PARADISE NOW Movies don't get more timely than Paradise Now, which qualifies as the year's best near-miss. Writer-director Hany Abu-Assad's film focuses on the eternal conflict between Palestine and Israel, but really, it might as well be about the tensions that exist between Iraq and the United States. Best friends Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) work as car mechanics in the West Bank city of Nablus, at least until the day they are summoned by the Palestinian underground to carry out a mission in Tel Aviv. They have been chosen to serve as suicide bombers, and with explosives strapped to their chests, they embark on their assignment, only to encounter a snafu that separates them and forces each man to scurry back to Nablus on his own. As the organization heads seek to bring both men back into the fold -- with questions forming in their minds as to the reliability and trustworthiness of this pair -- Said and Khaled begin to develop doubts about the whole approach, with their European-educated friend Suha (Lubna Azabal) adding to their confusion by sharing her own pacifist viewpoints. If ever a film needed more instances of characters philosophizing, it's this one; as it stands, there are too few scenes that allow us access into the minds of its characters, with the whole middle section devoted to a standard thriller set-up that would feel right at home in any big-budget Hollywood production. Yet when the movie takes the time to expose the fears and desires beneath the firebrand rhetoric, it's a fascinating affair: Abu-Assad doesn't condone his characters' actions, but he also reveals that every conflict has two sides -- and both sides are made up of distinct faces and identities. **1/2
PRIDE & PREJUDICE Good Lord, did we really need a new film version of Pride & Prejudice? After the 90s spate of Jane Austen adaptations -- not to mention the recent P&P updates Bridget Jones' Diary and Bride & Prejudice -- moviegoers understandably might proceed with caution. Yet all reservations dissipate as soon as the lights go down and this satisfactory version gets underway. Director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach have done an exemplary job of making us care all over again about the plight of the Bennet sisters, five young girls whose busybody mom (Brenda Blethyn) sets about finding them suitable husbands against the backdrop of 19th century England. The oldest daughter Jane (Rosamund Pike) immediately lands a suitor, but the independent Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) finds herself embroiled in a grudge match with the brooding Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen). As usual, Blethyn does enough acting for everybody, though she does leave enough air on the set so that her co-stars have a chance to make their mark. Romanticists who fell hard for Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC miniseries may or may not warm to MacFadyen (who's fine in the role), but there's no quibbling over Knightley's intuitive, note-perfect work as Elizabeth. It would have been nice, though, to have someone less predictable than Judi Dench cast in the role of the haughty Lady Catherine de Bourg -- so as to conserve her energy, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that she lifted some of her caustic dialogue from Shakespeare In Love and The Importance of Being Earnest. It'd be a shame if cinematographer Roman Osin didn't earn an Oscar nomination for his endlessly inventive camerawork, the sort not usually found in period pieces of this nature. ***
ZATHURA Children's author Chris Van Allsburg scored big with his picture book Jumanji, so it's no surprise that he dipped into the same well for Zathura, which can easily be summed up as "Jumanji in space." Yet moviegoers who caught the screen version of Jumanji at some point over the past decade might still be interested in checking out the cinematic take on Zathura, which differs in that it focuses on a strained sibling rivalry, showcases better visual effects, and replaces Jumanji's Robin Williams with a manic, defective robot (on second thought, that last point might not qualify as a difference). Jonah Bobo, adorable in that whiny-wounded manner that adults love as long as it's not their own kid acting that way (you can almost see director Jon Favreau coaxing more pouts out of his young charge), plays 6-year-old Danny, whose attempts to get along with his 10-year-old brother Walter (Josh Hutcherson) fall flat until he stumbles across an old board game hidden in their basement. It's called Zathura, and by playing it, the lads discover that they've been thrust into outer space, where they must fight off meteor showers, alien invaders and the aforementioned robot in order to make it back to Earth. Imaginative without being particularly exciting, Zathura will appeal immensely to young viewers while causing adults to be the ones to occasionally fidget in their seats. Grown-ups, however, will be the ones who benefit from the script's funniest quip, a throwaway line involving the indie flick Thirteen. **1/2
CHICKEN LITTLE With its hand-drawn animation division boarded up and its partnership with Pixar in flames, Walt Disney Pictures has taken the next step by creating its own fully computer-animated movie. Yet if Chicken Little represents the future of Disney animation, then the sky is indeed falling: This is as far removed from such old-school classics as Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast as roast duck is from chicken gizzards. The story is serviceable, centering on a diminutive bird (voiced by Zach Braff) whose warnings about an alien invasion are ignored by the other anthropomorphic animals. And to be fair, the film has its moments, most of them courtesy of a character known as Fish Out of Water (basically an animated Harpo Marx). But the central thrust -- a standard "underdog wins the day" slog that on a dime turns into War of the Worlds -- is the same sort of hollow experience that has all but drained the traditional toon tale of its potency over the past decade-plus. *1/2
DOOM Stating that Doom is probably the best of the numerous flicks based on a video game ranks as the feeblest praise imaginable. It's akin to noting that benign genital herpes is the best sexually transmitted disease to acquire, or that strawberry is the best tasting Schnapps flavor. Still, in a sub-sub-genre that has subjected us to the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Resident Evil, we'll take our favors where we can get them. Doom rips off Aliens at every turn (at least its makers steal from the best), as a group of military grunts find themselves combating vicious creatures at a manned outpost in outer space. For a good while, director Andrzej Bartkowiak actually attempts to make a real movie rather than just a video game simulation, but eventually the movie runs out of creative steam and turns increasingly daffy. **
JARHEAD In adapting Anthony Swofford's book about Marines bored by their experience during the Gulf War, director Sam Mendes and scripter William Broyles Jr. have made a movie that isn't exactly a war movie or an anti-war movie; if anything, it's the pioneer in the new genre of the semi-war movie. Jarhead is about warriors without a war, men who have been primed to kill and are then denied that opportunity. Mendes and his actors (led by Jake Gyllenhaal) do an admirable job of punching across this frustration, and our sympathies are with these characters even if we don't exactly endorse the reasons for their mental morass. Jarhead does its best to remain apolitical, yet the very nature of the piece insures that correlations can be made to the current debacle in the Middle East. Mendes may have been reluctant to offend the war hawks, but history can't afford a similar luxury: It's too busy repeating itself to balk. ***
THE LEGEND OF ZORRO Set approximately nine years after The Mask of Zorro, this sequel finds Don Alejandro de la Vega (Antonio Banderas) having trouble shedding his day job as Zorro in order to spend more time with his lovely wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and rambunctious young son Joaquin (Adrian Alonso). External pressures force the couple to split, with Alejandro drowning himself in booze and Elena taking up with a Frenchman (Rufus Sewell) who's clearly up to no good. The presence of Anthony Hopkins (who played the original, aging Zorro in the first film) is sorely missed, but Banderas and Zeta-Jones remain a sexy and spirited screen couple. Their fiery passion, combined with some solid action scenes, results in an undemanding good time. ***
LOGGERHEADS Jumping between various North Carolina locations, this drama from Monroe native Tim Kirkman follows a trio of interconnected stories. At Kure Beach, an HIV-positive drifter (Kip Pardue) camps out on the beach so he can study the area's loggerhead turtles. In Eden, a minister's wife (Tess Harper) misses the son she and her husband (Chris Sarandon) shunned once they had learned he was gay. And in Asheville, a perpetually distraught woman (Bonnie Hunt) decides to search for the child she long ago gave up for adoption. The deliberate pace is sure to make some viewers squirm, but I was struck by how quickly Kirkman was able to make me care about these aching individuals. All of the performances are noteworthy, though I was especially drawn to Hunt's change-of-pace turn as a woman who seems incapable of forming a smile on her face. ***
PRIME Meryl Streep admirably underplays the role of the kvetchy Jewish mom, a therapist who's distraught when she learns that her 23-year-old son (Bryan Greenberg) is dating one of her patients, a 37-year-old divorcee (Uma Thurman). The stakes might seem greater if Greenberg's character were stepping out with a woman played by, say, 70-year-old Judi Dench, but after a shaky start that promises a rehash of Monster-In-Law (please, God, no), the movie eventually finds its rhythm not so much in the expected spats between the lovers but in the genuine bond between the conflicted therapist and the damaged flower placed in her care. Streep and Thurman invest their characters with a great deal of passion, though Greenberg is only so-so as the object of everyone's attention. **1/2
SHOPGIRL Claire Danes, stripped of anything resembling a personality, plays a Saks glove counter flunkie who's so man-hungry that she drapes herself all over an obnoxious slacker (Jason Schwartzman) whose idea of safe sex is to wrap a Ziploc baggie around his pecker before intercourse. When it appears that this relationship won't go anywhere, she next succumbs to the advances of a wealthy older gentleman (Steve Martin) who can buy her lots of pretty things but can't commit emotionally. Shopgirl is based on Martin's novella of the same name, and although he wrote it a couple of years before Lost In Translation came around, it's obvious that director Anand Tucker wants to capture the same air of melancholy and romantic yearning that distinguished Sofia Coppola's exemplary film. Alas, the only thing lost in translation here is the point of this aimless, airless dud. *1/2
THE WEATHER MAN Nicolas Cage, who throughout the past decade has been more grating than ingratiating, here delivers one of his better performances in a movie that mines much of the same emotional terrain as About Schmidt. This serio-comic piece finds Cage cast as David Spritz, a Chicago TV weatherman whose potential career ascension only accentuates the messiness of his personal life. Writer Steven Conrad and director Gore Verbinski offer an affecting tale about a man who has trouble seeing the big picture because all of life's little asides keep obstructing his view. The film's sensibilities are just off-center enough to make it interesting, yet there's always a tug of universal recognition in David's travails. ***
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE: Daniel Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes.
PARADISE NOW: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman.
WALK THE LINE: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon.
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