By Johnny Ray Huston

'KIM BASINGER HOSPITALIZED – AFTER FIGHTS WITH ALEC!" The Star headline is a tiny detail of a corner-store scene in Mystic River, but it's a telling one. Even if Basinger and Baldwin (a Gore supporter whom the Star repeatedly commanded to follow through on his threats to leave the country when George W. Bush "won" the presidency in 2000) aren't in the movie, the set decoration of the liquor store owned by Sean Penn's character is a tiny reminder that they're exactly the kind of Hollywood lefties the tabloid media loves to hate. In Mystic River the two Hollywood actors who've been especially mocked and lampooned for their stances on the war in Iraq – Penn and Tim Robbins – scowl and grimace their way through a plodding, implausible parable of American masculine pride and retribution.

These "traitors" do penance by obeying the direction of a Republican icon of vengeance – Clint Eastwood – and solemnly pandering to a stilted version of working-class family values: a sure ticket to the 2004 Academy Awards, where Michael Moore won't be around to yell "Shame on you!" at the president. During an interrogation scene, Mystic River sheds its self-important cloak and briefly resembles a smarter policier by Eastwood's fellow Don Siegel acolyte Kiyoshi Kurosawa, yet it soon returns to a demonstration of the self-righteous justice Kurosawa dissects.

If Eastwood and company want Mystic River to be an indictment of American violence at home and abroad (as some of the film's defenders claim), then they need to tie up their loose plot lines. The true mystery is why the sole black character, a cop named Whitey Powers, disappears. By the end of the film, Laurence Fishburne inexplicably and yet oh so conveniently vanishes, allowing Penn to get away with murder – at least long enough to enjoy a patriotic parade. "We could rule this town," Penn's wife proudly declares, suddenly possessed by the spirit of Lady Macbeth. "Kings know what to do. They must never be weak."

Revenge was a dish served often in 2003's prestige films. Kill Bill: Vol. 1's story may have been an excuse for kinetic visual displays, but the blond Bride's desire to avenge the death of her unborn child is at its core. A baby to be is also the sentimental heart of Gaspar Noé's Irréversible, which posits a homosexual who rapes a woman as the fetus's barbaric polar opposite. In stylistic terms it should be pointed out that Noé's red-hued journey into the gay (club) Rectum flagrantly rips off the peekaboo degenerate's-party scenes in Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising" and Mick Jagger's droning score for Anger's "Invocation of My Demon Brother." (Deep philosophical insight? More like jealous straight eye for the queer guy.) Even Penn's other Oscar vehicle, 21 Grams, hitches an artily disassembled revenge plot to some offscreen kiddie deaths.

Chickenhawk down

The sanctity of children has long been a rallying point for American conservatives, and in this era, it's verging on mass-media mania. (Ironic, considering the Bush regime's blood work in Iraq.) Mystic River is particularly revealing in this regard. Much of the violence in Eastwood's Boston-set adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel is connected to a prologue: a boy is abducted and sexually abused by some men who pretend to be cops. (Eastwood infers that the pedophile is a priest.) As portrayed by Robbins – who recently referred to President Bush as a "chickenhawk," then issued an apology while insisting he was aware of the term's meaning – the adult version of this violated child is relentlessly downcast, boyish, and pathetic. Verging on mentally disabled, he's damaged goods, particularly when placed next to the film's favored representatives of flawed manhood (Penn and Kevin Bacon).

Yet Robbins's character also resorts to revenge, and it's here that Mystic River's plot line truly becomes murky. One of the film's final revelations is that Robbins's guilt-ridden appearance doesn't stem from a crime his friends and neighbors suspect him of but from an equally murderous attack – on a supposed molester. Eastwood's dramatization of the event seems rushed by disgust at what he's depicting. Yet the male "child" Robbins "rescues" in an urban cruising spot appears to be high-school age. If Mystic River's screenplay said nothing more, it might allow for ambiguity – perhaps Robbins bum-rushed a consensual encounter. But later, detective Bacon identifies the dead man as a convicted pedophile, neatly maintaining the film's presentation of criminal, stigma-laden homosexuality. The message seems clear: this attack on a total stranger is justified.

It's not unreasonable to suggest Eastwood is woefully unaware of complications regarding age of consent in a homophobic society; Mystic River simply upholds the phobia of the larger culture. Likewise, one has to wonder about Noé's decisions regarding what to show, or not to show, in Irréversible. Amped on testosterone, the film's athletic camerawork looks quickly away from the vast array of gay S-M acts that cross its field of vision but stops in its tracks to watch a rape in its entirety. Because that rape is perpetrated by a gay man against a woman, the film's scorecard of violence is worth noting. One of the film's pair of straight male protagonists narrowly averts anal penetration. Meanwhile, one woman is raped and one gay man is bludgeoned to death, both in graphic detail. The mystic river's twist at Irréversible's beginning-end is this: the vengeful protagonists kill the wrong sicko faggot. Noé's not very interested in that guy's story. Funny how cinematic fate works.

Noé's narrative framework connects gay S-M with a pregnant woman's rape. Directors such as Eastwood use homosexual actions to assert heterosexual male dominance and moral superiority. Perhaps only a gay viewpoint can respond with the critical impertinence that is necessary. Last month I e-mailed Philadelphia-based filmmaker and movie obsessive Andrew Repasky McElhinney, asking him to name his favorite films of the year. Living with Michael Jackson, Martin Bashir's documentary trip to Neverland and back, was near the top – one spot below Jacques Nolot's Porn Theatre (which never has a panic attack when faced with the spectacle of a nearby male-male blow job) and a few entries above Irréversible. Mystic River didn't make the list.

Capturing the Jacksons

Turn on your television and you too can live with Michael Jackson. Certainly, the Peter Pan-meets-Howard Hughes aspects of Jackson's numerous pathologies exert a fascination. But the mainstream media's obsession with Bashir's documentary and its subject is another pathology equally worthy of scrutiny. When it became clear last month that child abuse charges would be filed against Jackson, the Comcast lynch mob – Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Glass, and everyone but the creepy narrator of Forensic Files – immediately assembled, and VH1 again reverted to endless loops of Bashir's teleportrait, in which Jackson and his alleged victim (face now digitally scrambled) cuddle and hold hands.

There's a remarkable hypocrisy to mass-media anguished hand-wringing gestures regarding Jackson. Many of the same corporate entities that sexualize adolescents rushed to judge him – and they couldn't stop staring at Bashir's queasy but G-rated evidence. Jackson's own guilt or innocence almost becomes moot when one ponders VH1's desire to broadcast, again and again, the spectacle of him "sharing a love." Need we be reminded that functioning as a conduit of the public's imagination is a major part of Jackson's job description as a star? (Romancing children is another thing pop stars do – Jackson's doing it too literally for people's comfort.) In the wake of '80s child-molesting witch hunts and the O.J. Simpson debacle of the '90s, Fox News-style dedication to Jackson becomes even more disturbing.

Viewers are privvy to copious videotaped footage of an accused child molester in his home. They watch and wonder: did he do it? This Living with Michael Jackson scenario also applies to the most discussed documentary of this year, Capturing the Friedmans. Coincidence or trend? David Friedman's urge to chronicle his household's breakdown in the face of accusations against father Arnold and youngest son Jesse is more than understandable, both as a counterattack against media coverage and because of video's novelty factor during the '80s. Yet at some point – a car ride to the courthouse for sentencing? – eldest brother David almost seems to have fallen inescapably through the VHS looking glass, a problem Andrew Jarecki's movie has probably magnified.

When Capturing the Friedmans opened in New York City this summer, the Village Voice heralded its arrival with a cover story by Debbie Nathan, who wrote extensively about childhood sexual abuse hysteria for the Village Voice in the late '80s, when mania about such cases reached a peak. Her reportage about the cases of Kelly Michaels and others balanced detailed facts against frequently outrageous claims. Nathan appears briefly in Jarecki's film, offering a window into the climate of the times – a window Jarecki rarely travels through himself, preferring to take voyage after voyage through the TV screen and VCR lens of the Friedman home instead.

Capturing the Friedmans' tag line is "Who do you believe?," but I'd wager – in fact, I know – that many people left the theater asking the question Did he do it? instead, and the answer they give is yes. Both that answer and the question are simplistic to the point of being wrong. They're connected to a reality TV-era viewer's seeing-is-(dis)believing sense of entitlement about judging "life," an entitlement Jarecki's documentary embraces as much as critiques. Jarecki's debut feature might be one of the most disturbing and sad portraits of an American family in film history. But as a nonfiction movie about the issue of child molestation, one could argue that Capturing the Friedmans adopts spectatordom to a degree that does a disservice to the family in the title.

Johnny Ray Huston's list of best as-yet-undistributed films seen in 2003 (in alphabetical order)

1. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, USA)

2. Ford Transit (Hany Abu-Assad, Palestine/Israel)

3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)

4. I-San Special (Mingmongkol Sonakul, Thailand)

5. Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-Ok, South Korea)

6. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, USA)

7. Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)

8. A Thousand Months (Faouzi Bensaïdi, Belgium/France/Morocco)

9. Vibrator (Ryuichi Hiroki, Japan)