Clips

A selection of past reviews.

The Last Kiss: 2.5 reels
The Last Kiss remakes L’ultimo bacio, an obscure Italian drama about a twentysomething male who confronts a grass-is-always-greener quandary. Braff plays Michael, a likeable guy tentatively entering adulthood. He starts to question his ready-made future once he learns his girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett), is pregnant. Bigger problems arise when Michael attracts the eye of sexy college minx Kim (Rachel Bilson.) Vastly overrated Oscar-winner Paul Haggis (Crash) pens this adaptation, but doesn’t understand the characters, leaving it up to the actors to flesh out their poorly written roles. The meat of the movie remains with Michael and Jenna, so Braff and Barrett bring boxing gloves. He is mundane when questioning his future and fiery when the film gets around to the inevitable screaming matches between mates. Things get depressing in The Last Kiss. To its credit, the character arc that Michael and Jenna follow stays brutally honest. It just results in heaps of sadness for them and, in turn, us. -SO’C

The Ground Truth: 4.5 reels
The Ground Truth profiles the wartime experiences of several veterans as they struggle to re-adjust to civilian life and with the VA bureaucracy, which persists in making their lives hell as they seek help for their mental and physical wounds. The film is not a laid out, documentary-like inquiry into that quagmire called “the truth.” Without the intrusion of graphics or charts, Foulkrod foregrounds the words and personalities of her subjects. The result is perhaps the most important protest statement yet committed to film since the outbreak of this war.

At 75 minutes, this material is brilliantly, compactly structured. And it doesn’t matter where you stand on the war. It’s irrelevant, because the filmmaker’s concern is the psychological and spiritual toll that this war has taken on many of its veterans. Foulkrod conveys a message about the liberating power of protest, and the socially crucial need for each of us to follow our inner voice, in wartime and beyond. -JA

This Film Is Not Yet Rated: 3 reels
The new documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated is an attack on the MPAA board, but it proves an uphill battle to convince us with evidence from the cutting room floor. Director Kirby Dick has a few undeniable points up his sleeve. For one thing, nobody digs the fuzz, especially when it’s an authority as arbitrary and clandestine as this. The only thing more odd than the people on the ratings board-the film reveals-is the lack of people on it. Not only are these people not required to have any background in film, but they wouldn’t look out of place behind the counter at the DMV. Longtime MPAA President Jack Valenti argues from archival footage that his goal with the ratings board was to have the product judged by “average Americans.” But according to This Film, that’s not who’s judging. We learn that the movie raters are supposed to have young children at home themselves, but just as often they don’t. They are supposed to be in the job only a handful of years, but often stay on much longer than that. And their identities are kept entirely secret, during and after employment. As Americans, we’re all used to aloof and mindless bureaucracy, but this system ignores even the most basic precepts of justice. The MPAA ratings board is just one of many arbitrary and pretend institutions long overdue for a shake up, and This Film has an easy time proving it. But it’s hard to think of people shouting for social change as they leave the theater. -WM

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles: 3 reels
So, you’re a director; a Chinese director, to be exact. You’ve just hit the peak of your career with a huge box-office success (Hero) and a monster critical success (The House of Flying Daggers). In the Western eye, you are the man for martial arts films. So how do you follow this up? What great feat of imagery and ass-kicking could possibly follow this win? If you’re Zhang Yimou, you don’t try. You just go back to what you did before those: small art-house character pieces. Gou-ichi (the great Ken Takakura) makes a modest living as a fisherman in Japan and lives a very lonesome existence away from his family. Ken-ichi (Kiichi Nakai), his son, especially wants nothing to do with him due to some unnamed conflict. When he finds out his son has liver cancer, however, Gou-ichi rushes to Ken-ichi’s bedside, but is denied by the son’s constant grudge. Instead, he is met by Rie (Shinobu Terajima), his daughter-in-law, who gives him a tape of footage his son took of legendary opera star Li Jiamin (the Chinese opera performer plays himself). Sadly, Jiamin couldn’t sing the son’s favorite song, “Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles,” but promised Ken-ichi he would perform it the next time he toured in front of the camera. Moved by the terminal state of his son, Gou-ichi sets himself on a journey to China to videotape the singer and possibly stitch up the familial rift. Character studies about age and family can be enthralling and sometimes transcendental but the film trades that for the well-tread territory that Hallmark built its name on. -CC

Invincible: 3.5 reels
Following the disappointing 1975 season that saw the team finishing 4-10, the Philadelphia Eagles needed assistance and weren’t picky about where the help would come from. In a move characterized as part desperation, part publicity stunt, the Eagles organization held open tryouts in the summer of ‘76. Invincible tells the predominantly true story of down-on-his-luck bartender Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), who attended the Eagles’ free session and impressed newly appointed head football coach Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear). Papale eventually accepted an invitation to the Eagles’ training camp and half expected to be cut after the first week. To his surprise-and to his jaded teammates’ constant chagrin-Papale battled for a roster spot and provided the discouraged Eagles fan base with a reason to care about the battered franchise. Papale is the classic underdog, and first-time director Ericson Core takes the necessary steps to ensure that the film’s hero ascends to his proper pedestal. Though physically prepared for the film’s hard-hitting football sequences, Wahlberg brings a quarter of the energy and charm to scenes shared with his goombah pals. These characters could have been dismissed as cogs in the motivational movie machine, but writer Brad Gann goes to great lengths to illustrate how a labor strike hits these men harder than a linebacker. Wahlberg had an opportunity to channel that energy, yet even as Papale’s fortunes turn, the actor’s enthusiasm stays predominantly level. Wahlberg’s even keel doesn’t hinder Invincible, which still manages to be extremely likable despite its conventions. The blue-collar Invincible soaks up local flavor and sweats working-class determination. -SO’C

The Dogwalker: 2 reels
It’s inevitable that every review of The Dogwalker is going to mention the recent unexpected death of Pamela Gordon-a mainstay of Los Angeles theater for many years. Gordon plays Betsy, a popular but cantankerous Hollywood Hills dog walker who becomes the reluctant mentor to Ellie (Diane Gaidry). They need each other: Ellie has just run away from an abusive mate. Beat up and broke, Betsy is beset by some nameless chest-clenching disease (accompanied by lots of coughing and passing out). Tainted by a criminal past that has left her alone and bitter, she needs Ellie to keep her thriving dog walking business afloat. Betsy’s line, “How can you take care of a dog if you can’t take care of yourself?” pretty much summarizes the plot, which plays out like a script developed in a screenwriting class: too much formula, dead on arrival. Gaidry plays Ellie like a blank canvas-paint some horrific bruises on her face and she’s the victim of a wife beater. First-time writer/director Jacques Thelemaque wants his lead actress to be tough and independent, while fragile and soft on the inside. But she’s more constrained by character arcs than by limited material to develop her role. Through it all, Gordon gives the trooper thespian performance that colored her career: She’s rock steady and gets the story across with the thinnest of dialogue. There’s not much drama in a dog park beyond a lost dog, a fast car and a stray pup, people and poop; but The Dogwalker delivers. Then again, it gives us Pamela Gordon too. -EO

Lunacy: 3 reels
For a movie conceived by Czech surrealist master Jan Svankmajer, Lunacy is a rather stolid affair. Svankmajer intersperses his live-action story with stop-motion snippets featuring animated body parts set to rollicking organ music. Lunacy builds on the premise that there are no sane people-only madmen. But where Lunacy should’ve plunged into the abyss of the absurd, it chooses to skirt the edge lightly, as it solemnly tries to establish an allegory of society at large. A movie about crazies needs to be a bit crazy itself, but this one’s largely as battened-down as its central character-a milquetoast named Jean (Pavel Liska) who strikes up an acquaintance with the Marquis (Jan Tríska), a creepy nobleman. Svankmajer’s heavy-handed philosophical points keep his satire from achieving off-the-cuff eloquence. In the end, Lunacy lacks the teeth to be truly audacious. Yet its leisurely pacing and silly send-ups of psychosexual perversions make it an amusing enough gothic comedy. -JA

Facotum: 2 reels
Charles Bukowski’s unapologetic honesty has little history in movies. Movies don’t do ugly very well, which is one reason we find Matt Dillon playing Bukowski’s alter ego Henry Chinaski in the movie version of Factotum, his second novel. A factotum is a person available to do any odd work, and the story is about a guy who can’t hold down a job. Chinaski bumbles in and out of a host of employment opportunities, including a sporting goods store where he spends his time sleeping, and the first few moments as a taxi driver where he’s fired for failing to disclose his DUIs. The only things he manages to hold down are a steady supply of beer and his girlfriend Jan (Lili Taylor), a pale, scrawny little creature. Whether Chinaski is Bukowski hardly matters since Dillon doesn’t really capture either. He’s been fattened and uglied up a bit, but he’s simply a punching bag with a grimace. -WM

Edmond: 3.5 reels
Edmond is another of writer David Mamet’s white, urban, misogynistic male nightmares, but it’s saved thanks to Stuart Gordon’s appropriately playful direction and William H. Macy’s lead performance. Deeply frustrated city mouse Edmond Burke (Macy) hates his wife, his job, and desperately wants to get laid. One night, after a fortuneteller tells him his life has gone way off track, he bolts from his marriage, runs to a gentleman’s club where he might relieve himself. Edmond is constantly overcharged for sexual services and finds himself an easy target for pimps and scam artists. After a night of getting mugged and ripped off, Edmond snaps. Edmond’s odyssey takes him from the urban jungle, where his fears run rampant, to a penitentiary where he must butt up, so to speak, against all that drove him into his mad delirium. The world-class Macy is enough reason to check out Edmond. Mamet’s script may not be entirely convincing as either satire or social commentary, but in Macy’s hands, poor, pathetic Edmond’s story finds its shocking, darkly funny resonance. -JA

Conversations with Other Women: 4 reels
This film demands subsequent viewings if one wants to fully appreciate its layers of double meaning and shaded subtext. Conversations opens as a wedding reception at a posh New York City hotel winds down. A man and woman-each alone, bored, slightly drunk-strike up a conversation. The woman, we learn, has traveled here from London where she has a well-to-do cardiologist husband and three children waiting for her. The man has a 22-year-old girlfriend back at home, but we get the sense he’s had many a 22-year-old girlfriend waiting on him at one time or another. Rather, he’s more taken with this woman who’s clearly more than a passing fancy. The two repair to a hotel room where their bittersweet, often humorous verbal dance continues with a break for the inevitable catch-up sex. On the page, this all sounds corny. But, as remembrances layer one upon the other, this relationship takes on the darkness and depth of an epic love. -JA

Quinceañera: 3 reels
Writer/director duo Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have cited British Kitchen Sink dramas as a key influence behind their Sundance prize-winning Quinceañera. As Magdalena (Emily Rios) excitedly plans for her quinceañera-the lavish Mexican ceremony performed on a girl’s 15th birthday, in which she is initiated into adulthood-she finds out she’s pregnant. The news sends her Catholic preacher-father into a tailspin. Magdalena goes to live with Tomas, her sweet-souled great great-uncle (Chalo Gonzalez), depositing herself on his couch alongside her cousin, Carlos (Jesse Garcia)-a street-tough teenager who got booted out of his home for being gay. Crosshatched elegantly into Magdalena and Carlos’ domestic crises, we find a critique of Echo Park’s gentrification. All of its Latino characters face the possibility of displacement, as the influx of artistes threatens to uproot them. What keeps Quinceañera so engaging are the unselfconscious performances from Emily Rios and Jesse Garcia. Scene after scene, they convey their characters’ inner decency and innocence, fighting to get out past their sulky, tough-talking exteriors. -JA

Changing Times: 3 reels
Changing Times taps into the difficult themes of the modern European character entwined with its post-colonial past, specifically with Islamic identity. André Téchiné directs the film with a handheld camera, capturing at breakneck speed relationships held together by the thinnest threads. Gerard Depardieu plays Antoine, a French engineer who comes to Tangiers to supervise the construction of an Al Jazeera-type television station. The real reason for taking the job is to find first love Cecile (Catherine Deneuve), who moved to the former French colony where she married a Moroccan doctor (Gilbert Milki) and raised a son, Sami (Malik Zidi). Sami has just arrived from Paris with his girlfriend Nadia (Lubna Azabal) and her 9-year-old son Said. Nadia left Tangiers for Paris where she has become westernized, while her twin sister Aicha (also Azabal) has remained home becoming a devote Muslim. These are people that have come together in their lives, but their compatibility hangs in jeopardy. Depardieu and Deneuve each bring the strength of their abilities and are well-balanced by the supporting cast. Téchiné leaves open doors and a lot of loose threads to ensnare the characters long after the barely resolved ending.-EO

Scoop: 4 reels
Scoop could easily be taken as a blend of the two Allen flicks that preceded it: Melinda and Melinda and Match Point. It’s as if Allen noticed after making the two previous films that the ideas of both, reconfigured and combined, would make a really decent one. Scoop, breezy and buoyant, is the best of the three and a wonderful antidote to the lumbering summer blockbusters. Allen might be the first director to see the narrow potential in Scarlet Johansson and exploit it to the fullest. Scoop will be accused-like much of Allen’s work-for pulling out the same old punches. But it offers an interesting twist on the comic/straight man team. Allen makes Sid the acerbic straight guy, but he is decidedly unserious, with the funniest moments coming at the expense of Johansson’s earnest but bumbling sidekick. Scoop is no Annie Hall, but you could stand to see it more than once. That might be the best tip at the box office this summer. -WM

Little Miss Sunshine: 5 reels
On the surface, there’s nothing new about the tale of a dysfunctional family on a cross-country road trip. Nevertheless, Little Miss Sunshine is a gem. Credit a sharp, simple script, excellent casting and an unusual message: Failure is not only okay, it’s righteous.Little Miss Sunshine doesn’t operate in the usual mode of building up expectations only to disappoint, nor does it inflict humiliation on one party for the triumph of another. Little Miss Sunshine is a first time feature for all involved, from directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris to writer Michael Arndt, who is able to riff on typically dour subjects, like suicide, economic hardship and end of life issues, with biting humor and self-deprecating situations with which we can all identify. It’s been pretty hot lately, but this is some sunshine we could all use. -EO

Clerks II: 2 reels
After several movies featuring the same ingredients, Kevin Smith seems desperate to hawk stale leftovers and flat ideas. Almost all of Clerks II is made up of grade school humor. Clerks was like a magic security camera that allowed us to see one small corner of New Jersey, where two convenience store clerks watched movies all day. Here were the irreverent musings of real minimum-wage types. Clerks II is more interested in making a broad comedy out of ‘life at the bottom’ than showcasing it. One day, clerks Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) arrive at the Quick Stop convenience store-where they’ve spent the last decade-to find it has burned down. Fast forward to life at Mooby’s, a McDonald’s-like joint. In its blind desire to shock and offend, Clerks II gets pretty ridiculous. Smith resorts to putting his characters through their familiar paces: talking about sex and pop culture and wasting their lives, and calling each other gay-a lot. -WM

Time to Leave (Le Temps qui Reste): 3 reels
Time to Leave presents writer/director François Ozon with a huge obstacle: how to infuse intrigue into a film about death. Ozon’s approach is subtle, utilizing physical space and a strong performance by Melvil Poupaud who plays Romain, a successful but self-centered fashion photographer. We’re not far into the film before we witness Romain fainting and learning that he has inoperable, terminal cancer. Rather than marching through the predictable reactions (denial, anger, etc.), Ozon has Romain traverse a more internal landscape that is quietly summarized in visions of himself as a child. Perhaps Ozon’s greatest triumph is that the film holds your interest while avoiding the temptation to play the audiences’ tear ducts like a fiddle. But like a deflating balloon, Time to Leave-without any dramatic traction-moves toward an inevitability that feels more idealized than real. Ozon tries to work against the melodramatic grain, but ultimately succumbs to sentimentality. -EO

The Groomsmen: 3 reels
How regular is a “regular guy” who thinks someone is putting on airs for using the word “cordial?” In The Groomsmen, Mike (Jay Mohr), the cousin of soon-to-be-wed Paulie (Edward Burns), could certainly be considered an irregular regular guy. The argument over the word “cordial” heats up in a neighborhood bar owned by one of Paulie’s other groomsmen, Dez (Matthew Lillard). Paulie wants Mike to be nice to their estranged friend T.C. (John Leguizamo) who’s coming home to be another groomsman for Paulie’s wedding to his pregnant girlfriend Sue (Brittany Murphy). The plan is to kick back, go fishing, put the band back together for one last party before tucking unencumbered youth away in the garage for good. But as in any melodrama worth its salt, nothing goes exactly as planned. Burns, the screenwriter and director, tells this coming-of-middle-age story with an eye for the area, revealing persuasive artistry. But there’s something insubstantial at the heart of it all. The problem lies in making this personal a movie in such a mainstream way. Burns wants to capture real life, but with an upbeat ending. It’s an appealing way to look at things for a couple of hours, but most people would admit life just isn’t that simple, even in Long Island. -WM

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: 2 reels
Hailing from Jerry Bruckheimer’s “Bigger Is Better” school of filmmaking, Dead Man’s Chest takes all that was so charming about the first Pirates-its resurrection of a classic Hollywood genre, pirate-talk humor, and Depp’s fey mincing as Capt. Jack Sparrow-and amps it up to the wattage of a Looney Tunes cartoon. Once again, Sparrow and ever-hapless lovers Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) are shunted through a treasure hunt storyline, tangling with yet another crew of preternatural villains. The latter are led by squid-faced Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) who, after a thwarted romance, stashes his broken heart in the titular chest and commences to terrorize the high seas. After Will is blackmailed into recovering the chest, the script begins to resemble a big-budget clusterfuck, with Depp and cohorts left to mug and caper through Verbinski’s frenetic telling. Though Chest taps into our need for air-conditioned escapism, there’s an unsettling immodesty about it, which precludes anything unsexy like character development or a cleanly defined narrative arc. -JA

A Scanner Darkly: 4 reels
Employing the same animation technique as Waking Life, Richard Linklater has pulled off one of the best interpretations of a Philip K. Dick story ever, preserving the flavor, message and (best of all) manic comedy of the late sci-fi scribe’s writing. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) lives in a dilapidated Orange County tract house, which is more of a crash pad for his friends Jim (Robert Downey, Jr.), Ernie (Woody Harrelson) and girlfriend Donna (Winona Ryder). Under the pseudonym “Frank,” Arctor has been selected to spy on his friends-including himself-for unclear, but suspected, crimes related to the designer drug of choice, “D” (for Death). Rather than playing it as a gimmick, Linklater’s rotoscoping technique embellishes translation, while the ensemble cast plays marvelously with the delusional tirades and dark humor; avowing Dick’s message on the hypocrisy of the correctional system and the social structures that foster addictive behaviors only to punish them in an insidious cycle. -EO

Wassup Rockers: 4 reels
Wassup Rockers follows the exploits of the Velasquez brothers (Jonathan, Eddie and Milton) and their pals, Salvadorian émigrés who have rejected hip-hop culture in favor of refashioned old-school punk. Writer-director Larry Clark takes them to school, then from their neighborhood (”in the ghetto” as they repeatedly, and humorously, call it) to Beverly Hills and back, through backyards of celebrities and over the sketchy concrete of Hollywood. The boys talk sex, get hassled by cops, try to make it with privileged chicks, find themselves at a weird art party and get shot at by a celebrity who looks alarmingly like Clint Eastwood. Wassup Rockers is a fable of the poor – a light, urban picaresque, or, if you prefer, a Latino Odyssey complete with riddles, fantastic creatures and daring escapes which captures Los Angeles in a ground level, realistic light that few filmmakers have recently managed. It is loose, unconventional filmmaking, and all the more fun because of it. -WM

La Moustache: 2.5 reels
In adapting his novel of facial hair horror, writer-director Emmanuel Carrère takes his cinematic cues from Antonioni and Hitchcock. After shaving off his moustache on a lark, soft-spoken, good-natured Marc (Vincent Lindon) finds his life slowly beginning to unravel. His wife, Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos) doesn’t even notice the absent hairs on Marc’s face. She claims he’s never had a moustache, and blows her top on his mere insistence that he did. Marc’s friends and co-workers also express puzzlement over Marc’s claim of moustache-shaving and before long he is thrown into a full-blown funk. Carrère shunts us from Paris to Hong Kong as Marc tries to escape his existential nightmare and regain his composure and his sanity, charting one man’s descent into a vortex of quantum nightmares. Though La Moustache is a rickety, hollow exercise in style over substance, we thankfully get solid performances by Lindon and Devos to distract us. -JA

Superman Returns: 3 reels
Fists firmly on his hips, he’s plain and open about who he is and what he’s here for. But it is not as much a return of Superman as a return to him—the one from those four movies starring Christopher Reeve. Indeed, Director Bryan Singer’s version is so similar that it even digitally manipulates lead Brandon Routh’s features and voice to make him look and sound like the one concocted by producer Alexander Salkind and director Richard Donner in 1978. Superman Returns is a super corny movie, except when it’s being a super weird one, as when every threat looks like it was hatched by terrorists, or at least hatched by people very paranoid of terrorists. One of the few but noticeable differences in this Superman is the treatment of minor characters; everybody is serious, and likewise, every sentiment seems interchangeable. For pure action, Superman Returns is competent and entertaining. But it is also perfunctory and uneventful, and in many cases unimaginative. -WM

Who Killed The Electric Car?: 3 reels
Spurred by a California Air Resources Board (CARB) mandate, GM introduced the stylish EV-1, à la ’60s Citroën. Subsequently, one of GM’s marketing ploys was to hook up celebrities with the car in order to create a buzz. But when the car giant decided to yank the car from production, indeed the face of the earth, following the Republican sea change, they stirred the ire of Westside liberals—hearts oozing with passion, with deep pockets and a lot of free time on their hands. Chris Paine’s film follows a funky coalition of environmentally-minded folks and celebrity showmen, including a teary-eyed Peter Horton watching his leased car get repossessed, taking on the extermination of the EV-1 with emotions aimed squarely at a process rife with political manipulation. Though highlighting celebrity use suggests these were pricey specialty cars for the privileged, there are thankfully real people deeply involved who underscore the absurdity of the electric car’s untimely demise. -EO

Nacho Libre: 3 reels
The Napoleon Dynamite creators’ anticipated follow-up film maintains the same odd cadence and strange plotting, but banks its fortunes on the go-for-broke antics of comedian Jack Black. The gamble pays off for the film’s first two-thirds, though the laughs fade fast as it crawls toward its ending credits. Black funnels the pent-up energy of a prepubescent teen into the role of Ignacio, a Mexican priest drawn to the forbidden sport of lucha libre, or freestyle wrestling. When he realizes his prize money can benefit the orphans in his care, Ignacio dedicates his energies to becoming the world’s greatest fighter. Nacho parades shot-after-shot of the comedian’s fleshy stomach peeking out from too-tight sweatshirts or wrestling outfits. The remaining gags are haphazardly tossed out in the desperate hope that something sticks. Did Nacho change my perspective on global issues and prompt me to rethink my daily routines? No. Did Nacho make me laugh while I was in the theater? Certainly. And for a comedy, what more can we expect? -SO

Say Uncle: 0.5 reels
Though well meaning, the film is so simplistic that it undermines the very thing it seeks to convey: namely, prejudicial misconceptions of the relationship between same-sex parents and their children. Creator Paige’s message is both important and necessary, but his character can’t seem to grow up enough to convey it. Paige plays Paul, a Portland artist who spends his working days as a bored telemarketer, fanatically obsessed with children, specifically his friend’s wee lad Morgan Faber. When Pa Faber gets a job promotion to Japan, days of aimless wandering get Paul fired from his job, and all he can do is play in the sandbox with the neighborhood kids in the park. Paul’s behavior with children is so, frankly, creepy, that one starts to side with Maggie, the ultra-militant housewife enemy. Paul may not be a child molester, but get him away from my kid. Say Uncle could have worked if it had pushed toward pure camp (think John Waters), but it aches to be a morality tale and wag its finger at hetero hysteria. -EO

The Omen: 3.5 reels
Richard Donner’s original Omen was a pig in a cocktail dress, a silly story treated with undeserving earnestness. Here, John Moore tells the story of the anti-Christ like it should be told. The unfortunate Anti-Joseph and Anti-Mary are Robert and Katherine Thorn (Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles); when Katherine’s newborn dies just outside the hospital room, Robert takes a baby boy whose mother died during labor, and letting Katherine believe it is theirs. They name him Damien (cue choirs). Black dogs begin to bark, monkeys screech, and a very un-Doubtfire-like nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), shows up. Everything is overdone: Damien sleeps on red silk sheets; an interview with an old crippled man is conducted outside in the snow. The horror scenes are equally flamboyant; Marco Beltrami’s score kicks in to stunning effect every time the lights go out. The story of Damien has always seemed a little stupid to me, and here Moore has matched the story with its telling. -JM

A Prairie Home Companion: 3 reels
Whether you relish Keillor’s country-tinged folksy yarns or flip it off with disdain (for all of the same reasons), A Prairie Home Companion follows the same course. But in Altman’s style of overlapping dialogue, constant camera moves and slow zooms, Keillor has found the best stylist to bring his schmaltzy Weltanschauung to life. A Prairie Home Companion oscillates between the backstage and the live broadcast. Popular Prairie Home characters like gumshoe Guy Noir (Kevin Klein) and singing cowboy drifters Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly) are joined by the singing Johnson Sisters, Rhonda (Lily Tomlin) and Yolanda (Meryl Streep). Reluctantly tagging along is Yolanda’s death-obsessed daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan). If you buy it, A Prairie Home Companion is a pleasing slice of Americana pie. Keillor is a talented writer, and Altman’s direction invokes a rich and real body of work. -EO

The Alibi: 2 reels
For Kurt Matilla and Matt Checkowski’s The Alibi, distraction is the name of the game, Steve Coogan plays Ray Elliott, a man who has built a business around making it safe for people to cheat on their spouses. While handling his favorite client, Bob (James Brolin), Ray decides to hire Lola (Rebecca Romijn) as his new assistant and is asked to handle one last case for Bob: an alibi for his son Wendell. As Wendell is getting his freak on, he accidentally kills the girl he’s with and Ray is forced to cover it up. Soon enough, the girl’s boyfriend (John Leguizamo), a cop (Debi Mazar), and a Mormon assassin (Sam Elliott) are all after Ray and he has to mislead all of them. With a runtime just shy of 90 minutes, The Alibi can’t handle all these characters. What keeps the film from being a disaster is Coogan, who gives Ray so much wise-ass charm that we are enamored every time he comes on screen. In the end, the problem comes down to conflict: there is none. -CC

Mouth to Mouth: 3 reels
Alison Murray’s first film Train on the Brain was a documentary about riding the rails in full free-spirited hippie-hobo style. With her dramatic debut Mouth to Mouth she returns to the space of homeless youth, this time following Goth outsider Sherry (Ellen Page) who is drawn to a mobile outreach program called SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge). The program collects a hodgepodge of gutter punks and runaways while offering them medical and survival resources. SPARK also offers hipped-up, street-wise counsel from its leader Harry (Eric Thal). Watching SPARK through Sherry’s point of view gives the viewer a sympathetic perspective toward what they might otherwise dismiss. As a director, Murray demonstrates a solid grip on her story, which is ultimately a lesson in group power dynamics. By mixing it up with a sympathetic humanitarian platform like a progressive youth outreach program, she drives the message deeper because you want SPARK to succeed. Page’s work, along with Murray’s, suggests a very promising career to come. -EO

An Inconvenient Truth: 5 reels
The former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore has made a documentary of the slide show on global warming he has been giving all over the world. He points out in picture after damning picture, things are disappearing all over the place, an increasing “not there,” like something out of The Neverending Story. Bodies of water are already missing. Mountaintops have been stripped of their snowy peaks. Gigantic swaths of arctic ice have vanished. These are not predictions, but actual pictures of things that have already happened. Gore’s predictions are chilling, or will be soon. But despite the severity of his predictions, Gore refrains from the kind of spastic demagoguery that undid Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. He makes his points in measured, mostly unemotional tones, though not without some humor, however rueful. An Inconvenient Truth is a devastating document of a swiftly approaching reckoning with that misunderstanding. The truth of its title will be irreversible within our lifetime. -WM

Dead Man’s Shoes: 2.5 reels
The film has the simple beauty and snap rhythm of a film shot quickly on the run, effectively using handheld cameras and grainy small format footage. The kind of style that big-budget films make pretentious, here better fits the bill. The acting-particularly in the case of the soddy nobs that make up the gang of low lifers-is so believable that Dead Man’s Shoes feels like a documentary. The fuel of the vengeance genre is the catharsis, the wish fulfillment of punishing and humiliating those who have abused their power over the weak. In the superhero stories, there is a character trial that the hero must endure. But here we have very little backstory to the revenge seeker’s character. Dead Man’s Shoes would have done better with more shades to the protagonist’s anger. -EO

The Da Vinci Code: 2.5 reels
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), the central figure in the movie version of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, is not your archetypal world-saver. He’s your archetypal Harvard symbologist. Filled with puzzles, anagrams, cryptograms and brain teasers, The Da Vinci Code is like a live-action version of an interactive computer mystery-at its duller moments, something akin to a big-budget Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? An acquaintance at the Louvre has been murdered. Before dying, he carved into his body a cryptic message the police believes implicates Robert. Saved by the curator’s niece Sophie (Audrey Tatou), Robert and his new companion embark on a quest to solve his murder that is part car chase, part treasure hunt and part history lesson. Silas (Paul Bettany), a missionary man of unusual zeal for Opus Dei, has all of those characteristics, plus he’s adept with a blade and quick with a Glock. It’s nice to see an action film that doesn’t involve a guy in a skin-tight suit with a belt of gadgets. Problems in this movie are solved more often with brains than brawn. Even though it’s often hokum, it’s decently thought-out hokum, believable at a two-hour stretch if you give yourself up to it. -WM

Twelve and Holding: 4 reels
Being a kid is awkward and awful, but not in the stick-your-penis-in-a-pie way and certainly not the Peter Pan way. Situations that you can’t even fathom happen ad nauseum from ages 11 to 19. Hollywood has somehow turned all these occurrences into redemptive stories where every transgression is purely sexual and where things aren’t fully blamed on anyone. Even if someone is blamed, the blame is nonchalant and patched up with a simple hug. Michael Cuesta returns packing fire and ravaging humor with this unyieldingly dark look at adolescence and neglect. It starts easy: four kids, all at age 12, sit and watch fireworks at a neighborhood block party: Rudy and Jacob’s (both played by amazing newcomer Conor Donovan) only physical distinguishing trait is a large, purple birthmark on Jacob’s face. Leonard (Jesse Camacho) is the terribly overweight offspring of two fat-and-loving-it parents; Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum), tries to make the most of a psychiatrist mother (Annabella Sciorra) and a no-show dad. Their lives get tossed when Rudy is accidentally killed during a prank. Jacob begins to befriend the prankster, but things take a major dark turn for all three. -CC

Down in the Valley: 2.5 reels
Remember Edward Norton? Sure Fight Club bud Brad Pitt grabs all the sexy-man love, but for Norton, the pictures have gotten smaller. With a sharp cast lead by Norton and an amazing Evan Rachel Wood, partnered with a simple dramatic scenario, the film easily packs its punches at the beginning. But the script doesn’t dig for any sense of context, nor does it push the boundaries. Down in the Valley sets up our beloved San Fernando Valley as a concrete prairie. Teenagers Toby (Evan Rachel Wood) and her little brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) live in the single parent household of tough-love father Wade (David Morse). Little Lonnie is, for the most part, left home alone, turning circles in the driveway on his BMX. Crossing Toby’s path is Harlan (Norton); a real Gomer with a full arsenal of folksy goofiness that’s as engaging as it is suspiciously phony. But Toby falls for it and doesn’t waste anytime pinning her dreams on the cowboy in her suburban wasteland. Needless to say, things aren’t what they seem with Harlan, who’s playing Cowboys and Indians, but not with harmless toy guns. Toby is torn between her mystery beau’s simplistic sunset dreams and her bullheaded father’s in-your-face reality. -EO

Goal!: 2 reels
Burdened with the most optimistic title since Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Goal! The Dream Begins is indeed the first part of a trilogy that will eventually take a soccer-mad kid from Los Angeles to the World Cup. But first, he’s gotta get out of the barrio; good thing there’s a cliché-ridden story arc to get him there. After a scout from Newcastle United observes Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker)’s ball skills, he’s saying adios to his undocumented immigrant family, including Dad, who’d rather his son pursue the American dream of mowing other people’s grass. Santi, as he comes to be known by teammates, eats a lot of mud on the practice squad but eventually cracks the starting lineup. He also makes fast pals with his fellow Yank on the team, wisecracking Gavin (Alessandro Nivola), and to complete the fantasy, he engages in a forbidden romance with team nurse Roz (Anna Friel). Every stock element of the young-man-rising-to-glory tale is accounted for, and the four-man writing team sustains massive effort to avoid any twists that might deviate from the formula. If you’ve ever seen another sports movie, you’ve seen Goal! But if you haven’t, and you just adore English football, this extended infomercial for FIFA might eke out just a little cheer. -EM

The Proposition: 2.5 reels
Nick Cave wrote The Proposition, a gloomy, macabre Western set in the Australian Outback of the 1880s, and the movie’s tone will not surprise anyone familiar with the recording artist. It’s a west as wild, if not wilder, than our own, with John Ford’s mythic catalogue of bad guys, hard-scrabble ranchers and lawmen riding tall in the rhetoric. Outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), captured by one Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) is set free and given a chance to save his little brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) if he rides out and kills his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston). Arthur Burns is a much wilier and more wicked bad guy. His most recent escapade was the ravaging of a local farm, where he and his gang left an entire family dead and then burned down their house. But not until they raped the pregnant matron of the settlement, who happened to be the best friend of Captain Stanley’s wife Martha (Emily Watson). The movie could be seen, if squinted at hard enough, as an allegory for Australia at the crossroads-a lawless land struggling, as Captain Stanley insists, to be civilized. You suspect the Burns brothers are going to bring fire and brimstone for it, and are not disappointed. -WM

The Promise: 3.5 reels
The Promise is a psychotically beautiful film; one that presents striking, sophisticated imagery alongside painstakingly recreated B-grade wuxia (the Chinese film genre of martial arts and chivalry) kitsch. Rather than making use of muted, congruent color schemes, The Promise exalts in clashing reds and purples, or icy blue alongside electric green. The martial arts sequences are grounded only in the reality of Chinese fantasy film-history, with characters floating around like lures on a fishing line. It’s a film that requires complete suspension of disbelief, not just to accept the magical abilities of its characters, but to accept the notion that any human being could function in a world that is so over-stimulating. Through all of this visual chaos, director Chen Kaige creates characters and a story with a mythic feel, directly accessing powerful archetypes (with the occasional lapse into sentimentality and cliché), without ever needing to cite any specific literary source. It is surreal without being unfamiliar, and it reinforces all of the values of classical myths without being overtly derivative of them. It’s as good a foray into the Joseph Campbell-style mining of the collective unconscious as anything I’ve ever seen, George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien included. -ENJ

The Lost City: 1 reel
Andy Garcia’s The Lost City, about the fall of Havana to the communist forces led by Fidel Castro in 1959, is a pet project, something Garcia has been thinking about for decades. The result, as often happens, is unchecked earnestness-old-fashioned, sentimental and unintentionally comic. Making the kind of movie he’s familiar with (from a script by the late writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante) he places the lead he’s honed over the years into the maw of revolutionary Cuba. Garcia is Fico-handsome, noble, the eldest brother in a large and successful Havana family-caught in the middle of his fence-sitting elders and the younger siblings who want to take part in the coming political storm. A musician and nightclub owner followed around by a wise-cracking sidekick (Bill Murray), Fico is hassled by the corrupt forces of the current regime and harried by the various undercurrents of revolt. Lost City is a kind of childish homage to Casablanca, among other films (reminders of The Godfather series, of which Garcia was a part, also abound). But while opportunity allowed Bogart’s Rick to make an unselfish act, Fico is a cookie-cutter hero readymade for glory. -WM

Drawing Restraint 9: 2 reels
Matthew Barney continues his interests in transformative states in Drawing Restraint 9. His involvement with Björk is an effortless symbiosis; Björk has long been enamored with avant-garde panache, and her soundtrack for the film actively softens Barney’s heavy-handed image manipulation. Barney and Björk portray the prototypical occidental couple, both of whom are separately delivered to a Japanese whaling vessel by two small fishing boats. Barney is using the ship and Japan’s historical relationship with the harvesting of whales to enact a symbolic marriage between himself and Björk based on traditional Japanese Shinto ritual. Barney is restrained here; perhaps he’s actually learned something after gorging on his own self-indulgence. There are still levels of absurdity: Barney arriving whiskered in a coat that looks like a skinned Bigfoot, or Björk breathing through a blowhole on her back. (Does the girl ever do anything this side of normal?) But there are also fantastic parts as well; the film does offer sublime moments of beauty. But more often than not they are undercut by Barney’s uninteresting camera placement and stilted performances. In many ways, Barney seems to have inherited the kitsch torch from artist Jeff Koons, and for that matter, Andy Warhol, who was all about the artist as superstar. But Warhol made better films with a lot less. -EO

Our Brand Is Crisis: 4 reels
The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but so is the road to globalization-and in many ways it leads to the same place. In Rachel Boynton’s new documentary Our Brand Is Crisis, Clinton administration cast-offs prove how good they are at the machinery of politics, and how much their intentions miss the mark. The members of the U.S. political consulting firm GCS (in which James Carville is a principal player) are hired by Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada, a former president of Bolivia, in his attempt to regain the presidency. Goni allows the GCS consultants to shape his campaign and they respond by branding the Bolivian economy as “in crisis.” And they succeed: dirty media feeds weaken the initial front-runner Villa, and playing on citizens’ fears, Goni ekes out a narrow victory. But resting on his victory, the dissatisfaction of the populace violently revolts; more than a brand, Bolivia is now literally the product of a raging crisis. OBIC frames the energy of GCS’s machine with their utter inability to read the tea leaves of their own failure. The American strategy turned tragedy of “branding” a campaign failed to respond to the will of the people. -EO

The Lottery of the Sea: 3 reels
Shot over five years, director Sekula examines international trade, specifically the maritime exchange of goods. Primarily a photographer and writer whose aesthetic is unadorned and documentary, The Lottery of the Sea follows the same structure, like a home movie by a great social critic. Images such as an oil slick in Spanish waters, to the collision of a showboating U.S. Navy submarine with a Japanese training vessel off the coast of Hawaii, to the Panama canal, which Sekula describes as an enormous snake swallowing commerce from the two great oceans. A colossal real estate development plot on the Barcelona coast, a cement filled behemoth failure. Or the image of a maid in a wealthy hotel watching an anti-globalization rally beneath her, nodding to the beat of the protesters. Sekula frames these images in a Cinéma Vérité style, punctuated with Hollywood film clips and historic sea chantey songs. That ‘Made in China’ sticker will resonate just a little more when you start to consider the journey it has made and the layered consequences of our globalized economic system carried by the oceans of the world. -EO

When Do We Eat?: 2 reels
What saves When Do We Eat from totally flopping is character actor Michael Lerner in a rare lead role, and a noble attempt to capture the conflicted role of the modern Jew. But clichéd characters and a trite resolution that badly wants to tie everything up in a neat little bow ultimately doom the film. Lerner plays Ira Stuckman, who manufactures Christmas ornaments. His estranged son Ethan (Max Greenfield) is a failure in his father’s eyes, ever since as a child he cheated the traditional matzo hide’n’seek. It’s difficult to think of a mainstream film that picks up the dialogue of what it is to be a good, practicing Jew today. For those likeminded in the audience, a lot of the vitriolic verbal assault will resonate; for others (repressed Protestants, this is a shout out to you), you’re going to squirm a bit. But either way, asking When Do We Eat to engage us in a serious religious dialogue and be the banana peel of Passover is asking too much-Jew or Gentile, much like the Seder itself, you’re going to steal a peek at your watch. -EO

Lucky Number Slevin: 1 reel
It might seem like a stretch to compare the new thriller Lucky Number Slevin, by journeyman director Paul McGuigan, to Hitchcock, except that it too offers mistaken identity as its central conceit, and at one point directly mentions North by Northwest. But that’s the only successful con in the movie. This overdone affair has those kinds of pretensions, but its makers have confused the eloquent technique of suspense with the tawdry gimmick of a “gotcha” finale. Josh Hartnett is Slevin, a young man who just arrived in New York to see an old pal. As he explains to his pal’s comely next-door neighbor (Lucy Liu), he’s lost his apartment, girlfriend and wallet. This makes Slevin easily mistaken for his absent pal, who owes heaps of gambling debts. For the next hour he is whisked between two halves of a gigantic set piece, the penthouse lairs of rival crime bosses (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley), former friends who’ve glared at each other for 20 years behind duplicate sets of bulletproof glass. Not that we needed it, but Lucky Number Slevin is more proof that clever is not the same thing as smart. -WM

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown: 4 reels
I hated Ice Age. Needless to say, a sequel was inevitable, and I was prepared for the worst. So would you believe I thoroughly enjoyed it? There’s so much more energy to this radiant new Ice Age, subtitled The Meltdown because it occurs during a period of natural thaw. The frozen tundra of the first film is melting, creating the potential for flood. The sequel’s plot involves yet another trek for the primary herd, this time to the end of the valley where a boat-shaped rock structure waits to carry animals to safety. There’s real beauty and color to this evaporating world, captured by director Carlos Saldanha (who co-directed the first Ice Age with creator Chris Wedge). The difference boils down to Jon Vitti’s sharp script, a smarter and funnier adventure that taps into our current culture of fear and transmits the nation’s concerns to the creatures that survived the Ice Age. Vitti’s writing credits include The Simpsons, The Critic, Saturday Night Live, and The Larry Sanders Show. His jokes resonate while maintaining the elements that made the first Age a hit. Risqué jokes about re-populating the planet may be inappropriate for the youngest species in the crowd. Otherwise, Age sails by on warm sentiments about finding one’s family and accepting your identity. -SOC

The Devil and Daniel Johnston: 4 reels
Among mythological archetypes most often detected in the lives of rock musicians, pacts with the devil and messianic self-destruction clearly hold the silver and gold medals. Daniel Johnston-by virtue of his own ambitions, the efforts of his friends and fans, or simply fate-has led a life legendary enough to go up in the pantheon with the soul-sellers and the candles-in-the-wind. Even though the title implies some kind of midnight -at-the-crossroads scenario, Jeff Feurzig’s new film, The Devil and Daniel Johnston shows us that the myth fueling Johnston’s legend is uncommon among musicians. He is a demon killer, and he has spent most of his life epically battling the devil and other monsters-not signing contracts with them. These impressive accomplishments are balanced with the less romantic facts of Johnston’s life, most of which spring from his severe mental illness. Thankfully, the film also makes heroes out of the people who have supported the volatile Johnston throughout his life, most notably his parents and Stress Records founder Jeff Tartakov (whose sole artist is Daniel Johnston). Not just another trite, “I remember when” music documentary, focus stays with Johnston and his bizarre journey, and it’s much more remarkable because of it. -ENJ

The Secret Life of Words: 2 reels
Josef (Tim Robbins) lies on a bed, blinded and scarred by a fire that killed his best friend on the oil rig they both worked on. Hanna (Sarah Polley), on forced vacation from her warehouse employer, quickly takes a temporary position as his nurse, doing anything to stay in some sort of routine. She starts out isolated and completely silent but she soon befriends the men on the oil rig while tending to the charming but haunted Josef. She talks about food, jokes with Simon the chef (Javier Cámara) and discusses waves and the sea with the nervy Martin (Daniel Mays). However, she doesn’t really reveal herself to anyone but Josef, and most of the film is made up of conversations between them. When it becomes obvious that Josef needs more serious work, Hanna spends a last night with him, telling him about why she is so reserved and regulated. Josef gets better and attempts to reconnect with Hanna through her counselor (Julie Christie) and sees if they might have something real between them. What troubles me about the film is the lack of danger, the dull romanticism of the inner corridors in the oil rig and dialogue that speaks about something, but stumbles when turning inward. In plain terms, it’s boring, but at least the soundtrack is good.-CC

Adam & Steve: 1.5 reels
It’s nice to see a movie that actually presents its gay characters as functional human beings, with problems that are not cartoon stereotypes, or as vessels for some kind of “universal” message. But Adam & Steve is a film whose pivotal scene features a man who accidentally shits on the floor. It’s a frighteningly unfunny comedy as a whole, whose few moments of genuine humor are so brief that you are already dreading their conclusion, portending another stretch of flat jokes. So this is where Adam & Steve is really intriguing-though it might not actually be funny, it is a remarkable facsimile of the kind of gross-out comedies that have been reliable box office draws for straight audiences the past few years. Opening in correct form with an ’80s flashback (featuring a fat suit) and continuing with the required poop scene, violence against animals done for laughs, fat jokes, characters that get stoned and totally get the munchies, and lots of people in wheelchairs having bad (but hilarious!) things happen to them. This is not to say Adam & Steve is totally tasteless. It is just striving for what passes for normalcy in blockbuster comedies these days, as if to speak for the gay community and say, “If you tell us a fart joke, will we not laugh?”-ENJ

Lonesome Jim: 3.5 reels
If you were to saddle Garden State with a less likeable lead and set it in Indiana, you might end up with this small gem, the latest from actor-cum-director Steve Buscemi. “Lonesome Jim” (Casey Affleck) returns home ostensibly to find himself, but really, he’s just there to mooch off his folks. The fact that he finds himself in spite of himself saves this film, even if it ups the cheese factor as a result. The movie begins with Jim’s surprise arrival at his parents’ house. His brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan) is less than pleased to see him; his mother, Sally (Mary Kay Place), is overjoyed but clueless as to Jim’s unhappiness. And his father Don (Seymour Cassel), in response to Jim’s claim that his breakdown is due to “dehydration,” simply suggests a cup of water. As the film goes on, Jim gets involved with Anika (Liv Tyler), a nurse he meets in a bar and her son, Ben (Jack Rovello). Don then compels Jim to work at the family’s factory where he meets Evil (Mark Boone Junior), a cousin with a drug habit and impossibly low standards. Lonesome Jim certainly makes good use of Buscemi’s attention to character and sense of humor. If you’ve had days where you can’t stand the sight of a sunny disposition, you’ll want to meet Jim. -DT

V for Vendetta: 3 reels
Written by the Wachowski brothers (and directed by James McTeigue) V for Vendetta is a breath of fresh, if slightly funky, air after the tediously drippy, monochromatic esoterica that drowned the last two thirds of their Matrix series. V for Vendetta is a polemic disguised as an action movie. The graphic novel-penned by the same team who gave the world the better known The Watchmen-may have been about a dystopian future, but Vendetta the movie is firmly and unsubtly about the present. The objects of V’s wrath are not shadowy instruments of incomprehensible evil, but familiar pillars of society we’ve come to mistrust-the newsman, the priest, the doctor-right on down the line. V for Vendetta’s main claim is that the annihilation of a symbol of society might actually be a good thing. But if terror by government is terrible, what good is an act of terrorism by the people? And aren’t they still acting on someone else’s ideas? Vendetta glosses over its bombastic conclusions without making a stab at answers. The movie demonstrates tremendous force, but also a shallow sense of history that risks undermining everything it tries to accomplish. -WM

Find Me Guilty: 2.5 reels
Find Me Guilty is a rare glimpse into the alternate universe in which Mr. Vin Diesel does not shoot or kill anyone, lift anything heavy, or pilot any vehicle-he just acts. It’s also notable for being Sidney Lumet’s first major picture since Cassavetes in 1999. This isn’t exactly a triumphant return for Lumet or a jaw-dropping showcase of Diesel’s secret power, but it is a courtroom story that distinguishes itself from the dull world of lawyer-based entertainment. It’s a mixed blessing that the script is based largely upon actual transcripts from the Lucchese family conspiracy trial of 1987-88, the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. There’s still plenty of zany activity provided by Diesel’s Jackie DiNorscio-a wise-cracking cocaine dealer with a 6th grade education, representing himself to avoid dealing with a lawyer. Diesel hams it up adequately, and, more impressively, has transformed from super-human-macho-robot into a pudgy, balding New Jersey-ite for the role. It actually ends up being a pretty funny movie as long as Vin Diesel is on camera (who thought that that combination of words would ever be written?). The film proves the point that a heavy dose of schmucky witticism can make even the longest trial (literally) amusing-but it’s difficult to decide whether that justifies actually putting up with either. -ENJ

Stoned: 2 reels
For many, Brian Jones was the style and soul of the Rolling Stones. Jones was not only a brilliant guitarist but also a fashionista in style-obsessed 1960s London. But in death he was dismissed as a rock’n'roll fuck-up. In Stoned, director Stephen Woolley simply wants us to reconsider Jones as a sensitive man who couldn’t handle his drugs. The film focuses primarily on the relationship between Jones and contractor Frank Thorogood hired by then Rolling Stones road manager Tom Keylock. Thorogood’s 1993 deathbed confession to murdering Jones was a quiet coda in the Stones-Jones saga-blink and you would have missed it. Stoned feels predetermined, rather than evolving towards Thorogood’s momentary loss of reason, and can’t seem to breach his sense of humiliation beyond a checklist of pokes and jokes. The film is best when it attempts to play generations against each other, but it never plunders the opportunity, instead playing to simple threatened masculinity issues. Whether Thorogood actually murdered Jones, or whether it was accidental mischief, is speculative curiosity. John Ford once said that when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. In Stoned, they gunned for fact and lost sight of what’s more powerful: Brian Jones, the legend. -EO

Duck Season: 2 reels
In the realm of film classes and script seminars, this movie would seem to have a doozy of a formula: Four strangers in a small apartment are forced to bond when the power goes out. Sounds very human, with the potential for conflict, soul searching and resolution, or some good ol’ “triumph of the human heart.” This story begins with Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño). They cheer as soon as they’re left alone in the apartment like liberated POWs, heaving themselves on the couch for an intense video game and chip-munching session. This is interrupted first by a neighbor, 16-year-old Rita (Danny Perea); then by a power outage, and finally by a wayward, philosophizing pizza guy named Ulises (Enrique Arreola). There is a dispute over how much money is owed for the pizza, and, improbably, Ulises and Flama bet their respective sides on the outcome of a soccer match. Moko and Rita retreat to the kitchen to make out, while Ulises regales Flama with his life story. The child characters unwittingly take on the persona of the movie, and vice versa: Both have ideas that move them, but lack the courage and the experience to act. -WM

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things: 1 reel
Half of the curiosity that The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things will generate relates to the publicity whore-fest surrounding writer JT LeRoy. A celebrity confection that iconic hipsters have fought over for a lick of his limelight, LeRoy seems to embody a seductive cocktail fantasy of fucked-up fame: a prostitute and a lit-wit in need of protection. It’s been a comical parade to watch celebrities fight over their new pop culture pet. Whether director Asia Argento was clued-in to the ruse from the get-go doesn’t really matter; her new film smacks of LeRoy himself: fey imagery and ostensible substance. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things begins with a 7-year-old Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) being ripped away from his foster parents by cold child custody officers who plant him back with his mother, a mid-20s druggie truck-stop prostitute named Sarah (Argento). As dire as the story plays, there’s never a sense of true danger, like watching a building exploding in an action film: you know it’s an effect; you can sort of admire it for its wretched beauty, but as flaming bodies fall from the smoking windows (”oh, they’re just stunt men”) you move on. -EO

Chain: 2 reels
There has always been a melancholy lilt to Jem Cohen’s work, merging the banal and ordinary into those fantastic fleeting moments that are at once lost or overlooked, the thrill of seeing something beautiful in the flutter of a leaf under a street light, or the swirl of garbage in an ignored urban corner. Chain balances Cohen’s visual observations with two characters, Tamiko (Miho Nakaido) and Amanda (Mira Billotte), who narrate a loose story surrounding their present situations which-like the lazy arcs of passenger jets in the opening shots-are in holding patterns for very different reasons. Both women are beholden to simple economics beyond their control. Tamiko is on a business trip seeking American investment in her Japanese company’s plan for an amusement park. When her company runs into some financial troubles, she is left hanging-out, practicing her English in the beige hotels astride industrial parks. Amanda is homeless, living on her own in either buildings slotted for demolition, or in the new constructions replacing them. She trolls local shopping centers to pass the time, surrounded by shifting merchandise she can never afford. You may feel that Amanda and Tamiko are strolling through a dream, but director Cohen shows his eyes are wide open. -E0

Ask the Dust: 2.5 reels
This movie was directed by Robert Towne, known to film students everywhere as “the guy who wrote Chinatown.” Towne also wrote the screenplay to Ask the Dust, based on a book from the ’30s by John Fante. Towne first read the book around the time he was a young author in Hollywood writing Chinatown, and he’s been trying to get it written and made ever since. His attachment threatens to overshadow this modest endeavor. Ask the Dust is also about a young author in Hollywoodland, Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell). Arturo’s voice-over runs around town saying things like “friend to beast and man alike,” as if he stepped out of a Spencer Tracy picture, pulling up his suspenders, pushing his hat forward and twirling the toothpick on his lips. He’s not long under our auspices before he runs into the feisty Camilla (Salma Hayek), a sexy Mexican gal whose only dream is to marry someone who can give her a white person’s name. All the strident over-acting and antique camera work is bewildering unless you get the homage. Towne isn’t just trying to recreate the ’30s; he’s trying to recreate a film from the ’30s. Such eccentricities will be cute to those who get them, endearing to fans of Golden Age cinema. —WM

16 Blocks: 2.5 reels
As a short story in some pulp magazine of a sadly bygone era, 16 Blocks would be a dirty little gem. Crooked cops, lots of twists and turns, some tough-guy badinage spit out on the knife’s edge. In the hands of Richard “Lethal Weapon” Donner, however, it morphs into a strange and weak buddy flick that mixes 48 Hrs., Die Hard With a Vengeance, and about a dozen other cop movies together in a desperate attempt to seem vital and gritty. As the broken-down cop Jack Mosley, Bruce Willis is paunchy, balding, and deflated-looking; even his mustache looks sick of it all. Willis’ nemesis is David Morse, playing Frank Nugent, the head of the crooked cop contingent trying to take out the witness, and you couldn’t ask for a better villain. As Eddie Bunker, the witness being bounced from one harrowing confrontation to the next, Mos Def is the wild card here. His quiet, laidback humor works wonders in many a film, but here he’s not been given enough to work with. At about 15 minutes shorter, with a script that actually fleshed out Mos Def’s character instead of trying to turn him into some motormouth caricature, then 16 Blocks might have actually been something. As is, it’s like the cops say: Move along, nothing to see here. —CB

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party: 4 reels
Chappelle can’t elude fame—even with his recent duck to South Africa to escape certain contractual obligations with Comedy Central. Despite that, he manages to meld perfectly with the general populace in Block Party. Rather than veiling himself behind a posse of blinged bodyguards, Chappelle announces his fame with a bullhorn that he carries throughout the film, punctuating punch lines and slinging political critiques. The overall lack of ego throughout Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is refreshing, allowing the community and the music to unite and harkening back to ’60s and ’70s music fests and films like Wattstax. The premise couldn’t be simpler: Chappelle organizes a block party in a Brooklyn cul-de-sac and invites the neighborhood. With his bullhorn. The block party itself is a marvelous meshing of acts including Mos Def, Big Daddy Kane, Erykah Badu (sporting the maddest baddest afro wig you’ve ever spied—when the wind blows it off, she responds by stage diving into the audience), Dead Prez, a fabulous Jill Scott, Kanye West and Lauryn Hill with a reformed Fugees, among others. The film is a treatise on the power of music to unite a community. —EO

Tsotsi: 3 reels
The story of how the unexpected discovery of an infant affects a delinquent youth, Tsotsi (the word is slang for “thug”), is a revelation of simple humanity. Tsotsi has been rewarded as this year’s South African nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.

Unusual in its portrayal of violence as a self-inflicted wound, the stains of poverty and loss of privilege tear a community apart from within adds to the tragedy. Tsotsi car jacks a middle class black couple and, panicked, shoots the woman in the stomach as he makes off with her Beemer. Barely able to drive, he runs the car off the road only to discover her wee toddler in the back seat. Unable to desert the helpless infant, he strips the car, places the child in a shopping bag and heads off into the township. As Tsotsi’s own broken childhood begins to surface in the reflection of the helpless baby, he realizes that he’s utterly unable to care for the child. Director Gavin Hood makes the desolate township radiantly colorful, suggesting hope indeed exists in a place ripe with desperation. But Tsotsi’s simple message is clear and the fragility of lives hang in the balance of a word that is often repeated in the film: dignity. —EO

Running Scared: 3 reels
Like Paul Walker’s character in Running Scared, the movie is a lot smarter than it looks. The film is basically three different movies: 1) A straightforward crime drama—probably its strongest suit; 2) A satire of the genre, working on many levels from Peckinpah-esque examination of the male psyche to urban Grimm fairy tale; and, sadly, 3) A genuinely clunky thriller. Unfortunately, you never know which you’ll get from scene to scene, or even moment to moment. Paul Walker plays Joey Gazelle, a family man in suburban Jersey who also happens to work for the local mob. After a deal gone wrong ends up with a lot of people dead, Joey is charged with his usual task of disposing of the gun that killed said cops. Joey, however, has been stashing the guns he’s supposed to have ditched as an “insurance policy.” When his son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and his neighbor’s kid Oleg (Cameron Bright) witness him adding the weapon to his collection, Oleg sees an opportunity to settle the score with his abusive father, Anzor (Karel Roden). Soon, Anzor is wounded, Oleg is on the run, and Joey has one night to get the gun back or end up dead at the hands of his own people. Since Nicky might know where to find Oleg, what ensues is the worst Take Your Kid To Work Day, ever. —DT

Dirty: 2 reels
Like many a police partner in many a cop movie, Officer Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.) has decided he can no longer put up with the moral ambiguity of his current day job. That Dirty was inspired by the true events of the Rampart corruption scandals of the late 1990s would appear to lend the film even more mean-street cred. Officer Sancho’s partner Adel Salim (Cuba Gooding Jr.) guns down a defenseless elderly man without provocation. Sancho and Adel’s bosses suspect the two are rats, and frame them in order to keep the pair from testifying before the internal affairs division. Caribbean-sounding drug smugglers are brought in, along with enough pesky informants, evil cops, Mexican gang lords and hard-breathing, angry lieutenants to outfit half a season of NYPD Blue. Gooding Jr. does an excellent job of conveying the mix of selfishness, petulance and machismo that drives just such a person as Salim into just such a job as a police officer. Dirty should have been Salim’s story alone. —WM

Battle in Heaven: 2 reels
Carlos Reygadas’ second film, Battle in Heaven, is framed by a blowjob: a fair-skinned European woman performs the act on an indigenous, dark skinned man. It’s a technique of sexual shock value that turns those class distinctions back onto the audience’s perception of the act. Unfortunately, Battle in Heaven sinks under the weight of its own intentions. Marcos (Marcos Hernández) works for a Mexican general, picking up the rear of a pompous parade every morning and every evening. His other duty is driving the daughter of the general, Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz), who defiantly works on the sly at an upscale brothel. Marcos and his wife are holding a secret: they kidnapped a baby for ransom which unexpectedly died before they could collect. Afraid of the moral consequences of their failed plan, Marcos’ wife (Bertha Ruiz) considers joining a religious pilgrimage that is simultaneously moving through the city. Marcos reacts stoically to the pilgrims and the piety they seek. The city he views is bitterly divided between poverty and privilege. Ana’s sexuality becomes desirous to Marcos, who is repeatedly debased as he attempts to express his own sexuality, the tension propelling Marcos to violence and ultimately to the redemption he has viewed as unattainable. —EO

Unknown White Male: 4 reels
The best moments of Unknown White Male feel like the perfect answer to everybody’s hysteria over what documentaries and memoirs should be nowadays—a time when information and lies are transmitted so freely. That is not to say it’s groundbreaking, profound cinema; but it is a stylish and intriguing portrait of a person’s life—and an interesting person at that. In 2003, Doug Bruce, a British man living in New York, woke up on a subway bound for Coney Island with no idea why he was going there. Upon further reflection, he realized he also didn’t know where he was coming from, where he was, or his name. Doug—it turns out—has retrograde amnesia; meaning that he is able to form new memories, but cannot access any of those made prior to that day in 2003. The rest of the film follows Doug as he rebuilds his life. These bits of video are complimented by lots of stylish imagery reminiscent of Benetton ads with a soundtrack of sound collage music, scored by someone named Mukul. But it works—creating a surreal atmosphere that drier psychological documentaries lack. —ENJ

Freedomland: 4.5 reels
Unless you’ve read Richard Price’s novel Freedomland, it’s tough to pinpoint which direction this adaptation is headed. A routine police investigation erupts into a race riot before collapsing into a chilling portrait of a deranged killer. Price accepted the challenge of converting his own novel into a shootable screenplay, and retains the suspense and social commentary that strengthened his book. The film immediately establishes a New Jersey turf battle waged between Gannon, the upscale white suburb, and its less-advantaged neighboring village of Dempsey. One routine evening, Dempsey detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) responds to a carjacking alert. The victim, Brenda (Julianne Moore), tells Lorenzo she was dragged from her vehicle and left for dead. Brenda’s in a state of shock, seemingly unaware of Lorenzo’s steady line of questioning until she musters the courage to whisper the film’s notable hook: her four year old son Cody was in the car. The screenplay does tip its hand to the final reveal, and those paying very close attention might end up one step ahead. Still, it’s satisfyingly chilling the places this movie dares to go. —SOC

Tristram Shandy: 4 reels
Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story adapts Lawrence Sterne’s irreverent, difficult 18th century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, “a post-modern novel before there was anything modern to be post about.” Dense, impious and riddled with purposefully long-winded digressions, it isn’t something easily reconstructed into a two-hour after-dinner treat. But if Tristram Shandy the movie bears any resemblance to Tristram Shandy the book, it’s that both are hilarious. In taking on one of the most fucked-up novels in world literature, Winterbottom has tried to construct the most fucked-up movie he can. Unlike his imagined director, he steers clear of a “real” adaptation. Tristram Shandy is part Masterpiece Theatre, part 24 Hour Party People and part Curb Your Enthusiasm. The period film portions are both real and part of an imaginary director’s movie; they are shown as they would be in any other movie, and we see them being filmed by the imaginary director’s crew. It’s a lot easier to watch than explain. Trust me. -WM

Something New: 2 reels
Scripter Kriss Turner, a veteran of generic sitcom writing, attempts to blow the dust off an old joke for newfound laughs: Turner’s treatment for Sanaa Hamri’s Something New pits races against each other to tell the often-turbulent courtship of Kenya (Sanaa Lathan), a black accountant, and Brian (Simon Baker), her white landscape architect. Color colors everything for this duo as they try to make a relationship work, and Something New overplays the racial chip on its shoulder to the detriment of the romantic date movie that’s buried at its core. Hamri shows initial promise by tweaking the romantic comedy formula in the film’s opening minutes: A funny fantasy sequence opens Something New. We follow ice queen Kenya, who resists when meeting Brian, a man hot enough to melt her barriers, because he’s white. Something New merely suffers from the same old gaffs and hurdles that accompany bad writing. Hamri finally reveals her distrust in the audience when she clubs us over the head with forced romantic symbolism. While hiking through the woods, Brian and Kenya actually pass through a dark tunnel and emerge on the other side of a well-lit mountain where a sudden burst of rain washes away her hesitations and prejudices. Subtle, much? —SOC

Tamara: 1 reel
For quite some time now, the horror genre has simply been seen as an easy jolt. Tamara raises the stakes: it throws in even more teen hormones than House of Wax. Tell me if this sounds familiar: an ugly duckling named Tamara (Jenna Dewan) is accidentally killed while being bullied about uncovering steroid usage at school. But death, of course, never keeps a good girl down. She returns as a cleavage-sprouting hottie with an axe to grind against the kids who put her in the ground, using her new-found power to make people do what she wants. She also makes time to try to get close to Mr. Notally (Matthew Marsden), the dreamy teacher who ignored her before her death. Don’t get me started about how Tamara drives her dispatchers to self-mutilation and homosexual tendencies. Oh, and her father is a booze hound, in case you were wondering. To treat a genre that has been honored by such visionaries as David Cronenberg, George A. Romero, and John Carpenter with this sort of ignorance has the stench of money over integrity. —CC

In This Short Life: 4 reels
The programming at RedCat this spring is red hot, with many of the artists introducing their work, beginning with director Britta Sjögren who will offer her latest project In This Short Life. The sparse tale, shot in black and white, is a pseudo documentary, seamlessly mixing non-actors with professionals in a snapshot of social fringe dwellers at emotional apexes, when life-changing moments hang in the balance of indecision. In This Short Life balances the intertwining of four separate stories that are ultimately linked by issues of family. Sjögren herself plays Heather, a struggling artist whose domestic partnership with boyfriend Sean (Sean Uyehara) takes a sharp turn; Peter is an actor unable to let go of his dream of performing; Christine (Christine Sjögren), long separated from her husband, is indecisive about a relationship. As the characters’ relationships begin to come together in the end, Sjögren pulls away in a series of tableaux that puts In This Short Life in perspective. The final shot offers a marvelous twist where fiction and truth come together that contradicts the earlier narrative. —EO

Annapolis:1 reel
The day before he’s set to enter the Annapolis-based U.S. Naval Academy, Jake Huard (James Franco) paints the town one last time with his crew. On his buddy’s urging, he flirts with watering-hole floozy Ali (Jordana Brewster) but gets distracted when a bar fight breaks out. The next morning, during warm-up drills, Huard is shocked to discover she’s one of his Naval instructors. Apparently this fledgling plebe never watched Top Gun, a movie that screenwriter David Collard honors by repeatedly stealing from it-or An Officer and a Gentleman, Rocky, Stripes, or The Karate Kid. Maryland’s coastal town provides a beautiful backdrop for Huard’s hard-knocks transition from blue collar to dress whites. Annapolis surrounds Franco with a fleet of exaggerated caricatures, from the carefree drinking buddy (Jim Parrack) who’s destined for mediocrity, to the detached father (Brian Goodman) who can’t muster the courage to tell his son he’s proud of him. Huard encounters a rival in Loo (Roger Fan, held over from Lin’s Tomorrow), an ally in chubby Nance (Vicellous Reon Shannon), a mentor (Donnie Wahlberg), a no-bull drill instructor named Cole (Tyrese Gibson), and last but not least, a potential love interest in Brewster. Saying Annapolis is predictable is like saying water is wet. -SOC

BUBBLE: 3 reels
Soderbergh’s latest experiment has garnered attention by choosing to use non-established actors. The film is also being released simultaneously on cable, DVD and in theaters, the brainchild of co-producer Mark Cuban’s company. The story is so simple, it’s nearly transparent: Kyle (Dustin James Ashley) and Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) work in a doll factory in a small, depressed Midwestern town. They’ve forged an odd bond: Martha, a single, middle-aged caretaker of her elderly father regards Kyle, a trailer park stoner kid working two jobs, with motherly affection. Without many options or time on his plate, Martha seems Kyle’s only friend. Until single mother Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins) starts working at the doll factory. Young and cute, she picks up on easygoing Kyle, to the annoyance of Martha. When Rose is suddenly found strangled-suffice it to say, without revealing too much-there isn’t anything even resembling a mystery to be solved.

The idea of expressing marginal characters in the heartland in high definition video is a conceptually interesting, but comes off as gimmicky. One is left wishing Soderbergh and writer Hough would just leave town and let the characters play out their own dramas. -EO

Breaking News: 3.5 reels
Since we don’t seem to be able to put together a halfway decent cops-and-robbers movie anymore in this country, it’s nice to see that Johnnie To (Heroic Trio, Fulltime Killer) is still out there, making films like Breaking News. Strictly genre, but still quite inventive, this is the kind of breakneck-paced, assured filmmaking that can remind you why Hong Kong cinema first caught on in America. The main cop Cheung (Nick Cheung) does have the requisite problem with authority and the head robber Yuen (Richie Jen) is about as smart and charming as it gets. Breaking News manages to spice things up with a good amount of media circus satire, especially regarding Inspector Rebecca (Kelly Chen), who operates the whole police operation as though she were a film director: “This is the age of the media… Image is everything.” The satiric touches are light, but sting nonetheless. To’s style is quick and no-nonsense, but that’s not to imply he’s stale. Crane shots swoop over and through the action, while split-screens are liberally employed to follow simultaneous action. While the whole affair is riddled with empty shell casings, To doesn’t over-hype or eroticize the violence, preferring to keep things moving. Smart and sly, Breaking News shows that “genre” doesn’t have to mean predictable. -CB

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World: 1 reel
Albert Brooks’ pseudo-controversial Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is the least funny picture he’s ever conceived. We begin with Brooks, asked to travel to India and Pakistan on a goodwill mission to discover what makes Muslims laugh. Brooks totes two less-than-helpful agents (John Carroll Lynch and Jon Tenney) and an enthusiastic Indian assistant (Sheetal Sheth, the film’s saving grace) on his sojourn. He endlessly frets over the 500-page report he’s ordered to produce and conducts fruitless man-on-the-street interviews to unearth the source of the Muslim sense of humor. To be fair, “Muslim” teaches us a few things. The Three Stooges are funny everywhere. Polish jokes are crude but effective. And Brooks couldn’t discover a laugh at a George Carlin concert. The film tries to further a counterproductive plot, sending someone with a terrible sense of humor on a mission to find what makes people laugh. It’s akin to sending Fiona Apple to Japan to find out what makes sumo wrestlers so chunky. -SOC

Fateless: 2 reels
While all the main elements of film production coalesce well in Fateless, there’s ultimately something missing. Lajos Koltai’s adaptation of Nobel Prize winning author Imre Kertesz’s novel centers around a Hungarian Jewish boy’s senseless trial at the hand of the Nazis. Koltai has created concentration camps in unbelievable detail, and shot them with the sublime eye of a masterful cameraman. On the surface, Fateless isn’t anything all that new to the holocaust genre. Koltai’s film remains mostly a frame of Kertesz’s richly composed images passing like tableaus. Ultimately, however, it’s unable to fully express the complex motivations of his young protagonist Gyuri Koves In one typically stoic moment, an American sergeant offers a cigarette to the harrowing figure of Gyuri as the camp is liberated. The sergeant casually mentions that he’s Jewish too as if he were dismissing Gyuri from summer camp. Unfortunately, the topic of the protagonist’s reconciliation with the city and the Jews that escaped the holocaust alive is given the least attention. The great potential for symmetry in the film is lost, and we’re left with a summarizing voice over passage from Kertesz’s novel (Kertesz wrote the film’s script). -E0

Why We Fight: 3 reels
In his new film Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki has compiled an impressive collection of footage, culled from news broadcasts as well as interviews conducted specifically for the film. Though Why We Fight is trying very hard to be the kind of documentary that will change people’s minds about the war and its purpose, it will likely (and perhaps unfortunately) only be seen by those who already agree with its message. In spite of this, it spends a great deal of time addressing issues that have been familiar to even the most casually informed anti-war newshounds. Thankfully, though the subject matter may be familiar, the interviewees are not the usual peace-loving suspects. Rather than making its case with pacifists devoted to granola since Vietnam, Why We Fight uses many examples of people that were gung-ho for war of all kinds following 9/11, then changed their minds. The main problem with this film, both in its persuasiveness and flow and its entertainment value, is that Jarecki can’t stop introducing new arguments. With its many narrative arcs and focal points, the film does not answer the question of “why we fight” as much as it reminds us why we should be vaguely angry about it. -ENJ