Short Subjectives June 06 2007

Opening Friday

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HOSTEL PART II (R) Picking up where Hostel left off, Eli Roth's film follows three girls studying in Italy who make an unfortunate stop in a Slovakian hostel. Starring Heather Matarazzo, Jay Hernandez and Roger Bart.

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OCEAN'S THIRTEEN (PG-13) Director Steven Soderbergh's third installment of the Las Vegas heist films finds Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and the rest of his hunky henchmen out for revenge from ruthless casino owner Willie Bank (Al Pacino).

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ONCE (R) The Guy (Glen Hansard) works part-time helping his father run a small vacuum-cleaner repair business in Dublin, Ireland, but dreams of one day landing a record deal. His life changes when he meets the Girl (Marketa Irglova), an Eastern European woman who has moved to Ireland to start a new life for herself. Directed by John Carney.

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RED ROAD 5 stars (NR) See review.

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SEVERANCE (R) Directed by Christopher Smith, the film centers on an international arms dealer who rewards his employees with a mountain retreat in Eastern Europe. The group's luck quickly changes when they are attacked by a renegade band of soldiers. See review.

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SURF'S UP (PG) Another CGI film about adorable penguins, except this time a "documentary" crew takes audiences behind the scenes at the Penguin Surfing World Championship, following the world's greatest penguin surfers. The tuxedoed surfer dudes voice cast includes Shia LeBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel and Jon Heder.

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Duly Noted

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BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) (NR) This revisionist Western comedy, which served as the prototype of the buddy film for future films, stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, respectively. Screen on the Green. June 14 at dusk. Piedmont Park meadow near 10th Street and Monroe Drive. Free. 404-878-2600.

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CAR WASH (1976) (NR) A day in the lives of a close-knit group of employees at a downtown Los Angeles car wash. Starring Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Irwin Corey. Screen on the Green. June 7 at dusk. Piedmont Park meadow near 10th Street and Monroe Drive. Free. 404-878-2600.

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FACTORY GIRL (R) Starring Sienna Miller as '60s pixie Edie Sedgwick, this film follows Edie's journey from boring trust-fund baby to Andy Warhol-approved superstar. June 1-14. Cinefest, Georgia State University, University Center, Suite 240, Courtland St. $3-$5. 404-651-3565. www.gsu.edu/cinefest.

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THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) (R) The cult classic of cult classics, the musical horror spoof follows an all-American couple (Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) to the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a drag queen/mad scientist from another galaxy. It's all fun and games until Meat Loaf gets killed. Dress as your favorite character and participate in this musical on acid. Midnight Fri. at Lefont Plaza Theatre and Sat. at Peachtree Cinema & Games, Norcross.

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Continuing

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28 WEEKS LATER 3 stars (R) Following the outbreak of the "rage" virus in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later that turned most of the population of mainland Britain into crazed berserkers, this sequel takes up after the crisis has passed — or so it seems. Under U.S. military control, English civilians such as a haunted father (Robert Carlyle) and his two children (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton) move back to a London safe zone until all hell breaks loose again. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo may surpass Boyle's ability to craft jittery, unnerving thrill scenes, but the script's harsh anti-U.S. sensibility relies on plot points too nonsensical to be easily ignored in the film's last half-hour. — Holman

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AFTER THE WEDDING 3 stars (R) One of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language film, this Danish drama depicts a schoolteacher in India (Casino Royale's bad guy Mads Mikkelsen) who returns to his native Denmark to woo a potential philanthropist and discovers family ties he didn't know he had at a wedding. Thanks to the cast's realistic responses to some melodramatic plot points and Susanne Bier's energetic storytelling, After the Wedding combines fish-out-of-water humor and heated family conflicts without feeling like a Danish soap opera. — Holman

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AWAY FROM HER 5 stars (PG-13) An exceptionally accomplished and thoughtful directorial debut feature from the actress Sarah Polley. An absolutely luminous Julie Christie delivers one of the best performances of her career as a Canadian woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease, who along with her husband (Gordon Pinsent) makes the difficult decision to enter a nursing home. What happens after she does is unpredictable, emotionally harrowing and an incredibly moving statement about marriage, old age, death and dying. Not to be missed. — Felicia Feaster

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BLACK BOOK 4 stars (R) In the Netherlands in 1944, a Jewish fugitive (Carice van Houten) turns femme fatale as an anti-Nazi resistance fighter, only to discover that things aren't as black-and-white as it seems. Dutch director Paul Verhoeven returns to his homeland after making such lurid, visceral Hollywood product as Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers, with results that can be both thrilling and ridiculously melodramatic. Instead of coming across as a caricature of femininity, Van Houten's star-making performance always feel credible and anchors the film despite its borderline-ludicrous plot twists. — Holman

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BUG 3 stars (R) William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) adapts a gritty Off-Broadway script by Tracy Letts in this ambitious, if uneven, film about two dead-end types (Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon) holed up in an Oklahoma motel who believe they are infested by bugs implanted by the government. — Feaster

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DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT 3 stars (NR) A precise, moment-by-moment record of how a 19-year-old girl (Luisa Williams) prepares to detonate a bomb in the middle of Times Square, this conceptual meditation on the mystery of premeditated violence offers no answers and as a result comes across a beautifully made but cold exercise in documentation. — Feaster

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DELTA FARCE (PG-13) Starring Blue Collar Comics Larry the Cable Guy and Bill Engvall, the film follows three inept Iraq-bound soldiers who are accidently dropped in Mexico. Hilarity ensues. Directed by C.B. Harding.

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DISTURBIA 3 stars (PG-13) A likable but troubled teen (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest turns self-appointed neighborhood watch and suspects the guy next door (David Morse) of being a murderer. Director D.J. Caruso proves interested in the voyeuristic POV shots of the premise, at least as a technical exercise, and LaBeouf and Morse lend snap to their roles. Despite being a transparent Hitchcock imitation, Disturbia persuasively argues that the time may be ripe to revisit Rear Window's themes, thanks to advances in picture phones, digital cameras and other gadgets of the YouTube generation. — Holman

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EVEN MONEY (R) Director Mark Rydell's crime drama stars Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito, about a group of nine unconnected individuals whose gambling addictions unites them in unexpected ways.

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THE EX (PG-13) From director Jesse Peretz, this comedy stars Zach Braff and Amanda Peet as newlyweds Tom and Sophia. When Sophia decides the family should return to Ohio so she can be a stay-at-home mom and Tom can work for her father, life as a new family unit gets a bit more complicated when an old flame of Sophia's (Jason Bateman) threatens to break up their love nest.

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GEORGIA RULE (R) Never straying too far from tabloid caricature, Lindsay Lohan stars in this emotionally diarrhetic melodrama as Rachel, a sexually promiscuous hell-raising California girl parked with her earthy, sensible grandmother (Jane Fonda, a real woman in a cast of cheap imitations) in Idaho for the summer. Gary Marshall attempts to wrassle some big social issues such as alcoholism (Rachel's mom played by Felicity Huffman is a lush) and incest to the ground. But Marshall's dingbat, superficial sensibility triumphs in the end, making even molestation seem as inconsequential as prostitution was in Pretty Woman. -- Feaster

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GRACIE (PG-13) Directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). Gracie is a teenage girl who struggles to overcome the death of her older brother by trying out for the boy's varsity soccer team at her high school.

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HOME OF THE BRAVE (R) Directed by Irwin Winkler, this war drama stars Samuel L. Jackson and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as returning Iraq war veterans adjusting to life back at home.

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HOT FUZZ 3 stars (R) A London supercop (co-writer Simon Pegg) finds himself transferred to a seemingly crime-free English village, which turns out to be far more dangerous than it seems. Pegg and director/co-writer Edgar Wright satirize action-movie clichés with the same blend of affection and adrenaline that they brought to their zombie romantic comedy Shaun of the Dead. Pegg and Wright pen an air-tight screenplay, charged with the vocabulary of Hollywood shoot-em-ups (tight close-ups and booming sound effects can accompany the most mundane actions). Partnered again with Nick Frost as a bumbling police officer, Pegg and Wright display a sense of humor that should be registered as a lethal weapon. — Holman

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IMAX THEATER Hurricane on the Bayou (NR) Shot before and after the unprecedented devastation of Hurricane Katrina by director Greg MacGillivray, this documentary brings into focus the startling loss of Louisiana's rapidly disappearing coastal wetlands that are New Orleans' first line of defense against deadly storms. Starring Meryl Streep, Allen Toussaint II and Tab Benoit. Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France(NR) explores the minds of cyclists training for the Tour de France and studies the effects of the race on their brains. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

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JINDABYNE 3 stars (R) Australian director Ray Lawrence expands Raymond Carver's short story about how four fishing buddies' discovery of a dead body fails to interrupt their vacation. A rich, complex and grim work, Jindabyne may be too sprawling and enigmatic for its own good, but it features powerful, implosive performances from Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney as spouses sharing a failing marriage. — Holman

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KNOCKED UP 4 stars (R) On the foundation of just two films, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and now, Knocked Up writer/director Judd Apatow is rewriting the adolescent sex comedy a la Porky's and American Pie with smarter, more incisive — and hilarious — results. The story of an overachieving beauty (Katherine Heigl) whose one-night stand with overgrown slacker Seth Rogen leaves her with child, the gimmick is a little creaky, but the humor and generational read on savvy women and Peter Pan men is spot-on. — Feaster

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MR. BROOKS 3 stars (R) Kevin Costner and William Hurt prove eerily entertaining as a Portland pillar of the community and the imaginary friend who encourages his "addiction" to murder. The thriller features numerous surprising twists, but suffers enormously when the plot shifts to Demi Moore's drab turn as a millionaire police detective stalked by a standard-issue crazed killer. — Holman

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THE NAMESAKE 2 stars (PG-13) Mira Nair's (Monsoon Wedding) latest foray into cross-cultural ennui is a bit of a disappointment. When her adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri's novel is focused on recent newlyweds Ashima (Tabu) and Ashoke (Irfan Khan) as they make the difficult immigrant's journey from bright, warm Calcutta to grim Queens in the '70s the film succeeds beautifully. But when Nair's attention turns to their dour teenage hatchling Gogol (Kal Penn) in this epic family drama of cultural collision between the old world and the new, the film loses some energy. Gogol's bratty angst just doesn't carry the emotional gravitas of his parents' loneliness and yearning and every time the attention is on the younger generation's problems the film suffers. — Feaster

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OFFSIDE 3 stars (NR) Director Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, The Circle) whose films seem to play everywhere but his native Iran addresses the sad gender divisions in his country by focusing on the soccer-crazed girls who dress as boys to sneak inside male-only sports stadiums. But what begins as an examination of this gender prejudice enlarges into a portrait of the ties that bind Iranians, and a portrait of the warm and convivial relationship between its citizens. — Feaster

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PARIS JE T'AIME (R) Twenty filmmakers, including Alfonso Cuarón, the Coen brothers and Gérard Depardieu, each bring their own personal touches to the film, which features 20 interconnected narratives set in the city of Paris.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END 3 stars (PG-13) Jettisoning clarity of plot and character like so much ballast, the overstuffed final film in Gore Verbinski's swashbuckling trilogy lives up to its origins as a diverting theme-park ride, particularly in a pitched battle between two ships in a whirlpool and the surreal sequence of Capt. Jack Sparrow's (Johnny Depp) rescue from Davy Jones' Locker. — Holman

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SHREK THE THIRD 2 stars (PG) Slovenly ogre Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) shirks his royal duties by trying to enlist the only other heir, meek teen Arthur (de facto king of pop Justin Timberlake). Smug and self-congratulatory, Shrek the Third lacks the freshness and energy of its predecessors and takes perfunctory potshots at such cutting-edge topics as high school, dinner theater, hippies and vain, snobby princesses (although such voice actresses as Amy Sedaris offer amusingly ditzy turns). — Holman

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SNOW CAKE 2 stars (NR) Though best-known for villainous roles in Die Hard and Harry Potter, Alan Rickman's soft-spoken, sensitive turn steals the show in this tale of a gentle ex-con mismatched with a autistic woman (Sigourney Weaver). Weaver's watchable performance doesn't reconcile the quirks in the character, and too often the film plays like an indie version of Hollywood Oscar-bait such as I Am Sam. — Holman

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SPIDER-MAN 3 4 stars (PG-13) In the third and most entertaining of director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, the darker impulses of normally sunny superhero Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) take over thanks in part to an alien parasite that provides him with a black costume and a bad attitude. Awkwardly paced and top-heavy with new characters, Spider-Man 3 nevertheless keeps the conflicts rooted in character while improving on the spectacular special effects of the earlier films. If it's a little tiresome to see girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) constantly in peril, the creativity and excitement of freaky, poignant villains such as the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) take up the slack in Raimi's web. — Holman

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THE VALET 3 stars (PG-13) In this French farce, a parking valet pretends to be the boyfriend of a supermodel when her real lover's wife gets suspicious.

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WAITRESS (PG-13) From director Adrienne Shelly comes this romantic comedy about a small-town waitress who is pregnant with her abusive husband's baby and finds love with the new doctor in town.

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YEAR OF THE DOG 4 stars (PG-13) Screenwriter Mike White's (Chuck & Buck, School of Rock) directorial debut is a gingerly misanthropic anti-chick-flick about a woman, Peggy (Molly Shannon) crazy for dogs who goes through a radical life change when her beloved beagle, Pencil, dies. Defying every expectation about where such stories are "supposed" to go, this deadpan comedy and wonderfully openhearted film is a small triumph of go-its-own-way indie cinema. Shannon is a revelation playing an utterly idiosyncratic and lovable woman who sees life very differently from the people around her. -- Feaster