Bill Paxton in Shanghai Calling.

With binoculars trained on revising the immigration laws in Obama’s next four years, the new focus is on China. Shanghai Calling is an interesting U.S.-Chinese co-production filled with beautiful locations and colorful characters that reverses the trend. This time, the ocean is still crowded with immigrants heading for a foreign country seeking more pay, better jobs and an improved quality of life. But now the immigrants are Americans, and their destination is China.

Written and directed with flair by Daniel Hsia, this refreshing look at a cosmopolitan Shanghai we’ve never seen before centers on Sam Chao (played with warmth, confusion and humor by the charismatic Daniel Henney), a smart New York lawyer—handsome, single and on the eve of his 30th birthday—who finds himself reluctantly dispatched to modern-day Shanghai for a three-month assignment to mastermind a licensing deal involving a miraculous new touchpad smartphone that will bring his firm a billion-dollar income. From the minute he steps off the jetway, Sam is in a head-on collision with the culture, food, traffic jams, strange business customs and advanced technology of a country that is far from the exotic wonderland of old Hollywood movies. Sam may be Chinese-American, but he can’t speak one word of Chinese, and he’s never been to China in his life. In fact, he’s never been above 79th Street. Despite the help of a clever legal assistant named Fang Fang (Zhu Zhu) and a pretty blond expatriate single mom named Amanda (Eliza Coupe), a relocation expert hired to settle him into a beautiful glass apartment building still under construction, Sam is prepared for the worst. But the first thing he learns is that instead of a hardship post for failures and outcasts, sophisticated Shanghai is a glittering new gold-key outpost for bankers, executives, engineers, product manufacturers and other U.S. businessmen lured to a new frontier to get rich quick. Think California Gold Rush with chopsticks.

Progress is always accompanied by inventive new crimes, and the Chinese are particularly adept at working every angle. Sam’s expertise in copyrights, trademarks and patents seals his client’s deal immediately, but before you can say “pass the fried rice,” the mobile invention is stolen, duplicated and on the street selling out in mass production. It’s a snafu that almost costs him his job, delays his stay in Asia indefinitely and plunges him into frustration and stress. The movie follows its hero through a labyrinth of ill-advised attempts to fix his mistakes with the help of Fang Fang, the straitlaced law student who works a second job as a waitress in a cocktail lounge, a shady problem-solver named Awesome Wang (played by Chinese comic Geng Le), a horny American English teacher (Sean Gallagher) and an American jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur (the always-reliable Bill Paxton), who owns everything from a bar to a fried chicken franchise. Meanwhile, director Mr. Hsia takes the viewer on a guided tour of Shanghai’s out-of-the-way expatriate hangouts, from karaoke and tapas bars to reflexology parlors and neon-lit floating barges. There’s even an American section of the city called Americatown, the foreign equivalent to our Chinatown, where the mayor (also Mr. Paxton) is a carpetbagger who is an expert in trade subsidies. In addition to providing a crash course in the unique strategies of American-Chinese diplomatic relations (you’d better read up before you go there), Shanghai Calling introduces more crooks than a three-card-monte racket on Wall Street.

It is said that Shanghai changes constantly. The Chinese-American lawyer must either learn to change with it or admit defeat. The half-Korean actor-model Daniel Henney (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) surmounts even the occasional cliché with so much appeal that viewers will find it inviting and adventurous to change along with him. The ensemble cast of eccentric character actors is natural and without contrivance. The camera work is beautiful, and the script is mostly crisp even though the spoken English without subtitles is sometimes as confusing as the Mandarin. As the narrative builds, the movie shows how the harassed and impatient Chinese-American finds tolerance, acceptance of others, inner salvation and love. A lot for one movie to negotiate, not always successfully, but the enjoyment factor is obvious.

rreed@observer.com

SHANGHAI CALLING

Running Time 98 minutes

Written and Directed by Daniel Hsia

Starring Daniel Henney, Eliza Coupe and Bill Paxton

On March 25, Variety's Michael Schneider reported that Ian Somerhalder, who played the overly-tweased stipple-bearded Boone on Lost, had been tapped to co-star in an ABC pilot called The Vampire Diaries. According to Variety, the show "centers on a woman who falls for two vampire brothers—one good and one evil."

Add this to the list that includes the just purchased script by Marc Haimes for Elevator Men, which The Hollywood Reporter's Jay A. Fernandez described as "a less romanticized look at the human-vampire interactions"; last week's U.K. release of the delicately named Lesbian Vampire Killers; and the soon-to-be released adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Informers.

But wait, there's more. A lot more. How about Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's planned adaptation of Dark Shadows, which ran on TV from 1966 to 1971; the second season of HBO's True Blood (itself based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris); and of course, New Moon, the highly anticipated (by your 15-year-old cousin) sequel to Twilight, which grossed  $191,397,304 at the box office last year.

Since those films are drawn from kids' books (if you're really prepared to argue that these books aren't just for kids, you might want to take a cold, hard look at yourself in the mirror at Forever 21 or Abercrombie & Fitch and admit you're taking this Rejuvenile, Up With Grups extended adolescence thing a little too far—being a grownup is scary, but not so much that it's acceptable to read and act and dress and text and twitter like a teenager), we can expect several more movies in this cycle with Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, Midmorning, Noon, Just After Noon, Tea Time, A Little Before Supper, 10:23 p.m. and Geez, It's Almost Midnight on the horizon.

As we speak, some enterprising hack is probably pitching a vampire sitcom called My Wife Suck, about an uptight regular guy who marries a hot—but bloodthirsty—lady vampire. ("It's Dharma & Greg meets The Munsters!")

Enough. Time to drive a stake in the heart of this trend. From now on, there can be no more vampires in pop culture. If we're honest, there hasn't been anything truly scary about vampires since 1987 when Bill Paxton ate the scenery (and several of his costars) in Near Dark, and the outré psychosexual subtext of drinking blood (you know, "blood lust" and all) has been overextended since before Anne Rice interviewed her first vampire in 1977.

It's time to develop a replacement for this surfeit of bloodsuckers who have lately come to seem so sallow, so drained of their precious life force. (Have you seen Twilight's Robert Pattinson on the cover of GQ this month? He looks as burned out as Jeff Spicoli hitting his own head with a shoe in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

Vampires are selling so high right now that we're at serious risk of the bubble bursting: Who can forget the great Faeries boom and bust of the late '90s? It's bloody well time for a new quasi-supernatural being to come to the forefront of the culture.

And no, that being is not a zombie, no matter how many books Mel Brooks' son puts out, how cleverly someone appropriates a Jane Austen classic, or how many big budget Will Smith movies the culture industry foists on us. (Not to mention all those "zombie banks" in the news.)

Honestly, does anyone really like zombies? Is there anyone out there who doesn't want to punch a zombie in its rotten mouth? Zombies are so stupid, so devoid of any identifiable traits, so boring in their monomaniacal pursuit of braaaaaiiiins! (fine, you want brains—shut up, already), that the thought of reading about those idiots or watching them drag their gimpy legs across a movie screen (much less tuning in to a sitcom featuring an uptight regular guy who marries a hot—but necrotic—lady zombie) makes me want to put a bullet in my own head.

Here are some suggestions to replace vampires (and those goddamn zombies) in the pop consciousness of young people and older people who should really stop considering themselves part of the pop consciousness of young people. (Seriously: Pull up your pants.)

Freaks

Sure, HBO failed to make Carnivàle into a hit on the level of The Sopranos (or even K Street), and Comedy Central's Freak Show failed to have as many seasons as Drawn Together, but there's a lot to be mined in the old midway. What better way to dramatize the awkwardness of adolescence (our bodies going all screwy, hair sprouting all over, those damn lobster-claws and tails) than through the distorted funhouse mirror of the carnival freak?

Start with Katherine Dunn's 1989 novel Geek Love, which Warner Brothers has the rights to and which has drawn interest from Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton and others. Since Hollywood is remake crazy, how about a new version of Tod Browning's Freaks? That thing is still creepy 77 years after its release. ("One of us, one of us!")

Of course, you'd have to remove the whiff of Victoriana and the tacit judgment or condemnation of the deformed or differently abled ("freak" is a pretty harsh term), but maybe freaks can be recast as X-Men and writers and filmmakers can play up the triumphant exceptionalism implied in the title of Daniel P. Mannix's book We Who Are Not As Others. Freaks shouldn't be seen as objects of our derision: They should be objects of our awe. As Olympia Binewski, the narrator of Ms. Dunn's book, declares, "A true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born." (You hear that, stupid zombie-bite victims who turn into even stupider zombies?)

Vikings

Here's a chance for culture creators to really get in on the ground floor of the next-next. What better way to make sense of the just-ended era of rapacity and literal plunder than by dramatizing these bands of berserker brothers? Think of it as a chance for American Psychoesque satires (Scandinavian Psycho?) and big budget Braveheart type epics. If only Orson Welles were alive to do the voice-over. (Really, who remembers Erik, The Viking? Tim Robbins probably hopes you don't.)

This month's L'it Boy Wells Tower kicks it off with a story about Vikings in his new collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. According to Slate's Juliet Lapidos, the story centers around "marauding Vikings who attack a neighboring island without provocation. Although Harald, the narrator, feels he has outgrown the whole rape-and-pillage game."

Mr. Towers' publisher has even commissioned an animated short by Chris Roth based on the story to entice readers. (Mr. Tower also has a story that involves a carnival.)

Then there are the rumblings about Kenneth Branagh's adaption of the comic book Thor, which may star True Blood's towheaded vampire prince Alexander Skarsgård. (What, Thor wasn't a Viking, you say? Are you proud of yourself for knowing that?) One downside of Viking-related projects is a lack of diversity in casting, but, hey, what about a hilarious Moor-Viking buddy film?

Bigfoots (Bigfeet?)

Sasquatches have been percolating up through the culture since Tenacious D sang an ode to the big fella in 1999, McSweeney's published a journal by the name of Yeti Researcher in 2005, and a year later The New Yorker ran Tony Earley's short story "The Cryptozoologist".

As 30 Rock's recent Harry and the Henderson's riff showed, everyone has an inner bigfoot. And what are bigfeet if not cousins of the wild things from Where the Wild Things Are? (C'mon, work with me here!) With the right positioning, these guys could be big ... ger.

Consider this just a partial list. The world is full of amazing, improbable creatures (Krampuses! Golems! Log Cabin Republicans!) just waiting for their turn to replace vampires at bookstores, multiplexes, and on TV.

It's daybreak for you and your sons. Time to get your pale, bony asses back to Transylvania—and take your moronic zombie buddies with you. Be careful not trip over any stakes, suckers.

In a VIP room, Mr. Paxton was relating a story to Mr. Obama’s California campaign manager, Mitchell Schwartz, about an awkward encounter he had with real-life Mormon Mitt Romney.

“He gave me what I call the heave-ho handshake,” said Mr. Paxton, taking Mr. Schwartz’ hand and slinging himself forward to show the way Mr. Romney had rudely dispatched him. Mr. Schwartz, wearing a security-clearance pin on his lapel, laughed and matched Mr. Paxton’s handshake impression with one of his own, making fun of Bill Clinton’s roving eye.

Mr. Paxton offered his services to the campaign, saying he would appear on television, hit the streets or do whatever else needed doing. Mr. Schwartz added him to the list.

In California, celebrity is the companion piece of presidential politics, with the Democratic candidates themselves advertised and evaluated like box office rivals.

This week, as the California primary emerged as the hyper-competitive lodestar of the Super Tuesday states, picking a Democratic nominee became the only project with any buzz.

The Democratic debate last week at the Kodak Theater had all the trappings of an awards show. As Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton performed onstage, the cameras cut to Lou Gossett Jr. and Steven Spielberg and Jason Alexander nodding meaningfully at their words. Fran Drescher, at one point, gave a thumbs-up when Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton pretended to like one another.

When the debate ended, the celebrities spilled into the red-carpeted lobbies while above them, on the third floor, reporters heard from campaign advisers and surrogates in a makeshift spin room. Jonathan Pontell, a professional public speaker with Kato Kalin-like orange hair, instructed a woman in a short red dress (“My name is Citizen Kate, I have my own Web log!” she said) on how to sneak down to the lower level to, as he put it, “schmooze the Hollywood socialites and stars and directors.”

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco and a Clinton supporter with a Hollywood jaw line and slicked hair, talked about the “buzz, energy, youth, vibrancy” that celebrities lent candidates in Los Angeles. “There is an edginess. All those things. The creative index of life. There is a vibe that’s created, whether you like it or not, when Barack is there with an Oprah Winfrey. There is a vibe that’s created when there is a Leo.”

“We want to see celebrities,” explained Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as he slipped out the back door.

On the lower levels, the celebrities critiqued the evening’s performances.

“Especially as an actor, you read a lot into people’s behavior and how they deal with uncomfortable moments,” said Richard Schiff, a member of the president’s cabinet on The West Wing. He added, “It is better than any reality television out here.”

“What do you think?” he said to his friend Steven Weber, who played one of the brothers on the 1990’s sitcom Wings, and who had stepped into an elevator with him.

“Politicians are performers, they have to act their messages,” said Mr. Weber. “They have to embrace a text.”

Inside the club for the post-debate Obama fund-raiser, Mr. Obama first shook hands with supporters in a special reception room, where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pushed aside shorter supporters to get some face time with the candidate. Mr. Obama then addressed a larger crowd from a stage in front of a giant banner that said “Change.”

“And by the way, when I made that proposal, I didn’t do it in front of the Sierra Club, I didn’t do it in front of this crowd in Hollywood,” he said. “I did it in Detroit in front of the automakers.”

He was, unsurprisingly, a hit. Quentin Tarantino, who wore a snakeskin suit and long pointy shoes, clapped and hooted exuberantly. Greg Germann, who acted on the show Ally McBeal, said Mr. Obama “digs deep.” Joe Mantegna, who described himself as undecided, said the whole town had been energized by the Democratic race.

“I’m old enough to have been around for Kennedy and the whole thing and this reminds me of that,” he said of Mr. Obama. “It’s kind of like Camelot.”

There was a lot of that.

Mr. Paxton, who had arrived late, made his way into a private room decorated with Spanish tiles and wound up talking to an audience of entertainment lawyers, lighting designers, bloggers and publicists about a project he was working on for HBO, about John F. Kennedy’s last days.

As he made comparisons to the charisma of Mr. Obama and Kennedy, R. J. Cutler, who produced The War Room, a documentary about Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, nodded in agreement.

Mr. Cutler, referring to the effectiveness of this year’s Clinton war room against Mr. Obama, said, “I think they can stop him, but imagine if they didn’t stop him—imagine what world that would be like.”

Later, Mr. Paxton led a group of Obama supporters out of the club down the block to Katsuya, a new Philippe Starck-designed Japanese restaurant. Along the way, he described why he had committed to Mr. Obama, who he heard speak for the first time at a fund-raiser about three weeks earlier.

“I turned off to politicians and the whole scene for so long, and then this guy comes along,” he said, as he walked over a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to Red Buttons. He said he was depressed by the cynicism his children expressed about the office of the president. “That’s horrible,” he said. “Idealism is the bastion of youth.”

“But this guy, he feels presidential,” he said.

A few paparazzi stationed outside the restaurant snapped his picture.

“I can see him in the world theater. I can see him with world dignitaries,” he continued. “Again, I don’t need to do this stuff. I got a nice career. I don’t need to lay it on the line for anybody. I just find that I want to get behind this guy, I really do.”

“Can we get in here?” he said, walking up to the hostess of the restaurant, which seemed booked solid. “Thanks.”

A little while later, a Japanese woman sat Mr. Paxton’s party in a small, private room partitioned from the rest of the eatery by a white curtain. They ate salmon with caviar, beef and foie gras, onion-encased halibut and a variety of sushi.

“All of us are sitting around the table tonight for one reason,” said Mr. Paxton to his fellow Obama supporters. “And that’s pretty cool.”

Late in the night, as Mr. Paxton drove through Silver Lake and Echo Park and detoured to a small hill with a view of downtown Los Angeles, he pointed out buildings in front of which Buster Keaton performed his pratfalls, and streets where Chinatown was filmed, and where the “best tacos in North America” are served, and where you would not want your car to break down. Throughout the tour, he kept coming back to his admiration for Mr. Obama, repeating, “Idealism is the ba
stion of youth.”

ON THE MORNING of Feb. 1, Hillary Clinton began campaigning with an entourage of supportive California elected officials, eliciting roars of approval in sprawling gyms and convention centers in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose from the largest and loudest and youngest crowds she has drawn this entire campaign season. At her last stop of the day, in San Francisco, Mrs. Clinton deployed her own celebrity endorsements.

An effusive, now-white-haired Ted Danson introduced her on the stage of the ornate Orpheum Theatre as a “sympathetic, warm, wise, beautiful woman.” His wife, the actress Mary Steenburgen, wore a black dress and shimmering black boots up to her knees and testified that Mrs. Clinton’s “belly laugh is more raucous and dirty than mine, which is saying something.”

When the surrogates stepped off the stage, Mrs. Clinton stood alone and delivered a detail-packed policy speech.

For her last event in California, the following morning, in a gym at the State University of California in East Los Angeles, the Clinton show started with live music performed by the Mariachi Divas (organizers asked them to leave before Mrs. Clinton actually spoke) and celebrity warm-up acts.

Sally Field, dressed in a beige jacket and glasses, pronounced herself blown away. “I have been overwhelmed by how precise and specific her answers are,” she said.

Bradley Whitford, another West Wing actor, said, “I’m supporting Hillary because she has a dirty uniform.” Magic Johnson declared that with Mrs. Clinton as president, “all the world will be happy because all the world will know that America is open for business.”

“We have an amazing constellation of California stars right here,” Mrs. Clinton declared.

After the event, J. T Mollner, a 29-year-old director and Clinton supporter wearing a wool cap and striped sweater, said, “Celebrities give candidates a hip factor. Unfortunately, that is necessary to win.”

After Mrs. Clinton left California, her campaign notified reporters that her biggest celebrity supporter, Bill Clinton, would return before Tuesday’s voting.

AT BARS AND house parties throughout Los Angeles, the beer-fueled conversation focused as much on the tightening California race between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama as on new “projects” or meetings taken. Even paparazzi magnets like Lindsay Lohan, who ate a bowl of soup at Toast on Third Street Saturday afternoon, were for the most part left alone. (“I’m not sure yet,” she said when asked—annoyingly, by this reporter—who she planned to support.)

At a party of independent filmmakers on the night of Feb. 2, one woman said she was sick of everyone talking about Mr. Obama. Another woman who managed writers marveled at Mrs. Clinton’s endurance, but wasn’t sure she wanted to see her in the White House again. A former assistant to Oprah Winfrey stressed how enthusiastic her old boss was for Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

On the morning of Feb. 3, a Sunday, the full power of Ms. Winfrey’s celebrity revealed itself inside the Pauley Pavilion at UCLA, where she was set to make an appearance with Michelle Obama and Caroline Kennedy. As thousands of women filed in—the actor Michael York lazily held an Obama sign in the bleachers—a Jumbotron above the stage showed a music video featuring Scarlett Johansson, Common, will.i.am and Fresh Prince actress Tatyana Ali singing along to Mr. Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech.

When Ms. Winfrey appeared, dressed in a white shirt and black jacket and pants, the thousands of self-proclaimed “Obama mamas” broke out into pandemonium.

“We are free from the constrictions of gender and race and we can vote as we believe,” she said, adding, “I’m just following my own truth. And that truth has led me to Barack Obama.”

The audience, to judge by its raucous reaction, was impressed.

“She’s an important person and has quite a following,” said Chris Oshima, a judicial assistant from Los Angeles who was in the crowd. “She’s the embodiment of following your own dreams and your own thoughts.”

A few minutes later Ms. Obama came out and spoke, and then, in a surprise, so did Maria Shriver.

But first, Ms. Obama had another tinsel-wrapped present to give.

“Let’s give it up,” she said, “for Mr. Stevie Wonder!”

Like Macbeth, Superman may be a role that is always jinxed. (See Christopher Reeve.) But the downfall and lurid death of George Reeves, who to millions of kids growing up in the 1950’s was an action-hero comic-book icon, was creepy even by Hollywood standards, forever tainted by a special kind of tabloid poison. After playing one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors in Gone with the Wind, the promising career he banked on never ignited. And after changing from mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent into the corny caped crusader from Krypton in thousands of convenient phone booths in 104 cheesy episodes of the Superman TV show, Reeves was depressed, disillusioned and down for the count. One June night in 1959, his naked body was found dead of a single gunshot wound in the upstairs bedroom of his Hollywood home, a Hollywood has-been at 45. It went down as an apparent suicide, but many criminal theories have been floating around for nearly 50 years, and this impressively researched movie explores them all.

Like parallel lines, director Allen Coulter ( The Sopranos) and writer Paul Bernbaum blend the facts of Reeves’ life with the investigation of a fictional gumshoe named Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) and find enough illuminating similarities to make a film that sizzles like bacon in a hot skillet. On the TV screen, Reeves was a big, overgrown Boy Scout, coming out of his bulging tights in all the wrong places, working for truth, justice and the American Way in black and white. In reality, he was not loyal, trustworthy, brave, helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty or a straight shooter. He was broken, troubled, sleazy and desperate—not a player, not even close enough to the Hollywood action to be an observer.

Simo, as tough as Bogart, is a deadbeat dad working out of a seedy motel room, feeding off the scraps that respectable cops wouldn’t touch. When Reeves’ mother (Lois Smith) refuses to believe her son was a suicide, Simo smells a murder case that will make him a star. And there is evidence that he might be onto something. The real detective, Jerry Geisler, died before he could prove anything, but the movie doesn’t hide from name-dropping. Among the suspects: Reeves’ jealous longtime lover, Toni Mannix (Diane Lane, luscious even with bags and dewlaps); her dangerous husband, Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), ex-mobster and MGM executive; Reeves’ fiancée, Lenore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), who was inside the house when the gun went off; and tough MGM publicist Howard Strickling (Joe Spano), who “fixed” every scandal in town for a price. With so many colorful suspects, variable motives, contradictory clues, and period sets and costumes dripping with florid 50’s details, the setup for a perfect crime thriller is guaranteed. With Rita Hayworth dancing at Ciro’s and the Saturday-afternoon cowboy serials so cheap that everyone on the set rode the same horse, Hollywoodland evokes some of the same scuzzy glamour as L.A. Confidential.

In the end, the struggling actor, flying through the air in his Superman tights but getting nowhere, and the seedy investigator, hungry for publicity, money and self-respect while digging his own grave, merge into one hopeless footnote to Hollywood infamy. A terrific cast pumps suspense into the nervous system of this movie like adrenalin. No one is what he seems. Even the mother has a hidden agenda, pretending to preserve George’s integrity but driven by greed to hold onto the spillover from his klieg light as long as she can. The whole movie is a dour comment on the dark side of make-believe.

Who killed Superman? If it was suicide, why was one fatal shot fired from his revolver, with three bullets found near the body and no fingerprints on the gun? The mystery continues. Regardless of my own theory, I will always be left with the final wrenching shot of George Reeves himself, played with pain and sympathy by Ben Affleck—leaving his guests and wearily climbing the stairs alone to his death in a bathrobe, wearing the encroaching ravages of the aging process like scars.

Big Bust

If Bill Paxton had already charged his battery with the career-making leap to stardom he’s now enjoying as the hunky, harassed, overextended and Viagra-chomping polygamist in the HBO series Big Love, I bet he would never have said “yes” to an empty and moribund little item called Haven. But to be fair, this forgettable indie-prod—from the Cayman Islands, of all places, and directed by a native Caymanian named Frank Flowers—was in the can long before the versatile and underrated Mr. Paxton ever read the first script for Big Love. Introduced (to no applause) at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival, it was given up for dead. But here it is, riding in on the crest of Mr. Paxton’s fresh popularity as television’s most oversexed new leading man. In Haven, he doesn’t do anything wrong; he’s just wasted.

A meandering crime drama about murder and money-laundering in the tax-free Caymans, the film is woven from the interconnected stories of Americans, British expatriates and local island inhabitants, told at a snail’s pace through a confusing snarl of flashbacks and flash-forwards that keep you wondering where you are and why. Mr. Paxton plays an unscrupulous Miami businessman who flees to the palm-fringed paradise to avoid federal prosecution, with his precocious 18-year-old daughter Pippa (Agnes Bruckner) and a million dollars in tow. While she’s getting sick from sampling the local drugs, her path crosses those of a shady lawyer (Stephen Dillane) and a local junior G-man (Victor Rasuk) who are both planning to steal the undeclared fortune her father is hiding illegally. The film’s muddled emotional center, however, is the passionate and forbidden sex between a vicious thug’s beautiful daughter (Zoe Saldana) and a pouting fisherman, played by the mystifyingly overexposed and undeniably untalented Orlando Bloom. Their ill-fated secret affair leads to anger, vengeance, revenge, betrayals and a crime so violent that the parrots fly screaming into the banana trees while the audience heads for the exit doors.

In a tiresome attempt to emulate Traffic and Crash, the film jumps around in time, with some scenes repeated for no reason, but even when a lot seems to be going on at once, there’s no serious stab at characterization or plot development. Not that it matters: Most of the characters speak in such a bland patois that you can’t decipher what they’re saying anyway. Employing a docudrama style, writer-director Flowers tries to show the evil lurking beneath the surface tranquility of beautiful beaches, exotic cocktails and vacation villas with ocean views. According to Haven, the Caymans are bouncing off the coral reefs with drug problems, racial hypocrisy, domestic beatings and vehicular homicides, and everyone comes to a bad end there. For protection, you obviously need more than coconut-oil suntan lotion. I don’t think you’d want a timeshare.

Some of the performances are vivid—especially Bill Paxton, who convincingly balances the roles of white-collar criminal and doting, clueless father, and Stephen Dillane, whose calm and genial attorney demeanor masks a savage cruelty. Appearing in one flop after another, the allure of Orlando Bloom is wearing out fast. With the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to keep him alive, his teenage glam appeal seems incurable, but with any luck, his work in Haven as a brooding beachcomber Heathcliff could finally provide the antidote.

Like Macbeth, Superman may be a role that is always jinxed. (See Christopher Reeve.) But the downfall and lurid death of George Reeves, who to millions of kids growing up in the 1950’s was an action-hero comic-book icon, was creepy even by Hollywood standards, forever tainted by a special kind of tabloid poison. After playing one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors in Gone with the Wind, the promising career he banked on never ignited. And after changing from mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent into the corny caped crusader from Krypton in thousands of convenient phone booths in 104 cheesy episodes of the Superman TV show, Reeves was depressed, disillusioned and down for the count. One June night in 1959, his naked body was found dead of a single gunshot wound in the upstairs bedroom of his Hollywood home, a Hollywood has-been at 45. It went down as an apparent suicide, but many criminal theories have been floating around for nearly 50 years, and this impressively researched movie explores them all.

Like parallel lines, director Allen Coulter (The Sopranos) and writer Paul Bernbaum blend the facts of Reeves’ life with the investigation of a fictional gumshoe named Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) and find enough illuminating similarities to make a film that sizzles like bacon in a hot skillet. On the TV screen, Reeves was a big, overgrown Boy Scout, coming out of his bulging tights in all the wrong places, working for truth, justice and the American Way in black and white. In reality, he was not loyal, trustworthy, brave, helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty or a straight shooter. He was broken, troubled, sleazy and desperate—not a player, not even close enough to the Hollywood action to be an observer.

Simo, as tough as Bogart, is a deadbeat dad working out of a seedy motel room, feeding off the scraps that respectable cops wouldn’t touch. When Reeves’ mother (Lois Smith) refuses to believe her son was a suicide, Simo smells a murder case that will make him a star. And there is evidence that he might be onto something. The real detective, Jerry Geisler, died before he could prove anything, but the movie doesn’t hide from name-dropping. Among the suspects: Reeves’ jealous longtime lover, Toni Mannix (Diane Lane, luscious even with bags and dewlaps); her dangerous husband, Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), ex-mobster and MGM executive; Reeves’ fiancée, Lenore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), who was inside the house when the gun went off; and tough MGM publicist Howard Strickling (Joe Spano), who “fixed” every scandal in town for a price. With so many colorful suspects, variable motives, contradictory clues, and period sets and costumes dripping with florid 50’s details, the setup for a perfect crime thriller is guaranteed. With Rita Hayworth dancing at Ciro’s and the Saturday-afternoon cowboy serials so cheap that everyone on the set rode the same horse, Hollywoodland evokes some of the same scuzzy glamour as L.A. Confidential.

In the end, the struggling actor, flying through the air in his Superman tights but getting nowhere, and the seedy investigator, hungry for publicity, money and self-respect while digging his own grave, merge into one hopeless footnote to Hollywood infamy. A terrific cast pumps suspense into the nervous system of this movie like adrenalin. No one is what he seems. Even the mother has a hidden agenda, pretending to preserve George’s integrity but driven by greed to hold onto the spillover from his klieg light as long as she can. The whole movie is a dour comment on the dark side of make-believe.

Who killed Superman? If it was suicide, why was one fatal shot fired from his revolver, with three bullets found near the body and no fingerprints on the gun? The mystery continues. Regardless of my own theory, I will always be left with the final wrenching shot of George Reeves himself, played with pain and sympathy by Ben Affleck—leaving his guests and wearily climbing the stairs alone to his death in a bathrobe, wearing the encroaching ravages of the aging process like scars.

Big Bust

If Bill Paxton had already charged his battery with the career-making leap to stardom he’s now enjoying as the hunky, harassed, overextended and Viagra-chomping polygamist in the HBO series Big Love, I bet he would never have said “yes” to an empty and moribund little item called Haven. But to be fair, this forgettable indie-prod—from the Cayman Islands, of all places, and directed by a native Caymanian named Frank Flowers—was in the can long before the versatile and underrated Mr. Paxton ever read the first script for Big Love. Introduced (to no applause) at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival, it was given up for dead. But here it is, riding in on the crest of Mr. Paxton’s fresh popularity as television’s most oversexed new leading man. In Haven, he doesn’t do anything wrong; he’s just wasted.

A meandering crime drama about murder and money-laundering in the tax-free Caymans, the film is woven from the interconnected stories of Americans, British expatriates and local island inhabitants, told at a snail’s pace through a confusing snarl of flashbacks and flash-forwards that keep you wondering where you are and why. Mr. Paxton plays an unscrupulous Miami businessman who flees to the palm-fringed paradise to avoid federal prosecution, with his precocious 18-year-old daughter Pippa (Agnes Bruckner) and a million dollars in tow. While she’s getting sick from sampling the local drugs, her path crosses those of a shady lawyer (Stephen Dillane) and a local junior G-man (Victor Rasuk) who are both planning to steal the undeclared fortune her father is hiding illegally. The film’s muddled emotional center, however, is the passionate and forbidden sex between a vicious thug’s beautiful daughter (Zoe Saldana) and a pouting fisherman, played by the mystifyingly overexposed and undeniably untalented Orlando Bloom. Their ill-fated secret affair leads to anger, vengeance, revenge, betrayals and a crime so violent that the parrots fly screaming into the banana trees while the audience heads for the exit doors.

In a tiresome attempt to emulate Traffic and Crash, the film jumps around in time, with some scenes repeated for no reason, but even when a lot seems to be going on at once, there’s no serious stab at characterization or plot development. Not that it matters: Most of the characters speak in such a bland patois that you can’t decipher what they’re saying anyway. Employing a docudrama style, writer-director Flowers tries to show the evil lurking beneath the surface tranquility of beautiful beaches, exotic cocktails and vacation villas with ocean views. According to Haven, the Caymans are bouncing off the coral reefs with drug problems, racial hypocrisy, domestic beatings and vehicular homicides, and everyone comes to a bad end there. For protection, you obviously need more than coconut-oil suntan lotion. I don’t think you’d want a timeshare.

Some of the performances are vivid—especially Bill Paxton, who convincingly balances the roles of white-collar criminal and doting, clueless father, and Stephen Dillane, whose calm and genial attorney demeanor masks a savage cruelty. Appearing in one flop after another, the allure of Orlando Bloom is wearing out fast. With the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to keep him alive, his teenage glam appeal seems incurable, but with any luck, his work in Haven as a brooding beachcomber Heathcliff could finally provide the antidote.

10,000 Nazis Under the Sea

I've given it some thought and decided one of the things that is sorely missing from the plethora of dull, second-string turkeys we've been getting at the movies lately is obvious. What we need is an old-fashioned, action-packed, nail-biting World War II submarine epic. You know, like Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot , Dick Powell's The Enemy Below, with Robert Mitchum, or Robert Wise's Run Silent , Run Deep, with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster-one of those underwater suspense dramas full of periscopes and torpedoes and enemy convoys and only minutes to live or find an ocean grave. The void is now filled with U-571 , a terrifyingly real tale of undersea adventure set in the cold, dark depths of the fathomless Atlantic; it grabs you by the throat and doesn't ease up until the final credits begin to roll. Directed with maximum fury and unbearable tension by Jonathan Mostow, U-571 is one of the surprise hits of the new year. At the end of the packed screening I attended, the audience was cheering.

The year is 1942, Hitler has dispatched German submarines to the east coast of America, and the U.S. Navy has been powerless to crack the U-boat codes that are destroying scores of Allied ships. This is the story of a crew of American sailors on a dangerous secret mission to disguise one of their own boats as a German sub in order to locate and board another German sub containing the vital Enigma machines and decoding devices necessary to win the war. It's a Trojan horse operation that almost works under the command of a brave and honored skipper, played by Bill Paxton, but one thing goes wrong.

Captain Paxton and his crew reach the German boat, confiscate the code books and the Enigma machine and, like all humane Americans, try to transfer the prisoners to their own vessel, but in the middle of the operation the daring plan backfires. The U.S. sub is destroyed, forcing a handful of survivors back on board the foreign sub, where all the operating procedures are in German. With only one torpedo left, no defense system, the captain dead and most of the engines busted, the survivors set course for the friendly coast of England with an inexperienced lieutenant (Matthew McConaughey) as the new skipper. As the sub passes through German waters, it's one terrifying close call after another. Attacked by enemy dive bombers from the air and a Nazi destroyer underwater, the skipper knows if the torpedoes don't kill them, the shock waves will. It's a great role for Mr. McConaughey, who becomes a leader by accident and is forced to either blow up the destroyer or make sure none of his men survive to be captured.

Credit the director for avoiding clichés (no moonlight exchanges on the bridge to peruse the meaning of life and death) and building maximum tension in the claustrophobic chambers of what really looks like the bowels of a submarine. It's remarkable that so little of the action is shot in those usually annoying close-ups that plague movies filmed in tight enclosures. You actually know what is happening everywhere at once, and the blood and panic becomes your own. This requires great acting, and the task force assembled for the job performs admirably. The ensemble work is of the first order.

It's a shame to lose Bill Paxton so early because his strength gives the film so much of its center (and what's a Navy film without a captain everybody loves?), as well as Jon Bon Jovi and David Keith, but a finely tuned cast takes over with guts and brio. Harvey Keitel is marvelous as the oldest man on board, a veteran of World War I who knows how to follow orders from anyone who outranks him, even a rookie he mistrusts. The excellent Jake Weber, who stole Meet Joe Black right out from under Brad Pitt as the snobby, rejected "other guy," is memorable as the unshakable intelligence officer who masterminds the rendezvous with the stranded German sub that goes haywire. And the younger sailors, barely out of high school and never dreaming they could land in such a dire situation on their first assignment, are played by a tight ensemble, each with his own personality, all depending on instinct for survival, doing the job they were trained for under stress. Jack Noseworthy is especially good as the radioman who studied German at Brown University, and so is T.C. Carson as the cook and the only black man on the vessel.

An added plus is the set by Götz Weidner, who designed Das Boot and knows the territory. Although the story is fictional, it is based on several historic incidents involving the recovery of actual Enigma machines and coding devices in the North Atlantic that changed the course of the war, and the film is dedicated to the heroes who lost their lives at sea on similar missions. In the end, only seven men are still alive in a lifeboat, and they're the bravest sailors ever depicted.

My one grouse is that the film does not match photos of the terrific actors with the roles they play so convincingly. As the credits rolled, people all around me were asking, "Which one was Jon Bon Jovi?" "Who played the newlywed guy who lost his life before he consummated his own marriage?" These are new faces worth seeing again. Big mistake not to identify them. Otherwise, U-571 is one whale of an action picture that cracks you like a raw egg. A better film about war beneath the ocean has not been made.

Deflowered in the Attic

Sofia Coppola, daughter of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, was such a disaster playing Mary Corleone in Godfather III it was the end of her acting career. Now, however, in her debut as writer-director of a strange, poetic film called The Virgin Suicides , Ms. Coppola is more of a chip off the old block. She has a dark, uncompromising vision and much promise.

The Virgin Suicides , based on a bizarre novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a lurid, fascinating parable about five beautiful sisters, ranging in age from 13 to 17, who live in a suburban town in Michigan and who all kill themselves, leaving no end of grief, confusion and mystery for their friends and neighbors.

The five Lisbon girls are objects of desire and daydreams for the boys in town, but they are all unattainable, thanks to two parents who seem like obvious candidates for the loony bin. Dad (James Woods, on a busman's holiday from his usual psycho roles) is a wimpy high-school math teacher with no communication skills who isolates himself from reality in a world of model airplanes. Mom (Kathleen Turner) is a strict, implacable shrew who decorates her house with religious statues and Jesus paintings and dishes out strict punishments to her girls instead of compassion. While Dad talks to plants and Mom goes quietly haywire, their beautiful daughters form a bond of secret camaraderie that is later interpreted as a suicide pact.

When the oldest and most delectable Lisbon daughter, Lux (played by the ripe, blossoming Kirsten Dunst) is finally allowed to attend a school dance, she succumbs to the charms of the hunky campus heel (Josh Hartnett), who ruins her virginity and deserts her on the football field to make her way home at dawn, her prom dress in shreds. Chaos results. After the girls are taken out of school and locked up by their loopy mother, their only contact with the outside world is through mail-order catalogues and four younger neighborhood boys who try to help them with secret messages and flashlight signals. But the girls are on a collision course with self-destruction that haunts the town for years to come.

Thirteen-year-old Cecilia, the one who goes to a shrink (Danny DeVito, looking alarmingly like Gene Shalit), dies first, by throwing herself from a balcony and landing on a spiked fence. One by one, the others follow suit, as the boys in the town make vain attempts to apply amateur psychology. (Ms. Dunst descends into a secret life of promiscuity while the boys watch through binoculars.) But eventually everything ends tragically, plunging troubled adolescents into an obsession with death that becomes an allegory of lost innocence.

Ms. Coppola films this sordid fairy tale with a lush eye for metaphor; the girls are like the sirens of mythology, luring besotted men to the rocks. Watching the world from their balcony prison, they are Rapunzels in distress, longing for rescue. As they waste away from the poison within their own inner sanctum, their doom is paralleled by their favorite trees dying of Dutch elm disease in the front yard. Obviously inspired by her father's movies, Ms. Coppola does interesting things with camera movements and light, the darkest events lit with almost-theatrical spots of bright, hazy colored gels.

The film does not romanticize teenage suicide. The Lisbon sisters are more like elusive phantoms of youthful fantasy, whose brief, incendiary lives are the stuff of folklore. In creating a film of startling originality as delicate as it is disturbing, Ms. Coppola has also created a niche for herself as a filmmaker with exceptional flair.