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NO RESERVATIONS As far as culinary treats go, patrons can't do better this summer than Ratatouille. But whereas that Pixar gem is the filmic equivalent of an entree, think of this pleasant time-filler as a particularly palatable side dish. Movie-star wattage counts for a lot in No Reservations, and both Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart burn brightly, both individually and in their shared scenes. She's Kate, a workaholic chef whose life gets upturned when her sister's fatal car crash leaves her in charge of her precocious niece Zoe (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin). He's Nick, a sous chef who takes a position under Kate at a posh restaurant and quickly finds himself drawn to this tempestuous woman who considers herself the finest chef in all of New York and physically confronts customers who dare complain about her dishes. A frothy confection on the surface, No Reservations, based on the 2001 German film Mostly Martha, spends a great deal of time on the painful loss experienced by Zoe as she comes to grips with the death of her mother. Mostly, though, the movie functions as a charming romantic comedy, one bolstered by the crisp camerawork by Stuart Dryburgh (The Piano) and especially the richly textured music by Philip Glass (The Hours), whose score is so grandiose and award-worthy that it occasionally threatens to overwhelm the small picture it's serving. ***
RESCUE DAWN With apologies to William Shakespeare, when director Werner Herzog makes a movie, there generally isn't a method to his madness; instead, there's madness in his method, a go-for-broke intensity that has informed most of this German maverick's pictures, from his classics Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo to his recent (and excellent) documentary Grizzly Man. But that aggressive (insane?) edge is nowhere to be found in this fairly conventional drama inspired by a true story. Herzog already tackled the tale of Dieter Dengler in his 1997 doc Little Dieter Needs to Fly, yet here he provides it with a more fictional sheen. Dieter (Christian Bale) is a gung-ho U.S. navy pilot who, in the early days of the Vietnam War, is shot down over Laos and held in a makeshift POW camp along with two other Americans (Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies). There are no political allegories or points of view, no fancy special effects, and, except during a curiously flat conclusion, no displays of sentimentality. This is simply a movie about a man at odds with his surroundings, and in that respect, it fits nicely into the Herzog oeuvre. What doesn't fit so neatly is the feeling that, while Herzog has hardly sold out, he has tamed his inner filmmaking demons long enough to make a respectable movie that won't ruffle any feathers during the summer film season. **1/2
SICKO Forget illegal immigration or the war on terror or any other faddish domestic crisis that regularly tops the polls: It's long been clear that health care ranks as the number one problem in America, and only a complete moron -- or a well-to-do Republican -- would believe that there's nothing wrong with our current system. So here comes Michael Moore to tackle the subject, in what arguably stands as his most ambitious project to date. As with past works by this controversial filmmaker, Moore proves himself to be more a professor with some fanciful ways of explaining the matter at hand than a documentarian in the strictest sense of the term: He often places himself at the center of the spotlight, and he lets niggling details fall by the wayside in his rush to accentuate the greater truth. Sicko is no different: One can quibble about the presentation or the soft-pedaling of certain points, but there's no doubt that Moore's heart is in the right place, or that, in a just world, his powerful picture would serve as an agent for change. A patriotic American who believes that no one should be left behind, Moore employs his latest film as a bludgeoning tool against insidious insurance companies and the corrupt politicians who let them get away with murder -- often literally. Not surprisingly, Moore's solution on how to wrest this nation away from the hands of the insurance companies, lobbyists and politicians is to provide universal health care for everyone. Michael Moore is hardly the person I'd pick to bring a measure of sensibility back to a great nation long ruled by venal profiteers, but I suppose he'll do in a pinch. ***1/2
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