Markie goes to movies (so you don't have to)

Ask the Dust (dir. Robert Towne) Robert Towne is an L. A. homeboy. One way you know is that he wrote the screenplay for one of the great L. A. movies, Chinatown. Not least of that film's virtues are the parallels it draws between 1940s and 19702 L.A. and the amoral hustlers who run both. His own 1940s (actually, '30s) homage shows the city much straighter--like, really, really straight. Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek as pretty and stylized as can be playing the tragically mismatched Italian-and-Mexican lovers. (You'll never guess which is the brooding boozer and which is the fiery pothead.) Imagine Barton Fink done straight (minus the apocalypse) and you're on the right track. Markie's review (stupid points): ??

Basic Instinct 2 (dir. Michael Caton-Jones) Poor Sharon Stone. She's really beautiful in her way, and sometimes, like in this movie, she tries really, really hard. But much as it hurts to say it, girlfriend can't act to save her life. So her murderous, omnisexual act is just that--curled lips, come-way-hither looks. And believe me, the only other interesting thing in this long, fairly complicated, fairly dull (and not nearly sleazy enough) mystery is who David Thewlis owes money to that he has to star in movies like this one. Markie's review (stupid points): ?½

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (dir. Asia Argento) I'll say one thing: this puree of Larry Clark, David Lynch and Oliver Stone (with soupcons of Jerry Springer and Flannery O'Connor) is artful in a visual way: cool hallucinations and dream sequences, cutting that intensifies the horror of its dozen or so most skin-crawling sequences. And I have to hand it to the director for imagining the mom as a redneck Courtney Love, a.k.a. a Very Bad Parent who sets terrible examples in matters of sexual conduct and substance abuse, then casting herself in the part. How much you enjoy it will totally depend on whether you find this vividly-rendered story horrific or over-the-top hilarious. So you've been warned. Markie's review (stupid points): ???