new releases
3-IRON (R) This latest offering from South Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) is the enigmatic tale of a young man (Jae Hee) who, while breaking into a supposedly vacant home for a little inscrutable but harmless pranksterism, encounters and hooks up with a curiously likeminded woman (Lee Seung-yeon). The film unfolds in dreamlike fashion, told through images and the silences between actions, and with a minimum of dialogue. The cumulative effect is often just short of hypnotic. The tone here is considerably less nasty than in Kim's previous Bad Guy and The Isle, but that won't save the film from the scorn of viewers with little patience for connecting the dots of a deliberately open-ended (some might say ambiguous) narrative puzzle. Moviegoers who can deal with minimalist action, measured pacing and who like a little metaphysical sizzle in their cinema - and you know who I'm talking to - will be amply rewarded. Also stars Kwon Hyuk-ho. Opens June 3 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Call to confirm.
1/2
LAYER CAKE (R) More fun with London's crime underworld from first-time director Matthew Vaughan, a man whose producer credits on Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch betray his obvious affection for this sort of material. The story here isn't particularly new - a smooth criminal (Daniel Craig) seeking retirement gets sucked back into the biz for a last big score - but there's more than enough colorful characters, smart and nasty, slang-ish dialogue and twists to make it all worth our time. The cast is consistently strong too, particularly Craig and co-stars Colm Meaney and Michael Gambon. Vaughan's direction is remarkably assured for a first-timer, ominously insinuating and un-flashy in a way that his colleague, Ritchie, could only dream of. Also stars George Harris and Sienna Miller. Opens June 3 at Tampa Theater in downtown Tampa. Call to confirm.1/2
RECENT RELEASES:
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (R) A remake of the much-loved but not very good haunted house flick from 1979, this new Amityville hails from the team responsible for the recent revisiting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which undoubtedly accounts for the copious amounts of gore, grisly sadism and generally messed-up atmosphere. The remake begins with creepy noises and quickly escalates into squabbles and open rifts between the various family members inhabiting a malignant house that's clearly seeking to possess and destroy them. Shortly thereafter, Amityville '05 tips its hand and then peaks way too early - less than half an hour in, the house is dripping blood all over the place and ghostly, ghoulish visions are leering over every shoulder - all but deflating the movie's more subtle, psychological side, particularly its Shining-lite proposition that true horror is what lurks beneath the surface of the All-American Happy Family. 1/2
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE (R) Daniel Day-Lewis was coaxed out of semi-retirement to act in this new project by his director-wife Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity), making it all the more disappointing that the film turns out to be not particularly good. Basically shapeless and heavy-handed at all the wrong moments, The Ballad of Jack and Rose is about, among other things, the fading dreams and perhaps too-intimate relationship of a terminally ill, hippie-dippie dad and his precocious, nearly-grown daughter. Day-Lewis plays the dad, Jack, a chain-smoking environmentalist living in something approaching total isolation with his beautiful, budding daughter, Rose (Camilla Belle). It all feels rather airless; the characters' "lively" quirks are supposed to keep us engaged, but even the good performances here can't disguise the rambling self-consciousness of what amounts to a seriously flawed script. The film opens up, briefly, when Jack brings a woman into the house to act as a surrogate wife-mother (a pair of teenaged boys are attached, providing some amusing interactions), but Day-Lewis' central character remains too vaguely drawn and unsympathetic, and the movie's core father-daughter dynamic is a mess. Also stars Catherine Keener and Jena Malone.
CITIZEN VERDICT (NR) Reality TV and the American legal system are the primary targets in this bungled project, set in Tampa but shot mostly in South Africa and Canada, from South Florida filmmaker Phillippe Martinez. Jerry Springer references himself, playing a sensationalistic TV personality who hooks up with a tough-on-crime Florida governor (a sleepwalking Roy Scheider) to produce a new show where viewers put someone on trial, vote on the verdict, and then get to witness a pay-per-view execution. Citizen Verdict's themes are undeniably important but they've all been tackled many times before, usually with significantly more skill and imagination. Ill-considered scenes designed to assure us of the movie's patriotism pop up every so often for no apparent reason other than to atone for the film's periodic jabs at America's bad habits. It's hard to say whether Citizen Verdict lacks the courage of its convictions or if it simply lacks vision, but the movie seems to be working overtime to please all the people all the time, and, as is usually the case with something so transparently desperate, fails. Also stars Armand Assante and Justine Mitchell.
CRASH (R) In a nutshell, Crash is a sort of A-Z guide to racial tensions in modern America, and about how even the best of us sometimes use those tensions to drive ourselves and each other crazy. The movie takes the form of an Altman-esque ensemble piece a la Short Cuts, with writer-director Paul Haggis (screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby) introducing some dozen characters of various ethnic backgrounds, and then elaborately interweaving their lives over a brief period of time. Haggis constantly complicates the playing field, exposing ethical dilemmas, supplying extenuating circumstances that effectively alter what just a scene or two ago appeared to be the rules of the game. The movie is all about tensions between black and white, certainly, but the shifting context in Crash leaves no doubt that what we're really dealing with is mostly shades of gray. Ultimately, everything is laid out in a manner that's just a bit too symmetrical, with all of the stories neatly counter-balanced and with the narrative-advancing coincidences piling up so thick and fast it's nearly overwhelming. Still, it's hard to complain too loudly about a filmmaker trying to do too much for once as opposed to too little. Stars Don Cheadle, Ryan Phillippe, Terrence Howard, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito, Larenz Tate, Thandie Newton, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Brendan Fraser. 1/2
ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (NR) Director Alex Gibney's documentary about the rise and fall of the infamous corporate juggernaut is based on a book by Fortune Magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. It opens with a reenactment of Enron exec Cliff Baxter's suicide, then travels back in time to describe chairman Kenneth lay's humble beginnings and eventual ascent in the corporate world; the financial malfeasance evident as far back as 1987; and the "aggressive accounting" philosophy that took hold of the company with the arrival of CEO Jeff Skilling. (Not Reviewed)
FEAR AND TREMBLING (NR) It's not just the Lost in Translation fan club who'll be taken with this delightfully droll account of a Westerner on the other side of the looking glass in Japan. Sylvie Testud is marvelous as Amelie, a Belgian woman whose nostalgia for a brief childhood stint in Japan prompts her to leave Europe and secure a translator's job at a big Japanese corporation. Positioned at the very bottom of a long and elaborate chain of command, Amelie soon finds herself thrown into a state of perpetual confusion and humiliated at every turn by her various superiors, often for the apparent sin of doing too good a job. Burdened with ever more maddening or mundane tasks, Testud's character takes the very Japanese tack of saving face and refusing to resign, while taking the very un-Japanese tack of sticking around the office after hours and prancing about on her bosses' desks stark naked. Based on an autobiographical novel by Amelie Northomb, Fear and Trembling has a ball skewering the rigidly codified and (to us) incredibly bizarre hierarchies of the Japanese workplace. The film is most engaging when it's observing the oddities of Japan's corporate arena as conscience-less food chain, but there are glimpses of compassion here too that keep the film from becoming anything less than three-dimensional. Also stars Kaori Tsuji, Taro Suwa and Bison Katayama. 1/2
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (PG) The long-awaited film adaptation of Douglas Adams' cult-beloved sci-fi absurdity finally hits the big screen, with mostly entertaining results. Martin Freeman (from BBC's The Office) plays Arthur Dent, the hapless English everyman yanked off of Earth by a friend who's more than he seems (Mos Def) seconds before the planet is destroyed to make room for an interstellar highway. Dent and friend shortly end up on a runaway starship piloted by the idiotic President of the Galaxy (the always watchable Sam Rockwell) and Dent's Girl Who Got Away (Zooey Deschanel); along with Marvin the Paranoid Android, the motley crew endures sidetracks and setbacks on its quest for The Answer to Everything. Director Garth Jennings plays it fast and lavish, mixing Gilliam-esque live-action puppetry and cutting-edge CGI. Freeman and Deschanel both bring warmth to somewhat underdeveloped roles, and Rockwell plays the over-the-top Zaphod Beeblebrox with deceptive ease. It's Mos Def, however, who steals every scene in which the characters actually matter - his perfectly human Ford Prefect never under- or overdoes it. Also stars John Malkovich and the voice of Alan Rickman.
HOUSE OF WAX (R) If you're expecting anything remotely like a remake of the 1953 Vincent Price film by the same title, forget it. Other than boasting a deranged sculptor as one of its characters (here lovingly renamed Vincent), this House of Wax bears virtually no resemblance to the quaint little 3D thriller for which it's named. Instead, what we have here is one of those ultra-aggressive, modern-day descendants of the slasher movie and the Texas Chainsaw school, in which attractive-but-none-too-bright kids venture into some area where they have no business being and find themselves summarily sliced and diced by sadistic mutant rednecks. There are lots of creepy mannequins on display, the one big holdover from the original House of Wax, but the movie mostly eschews atmosphere in order to do what's expected of it. Half of the film is devoted to young girls wandering around in tight T-shirts and putting themselves and their studmuffin boyfriends in jeopardy, while the other half (well, maybe not a full half, but it feels like it) is comprised of extremely freakish and brutal sequences of torture and death. To the movie's credit, it does what it does pretty well, and some of its imagery is genuinely disturbing in a borderline surreal way, but the real reason to buy a ticket is for the sheer weirdness factor of watching Paris Hilton's "performance." Also stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt and Jared Padalecki.
IN MY COUNTRY (R) If you thought The Interpreter cheapened important political issues by using them as props for Hollywood's worst impulses, wait until you get a load of In My Country. Samuel L. Jackson stars as an African-American journalist sent to South Africa to cover a national conference in which the old demons of Apartheid are conjured up and confronted. The movie clearly wants us to think long and hard about the evils that humans perpetrate upon one another, but it pounds its messages home in stilted and hopelessly heavy-handed fashion, even as it's unable to resist throwing in a cheesy and completely unnecessary romance between Jackson's character and an Afrikaans poet (Juliette Binoche) that only makes all the political sermonizing all the more difficult to swallow. In My Country is obviously well-intentioned but it's also trite, preachy, stiffly acted and, worst of all, dull, with a tacked-on feel-good ending that only serves to cheapen the whole thing further. Also stars Brendan Gleeson.
THE INTERPRETER (PG-13) Glossy production, political relevancy and an A-List of names behind and in front of the cameras can't save director Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter, a suspense thriller with very little suspense and even fewer thrills. Nicole Kidman stars as a U.N. translator who accidentally overhears a plot to assassinate an African dictator and then finds herself locking horns with and (you guessed it) eventually drawn to the secret service agent (Sean Penn) handling the case. Nothing too terribly interesting results from any of this, and the movie's topical touchstones, such as global terrorism and ethnic cleansing, aren't explored so much as they're used as texture and background scenery. There are some exciting individual sequences in The Interpreter but they don't hang together or add up, and the simmering but basically dull romance between Kidman's and Penn's characters is a cliché of the worst sort. Also stars Catherine Keener.
KICKING & SCREAMING (PG) Despite the title, this is a curiously listless comedy from wild man Will Ferrell. The former SNL player isn't given much room to stretch or improvise as the incompetent coach of a kids' soccer team, and there are even more wasted opportunities when Ferrell finds himself competing against the league's Ubercoach - his own bullying, alpha-male dad (Robert Duvall). There are a few amusing moments as Ferrell's character finds his inner sports jerk and transitions from mild-mannered to over-caffeinated and hyper-aggressive, but Kicking & Screaming is, for the most part, formulaic family fun, with an assembly-line feel to nearly every aspect of the project. Ferrell's team is a collection of obligatory "types" (the precocious one, the adorable little one with glasses, the big lunkhead, the one who eats worms), the physical comedy is remarkably unfunny, and director Jesse Dylan (son of Bob) shoots the action in a thoroughly uninspired way that makes even the most exciting soccer game look dull. Also stars Mike Ditka and Kate Walsh.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (R) Ridley Scott's two-and-a-half hour epic about the religious Crusades of the middle ages has armies marching every which way, of course, but the biggest army of all might be behind the scenes - the teams of advisors employed by a non-Muslim director to make sure no delicate Muslim toes were stepped on. The result is a rigorously even-handed epic about a subject over which, nearly a millennium later, passions still run dangerously high. The film treads so gingerly on its core conflict, in fact, that it feels very nearly drained of passion - perhaps the deadliest sin for a movie that is ostensibly about, above all else, passion. Kingdom of Heaven is too long by at least half an hour, its central figure (a blacksmith-turned-knight portrayed by Orlando Bloom) is curiously uncharismatic, and too much of its running time is taken up with speechmaking and pretty platitudes. Scott and screenwriter William Monahan divide up their Muslim and Christian characters into two camps - men of conscience and fanatics - and then place words in their mouths that offer thinly veiled but not particularly enlightening commentary on the current-day clash of civilizations. Also stars Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Eva Green, David Thewlis, Ghassan Massoud and Brendan Gleeson. 1/2
THE LONGEST YARD (PG-13) In this remake of the 1970s flick, Adam Sandler stars as former professional football player Paul Crewe, whose career ends after he allegedly throws a game. A series of unfortunate events lands him in jail, where, after some persuasion by Warden Hazen (James Cromwell of Six Feet Under), he decides to start his own football team of convicts, to play against the guards. All the elements of a classic sports film are here: the rag-tag bunch of underdogs; a slow motion shot as the clock on the scoreboard runs out; pep talks with flying spittle; the predictable victorious ending. The key difference from the original movie is the humor. Sandler sheds the sketch comedy shtick of Saturday Night Live while still generating laughs and coming off as a proficient actor. The film also stars Burt Reynolds and Chris Rock, who lead the ensemble cast of convicts. Reynolds, who played the original Crewe, has developed a latent campiness in his old age that allows him to eke out a passable comedic performance. Also stars rap artist Nelly.
-Matthew Pleasant
MADAGASCAR (PG) Four animal buddies escape from a zoo and make a dash for the proverbial wild, only to discover that freedom has its own set of complications. Although less frenetic and cluttered than that other recent digital animation, Shark Tale, DreamWorks' Madagascar is fraught with its own problems, including an over-reliance on predictable, kid-friendly slapstick, and a story that takes forever to get going and then slides into some odd and unsatisfying areas. There are possibilities for Swiftian satire when the large, city-bred mammals wash ashore on the titular island and find themselves caught up in a war between two pint-sized species, but the movie drops the ball and simply focuses on the wacky antics of the urban animals as they attempt to adjust to a lack of civilization. The last act is inexplicably strange, as the once-docile lion gets in touch with his carnivore instincts and begins thinking about his former friends as dinner - an eat-or-be-eaten syndrome that may be a tad difficult to explain to wee viewers raised on Disney's Circle of Life. The animation looks great, though (in a more exaggerated, stylized way than we're used to), several of the characters are memorable (the lemur king and a quartet of penguins are particular crowd-pleasers), and, although there isn't all that much adult-oriented pop-culture reference and humor here, when it comes it's right on target. The gag about over-educated monkeys flinging pooh at Tom Wolfe is a movie moment for the ages. Featuring the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith.
MINDHUNTERS (R) Originally scheduled to open way back in January 2004, then postponed to last summer, and then finally dumped in the summer of 2005, all the signs should have alerted us that something truly rotten was afoot here. Fading stars Christian Slater and LL Cool J are among a team of FBI agents participating in a simulation exercise gone horribly wrong when one of the team members turns out to be a serial killer. The movie is basically a dumbed-down and amped-up variation on that old mystery-story schematic where a murder is committed in a locked room and we have to figure out which of the guests is the killer. The, uh, innovation here is that few clues are supplied and all of the suspects are simply knocked off (in gruesome fashion) one by one, virtually eliminating any possibility of the guesswork that might have generated some suspense or fun. Mindhunters lurches on, sloppily written and not particularly scary (except for that shot of Christian Slater's ass), finally resorting to flinging red herring after red herring at us and winding up with the biggest letdown since someone first heard that the butler did it. Also stars Val Kilmer, Jonny Lee Miller, Will Kemp and Kathryn Morris.
1/2
MONSTER-IN-LAW (PG-13) Monster-in-Law is the next generation of Meet the Parents/My Best Friend's Wedding-genre movies, drawing on both crude and cute humor. Jennifer Lopez stars as Charlotte Cantilini, an artist who, while working to further her career, meets the love of her life in the form of a handsome, charming doctor, Kevin (Michael Vartan of Alias fame). Unfortunately, he also happens to be the son of Viola Fields, a Barbara Walters-esque television interviewer played by Jane Fonda. Of course, no one is good enough for her baby, so the over-protective Fields devises a underhanded plan to botch her son's imminent nuptials. Fonda manages well enough with the younger cast, slipping into the role of a conniving and overbearing mother with ease. Lopez performs in her usual endearing, clumsy love-interest mode to moderately funny effect. The film also stars Wanda Sykes as Ms. Fields' personal assistant. After two television shows and a successful career in stand-up, Sykes has proven herself worthy of carrying an entire movie; Monster-in-Law has her holding together the less-humorous scenes between Lopez and Fonda, only appearing in frame long enough to deliver punchy one-liners. Also stars Will Arnett.
-Matthew Pleasant
NOBODY KNOWS (PG-13) Based on a true story that shocked Japan in the late '80s, Nobody Knows offers a refreshingly unsentimental and unsensationalized account of four young brothers and sisters getting by more or less or their own. Twelve-year-old Akira (Yagira Yuya) is the man of the house, while a flaky, promiscuous mom flits in and out of the kids' lives, disappearing from the scene altogether by the film's mid-point. Abandoned and unschooled, both formally and in the ways of the world, the kids create their own insular community, and Nobody Knows takes place almost entirely within that private world of the children's apartment, with only occasional forays into the outside world. Director Kore-eda Hirokazu (After Life, Mabarosi) coaxes some amazingly rich and natural performances from his young, non-professional actors, adding to the documentary-like effect created by Yutaka Yamazaki's supple but never slick, handheld camerawork. Also stars Kitauru Ayu, Kimura Hiei, Shimizu Momoko and Japanese pop star You (yep, that's her name) as the mother.
PALINDROMES (NR) Todd Solondz's new film is a close encounter of the most discomfiting kind, an inscrutable act of artistic brinksmanship where the sublime and the shockingly tacky become the strangest of bedfellows. The big conceit here, the one bound to divide even the most sophisticated audiences right down the middle, is that Solondz takes Bunuel's old Obscure Object of Desire trick and amplifies it fourfold, casting eight different actors to play Aviva, the runaway 13-year-old girl who is Palindromes' main character. Palindromes is, in many ways, an updated, more perverse Perils of Pauline, with Aviva yanked from the bosom of her cozy suburban family and out into the real world, where she encounters a series of strange and often unpleasant things. Solondz sometimes seems to be trying to pass off a sick joke as something more, but most of Palindromes hits its mark, and the people we meet are mostly complicated creatures, worthy of compassion as well as ridicule. It's clear that Solondz has a fascination for the grotesque and the mean-spirited, but the best parts of Palindromes push past that, to a place that calls cruelty into question by appearing to revel in it. Stars Ellen Barkin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Penn, Shayna Levine and Debra Monk. Playing at Sunrise Cinemas at Old Hyde Park.
1/2
PULSE: A STOMP ODYSSEY (G) The producers and creators of the Broadway hit Stomp set their sights high with this 40-minute, large-format IMAX film. Pulse is not exactly an adaptation of the urban-oriented Stomp show, but, rather an ambitious pan-global survey of sound and rhythm in all its manifestations. The film was shot on five continents, and, although it is essentially wordless, it's anything but silent, communicating a world of nuances through a seemingly limitless variety of clicks, whispers, woops, warbles, grunts, growls and howls. We get elaborate ensemble dances from Africa, Native American chants, Lower East Side break dancers, a Hindu ceremony in Southern India (complete with a small army of decorated elephants), the bell ringers of England's Winchester Cathedral, dueling marching bands on the Brooklyn Bridge, a flamenco troupe on a rooftop in Granada, and even a group of underwater percussionists. It's an inspirational and sometimes overwhelming sensory assault, with the only problem being the filmmakers' annoying penchant for rapid-fire editing that often diminishes the integrity of the performances (especially on that huge IMAX screen, where we're constantly swiveling our necks in an effort not to miss anything). The movie's powerful sights and sounds are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. Playing at Imax Dome Theater at MOSI in Tampa.
1/2
SAHARA (PG-13) A bland, by-the-numbers action-adventure project based on one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt books, with an artificially tanned and carefully rumpled Matthew McConaughey playing Pitt as a cocky, carefree Indiana Jones-lite. There's nothing too terribly awful or pretentious here, but everyone seems to be sleepwalking through their non-demanding roles, from Steve Zahn as the obligatory comic relief sidekick to Penelope Cruz as the love interest. You might just find yourself dosing off, too. Also stars William H. Macy.
1/2
STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH (PG-13) Although it's technically the middle installment of the Star Wars series, Episode III is where all the chickens come home to roost - and, to cut right to the chase, Lucas gets it mostly right. There's no secret to what happens here, but the way the movie grooves on the tragic inevitability of its events is impressive, infusing the tale with an intensity that's nearly operatic. It's not all icing, of course - Lucas remains an erratic director with an annoying tendency to cram in something for everyone, and Episode III suffers from clunky dialogue, bad acting (particularly from Hayden Christensen), inelegant rhythms and some serious inconsistencies of tone. Still, flawed as it is, the film is far more cohesive and complex than anyone could have expected, and a satisfying experience over all, particularly for anyone who thinks of themselves as fans of the series. Emotionally and plot-wise, this is the linchpin for the entire series, and the movie does it right, effectively tying together the frenetic digital doodlings of the 21st century Star Wars movies with the richer narratives that captured the popular imagination in the late '70s and early '80s. Also stars Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman and Jimmy Smits.
1/2
UP AND DOWN Czech director Jan Hrebejk (Divided We Fall) and co-writer Petr Jarchovsky tackle some very big issues (to name a few: race, class and the precariousness of comfort zones) while weaving together the lives of petty crooks, professors, social workers, soccer hooligans, incipient fascists and abandoned children of all ages. The principal stories revolve around a barren woman (Natasa Burger) who buys an illegal immigrant's baby at a pawnshop, and a very awkward family reunion in which an estranged son (Petr Forman, son of director Milos) returns home for the first time in 20 years, only to find a place as crushingly familiar as it is utterly changed. The movie has a tendency to cram itself with too many characters, too many themes and too much story for a mere 103 minutes, but it's exciting watching it try to make it all work. Also stars Jiri Machacek, Jan Triska, Emilia Vasaryova and Ingrid Timkova.
WALK ON WATER (NR) This is the new film from Israeli director Eytan Fox, whose Yossi & Jagger became a staple at recent gay film festivals with its same-sex romance between two Israeli soldiers, and Walk on Water also dips its toes, briefly, into queer territory. Israeli superstar Lior Ashkenazi (Late Marriage) stars as a grieving secret service agent dealing with his wife's recent suicide, and assigned to root out a Nazi war criminal by becoming friendly with the man's adult grandchildren. The female grandchild becomes a bit of a romantic diversion, the male grandkid turns out to be gay and forces the macho Mossad to confront his homophobia, and other plot thickenings touch on Israeli-Palestinian animosity and German guilt vs. Jewish paranoia regarding the Holocaust. Director Fox juggles all of these elements and, against all odds, keeps them aloft much of the time, although we can frequently feel the film straining to do so. Also stars Knut Berger and Caroline Peters.
XXX: STATE OF THE UNION (PG-13) Xander Cage, the token badass from 2002's XXX (played by Vin Diesel), has been mysteriously killed in action - or perhaps he was just too busy pursuing a family-friendly image with Disney. Either way, NSA agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) has already managed to find Darius Stone (Ice Cube) to fill Xander's shoes. Just in time, too, because a right-wing nut job (Willem Dafoe in Green Goblin mode) is conspiring to kill the president! What follows is a garbled mess fraught with clumsy exposition, confusing editing, plot holes and a remarkable disregard for proper U.S. presidential succession procedures. Occasionally, the film manages brief flashes of wit, satirizing its obvious Bond origins to humorous effect; the cars are pretty cool, too. For the most part, however, the new XXX is just as tired, dumb and as predictable as the films it shamelessly rips off, without any of the charm. Also stars Xzibit and Nona M. Gaye.
1/2 -Zach Rosenfeld
Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
