Author: kent-williams

Categories
Arts

Shorter film reviews

The Break-Up (PG-13, 106 minutes) Peyton Reed’s “anti-romantic comedy” about a mismatched couple (Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston) is often funny, sometimes uncomfortably so. Vaughn plays a guy’s guy, the kind who’d like to put a pool table in the living room, and Aniston is a version of her sweet, spunky character from “Friends.” (Kent Williams) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Cars (G, 116 minutes) Pixar blows us away yet again with an animated story of a NASCAR hotrod (voiced by Owen Wilson) who needs to take the “I” out of “TEAM.” Only by the amazingly high standards set by Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles does the movie come up a little short. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Click (PG-13, 86 minutes) Adam Sandler is a harried family man (welcome to the realm of Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin, Mr. Sandler) who finds a magical remote control. Get this: With it, he can pause stuff and fast forward it and mute it. Why he could fast-forward a fi ght with his wife or slo-mo that jogging girl with the big boobies. My god, that plot is clever enough to be a light beer commercial! (Devin O’Leary) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

The Da Vinci Code (PG-13, 149 minutes) Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s religious-mystery novel, in which a Harvard professor (Tom Hanks) and a Parisian cryptographer (Audrey Tautou) try to track down the Holy Grail while being pursued by a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany), fails to get a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The Omen. Howard has illustrated the book beautifully, but he hasn’t wrestled with it, made it his own. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Devil Wears Prada (PG-13, 106 minutes) Lauren Weisberger’s insider fashion industry exposé goes Hollywood with Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries) taking on the role of a naive young woman who moves to New York and gets a hellish day job as an assistant to one of the city’s biggest and most ruthless fashion magazine editors (played with snobby glee by Meryl Streep). Think “Sex in the City” with a cuter star and a more cynical outlook. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (PG- 13, 104 minutes) Vin Diesel, having long lost any level of relevance to this fast-moving fi lm franchise, is here replaced by Lucas Black, the kid from Sling Blade. But, really, who cares which humans are involved so long as you’ve got a tricked-out Mitsubishi Lancer EVO IX to ogle? Black plays a troubled teen who heads to Tokyo to live with his military uncle officer. There, he falls into the world of underground street racing. The film is rated PG-13 for “reckless and illegal behavior involving teens.” In other words, it’s gonna be a huge hit with high schoolers. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (PG, 85 minutes) You have no one to blame but yourself for this, people. Garfield goes to England where a case of mistaken cat-identity has him inheriting a castle. There, he runs afoul of the scheming Lord Dargis (played by a no-doubt embarrassed Billy Connolly) who wants the estate all for himself. I realize you spent $75 million on the first movie, America, but I’m confident you regret that now. Think of this as a bad first date you’re embarrassed you slept with. Just avert your eyes as you pass the theater and pretend you can’t see it. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

The Lake House (PG, 99 minutes) Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock emote up a storm in this supernatural weepie. It slowly accumulates power and gets extra points for holding on to its dour mood even after the romantic leads have discovered that they’re communicating via snail mail across time. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Nacho Libre (PG, 100 minutes) From the makers of Napoleon Dynamite comes this equally odd comedy about a cook (Jack Black) at a Mexican orphanage, who moonlights as a masked wrestler to save his adopted home. The story is simple, the tone is good-natured and the humor is pretty low-key. But Black gives it his all, delivering a surprisingly dexterous (if less spastic than normal) performance. If you didn’t get Napoleon Dynamite, you won’t get this one. Still, fans of the decidedly offbeat are sure to embrace it. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Omen (R, 95 minutes) The 1976 shocker The Omen is really just a slasher film dolled up in Biblical raiment. But it’s still a damnably entertaining movie. Naturally, we required no remake; but we’ve got one anyway, once again documenting a clueless Washington family who seems to have given birth to the Antichrist. The cast (including Liev Schreiber, Julia Styles, Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite) takes things seriously, and the direction is notably slick. Still, the script apes the original almost note for note, making this feel like a cover album of your favorite band—good if only for of the familiarity, but not nearly as memorable as the original. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Over the Hedge (PG, 96 minutes) An all-star voice cast (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte) lends its talents to this CGI toon adaptation of the popular newspaper comic strip. Willis plays a mischievous raccoon who helps his forest buddies adapt to the encroaching sprawl of suburbia. The animation is fluid and the writing has a bit more spark than most of the recent computer toons we’ve been subjected to (The Wild). From the director of Antz. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (PG-13, 151 minutes) The seaworthy crew of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl returns with Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow on the run from a squid-faced sea demon intent on stealing the lovable scalawag’s soul. Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush and Keira Knightley are all back on board, joined by Stellan Skarsgård and Bill Nighy. Like the previous outing, this one’s loaded with fun, fantasy and an appropriate measure of summertime swashbuckling. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13, 105 minutes) In Robert Altman’s cockeyed salute to Garrison Keillor’s radio program, Keillor (who wrote the script) lumbers on and off the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater, launching into one shaggy-dog story after another. Despite some amusing performances from the likes of Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Kevin Kline, the movie never quite gels, feeling more like a rough draft than a finished work of art. (K.W.) Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre Superman Returns (PG-13, 157 minutes) Reviewed on page 46. Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Waist Deep (R, 97 minutes) In this inner-city thriller, an ex-con (Tyrese Gibson, 2 Fast 2 Furious) gets tangled up with a gang after his car is jacked with his young son inside. When a nasty criminal kingpin (rap star The Game) demands a ransom for the boy’s release, our anti-hero teams up with a street-smart hustler (Meagan Good of You Got Served) for some hip-hop Bonnie and Clyde action. From the director of Glitter. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13, 104 minutes) The third installment in the Marvel Comics franchise delivers the goods, with moments of sublime pathos and mystic power. With a cure in the offing, society’s untouchables—mutants with superhuman powers—must once again choose between reform or revolution. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Categories
Arts

Full reviews

Nacho Libre
PG, 100 minutes
Now playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

In Nacho Libre, Jack Black has turned himself into a sight gag. His hair permed, a mustache crawling across his upper lip, he cavorts about the screen in one of the most ludicrous outfits since Howard Stern fouled the air as Fartman. There’s a pair of stretchy pants, over which Black’s capacious gut pours like lava. There’s a cape, for that superhero je ne sais quoi. And there’s a cover-the-entire-head mask that makes him look like an escapee from a bondage-and-discipline convention. But if that still isn’t enough to get you rolling in the aisles, throw in a dirt-cheap Mexican accent, which Black wields like a weapon, slaying the audience before it’s had a chance to ask whether any of this is working. Oh, and a brief look at Black’s butt cleavage. Chris Farley, where are you when we need you?
With his ability to disappear into that fat-guy persona, Farley might have made something out of Ignacio (Spanish for “ignoramus”?), a Scandinavian-Mexican friar/cook who longs to be a luchador (which is like our professional wrestlers, only even less professional). And Black certainly has his moments, as when he launches into a mariachi serenade straight out of the Tenacious D songbook. But the movie seems to think that the audience will be sufficiently amused just watching Nacho get clobbered, in and out of the ring, by a succession of midgets, giants and every size in between. Determined to make it in a field for which he seems supremely unqualified, Ignacio keeps coming back for more, accompanied by his string-bean tag-team partner, Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez). And that’s pretty much it for plot.
Director and co-scriptwriter Jared Hess got by with even less plot in his first movie, Napoleon Dynamite, which alerted an entire generation to the pleasures of tater tots. But Jon Heder’s Napoleon, a geek’s geek who refused to hide under the bleachers all day, seemed like the real deal—that guy who sat next to you in math class, drawing pictures of unicorns. Black’s Ignacio, on the other hand, seems a little forced. The movie itself—which was shot in Mexico with a number of Mexican actors, both amateur and professional—has a pleasantly strange vibe, like one of those East European comedies where the local customs would baffle an anthropologist. But the scriptwriters haven’t figured out how to fully exploit this milieu. Pinned against the ropes while being relentlessly pummeled, Black ends up being all dressed up, with nowhere to go.

The Lake House
PG, 105 minutes
Now playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock emote up a storm—well, a light drizzle, anyway—in The Lake House. But it was the house I fell in love with: It’s one of those all-glass pavilions on stilts that only a movie star could possibly afford. So gracefully does it hover over the water, both spoiling and enhancing the view, that you keep being distracted from the holes in the movie’s plot. An epistolary novel set in the age of You’ve Got Mail, The Lake House asks us to believe that Reeves’ architect/developer and Bullock’s doctor have occupied this crystal palace in separate years, and are only able to communicate with each other via snail mail from their respective time periods. Can their blossoming love break the bonds imposed by the space-time continuum? Can they meet at The Shop Around the Corner? Somewhere in Time? An Internet café?
Reeves and Bullock met in Speed, of course, but that little piece of hell-on-wheels wasn’t known for its romantic subplot. Here, director Alejandro Agresti (Valentin) slows things down considerably, and he goes for a more somber mood, with the sun rarely peeking through overcast skies. Reeves is bummed because his father (Christopher Plummer), a world-class architect who designed the house at the lake, is also a world-class bastard. Bullock is bummed because… Well, it’s not quite clear why she’s bummed, but she’s quite clearly bummed. Overall, the actress shows little of the warmth that usually offsets that slight chilliness in her screen presence (except in Crash, of course, where she was pure frozen tundra all the way). Agresti, who’s Argentinian, takes a chance by allowing these two sad sacks to wallow in their own self-pity, and you know what? It pays off.
Pays off eventually, I should say. As in Sleepless in Seattle, our romantic leads spend most of the movie apart, and neither of their stories is especially compelling—but they accumulate power as they go along, culminating in a scene where, plausibility be damned, they meet briefly at a party. I would never have thought Reeves could pull off such a scene; he’s the Al Gore of actors, earnest and dull, especially when trying not to seem so earnest. But he’s starting to settle into his stiffness, and occasionally even convert it into gravitas. And his line readings have gradually become looser, more real. Bullock maybe takes the dour thing too far this time (she’s relentlessly downbeat, except for the ugh moment when she plays chess with her dog), but it’s the movie’s dourness, its refusal to let gray skies morph into blue, that makes it such a refreshing weepie. After all, who wants their tears glistening in the sunlight?

Categories
Arts

Shorter reviews

The Break-Up (PG-13, 106 minutes) Peyton Reed’s “anti-romantic comedy” about a mismatched couple (Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston) is often funny, sometimes uncomfortably so. Vaughn plays a guy’s guy, the kind who’d like to put a pool table in the living room, and Aniston is a version of her sweet, spunky character from “Friends.” (Kent Williams) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Cars (G, 116 minutes) Pixar blows us away yet again with an animated story of a NASCAR hotrod (voiced by Owen Wilson) who needs to take the “I” out of “TEAM.” Only by the amazingly high standards set by Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles does the movie come up a little short. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Click (PG-13, 86 minutes) Adam Sandler is a harried family man (welcome to the realm of Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin, Mr. Sandler) who finds a magical remote control. Get this: With it, he can pause stuff and fast forward it and mute it. Why he could fast-forward a fight with his wife or slo-mo that jogging girl with the big boobies. My god, that plot is clever enough to be a light beer commercial! (Devin O’Leary) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6    

The Da Vinci Code (PG-13, 149 minutes) Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s religious-mystery novel, in which a Harvard professor (Tom Hanks) and a Parisian cryptographer (Audrey Tautou) try to track down the Holy Grail while being pursued by a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany), fails to get a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The Omen. Howard has illustrated the book beautifully, but he hasn’t wrestled with it, made it his own. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The Devil Wears Prada (PG-13, 106 minutes) Lauren Weisberger’s insider fashion industry exposé goes Hollywood with Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries) taking on the role of a naive young woman who moves to New York and gets a hellish day job as an assistant to one of the city’s biggest and most ruthless fashion magazine editors (played with snobby glee by Meryl Streep). Think “Sex in the City” with a cuter star and a more cynical outlook. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (PG-13, 104 minutes) Vin Diesel, having long lost any level of relevance to this fast-moving film franchise, is here replaced by Lucas Black, the kid from Sling Blade. But, really, who cares which humans are involved so long as you’ve got a tricked-out Mitsubishi Lancer EVO IX to ogle? Black plays a troubled teen who heads to Tokyo to live with his military uncle officer. There, he falls into the world of underground street racing. The film is rated PG-13 for “reckless and illegal behavior involving teens.” In other words, it’s gonna be a huge hit with high schoolers. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6 

Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (PG, 85 minutes) You have no one to blame but yourself for this, people. Garfield goes to England where a case of mistaken cat-identity has him inheriting a castle. There, he runs afoul of the scheming Lord Dargis (played by a no-doubt embarrassed Billy Connolly) who wants the estate all for himself. I realize you spent $75 million on the first movie, America, but I’m confident you regret that now. Think of this as a bad first date you’re embarrassed you slept with. Just avert your eyes as you pass the theater and pretend you can’t see it. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

The Lake House (PG, 105 minutes) Reviewed on page 47.  Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Mission: Impossible III (PG-13, 126 minutes) J.J. Abrams (the guy behind “Alias” and “Lost”) takes over as director for this third outing. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Keri Russell, Billy Crudup and Philip Seymour Hoffman (doing bad guy duty) make up the impressive cast list. Unfortunately, it’s scripted by the guys who wrote The Island. As in previous Impossible outings, the plot is baroque to the point of nonsensical. The explosions look pretty, though. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Nacho Libre (PG, 100 minutes)  Reviewed on page 47. Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Omen (R, 95 minutes) The 1976 shocker The Omen is really just a slasher film dolled up in Biblical raiment. But it’s still a damnably entertaining movie. Naturally, we required no remake; but we’ve got one anyway, once again documenting a clueless Washington family who seems to have given birth to the Antichrist. The cast (including Liev Schreiber, Julia Styles, Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite) takes things seriously, and the direction is notably slick. Still, the script apes the original almost note for note, making this feel like a cover album of your favorite band—good if only for of the familiarity, but not nearly as memorable as the original. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Over the Hedge (PG, 96 minutes) An all-star voice cast (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte) lends its talents to this CGI toon adaptation of the popular newspaper comic strip. Willis plays a mischievous raccoon who helps his forest buddies adapt to the encroaching sprawl of suburbia. The animation is fluid and the writing has a bit more spark than most of the recent computer toons we’ve been subjected to (The Wild). From the director of Antz. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13, 105 minutes) In Robert Altman’s cockeyed salute to Garrison Keillor’s radio program, Keillor (who wrote the script) lumbers on and off the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater, launching into one shaggy-dog story after another. Despite some amusing performances from the likes of Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Kevin Kline, the movie never quite gels, feeling more like a rough draft than a finished work of art. (K.W.) Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

Superman Returns (PG-13, 157 minutes) Director Bryan Singer, who gave life to the X-Men movies, tries his hand at reviving the Superman franchise. The result is a magnificently entertaining throwback to yesteryear. The film functions as a visually and tonally perfect follow-up to the first two Superman movies. Turns out Supes (newcomer Brandon Routh) has been missing from Earth for the last five years. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on, gotten engaged and had a kid. Lex Luthor (a great Kevin Spacey), meanwhile, has gotten out of jail and is hatching a nasty revenge plot against our hero. The film is lengthy and lingers far more on the romance angle than on the action. Still, the action that does show up on screen is epic and hugely cinematic. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

Waist Deep (R, 97 minutes) In this inner-city thriller, an ex-con (Tyrese Gibson, 2 Fast 2 Furious) gets tangled up with a gang after his car is jacked with his young son inside. When a nasty criminal kingpin (rap star The Game) demands a ransom for the boy’s release, our anti-hero teams up with a street-smart hustler (Meagan Good of You Got Served) for some hip-hop Bonnie and Clyde action. From the director of Glitter. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13, 104 minutes) The third installment in the Marvel Comics franchise delivers the goods, with moments of sublime pathos and mystic power. With a cure in the offing, society’s untouchables—mutants with superhuman powers—must once again choose between reform or revolution. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

For movie times, call 817-FILM (817-3456)

Local Movie Houses

Carmike Cinema 6    973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6    979-7669

Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4    980-3333

Vinegar Hill Theatre    977-4911

Categories
Arts

Cars

    I’m sure that, the day after the Big Bang, someone looked over at the Supreme Being and said, “Great job, now what have you got for an encore?” So it may not say anything about Cars, Pixar’s latest foray into the bits-and-bytes world of computer animation, that I was unable to summon up quite the enthusiasm I did for Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. (A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc.? Eh.) Or maybe it does say something about Cars—or, more specifically, something about cars. Toys, fish, bugs—each has its expressive potential. But cars, despite the ingenious things Pixar has done to them (and despite our country’s century-long love affair with them), don’t respond all that well to the kind of anthropomorphic treatment that’s Pixar’s stock in trade. For whatever reason, I kept looking for the people inside.
    O.K., so I’m automotively challenged. Heck, I wasn’t even that into Hot Wheels—but something tells me that Pixar founder John Lasseter (who’s back in the director’s chair for the first time since Toy Story 2), was. Like so much of his work, Cars harks back to his baby-boomer childhood—pre-OPEC, when gas was so cheap it was as if engines ran on air. But this movie is set in the NASCAR-obsessed present, where our hero, a hotshot hot rod named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), has steered himself into the pole position for the next Piston Cup. In an opening sequence that leaves most other cinematic depictions of stock-car racing in the dust, Lightning shows us what he’s made of. But he’s too cocky, always tooting his own horn—he seems to think he earns the checkered flag without the help of a pit crew.
    And we all know what that means: Look out ahead, life lesson looming.  And indeed, while on his way to the Piston Cup finals in Los Angeles, Lightning gets sidetracked—lured off the interstate to a town that can barely be found on a map, but used to be one of those places where you got your kicks. You know, on Route 66. Actually, Radiator Springs, although baking in the sun near Monument Valley, seems closer to Mayberry (or maybe that town Michael J. Fox wandered into in Doc Hollywood). And Cars, which had been racing along, starts coasting a bit, even stopping on occasion to enjoy the scenery. And that’s not such a bad thing—after the high-octane, skull-rattling opening, the change of pace is welcome. And so are the residents of Radiator Springs, especially a good ol’ boy in the shape of a battered tow truck named Mater, whom Larry the Cable Guy endows with all sorts of redneck charm. For fun, these two polar-opposite vehicles go tractor-tipping—which is like cow-tipping, only with, you know, tractors.
    To make a long (nearly two hours long) story short, Lightning learns that 1) sometimes, you gotta turn right to turn left, and 2) it’s kinda nice to slow down every once in a while. Valuable lessons, indeed, but not the kind of thing that’s going to get your average 10-year-old’s engine revving. (And when will Pixar finally make a movie more for 10-year-old girls than for 10-year-old boys?) Cars is a very enjoyable ride, and it exhibits the same fanatical attention to detail —reflective surfaces that would have had the Dutch masters weeping, for example—that makes all Pixar productions such marvels to behold. But, ultimately, I found myself asking for just a little bit more: more humor, for one thing. Having soared so high for so long, Pixar is in the unenviable position of having to top itself. In that sense, and only in that sense, Cars runs just a tad low on gas.

Categories
Arts

Short film reviews

The Break-Up (PG-13, 106 minutes) Peyton Reed’s “anti-romantic comedy” about a mismatched couple (Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston) is often funny, sometimes uncomfortably so. Vaughn plays a guy’s guy, the kind who’d like to put a pool table in the living room, and Aniston is a version of her sweet, spunky character from “Friends.” (Kent Williams) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Cars (G, 116 minutes) Reviewed on this page. Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Click (PG-13, 86 minutes) Adam Sandler is a harried family man (welcome to the realm of Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin, Mr. Sandler) who finds a magical remote control. Get this: With it, he can pause stuff and fast forward it and mute it. Why he could fast-forward a fight with his wife or slo-mo that jogging girl with the big boobies. My god, that plot is clever enough to be a light beer commercial! (Devin O’Leary) Coming Friday; check local listings

The Da Vinci Code (PG-13, 149 minutes) Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s religious-mystery novel, in which a Harvard professor (Tom Hanks) and a Parisian cryptographer (Audrey Tautou) try to track down the Holy Grail while being pursued by a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany), fails to get a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The Omen. Howard has illustrated the book beautifully, but he hasn’t wrestled with it, made it his own. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (PG-13, 104 minutes) Vin Diesel, having long lost any level of relevance to this fast-moving film franchise, is here replaced by Lucas Black, the kid from Sling Blade. But, really, who cares which humans are involved so long as you’ve got a tricked-out Mitsubishi Lancer EVO IX to ogle? Black plays a troubled teen who heads to Tokyo to live with his military uncle officer. There, he falls into the world of underground street racing. The film is rated PG-13 for “reckless and illegal behavior involving teens.” In other words, it’s gonna be a huge hit with high schoolers. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (PG, 85 minutes) You have no one to blame but yourself for this, people. Garfield goes to England where a case of mistaken cat-identity has him inheriting a castle. There, he runs afoul of the scheming Lord Dargis (played by a no-doubt embarrassed Billy Connolly) who wants the estate all for himself. I realize you spent $75 million on the first movie, America, but I’m confident you regret that now. Think of this as a bad first date you’re embarrassed you slept with. Just avert your eyes as you pass the theater and pretend you can’t see it. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

The Lake House (PG) Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock (finally! a Speed reunion!) come together again for this romantic mystery, a remake of a beautiful if confusing Korean film. Bullock plays a lonely doctor who begins exchanging letters with a frustrated architect (Reeves). Turns out that Bullock and Reeves are actually living in the same lakeside vacation home, but exist two years apart and are communicating through a magical mailbox. …I told you it was confusing. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Mission: Impossible III (PG-13, 126 minutes) J.J. Abrams (the guy behind “Alias” and “Lost”) takes over as director for this third outing. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Keri Russell, Billy Crudup and Philip Seymour Hoffman (doing bad guy duty) make up the impressive cast list. Unfortunately, it’s scripted by the guys who wrote The Island. As in previous Impossible outings, the plot is baroque to the point of nonsensical. The explosions look pretty, though. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Nacho Libre (PG) From the makers of Napoleon Dynamite comes this equally odd comedy about a cook (Jack Black) at a Mexican orphanage, who moonlights as a masked wrestler to save his adopted home from foreclosure. The story is simple, and the humor is pretty low key, but Black gives it his all, delivering a surprisingly dexterous performance. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Omen (R, 95 minutes) The 1976 shocker The Omen is really just a slasher film dolled up in Biblical raiment. But it’s still a damnably entertaining movie. Naturally, we required no remake; but we’ve got one anyway, once again documenting a clueless Washington family who seems to have given birth to the Antichrist. The cast (including Liev Schreiber, Julia Styles, Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite) takes things seriously, and the direction is notably slick. Still, the script apes the original almost note for note, making this feel like a cover album of your favorite band—good if only for of the familiarity, but not nearly as memorable as the original. (D.O.)
Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Over the Hedge (PG, 96 minutes) An all-star voice cast (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte) lends its talents to this CGI toon adaptation of the popular newspaper comic strip. Willis plays a mischievous raccoon who helps his forest buddies adapt to the encroaching sprawl of suburbia. The animation is fluid and the writing has a bit more spark than most of the recent computer toons we’ve been subjected to (The Wild). From the director of Antz. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13, 105 minutes) In Robert Altman’s cockeyed salute to Garrison Keillor’s radio program, Keillor (who wrote the script) lumbers on and off the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater, launching into one shaggy-dog story after another. Despite some amusing performances from the likes of Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Kevin Kline, the movie never quite gels, feeling more like a rough draft than a finished work of art. (K.W.) Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

Waist Deep (R, 97 minutes) In this inner-city thriller, an ex-con (Tyrese Gibson, 2 Fast 2 Furious) gets tangled up with a gang after his car is jacked with his young son inside. When a nasty criminal kingpin (rap star The Game) demands a ransom for the boy’s release, our anti-hero teams up with a street-smart hustler (Meagan Good of You Got Served) for some hip-hop Bonnie and Clyde action. From the director of Glitter. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13, 104 minutes) The third installment in the Marvel Comics franchise delivers the goods, with moments of sublime pathos and mystic power. With a cure in the offing, society’s untouchables—mutants with superhuman powers—must once again choose between reform or revolution. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Categories
Arts

Film Reviews

A Prairie Home Companion

PG-13, 105 minutes
Opens Friday at Vinegar Hill Theatre

    Minnesotans don’t like to draw attention to themselves, and the man who’s been pointing that out for over 30 years—drawing oodles of attention to both him and them in the process—plays the emcee in A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman’s cockeyed salute to a radio program that seems like it’s been around as long as radio itself. In a role he was born to play (literally), Garrison Keillor lumbers on and off the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, launching into one shaggy-dog story after another, whether he’s on the air or not. And it isn’t entirely clear how we’re supposed to take him. As a sage? A windbag? Both? The conceit is that it’s the show’s last night (the theater having been bought by a Texas conglomerate that intends to turn it into a parking lot). Keillor and his guests, played by such luminaries as Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, are ghosts. They just don’t know it.
    Improvising to beat the band, just as they did at this year’s Oscar telecast before handing Altman a Lifetime Achievement Award, Streep and Tomlin are the Johnson Sisters, Yolanda and Rhonda—all that’s left of what used to be a quartet. They still perform, but something’s clearly missing. Yolanda seems sad and tired, and Rhonda seems bitter. And like everybody else in the movie, they’re stuck in the past, swapping stories they’ve swapped so many times before that even they don’t remember who actually told them first. Alas, the stories don’t add up to much. We assume we’re being led somewhere, but we’re not. Altman’s always worked by indirection, finding his way to a theme and allowing us to find our own way—but he seems to have lost his sense of direction here. Although it’s based (loosely, one assumes) on a script by Keillor, the movie never gels. It feels like a first draft.
    And yet, as with any first draft, there are things worth keeping.  Duded up to look like they’d be perfectly at home on the range, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly give faces to those longtime “Prairie Home” companions, Dusty and Lefty. And unlike Streep and Tomlin, these two could actually pass as a singing act: Their crusty voices conjure the very essence of popping open a can of beans while sitting around the campfire. But they’re given even less of a storyline than the sisters—although they still manage to break out with a bad-joke routine that turns out to be something of a showstopper. Also nice to have around (although he perhaps belongs in a different movie) is Kevin Kline as Guy Noir, the private eye who’s read too many Mickey Spillane novels. Now in charge of security, Kline’s Guy combines The Thin Man’s Nick Charles and The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau—a bumbling fool with a certain debonair air. He, more than most, actually justifies Keillor having given flesh to what has heretofore been a figment of his imagination.
    Don’t expect any news from Lake Wobegon, though; Keillor is content to play a minor role in his own show (although there’s something in there about him and Yolanda having once kept the firelights burning, if you know what I mean). One wishes that Keillor and Altman had taken all these hints and turned them into something. The movie might well have been a worthy follow-up to Altman’s Nashville, which it resembles in certain ways. But Nashville, set during the American bicentennial, cast its net across the entire country, capturing the sense of doom that followed in the wake of all those political assassinations. A Prairie Home Companion, by comparison, seems stuck— hermetically sealed—in that old Fitzgerald Theater (and in the past).
    It’s about a show that was old-fashioned even when newly fashioned —“on the air since Jesus was in third grade,” as Keillor likes to say. And, for better or for worse, it goes out the same way it came in: not with a bang but with a whimper.

The Break-Up

PG-13, 106 minutes
Now playing at Regal Downtown
Cinema 6

    The Break-Up is billing itself as an “anti-romantic comedy,” so it shouldn’t surprise us when Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston spend the entire movie trying to make each other’s life a living hell.
    Think War of the Roses, only with a couple that just got together five minutes ago. Vaughn’s a guy’s guy, the kind that would like to put a pool table in the living room. Aniston is… Well, she’s basically Rachel again—sweet, spunky, skin the color of a perfectly roasted marshmallow Rachel. But here, to fit the movie’s contrived conceit, she has a preference for ballet over Nine Ball. Because, you know, opposites attract, right? Of course, before we know it, matrimony has given way to acrimony, but (what’re the chances?) neither party is willing to move out of their fabulous Chicago condo. Mayhem predictably ensues—as in War of the Roses, possession is apparently nine-tenths of the brawl.
    Directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On), The Break-Up is being hammered by critics. But it’s often funny (albeit sometimes uncomfortably so).
    And there’s something so… refreshing about how far it’s willing to go to make us both laugh and cringe. Call it a date movie for those who, unbeknownst to their partner, have been planning a break-up of their own.

Categories
Arts

Short film blurbs

The Break-Up (PG-13, 106 minutes) Reviewed in this issue.  Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Cars (G, 116 minutes) Now that Pixar and Disney are playing nice, the never-miss computer animation firm revs up the engine on its latest family outing. We’ve got a cocky stock car (voiced by Owen Wilson) who gets sidetracked on the way to a big race and ends up in tiny Radiator Springs. Busted for speeding, he’s sentenced to community service, and soon learns the meaning of friendship and respect. The premise sounds like Pixar’s weakest, but director John Lasseter (Toy Story) keeps things bouncy, fun and sweetly nostalgic. All-star voice cast includes George Carlin, Bob Costas, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Keaton, Paul Newman and Larry the Cable Guy. (Devin O’Leary) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The Da Vinci Code (PG-13, 149 minutes) Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s religious-mystery novel, in which a Harvard professor (Tom Hanks) and a Parisian cryptographer (Audrey Tautou) try to track down the Holy Grail while being pursued by a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany), fails to get a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The
Omen. Howard has illustrated the book beautifully, but he hasn’t wrestled with it, made it his own. (Kent Williams)  Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (PG-13) Vin Diesel, having long lost any level of relevance to this fast-moving film franchise, is here replaced by Lucas Black, the kid from Sling Blade. But, really, who cares which humans are involved so long as you’ve got a tricked-out Mitsubishi Lancer EVO IX to ogle? Black plays a troubled teen who heads to Tokyo to live with his military uncle officer. There, he falls into the world of underground street racing. The film is rated PG-13 for “reckless and illegal behavior involving teens.” In other words, it’s gonna be a huge hit with high schoolers. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (PG) You have no one to blame but yourself for this, people. Garfield goes to England where a case of mistaken cat-identity has him inheriting a castle. There, he runs afoul of the scheming Lord Dargis (played by a no-doubt embarrassed Billy Connolly) who wants the estate all for himself. I realize you spent $75 million on the first movie, America, but I’m confident you regret that now. Think of this as a bad first date you’re embarrassed you slept with. Just avert your eyes as you pass the theater and pretend you can’t see it. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

The Lake House (PG) Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock (finally! a Speed reunion!) come together again for this romantic mystery, a remake of a beautiful if confusing Korean film. Bullock plays a lonely doctor who begins exchanging letters with a frustrated architect (Reeves). Turns out that Bullock and Reeves are actually living in the same lakeside vacation home, but exist two years apart and are communicating through a magical mailbox. …I told you it was confusing. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

Mission: Impossible III (PG-13, 126 minutes) J.J. Abrams (the guy behind “Alias” and “Lost”) takes over as director for this third outing. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Keri Russell, Billy Crudup and Philip Seymour Hoffman (doing bad guy duty) make up the impressive cast list. Unfortunately, it’s scripted by the guys who wrote The Island. As in previous Impossible outings, the plot is baroque to the point of nonsensical. The explosions look pretty, though. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Nacho Libre (PG) From the makers of Napoleon Dynamite comes this equally odd comedy about a cook (Jack Black) at a Mexican orphanage, who moonlights as a masked wrestler to save his adopted home from foreclosure. The story is simple, and the humor is pretty low key, but Black gives it his all, delivering a surprisingly dexterous performance. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

The Omen (R, 95 minutes) The 1976 shocker The Omen is really just a slasher film dolled up in Biblical raiment. But it’s still a damnably entertaining movie. Naturally, we required no remake; but we’ve got one anyway, once again documenting a clueless Washington family who seems to have given birth to the Antichrist. The cast (including Liev Schreiber, Julia Styles, Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite) takes things seriously, and the direction is notably slick. Still, the script apes the original almost note for note, making this feel like a cover album of your favorite band—good if only for of the familiarity, but not nearly as memorable as the original. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Over the Hedge (PG, 96 minutes) An all-star voice cast (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte) lends its talents to this CGI toon adaptation of the popular newspaper comic strip. Willis plays a mischievous raccoon who helps his forest buddies adapt to the encroaching sprawl of suburbia. The animation is fluid and the writing has a bit more spark than most of the recent computer toons we’ve been subjected to (The Wild). From the director of Antz. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Poseidon (PG-13) Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss star in a big-budget remake of 1972 shipwreck movie The Poseidon Adventure, combining our fear of drowning with our fear of tight spaces. Director Wolfgang Petersen’s in too much of a hurry, keeping all the deaths at a distance. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13, 105 minutes) Reviewed on page 46. Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

RV (PG) Steve Martin must have been busy, because it’s fallen to Robin Williams to star in this pathetic, plotless excuse for a “family” comedy. Williams stars as a hapless dad who tries to pass off a business trip to Colorado as a family vacation. Along the way, the annoying clan has lots of wacky misadventures in a rented RV. That’s it, folks. Williams was starting to get annoying on screen, now he’s just sad. Go rent National Lampoon’s Vacation instead. It’s pretty much the same movie, only 20 times funnier. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

See No Evil (R) Porn king Gregory Dark (New Wave Hookers, Let Me Tell Ya ’Bout White Chicks) tries his hand at directing a mainstream horror film. Naturally, he hooks up with professional wrestler Kane (who used to grapple under the name Dr. Isaac Yankem DDS). The story (such as it is) concerns a group of troubled teens (nobody you’ve ever heard of) who are assigned to clean up an old hotel. Wouldn’t you know it: There’s a serial killer living there. It’s produced by World Wrestling Entertainment Films. My work here is done. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Thank You for Smoking (R, 92 minutes) Based on Christopher Buckley’s satiric novel about a tobacco-industry lobbyist (Aaron Eckhart) who seems to feel good about what he does for a living, Jason Reitman’s refreshingly un-PC film lets both sides of the smoking/anti-smoking debate have it with both barrels. Encompassing a trip to Hollywood as well as a kidnapping, the movie gives off a caffeinated buzz, capturing the book’s slightly giddy tone. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13, 104 minutes) The third installment in the Marvel Comics franchise delivers the goods, with moments of sublime pathos and mystic power. With a cure in the offing, society’s untouchables—mutants with superhuman powers—must once again choose between reform or revolution. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Categories
Arts

Short film review

Akeelah and the Bee (PG, 112 minutes) In case you hadn’t noticed, Hollywood is in the midst of a red-hot spelling bee craze. In the wake of Spellbound and… um, Bee Season, comes this drama about an 11-year-old girl from South Los Angeles who tries to make it to the National Spelling Bee. The story is, as expected, cute and inspirational. It’s also predictable, emotionally simplified and filled with clichés. Think The Karate Kid with a little girl taking over for Ralph Macchio, Laurence Fishburn doing the Mr. Miyagi thing, and words instead of crane kicks to the head. (Devin O’Leary) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

The Break-Up (PG-13, 106 minutes) Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn (who, yes, are a couple in real life; can we please get over that now?) star as a boyfriend and girlfriend who break up, but refuse to vacate the gorgeous condo they have rebuilt together. On the advice of friends (and a few strangers) the two begin a psychological war, which could be described as the cute version of War of the Roses. The film doesn’t add any totally unexpected twists to the romantic comedy formula, but Aniston and Vaughn work well together and the humor segues into feel-good territory without ever feeling strained. Kudos for salting the supporting cast with the likes of Ann-Margret, Jason Bateman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Favreau, Peter Billingsley and Joey Lauren Adams. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Cars (G, 116 minutes) Now that Pixar and Disney are playing nice, the never-miss computer animation firm revs up the engine on its latest family outing. We’ve got a cocky stock car (voiced by Owen Wilson) who gets sidetracked on the way to a big race and ends up in tiny Radiator Springs. Busted for speeding, he’s sentenced to community service, and soon learns the meaning of friendship and respect. The premise sounds like Pixar’s weakest, but director John Lasseter (Toy Story) keeps things bouncy, fun and sweetly nostalgic. All-star voice cast includes George Carlin, Bob Costas, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Keaton, Paul Newman and larry the Cable Guy. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

The Da Vinci Code (PG-13, 149 minutes) Ron Howard’s movie version of Dan Brown’s religious-mystery novel, in which a Harvard professor (Tom Hanks) and a Parisian cryptographer (Audrey Tautou) try to track down the Holy Grail while being pursued by a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany), fails to get a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The Omen. Howard has illustrated the book beautifully, but he hasn’t wrestled with it, made it his own. (Kent Williams) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Mission: Impossible III (PG-13, 126 minutes) J.J. Abrams (the guy behind “Alias” and “Lost”) takes over as director for this third outing. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Keri Russell, Billy Crudup and Philip Seymour Hoffman (doing bad guy duty) make up the impressive cast list. Unfortunately, it’s scripted by the guys who wrote The Island. As in previous Impossible outings, the plot is baroque to the point of nonsensical. The explosions look pretty, though. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike
Cinema 6

Oliver Twist (PG-13, 130 minutes) Roman Polanski (Chinatown) takes a crack at Charles Dickens’ classic tale of resourceful orphan boys and opportunistic thieves. Polanski remains faithful to the original novel, but adds little flavor to it, cramming as many characters and incidents as he can into the film’s 130-minute run time. The result is occasionally impressive (the visuals are spot-on, Sir Ben Kingsley does a mean Fagin), but a bit too formal. (D.O.) Playing through Thursday at Jefferson Theater

The Omen (NR, 95 minutes) The 1976 shocker The Omen is really just a slasher film dolled up in Biblical raiment. But it’s still a damnably entertaining movie. Naturally, we required no remake; but we’ve got one anyway, once again documenting a clueless Washington family who seems to have given birth to the Antichrist. The cast (including Liev Schreiber, Julia Styles, Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite) takes things seriously, and the direction is notably slick. Still, the script apes the original almost note for note, making this feel like a cover album of your favorite band—good if only for of the familiarity, but not nearly as memorable as the original. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

Over the Hedge (NR, 96 minutes) An all-star voice cast (Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte) lends its talents to this CGI toon adaptation of the popular newspaper comic strip. Willis plays a mischievous raccoon who helps his forest buddies adapt to the encroaching sprawl of suburbia. The animation is fluid and the writing has a bit more spark than most of the recent computer toons we’ve been subjected to (The Wild). From the director of Antz. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Seminole Square Cinema 4

Poseidon (PG-13) Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss star in a big-budget remake of 1972 shipwreck movie The Poseidon Adventure, combining our fear of drowning with our fear of tight spaces. Director Wolfgang Petersen’s in too much of a hurry, keeping all the deaths at a distance. (K.W.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13, 105 minutes) Legendary director Robert Altman (M*A*S*H*, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts) assembles another jaw-dropping ensemble cast (let’s see … Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Meryl Streep and Lilly Tomlin) to interpret Garrison Keillor’s folksy radio show. Rather than a literal translation, the film looks at the backstage antics behind the “final broadcast” of the Keillor’s “fictional” radio show. Funny, genial and full-to-bursting with great little character moments, Altman and Keillor have assembled an oddly likable, resolutely old-fashioned showbiz comedy. (D.O.) Coming Friday; check local listings

RV (PG) Steve Martin must have been busy, because it’s fallen to Robin Williams to star in this pathetic, plotless excuse for a “family” comedy. Williams stars as a hapless dad who tries to pass off a business trip to Colorado as a family vacation. Along the way, the annoying clan has lots of wacky misadventures in a rented RV. That’s it, folks. Williams was starting to get annoying on screen, now he’s just sad. Go rent National Lampoon’s Vacation instead. It’s pretty much the same movie, only 20 times funnier. (D.O.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

See No Evil (R) Porn king Gregory Dark (New Wave Hookers, Let Me Tell Ya ‘Bout White Chicks) tries his hand at directing a mainstream horror film. Naturally, he hooks up with professional wrestler Kane (who used to grapple under the name Dr. Isaac Yankem DDS). The story (such as it is) concerns a group of troubled teens (nobody you’ve ever heard of) who are assigned to clean up an old hotel. Wouldn’t you know it: There’s a serial killer living there. It’s produced by World Wrestling Entertainment Films. My work here is done. (D.O.) Playing at Carmike Cinema 6

Stay (R, 98 minutes) Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) directs a script by Eric Benioff (The 25th Hour). Ewan McGregor (still working way too hard) plays a New York City psychiatrist who tries to prevent an unusual young patient (Ryan Gosling, The Notebook) from committing suicide on his 21st birthday. This bizarre psychological thriller presents us with dreams, mysteries, miracles and increasingly surreal encounters that all lead up to (what else?) a twist ending. The cast is great, but the whole “twist ending” thing has been done to death. (D.O.) Playing through Thursday at Jefferson Theater

Thank You for Smoking (R, 92 minutes) Based on Christopher Buckley’s satiric novel about a tobacco-industry lobbyist (Aaron Eckhart) who seems to feel good about what he does for a living, Jason Reitman’s refreshingly un-PC film lets both sides of the smoking/anti-smoking debate have it with both barrels. Encompassing a trip to Hollywood as well as a kidnapping, the movie gives off a caffeinated buzz, capturing the book’s slightly giddy tone. (K.W.) Playing at Regal Downtown Mall 6

Water (PG-13, 117 minutes) Set in the ‘30s during India’s struggles against British colonial rule, this melodramatic drama/romance examines the plight of an 8-year-old girl, forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi after her husband from an arranged marriage dies. Due to cultural mores, she’s expected to remain faithful to her husband for the rest of her life. There she interacts with a group of widows, all nursing their own secret backstories. Beautiful, occasionally tear-inducing, but not as deep as filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s earlier work (Earth, Fire, Bollywood/Hollywood). In Hindi with English subtitles. (D.O.) Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13, 104 minutes) Reviewed on page 40. Playing at Carmike
Cinema 6

X-Men:


Winging it: Angel (Ben Foster) lets his freak flag fly in X-Men: The Last Stand

George Lucas, eat your heart out.
With the arrival of X-Men: The Last Stand, we now have a sci-fi trilogy that rivals and, in some ways, surpasses the Star Wars saga. The characters may not have the iconic richness of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and the movies themselves may not have the epic sweep (a sweep that finally engulfed Lucas, chewing him up and spitting out that second trilogy), but the emotional connection is there. And the X-Men movies, while going about the business of wildly entertaining us, have managed to play into the zeitgeist in ways we haven’t seen in these comic-book Weltanschauungs (it’s a fancy German word for “blowouts”) since The Matrix. Racial purity, sexual deviance, gender equality—these are a few of the themes that underpin the series. But they wouldn’t mean a thing if the movies didn’t keep delivering the goods. X-Men: The Last Stand not only delivers the goods, it achieves pop grandeur, moments of sublime pathos and mystic power. Wait—all of this from a movie directed by Brett “Rush Hour” Ratner? Has Professor Xavier been infiltrating my thoughts again?
One of the few problems with the X-Men movies has been that everybody’s so powerful, in so many different ways, that it all starts to seem like an elaborate game of “rock, paper, scissors” (only with fiery eye rays and adamantium claws). And X3 plucks yet more mutants from the Marvel Comics gene pool. After sitting out the first two episodes, fan-favorite Beast now makes an appearance, courtesy of Kelsey Grammer, who never lets on for a second that playing an enormous blue furball is any different from playing, say, King Lear. An “assimilationist,” Beast heads the government’s Department of Mutant Affairs (specifically named, one assumes, to remind us of the Bureau of Indian Affairs). Gifted, or differently abled, or however you want to describe them, mutants remain the untouchables of human society, genetic freaks who are reviled for how different they are, even though those differences amount to some of the coolest superpowers ever devised at a comic-geek bull session. Who, for instance, wouldn’t want to fly around like the angel Gabriel?
That particular power belongs to Warren Worthington III (Ben Foster), son of Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy), who’s recently discovered a cure for what most mutants don’t consider a disease. In an early scene, set 10 years in the past, Warren III has locked himself in the bathroom, where he’s hacking away at the wings sprouting from his shoulder blades. All we see is the blood and the white feathers scattered about the floor. Where the X-Men movies continue to excel is at putting the “human” back in “superhuman”—a teenage boy’s horror at the changes his body is undergoing, for example. Like the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters is a boiling cauldron overflowing with hormones—but it’s also where these teenage mutants learn how to control their powers (some, unfortunately, never do adjust). It’s in this volatile crucible of outsized powers and burgeoning pubescence that this new “cure” is most debated. For example, Anna Paquin’s Rogue—a mutant who is still unable to touch her boyfriend without sucking the life right out of him—is more than a little curious about Dr. Worthington’s “X gene” antibody.
A major player in X1 and X2, Rogue is mostly shunted off to the side in X3. There simply isn’t enough room for everybody to spread their wings, literally or figuratively, but director Brett Ratner does a nice job of directing traffic, giving each character just enough time to leave a lasting impression. Among the newbies, Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) rolls over opponents like a fullback from hell. Among the oldies, Halle Berry’s Storm is still a tempest in a teapot, despite a bunch more lines, a brand-new hairdo and a skintight black-leather suit that Catwoman would have died for. Is this Academy-Award winner capable of emoting with more range than, say, the Channel 15 weather girl? Apparently not. Much better, as always, is Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who looks more like a Dirty Harry-era Clint Eastwood every day. So virile that he can get away with muttonchops that would have made Captain Kangaroo blush, Wolverine spends most of X3 pining for Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who, if you recall, died at the end of X2.
But nobody ever really dies in comic books. And so Jean, having gone down in flames to save her fellow X-Men, predictably rises from the ashes. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Phoenix, the mutant’s mutant, a woman so telekinetically awesome that, like Carrie on prom night, she could bring down the school gymnasium simply by putting her mind to it. Like Berry, Janssen isn’t a terribly expressive actress, but if looks could kill (and we know they can) you can’t help but wonder whether X-Men: The Last Stand shouldn’t have been called X-Women: The Last Straw. A hydrogen bomb surrounded by slingshots, Phoenix turns out to be what the future of the world depends on. And in the movie’s opening scene, we see her as a young girl who’s paid a visit by the (equally young, through some astonishing movie magic) Charles Xavier (the silver-tongued, chrome-domed Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (the silver-tongued, silver-haired Ian McKellen). Still partners, these two go after their prey like a couple of college recruiters. She’s the only Class 5 mutant they’ve ever heard of.
Gently applying their theater backgrounds to comic-book dialogue, Stewart and McKellen remain the heart and soul of the X-Men movies, overlapping their acting styles just enough to make us wonder where Professor Xavier ends and Magneto begins. We still don’t know what caused their breakup, but they’ve come to represent the two opposing approaches to civil rights in this country: reform or revolution, nonviolent resistance or violent resistance, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. Yet neither of them has the soulful eloquence of Martin Luther King, or the fiery rhetoric of Malcolm X. They’re British to the core, maintaining a stiff upper lip as things spin out of control around them. Stewart’s so calm and soothing that you almost don’t notice how good he is—but just try to imagine anybody else in the role. As for McKellen, he has this uncanny ability to take a line or an expression right up to the point of parody, then stop. Any actor who could survive the costumes he’s forced to prance around in deserves our full respect.
Anyway, it’s not entirely clear what Professor Xavier thinks about the cure, which could be used as a form of genetic genocide. But Magneto, always itching for a fight, starts raising an army. This mutant militia holes up in the woods, like some right-wing survivalist types, then head to San Francisco, where Worthington Labs is based (in what used to be Alcatraz, natch). Climactic sequences can be so anticlimactic in these big-budget behemoths, but Ratner keeps his wits about him (as well as his wit). Many of us groaned when we heard that he was taking over for Bryan Singer, who did such a bang-up job directing X1 and X2, but we needn’t have worried. Ratner, heretofore best known for the Rush Hour movies, finds the poetry in pulp. Everything’s beautifully staged, nothing’s too overblown. And that climactic sequence, which involves relocating the Golden Gate Bridge and breaking into Alcatraz, masterfully showcases Hollywood’s own secret power: CGI F/X.
But where do we go from here? That’s not a question that tends to get asked after the third movie in a trilogy, especially one called The Last Stand. But there’s definitely a sense of “to be continued” as the remaining X-persons head back home to lick their wounds, bury their dead, and sharpen their claws. And there’s a sense that this comic-book premise—superheroes as an oppressed minority—has a lot of life left in it. Luckily, there are many more X-persons where these came from, and they’re definitely not shy.

Categories
Arts

The Da Vinci Code


Now playing at Seminole Square Cinema 4
For times call 817-FILM

You can almost imagine a telegram, marked “His Holiness’ Eyes Only,” arriving in Rome, its cryptic message decipherable only by those familiar with Hollywood’s business practices: NO NEED TO WORRY STOP MOVIE BLOWS STOP WILL OPEN BIG THEN DROP OFF 50-60 PERCENT STOP HAS NO LEGS STOP HANKS HAIR NOT REALLY A PROBLEM STOP
Condemned sight unseen by the Vatican, The Da Vinci Code finally arrives in movie theaters, spreading the Gospel of Mary as unearthed by Dan Brown, the Scooby-Doo of Catholic history buffs. Brown, who could start his own religion with the converts his cosmic-mystery novel has found around the world, pulled off a hoax that makes the Hitler Diaries look like the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s not that people believed every word of Brown’s conspiracy theory—namely, that the Catholic Church has for centuries been covering up Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene, his anointed successor, thereby subverting the sacred feminine in favor of the sacred masculine—but, by combining church history and art history with anagrams and pentagrams, Brown inspired just enough doubt to leave millions upon millions of believers and nonbelievers reaching for his theological X-File. The way, the truth and the light are out there.
But not in here, alas (“here” being a cinematic chapel crammed with the faithful; lights low, spirits high, copies of the Gnostic Gospels tucked into our cup-holders as Ron Howard’s movie version unspools before our eyes). Howard told Newsweek he wanted to reproduce the experience of reading the book. Instead, he’s reproduced the experience of writing a book—several false starts, a muddled middle and multiple dead ends. For all of his infelicities, at least Brown knows how to propel a story forward (pose and solve a mystery, then pose and solve another one). He was smart enough to allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. But Howard and scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman, taking the book basically one page at a time, show little imagination of their own. They’ve illustrated it, often beautifully (if your travel budget’s a little low these days, here’s Paris and London for less than $5 an hour), but they haven’t wrestled with it, revised it. It’s the King James Version: ornate, and more than a little moldy.
Tom Hanks, looking around for something to sink his teeth into, is Robert Langdon, the Indiana Jones of Competitive Semiotics. Only instead of the Ark of the Covenant, he’s after the Holy Grail—a quest that becomes far more urgent after he’s declared a suspect in the murder of a curator at the Louvre. (The body, surrounded with numbers and letters just waiting to be decoded, is laid out like Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man.”) Along for the ride (or is she driving?) is Audrey Tautou’s Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer with a personal stake in the outcome. The curator was her estranged grandfather, you see, and her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was, well…anyway, she’s along for the ride. And a bumpy ride it is, what with a crazed albino monk (Paul Bettany, who cracks a mean whip) hot on their trail. Can these two solve the riddles, unravel the mysteries and unearth the greatest story never told?
Is the Pope Catholic? But, more importantly, do we care? Brown, whose dog-eared copy of The Name of the Rose will surely bring top dollar on eBay some day, managed to get us excited about such arcane matters as the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar and the Council of Nicea. Howard, however, puts us right back to sleep. It seems that he’s either bored with the material, or desperately afraid of overstimulating the audience. At the very least, couldn’t he at least have gotten a decent spook going, à la The Exorcist or The Omen? Would that really have brought down the wrath of God? Alternatively, couldn’t he have had some fun? Of the entire cast, only Ian McKellen, as a wealthy, eccentric scholar with a Mary Magdalene obsession, seems to realize that The Da Vinci Code is basically Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for adults. This movie needed a De Palma, a Tarantino or a Stone—you know, a cinematic blasphemer. Instead, Hollywood sent a choirboy—and the rest of us must suffer for his sins.