‘Ray’ has so much going for it that it surprises you when it fails to impress. With one of the greatest performances of the year by Jamie Foxx and a life story that was bubbling with details, ‘Ray’ surprisingly overstays its welcome. There were many interesting story arcs in there, unfortunately the movie was devoted to all of them and none of them. The best moments are when the film concentrates on the musical genius. When was the last time there was a ho-hum movie with an Oscar worthy performance? ‘Training Day’ perhaps?

Absolutely spectacular ‘nine-years later’ look at Before Sunrise, which was a Linklater masterpiece. As is this one. Pick up any movie by Richard Linklater and you will be amazed by how each actor seems like he’s speaking his mind, not reading lines from a script. This has never been more true than in this movie, where the actor’s actually contributed to their parts of the screenplay. This gives the effect of actually having watched two people play out the games we all play in course of conversation, but also have them say it like they mean it. We’ve seen these two characters (by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) twice before (Before Sunrise and a short sequence in Waking Life) and I’d take another dozen movies with just them over most of the movies I try hard to avoid.

Jack Nicholson almost makes this movie work for me, but in the end it fall shorts. But for a couple of spectacular scenes (chicken salad sandwich and Jack playing piano on a truck) and a masterful final act, the film would have been a complete dud for me. I sincerely wanted it to work, but it didn’t.

When was the last time you saw a movie that had ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ as it’s theme song and took it seriously? The time was 1936 and you could sing that song without sounding cynical. Or so I believe now, nearly 70 years later. It seems, though, that people must have been equally cynical back then. Post-depression, between wars. However, if you’re Frank Capra, you could get away with it over and over as you pit the likes of Gary Cooper and James Stewart as small-town bumpkins against ‘the man’, the system. This time, it’s Gary Cooper who’s inherited a vast sum from his big city uncle and must deal with the pressures inherent of being a Frank Capra character. If you’ve seen the Adam Sandler version, you haven’t seen anything. The premise is same- however, in that version, the jokes are turned up and told twice for effect.

Woody Allen takes on the infamous book by Dr. David Reuben in a series of seven shorts. One wonders what kind of a job Monty Python would have done with this, considering I just saw The Meaning of Life. And just like that film, some of the sketches work: Woody Allen as the anxious sperm, Gene Wilder as.. well, see that one for yourself to believe it; and some of them don’t work. Like many of Woody Allen’s early movies (Bananas, Sleeper), the story telling gets in the way of the jokes. And when you have 10 minute shorts, you can’t afford too much of that. All in all, though, worth a watch for those moments of sheer genius.