Criticisms of corporate culture often cast a naive outsider as the protagonist. The Hudsucker Proxy's proxy is a man, perceived as an incompetent, who is instilled as the president of Hudsucker Industries so that the company's stock value will plummet, allowing the board of directors to scoop up the devalued stock on the cheap.

Tim Robbins stars in the titular role, with Jennifer Jason Leigh posting an incredibly likable performance as a reporter investigating Robbins' rapid rise, and the always venerable Paul Newman plays the man pulling the strings on the board of directors. Written and director by the Coen brothers in collaboration with Sam Raimi, this film is beautiful, and sharp as a tack. With all of this incredible talent involved, it's no surprise that the film is so enjoyable.

If the Coen brothers had released this film today, it wouldn't have been met with as mixed reception as it was back in 1994. The groupthink in reviewing circles has definitely swung to the Coen's corner since then. It's a bit of a shame that this is so, because honesty is so important in reviewing; the film does incorporate a lot of non-standard imagery and formative elements that reviewers aren't generally kind towards; it would only be fair for the reviews to remain bad today. However, that would just be another reviewing prejudice informing the opinion. Therefore, the film is not only very enjoyable, providing valuable social commentary for the intelligent viewer, it also exposes a weakness in the reviewing community.

Vigilantism exists in the grey fuzz that surrounds what society deems to be ethical behaviour. Actions taken in this vein may benefit society, but the subjective application of justice has the potential to do more harm than good.

In Defendor, Woody Harrelson plays the titular hero, a man of below average intelligence who suffered deep mental and emotional scarring in his childhood. As a self-styled superhero, he roams the city by night dealing street justice to those he deems (as Dirty Harry once famously did) "punks."

The film is beautifully shot, using a range of cinematic techniques to calmly elicit appropriate emotional responses in the viewer. The film is about the grittiness of a big city, and its vistas of Hamilton, the old industrial city, are hauntingly beautiful and enticing.

Woody Harrelson plays an impressive combination of Woody from Cheers and Mickey from Natural Born Killers. Woody may not be considered one of the acting greats of our day, but its easy to see why the man garned an Oscar nom for his work last year in The Messenger. His performance in Defendor is easily up to that level.

While the visuals and acting are both great, where the film really excels is in its writing. The subtle dialog explores themes of vigilante justice, police corruption, friendship, heroism, and goodness. The leitmotif is that justice is a tricky concept; the film is essentially an ode to moral relativism, sprinkled with some guilty laughs.

Shot on a shoestring $4 million budget, the movie demonstrates that cinema is not a medium whose strengths are best expressed by big-budget special effects, but by the careful, heart-wrenching examination of the human psyche, by touching drama, and by strong performances. Defendor is a movie about the dumb hero in all of us, about overcoming our inadequacies to do great things. It's a shame that a film like this will probably be overlooked, because it was truly lovely.

The Playlist & Deadline Hollywood report writer/director of The Messenger Oren Moverman is in talks to pull double duty on the Universal produced Kurt Cobain biopic previously written by David Bienoff (Brothers, 25th Hour).

Considering how well The Messenger has been receieved I have high hopes for this project. Of course you have to take into account what kind of effect widow Courtney Love will have on this project (hopefully minimal). No actors have been attached to play Cobain or Love, but I imagine casting will commence soon.

For a long time it was speculated that director Christopher Nolan would not be participating in the third Batman film, but it appears that those fears can be laid to rest as Nolan has officially signed on to direct Batman 3 (or whatever the hell it will be titled soon).