New Releases
AFTER THE WEDDING / THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY Just because the summer blockbuster season is upon us doesn't mean that moviegoers uninterested in pungent pirates or a shrieking Shrek should stay home and warm up the DVD player. The local art-houses will continue to provide healthy alternatives, as witnessed by this twofer that's opening locally against a certain friendly neighborhood you-know-what. A recent nominee for the Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award, Denmark's After the Wedding stars Mads Mikkelsen (the bleeding-eye villain in Casino Royale) as a humanitarian trying to save his orphanage in India from going under. He travels to Copenhagen to meet a millionaire (Rolf Lassgard) interested in financing the project, only to learn that the businessman has a more personal motive for bringing him to Denmark. Initially threatening to turn into the most shameless of melodramas, After the Wedding instead builds upon its rickety foundation with such dexterity and grace that it eventually emerges as a deeply moving experience. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, meanwhile, is the latest from British iconoclast Ken Loach, a hard-hitting political drama that snagged the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Focusing on Ireland's bid for independence in the early part of the 20th century, it stars Cillian Murphy as a medical student who puts his career as a doctor on hold in order to help his countrymen, including his brother (Padraic Delaney), fight against British rule. But as the conflict grows more complicated and the Irish factions begin to split and quarrel among themselves, the two siblings suddenly find themselves in opposition. More convincing than Hollywood's take on the conflict, 1996's Michael Collins, this down and dirty import is honest enough to acknowledge that war has the ability to turn everyone -- despite their convictions -- into thugs and murderers. Both movies: ***
NEXT One of the weakest adaptations yet of a Philip K. Dick story ("The Golden Man"), Next is most notable for how it shunts the vibrant, 46-year-old Julianne Moore off to the sides while it gives 43-year-old Nicolas Cage a noticeably younger love interest in 25-year-old Jessica Biel. (In similar fashion, the movie's poster makes it look like Biel's bodacious ta-tas are the leading characters.) Biel is basically filling the same function as she did in last year's The Illusionist, which is serving as girlfriend-pawn to a magician hoping to keep her out of harm's way. Cage's Cris Johnson actually uses his Vegas "magic man" act to cover up the fact that he can see two minutes into his own future and thereby shape his destiny to his liking. Cris considers his gift a curse, but FBI agent Callie Ferris (Moore) believes it can help her locate a Eurotrash terrorist outfit plotting to destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb. Into the mix walks Liz Cooper (Biel), a teacher who's been frequently appearing in Cris' visions and who might hold the key to ... well, something; the movie never bothers to elaborate. Next quickly loses altitude once it becomes apparent that Cris' powers will conveniently come and go as needed to keep the screenplay lurching forward. Yet even this slipshod quality is tolerable until we reach the final portion of the film, a monumental copout on the level of those overused "It was all a dream" stories that our fiction writing professors would urge us not to pen back in college. One plus: It's great to see Peter Falk (now 79) as Cage's confidante, even if his screen time seemingly runs shorter than the end credits crawl. *1/2
Current Releases
BLACK BOOK Director Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in over 20 years is slam-bang entertainment that's almost delirious in its attempt to emulate some of the ambitious World War II epics from the past. Verhoeven, whose notable career (The Fourth Man, RoboCop) was singlehandedly derailed by Showgirls, infuses Black Book with plenty of verve and passion, and he's aided by a top-notch cast led by the wonderful Carice Van Houten. In Rachel Stein, Van Houten has created a truly memorable character, a Jewish woman who endures her share of heartbreak and humiliation yet is above all else a survivalist. Even though her family is gunned down before her eyes, she manages to escape the carnage, determined to find the duplicitous rat whose actions caused their demise. She joins the Dutch underground, where she becomes attracted to Hans Akkersmans (Thom Hoffman), a macho marksman (he bears some resemblance to Russell Crowe) who seems to have more lives than your average cat's grand total of nine. In true Mata Hari fashion, Rachel is asked to get chummy with a high-ranking Nazi official (Sebastian Koch, the conflicted playwright in The Lives of Others), a problem once she begins to fall in love with him. With its series of blazing gun battles, numerous espionage capers (will Rachel get caught while bugging Nazi HQ?), and characters repeatedly double-crossing each other, Black Book rarely gives the viewer time to breathe -- it's like The Guns of Navarone for the art-house set. ***1/2
BLADES OF GLORY Unless he keeps his eye out for innovative fare like Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell might find himself driving his career into a rut. Blades of Glory shows the strains of the comedian trying to keep himself contained in a box: His Chazz Michael Michaels, a coarse sex addict who's also an unlikely skating champion, mines the same comic territory as most Ferrell performances, ranging from Talladega Nights to Anchorman and beyond. Since Ferrell is only playing variations on a theme, it's costar Jon Heder (of Napoleon Dynamite fame) who provides most of the modest chuckles. As Jimmy MacElroy, a rival figure skater who's forced by circumstances to team with Chazz to become the first male-male figure skating team in history, Heder plays up his character's delicate traits to the point that they offer a pointed contrast to Ferrell's predictable boorishness. "You're like a 15-year-old girl," taunts Chazz, "only not hot." After a sluggish beginning, the laughs pick up during the midsection, and I appreciate that Queen's Flash Gordon theme plays a prominent role in the finale. Otherwise, this is one more assembly line comedy by the Ferrell-Stiller-Vaughn-Wilsons conglomerate (Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are AWOL, but Ben Stiller serves as a producer and Luke Wilson pops up in a tiny role). For a similar yet superior film, rent the Farrelly brothers' 1996 bowling flick Kingpin. Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid and especially Bill Murray offer moments of lunacy so inspired, they make Ferrell in Blades of Glory look like a visitor to the comedy genre. **
FRACTURE For the most part, Hollywood has grown so inept at staging whodunits that it's a blessing to come across a film like Fracture, which lets audiences know from the outset that he-done-it. The "he" in question is wealthy engineer Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), who has just shot his adulterous wife (Embeth Davidtz). With the identity of the villain in place, Fracture can then borrow a page from the Columbo playbook by following the protagonist as he tries to piece together the details of the crime. But the lawman here is a far cry from Peter Falk's lovably rumbled detective; rather, he's Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a hotshot attorney who's used to winning and who agrees to prosecute Ted because, hey, the man has already signed a confession, right? But in his arrogance, Willy has underestimated Ted, and it's a disastrous move that might end up costing him his career. Fracture has its fair share of plotholes -- enough that you might be tempted to grab a shovel and a bag of cement mix -- but it features an exquisite cat-and-mouse game that makes it easier to overlook its flaws. And for once, here's a film in which it's not instantly obvious to predict every twist resting just over the horizon. The film grows flabby in the midsection thanks to a superfluous subplot involving Willy's romance with his new boss (Rosamund Pike), but once it gets back to focusing on business rather than pleasure, it straightens itself out. Hopkins is solid in a role that veers toward Hannibal Lecter terrain, but it's Gosling who gooses the proceedings with a thoughtful performance. ***
GRINDHOUSE Designed as an homage to the low-budget exploitation flicks that ran rampant in past decades (most notably the 1970s), Grindhouse finds cinematic bad boys Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez attempting to create their own down-and-dirty double-bill, two grisly features (complete with bogus trailers, the best being Werewolf Women of the S.S.) that would have been right at home playing in a disreputable Times Square movie theater circa 1974. It's a terrific idea, but unfortunately, the quality of the individual works veers all over the map. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is tons of fun, not only in its gleeful siphoning from George Romero's zombie classics but also in the manner in which Rodriguez insures that every frame looks like it came from a beat-up film print buried in somebody's garage since the 70s. As for the story, it's the usual slime-and-grime saga of a plucky band of survivors fighting off hordes of shambling, oozing creatures who have all been infected by a deadly virus. But while Planet Terror is the bomb, Tarantino's Death Proof is simply a bomb. Did he not understand the assignment? Presented in a blemish-free style full of show-off techniques and scene after scene of dull chatfests, this ends up resembling not so much a grindhouse flick as a Quentin Tarantino movie -- and a bad one at that. As Stuntman Mike, a psycho who uses his own souped-up vehicle as a weapon with which to murder comely young women, Kurt Russell is the story's MVP, but Tarantino too often leaves him stranded on the side of the road. Planet Terror: ***1/2; Death Proof: *1/2; Overall: **1/2
HOT FUZZ The team that brought us Shaun of the Dead -- writer-director Edgar Wright, writer-star Simon Pegg and costar Nick Frost -- now take a shot or 12 at the police procedural with Hot Fuzz, a funny if distressingly overlong comedy that also manages to evoke memories of The Wicker Man, Plague of the Zombies and other spooky yarns centering on eccentric villagers inhabiting the less-traveled paths of the British Isles. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a dynamic, by-the-book cop who's so efficient at nailing the bad guys that his three superiors (cameos by familiar English actors) ship him off to the remote hamlet of Sandford so he won't keep embarrassing the rest of the London force. Upon arriving in Sandford, he realizes that his commanding officer (Jim Broadbent) is a flake and his peers are morons, although he does strike up a friendship with Danny Butterman (Frost), a well-meaning cop who finds spiritual guidance in the movies Bad Boys II and Point Break. But a string of gruesome accidents convinces Angel that some dark secret exists in Sandford, and he enlists the bumbling Butterman to help him get to the bottom of the mystery. Hot Fuzz appears to be England's attempt to prove to Hollywood that it can make brawny, blustery blockbusters every bit as noisy as those churned out by Tinseltown on a weekly basis, but even this pissing-contest mentality can't drown out the satiric edge that earns this a recommendation. But did the film have to feature more faux-endings than even The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King? ***
IN THE LAND OF WOMEN It's not quite a case of "like father, like son," but Jonathan Kasdan, the offspring of the excellent writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, shows that he at least harbors some of Dad's easygoing way with words with this engaging if underwhelming comedy-drama. In his first theatrical endeavor as writer-director, the young Kasdan shows plenty of promise in relating the tale of Carter Webb (Adam Brody), a screenwriter of softcore erotica who hopes that by leaving L.A. to stay with his crotchety grandmother (Olympia Dukakis) in Michigan, he'll have time to refocus his energy and start on that autobiographical high school tome he's always dreamt of penning. Having just endured a heartbreaking split with a beautiful French model (Elena Anaya), women are the farthest thing from his mind, yet upon arriving in the Michigan 'burbs, the 20something Carter instantly draws the attention of the neighboring Hardwicke women: middle-aged housewife Sarah (Meg Ryan), her teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart), and her precocious youngest, Paige (Makenzie Vega). How Carter copes with this sudden influx of females provides the picture with its spine, as his presence forces all the characters to confront their own foibles and learn to properly relate to one another. Brody's scenes with Ryan are the film's strongest, as Sarah provides Carter with a stabilizing sense of maturity while he allows her to rediscover both her inner and outer beauty. More haphazard are Carter's tête-à-tête interludes with Lucy, which range from authentic to awkward and often run counter to Kasdan's ear for natural dialogue. **1/2
MEET THE ROBINSONS Select theaters across the nation (including a couple in Charlotte) are showing this latest Disney animated feature in 3-D, and I'm sorry I didn't catch the film at one of those venues -- at least it would have added an extra dimension to what is otherwise a shallow cartoon that somehow manages to be slow-moving and hyperactive at the same time. Imagine The Incredibles made by profiteers and that's pretty much Meet the Robinsons in a nutshell -- it's not surprising that, like Chicken Little (to name but one dud), this is Disney operating without the safety net of John Lasseter and his Pixar team. This obnoxious film focuses on obnoxious Lewis, an orphan whose scientific contraptions are coveted by an obnoxious villain known as the Bowler Hat Guy. In a bit of time-hopping not worthy of Back to the Future (I, II or III), a member of the obnoxious Robinson family of the future comes to help out Lewis, thereby leading to a scattershot adventure involving obnoxious singing frogs, obnoxious food fights and an only-slightly-less obnoxious dinosaur. The final 20 minutes include a pair of decent plot pirouettes, but by then, I was so bored out of my skull than even a wayward reel of Raiders of the Lost Ark somehow slipping onto the projection booth platter probably wouldn't have stirred me out of my comatose state. *1/2
PERFECT STRANGER As far as Halle Berry thrillers go, this one beats Gothika and The Rich Man's Wife hands down -- though it still isn't up to the challenge set forth by Catwoman, which had us on the edge of our collective seats wondering if it would ever get better. Unlike the aforementioned trio, Perfect Stranger is at least fairly competent -- at least for a while -- although "fairly competent" doesn't exactly translate as "very good." Berry plays Rowena Price, an investigative reporter who seems to specialize in scandalous "gotcha" exposes (making her less New York Times and more National Enquirer). Her childhood friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) claims she's been having an affair with advertising king Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis), so when Grace turns up dead, Rowena and her colleague Miles (Giovanni Ribisi) suspect that Hill, a notorious womanizer, was responsible. Grace creates two fake identities in an attempt to nail Hill -- she poses as a temp at his office and as an online party girl looking for action -- but as she continues to juggle separate personas, she begins to realize that other parties might also be involved. This might be the first film in history in which product placement (in this case, Victoria's Secret) might indirectly infer the guilt or innocence of a major character, though it's certainly not the first movie in which the tiresome Ribisi plays a patented nutjob. At any rate, the picture only skims the surface of potentially intriguing issues (specifically, the use of the Internet as the ultimate predatory tool), and its unveiling of the killer (and the ludicrous scenes that follow) is sure to elicit more shrugs than shrieks. **
YEAR OF THE DOG As someone who's been blessed with the company of canines for my entire life, I sat through Year of the Dog seriously wondering if writer-director Mike White has ever owned a pet in his entire life. A grotesque film from a normally accomplished scripter (The Good Girl, Chuck & Buck) also making his directorial debut, this dud is so confused in its intention and execution that it's difficult to know where to begin. Molly Shannon (just fine) plays Peggy, a lonely secretary who finds comfort in the loving paws of her new beagle puppy, Pencil. But Peggy's irresponsibility leads to the dog's death, thus beginning a personal odyssey in which she becomes a vegan and an ardent animal rights supporter. Mostly peopled by caricatures of all stripes, this insufferable film does more harm than good by playing up the stereotype of the foaming-at-the-mouth, bleeding-heart, PETA-supporting loony, and even at the end, White never makes enough of a distinction between being deeply committed to a cause and merely worthy of being committed to an institution. (And for those who have no problem with Peggy's actions: Pretend she's, say, an anti-abortion advocate and see if you still support all of her firebrand methods.) To be fair, many scribes have lavishly praised Year of the Dog, presumably because it's not a cookie-cutter motion picture but instead comes across as something clearly out of the ordinary. Well, yeah, I suppose it is. Then again, elephantiasis of the testicles is also out of the ordinary, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, either. *
OPENS FRIDAY, MAY 4:
AFTER THE WEDDING: Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgard.
LUCKY YOU: Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore.
SPIDER-MAN 3: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst.
THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY: Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney.
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