Upcoming Releases
THE INVASION (PG-13) Every era probably gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers it deserves, and this might just be ours. Don Siegel's original take on alien pods turning humans into emotionless robots was the perfect '50s sci-fi flick as thinly veiled critique of communism; Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake pumped up the existential dread in exciting and strangely believable ways; and Abel Ferrara's 1993 version reimagined the tale with the director's lurid and vaguely nihilist panache. Now, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (whose last-days-of-Hitler romp, Downfall, was one of 2005's best films) takes a crack at the tale, with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig starring as the hapless humans in danger of losing their souls. Also stars Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright and Jackson Bond. Opens Aug. 17 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
RECENT RELEASES
BECOMING JANE (PG) A very Miramaxian-sounding mish-mash of period-drama fact and fiction, zeroing in on a young Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) becoming involved in a romantic encounter that shapes the books she'll eventually write and the writer she'll eventually become. Also stars James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith and Joe Anderson. (Not Reviewed)
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (PG-13) The third and supposedly final installment of the popular Bourne franchise is by far the best of the batch, a relentless barrage of sheer adrenaline that more than compensates for any shortcomings in the material. Matt Damon returns for one last go-round as the memory-challenged super-spy/assassin trying to piece together the truth of his lost identity; the villains, appropriately enough, are the only ones who ultimately matter — the CIA goons who turned him into the horribly efficient killing machine he is. The Bourne Ultimatum refines and relies upon all the elements that have made the series so successful and so appealing — the consistently agitated, you-are-there camerawork; the tense, nearly nonstop games of cat-and-mouse played by lethal adversaries; the slam-dunk action set pieces and breakneck chases through crowded, exotic locales; the globe-trotting storyline that whisks us from Moscow to Madrid to London to Tangier, before settling in for the duration in New York City. Things happen fast, lines blur between the hunter and the hunted, and some of the action is shot and edited in so frenetic a fashion that a second viewing may be required just to figure out what actually went on. Also stars Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Albert Finney and Scott Glenn. 3.5 stars
BROKEN ENGLISH (PG-13) Diehard Parker Posey fans will likely revel in Broken English, which features one of the indie darling's meatier performances, but there's little else about the film that's particularly memorable. Posey plays a sophisticated but romantically frustrated single girl named Nora Wilder, a high-strung Manhattan 30-something who seems to have stepped right out of Sex and the City. Nora spends the first half of the movie drinking too much, kvetching and sleeping with all the wrong men, then begins experiencing full-blown panic attacks when she finally meets a charming Frenchman (Mevil Poupaud) who might actually be Mr. Right. Writer-director Zoe Cassavetes (yet another of John's offspring cashing in on the family name) cobbles together a string of characters and situations familiar to anyone who's seen that aforementioned HBO series or any number of Sundance girl-in-distress films, then attempts to tie the whole thing together with a last-minute trip to glamorous Paris and an ending that's way too close to Before Sunrise for comfort. Posey makes the most of fairly thin material, but there's not quite enough here to hang a film on. Also stars Drea de Matteo, Gena Rowlands, Justin Theroux and Peter Bogdanovich. 2.5 stars
EL CANTANTE (PG-13) Jennifer Lopez doesn't quite go for the throat as Puchi Lavoe, longtime mistress and eventually wife to legendary salsa singer Hector Lavoe, but you can occasionally see those chiseled nostrils flaring at the sweet smell of blood. Hector (Lopez's off-screen husband, Marc Anthony) is the nominal star of this music biopic, but behind every dysfunctional, drug-gobbling man is a dysfunctional, drug-gobbling woman, and Puchi functions not only as her superstar husband's wife and confidante, but also as his mother, whore, nurse, supplier, nemesis and boss. Structured much like one of those VH-1 retro-pop featurettes, El Cantante begins with its subject's peak moment of creativity and/or popularity, then flashes back, as these things must, to his humble beginnings. Lavoe's inevitable slide begins almost before his rise has kicked into gear, and El Cantante depicts Hector's abrupt immersion in drugs without much fanfare or even context as one long, largely unexplained blur of bad behavior. The movie flits back and forth through the years, alternating scenes of shooting up and (thankfully) music, with too few of the really high highs and low lows that comprise a story arc and give a film its shape. A more cynical observer might conclude that director Leon Ichaso simply couldn't be bothered to fine tune the dynamics of this material, almost as if he were on some sort of contact high himself from all that smack Lavoe's constantly pumping into his veins. Also stars John Ortiz, Manny Perez, Vincent Laresca and Federico Castelluccio. 2 stars
HAIRSPRAY (PG) John Waters' mildly subversive 1988 film Hairspray became a popular Broadway musical in 2002, and the project now comes full-circle through the looking glass, transformed into the big, bouncy and thoroughly nonthreatening all-singing, all-dancing spectacle currently playing at a multiplex near you. Hairspray takes place in 1962 in Waters' pleasantly seedy home turf of Baltimore, a time and place where the emerging momentum of the youth culture (embodied in the film by big hair and rock 'n' roll) is heading for a showdown with the repressive mores of the old guard, particularly the pervasive racial segregation of the time. Our hero is pudgy, teenaged misfit Tracy Turnblad (newcomer Nikki Blonsky), and Hairspray has good, semi-wholesome fun charting her almost accidental progress from chubby underachiever to unlikely rebel with a cause. The movie looks good, full of groovy colors and some engagingly plotted dance sequences, but the music is an uninspired pastiche of early '60s pop and show tunes, and Hairspray often spells out its messages with far too little humor or subtlety. Also stars John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Elijah Kelley, Brittany Snow and Zac Efron. 3 stars
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (PG-13) The fifth installment in J.K. Rowling's series about the resilient young magician is considerably darker than its predecessors. Harry (played by Daniel Radcliff), his friends, Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix — a secret assembly of dark arts-fighting witches and wizards — are having trouble convincing the magic-practicing public that Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has returned to wreak havoc. It doesn't help that the Ministry of Magic not only denies Voldemort's return but is determined to discredit Harry by any means possible. While filmmaker David Yates (best known for TV dramas like Girl in the Café) gets the dark, gritty ambiance of the story right and reveals Harry's discontent in the most general sense, he fails to deliver the charming magical quality that the other four films possessed and the visually spectacular moments for which the Harry Potter franchise is so well known. British star Imelda Staunton plays loathsome Ministry Agent Dolores Umbridge with great skill and Helena Bonham Carter's cameo as psychotic Azkaban prison escapee Bellatrix Lestrange is quite memorable, but the plot has been oversimplified to such an extent that formerly fleshed-out characters come off as two-dimensional caricatures of themselves. Also stars Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon and Gary Oldman. 2.5 stars —Leilani Polk
HOT ROD (PG-13) Saturday Night Live comedian-du-jour/performance artist/digital filmmaker Andy Samberg stars as a klutzy amateur stuntman who needs to raise big bucks fast to pay for a heart transplant for his disapproving father. In case you were wondering, it's a comedy. Also stars Ian McShane, Isla Fisher, Jorma Taccone and Bill Hader. (Not Reviewed)
JOURNEY FROM THE FALL (NR) The travelers making their way through Journey From the Fall are a South Vietnamese family thrown into freefall in 1975 when the Americans pack up stakes and the Communists begin their ruthless postwar housecleaning. Ex-resistance fighter Long (Long Nguyen), the patriarch of the clan, winds up being shuttled between a series of hellish "re-education centers," while his wife, mother and son (Diem Lien, Kieu Chinh and Tri Nguyen) join a boatload of refugees on a perilous voyage to freedom in America. Triple-threat writer-director-editor Ham Tran, a Saigon-born, UCLA-trained filmmaker, reportedly drew on his own experiences in crafting Journey From the Fall, and there's a palpable authenticity here that partially redeems many of the film's flaws, not the least of which is its tendency toward melodrama. But while the characters occasionally lapse into soap-opera speak and overheated political declarations (made even more problematic by a weepy musical score), there are also moments of undeniable power, particularly in the film's first half. Also stars Nguyen Thai Nguyen and Cat Ly. Playing at Tampa Theatre. Call theater to confirm. 3 stars
RATATOUILLE (G) Pixar's latest contribution to the annals of animation history is a sweetly perverse retooling of Disney's Cinderella, as retold for the Age of Conflicted Foodies — with Cindy reborn as a rat who wants to be Rachael Ray. The rat's name is Remy, and he even has his own fairy godmother — a floating Paul Bocuse figure who cheers him on with the shining motto "Anyone can cook!" — and by the end of this Paris-set rags-to-riches fable, glass slippers are found on all the right feet and rodent-inspired haute cuisine is the hit of the land. The latest creation of genius-boy director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles), Ratatouille is as clever as it is entertaining, although this may well be the first Pixar film to actually connect more powerfully with grown-ups than with their kids (not withstanding that rare 8-year-old who yearns to hear talking animals wax poetic on the glories of saffron and wild mushrooms). Also features the voices of Patton Oswald, Iam Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy and Janeane Garofalo. 4 stars
RUSH HOUR 3 (PG-13) It's been six years since the previous installment of this action-comedy franchise, and Rush Hour 3 comes stumbling into the multiplexes like one of those zombies lumbering through the shopping malls in Dawn of the Dead — a creature operating strictly on autopilot, too dumb to know it's dead. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker return as the ethnic odd couple at the center of the action, squabbling buddy-cops who this time find themselves searching for bad guys in Paris — a locale that provides the movie with some much-needed glamour and a handful of mildly amusing gags about French-American relations. The stars gamely reprise all of the moves for which they're best known (and have been this franchise so profitable), but time has not been kind to these men, and the film's script is too lazy to do much beyond paint its heroes into a series of uncomfortable corners. Also stars Hiroyuki Sanada, Youki Kudoh, Max Von Sydow, Yvan Attal, Noemie Lenoir and Zhang Jingchu. 1.5 stars
SICKO (PG-13) Michael Moore's documentary on the business of U.S. medical insurance mounts a righteously angry, alternately sentimental, blowhardy and often-effective argument. Useing anecdotal evidence and occasional numbers, Moore makes the case that U.S. health insurance companies, in the words of one e-mailer, "flat suck." Again taking up the cause of the working class victims and heroes he's made his focus since Roger & Me, Moore offers up some familiar villains. The first versions of medical profiteering trace back to the Nixon administration, specifically a 1971 conversation between John Erlichmann and the president (courtesy of the White House tapes) concerning Edgar Kaiser's proposal that health insurance could make money — lots of it. The film includes brief digs at Ronald Reagan (who appears to have been a paid spokesperson for the industry, before he was president) and "little lady" Hilary Clinton, who famously fought back, for a minute. Cute as well as accusatory, the bit connects fear and money by way of politics. It's an incisive analysis in its way, more nuanced than the most obvious conclusion, that congresspeople are greedy, conformist or categorically unthoughtful. Here the system, recounted by victims as well as former workers within it, looks dismal and dishonest. 3.5 stars —Cindy Fuchs
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (PG-13) Homer J. Simpson breaks the fourth wall right off the bat in The Simpsons Movie, pointing directly into the audience and telling us that anyone who'd pay to see something they get for free at home is a big, fat jerk. Godard couldn't have said it better, and, for much of its running time, this full-length big screen feature based on the long-running TV show is everything we want it to be: irreverent, subversive, smart as a whip and absurdly hilarious. Jokes are layered atop jokes, coming so quickly in the first half hour they're nearly subliminal, and the movie has a ball stretching its PG-13 rating in ways verboten by network TV (Marge utters a hearty "Goddamn" at one point, Otto the bus driver is finally allowed to actually suck on his bong, and Bart not only becomes a raging adolescent alcoholic but even gets to show us his weenie). Structured much like an expanded Simpsons TV episode, the movie piles on the non-sequiturs — Grandpa Simpson has an apocalyptic vision, Homer engages in some hot man-pig love — until they begin to come together into something resembling an actual storyline. The movie peaks well before its so-called plot reveals itself — a half-hour time slot is really the ideal format for this material — but even the padding in The Simpsons Movie is more entertaining than just about any other comedy out there at the moment. Featuring the voices of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith and Hank Azaria. 3.5 stars
SKINWALKERS (R) If nothing else, a movie that promises more werewolves than you can shake a stick of wolfbane at. A pair of rival werewolf clans are about to clash, and a pre-teen boy finds himself at the center of the action when the fur starts flying. Stars Jason Behr, Elias Koteas, Natashe Malte and Kim Coates. (Not Reviewed)
STARDUST (PG) An appealing concoction that honors the spirit of fairy tales while putting a clever, gently ironic spin on everything it touches. Some might be tempted to call the approach a little calculated, too Shrek postmodern-lite by way of The Princess Bride (with a touch of Gilliam's Baron Munchausen thrown in for good measure) — but even if Stardust doesn't quite achieve the same heights as its prototypes, the air up there is often pretty exhilarating. The movie's forward momentum eventually takes on a life of its own as our heroes (Charlie Cox and Claire Danes) leap from frying pan to fire, out of witches' cauldrons and straight into flying pirate ships. Fireworks ensue, love finds a way, and the movie sends us off out of the theater with a crescendo of digital mayhem and one final Happily Ever After. Danes is just awkward enough to be immensely appealing here (she's turning into Hollywood's coolest big-boned blonde since Uma Thurman), Michelle Pfeiffer is perfectly cast as an aging witch desperate to hang on to her beauty, and, just when your attention might be about to flag, in marches Robert De Niro, chewing up the scenery as a big, bad pirate screaming to unleash his inner queen. Also stars Sienna Miller, Jason Flemyng and Rupert Everett. 3.5 stars
TALK TO ME (R) Don Cheadle, an actor who is rarely less than remarkable, turns in another fine performance as Petey Greene, a silver-tongued devil and perennial bad boy who used his position as a Washington, D.C., talk-radio host to shake up the political and cultural landscape of America in the '60s and '70s. Director Kasi Lemmons, who tugged a bit too aggressively at heartstrings in 1997's Eve's Bayou, does a commendable job here, although she gets a little lazy in Talk To Me's second half, skipping too quickly through key events in Greene's life and then allowing Petey to all but disappear from his own story during the final act. This allows Talk To Me to begin focusing more on Greene's manager, Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor, also excellent), but even here the film offers unexpected pleasures in illuminating the almost symbiotic relationship between the two men. Factor in the best soundtrack of the year (how much Otis Redding and James Brown can your heart stand?), and some spot-on conjuring of superfab '60s/'70s vibes, and that makes Talk To Me a movie to see. Also stars Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Epps and Martin Sheen. 3.5 stars
TRANSFORMERS (PG-13) Armageddon and Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay plays with the most expensive toys in the planet in this loud, destructive live-action version of the Hasbro properties. The plot, themes and characterization are laughable at best (except for Shia LaBeouf's ingratiating, steadying work in the leading "human" role), but the special effects extravaganza of giant robots whaling on each other is kind of awesome. 3 stars — Curt Holman
UNDERDOG (PG) Yet another vintage Saturday morning cartoon comes wagging its tail all the way to the big screen. Everyone's favorite talking, super-powered beagle protects truth, justice and a really cute cocker spaniel, with Jason Lee providing the canine hero's voice — a casting coup reeking of pomo irony and undoubtedly dreamed up by the same geniuses who put Bill Murray and Garfield together. Also stars Patrick Warburton, Amy Adams, Peter Dinklage and Jim Belushi. (Not Reviewed)
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2007.