BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE (PG-13) A romantic triangle of some sort, apparently, complicated by the fact that one or more of the players has a tendency to sprout fur and fangs when the moon is full. Stars Agnes Bruckner, Hugh Dancy, Olivier Martinez and Kata Dobo. Opens Jan. 26 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
RECENT RELEASES
APOCALYPTO (R) For those of you completely over Mel Gibson after his recent tirades, and wondering if there might be any possible reason to be interested in yet another foray into subtitled, gore-soaked sadism from this controversial celebrity, I urge you to give Mel another chance. Although it's just a chase movie at its stripped-down core (think The Most Dangerous Game by way of John Woo's Hard Target), Apocalypto does what it does exceedingly well. The film's exotic flourishes are as intoxicating as they are omnipresent, even as Apocalypto plows ahead with the energy and compelling forward momentum of a Mad Max popcorn epic. It begins in a small jungle village, explodes into the head-spinning chaos and terrible beauty of a full-blown Mayan city, then resolves itself in a final burst of speed and motion, as the protagonist races to elude his murderous pursuers and make it home alive. Apocalypto is no masterpiece, but it's a more-than-respectable effort from a director who, at his best, produces some of the most visceral moviemaking Hollywood has to offer — no small feat in these blandest of times. Perhaps most important, Apocalypto reminds us that worthwhile art can issue from even the most flawed human beings, and that alone might be worth the price of admission. Stars Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Raoul Trujillo and Rodolfo Palacios. 3.5 stars
BABEL (R) Many tongues are spoken and many stories interwoven in Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu's Babel, but, like those blind men feeling up the elephant, each of the movie's characters has only the foggiest notion of the big picture of which they're a part. Babel continues the patented blend of interlocking narratives and scrambled time frames that Innaritu and screenwriting partner Guillermo Arriaga dished out in Amores Perros and 21 Grams, a method that links its characters' lives by a series of coincidences rendered cosmic in the unbearable randomness of being. In Babel's version of chaos theory, a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and a Japanese businessman on vacation gives his hunting rifle to a Moroccan guide, eventually resulting in the guide's youngster accidentally putting a bullet in Brad Pitt's wife (Cate Blanchette). This in turn causes Pitt's and Blanchette's housekeeper, on the other side of the world, to risk missing her son's wedding unless she brings the couple's kids with her to Mexico, where beautiful and dangerous things await. And so on and so on. There are some painfully potent moments here, but the filmmakers' grasp sometimes exceeds their reach; simply put, we too often feel the movie straining to supply the connections necessary for making sense of the chaos. Still, Babel is bound and determined to pull off its cosmic hat trick and, even with all the metaphysical doodling and contrived rearranging of structure, the film gives us slabs of emotion that ring raw and true, with an English Patient-esque mix of ingenious editing, seductive cinematography and solid performances that goes a long way toward winning us over. Also stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Koji Yakusho, Adriana Barraza, Rinko Kikuchi and Elle Fanning. 3.5 stars
BORAT (R) A subversive mockumentary after the style of Christopher Guest (but pound-for-pound funnier), Borat is a road trip across America in which many of the key players appear bizarrely unaware that they're participants in a massive hoax. Our guide is British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, adopting the persona of clueless Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdivev (a recurring character from his Da Ali G Show), who travels coast to coast in a feces-smeared ice cream truck, ostensibly in an effort to see what makes this country tick. A typical Kazakh (which is to say, Cohen's lampooning of otherness manifested as a "typical" Kazakh), Borat is a sweetly contemptible, hygienically-challenged moron, a product of a decimated, inbred environment with a rabid fear of Jews, independent women, homosexuals and virtually anything else that moves. Borat plays into just about every conceivable stereotype, and half the fun of the movie is watching the reactions of the people he encounters, many of them presumably ignorant of the fact that he's an actor playing a part. Some of these people react to Borat's wildly inappropriate words and deeds in stunned revulsion, others with disturbing affection, but either way the way the results are as spontaneous as they are hilarious. Also stars Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson, Pat Haggerty and Alan Keyes. 4.5 stars
CHILDREN OF MEN (R) A devastating re-tooling of that ol' dystopian sci-fi blues from director Afonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Children of Men puts us uncomfortably up close and personal with a very near-future (2027, to be exact) in which the world has fallen into anarchy, disease and military dictatorships run rampant, and humans are no longer capable of reproducing. Our guide through the chaos is an ex-activist turned civil servant (a rumpled, world-weary Clive Owen) who somehow finds himself charged with seeing to the safety of the world's last pregnant woman. The film eventually becomes less politically charged cautionary tale and more full-blown action-thriller, but Cuaron is equally adept at both. It's all quite exhilarating, in its gritty, downbeat way, and perhaps just a little too believable. Also stars Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam and Claire-Hope Ashitey. 4 stars
CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (R) Despite the dazzling and often wacky flourishes, Zhang Yimou's new movie is an old-fashioned melodrama at heart, pitched somewhere between grand opera and soap opera, part noir and part Shakespearean tragedy. Set in the 10th century during the waning days of China's Tang dynasty, Curse of the Golden Flower is a lurid tale of palace intrigue, double crosses and murder, with the main players being the royal family: a megalomaniacal emperor (Chow Yun-Fat), his adulterous, neurotic wife (Gong Li) and three royal princes, all with their own ambitions and agendas. This is the sort of movie where everybody has secrets, and even though few of those secrets turn out to be terribly surprising, there's a weird satisfaction in watching as the movie's noir-ish web of lust and deceit assumes its nearly classic shape and momentum. But then, hundreds of black-clad ninja assassins swing in from nowhere in perfect synch, and we're suddenly aware that what we're witnessing is a wholly bizarre fusion of genres. All of this unfolds in a royal palace that seems composed of Gummi Bears dipped in radioactive varnish. There's a strange sort of logic in setting this classically noir-ish tale in a Chinese Wonkaland, as the whole movie ultimately takes on the delirious pitch of a fever dream, with characters running raving through enormous fields of bright yellow flowers that make Van Gogh's colors look washed-out. Also stars Liu Ye, Li Man, Ni Dahong, Jay Chou, Qin Junjie and Chen Jin. 3.5 stars
DREAMGIRLS (PG-13) A uniquely African-American variation on that old Chicago razzle-dazzle, Dreamgirls lunges from one fabulous musical number to the next, a nearly nonstop hit parade with scattered bits of story thrown in during the downtime. Revolving around the rise of a girl-group called The Dreamettes (The Supremes by any other name), Dreamgirls attempts to tell the story of Motown, but it's all so slick and super-sized that it rarely resonates as it should. Ditto for the characters served up here, all of whom double as big, fat cultural icons in a flamboyantly superficial survey of what is arguably black music's most important decade. (For all the outsized drama, Dreamgirls often unintentionally comes pretty darned close to being soul music's Spinal Tap, minus the jokes.) What saves Dreamgirls is that its core performers — particularly Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy and newcomer Jennifer Hudson — are talented and charismatic enough that, even when the material is bogus and the movie is just going through the motions, it's a pleasure to watch the singers and dancers vigorously strutting their stuff. Dreamgirls is mostly empty calories but, like most junk food, it's pretty hard to resist. Also stars Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose and Keith Robinson. 3 stars
FLUSHED AWAY (PG) The latest project from those ever-reliable genius types at Aardman Studios (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run) is the animated tale of two mice — posh urban rodent Rodney (voiced by Hugh Jackman) and his scruffy female counterpart Rita (Kate Winslet) — sharing an amazing adventure in London. More accurately, the movie situates itself in a miniaturized clone of London located in the sewers below the real city, and populated by a wonderfully eccentric menagerie of mice, frogs and slugs of indeterminate origin (the later being the movie's biggest scene stealers who break out in song at the most bizarre moments). The Anglo-centric humor may occasionally drift over the heads of younger viewers (there's wordplay here on distinctly British patter such as "diverting" and "smashing," and at one point a cockroach can be seen reading Kafka), but the movie is basically good, silly fun for everyone. The characters all have personality to spare, elements of slapstick, adventure and romance are expertly fused and paced, and the classy CGI animation skillfully emulates the charming stop-motion style for which Aardman is so well known. Also featuring the voices of Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis. 3.5 stars
FREEDOM WRITERS (PG) In the days immediately following the Rodney King blow-up, with racial tensions soaring at inner city schools around the country, naïve and ridiculously perky first-time teacher Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) walks into her scary new classroom with a big smile and a string of perfect pearls around her neck. "I give this bitch a week," smirks one of her wildly misbehaving students. But Erin is a teacher who genuinely cares and, as if you couldn't guess, these rough and embattled kids quickly begin responding. She gives them diaries in which to express themselves, makes stirring speeches about the horrors of prejudice,and eventually takes them on a field trip to the Holocaust Museum, where these dyed-in-the-wool gang members suddenly see the light (and the soundtrack similarly transforms from de rigueur rap to schmaltzy strings). Despite the movie being based on true events, Freedom Writers feels thoroughly canned, with sincere but soft-edged performances, transformations that occur far too neatly,and an overly symmetrical story arc that has our hero's success with her students rising as her relationships with peers (school bureaucrats and a neglected hubby) hit road bumps. It's all as predictable as it is well-meaning, an utterly unsurprising retread of a dozen other movies you've seen and barely remember. 2.5 stars
THE GOOD GERMAN (R) Director Steven Soderbergh indulges his inner rebel and his traditionalist side all at once here, meticulously co-opting the filmic language of 1940s Hollywood to create a somewhat self-conscious but beautifully crafted homage/deconstruction of classic postwar movies. Soderbergh sets his film in the hopelessly corrupt Berlin of1945 (closely mirroring the postwar Vienna of The Third Man), where American war correspondent George Clooney finds himself embroiled in a web of secrets, lies and extravagant coincidences, much of it revolving around a former flame Cate Blanchett. From its crisp black-and-white photography to its musical score (alternately lushly romantic and grand in ways that movie soundtracks don't allow themselves to be these days), to an ending straight out of Casablanca, The Good German nails the look and feel of those motion pictures of yore. There's something a bit grating about such extreme artifice, but there's food for thought here, too. As the title suggests, the film keeps circling around the difficulty of determining whose hands are clean, and what we get is an appropriately convoluted portrait of a morally dubious universe where there is no right or wrong — only those who survive and those who don't. Also stars Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges and Tony Curran. 3.5 stars
THE GOOD SHEPHERD (R) For his second stint in the director's chair, Robert De Niro tackles a subject no less daunting than the birth and growth pains of the CIA and spans some four decades of world-shaking events. And still, amazingly enough, The Good Shepherd is a bore. The film moves at the proverbial snail's pace as it flips back and forth between time periods, none of which are handled with much flair. As if to compensate, it throws in some ostensibly crowd-pleasing dramatic mumbo jumbo about the main character's personal life — daddy issues, a soulless marriage, the girl who got away — before petering out with a predictable subplot about the identity of a double agent. The movie barely simmers for what seems like forever without ever really coming to a boil, and it all culminates in a Sophie's Choice moment that doesn't feel quite earned. Stars Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon, Billy Crudup, Alec Baldwin and Robert De Niro. 2 stars
THE HISTORY BOYS (R) Adapted from Alan Bennett's play of the same name, Nicholas Hytner's new film follows a group of very bright and very precocious English schoolboys trying to figure out how to get into Oxford. Stars Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour, Dominic Cooper and Samuel Barnett. (Not Reviewed)
THE HITCHER (R) A pair of college kids on a cross-country road trip deal with a mysterious, malevolent stranger (Sean Bean) who seems to have nothing better to do than make their lives a living hell. The filmic equivalent of the joke about the chicken crossing the road, here is yet another variation of the movie that will never die. Also stars Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton. (Not Reviewed)
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (R) A staunchly humanist drama in the form of a war movie, Letters from Iwo Jima offers what is basically the reverse angle of Flags of our Fathers, a movie that barely allowed us a glimpse of the eyes behind the guns blowing holes in young American soldiers. Clint Eastwood returns here to the pivotal WWII battle that consumed his earlier film, but this time the director attaches faces to his invisible enemy, as well as names, histories and personalities, daring to turn former foes into human beings who weep and bleed. The two films are similarly structured as well: Both Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima mix extended and extremely graphic battle sequences with more serene, intimate moments (often in the form of somewhat awkward flashbacks) detailing the moral dimensions of their characters. In Flags, Eastwood focused on American soldiers falsely promoted as heroes, hammering home how war is packaged, sold and sanitized into a curiously bloodless symbol of patriotism. Letters concentrates on the flipside of the same equation: Japanese soldiers realizing they're being lied to by leaders who order them to die for a cause that's already lost. Both movies are ultimately mad as hell about the same exact thing: the idiocy of buying into illusions that governments try to impose on their people — and yes, the parallels with our current mess in Iraq are unavoidable. Stars Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase and Shindou Nakamura. 3.5 stars
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (PG) It's a toss up who's the real star here — Ben Stiller or the special effects — in a comedy-adventure about a hapless security guard who discovers all the exhibits in the Museum of Natural History are coming to life. Also stars Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais, Dick Van Dyke and Carla Gugino. (Not Reviewed)
NOTES ON A SCANDAL (R) A fierce performance by Cate Blanchette and an even more remarkable one by Judi Dench are the main reasons to see Notes on a Scandal, a solid little thriller that has something bad to say about nearly all of its characters. Blanchette stars as Sheba Hart, a greenhorn teacher who gets taken under the wing of veteran instructor Barbara Covett (Dench), an oddball spinster whose affection for the younger woman goes from creepy to deadly. Blanchett's character is no angel either, and her steamy affair with one of her 15-year-old students only complicates the film's nasty turn of events and snowballing head games. In the end, the film doesn't really amount to much more than a retooled and interestingly textured variation on your basic Fatal Attraction cat-and-mouse, but some of the twists and turns are surprisingly effective, and Dench and Blanchette are a pairing made in cat-and-mouse heaven. Also stars Bill Nighy. 3.5 stars
THE PAINTED VEIL (PG-13) A classy picture postcard with a good performance or two tucked inside, The Painted Veil's credits are impeccable, from its well-respected source (Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel of the same name) to its well-respected stars, Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. Watts is in particularly fine form as pretty but shallow Kitty, a spoiled Londoner forced by her cuckolded husband (Norton) to accompany him on a virtual suicide mission to a cholera-ridden village in China. The Painted Veil doesn't seem all that comfortable sustaining the slow-burning intensity of the couple's strained relationship, and so it deflects our attention with detours to a world-weary neighbor (Toby Jones) and with various representatives of the budding, anti-imperialist nationalism sweeping China in the 1920s. And then there are those adorable but tragically doomed nuns at the local orphanage where Kitty volunteers. The movie's arc is fairly predictable, with most of the characters working through their pain, getting in touch with their humanity, finding redemption and, finally, reaching an understanding that approaches, as Lou Reed once had it, some kinda love. Also stars Liev Shrieber, Diana Rigg and Anthony Wong. 2.5 stars
PAN'S LABYRINTH (NR) Besides functioning as a brutally incisive account of life during wartime, Pan's Labyrinth is something of a fairy tale, a classic fable shaken and stirred with a modern twist (including a wicked, obsessive-compulsive stepfather, a trio of tasks to be completed before the moon is full and a bionic-insect fairy for a guide). The movie is also an elegant coming-of-age tale, taking place during the final days of the Spanish Civil War, and filtering that conflict through the imagination of a 10-year-old girl who absorbs the messy suffering into a richly ordered fantasy world of her own device. Taking us down the rabbit hole and straight through the looking glass, Pan's Labyrinth layers its real-world wartime drama with glimpses of a parallel universe where anything is possible, where pagan myth and Jungian symbols collide and magical realism mixes freely with grotesque imagery straight out of Goya. The film is a fairy tale in the best and darkest sense (a baby-killing, eyeless monster dining by an enormous pile of tiny shoes is just one of its terrible pleasures), so be aware that this is most decidedly not, repeat not, an entertainment for children. Stars Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Ivana Baquero, Ariadne Gil and Alex Angulo. 4.5 stars
PERFUME (R) Faithfully adapting Patrick Suskind's cult novel, director Tom Twyker offers up the life and times of Jean Baptiste Grenouille, a strangely repellent 18th-century Frenchman with a preternaturally developed sense of smell, but who gives off absolutely no odor himself (almost as if he doesn't quite exist in the same physical dimension as the rest of us). Perfume vividly brings to life the ineffable otherness of this man who fell to earth, with Twyker (working territory infinitely more refined than the rat-a-tat razzle-dazzle of Run Lola Run) retaining the agreeably overripe essence of Suskind's novel while expanding its moral scope. Grenouille is transformed here into a sympathetic monster in the classic mold of the one created by Dr. Frankenstein, where monstrousness is essentially innocence gone tragically wrong. At once noble, blasphemous, pathetic and stark raving bonkers, Grenouille ultimately morphs into a Nietzschean Jack the Ripper, but even when Perfume eventually threatens to turn into this week's serial killer thriller, the movie remains utterly unique — a heartbreaking love song to beauty, sung by a beast of a man who, lacking a soul of his own, attempts to feed upon the soul of the world. Stars Ben Whishaw, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Dustin Hoffman and John Hurt. 4 stars
ROCKY BALBOA (PG) Three decades after the original Rocky and 16 years after the franchise's last hurrah, Sylvester Stallone's most iconic character returns to the big screen for yet another bout of head-bashing and obstacle overcoming. (Not Reviewed)
VOLVER (NR) Pedro Almodovar's abiding obsession with female mystique reaches a whole new level in Volver, a film that seems to take place in a world entirely depopulated of males. The setting is modern day Madrid, actually, where we quickly discover that the women outlive the men by miles — a truism demonstrated when the movie's first (and practically only) male character appears at the 14-minute mark, only to get knocked off (by one of the resident females) barely five minutes later. That murder provides one of the central plot points around which Volver's various and sundry females scurry, although all of the undeniably amusing or odd twists and turns don't really add up to much. The director achieves a seemingly effortless blend of his standard elements here — comedy, farce, melodrama, a touch of kitsch, even a bit of Hitchcockian noir — all delivered with his customary wit and style. But Volver doesn't approach the levels of depth and focus that we've come to expect from latter-day Almodovar and winds up a watchable but distinctly lighter-than-air concoction. Stars Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas and Yohana Cobo. 3.5 stars
WE ARE MARSHALL (PG) Despite a fairly strong start and the best of intentions, this inspirational sports opus ultimately falls victim to most of the pitfalls of its genre. Taking as its starting point one of the most horrific moments in American sports history — the 1970 plane crash that killed the entire football team of Marshall, West Virginia — We Are Marshall begins with a melancholy and moving first act that focuses on the grieving survivors of the community. Director McG changes course quickly enough, though, when an earnest new coach (Matthew McConaughey) is brought in to rebuild the team, and montages, period music and speech-making take over in a blatant effort to tug at those old heartstrings. Also stars Matthew Fox, Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie, Kate Mara and David Strathairn. 2.5 stars