mama tambien.

2002 (11 films): 24 Hour Party People, Talk to Her , Bloody Sunday, 8 Mile, Adaptation, Bowling for Columbine, Changing Lanes, City of God, The Pianist , The Quiet American, Whale Rider, Road to Perdition.

2003 ( 8 films): Los Angeles Plays Itself, Bad Santa, The Fog of War, Master and Commander, Shattered Glass, 21 Grams, Open Range, Touching the Void.

2004 (15 films): Sideways, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, The Incredibles, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bad Education, After Sunset, Man on Fire, Collateral, Downfall, Man on Fire, Mar adentro (The Sea Inside), Maria Full of Grace Million Dollar Baby, The Motorcycle Diaries, Napoleon Dynamite.

2005 (7 films): Grizzly Man, The Aristocrats, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, A History of Violence, Match Point.

2006 (5 films): United 93, The Departed, Babel, Children of Men, Notes on a Scandal.

2007 ( 8 films): Zodiac, Michael Clayton, I’m Not There, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Lives of Others ], 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Orphanage.

2008 (4 films): Man on Wire, Revolutionary Road, Che, WALL*E

2009 (3 films so far merit best-of-decade status): Up In The Air, An Education, The Hurt Locker.

We’re coming to the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. I’m going to post a list of…oh, 25 films, I suppose, that I consider the best among the last ten years. I could tap out a list of the best 100 without breaking a sweat, but we may as well be tough about this. There are two ways to assemble such a list. One is to deliberately exclude excellent films that were commercially popular, and the other, obviously, is to only choose films that were great but which the mob ignored. I may make a list of both kinds. In any case, I’m asking for lists from the readership as a way of starting the process.