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.
***image3***Designates items highlighted in this week's issue.
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OPENS FRIDAY
The Break-Up
Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston still deny their highly publicized involvement-not that we
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care, being above such tawdry topics as celebrity gossip (but come on,
Brangelina: Shiloh Nouvel? We know you're trying to compete with such high-caliber weird baby names as Apple, Moses or Kal-el, but naming your spawn for a Civil War battle…?). We hope there'll be more to this battle-of-the-sexes comedy than the personal lives of its two leads; with a story co-written by
The Wedding Crashers
actor and Frat Packer Vaughn (and Albuquerque's own Jay Lavender) and direction from Peyton Reed (
Down with Love
,
Bring It On
),
Break-Up
will appeal to that thirtysomething crowd that understands real estate takes priority over passion. When Gary (Vaughn) and Brooke (Aniston) split up after two years' cohabitation, neither of them is willing to give up their flossy Chicago condo. Co-stars include Vaughn regular Jon Favreau (
Swingers
), Judy Davis and Jason Bateman.
UA South, PG-13, 106 min.
***image2***L'Enfant
Brothers and Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes demonstrate with each film their singular ability to project an unforgiving working-class and immigrant Belgium with Dogme-like veracity (
La promesse
,
Rosetta
). Their latest draws mixed reviews (New Yorker francophile Anthony Lane offers, "There is something willed and implausible…beginning with the first non-crying, non-hungry infant in human history") but the Dardennes have a knack for extracting stunning performances from their leads, in this case Jérémie Renier and Déborah François as Bruno and Sonia, a pair of (very) young lovers in trouble-not only unwantedly pregnant but already struggling to survive on Sonia's unemployment and Bruno's petty theft. Unexpectedly, the birth of infant Jimmy offers an economic opportunity, albeit a morally problematic one.
CCA, R, 100 min.
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Look Both Ways
Aussie writer-director Sarah Watt tackles the ultimate taboo subject of death with a deft combination of live action and sketchy, dreamy cartoons, and the perfect blend of seriousness and tongue-firmly-in-cheek humor. Meryl (Justine Clarke) is a prettier, more Aussie version of Woody Allen; she's continually imagining the worst, haunted by graphic imaginings of the horrible, involuntary ease with which it's possible to slip the surly bonds of earth. When she actually witnesses a genuine accident, she finds herself drawn to another bystander-the photographer Nick (William McInnes), himself petrified of the Grim Reaper. "Ineffably Australian and intriguingly (rather than annoyingly) artsy," avers Lisa Schwartzbaum; we anticipate that peculiarly postcolonial blend of fantasy and gritty veracity found in the fiction of, say, Tim Winton or Peter Carey.
The Screen, PG-13, 100 min.
SHORT RUNS
Alles auf Zucker!
This dysfunctional-family farce may be an entirely unique creature in the annals of post-war film: a German-Jewish comedy. The New York Times even observed that
Zucker
, wildly successful in Germany, has proven "an unconventional form of therapy for the strained relations between Jews and gentiles." No surprise, then, to learn that Swiss-born filmmaker Dani Levi's currently in production on an even edgier comedy,
Mein Führer: The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler
. Henry Hübchen and Udo Samel play estranged brothers from East and West, who must resolve their flagrant differences at their mother's deathbed.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 90 min.
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CSA: Confederate States of America
Delicately skirting along the edge of the tasteful comes this eye-opening, sickeningly funny mockumentary depicting an alternate universe in which the Confederacy won the War of Northern Aggression, changing world history as a result.
CSA
not only sends up all of the documentary conventions flawlessly ("Learn how we protected the noble institution of slavery!" says a breathless voiceover, as the camera lingers over those Ken-Burns-style still photographs and DW Griffiths' films go on to depict Lincoln's capture) but also manages to skewer the current state of US racial politics (QVC commercials selling slave families, "available individually or as a set"); deliciously, evilly subversive.
The Screen, NR, 89 min.
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The Devil and Daniel Johnston
You may not have heard of the latter, although musicians from Tom Waits to Kurt Cobain (taking in Wilco, Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam along the way) have counted themselves among his ardent fans. The cartoonist and composer's life has without a doubt been made arduous by his struggles with manic depression, but its corresponding surges of creativity turned him into an outsider songwriter's songwriter, equal parts Robert Johnson and Henry Darger. Jeff Feuerzeig's intimate, startling and often funny documentary netted him a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year, with good reason: Devil, zero; Daniel Johnston, one.
CCA, PG-13, 110 min.
Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning play father and daughter in this refreshingly noncommercial tween-girl flick about an injured racehorse whom the pair believe could be rehabilitated for another chance on the track. Decent acting-and hiring cinematographer Fred Murphy (
The Dead
,
The Trip to Bountiful
) certainly didn't hurt, either.
Santa Fe Film Center, PG, 102 min.
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Elevator to the Gallows
It's hard to remember that late director Louis Malle (
My Dinner with Andre
,
Au revoir, les enfants
) was ever a 24-year-old hotshot who scampered away with the Prix Delluc and essentially kicked off the
nouvelle vague
with this 1957 noir confection, which also made an icon out of star Jeanne Moreau (perhaps never photographed quite so well again). When Moreau conspires with her lover (Maurice Ronet) to murder her husband, they're not prepared for how complicated such deeds can
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be, nor how quickly it can all go pear-shaped. With François Truffaut's DP Henri Decaë at the wheel and a notoriously cool improvisational soundtrack by Miles Davis, a shiny new 35 mm print of
L'ascenseur pour l'échafaud
proves to be no less than pure créme brulée.
The Screen, NR, 88 min.
Garçon stupide
Expect nothing less from the protagonist of this Fabulous Thursday flick: Loïc (Pierre Chatagny), the dumb boy of the title, hops from shallow sexual encounter to encounter while aching for a real relationship-but without the faintest idea of how to go about acquiring one. Chatagny gives a strong performance as the emotionally stunted Loïc; 28-year-old Swiss director Lionel Baier may be one to watch, though the narrative here is often frustratingly uneven.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 94 min.
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Kekexili
Inspired by a true story, this beautifully photographed epic (filmed in the Himalayas) takes us along for the ride as a Beijing journalist investigates the disappearance of volunteers committed to protecting the Tibetan antelope from poachers-even if it means they themselves have to bend the laws.
Kekexili
has allegedly become a phenomenon in China, where it has led to new efforts to protect endangered Tibetan species-but beyond any ethical or political value, it's a harshly lovely story.
CCA, NR, 90 min.
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The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
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. 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.
Krooked Kronicles
Weekend before last, an audience of 1,800 rolled into San Francisco's Castro Theater for this documentary, sponsored by Krooked Skateboards and featuring Mark Gonzales, Dan Drehobl, Van Wastell and Bobby Worrest.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
Strange how times have changed for Robert Carlyle, ever since his turn as psychotic Begbie in
Trainspotting
; the roles he's landed since then have tended much more toward the sweet side, if still often darkly funny: the alcoholic dad in
Angela's Ashes
, a romantic lead in
Carla's Song
and
The Full Monty
-and of course quirky Beeb detective
Hamish Macbeth
. Carlyle continues with the pure evaporated cane sugar, so far rarely redolent of sucralose, as a man broken-hearted by the death of his wife. A chance encounter with John Goodman leads him circuitously to the school of the title (overseen by Mary Steenburgen)-and to a fresh start, his transformation attended by fellow dance and charm students Marisa Tomei, Donnie Wahlberg and Sean Astin (don't you lose him, Samwise Gamgee!).
The Screen, PG-13, 103 min.
***image2***Our Brand Is Crisis
The Film Center's been bringing us some pungent political fare lately; if you liked
The War Room
(which some of us saw approximately 14 squillion times-it was that engrossing), you'll be immediately sucked into this stranger-than-fiction documentary from the get-go. Director Rachel Boynton has trained her camera on a team of American campaign managers exported to Bolivia, where they've been hired to spin the image of an unpopular candidate and get him reelected. James Carville heads the lineup (which also includes Tad Devine, Stan Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner) behind the strategy: To market Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to his own people, battered by poverty and violence, and increasingly mistrustful of their own government.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 87 min.
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Sir! No Sir!
See
.
CCA, NR, 85 min.
Words of My Perfect Teacher
This week's Buddhist Film Night gives us another Westerner's exploration of Eastern mysticism as Lesley Ann Patten filmed interviews with her teacher-reincarnated lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche-in an attempt to better understand their relationship. The twist: Khyentse Rinpoche is a filmmaker himself, and an accomplished one to boot, having written and directed both
The Cup
and
Travelers and Magicians
, as well as serving as consultant to Bertolucci during the filming of
Little Buddha
. Filmed on location partly in Bhutan, Patten's documentary also features a lively world music soundtrack (with the title song by Mr. Tantra himself, aka Sting).
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 103 min.
NOW SHOWING
The Da Vinci Code
Tom Hanks stars as Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon in this goofy but fairly entertaining adaptation of Dan Brown's goofy and not in the least entertaining novel. Naturally, during a Paris booksigning, Langdon's asked by the gendarmerie (no doubt dazzled by his PowerPoint) to assist with a murder case. Enter cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), the victim's granddaughter, who bears Startling Information for Langdon. All this abruptly leads to a clandestine midnight tour of the Louvre and Langdon's and Neveu's flight from Paris; frantically intercut scenes suggest that the Catholic order Opus Dei are not only evil cultists who brainwash their lay followers but are also tasking monastic albino hitman Silas (Paul Bettany), who murders his way across France one step ahead of Neveu and Langdon, reporting back such revelations as: "The legend is true. It hides beneath the Rose." Thank goodness we've got a symbologist handy…and fortunately Langdon seems to have played a lot of Boggle in his day. While much of what's amusing may be unintentionally so (including the dialogue: "I have to get to a library-fast!"), director Ron Howard keeps things moving quickly enough so that you can't really dwell on the idiocies, which is an infinite improvement over Brown's book. Reminiscent of
The X-Files
in its heyday, with somewhat less prepossessing leads and a soupy Hans Zimmer score,
Code
is the first chunk of summer fare that's almost competent, which at this decadent, late-empire stage of the game, is pretty darn…OK.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, PG-13, 149 min.
Don't Come Knocking
Wim Wenders directs and Sam Shepard wrote and stars as washed-up Western movie star Howard (Shepard), who, once famed for playing cowboy heroes, now drowns his sorrows in a bottle, until one day he up and rides off into the sunset. Costarring Tim Roth, Eva Marie Saint and Jessica Lange,
Knocking
's worth seeing for old times' sake (though you could also just re-rent
Paris, Texas
or
Fool for Love
).
UA DeVargas, R, 122 min.
Ice Age: The Meltdown
This disappointing sequel turns disaster-movie as Manny, Diego and Sid discover that behind a wall of melting ice looms a
Deep Impact
quantity of water threatening to submerge their valley. Their escape is hindered by an attractive lady mammoth (Queen Latifah), while the film benefits from regular appearances from proto-squirrel Scrat, ever scrabbling after his elusive acorn-the most amusing thing in the movie, which only occasionally takes off into choreographed flights of glee.
UA South, PG, 90 min.
Just My Luck
This disastrously bad outing proves nothing except that Lindsay Lohan's still too young to carry a film as an adult lead. It's another swapping-identities plot, this time without props from Jamie Lee Curtis; Ashley (Lohan), notorious within her circle of Manhattan friends for being the luckiest chick around, kisses Jake (Chris Pine) at a masked ball, exchanging her fortune for his-and Jake's about as lucky as a frat boy at an Emily's List fundraiser.
DreamCatcher, UA South, PG-13, 103 min.
Mission: Impossible III
Lost
director JJ Abrams does everything in his power to keep you from remembering that it's the Sofa-Leaper Himself playing Ethan Hunt-from
M:I-3
's nerve-wracking opening sequence in which a bound and bruised Hunt negotiates frantically with gun-wielding villain Philip Seymour Hoffman. Alas, Abrams also wants us to see Ethan's "sensitive side," so he makes other choices like…cutting from this sequence straight to an engagement party for Ethan and his bride Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Hunt's summoned out of his mushy love-nest retirement to bring down Hoffman, a doer of international evil deeds, in the course of which there are helicopters to blow up, buildings off which to base-jump, a crack team of IMF experts to assemble (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q) and contrived plot lines to pursue.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, PG-13, 126 min.
Over the Hedge
Only black-sheep cousin DreamWorks, with its countercultural sense of humor, could get behind a story as subtly left-of-center as this one: RJ (Bruce Willis) is a fast-talking raccoon on the make, looking to score a large quantity of junk food so he can pay off an ursine leg-breaker (Nick Nolte). In the interest of saving his hide, he enlists an eclectic "family" of animals stymied by the new hedge enveloping their former forest home, now a tiny enclave of park surrounded by the identical tract-housing of suburbia. The family's cautious leader, turtle Vern (Garry Shandling), has returned from a preliminary investigation with horrific reports of the "freaking pink primates!" on the other side. RJ must convince the group that there's Oreos and Pringles to be had, and they'd better brave the 'burbs to store enough calories for the winter. Like many of cinema's con men, however, RJ finds himself wondering whether selling out his adorable new friends is worth it. And we take his point: Steve Carell as an overcaffeinated squirrel is particularly cute, whether stammering incoherently, "But I like a cookie!" or (in one priceless sequence) experiencing the world as slowed-down due to his own untrammeled velocity.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA South, PG, 96 min.
Poseidon
First Law of Mediocre Disaster Blockbusters: Never give 'em time to think.
Poseidon
readily complies, permitting no reflection between hair-raising events, with lots of fairly graphic casualties. Which brings us to the Second Law: Substitute chaos, yelling, falling objects and random explosions for drama (since it's impossible to generate suspense if you don't care about anyone). Finally, the Third Law: Construct characters out of flabby dialogue, construction paper and gluestick; there should be a Sexy Maverick Leader (the tireless Josh Lucas), Rich Older Gay Guy (Richard Dreyfus), Hot Hispanic Chick (Mía Maestro), Hot White Chick (Emmy Rossum), Annoying Drunk Idiot (Kevin Dillon), Pretty Scared Mom in a Ballgown (Jacinda Barrett) and Kurt Russell. To assess whether
Poseidon
truly attains the goals of the MDB, though, compare it to an outstanding one-and there's a classic ready at hand, probably to director Wolfgang Petersen's dismay; it's called
The Poseidon Adventure
, and it's everything this sloppy, loud remake isn't.
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, UA South, PG-13, 99 min.
RV
Barry Sonnenfeld (
Men in Black
) directs the unamusing odyssey of Bob Munro (Robin Williams), who decides his suburban family would benefit from an RV trip to the Rockies, where they encounter NASCAR-lovin', beer-drinkin' campers, among them Jeff Daniels.
DreamCatcher, UA North, PG, 99 min.
See No Evil
In a blatant effort to pull in WWF audiences, this teen-slaying horror flick stars all seven feet and 320 pounds of wrestling champion Kane, who plays retiring psychopath Jacob Goodnight. When a group of delinquent teenagers draws the community-service job of cleaning out the hazardously disintegrating Blackwell Hotel, they're unaware that Goodnight is squatting in its ruins, bearing a grudge.
UA South, R, 100 min.
***image3***Water
See
.
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 117 min.
X-Men: The Last Stand
Ushering in the summer's really big blow-'em-up whoopie movies is
The Last Stand
(but should we really believe them, with
Die Hardest 4
in the offing?). And the gang's all here: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin and the rest of the mutants (including a Pictish Kelsey Grammer-and a resurrected if not particularly compos mentis Famke Jannsen) must defend their kind even more fiercely now that a "cure" for their aberrancies has been found, and humans seem increasingly disposed to rid the world of these weird people who can set things ablaze and fly around and what have you. Adding to the fun is Magneto (Ian McKellan, hamming it up with gusto) who seems desirous of giving mutants everywhere an even worse rap than the one they've already managed to snag. It's not a terrible movie (especially compared to the first of the trilogy) but it's not particularly heart-stopping either (except when one considers its weekend box office, which is roughly the equivalent of the GNP of India).
DreamCatcher, UA DeVargas, UA North, PG-13, 104 min.
