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SHANGHAI KNIGHTS If you're gonna insist on making a formulaic sequel to a formulaic comedy, then this might be the way to go, by overstuffing it with so much nonsensical material that some of it is bound to charm through sheer willpower. Its 2000 predecessor, Shanghai Noon, ranked as one of the weaker "odd couple" comedies of late, with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson going through the paces in a dull action romp set in the Old West. Knights is an improvement, with Chan and Wilson heading to London to solve the murder of Chan's character's father. The villains are uninteresting and the central plot thread is dopey, but it's what's around the edges that makes this painless entertainment. Writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar find clever ways to incorporate historical figures into their storyline (best of all is the use of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, winningly played here by Thomas Fisher), and they also pay tribute to practically every notable screen comedian this side of Cheech and Chong (Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and the Hope-Crosby team are among those honored). The anachronisms make Oliver Stone's dramas seem like cinema verite documentaries by comparison, yet it's a perverse pleasure to hear The Who's "My Generation" and "Magic Bus" in a film that's set in 1887. 
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TALK TO HER Writer-director Pedro Almodovar's latest effort may not provide the level of satisfaction obtained through his Oscar-winning All About My Mother, but it's still a memorable experience that, like many of his works, presents weighty issues colorfully wrapped up in his own idiosyncratic strain of kitschy goodwill. It almost sounds like the start of a tasteless joke: Did you hear the one about the two women in comas? Yet with this angle, Almodovar fashions a meditative piece in which two men -- a nurse (Javier Camara) and a journalist (Dario Grandinetti) -- come to know each other as they lovingly tend to the two stricken women in their lives: a ballet dancer (Leonor Watling) and a bullfighter (Rosario Flores). As always, Almodovar's plate is full: Communication between the sexes, the melding of masculine and feminine traits, and the fine line between devotion and obsession are just some of the issues tackled here. Yet if the end result on occasion feels more calculated than expected, there's still great tenderness and compassion on view here, as well as the filmmaker's usual outrageous touches.
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