Tag: Digital Media

Many years ago, when summer action blockbusters were a new-ish thing, my mother would say at their conclusion, “That movie was so loud.” It wasn’t really a complaint. It was an observation that, at 10 years-old, I found spurious. Maybe they were loud, maybe they weren’t. I was probably more interested in disagreeing with her.

If I could get my mother to attend Pacific Rim, she and I would find common ground on one thing, for sure: This movie is loud. Super loud. So loud that, at times, it hurts. And this is coming from someone who has listened to music, loudly, on headphones his entire life, and attended more concerts —and stood next to the amps—than he can count.

Maybe the volume is a plot element: The crushing sound effects of metal warriors crashing against scaly monsters exist to disguise the creakily turning wheels of the plot.

I don’t mean to suggest anyone should expect story innovation from a big summer action confection. Ha, no! That’s absurd. But one should expect, maybe, the sound isn’t so consistently blaring that it distracts from what happens on screen.

It also helps when what’s going on on-screen warrants undivided attention. Pacific Rim has some inspired scenes—mostly owed to Ray Harryhausen and kaiju movies—but it also thuds and clangs around.

There is good stuff, however. It’s hard to dislike Idris Elba. The erstwhile Stringer Bell from “The Wire” and future Nelson Mandela in the upcoming Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom uses his considerable gravitas and charisma to great effect as Stacker Pentecost, the leader of a group of jaegers—that is, giant robot-like things that are used to fight the monsters, which require two human pilots who share their consciousness to operate them, and look like something out of “Voltron.”

There’s also a genuinely scary sequence in which a young Japanese girl is chased down a recently trashed city street, screaming for her life. It’s not the sight of buildings being obliterated that’s so horrifying, but the look of shear terror on the child’s face. Her labored breathing and wide-eyed fear produce more emotion than anything the monsters do.

Finally, there are the monster themselves, which look as cool as you’d expect them to look in a movie directed by Guillermo del Toro. It’s too bad every fight happens at night, because the monsters are something to behold.

The story that fuels Pacific Rim is non-existent. It’s just an excuse to stage enormous digital fights. It also doesn’t make much sense. For example, monsters from another dimension or place or something invade Earth from a spot in the Pacific Ocean called “the breach.” There’s a plan to exploit the breach from Earth and drop a nuclear weapon into it, but (ugh, spoiler) no one from Earth can get into the breach without using kaiju DNA. They can, however, get back without using kaiju DNA.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is monster fights, and Pacific Rim has plenty of that. Eh.

Pacific Rim PG-13, 131 minutes, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Playing this week:

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

After Earth
Carmike Cinema 6

The Attack
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Epic
Carmike Cinema 6

Fast and Furious 6
Carmike Cinema 6

Fill the Void
Vinegar Hill Theatre

The Great Gatsby
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Grown Ups 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hangover Part III
Carmike Cinema 6

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Kings of Summer
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Lone Ranger
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Man of Steel
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Monsters University
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Much Ado About Nothing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Mud
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Purge
Carmike Cinema 6

This Is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

White House Down
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Movie houses:

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre
977-4911

 

Move aside Johnny Depp, and let Gene Wilder show you how it’s done. Revisit the zany world of mysterious recluse and confection genius Willy Wonka in a special showing of the beloved classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Dream alongside Charlie, the impoverished hero of the story, and laugh at the ironic, bumbling disasters that befall the four unpleasant children who join him on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of the chocolate factory. A sweet summer escape on the big screen.

Sunday 7/21  $4-6, 2pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2pt2-F2j2g&feature=c4-overview&playnext=1&list=TLZSMJ8TYN8JU

The Mars Patrol

Young Lovers/Self-released

London-based sextet, The Mars Patrol, has been making undeniably catchy music for almost a decade, and its latest EP Young Lovers is no exception. The band’s trademark upbeat sound shines on the rousing opener “Here We Go,” while “Stop Pushing You Away” and the closing title track feature the driving pop beat and jangly guitars that make you want to dance. Singer Davina Divine enchants with strong, energetic vocals, and she pairs well with songwriter, guitarist, and co-founding band member Ross Nelson to create a number of sparkling lyrical moments showcasing the band’s penchant for positive consciousness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFdPJLbgMw

Shannon Curtis

Cinemascope/Saint Cloud Records

Los Angeles-based dream pop artist Shannon Curtis has made an intriguing debut. Often relying on languid synths to match with her breathy, ethereal vocals, Curtis strikes a chord with her down-tempo tracks. “Love is an Earthquake” opens with a steady roll of synths that you expect to expand, yet Curtis does the unexpected, and uses restraint in a surprisingly effective manner. On “Book of Fiction” Curtis croons about a relationship that can never be. On the keys and beat machine-heavy “Let’s Stay In,” Curtis lets her hair down a little and has some fun. The percussion on “Dandelion Wishes” adds an organic feel to the track, and “Anti-Gravity” features an oddly placed, sonic squiggle that manages to grow on you, while the throbbing beats on “So Many Stars” mirror a beating heart make for a nice effect. Cinemascope brings together a winning combination of subtlety, thoughtful lyrics, and otherworldly atmospherics.

Jenn Bostic

Jealous/Self-released

Jenn Bostic is poised to take the music world by storm. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s debut album is full of passion, memorable melodies and lyrics that will tug at your heartstrings. Whether it’s the funky country of “Change,” the pop rock of “Anywhere But Here,” or the driving piano balladry of “Snowstorm,” Bostic shines as much for her showstopping vocals as she does for musical variety. Bostic will get you with her lyrics too. You’ll likely need a Kleenex after hearing the ode to her deceased father “Jealous of the Angels,” while “Just One Day” is a swelling, mid-tempo, radio-friendly number. “Let’s Get Ahead of Ourselves” is an airy, upbeat nod to falling head-over-heels in love, and a way for people to see Bostic’s fun-loving side. Bostic won 5 Independent Country Music Association Awards in 2012, and with the release of Jealous, a new country music queen is emerging.

How does a reformed supervillain, Gru (Steve Carell), have anything to do in a sequel in which he’s not made the villain? Simple: He’s recruited by an international crime-fighting organization led by Silas Ramsbottom (ha, yeah; he’s played by Steve Coogan and resembles an obese James Fox) and partnered with Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig) to stop someone from using a secret potion to turn the minions (the yellow guys who speak gibberish) into, effectively, purple people eaters. Plus, Gru’s daughters want him to fall in love.

It’s contrived, to be sure, but Despicable Me 2 is laugh-out-loud funny. There were a few times I laughed so loudly I was embarrassed. Best of all, one doesn’t need to be familiar with Despicable Me to enjoy its sequel (though you may wonder how Gru ended up the father of three little girls); Despicable Me 2 stands up pretty well on its own. For example, in the first film, writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio don’t explain why Gru has the minions at his disposal. This time around there’s no explanation, either. The minions exist purely for comic relief (with a little light plot work), and it’s just as well.

As for the story, it’s an excuse to string together a series of one-liners and sights gags. As I chortled uncontrollably, I forgot that the plot is paper thin. Even the supervillain Gru is tasked with stopping is, as far as animated villains go, pretty harmless. He may or may not be someone from Gru’s past—it bears no relation to events of Despicable Me, so whatever—and Gru has to decide whether he wants to get involved in an attempt to halt the villain’s nefarious, but very funny, plans.

In addition to the world’s most vindictive chicken, Despicable Me 2 has great sight gags (including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it plan to attack Hoboken, N.J.), and dialogue that’s absurd in the right way: “Looks like your date was shot with a mild moose tranquilizer,” and “They never found his body; just a pile of singed chest hair.”

And I keep bringing up the fact that there’s no need to have seen the first film because I hadn’t seen it when I watched Despicable Me 2. I went in blind and, yes, laughed to the point of embarrassment. (Afterward, at home, I ordered Despicable Me On Demand…and laughed hysterically. Good thing no one else was awake.)

There has been some grousing in other reviews that because Gru is no longer a villain, Despicable Me 2 just isn’t much fun. That’s not the case. Gru is driven by ego as much as anything, and ego doesn’t care whether you’re trying to be the best supervillain or the best narc. It just wants to be right.

The most charming thing about the Despicable Me series is that it’s so gleefully silly. Somewhere the non-sexist side of Benny Hill is smiling. Sit back. Enjoy. The 3D effects work well, and Pharell’s songs light up the soundtrack.

Despicable Me 2, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Playing
this week

After Earth
Carmike Cinema 6

The Attack
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

The East
Vinegar Hill Theatre

The Great Gatsby
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hangover Part III
Carmike Cinema 6

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Identity Thief
Carmike Cinema 6

The Kings of Summer
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Lone Ranger
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Man of Steel
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Monsters University
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Much Ado About Nothing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Mud
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Oblivion
Carmike Cinema 6

Pain & Gain
Carmike Cinema 6

Pandora’s Promise
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

This Is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

White House Down
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie
houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre
977-4911

In case you missed it, lots of people are angry over Johnny Depp’s decision to play Tonto in the manner he plays Tonto in The Lone Ranger. There’s further anger over the decision to have a white man play Tonto. And the dead bird on his head. Et cetera.

Sorry, peeps: The redface is a red herring. Depp is pretty smart, and his decision to play Tonto as an ironic version of his TV counterpart is rather inspired. 1. Draw the people in/get the dander up with something familiar and taboo; 2. Turn familiar/taboo image on its head; 3. Have last giggle to bank as familiar image/taboo becomes hero instead of laughingstock.

Depp and his frequent collaborators, director Gore Verbinski and screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (along with screenwriter Justin Haythe), have done what they do best: They’ve taken a thin premise and turned it into big, brashy, overlong entertainment. On the Verbinski/Depp enjoyment scale, The Lone Ranger lands somewhere after the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and before its follow-ups. (Rango stands alone.)

Sometime in 1869, attorney John Reid (Armie Hammer) returns to Texas from the East Coast, joins his brother as a ranger on a hunt for outlaws in Indian Territory, and gets shot to shit. Tonto (Depp), with the help of a smart and wily white horse, brings Reid back to life—or he never died; it’s not clear, intentionally—as the Lone Ranger and together they hunt down the people responsible for killing Reid’s brother.

That ain’t the half of it, of course. There’s also Tonto’s quest for the men who killed his family. And then there’s Reid’s long-lost love, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson); the railroad magnate (Tom Wilkinson); the cavalry officer (Barry Pepper); and the super-bad guy, Butch Cavendish, played with appropriate hamminess by a wonderful William Fichtner. And lots and lots of bullets.

As with all Verbinski movies post-The Ring, The Lone Ranger has way too much happening. At 149 minutes, there are about 40 minutes of shenanigans and story that could go and we’d miss nothing. For example, the entire movie has a framing device with Depp playing a very old Tonto. It serves no purpose.

Then there’s the standard Rossio-Elliott plot-heaviness. Some of the characters aren’t what they seem. Some of them are, and some of them are worse than we can imagine. The reveals—and audiences will figure out the plot twists before the characters in the movie do—shouldn’t take this much time when it’s pretty clear who’s good and who’s bad the moment they walk on screen.

All the actors are fun, especially Fichtner and Depp. For all those who think Depp is making fun of the Comanche—the tribe that adopted him—the joke’s on them. This entire movie is a joke.

That brings us to Armie Hammer, who’s in on the joke, but also the butt of it. He just doesn’t have much to do. If his comic timing were better—if his character(s) were better developed, as in The Social Network—he’d be as vital as Tonto. But he isn’t. Tonto just needs kemosabe to get shot at, which is a nice change of pace for the character who used to be the sidekick.

The Lone Ranger PG-13, 149 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Playing this week:

42
Carmike Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Frances Ha
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hangover Part III
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Internship
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Iron Man 3
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Man of Steel
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Monsters University
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Much Ado About Nothing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Mud
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Now You See Me
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Olympus Has Fallen
Carmike Cinema 6

Pandora’s Promise
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Place Beyond the Pines
Carmike Cinema 6

The Purge
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Oz The Great and Powerful
Carmike Cinema 6

Scary Movie V
Carmike Cinema 6

Stories We Tell
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Star Trek Into Darkness
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

This Is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Bling Ring
Vinegar Hill Theatre

White House Down
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Movie houses:

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre
977-4911

Brad Pitt’s attack on zombies fails to capture the trend

It’s not that World War Z is bad. Any movie with star Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster—whose resume swings from Stranger Than Fiction to Machine Gun Preacher-—can’t be bad. It can, however, be pretty mediocre.

Fans of Max Brooks’ novel World War Z would probably say the failure comes from subverting the novel’s structure—a collection of accounts of the zombie war set 10 years after its end—and setting the movie at the beginning of the conflict. Maybe that’s the problem, but I’d argue a movie’s job isn’t to be faithful to its story’s origins; it’s to be an entertaining movie. World War Z is not. It has all the elements of a decent zombie adventure story, but it’s so derivative it’s impossible not to spend the movie tracing the story arcs back to other places.

For example, Gerry Lane (Pitt), a U.N. investigator, spends much of the film looking for patient zero, the first person infected with the virus (or whatever it is) that’s turning people into zombies. See also: Contagion. Of course, he’s retired and lured back into service. See also: Rambo: First Blood Part II.

More derivation: The zombies can move really quickly (Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake) or really slowly (George A. Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead). The music sounds like Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (The Exorcist). The world seems to be ending (every apocalypse movie, but let’s go with the recent spate, including This is the End, Warm Bodies, The Host, and the Resident Evil series).

And in what must be coincidence—because the screenplay isn’t smart enough for it to be purposeful—a World Health Organization doctor tells Gerry not to hit zombies with blunt objects because it just riles them up. If you recall Blazing Saddles, co-
written and directed by novelist Brooks’ father Mel Brooks, you shouldn’t shoot Mongo because it just makes him mad.

That’s a long way of saying the mind wanders when it should be concentrating on the zombie plague, which crashes down in the first 10 minutes. The following 100 minutes are spent fleeing and figuring out what went wrong, and the bursts of zombie menace are timed to stave off boredom while Pitt broods. It doesn’t help, by the way, that his name is Gerry, and that his boss’ name is Thierry (which is pronounced, as we remember from French class, “Terry”).

The other thing one notices is the movie’s confused gender politics. Gerry is married to Karin (Mireille Enos), who does a pretty good job keeping the family alive. But of course she’s attacked and he saves her. Then there’s a convenient plot excuse for her to stay behind with the kids while he saves the world.

Gerry teams up with a tough Israeli soldier (Daniella Kertesz). But then he has to save her, too. It’s as if the four credited screenwriters (all men) couldn’t decide whether to let the women kick ass or make dinner, so they let them half-do both. And as we all know, saving the world is man’s work.

Maybe the women will have other things to do in the sequel. Because you know there’s a set-up for a sequel, right? Of course you did.

Will it be mediocre? Does a zombie love human flesh?

 

World War Z

PG-13, 110 minutes, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

 

Playing this week:

42
Carmike Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Big Wedding
Carmike Cinema 6

The Bling Ring
Vinegar Hill Theatre

The Company You Keep
Carmike Cinema 6

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Epic
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Fast & Furious 6
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Frances Ha
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Internship
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Iron Man 3
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Man of Steel
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Monsters University
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Mud
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Much Ado About Nothing
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Now You See Me
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Place Beyond the Pines
Carmike Cinema 6

The Purge
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Oz The Great and Powerful
Carmike Cinema 6

Scary Movie V
Carmike Cinema 6

Stories We Tell
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Star Trek Into Darkness
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

This is the End
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

 

Movie houses:

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14
and IMAX
244-3213

Vinegar Hill Theatre
977-4911

Enjoy a star-studded trip to 1940s Hollywood with the suave Cary Grant and glamorous Rosalind Russell in a special screening of Howard Hawks’ classic screwball comedy, His Girl Friday. Adapted from Broadway hit The Front Page, the film features a hard-boiled newspaper editor who learns his ace reporter ex-wife is set to marry a bland insurance man, and he must pull out every trick in the book to sabotage the wedding.

Thursday 6/27  $7.50-10.50, 7:30pm. Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W. Market St. 977-4911.

It’s the perfect time of year to discuss a longstanding moviegoers’ gripe: “The book was better.” Or “they changed the ending.” Or World War Z is an in-name adaptation only. (To be fair, that last statement, sort of uttered by World War Z novelist Max Brooks, isn’t a gripe. It’s the book’s fans who are doing the griping.)

So far this summer there’s been a lackluster Superman movie (Man of Steel), but Brad Pitt and Marc Forster’s World War Z is making serious box office inroads. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is five months away (its scheduled opening is November 20), but there’s already been lots of yapping on the Interwebz about whether it will stick closely to the book.

And here’s my wholly informed, professional critic’s opinion about all this stuff: Who gives a shit if a movie is different from its source material?

Sure, that’s dismissive and maybe even a little mean. Some stories affect readers deeply, and those readers in turn expect to have their stories represented faithfully when transferred from source to screen. It rarely happens. And when a really faithful adaptation does happen, it, too, can be wretched (see: Sin City; the problem was not the source material).

The truth is—and we all know this deep down, and we’ve all heard it before—it doesn’t matter whether a movie adaptation of a book (or comic or graphic novel or play) resembles its source material. At all.

Did you enjoy the movie? Great. You didn’t? Too bad, but you can still enjoy the Action Comics No. 1.

Again, these are all things we know. Most of the time, books or comics or whatever are just too long—even the short books—and too dense, too detailed, and too subplot-heavy to be transferred without alterations.

And sometimes there are images in source material better left to a reader’s imagination. What if, in Ang Lee’s adaptation of Life of Pi, he’d included the scene from the novel in which Pi, the protagonist, tries to eat the tiger’s feces? Instant barf-fest (though John Waters would probably be pleased). If Tony Kushner had used Doris Kearns Goodwins entire Team of Rivals for his screenplay Lincoln instead of the slim section he used, it could have been a 13-episode HBO series.

Consider comics. Man of Steel‘s creators have 75 years of source material to draw from. Yikes. At least they tried something new-ish, even if the results are bad-ish.

Plus, let’s be honest. We only care about an adaptation’s integrity when we don’t know (or care about) the source material. Does anyone sniff derisively because There Will Be Blood barely resembles Upton Sincair’s Oil!, or because Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo significantly alters parts of Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud’s D’entre les Morts, or because Apocalypse Now is different from Hearts of Darkness and careens into super-weirdness when they find Kurtz?

But make World War Z a movie about the outbreak of the zombie plague instead of a series of accounts about the war 10 years after its end? THE HORROR. QUEL DOMMAGE.

In the long run, does it matter that a pre-Joker Jack Napier kills Batman’s parents Tim Burton’s Batman? In 1989, it certainly felt like a big deal. Then Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins and everyone sort of forgot about Burton’s alterations of the Batman universe.

That’s a long way of saying don’t fret. The great thing about Hollywood is that it keeps giving fans chances to hate it. If you dislike Man of Steel (which is entirely reasonable), it’s possible that in another decade, Warner Bros. will hit the history eraser button and reboot the franchise. They did it with Batman. They’ve done it with Superman twice.

The bottom line is that we all pay our money, and therefore we all get what we get. And you’re not really going to skip out on World War Z just because it’s different from the book. Are you?

The record-breaking success of 1989’s Batman green-lit a wave big-budget retro-adventure films, including the outlandish, neon ensemble piece Dick Tracy; the brash, moody grotesquerie of The Shadow; and the feather-light, straight-faced camp of latecoming entry The Phantom. Nestled amongst them is 1991’s The Rocketeer; though it was considered a modest disappointment upon release (Disney thought they had another Indiana Jones franchise on their hands), it has aged remarkably well, proving far more timeless its peers, and finding a devoted cult following on home video.

The film was a career-making break for Charlottesville’s own Billy Campbell (a Western Albemarle grad), pitch-perfect in the starring role as an earnest, all-American daredevil pilot in 1930’s California who accidentally lucks into one of the most primal of 20^th-century pop-science fantasies: a rocket pack. Simultaneously pursued by the rockets designers, the FBI, and the Mob, he dons an impeccably designed art-deco helmet and takes flight in order to rescue his sweetheart (a never-lovelier Jennifer Connelly) while thwarting a secret Nazi invasion of the US.

The supporting roles are filled by a solid roster of reliable character actors, from Alan Arkin and John Polito to Paul Sorvino and young Terry O’Quinn (as Howard Hughes!); the under-appreciated Timothy Dalton has never been finer than his wickedly fun turn here as a sneering, swashbuckling villain, channeling the darker side of the Erroll Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. persona.

Closely adapted from an obscure 1980’s comic book by would-be pin-up artist Dave Stevens (Connelly’s character was supposed to be Betty Page in the original), the film is expertly helmed by Joe Johnston, a Spielberg and Lucas protégée who got his start as a model-builder for the original Star Wars. One of the few contemporary filmmakers to revisit retro and genre material with sincerity and optimism rather than cynicism and sarcasm, Johnston has had a remarkably consistent career, from Honey, I Shrink the Kids and October Sky to the recent Wolfman and Captain America remakes.

Featuring zeppelins, car chases, nightclubs, gangsters, swordfights, daredevil acrobatics, numerous fun jabs at old Hollywood, and countless scenes set in and around classic LA landmarks, The Rocketeer is a timeless, charming, and well-crafted bit of all-American entertainment. The Packard Theater at the Library of Congress in Culpeper will screen a fully restored 35mm print of The Rocketeer on Saturday, June 22^nd at 2:00pm. The film is rated PG, and admission is free, although the Theater does encourage advance reservations.

Slim Loris

Future Echoes and Past Replays/Record Union

Swedish indie Americana rock group, Slim Loris, has made one of 2013s most surprising albums thus far. Euphoric, humorous and bittersweet, Future Echoes and Past Replays is a success. The band ensnares you with the lively and whimsical “Fear of Flying,” or the subdued and contemplative “While I Breathe,” and sometimes the power of the music they create is simply spine-tingling as in “Awakening”. Singer Mattias Cederstam muses “Happiness found its way past me/And I just let it be” on the Americana rock track “Visions of Tomorrow,” and brings out levity with lines like, “I am clean as a whistle/Clean as a whistle/Depending on where/The whistle has been” from “Clean as a Whistle.” There is something beautiful, honest and hypnotic on this album that comes out of left field and smacks you in the chest.

Eluvium

Nightmare Ending/Temporary Residence

Eluvium a.k.a. Matthew Cooper’s Nightmare Ending is a massive, almost fully instrumental double album that takes you on an epic. The melodic sway of “Don’t Get Any Closer” is like something from within a dream, while “Warm”’s waves of sound wash over you like euphoria. “Unknown Variation” literally adds some distortion to the picture via samples of composer/electronic artist BT’s recent albums Nuovo Morceau Subrosa and If the Stars are Eternal so are You and I and the results are stunning. Cooper also brings in breathtaking piano interludes (“Caroling” and “Impromptu”) and “Rain Gently” and the spellbinding “Covered in Writing” combines haunting piano keys with heavenly orchestration to dramatic effect. By the time Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan whispers the album’s only lyrics on the final track, “Happiness,” amidst all the beautiful cacophony that surrounds him, the contradiction of a Nightmare Ending is revealed.

Eisley

Currents/Equal Vision Records

After the release of 2011’s The Valley, fans of the indie rock group Eisley had to wonder if this angrier incarnation of the band was going to completely replace the fantastical dreamers that had come before. Currents should alleviate those fears. The DuPree sisters—Sherri, Stacy and Chauntelle—sound as angelic and sirenlike as ever, and the music that accompanying their vocals is beautiful. Hypnotic beats, gorgeous acoustic guitar, and a stirring string section make “The Night Comes” a head turner, and the piano-led finale, “Shelter,” rolls out a heavenly chorus before Stacy stuns you with a subtle delivery of “Nowhere feels like somewhere when I’m in your arms” to promote the power of love. The title track proves they still make groovy dance numbers, “Blue Fish” magically combines melodies and soul-stirring lyrics together, and the jazzy rock of “Drink the Water” is a nice change of pace.