Metro Pulse Online: Movies, Past &Amp; Future

Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Agent Cody Banks: Destination London (PG)
James Bond for the pre-teen set—undercover CIA agent Cody Banks (cutie pie Frankie Muniz)—heads across the pond to take down the mastermind who taught him everything. Anthony Anderson brings some hip attitude to the assignment, and junior British agent Emily (Hannah Spearritt) provides backup.
Prediction: Did we really need another Cody Banks movie? Tick, tick, tick, Frankie. Your 15 minutes are slowly winding down, and cutting the red wire isn’t going to stop it.

Secret Window (PG-13)
In the midst of a divorce, writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) retreats to his remote cabin to nap and stare at his laptop. When a creepy guy from Mississippi dressed like an Amish farmer (John Turturro) shows up at his door claiming that Rainey stole his story, the writer finds his life descending into the terrifying territory of his own fiction. Written and directed by David Koepp (screenwriter of Spider-Man and Panic Room).
Prediction: Face it: you don’t care what this movie delivers as long as you get to look at Johnny Depp’s ever-fascinating features (and crazy bed-head) for two hours.

Spartan (R)
Talented and respected Special Ops officer Robert Scott (Val Kilmer) gets the assignment to find the missing daughter of a government official. Aided by protégé Curtis (Derek Luke), the investigators discover a white-slavery ring and some political secrets that may threaten the girl’s life and theirs. Written and directed by David Mamet.
Prediction: Spartan will undoubtedly be dialogue-heavy and fast-moving, but will it make any sense? Mamet makes an above-average political thriller—his Heist, The Spanish Prisoner, and House of Games are good examples—but the key is for the whole thing to wind up leaving audiences impressed and not merely dizzy.

In Praise of the Underdog

Bill Murray wuz robbed.

Mind you—I’ve got nothing against Sean Penn. He just seems to be stuck in a bit of a rut where he only plays blue-collar anti-heroes or the mentally challenged. Of course, the Academy just slobbers over those two types of roles, so Penn’s Best Actor win isn’t a surprise so much as it is disappointingly predictable.

Murray just gets no love. Sure, he’s made his share of lousy movies. The ones that work, however, are the cinematic gems that his deadpan hound-dog delivery bring to a sparkling polish. Take Lost in Translation (R, 2003), the Sofia Coppola flick that earned him the Oscar nomination. While Coppola’s script borders on genius, the film itself wouldn’t have been quite so resonant without Murray’s understated performance. Some have argued that Murray was simply playing himself, an argument that only adds more proof that he’s a wonderful actor. He makes it look so easy—one of the hardest things for an actor to do, really—that his achievement goes unrecognized.

The same holds true for that other Oscar nom who, if not robbed outright, was on the bad end of a misdemeanor. Johnny Depp’s turn as a woozy, sexy, Keith-Richards-esque Caribbean pirate falls into the same category as Murray’s performance. It looked easier than Paris Hilton on prom night, which means that all of Depp’s hard work, well, worked.

But these two actors have been bound together before, in far stranger circumstances. Both shared the screen in the under-rated Tim Burton project Ed Wood Both got their start on the tiny screen. And both have played gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. While Depp’s version (1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was by far the better piece of cinema—helped along in no small part by director Terry Gilliam’s uncanny ability to make evoke what ether does to your world—you can see the seeds of Depp’s performance in Murray’s earlier film, Where the Buffalo Roam (R, 1980). Buffalo�never quite gets off of the ground weighed down by a flat script and flatter directing, but Murray’s work hints at the actor he’ll become. It’s just too bad that actor was shamelessly robbed by a man half his size.

—Adrienne Martini