By Clint Clausing

Staff Writer

    In light of it being a New Year and since I actually got out and saw multiple films this holiday season, I thought I would do something a little different this time around and review three movies for the price of one. I know, you all appreciate the additional input. You can send your thanks in writing on the back of your favorite denomination of U.S. currency to Jared at the magazine’s headquarters. At any rate, here’s a roundup of the movies I got to see this Christmas season. Thank God none of them actually has any great deal to do with Christmas.

    Syriana: 4 out of 5 stars. Syriana is what I would call "an important movie." Not important in the sense that it is a groundbreaking film as films go, but because it addresses issues that need to be discussed in the open throughout American society. For that reason, I grant the four stars, though I think director Stephen Gaghan tries to swing for the fences when really he only needs a sacrifice fly to score the winning run with this picture. He tries to do too much with too little and, at the same time, convince the audience that the CIA has agents overseas conducting American sponsored terrorism while they have agents acting covertly in the highest levels of corporate law firms, all in order to maintain instability in the Middle East. That’s a little too preposterous when one considers that the film’s best scenes between Matt Damon’s financial consultant and Alexander Siddig’s reform oriented sheik state the same subject matter in very concrete and less conspiratorial terms. Gaghan’s storytelling gets in his own way in many cases, dividing the overall narrative so much that even the actors don’t seem to know exactly what they are doing in some of the shorter scenes. The reasons to go see the movie are its ideas, George Clooney’s, Matt Damon’s, and Alexander Siddig’s performances and the wealth of coffee conversation that follows a viewing of this flawed but compelling film.

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