Okay, that's it. No more picks for me. No more suggestions, no more hints as to what may be a good film before I actually see it. I mean it this time. I've seen Be Kind Rewind, and now I must break it to you that my reputation as a must-see-film prognosticator is sullied beyond repair. From here on out, I'm sticking to the spiritual stuff and letting someone else play psychic friend.

Be Kind Rewind was not the film I visualized in my head, though the premise had promise. Though Michel Gondry still stands out as one of the most imaginative directors today, I question his ability to tell a relevant, satisfying story on his own. Don't get me wrong, the themes are there: mom-and-pop vs. big-business, the simple pleasures of low-income living, the eternal appeal of nostalgia... They're all there, but they're not addressed deeply enough to carry the run-away story. And I think the real reason for the unsatisfactory experience is that Gondry's film, based on two guys trying to make up for erasing a store-full of videos by "sweding" their own, attempts to celebrate the untrained filmmaker by giving his own movie a home-made feel (with improvised scenes and the non-clever dialogue of everyday people). The result, as I see it, is a mediocre, unfocused story.

But maybe there's more to Gondry's method than meets the eye. The stories told by Jesus, like those of Gondry, were also about everyday life: A farmer plants seeds, fisherman catch fish, a woman finds a coin. Not the biggest blockbuster ideas in the world, yet poignant enough to visualize days, even centuries, later. Jesus, like Gondry, avoided cliched language and formulaic endings in his stories, which plague both mainstream and Christian films today. Most of his parables remained unexplained to the masses that gathered to hear him. His parables, for the most part, were slice-of-life tales meant to provoke thought or create mental images around abstract spiritual concepts. In this way, he and Gondry are on the same page.

However, Christ also had a handful of carefully-structured parables with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. While not everybody remembers the "Pearl of Great Price" or "Importunate Widow" vignettes, longer stories like "The Good Samaritan" and "The Prodigal Son" are affixed in our public consciousness. These deliberately-shaped stories of Christ's follow Aristotle's three-act structure, as identified about 300 years prior to Christ's ministry (and as practiced today by every working screenwriter in Hollywood).

The tragedy of Be Kind Rewind is that it's trapped between the two story types, somewhere in structural limbo. Gondry's heroes (Jerry and Mike, played by Jack Black and Mos Def, respectively) start the journey to save Mike's job at the video store. Then, they stop for a slice of life. Enjoying the flavor, they stop for another slice. Then they start a subplotted journey, but they return for another delicious life-slice and forget all about the subplot they started. After totally engorging themselves on slices, they realize the journey's about to end soon, so they rush to wrap up their journey before the closing credits roll. The result is unsatisfactory.

Gondry, who has made a name for himself as a top-notch music-video and short-film director, could've done a bang-up slice-of-life piece had this story been condensed into a thirty-minute short. Or, he could've blown our minds had he passed on the concept to screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who's proven his ability to write structured-yet-bizarre scripts for films like Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Instead, though, we have Be Kind Rewind as it's presented on the big screen.

Thankfully, those of you still hoping to find a love letter to the film-going experience can still do so on DVD, with the Oscar-winning Italian film Cinema Paradiso (1988). It manages to be a meticulously-crafted three-act story, without falling into any generic Hollywood formula. And if you want to celebrate both slice-of-life and three-act structures at their best, look no further than the red ink of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where Christ's parables enrich our souls, serving as subtle reminders that you can't have your slice-of-life and three-act, too.