 Movies
Published: March 19, 2008 Due to the ever-changing nature of the movie biz, showtimes as they appear in any and all newspapers should always be double-checked with the theaters before setting off for a night at the flicks. Please call theater for times. OPENS WEDNESDAY
This sweet (hopefully not saccharine) tale centers on Enrique (Eugenio Derbez), a cute little kid in Mexico whose mother works as a maid in Los Angeles. She sends back remittances and hopes to see her boy again someday. When Enrique’s grandmother passes away, he heads out on a solo mission to reunite with his mother, avoiding la migra but finding adventure along the way. UA DeVargas, PG-13, 109 min. OPENS FRIDAY
Caramel is a romance-infused comedy that revolves around four Lebanese ladies who work at a beauty parlor in Beirut. With colorful cinematography, a score of moving Lebanese music and interwoven socio-political themes, Caramel looks like more than just a Lebanese Sex and the City. UA DeVargas, PG-13, 95 min. >>> THE COUNTERFEITERS This year’s Foreign Language Oscar Winner tells a fascinating, f’d up and little-known tale about the biggest counterfeiting operation in history (see SFR review). CCA, R, 98 min. DRILLBIT TAYLOR Written by Kristofor Brown, Seth Rogan and John Hughes (under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes), Drillbit Taylor stars Owen Wilson as the titular Drillbit Taylor, a homeless-man-turned-discount-bodyguard. When some nerdly high schoolers hire Drillbit to protect them from bullies, Drillbit goes undercover as a teacher at their school by camouflaging himself in teacher garb, that is, he carries around a coffee mug. Plot predictions: Drillbit finds love with a “co-worker” who discovers that he is actually a homeless man masquerading as a teacher (but she loves him anyway) and the nerdy kids get revenge on the bullies. There is lots of silly, slapstick humor along the way, of course. Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, PG-13, 102 min. SHUTTER Shutter is a remake of a Thai movie that is supposedly really damn scary. It’s concerns an American couple, Ben (Joshua Jackson) and Jane (Rachael Taylor), who live in Tokyo. One night they kill some girl with their car. Soon after, Ben, who is a fashion photographer, starts to notice weird blurs in his images. Does he have a smudge on his lens? Or could the dead girl be back for revenge? Hint: Don’t try to use Occam’s razor. Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, PG-13, 85 min. TYLER PERRY’S MEET THE BROWNS Playwright-turned-director Tyler Perry is back with another bland family comedy that includes his name in the title. This one is about a single mother who travels to the funeral of the father she never knew. The script is adapted from Perry’s play by the same name and Perry does double-acting duty as both the female and male characters. Also stars pretty boy and former Lakers benchwarmer Rick Fox and Angela Bassett. Regal Stadium 14, PG-13, 90 min.
Vanaja is not only Rajnesh Domalpalli’s first film, it’s also his thesis project at Columbia University, where the South Indian native recently got his masters. Something tells me that, while the rest of his classmates were turning in films in which upper-class hipsters mumble to each other about their solipsistic ennui, this multi-film festival award-winner garnered Domalpalli an A+. The film’s protagonist is Vanaja, the 15-year-old daughter of a fisherman, who begins working in the home of a wealthy woman in the hopes that she might pick up the traditional South Indian dance, Kuchipudi. But the film, which looks gorgeously, vibrantly colorful, takes a darker turn when an older man develops in interest in Vanaja. The Screen, NR, 111 min. SHORT RUNS return to top BANFF MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL There are almost no ocean, swamp, savannah, lake, desert, forest or jungle film festivals. And yet, for some there seem to be mountain-oriented films fests everywhere. One of the most prestigious is the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It stops in Santa Fe with such mountain-themed films as Ain’t Got No Friends on a Powder Day. 7 pm Tuesday, March 25. $13. Lensic, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234 BETWEEN TWO WORLDS This documentary disses on the Gregorian calender and gives mad props to the Mayan calender. Includes footage from the travels of director José Jaramillo in the Mayan world of southern Mexico. Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 90 min.
Big Dreams, Little Tokyo is a funny indie flick about a pair of cultural misfits who room together in Little Tokyo. One is Boyd, a Japanese-speaking American who strives to make it in the Japanese business world, only to find himself ostracized. Boyd’s roommate, Jerome, is an aspiring sumo wrestler, as slight of frame as he is of chance at sumo success. Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 86 min.
Fairies, those winged little flutterers, have appeared in cultures the world over, including that of ancient Celts, the peoples of Northern Dweebville and the Weirdos of Suburbialand. This documentary takes a serious look at fairies, in art and “reality,” including interviews with some people who claim they can see into the world of fairies. Oh man, this is going to be so unintentionally hilarious. Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 75 min. HEART AND SOIL Heart and Soil is a documentary about family and farming in northern New Mexico and southwest Colorado. Plays with Ed Meets His Maker, a short film about a nerdy kid who stages a funeral for his pet turtle. Santa Fe Film Center, NR KIDS FIRST!: VEGGIE TALES: MOE AND THE BIG EXIT While fundamentalist Muslims make death threats if someone depicts Muhammad at all, here in Jesus-Land the opposite is true. It’s cool to tell the 3,000-year-old sacred story of Moses as a cartoon Western in which Moses is played by the animated actor “Larry the Cucumber” and the oppressive Egyptians are zucchinis. Actual believers think this is “cute” and a great way to instill their sacred stories. Is it any wonder that religion in America has so rapidly descended into kitsch? Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 52 min.
Best Latino Film Award winner at the 2007 Santa Fe Film Festival, Gabriela Bohm’s thoughtful documentary follows several South Americans who explore their Jewish ancestry after they learn of their family’s conversions to Catholicism during the Inquisition. This subject may be of interest to the many crypto-Jews of New Mexico who are searching for their own historical identity. Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 75 min. LOST AND FOUND IN MEXICO A documentary that tells the stories of several ex-pats living in beautiful San Miguel de Allende. Whether Lost and Found mentions the inflation caused by neo-colonization and the gentrification and other effects this has on the local populace is unknown. Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 53 min.
This documentary by Peter Goodman is about Sally Morgan, a woman who claims she is clairvoyant. Is she? Goodman puts her through rigorous scientific scrutiny with some Harvard- and Yale-educated smartypants. Turns out, sometimes she is eerily right, other times completely wrong. Sounds like magic to me. Santa Fe Film Center, NR NOW SHOWING return to top
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is a harrowing, brilliant Romanian film, set during the waning years of Nicolae Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime. An illegal abortion is its central event, but this is no message film (see SFR review). The Screen, NR, 113 min. 10,000 BC Writer-director-producer Roland Emmerich’s action movies have, historically, been better than the average adrenaline- and effects-fueled fare. In 1994 he made Stargate, in 1996 he made Independence Day and then, in 1998, he made Godzilla. 10,000 BC is about a mammoth hunter who has to save his tribe, in case you were still wondering (see SFR review). Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, PG-13, 109 min. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS Al-vin! Si-mon! The-o-dore! Do, do, do, do, do, do they have turn every nostalgia-inducing childhood memory into computer animated lame-ity? Alpha chipmunk Alvin, studious Simon and portly Theodore are back and ready to raise a ruckus. Yay. UA North, PG, 92 min.
A winner of numerous festival awards, Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit was supposed to be Israel’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars but was disqualified because more than half of its dialogue is in English. It centers around an Egyptian police band that heads to Israel on a mission to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center. Instead, the language barrier causes the band to wind up in a small Israeli town where the locals try to show them a good time. Looks to be pure cross-cultural charm. UA DeVargas, PG-13, 87 min. THE BANK JOB Directed by Roger Donaldson (The Recruit, Thirteen Days, Cadillac Man), The Bank Job is the true (though highly spiced up) story of the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery, perhaps the most notorious bank job in history. An interesting story, The Bank Job looks to have a fair amount of British humor as well as intrigue. Regal Stadium 14, R, 83 min.
When junkyard employee Jerry (Jack Black) attempts a terrorist-style attack on the power plant he suspects of causing his migraines, he accidentally magnetizes his brain. Thus magnetized, he then ruins the entire stock of VHS movies in his friend Mike’s (Mos Def) video store. In order to satisfy the store’s sole loyal customer, an elderly who lady displays signs of dementia, the duo set out to recreate enough films to keep her coming back (see SFR review). UA North, PG-13, 111 min. THE BUCKET LIST Before they die, Academy Award-winning actors Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman wanted to make one more formulaic Hollywood feel-good movie that doesn’t make use of their talents. That movie is The Bucket List. UA North, PG-13, 97 min.
Jazz trumpeter/singer/actor/drug addict Chet Baker was the Lindsay Lohan of the 1950s: a pretty face who hopped between jail terms and movie screenings with style, though Baker one-ups Lohan by actually possessing talent. This Oscar-nominated documentary about Baker’s life, from 1988, has something of the longitudinal aspect of the Up series to it, since it includes footage ranging from Baker’s youth to his final years. CCA, NR, 120 min. COLLEGE ROAD TRIP Melanie (Raven-Symoné), an overachieving high school student (she can locate America on a map), is totally stoked about her all-girl road trip to check out prospective universities. But when her overbearing police chief dad (Martin Lawrence) insists on escorting her, she soon finds herself embroiled in a chuckle-inducing adventure that culminates in life lessons. A recipe for disappointment: This movie will excite young girls about going to college and, simultaneously, dumb them down so that they can’t manage to get in. Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, G, 83 min. DEFINITELY, MAYBE Ryan Reynolds stars as Will, a dad who, in the midst of a divorce, explains to his 10-year-old daughter that he was once a player. Will censors out the coke-fueled three-ways, but tries to be as honest as possible. These stories require multiple flash-backs, dating back to when Will was a Bill Clinton campaign staffer and he was hooking up with three women. Will changes the women’s names so that his daughter has to figure out which one is her mother. UA North, PG-13, 105 min. DOOMSDAY The writer-director of Doomsday, Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) is counted among the unofficial members of “The Splat Pack”—a term coined by film historian Alan Jones to describe the new wave of filmmakers who have a penchant for grotesquely extreme horror. But, though it’s certain to be violent, Doomsday looks to be more post-apocalyptic thriller than horror flick. Transpiring in London, 25 years after it’s been totally screwed over by a virus that was unleashed in 2008, Doomsday looks very much like a mashup of Mad Max, 28 Weeks Later and Escape From New York—except that it’s fronted by a hot chick (Rhona Mitra) and an even hotter black Bentley. Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, R, 105 min. FOOL’S GOLD Will the latest incarnation of a film called Fool’s Gold, which features Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson as a married couple who are put in situations that cause them to disrobe as they search for buried treasure, be the real deal? Or will it turn out to be a shiny but valueless hunk of dirt that draws the attention of those with sub-par skepticism? UA North, PG-13, 110 min. FUNNY GAMES Only Vienna, the repressed, beautiful and ghoulish capital of Austria, could have produced the singular minds that are Freud, Wittgenstein and, now, auteur Michael Haneke (Caché, The Piano Teacher, The Seventh Continent). Funny Games is a shot-by-shot remake of his 1997 original by the same name. The earlier iteration—a shockingly violent commentary on violence in the media—has became something of a cult film, though it is as despised in some circles as it is loved in others. The latest version is still about a family being tortured in a lakeside cabin, but it now stars Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. UA DeVargas, R, 107 min. HORTON HEARS A WHO! Based on the book by the ingenious Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!’s two directors’ (Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino) résumés include such comedic hits as Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life and Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. It’s voiced by Jim Carrey (who starred in another Dr. Seuss-based animation, How the Grinch Stole Christmas), Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett and Judd Apatow staples Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. All told, Horton Hears a Who! is the most promising mainstream kids’ cartoon since Ratatouille. It’s about an elephant who has vowed to protect a microscopic civilization that lives on a speck of dust. Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, G, 88 min. IN BRUGES Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as a pair of London-based hitmen who, after a hit gone bad, are ordered by their mob boss to chill out for a bit in the quaint, medieval city of Bruges, Belgium. With nothing to do but live the tourists’ life, the two check out art, muse on life and kick it with prostitutes and, oddly, an American midget acting in a European art film. Martin McDonagh, who won an Oscar in 2006 for his live-action short, Six Shooter, directs. UA DeVargas, R, 107 min. JUMPER Director Doug Liman’s precipitous artistic decline has gone like this: Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and now Jumper. Jumper is about some good-looking dude (Hayden Christensen), who had it rough as a kid, only to discover he has the ability to teleport. Turns out, a war has been raging for centuries between Jumpers and those haters who have sworn to kill them. Who knew? UA North, PG-13, 90 min.
Juno is a touching counterpoint to such male-perspective pregnancy sagas as Knocked Up. Still, like the hipster aesthetic it idealizes it’s trying hard to have pseudo off-kilter tastes, banter and plot directions rather than just genuinely having these things. This, however, hasn’t stopped it from winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (see SFR review). UA DeVargas, PG-13, 92 min.
Frances McDormand (Fargo) stars as the titular Miss Pettigrew, a middle-aged governess living in 1939 London. When she is yet again unfairly fired, Miss Pettigrew seizes the opportunity to become the “social secretary” to the glamorous American diva, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a fun and well-made film with terrific performances, witty banter and strong character development (see SFR review). UA DeVargas, PG-13, 92 min. >>> NEVER BACK DOWN Or should you? It was just a matter of time, with the rising popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and mixed martial arts (MMA), for Hollywood to capitalize and target that lucrative 18-34 male demographic. Never Back Down is about the Daniel-san-type handsome-but-troubled new kid at school who, after he gets his ass kicked, begins training in a combination of martial arts. It’s like The Karate Kid except the moves work way better and the movie works way worse. Statisticians: Will someone please keep track of how many extra teenagers get themselves stabbed in the weeks that follow this movie’s release (see SFR review)? Dreamcatcher, Regal Stadium 14, R, 106 min.
This documentary by Jeremy and Randy Stulberg is about a group of radicals in New Mexico who live in the absolute middle nowhere, 25 miles from the closest town. With no electricity and barely any food or water, this group of eccentrics (with names such as Mama Phyllis, Dreadie Jeff, Gecko and Moonbow) have chosen the type of freedom not offered by cell phone companies. Escaping society, and modern standards of hygiene, the loosely knit, rag-tag bunch is livin’ its own version of the American Dream. CCA, NR, 64 min. THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, which was already adapted for television in 2003 and shown on BBC, The Other Boleyn Girl tells the semi-true story of two sisters who competed for the affection of King Henry VIII, a man who was notoriously difficult to be in a relationship with. Stars Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson as the sisters in rivalry and Eric Bana as Henry the Bastard. Regal Stadium 14, PG-13, 105 min. PENELOPE Christina Ricci stars as Penelope, a girl cursed with a snout nose, in this light-hearted fairytale supposedly about accepting one’s self but, more than likely, equally confirming the notion that a woman’s looks are her main asset. James McAvoy, sporting an American accent, plays the suitor. UA North, PG, 102 min.
The Savages is a shrewdly observed tragicomedy about a pair of emotionally stunted, middle-aged siblings who, in dealing with their deteriorating father, are punted out of their denial and forced, bit by bit, to face their existential dread, their longing, their mediocrity and each other. Jenkins’ writing and direction are superb. Sentimentality is avoided, the humor is subtle and the dialogue is realistic and revelatory (see SFR review). CCA, R, 128 min. SEMI-PRO One-hit-wonder disco star Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell) took his loot and bought himself a basketball team. Now Moon is player, owner and coach of The Tropics, the worst team in the league. To save his team, Moon must fluff his fro, don his short shorts and lead the Tropics to victory. As to how Semi-Pro will compare to other Ferrell stoner-classics, the wild card may be the director, Kent Alterman. Regal Stadium 14, UA North, R, 90 min.
Catalonian writer/producer/director Pere Portabella refuses to release The Silence Before Bach on DVD, so this might be the only chance to see it. Silence is composed of several experimental vignettes, both modernized and in period costume, that speak to the joys of German composer/organist Johann Sebastian Bach’s genius. With its avant-garde structuring, it may be somewhat like last year’s Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There—but with its poetic prowess dedicated more to music than man. The Screen, NR, 102 min. THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES Little white kid discovers secret world inhabited by magical creatures and somehow comes to possess an object that bestows him with powers; kid heads out on an adventure in which his friend and/or little sister tags along; friend and/or little sister is eventually captured; adults are incredulous but are finally forced to believe; kid saves the world. In The Spiderwick Chronicles the makes-you-special object is a magic book and the creatures resemble those nasty plaque and bacteria blobs from the old Listerine ads. Regal Stadium 14, UA North, PG, 97 min. STEP UP 2 THE STREETS Fashioned from suburban fantasies of being a sexy street dancer in “da hood”—fantasies that could only exist if your entire conception of city life came from watching MTV videos—Step Up 2 the Streets is about two blah-ly attractive white kids at a fine arts dance academy (again!?!), 4 whom gaining acceptance among “minorities” with “attitude” is the ultimate test. Regal Stadium 14, UA North, PG-13, 105 min.
Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a greedy oilman who will stop at nothing to get rich in the turn-of-the-century West. Loosely based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, There Will Be Blood explores the worst that human nature has to offer through a stunning (and Academy Award-winning) performance by Day-Lewis (see SFR review). UA DeVargas, R, 158 min. VANTAGE POINT Vantage Point tells its story of the assassination of the president of the United States from multiple angles and stars Dennis Quaid as a secret agent who took a bullet for, it now appears, no reason; Forest Whitaker as the hapless, camcorder-toting tourist-turned-modern-day-Zapruder; Sigourney Weaver as the journalist know-nothing; and William Hurt as The Prez, aka The Decider, aka the dude who just got capped. Regal Stadium 14, UA North, PG-13, 90 min. THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP A kid in Scotland discovers a Loch Ness Monster egg, which proceeds to hatch. An Internet commentator describes the film’s resulting beast as a cross between a “plesiosaur and an estemmenosuchus.” Precisely, sir. UA North, PG, 111 min. © Copyright 2000–2007 by the Santa Fe Reporter |
