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.
click here for movie theaters and showtimes
Opens Friday
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ANNAPOLIS
We from Santa Fe can be forgiven for wondering if this isn't a film about St. John's sister campus, but in fact it is about the Naval Academy and how
hard
it is, how
difficult
and
strenuous
and
grueling
. We know these things, you see, because of the great many shots of James Franco doing pushups in the pouring rain while Tyrese Gibson and, for variety, Jordana Brewster yell at him and accuse him of not being tough enough to withstand their invective, since he's but a scrappy working-class lad from the wrong side of the tracks and without a fancy prep-school education. But we've seen
GI Jane
; we've seen
Full Metal Jacket, Tigerland
and for that matter
Stripes
and
Private Benjamin
, and we'll put money on our boy James to graduate and throw his white cap up in the air before heading out to kick some enlisted (working-class, wrong-side-of-the-tracks) Mideastern ass.
UA North, R, 103 min.
BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE 2
In this sequel to the 2000 breakout success, Martin Lawrence reprises his role-and costume-as Malcolm Turner, an FBI agent who must disguise himself as a large, older African-American woman in order to protect a federal witness. Apparently inspired by the premise that large older African-American women are inherently funny, Lawrence must know some different women than we do…and in fact, the gags are at their most successful when Ms. Momma takes wide-eyed relish in smacking around stupid crooked white guys, of whom, in art as in life, there never seem to be any shortage.
DreamCatcher, PG-13, 99 min.
BUBBLE
Just as video killed the radio star, you'd almost think director Steven Soderbergh (
sex, lies & videotape, Out of Sight, Traffic, The Limey
) is out to put the nails in the coffin of cinema with this little American Gothic murder mystery set in a toy factory. A summer festival darling starring unknown actors, Bubble is first of all shot entirely in high-def, and then has its theatrical release and DVD release
simultaneously
. In an era when even Francis Ford Coppola urged his own daughter to shoot
Lost in Translation
in digital (she refused), these are inevitable developments; and anyway, as long as Soderbergh brings his mordant intelligence to the project, we're game.
CCA, R, 98 min.
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CRIMEN FERPECTO
The new comedy by cult director Álex de la Iglesia (
800 Bullets, La Comunidad
),
The Ferpect Crime
(as it's being called in English) stars Guillermo Toledo as Rafael and Mónica Cervera as Lourdes, feuding salespeople of an upscale department store. The power-hungry Rafael in particular has ambitions to become the store manager; when his primary rival for the position dies and Lourdes is the only witness, the two match wits in an ever-escalating battle of the sexes (and their tailored clothing). With the bizarre humor of a young Peter Jackson, the Spanish de la Iglesia's work is invariably black, grotesque and side-splittingly funny.
The Screen, NR, 105 min.
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THE MATADOR
Since being nominated for a Golden Globe, both Pierce Brosnan and this funky sleeper comedy have been getting more attention-deservedly so, given its almost-too-funny-to-laugh (and then as abruptly wrenching) script from writer-director Richard Shepard, as well as Brosnan's unexpectedly louche performance as Julian, a dissipated hitman ("I facilitate fatalities") losing his nerve. Brosnan obviously relishes destroying his 007 image; similarly, straight-man Greg Kinnear gets to play against (and with, and around, and near) his type as Danny, an ineffectual salesman who meets Julian at a hotel bar in Mexico-and hopes never to see him again, until a shaken Julian turns up at Danny's house asking for help. Refreshingly singular and well-crafted.
UA DeVargas, R, 96 min.
NANNY MCPHEE
If nothing else, Emma Thompson should run away with all the BAFTAs Blighty has to offer for making the unselfish artistic sacrifice of appearing for two hours onscreen with a big warty prosthetic nose and a single prominent snaggletooth-but in addition, she wrote the screenplay, based on Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books. She stars as the titular nanny, who proves a loving but firm governess to Colin Firth's seven unruly children-and her magical gifts may come in handy when the family's threatened with separation.
UA South, PG, 97 min.
click here for movie theaters and showtimes
Short Runs
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BALLETS RUSSES
Unfulfilled balletomanes, form a line starting in the corner to watch some of the greatest dancers of the 20th century, in both priceless archival footage and as their present-day elderly and still-impassioned selves. Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine's bravura documentary attempts to illuminate the fanaticism audiences once felt for the ballet by unearthing the story of Ballets Russes, who never played in Russia and who were actually two rival companies. It's all here-the steps, the pain, the jealous choreographers, the audience adulation, the glamour, the poverty, the ground glass in the toe shoes-and told by the dancers themselves, including Irina Baronova, Frederic Franklin, Nathalie Krassovska, Alicia Markova, Tatiana Stepanova and Maria Tallchief.
The Screen, NR, 118 min.
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BREAKFAST ON PLUTO
Cillian Murphy's pretty. We knew this, of course (
28 Days Later, Red Eye
)-but we mean
really
pretty. And that's a good thing when you're in a Neil Jordan film (
The Crying Game, Interview with a Vampire
), because you'll inevitably wind up wearing eyeliner. Jordan teams up again with novelist Pat McCabe (
The Butcher Boy
) to adapt and direct the heartwrenching story of Kitten Brady, born Patrick, who leaves small-town Ireland for London to find his mum-and a more exciting (and potentially dangerous) life as a transvestite cabaret singer in the swinging '60s and '70s. Jordan stalwarts Liam Neeson (
Michael Collins
) and Stephen Rea (
The End of the Affair
) costar; flawless period details and a spot-on performance from the ever-astounding Murphy make
Pluto
unmissable.
CCA, R, 135 min.
BURNING MAN: BEYOND BLACK ROCK
One of the hits at December's film festival, this is the documentary for all of us who are intrigued by the unique city of 30,000 created for seven days every summer in the Black Rock Desert. The filmmakers assiduously tracked Burning Man folk and their doings for a solid 18 months, resulting in a most thorough documentary of the organization.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 105 min.
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CHASING BUDDHA
Robina Courtin does a Sister Helen Prejean in this complicated portrayal of the Tibetan Buddhist nun and director of the Liberation Prison Project, debunking ideas about what makes a person of the cloth (and especially a female one) "spiritual." We follow the energetic, outspoken and often abrasive former Catholic feminist as she works with inmates on and off death row in Kentucky, gaining insight into what's popularly called "engaged Buddhism" and the teachings of acceptance and compassion it can offer everyone who's been given a life sentence.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 60 min.
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COWBOY DEL AMOR
Michele Ohayon's funky, funny look at a bluntly offensive matchmaking scheme is the kind of film you want to dislike and instead wind up enjoying hugely. Non-gay cowboy Ivan Thompson, divorced after 17 years of unholy matrimony, can't line up the next Mrs. Thompson-until his Mexican ranch-hand suggests placing a personals ad in a Juarez newspaper. But the startling flood of replies gives the entrepreneurial gringo pause: To heck with marriage, there's a business opportunity waiting! Faster than you can say "Russian mail-order bride," Ivan opens a matchmaking service, Cowboy Cupid, to pair Mexican women who want to move north with traditionalist (not to say sexist) American men who prefer old-fashioned (not to say uneducated and compliant) women, and, well, everyone's happy-or are they?
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 86 min.
GAY SEX IN THE '70S
Hm, wonder what this one's about? Fabulous Thursday takes us back to the unbridled days between Stonewall (1969) and the first public HIV/AIDS diagnosis (1981), including frank interviews with men who were sexually active, and we do mean active, during the halcyon decade of bathhouses and back rooms, when hook-ups were both nearly effortless and (as far as anyone knew at the time) consequence-free.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 72 min.
MALA LECHE
The Screen continues its gritty series
Visions of the Real: Documentaries on the Cutting Edge
with Naomi Uman's 47-minute
Mala Leche
. The bleaker follow-up to her evocative, deceptively simple 1998 documentary
Leche
, which without commentary followed the daily doings of a Mexican family of dairy ranchers,
Mala Leche
accompanies members of the same family when they move northward into California. Ms. Uman will be present to show some of her other documentary work.
The Screen, NR
NAKED IN ASHES
When the subject matter's so fascinating (the inventive, astounding ascetic practices of India's purported 13 million Hindu yogis) it almost doesn't matter that American-born director Paula Fouce's filmmaking is nervous, skittery and weak. Don't get us wrong; what you see is pretty darn spectacular (the uncut hair, the curling fingernails, the standing on one leg for decades, the pulling a car with one's penis-oh yes; all this and more) but it would be nice if the film's stance weren't quite so wide-eyed and rapt while somehow simultaneously managing to condescend-a yogic feat almost worthy of its own documentation.
CCA, NR, 103 min.
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THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
The opening of Noah Baumbach's debut-a combative tennis match in which Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and his older son Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) play doubles against wife and mother Joan (Laura Linney) and younger son Frank (Kevin Kline's progeny Owen)-sets the stage for ferocious family conflict centered around the parents' divorce. In a painfully accurate performance, Daniels gains our compassion for the irritating Bernard by revealing his insecurity with his wife's writing career (suddenly more successful than his own). As the boys side with different parents, they reinvent their dysfunctionalities (Walt adopts his father's more noxious mannerisms, Frank develops precocious tastes for beer and autoeroticism). By the time he deploys the film's most dramatic, Godardesque shots, upping the emotional ante at the last minute, Baumbach has earned the right to do so.
The Screen, R, 80 min.
click here for movie theaters and showtimes
Now Showing
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BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Screenwriting team Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (adapting Annie Proulx's story) have actually succeeded in making something new under Hollywood's world-weary sun. While Westerns have always been homoerotic (almost a tautology of the genre), never has
Lonesome Dove
merged so honestly and so meltingly with, say,
Maurice
. Add the lyrical direction of Ang Lee and you get an old-fashioned big-screen romance, which only incidentally happens to be between two men. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger, who recalls Brando or Dean in his inarticulacy) meet one summer when they pair up to watch a herd of sheep; Jack is a rodeo charmer, as playful and sensual as Ennis is laconic and introverted. Soon both men find themselves struggling to ignore the obvious; without putting too fine a point on it, they fall in love. Eventually, the agonizing repercussions of one's fearful renunciation of the other reverberate through the remainder of the film, a tragic denial of self. It's heartbreaking, it's beautifully filmed and it's making money hand over fist; ride 'em, cowboys. (See SFR's
.)
UA DeVargas, R, 134 min.
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CAPOTE
Back for a pre-Oscar run,
Capote
stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of his career as the author, who in 1959 finds himself at loose ends after the fantastic success of
Breakfast at Tiffany's
. Persuading his New Yorker editor (Bob Balaban in a great turn as William Shawn) to let him write about a gruesome murder case, Truman heads for the dark interior of the Midwest with best friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener, similarly brilliant), where he began researching what was to become
In Cold Blood
. Director Bennett Miller, writer Dan Futterman (who long ago played Gene Hackman's son in, of all things,
The Birdcage
) and Hoffman don't seek to whitewash Capote's self-serving qualities, and the result is an uncannily accomplished character assassination turned ode to its immensely gifted subject, awash in structured, complicated ambiguity and delicately terrifying. (See SFR's
.)
UA DeVargas, R, 98 min.
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CASANOVA
Heath Ledger seems determined to lose whatever patina he's acquired by appearing in
Brokeback Mountain
by making himself ridiculous as the notorious lover in this poorly scripted, clunkily directed (for shame, Lasse Hallström!) mess, costarring Sienna Miller as fiery feminist Francesca Bruni, Jeremy Irons as a papal inquisitor and an utterly wasted Oliver Platt-presumably cast here on the basis of his work in a far superior flick, one also set in Venice during the same historical period:
Dangerous Beauty
. Come to think of it, that film has a more convincing fiery feminist, too; a more daring fifth-act escape; and Rufus Sewall, which is plenty enough for us. (See SFR's
.)
UA North, R, 108 min.
GLORY ROAD
Based on a true story,
Glory Road
joins a never-ending list of underdogs-overcoming-insurmountable-odds sports movies that includes last year's
Rebound, Coach Carter
and the remade
Bad News Bears
. Josh Lucas ***image3***
stars as Don Haskins, former girls' high-school basketball coach who took over as head coach at Texas Western College in 1965 and did the unthinkable: He decided to recruit black players for his starting lineup, which at the time was almost unheard of. To everyone's surprise, Haskins led his team to a near-perfect season and, in what many believe was the most important college basketball game of all time, a stunning 1966 NCAA championship over Kentucky. But while
Glory Road
addresses the racist notions that prevailed at the time, it also tries to make the subject matter as feel-good and as family-friendly as possible.
DreamCatcher, UA North, PG, 106 min.
END OF THE SPEAR
With one of those groovy double-entendre titles that make movie critics' jobs so easy,
End of the Spear
refers not only to the peace which Christian missionaries hoped to introduce into the Ecuadoran culture of the Waodani (South America's most notoriously violent tribal society), but also to the weapon's business end-which, unfortunately, is the end the missionaries quickly encounter, as any dunderheaded anthropology post-doc could probably have told them, even in 1956. With every opportunity for arresting trans-cultural encounters,
End of the Spear
winds up largely swamped in the filmmakers' glutinous sincerity, though there's at least one performance (Louie Leonardo as the agile warrior Mincayani) worth noting.
UA South, PG-13, 111 min.
HOODWINKED
The new animation from Edwards brothers Cory and Todd (
Chillecothe
),
Hoodwinked
updates the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood with multiple perspectives à la
Rashomon
, salted with fast and furious gags, dollops of sarcasm and the vocal talents of Glenn Close, Anne Hathaway, James Belushi, David Ogden Stiers, Chazz Palminteri and Xzibit. The bad news is that as we grow more and more discriminating about our animation, the dicey art of smaller-studio features such as this one doesn't compare well with the realization of Tim Burton or Nick Parks-or even
Shrek
's Andrew Adamson.
DreamCatcher, UA South, PG, 80 min.
LAST HOLIDAY
Queen Latifah stars as Georgia Byrd, who's always lived a retiring, modest life-until she learns she has only three weeks to live, whereupon quits her job, cashes in her IRA and embarks on the lavish trip to Europe she's always dreamed of, complete with makeover and flirtation with foreigners (Giancarlo Esposito and Gérard Depardieu)-as well as a surprise visit from Sean (LL Cool J), the coworker on whom shy Georgia has always had an unspoken crush. Wayne Wang (
Smoke, Maid in Manhattan
) has given us a playful, fun and life-affirming movie about seeing the world with fresh eyes and contagious enthusiasm. (J Christopher Dupuy)
DreamCatcher, UA South, PG-13, 112 min.
LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Comedian Albert Brooks is commissioned by the US government to travel India and Pakistan. His assignment? A 500-page report on what cracks up Mohammed's followers (presumably the better to continue asserting our military supremacy). Written and directed by Brooks, the movie, like the mission itself, is a failure. After repeatedly unsuccessful encounters, Brooks is forced to return with merely four pages of information, the only notable display of comedy having occurred during his brief border-crossing into Pakistan (where he is invited to share a hookah supposedly containing hashish). Here he finally succeeds in determining what makes Muslims laugh: mind-altering substances! Perhaps if the audience had been invited to share, we'd find the movie more entertaining than the commercials preceding it. If anything
Looking for Comedy
actually reduces the West's understanding of the Muslim world, increases the likelihood of conflict with the US and probably diminishes the balance in the backers' bank accounts as well. (Tristan M Katz)
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MATCH POINT
You can't really say Woody Allen's made a comeback with his latest foray, which ventures not only out of Manhattan into London but also away from his well-worn genre turf into the arena of the romantic thriller-because it's so unlike anything we've ever seen from him that he's not come back so much as he has suddenly sprinted forward somewhere entirely new, and with astonishing success. At his service is a hungry young cast: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett Johansson (playing a bit above her game here; she's good, but she's no Lauren Bacall, or for that matter Mariel Hemingway), Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode, none of whom even remotely resembles Woody Allen. Darker than
Crimes and Misdemeanors
, as spry as
Bullets over Broadway
and with the lean, brash confidence of
Manhattan
,
Match Point
has its own sinister precision and a noirish fascination with dingbat old-money versus new-world avarice (see SFR's
).
Jean Cocteau, R, 124 min.
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
We feel about
Memoirs
the way we felt about
The Last Samurai
(not Helen DeWitt's novel, but the cinematic cheap shot starring Ken Watanabe-and, oh yeah, Tom Cruise): It's pretty, it has three of the world's most beautiful actresses in it (
Raise the Red Lantern
's Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh-who has a sexy, elegant dignity not seen on screen since Ingrid Bergman-and feisty Zhang Ziyi, always good for a firecracker or two)
and
it stars Ken Watanabe, too. Unfortunately, it's also an unadulterated bore; when you hear Zhang's voiceover: "Mine is a story that should never have been told"-well, let's just say it begs the question.
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 145 min.
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MUNICH
Gratifyingly, Spielberg's latest is neither a) pro-Zionist, b) pro-Palestianian or c) some facile combo of the two, glued together with why-we-can't-all-just-get-along agitprop. Instead it's tight, well-paced filmmaking, if a bit on the windy side. Eric Bana does most of the work in his outstanding portrayal of Avner, the Mossad agent assigned by Golda Meir to lead a team (Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds and Hanns Zischler) responsible for killing those behind the Munich assassinations-as it's Avner who serves as the group conscience, with brooding, Hamlet-like moral indecision, uncertain as to whether Israel has identified the right targets or simply wants the heads of any 11 Palestinian sympathizers, no matter their guilt or innocence. (See SFR's
.)
UA DeVargas, R, 164 min.
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THE NEW WORLD
Colin Farrell reverts to his underdog Irish roots and it's a beautiful thing to see-as is the rest of writer-director Terrence Malick's gorgeously photographed take on the mythical history of Pocohontas (though she's never named in the film). Malick has always been known for taking his sweet time between films but here his languorousness also makes itself felt during shots and between scenes. While the story is familiar (starving, smelly, violent European colonists too dumb to grow their own corn, saved by the compassionate if ultimately regrettable intervention of the Powhatan tribe), Malick unobtrusively turns an unseen facet toward us: an arresting, quiet romance between two people from irreconcilable cultures. The remarkable Q'Orianka Kilcher (only 14 years old) stars as Pocohontas, who's fascinated with the newcomers in general and John Smith (Farrell) in particular. Yet even the details of their intense, ill-fated love affair and her eventual marriage to John Rolfe (Christian Bale) fade, immersed in the larger frame of Malick's downright
feminist
love for the prelapsarian innocence of the new American world itself, sentenced to loss and waste almost as soon as it is sighted by the old.
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 135 min.
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SYRIANA
In writer-director Stephen Gaghan's complex, multilayered political thriller, oil is the driving force behind an intricate web of deception, murder and corruption. Using an interwoven story structure similar to that of his Oscar-winning
Traffic
screenplay, Gaghan offers a conspiracy-minded view of the interconnected world of oil sales, strife in the Middle East and duplicitous business endeavors. With an ensemble featuring George Clooney as a burnt-out CIA operative, Matt Damon as an idealistic derivatives trader, brilliant work from Tim Blake Nelson, Will Hurt and Jeffrey Wright, and perhaps most remarkably a star-making performance from Alexander Siddig as a liberal, Western-thinking Saudi prince,
Syriana
is a bold-albeit unapologetically left-leaning-work not afraid to spark discussion. Weaving an intricate tapestry of overlapping story and character arcs, Gaghan attempts to explain what is going on in the world today, as oil reserves quickly diminish and no one wants to be left in the dark, literally; the result is a smart thriller that rebukes the clichés and trappings normally associated with this genre.
UA North, R, 126 min.
TRISTAN & ISOLDE
More
Braveheart
than
A Knight's Tale,
this Scott-brothers-produced version of the medieval romance is refreshingly tragic-and surprisingly entertaining. Though
Tristan & Isolde
is another story of star-crossed young lovers (in this case, James Franco and Sophia Myles), we're spared the topical references and hip-hop soundtrack that typically accompany movies dealing with doomed teenaged love. Instead,
T&I
presents a dilemma with which most modern romances don't usually grapple (although romance in any era is fraught with terrifying choices): How can we choose between friendship and love when the only way to gain one is to lose the other? When the stakes include not only Tristan's affection for his father-figure and mentor King Mark (Rufus Sewall), but also the fate of Cornwall and Britain, it's difficult to justify wrecking everything for the sake of a love stronger than death, no matter how Wagnerian.
UA North, PG-13, 140 min.
UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION
If you loved Kate Beckinsale wearing a rubber outfit in
Underworld
, you'll, um, love her wearing it again, as the battle between Lycans (werewolves) and Death Dealers (vampires) toils onward with no apparent end in sight. Ms. Beckinsale, as voluptuous vampire heroine Selene, along with her half-canine love interest Michael (Scott Speedman) must battle intra-species prejudice, gravity and murky lighting; they are aided and/or hindered by confusingly better actors, including Bill Nighy and Derek Jacobi.
DreamCatcher, R, 103 min.
NOTHING TRIVIAL ABOUT IT will be back next week.
click here for movie theaters and showtimes
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.
