Upcoming Releases
BUG (R) Is it a horror movie or an existential art flick masquerading as a horror movie? Or vice versa? Since the studio declined to screen this one for review, we'll just have to wait to see how it all comes out in the wash. Based on a stage play, and directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist), Bug stars Ashley Judd as a woman holed up in a hotel room while some sort of (metaphorical?) contamination rages outside. Also stars Michael Shannon and Harry Connick Jr. Opens May 25 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (PG-13) One more go around — and, reportedly clocking in at over two and a half hours, a very long go around — for Johnny Depp and company. The mega-budgeted third part in a swashbuckling franchise of almost Bollywood-like over-abundance (Adventure! Comedy! Horror! Romance!), this latest installment also boasts appearances by Chow Yun-Fat and, as Depp's swaggering, slurring pop, Keith Richards. Also stars Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy. Opens May 25 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
RECENT RELEASES
28 WEEKS LATER (R) 28 Weeks Later is largely headache-inducing stuff — frenetic, synapse-shredding, strobe-light-and-amyl-nitrate horror. The movie picks up some months after its predecessor (28 Days Later), with the zombie-inducing epidemic of the original film apparently contained and American-led NATO forces moving in to help rebuild a devastated Britain. Everything soon enough goes to hell, of course, and the bulk of the film is pure chaos, as masses of frightened human survivors and infected, flesh-craving zombies run amok through the streets of London, and confused U.S. soldiers stand at a distance firing blindly into the crowds, unable to tell friends from foes. The movie's scenario practically demands a parallel or three with Iraq, but there's very little shape or nuance to what happens here, and what 28 Weeks Later mainly has going for it is some pretty extreme and ugly nihilism (the person we presume to be the hero even runs out on his loved ones in the first scene and, in a particularly dubious bit of pop psychology, later becomes a monstrous daddy-zombie stalking his own children). There are some clever turns here, but the movie mainly just tosses out a series of faceless characters for its zombies to chow down on, all set to a combination of aggressive metal and dreamy, discordant rock of the sort that used to be called alternative. Not much of a beat, but I suppose you could dance to it if you tried. Stars Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Catherine McCormack, Imogen Poots, Makintosh Muggleton and Idris Elba. 2.5 stars
300 (R) We've come a long way from Final Fantasy, to the point where it's easy to forget that the digitally tweaked imagery washing over us in 300 is not, strictly speaking, real. The source here is a graphic novel by Frank Miller, and the sense that's imparted is that director Zack Snyder (rebounding nicely from his Dawn of the Dead remake) has imbued the panels not only with motion but also with life. An even more sophisticated blend of human actors and computer-generated environments than what was achieved in Miller's Sin City, 300's virtual universe recreates the battle of Thermopylae, when a small band of Spartan warriors held off a much larger army of Persians in 480 B.C. There's style to burn here and gore aplenty, as three hundred Spartan musclemen (resembling Tom of Finland fantasies in their red capes and black leather jock straps) take on hordes of fantastic and fearsome foes in a spectacle both elegant and unabashedly grisly. The movie is mainly notable for being an amazing technological achievement, but there's an actual story here as well (with some engaging characters and surprisingly smart writing), revealing 300 as something more than simply style for its own sake. Stars Gerald Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West and Rodrigo Santoro. 3.5 stars
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER (PG) Billy Bob Thornton stars as Charlie Farmer, a more or less ordinary man who — as is required in stories like these — dares to dream an extraordinary dream. Charlie's got an adoring wife (Virginia Madsen), two perfect children and a family farm to run, but it turns out that he once had dreams of being an astronaut, and what he really wants to do is to fly a rocket ship into outer space. That's why Charlie's going broke building that massive rocket in his back yard, and that's why the FBI is monitoring him and everybody in town thinks he's crazy. But of course, those of us in the audience are supposed to understand that he's anything but crazy, except in the best and most inspirational follow-your-dreams sort of way. For every interesting little bit of quirkiness there are two big, uplifting speeches complete with swelling Muzak ("Without our dreams, we're nothing"being the main mantra here), and the movie's pieces fall into place with a perfunctory thud completely at odds with the uplift the story strives for. Also stars Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern and Richard Edson. 2.5 stars
AWAY FROM HER (PG-13) Julie Christie stars as Fiona Anderson, a woman suffering from Alzheimer's, and as her memory vanishes, Away From Her sets itself the task of examining what remains. As much as the film focuses on Fiona's slow, slipping-away process, Away From Her is on equally intimate terms with her husband/caregiver Grant (Gordon Pinsent), and the bittersweet portrait painted here is ultimately a two-shot, a carefully layered mosaic of the couple's 44-year union. In a larger sense, the movie is a quietly telling examination of the nature of love itself, a reminder of what holds couples together even after the realization that our loved ones are not as we imagined them to be. In lesser hands this could easily have become treacly, even tedious going, but Away From Her turns out to be that rare, small film that packs an uncommonly large punch. Writer-director Sarah Polley (the young Canadian actress from The Sweet Hereafter, here making her behind-the-camera debut), allows the material to flow through conduits that don't always conform to our expectations, eschewing carpet-chewing for understated lyricism, and relying on the emotional truth of her actors' finely nuanced performances to bring it all home. Also stars Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy and Kristen Thomson. 3.5 stars
BLIND DATING (PG-13) Did you hear the one about the incredibly handsome, capable blind guy (with basketball skills that make Daredevil and Zatoichi look like klutzes) who also happened to be a 20-something-ish virgin? Well, here it is, in all its well-meaning, pathetically inept anti-glory. Chris Pine stars as Danny, the blind hunk whose raging stereotype of an Italian goomba brother sets him up on a series of, you guessed it, blind dates, each of which turns out to be more predictably awful than the last. Even more awful are our hero's periodic attempts to pass as a "normal" sighted stud, a set-up for some astonishingly embarrassing slapstick and an even more embarrassing turn by Jane Seymour as a therapist who can't seem to keep her clothes on. Wafting through the proceedings is a culture-clash romance in which Danny falls for an Indian girl who's expected to marry one of her own and a melodramatic subplot involving the protagonist volunteering for a dangerous experimental operation to restore his sight. Pine is passable in the lead role, and Anjali Jay is a likeable enough object of desire, but virtually everything else about Blind Dating is too bogus to be believed. Also stars Eddie Kaye Thomas, Stephen Tobolowsky and Pooch Hall. 1.5 stars
FRACTURE (R) Although this is basically just a pumped-up version of one of those old Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV episodes about trying to get away with the perfect crime, Fracture works best when it's pretending to be The Silence of the Lambs, minus the fava beans and tasty liver. Ryan Gosling takes the Jodie Foster role (complete with down-home accent and humble beginnings), a law-abiding golden boy playing, and mostly losing at, a game of wits with a brilliant psychopath — portrayed by none other than Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins hams it up in fine, Lecter-ish style, right down to the creepy little facial ticks and reptilian stare (accented by ghoulish low-key lighting straight out of Silence). In fact, the Lecterisms are so in-your-face that at times the movie seems to be emulating The Freshman's postmodern hat trick with Brando's tongue-in-cheek reprise of his iconic Godfather role. There's ultimately nothing remotely postmodern or self-reflective about Fracture, however, and it soon becomes clear that the movie is simply cashing in on a registered trademark. That said, you could do worse. It's so entertaining watching Hopkins oozing his creepy charisma that we hardly notice all the plot holes and lack of gravitas around him. Also stars Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Billy Burke and David Straithairn. 3 stars
GEORGIA RULE (R) Two of the actresses you love to hate — Lindsay Lohan and Jane Fonda — are among the three featured female leads here. That, along with the fact that the high-testosterone Spider-Man 3 is the only other game in town this week, should insure this movie attracts an audience of sorts, whether it be those seeking a car crash or a chick flick. As it happens, Georgia Rule is a bit of both. Felicity Huffman makes up the final third of the movie's female triad, playing a boozy Californian who sends her out-of-control teenaged daughter (Lohan) to spend the summer in Nowheresville, Idaho, with Huffman's estranged, iron-willed mother (Fonda). Director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride) mercilessly milks the shtick resulting from three generations of feuding mothers and daughters, but the conflicts are mostly too tidy, the personalities too rigid, and every other gesture over-enunciated, like a so-so play, stiffly executed and slapped up on the screen. The movie begins by throwing out streams of strident humor (much of it rooted in the promiscuity of Lohan's character), then abruptly shifts gears to heavy drama without having much of a handle on either. It's like randomly channel surfing from Steel Magnolias to Porky's to some faceless Lifetime Movie of the Week, and rest assured that there will be hugs all around if you wait long enough for them. Also stars Dermot Mulroney, Garrett Hedlund and Cary Elwes. 2 stasr
GRINDHOUSE (R) The gimmick here — an inside joke grown so enormous it happily devours itself — is that the two movies bundled together in Grindhouse simulate the whole experience of taking in a double feature at some bottom-tier (aka "grindhouse") movie theater back in the 1970s. You can almost feel the sticky floors beneath your feet as grindhouse aficionados and co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino touch all the bases, right down to the previews for (fake) coming attractions and the scratched, faded and badly spliced film stock. As for the main features here, this is basic so-bad-it's-good stuff, gleefully violent, brainless fare. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is yet another Night of the Living Dead mash-up, in which flesh-munching zombies are complimented by cartoonish helpings of gore and the already iconic image of Rose McGowan with a machine gun attached to where her leg used to be. Tarantino's Death Proof gives us a psychotic stuntman (Kurt Russell) repeatedly smashing his car into a bunch of comely females for no discernable reason. With its exploding body parts and nonstop go-go frenzy, Rodriguez's contribution is just one step removed from the nonsensical commotion of his Shark Boy and Lava Girl. Oddly, Tarantino, that most movie-mad of director-fetishists, keeps things more grounded in reality, but his film also winds up being the duller portion of this double bill. Although it concludes with a wonderfully gratuitous car chase, 80 percent of Death Proof is simply girls sitting around shooting the breeze — and Tarantino still has a tough time writing decent dialogue for women. Also stars Freddie Rodriguez, Sydey Tamia Poitier, Vanessa Ferlito, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Stacy Ferguson and Naveen Andrews. 3.5 stars
HOT FUZZ (R) An even more seamless genre-bender than the director's previous Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright's thoroughly entertaining Hot Fuzz mashes up comedy, action, buddy movies and the odd Agatha Christie whodunit, while gleefully taking the piss out of everything it touches. The movie's smart enough to show some respect too, and its bottom line simultaneously spoofs and cherishes big, splashy action movies in much the same way that Shaun stroked and skewered horror. Wright's co-scripter Simon Pegg stars as Nicolas Angel, a London supercop who makes his less dedicated colleagues look so bad that he finds himself "promoted" to a beat in a picturesque, backwater burg (at which point the movie's perfectly chosen soundtrack becomes dominated by The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society). The big joke here is that the sleepy village turns out to be anything but, and Angel winds up matching wits with a hooded reaper who's slicing and dicing the locals (and making it all look like a series of extremely unconvincing accidents). Hot Fuzz is some very funny stuff, with comedy that does droll as well as slapstick, and a well-stocked bank of almost too-clever pop culture references. It all tends to go on a bit too long for its own good (there are at least two climaxes too many here), but even the excesses are worth a look. By the end, Hot Fuzz is all glorious anarchy, as it should be. Also stars Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Paddy Considine, Billie Whitelaw and Edward Woodward. 4 stars
THE LAST MIMZY (PG) The story here is actually pretty simple, but it's communicated in such a tedious, convoluted manner that it's hard to get a handle on what's happening until the movie's nearly over and even harder to care. Adorable little Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) and big brother Noah (Chris O'Neill) discover a box filled with mysterious "toys" that seem to be giving them special powers — although, as it turns out, the children's powers are just one more red herring in a movie filled with them. Very little of what occurs here seems specifically connected to anything else, entire areas of the plot are introduced and then haphazardly discarded, and even the main idea driving the story — some gobbledygook about the toys being beamed here by a future civilization in need of saving — is only explained in what amounts to a perfunctory postscript. Pitched in some bizarre netherworld between kid-friendly fare and adult drama, the movie gussies itself up with what is essentially very slight material with baroque visual effects and contrived narrative flourishes that are probably supposed to pass as sophisticated but that only add to the general air of incoherence. Also stars Timothy Hutton, Joely Richardson, Rainn Wilson, and Michael Clarke Duncan. 2 stars
THE NAMESAKE (PG-13) A family saga spanning two generations, The Namesake is a film about packing up one's life and moving from one place to another. The principal bodies in motion here are Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) and his wife Ashima (Tabu), a Bengali couple who make a move to the United States and wind up living there as hyphenate-Americans, one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. Adapting Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 bestseller in fine, cinematic style, director Mira Nair chronicles the Gangulis' changing lifestyles and attitudes over the years, detailing their trajectories with affection and rare intelligence, and giving the film a fluid, episodic feel that's mainly concerned with the everyday textures of life. Nair begins to lose control of the all-important rhythms of her film at the midpoint, as the focus shifts to son Gogul Ganguli (Kal Penn), and the story begins to push in more conventional directions that occasionally skirt the edges of melodrama. But even at its soapiest, there are more than enough grace notes to redeem The Namesake and keep it well on track. Also stars Jacinda Barrett and Zuleikha Robinson. 4 stars
PERFECT STRANGER (R) Despite the perfectly generic title and perfectly bankable A-List stars (Halle Berry flirting with Bruce Willis!), Perfect Stranger turns out to be far from perfect and not at all strange. James Foley, who has directed some pretty good films in his time, cooks up a slick but basically pointless thriller that never quite kicks into gear. The movie is pretty much all foreplay, promising puzzles within puzzles without ever really providing one worth pondering. Berry stars as Rowena Price, a foxy newspaper reporter who goes undercover at a top advertising agency run by a philandering executive (Willis) who may have murdered Berry's friend. The stars are fun to watch — Willis plays a slightly more ominous version of his standard scalawag, and Berry's cartoon crusader may be her best since Catwoman (take that with as many kernels of popcorn as you wish) — but the script is lazy to a fault, with cheesy flashbacks surfacing every so often in lieu of actual character development. Also stars Giovanni Ribisi, Gary Dourdan and Patti D'Arbanville. 2 stars
SHOOTER (PG-13) Even in those rare moments when nothing seems to be happening, there's a sense of forward momentum here that reminds us of why they call these things action movies. (Our sense of the story advancing is so palpable, in fact, that's a bit of shock when we finally realize there's not really much story to advance.) Mark Wahlberg stars as an ex-marine sharpshooter who becomes the fall guy for a high-level political assassination he's been recruited to foil. With every armed body in America on his tail, Wahlberg spends most of the movie running for his life, pausing only for brief attempts at proving his innocence, with the whole thing playing out a little like The Fugitive meets Sniper on a grassy knoll (the movie teases us not just with presidential assassinations, but with all manner of shadowy conspiracies). There's nothing particularly spectacular about Shooter, frankly, nor are there any spectacular screw-ups (at least until the climatic face-off, when all the omnipotent bad guys turn themselves into convenient targets). It's sometimes a bit difficult to catch all of the characters' dialogue — what with all the gruff, Dirty Harry whispering going on, they could be pretty much saying anything — but by now you've probably figured out that doesn't much matter. Also stars Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Danny Glover and Ned Beatty. 3 stars
SPIDER-MAN 3 (PG-13) There's eye candy aplenty and tons of nutrient-free fun, but there are simply too many villains for comfort in this summer blockbuster, and they come crawling out of the woodwork with scant regard for rhyme or reason. The basic template here seems to be those more-is-more, super-powered free-for-all's that began taking over the Batman movies right around the time of Batman Returns and nearly sunk the franchise. There's nothing nearly as pointless as those Bat-fiascos here, but the script for Spider-Man 3 does show clear signs of franchise fatigue, making the mistake of confusing true spectacle with the process of simply piling on one damn thing after another. The fighting is interspersed with moments of mild comic relief (including Bruce Campbell channeling John Cleese as a snooty maitre d'), a subplot involving the hero's struggle to overcome his baser instincts for revenge, and some moderately engaging soap opera (and yes, one of the characters actually does get amnesia, only to regain his memory and make big trouble for everybody). The recipe essentially just repeats until the closing credits and, in the end, any characters left standing learn a valuable life lesson or two. Where Spider-Man 2 felt richly textured and, at its best, primal (or at least as primal as a movie about a guy in spider tights can be), this year's version too often feels overstuffed and shapeless. In any event, it's not what we deserve from a movie that reportedly cost more to make than the GNP of some countries. Stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace and Bryce Dallas Howard. 3 stars
YEAR OF THE DOG (PG-13) Mike White (who wrote Richard Linkater's School of Rock, as well as Chuck & Buck) directs a semi-sweet but slightly off-kilter tale of a girl and her dog — or rather, a girl and her lack of a dog, since the beloved pooch in question dies shortly after the film begins. Former SNL-er Molly Shannon plays Peggy Spade, a woman devastated by the loss of her pet and captured in a series loosely connected vignettes featuring an assortment of quirky acquaintances. White fashions the material as comedy of a mostly droll sort, putting Peggy through her paces as we watch her become, in due course, a vegan and then an animal rights activist. By the end of Year of the Dog, Peg has taken it upon herself to rescue a small army of homeless canines who, naturally, proceed to wreak havoc upon her personal space — but the deeper the woman's life spirals into chaos, the more strangely serene she becomes. White doesn't seem to know quite how or when to end his story, but these odd little moments of contrast become punch lines unto themselves. It's all a little too perplexing, since, a lot like one of the abused, confused animals that Peggy rescues, the movie licks your face one moment and nips at your hand the next. Also stars John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgaard, Laura Dern, Regina King and Josh Pais. 3 stars
ZODIAC (R) Nobody does serial killer movies like David Fincher, and Fincher's Zodiac is a serial killer movie unlike any other — including his own. Eschewing the dank, velvety atmospherics and formidable stylistic flourishes of the director's own esteemed Seven (and most of his other previous work), Fincher fashions Zodiac in a surprisingly straightforward and frill-less manner, evoking the look and feel of a 1970s time frame without slavishly fetishizing it. Even more crucially, Fincher subverts our expectations of where the meat of the movie should lie, giving us a film where the thrill of the chase takes a back seat to red tape and blind alleys. There's a lot of cross-chatter and seemingly pointless tail-chasing here, but that in fact becomes crucial to what the film's all about. A police procedural distilled to its cold, bureaucratic essence, Zodiac immerses us in a process that's more nerve-wracking nuts and bolts than car chases and titillating madmen, ultimately positioning the movie much closer to something like All the President's Men than Silence of the Lambs. The periodic murder sequences pack an undeniable wallop, but the vast majority of Zodiac plays out in the cluttered newsrooms and drab offices where loosely connected groups of curiously faceless journalists and cops endlessly debate the details driving their case. With no real heroes (the focus rarely settles too long on any one individual) and a villain who's more of a MacGuffin than a palpable personality, Zodiac is easily the most perverse mainstream entertainment in ages. In the end, virtually every one of its obsessed good guys winds up down for the count. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards and Brian Cox. 3.5 stars
This article appears in May 23-29, 2007.