BE COOL (PG-13) John Travolta returns as wise guy-turned-movie-producer Chili Palmer in this disjointed and very disappointing sequel to the 1995 oddball comedy Get Shorty. Despite the occasional amusing bit, Be Cool is a flat, episodic mess that often just seems like an excuse to string together a bunch of gratuitous celebrity cameos (including a fun one from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a very bad bodyguard), and a reason to get Travolta and Uma Thurman back on the dance floor together again. The setting's been changed from the movie biz to the music biz in Be Cool, with a sliver of a plot about Travolta's character's efforts to help a female singer make it to the top, but the film's periodic winking at its own clichés are almost as clumsy and uninspired as the clichés themselves. Also stars Vince Vaughn, Harvey Keitel and Christina Milian. 
BORN INTO BROTHELS (NR) Academy Award-winning documentary about the children of Calcutta prostitutes and the efforts of filmmaker Zana Briski to get the kids out of their Red Light Hell and into some better place. Briski, a photojournalist by trade, equips the children with simple point-and-shoot cameras, teaches them the basics of photography, and we watch as the budding young artists use their newfound ability to document their world as a means of rising above it. It's a fascinating process, all captured in this film, and even though it's a foregone conclusion that not all of the kids will be somehow magically empowered (their environment is simply too overwhelming and too awful for that to happen), there's a substantial amount of hopefulness to be found in Born Into Brothels. Briski is nothing if not a dedicated humanitarian, so much so that the film suffers a bit by having the filmmaker inject so much of herself into the proceedings (by necessity, some might argue), but there's no denying that this is finally the kids' show all the way. It's also, at root, a moving testimony to the transformative power of art. Co-directed by Ross Kauffman. Currently playing at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. 1/2
BRIDE AND PREJUDICE (PG-13) Jane Austen with songs and dances? Hey, youbetcha. The new film from Anglo-Indian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) is a deliriously colorful ode to the rich fantasies of Bollywood as well as a fast and loose adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - and it might just be this Brit-born-and-bred director's craftiest fusion of East-West yet. The movie's musical numbers introduce most of its key conflicts, as well as the male and female leads who will spend the first half of the movie squabbling and the second half trying to find a way into one another's arms. A charisma-oozing Aishwarya Rai is delightful in her first English-speaking role, as the feisty, free-spirited heroine who appreciates what's good in the Western world, but who values her own heritage above all. The movie doesn't fare so well with Rai's Caucasian counterpart - a less-than-dynamic Martin Henderson as the culturally chauvinistic but ultimately redeemable Darcy - but there's so much else going on here that we hardly notice. Chadha's take on Austen may seem frivolous or even a tad irreverent to purists, but this breezy romantic comedy cuts right to the chase of the author's sense, if not her sensibility. Currently playing at Beach Theatre, St. Pete Beach. 1/2
THE CHORUS (PG-13) French Drama The Chorus (Les Choristes) falls into that schmaltzy genre of film that features a plucky teacher who refuses to consign his students to mediocrity's ranks. Clement (Gerard Jugnot) is the appealing star, a nicely frumpy Wallace Shawn-type with disappearing chin and dumpling face. In 1949, the failed musician takes a job at a rural reform school, where he discovers an in-house choir of angels in the school's unruly children. While The Chorus sticks closely to the World's Best Teacher script, it does attempt to draw a convincing picture of what's at stake and offers some good reasons as to why some of the children are such shits. Currently playing at Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota.
