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.
Shows and times for Friday, Sept. 8-Tuesday, Sept. 12 were unavailable at press time due to the Labor Day holiday. Please call theater for times.
***image3***Designates items highlighted in this week's issue.
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Heading South
Three middle-aged, North American women travel to 1970s Haiti to buy the affections of the local young men. Their
ideas of no-strings-attached romance are disturbed by the realities of political unrest and poverty plaguing the
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land. Through Legba (Menothy Cesar, winner of the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 2005 Venice Film Festival), a favorite conquest of the ladies, they experience the increasing frustration of Haiti's people with their social constraints.
The Screen, NR, 108 min.
La Moustache
This "Kafkaesque fantasy" by first-time French director Emmanuel Carrere follows Marc (Vincent Lindon) after he shaves off the mustache he's worn all of his adult life. The strange part is neither his wife nor any of his friends notice his missing accoutrement and, even more disturbing, they insist he never had one. A prize winner at Cannes, this esoteric thriller is bound to enrapture with its "beauty and flawless performances."
CCA, NR, 86 min.
***image2***Cats of Mirikitani
Jimmy Mirikitani isn't your typical crotchety old man. Sure the 85-year-old artist has been through a lot: losing family in WWII, homelessness in New York City, being followed around for a documentary…The artist brushes all this aside with a smile and a motto, "Make art not war."
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 74 min.
Creatures from the Pink Lagoon
Libidinous gay men have been turned into ravenous flesh-eating zombies by toxic mosquitoes and are on the move in the direction of a clutch of (living) gay friends who have gathered at a beach house for a birthday celebration. A sort of "Stonewall of the Dead" meets
Peter's Friends
campfest, hailed by film critic Star C Foster as "good fun, a broadly painted, tongue in cheek revisiting of old-school monster movies."
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 95 min.
Darshan: The Embrace
A documentary exploring the life and spirit of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. You can call her "Amma." Have you been hugged today? If not, check out the life of the world's best hugger. Directed by Jan Kounen, with "startlingly beautiful cinematography" by Sebastien Pentecouteau.
The Screen, NR, 93 min.
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Gordon Matta-Clark: Films
The film explores the life and works of artist Matta-Clark, following him from New York to Antwerp during the period of 1971-1977 (see
).
College of Santa Fe, NR, various run times
Kids First! Film Club: Angelina Ballerina: All Dancers on Deck
Angelina and her fellow dancing friends are on an ocean voyage to the land of Dachovia for a big performance. Along the way they meet Yuri, a sailor pining for the the love of the ship captain's daughter. A sea of icebergs and intrigue lay between Angelina and her stage debut in this animated adventure with vocals by the likes of Dame Judy Dench. Free for kids accompanied by an adult.
Santa Fe Film Center, PG, 46 min.
Phantom of the Opera
The 1943 remake by Arthur Lubin of the world renowned story of a masterful maniac who haunts the Paris Opera. Claude Rains plays the shadowy figure who will stop at nothing to see his protege Christine (Susanna Foster) become the star of the opera. The elaborate replication of the Palais Garnier is a must see.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 92 min.
Shoujyo: An Adolescent
A love story of sorts: Tomokawa (Eiji Okuda) is a 43-year-old policeman who initiates a relationship with Yoko (Mayu Ozawa), who happens to be 15. Uffe Stegmann writes in Asian Cinema, "In Japan it was not a big success. Maybe the subject was too controversial, even for Japan."
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 132 min.
Spirit Riders
An award winning documentary exploring the role of the Lakota Indians in the World Peace movement. The film chronicles the practice of ceremonial horseback rides as a means of healing and inspiration. Narrated by Peter Coyote, including interviews with Viggo Mortenson (
Lord of the Rings
,
Hidalgo
) and music by Bill Miller, Robert Mirabal, Keith Secola, Rick Allen and Lauren Monroe.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 90 min.
Stairways to Heaven: The Practical Magic of Sacred Spaces
A documentary exploring the space between the worlds: as in, ours and the next. Using ancient monuments (like Stonehenge, presumably actual size, not 18 inches tall or made of refrigerators), great Gothic cathedrals (with secret Templar messages hidden in them) and the fairly recent advent of crop circles, the "spiritual technology" of the ancients is revealed. We humbly predict this film will play in Santa Fe well into the next ice age.
Santa Fe Film Center, NR, 54 min.
Stolen
When 13 paintings were stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, the walls remained bare. Gardner's will stated that nothing be changed after her death and the blank spaces and frames that once housed Rembrandt, Degas and Manet are almost as powerful as the missing paintings. Blythe Danner and Campbell Scott help tell the story of the hunt for these missing treasures.
The Screen, NR, 85 min.
Accepted
It's every high school senior's dream: Screw higher education and make up a college where students can study what they like, someone's crackpot uncle poses as the dean, and your main facility is an abandoned psychiatric hospital. When Bartelby B Gaines (Justin Long-the guy from the new Apple commercials) is rejected from all of the schools to which he applies, he creates the fictitious South Harmon Institute of Technology in order to placate his parents. Soon, college-app-rejects from all over are showing up at South Harmon, ready to take classes. Or maybe just major in hanging by the pool and perfecting the art of the wet T-shirt contest. With Blake Lively as Monica, the girl of Bartelby's dreams, and Lewis Black as the uncle who masquerades as administration.
Dreamcatcher, UA North, PG-13, 90 min.
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An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore in all of his earnest glory, post-Presidential hopes, touring the country and exhorting anyone who will listen to take global warming seriously. Gore's screen persona turns out to be "disarming, funny and animated," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and that goes a long way toward sustaining the hour-and-a-half litany of urgency and unfolding environmental catastrophe.
UA DeVargas, UA North, PG, 95 min.
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Army of Shadows
Universally acclaimed and long awaited, this classic French noir, never before released in the US, finally makes an unmissable appearance. Jean-Pierre Melville's tale of French freedom fighters during World War II and their efforts to undermine Nazi rule during the German occupation, originally released in 1969, combines razor-sharp performances from Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret with a suspenseful script and legendary imagery. Remarkable for its relentless unsentimentality and its refusal to romanticize the resistance, especially considering (or perhaps because of) Melville's personal experiences in the movement (see
).
The Screen, NR, 145 min.
Barnyard: The Original Party Animals
In this animated story of epic times at the farm, Otis (voiced by Kevin James) is a carefree jokester of a bovine (who enjoys activities like cow-tipping) until his father, the patriarch of the farm (Sam Elliott) is attacked by coyotes and Otis is forced to become a more responsible member of the barnyard community. Courtney Cox's vocal talents make an appearance as Daisy, Otis' lady love, and Danny Glover is Miles, the sidekick mule.
Dreamcatcher, UA South, PG, 83 min.
Beerfest
Beer is hilarious. Dumb guys are hilarious. Germans can, of course, be very funny too. Dumb guys who drink lots of beer competing with evil Germans in an underground beer drinking contest that has sinister echoes of
Fight Club
are maybe not so funny. But who knows? Jay Chandrasekhar (
The Dukes of Hazzard
,
Super Troopers
) directs. Featuring Paul Soter, writer of
Club Dread
, with cameos from Cloris Leachman and Jürgen Prochnow.
Dreamcatcher, UA North, R, 110 min.
Crank
Imagine you're one of those hitmen who wants to get out of the glamorous lifestyle of killing people for money, but you
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only have an hour to live, because you've been poisoned and the
only way you can keep yourself alive is to keep adrenaline levels high in your blood, because adrenaline is the only antidote to the poison you've been given. It's like
Speed
meets
Grosse Point Blank
meets...what exactly? Our guess is someone out there in Tinseltown is really talented at pitching scripts. With Jason Statham and Amy Smart.
Dreamcatcher, UA South, R, 83 min.
The Devil Wears Prada
Anna Hathaway reprises her
Princess Diaries
ugly duckling persona in this film, based on the book of the same name, which chronicles the experiences of an assistant to the former editor of Vogue. Meryl Streep co-stars as the devil herself, Miranda Priestly, the editor of the fictional magazine Runway.
Prada
is a glamorous look inside the New York fashion scene, which most of us are too dowdy to even dream about entering-a glimpse that is resplendent with sexy clothes and peppy music montages. With Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt.
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 106 min.
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Drawing Restraint 9
Björk and Matthew Barney join forces and, guess what? The results are bizarre and inscrutable, yet oddly appealing and visually stunning. Barney and Björk play two "ordinary" folks who accidentally wind up on a Japanese whaling ship. There's something about wedding clothes, a giant lozenge-shaped symbolic sculpture made out of petroleum sludge and the Japanese ship captain regaling the audience with the detailed history of the ship
CCA, NR, 135 min.
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I Like Killing Flies
Kenny Shopsin, a chef immortalized in a New Yorker profile by Calvin Trillin, works in a kitchen the size of a walk-in closet, yet manages to keep 900 items on his menu. Was he the inspiration for
Seinfeld
's Soup Nazi? Possibly, as he has the tendency to ban people from eating his creations for transgressing his strict codes. The Hollywood Reporter raves: "A rare, hilarious and ultimately touching look at the kind of American iconoclast that barely exists anymore."
CCA, R, 80 min.
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The Illusionist
Based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Millhauser. A magician, Eisenheim (Edward Norton), uses his unusual talents to woo his ill-fated childhood sweetheart, Duchess Sophie von Teschen (Jessica Biel), and derail the class system in Victorian Vienna. Upon returning from exploring the world, Eisenheim finds that Sophie, with whom he's still in love, is engaged to the crown prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). Eisenheim strikes up an unlikely friendship with Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) in his quest to win back his lady love (see
).
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 109 min.
Invincible
Mark Wahlberg plays real-life Vince Papale, an ordinary working stiff who gets a chance to be a member of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. He's 30 years old! But even more unspeakably shocking, the absolutely unimaginable truth of it: He never played college ball. We can hear the gasps spreading around Santa Fe like so many air brakes. Rest assured, Papale ended up overcoming the (almost) insurmountable handicap of never playing college ball. He played three seasons (from '76 through '78) with the Iggles as a wide receiver and has fairly respectable stats, considering that, at 30 years old, he was the oldest rookie in the history of the NFL who
never played college ball
. With Greg Kinnear and Elizabeth Banks.
Dreamcatcher, UA South, PG, 128 min.
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Little Miss Sunshine
A mixed bag cynical road trip that halfway morphs into a family situation comedy lovefest. While precisely stylized use of the camera evokes a boldness reminiscent of
The Graduate
or early Woody Allen, endearing moments are the glue holding this frequently cynical movie together. When the family finally arrives at its destination, the depiction of child pageant queens, at once disturbing and hilarious, is the cherry on top of this wild ride. The result is a climactic scene that is pretty near perfect: both laugh-out-loud surprising and endearingly inevitable. With Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin and Greg Kinnear.
UA DeVargas, R, 110 min.
Material Girls
The execrable and unaccountably popular Hilary and Haylie Duff star in this film with a
Simple Life
ripoff plot. When two rich girls (heiresses with little dogs, celebrity birthday parties on the agenda and a cosmetic company inheritance) suddenly lose it all, they must learn to live like the other half and perhaps actually do a bit of work. Of course, valuable life lessons are learned, and the girls discover that there's more to life than being really fantastically, unbelievably wealthy. This is precisely the kind of heartwarming, uplifting, inspiring yet quirky message the fantastically wealthy need to hear.
UA South, PG, 97 min.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Johnny Depp fully inhabits his seagoing spin on Keith Richards, wrapping his lips around florid syllables or turning drunken stumbles into something approaching graceful pirouettes. Screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio try to give the character some tension between his cowardly nature and a sense of loyalty, but they know well enough not to mess too much with what worked the first time. Once
Dead Man's Chest
gets started, it rolls along with all the energy a summer movie should aspire to.
UA North, PG-13, 145 min.
The Quiet
It might spell trouble when the single paragraph plot snapshot for a film provided by the film's own creators makes about as much sense and has about as much resonance as TV Book's soap opera summaries. A deaf girl moves in with her godparents after her widowed father dies and endures the torments of her hostile stepsister. Variety calls this film "a Lifetime movie on crack" and, indeed, one of the better reviews found, from Film Threat, allows "it's best for cheap laughs for jaded moviegoers with nothing better to do with their time."
UA DeVargas, R, 92 min.
Scoop
Watching this once-great filmmaker flounder behind the camera over the last decade is like those images of Willie Mays stumbling through the outfield at the end of his career, too stubborn to ride gracefully into the sunset with his Hall of Fame credentials. Scoop finds Allen attempting to return to frothy comedy with a suspense twist. His comedic touch has ossified to the point where nothing funny can grow organically out of the situations he creates.
UA DeVargas, PG-13, 96 min.
Snakes on a Plane
Like
Tremors
and
Eight Legged Freaks
before it,
Snakes on a Plane
exploits our tendency to squirm at the mere mention of creepy-crawlies. In an age of ultra-high-security air travel, it's not quite clear how a crate of fatally dangerous snakes makes it onto a jet crossing the Pacific, but it is this unusual means of assassination that mobster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) intends to use to get rid of a key witness in a case against him. Samuel L Jackson is Neville Flynn, an FBI agent extraditing the witness. Of course, Flynn is also our foul-mouthed hero, as the passengers band together against their venomous would-be killers. Jackson reportedly took the role without reading the script, because he thought the title was hilarious. The film has gotten so much advance buzz that its title is actually an acronym on blogs and in e-mails: "SoaP," a wildfire meme basically meaning "dude, that's so lame and ridiculous that it's cool."
UA North, R, 106 min.
Step Up
Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum) is an archetypal boy from the wrong side of the tracks who lands himself a community service gig at the prestigious Maryland School for the Arts. Before long, he's busting out his mad break-dancing skills in the parking lot, and is spotted by Nora (Jenna Dewan), who recruits him to be her dance partner. This may be Tyler's chance to be upwardly mobile, if he can survive the world of competitive dance. With Rachel Griffiths as an administrator at the school, and choreographed by the acclaimed Anne Fletcher.
Dreamcatcher, UA South, PG-13, 98 min.
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Talladega Nights
Even highbrow art-film snobby friends of ours are (sometimes reluctantly, as if to avoid scratching their smartypants persona) praising this Will Ferrell comedy. We wonder what diehard, poor white-trash NASCAR fans think.
UA North, PG-13, 110 min.
Who Killed the Electric Car?
If we could all pick a washed-up actor to deliver our eulogies, most of us probably wouldn't put Ed Begley, Jr., at the top of the list. Such, however, is the fate of the electric car, at whose mock interment the former
St. Elsewhere
healer is joined by the likes of
thirtysomething
alumnus Peter Horton and
Baywatch
babe emerita Alexandra Paul. There's something almost necrophiliac about this film's obsession with its subject, which failed in part because few people really wanted a vehicle that pooped out after 60 or 70 miles.
CCA, G, 92 min.
The Wicker Man
Nick Cage (who also produced this remake of the 1973 British effort) plays a hardboiled hero lawman who travels to a freaky island in search of a missing girl only to find strange sexual rituals, a "possible" human sacrifice (in the words of press materials) and, the real shocker, a "harvest festival." These are some hardcore neo-pagans, folks.
Dreamcatcher, UA North, PG-13, 93 min.
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World Trade Center
Oliver Stone's latest is a different sort of action film: Rather than chronicling political intrigue (
Nixon
,
JFK
) or colossal conquerors of the past (
Alexander
), Stone takes on the events of 9.11 in New York City. A New Yorker himself, Stone offers us the story of two Port Authority cops, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena, respectively), who become trapped under the World Trade Center rubble when they go to evacuate the buildings. With Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello as the significant others of Will and John.
Dreamcatcher, UA DeVargas, UA South, PG-13, 125 min.
