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.
Designates items highlighted in this week's issue.
Click here for movie theaters and showtimes
OPENS FRIDAY
78th Annual Academy Award-Nominated Short Films
NB that screenings will be broken up into animated shorts and live-action shorts (see
).
CCA, NR; animated program, 80 min., live-action program, 99 min.
American Dreamz
Directed by Paul Weitz (
American Pie
, yes, but also
In Good Company
and
About a Boy
), this has potential to be either high satirical silliness of the finest water, or a total drag. Hugh Grant plays burned-out talent/reality-show host Martin Tweed, reduced to groping for ratings by casting Omer, a charming young show-tune singing Arab (the brave Sam Golzari). In a delightful skewering of cinematic convention, Omer's also a terrorist (In a Hollywood movie? Who'd have imagined?)-and daffy US president Dennis Quaid has decided to appear on the show's final episode. Can Omer successfully perform the medley from
Phantom
whilst pulling the pin on a hand grenade?
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 107 min.
Dying to Tell the Story
Twenty-two-year-old Reuters photographer Dan Eldon was among a group of five journalists attacked by a mob during the Somali famine in 1993; he and three others were stoned to death. What motivates journalists to put themselves in such danger? His mother, Kathy Eldon, executive-produced this Emmy-nominated
documentary in response to her son's death, while his younger sister Amy is the film's narrator
and its associate producer, interviewing journalists (including the Somali attack's sole survivor).
Kathy Eldon will give a talk at 3 pm on Saturday, prior to the film's 5:30 screening; viewers also can opt to attend a luncheon beforehand (tickets $30, call 988-7414 for details).
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 95 min.
Friends with Money
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener (
Lovely & Amazing
) can have a dab hand with the dialogue and a dry, wry way of revealing the domestic and career lives of middle-class white chicks. Jennifer Aniston returns to the indie territory she negotiated so capably in
The Good Girl
(and, we hope, will shed the bad-script karma acquired thanks to
Derailed
and
Rumor Has It
) as Olivia, single, poor and working as a maid. As the fates would have it, her three best friends (a fabulous trio of Norns: Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener) are also fabulously wealthy and married.
UA DeVargas, R, 88 min.
The Santa Fe Reporter Three-Minute Film Festival
Ninety minutes, 33 films; for those of us with short attention spans, what's not to love (see
)?
The Screen, NR, 90 min.
The Sentinel
Michael Douglas pulls a Harrison as tough-bird Secret Serviceman Pete Garrison, abruptly relieved of his FLOTUS duties when someone frames him for the murder of another agent (having a scandalous affair with First Lady Kim Basinger probably didn't look so good on the old performance review, either). Garrison's convinced that a neo-Nazi bent on presidential assassination has infiltrated security-but no one will believe him, especially now that Garrison's protégé Jack Bauer, pardon, Kiefer Sutherland (
24
) has seized the reins. Expect at least one scene in which one grabs the other by the suit jacket lapels and, slamming him against a wall, says threateningly between clenched teeth, "Stay out of my way" (if not "Get off my plane…").
DreamCatcher, UA North, R, 108 min.
Silent Hill
Originally one of those rare video games that are actually bloodcurdling (pace
Resident Evil
), this movie version stars Radha Mitchell (
High Art
,
Finding Neverland
) as young mother Rose, seeking her sick child in the misty, über-eerie streets of the titular abandoned town, and possibly having to make a pact with the dark side to escape. Director Christophe Gann (
The Brotherhood of the Wolf
) has allegedly created an old-school, make-you-jump horror movie, with a satisfying number and variety of shrouded ghoulish beings emerging suddenly from the CGI fog.
DreamCatcher, UA South, R, 126 min.
SHORT RUNS
The Beauty Academy of Kabul
Liz Mermin's affecting 2004 documentary accompanies American women (some of whom emigrated from Afghanistan in the early 1980s) as they return to the capital city to open a school for beauticians. Among their apt pupils are women who ran underground beauty salons under the Taliban (and we thought Prohibition was bad). Forget driving cars or civil rights; maybe it's Maybelline eyeliner that truly has the power to change the world.
The Screen, NR, 74 min.
Brain from the Planet Arous / The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Professor Doom and Dr. Chaos offer a double feature "suitable for brainiacs" with this pair of shameless exploitation movies from, respectively, 1957 and 1962. Test your
Mystery Science Theater 3000
smart-aleck skills with some truly awful sci-fi of the malevolent-disembodied brain school, cheering lustily everytime someone says in a hoarse whisper, "My God, it's
alive
!"
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 152 min.
Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation Film Series
The final installment in a series to accompany its exhibit
Changing Hands
, the IAIA Museum
presents Christopher McLeod's
Mount Shasta
, as well as
A Thousand Roads
, directed by Chris Eyre (
Smoke Signals
), a short docudrama which makes a lot more sense once you learn that it was created to serve as an introduction for visitors to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
NR, 71 min. Regular museum admission. Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, 108 Cathedral Place, 983-1777
Coachella
This documentary puts you right in the middle of the music as bands and artists including The Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian, Björk, Bright Eyes, The Flaming Lips, Morrissey, Radiohead-we could go on-play the polo grounds in Indio, Calif., where the Coachella Music Festival is held every year.
Santa Fe Film Center, R, 120 min.
Deep Blue
Deep Blue
points out that more people have walked on the surface of the moon than on the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Narrator Pierce Brosnan explains it all while we wallow in suboceanic cerulean bliss and stunning photography of sea turtles and dolphins.
The Screen, G, 83 min.
Duma
Followers of St. Francis, rejoice in this gorgeously filmed story of a wide-eyed cheetah and the boy who loves him. White South African Xan (Alex Michaeletos) adopts an orphaned cub who enjoys living on the Kenyan family farm, but eventually Duma must be returned to the wild. On the way, Xan and Duma encounter a young African traveler, Ripkuna (the magnificent Eamonn Walker), and the two young men form a bond which-like Xan's with Duma-winds up far exceeding our ordinary expectations of friendship.
CCA, PG, 100 min.
The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
Young writer-director Kayvan Mashayekh makes a strong debut with this story of 12-year-old Kamran (Adam Echahly), whose family tells him an important secret: that he's descended from the 11th century poet and astronomer, and that it's his responsibility to keep this inheritance alive for future generations. Flashbacks to ancient Persia explore the relationship between Khayyam (Bruno Lastra) and his best friend Hassan Sabbah (founder of the original Assassins), with scenes shot on location in Samarkand and Uzbekistan.
Santa Fe Film Center, PG, 95 min.
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont Hotel
The Screen picks up seamlessly from where the late Jean Cocteau left off (see
).
The Screen, NR, 108 min.
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Curiously, this animated short from Australia will also play at CCA along with nine others-and if you're really under 12, and not just trying to sneak into Kids First! for free, this might not be your best bet anyway, as it's probably a little too unsettling for the tiny ones, with scuttling blood-sucking creatures and an incurable plague-think Joseph Conrad with sets by Hayao Miyazaki (see
).
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 28 min.
Nobelity
As an Earth Day benefit for Amnesty International, CCA screens this documentary, featuring interviews with nine Nobel laureates including Wangari Maathai, Steven Weinberg, Desmond Tutu and Amartya Sen (what, no Seamus Heaney or Derek Walcott?).
CCA, NR, 28 min.
One: The Movie
Santa Fe loves us some metaphysics: Held over for its ninth week is this documentary filmed by a group of suburban dads, in which a gaggle of spiritual luminaries such as Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Thich Nhat Hahn, Riane Eisler, Father Thomas Keating, Robert Thurman and His Holiness the Dalai Lama are asked for their answers to life's biggest unsolved questions.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 79 min.
Rang de Basanti
Bollywood meets post-colonial Blighty in this tale of a young British woman whose grandfather served in the police force in India during that country's struggle for independence. Discovering his diaries, she hits on the idea of making a film about the revolutionaries her grandfather knew. Unfortunately the young people she encounters in India are banghra-ed out, 24-hour-party people who think the past is for squares and want no part of her noble project. The BBC calls Rakeysh Mehra's film "universally appealing," with a high-spirited cast of up-and-coming Bollywood stars.
CCA, NR, 157 min.
Some Like It Hot / The Wizard of Oz
Community Open House Day features showings of the two classic films; tickets are free but should be reserved in advance by calling the box office.
The Wizard of Oz
, G, 112 min., 1 pm;
Some Like It Hot
, NR, 120 min., 7 pm. Free. The Lensic, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234
The Spirit of the Beehive
The 1973 Spanish-language classic tells the poignant story of two little girls and their search for Frankenstein's monster after they see James Whale's 1931 movie in their small Castillian village, ravaged by the Spanish Civil War.
The Screen, NR, 97 min.
Twisted
Santa Fean, filmmaker and dystonia sufferer Laurel Chiten will be in attendance at this world premiere of her film dealing with the little-understood and incurable neurological disorder, which forces its victims' muscles into abnormal and often painful positions against their wills. The remarkable thing about Chiten's documentary is not so much the relentless clarity with which she views her subjects, or her command of the medical dialogue surrounding it, as the vibrant tenderness and great good humor with which she introduces us to the lives of these extraordinarily ordinary people, who endure incessant misunderstanding. A Q&A will follow the screening.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR
The Weekend
Gena Rowlands, Deborah Kara Unger and Brooke Shields star in Fabulous Thursday's scenery-heavy weepie about a wealthy family trying to come to grips with the loss of their son.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 97 min.
Why We Fight
Eugene Jarecki's award-winning documentary explores, with intelligence and panache, the underpinning rationale behind armed conflict-with interviews from the likes of Ken Adelman, John Eisenhower, William Kristol, John McCain, Richard Perle, Dan Rather and Gore Vidal.
CCA, PG-13, 98 min.
World Cinema Showcase
The showcase wraps up this week with Israel's
Medurat Hashevetch
(
Campfire
), the story of one woman's struggle for acceptance as a West Bank settler; the politically incorrect Belgian comedy
Aaltra
; and, not least, Thai director Eric Khoo's
Be With Me
, a bittersweetly romantic trio of stories knit together with delicate cinematography.
Aaltra
, 92 min.;
Be with Me
, 93 min.;
Campfire
, 96 min. CCA, NR.
NOW SHOWING
ATL
In this hip-hop-roller-skating-movie-that-can't-be-marketed-as-such-
because-of-the-dismal-failure-of-
Roll-Bounce
, "ATL" stands for Atlanta, as in Georgia, as in the city where working-class teens Tip Harris, Evan Ross, Jackie Long, Jason Weaver and Albert Daniels are coming of age. With a story by Antwone Fisher, loosely based on the childhoods of Dallas Austin and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, this unexpectedly cut-above film has fresh performances and intensely cool soundtrack.
DreamCatcher, UA South, PG-13, 105 min.
The Benchwarmers
Trust us, it's even worse than it sounds (and it should have been a summer release anyway): David Spade, Jon Heder and Rob Schneider play three friends who form a baseball team to revenge themselves on their traumatic childhood memories of Little League, with agonizingly unfunny results.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA South, PG-13, 87 min.
Ice Age: The Meltdown
This somewhat disappointing sequel to 2002's animated delight immediately turns disaster-movie as Manny, Diego and Sid discover that behind a tremulous wall of melting ice looms a
Deep Impact
quantity of water threatening to submerge their valley. Their escape is interrupted by an attractive lady mammoth (Queen Latifah) who thinks she's an opossum; another subplot involves saber-toothed Diego's fear of water, while the film as a whole benefits from regular appearances from proto-squirrel Scrat, still scrabbling after his elusive acorn-by far the most amusing thing in the movie, which only occasionally takes off into choreographed flights of frenzied glee.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, PG, 90 min.
Inside Man
Spike Lee (
25th Hour
,
Malcolm X
) does the lucrative thing with his new big-box-office heist flick starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen (
Closer
) and Jodie Foster as three opponents in a pitched battle of wits-a bank robber (Owen), his frustrated hostage negotiator (Washington) and a mysterious power broker (Foster, marvelously villainous). Chiwetel Ejiofor (
Serenity
) is entertaining as Denzel's partner, as are Christopher Plummer and William Dafoe; the whole is compulsively watchable, if a guilty pleasure.
UA North, R, 129 min.
Lucky Number Slevin
Even the combined powerhouse talents of Sir Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman, with Stanley Tucci and Bruce Willis thrown in, can't save this thriller. Josh Hartnett plays the title character, mistaken for someone less law-abiding and thus drawn into the conflict between New York's most powerful crime bosses (Kingsley as the Rabbi and Freeman as the Boss). In this
Memento
wanna-be, we can see the twist coming a mile away, and in the meantime begin to resent everything keeping us from it.
UA North, R, 109 min.
Phat Girlz
Mo'Nique (aka Jasmine Biltmore) plays a plus-size fashion designer looking for love in anti-zaftig America. Lo and behold, she discovers that the Nigerian brother of her dreams doesn't share our anorectic American aesthetic, yielding a ditzily cute but overly long first outing for director Nnegest Likké.
UA South, PG-13, 99 min.
Scary Movie 4
Bring on the summer titles with the numbers in 'em! Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris, at whom we admit we giggled in her
Lost in Translation
cameo as a bubble-headed starlet who thinks Evelyn Waugh was female) must save the world from giant homicidal iPods-while also lampooning everything from
Saw II
to Tom jumping the couch.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, PG-13
She's the Man
When soccer-mad Viola (Amanda Bynes) finds out her school has done away with its women's team (in a parallel universe in which Title IX does not exist), she decides to pose as her twin Sebastian (as in
Twelfth Night
) so as to play for his prep-school team, with sidies barely glued on. Alas, we've never seen such godawful muggings as the ones produced by Bynes;
She's the Man
has no greatness thrust upon it-not even of the shopping-mall variety.
UA South, PG-13, 105 min.
Stay Alive
Breaking new cinematic ground,
Stay Alive
goes in a completely novel direction: It's a PG-13 horror flick (starring
Malcolm in the Middle
's now-adult Frankie Muniz, weirdly enough) in which an online game becomes sentient, killing its teen players in an increasingly elaborate and disgusting variety of ways.
UA North, PG-13, 85 min.
Take the Lead
About as spicy as your grandma's Aunt Hortense, the tepid
Take the Lead
is indeed based on a true story, and for that matter an infinitely more watchable film:
Mad Hot Ballroom
. Antonio Banderas stars as real-life Pierre Dulaine, a dance instructor who decides to volunteer in the NYC public school system, only to find that his classical methods run counter to his students' hip-hop passions. From this culture clash, an entirely new dance form emerges, which the film somehow manages to render completely uninspiring.
DreamCatcher, UA North, PG-13, 108 min.
Thank You for Smoking
Jason Reitman has adroitly adapted Christopher Buckley's already wickedly funny novel and the result is a lucid skewering of the way we deal in what the film's hero affably terms "moral flexibility." Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is a lobbyist for Big Tobacco; blonde, square-jawed, charming and guileless, the so-called "Sultan of Spin" is a master of manipulation. But with Nick's son Joey (Cameron Bright) idolizing his infamous dad, Nick begins to feel less and less certain of the ethical validity of his profession. Eckhart's Ken-doll features and blank facial expressions lend hilarious affect to dry dialogue and high-end satire in the spirit of
Wag the Dog
.
UA DeVargas, R, 92 min.
Tsotsi
South African actor Gavin Hood, veteran of movies with titles like
Operation Delta Force 3
and
Kickboxer 5
, breaks out as a director with this surprisingly fierce and pungent look at South African politics (which he also adapted from the novel by Athol Fugard). It's an urban crime drama set in the township of Soweto, scored with driving Kwaito beats and featuring a potentially career-making performance by Presley Chweneyagae, playing the young thug at the crossroads.
UA DeVargas, R, 94 min.
V for Vendetta
Part of the problem with
Vendetta
could be the fact that its title character, the avenging V (Hugo Weaving) wears a mask and a black pageboy wig in his capacity as a terrorist who dolls up like Guy Fawkes (though he more resembles Prince Valiant) to commit acts of violence against a futuristic totalitarian British state. Some truly maudlin dialogue is to blame, as is Natalie Portman's wide-eyed earnestness as his protégé-but the fact that its hero is forcibly rendered wooden doesn't help
Vendetta
achieve entertainment escape velocity.
UA DeVargas, UA South, R, 132 min.
The Wild
Disney pays homage to DreamWorks' summer hit
Madagascar
by ripping it off shamelessly:
The Wild
tells the tale of a lion teenager, born in captivity in New York, who's accidentally transported to Africa. A posse of friends sets out for the rescue (comprised of squirrel, giraffe and koala and played by Jim Belushi, Janeane Garofalo and Eddie Izzard, respectively). Perhaps entertaining for small children, but you'll want to bring your knitting; don't count on being able to doze, because the soundtrack's too insistent and irritating.
DreamCatcher, UA South, G, 94 min.
