WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF May I please go ahead and openly declare my unwavering adoration for Shirley Henderson? She's the new Helena Bonham-Carter, a pale-faced, dark-browed Brit with an off-kilter beauty and enough acting chops to waylay a dozen Hollywood starlets in one fell swoop. Terrific in such diverse projects as Topsy-Turvy, Bridget Jones's Diary (where she played one of Renee Zellweger's best buds) and the recent Intermission, she's equally memorable in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, a curious piece of whimsy that isn't nearly as straightforward as its title. Not always successful but also never uninteresting, the film casts Jamie Sives as Wilbur, a Glasgow resident who's generally giving those around him the cold shoulder when he's not busy devising new ways to commit suicide. His eternally patient brother Harbour (Adrian Rawlins) devotes himself to Wilbur but also finds time to romance single mom Alice (Henderson), yet once they're wed, Harbour is forced to confront his own medical misfortune while Wilbur and Alice explore their mutual attraction behind his back. The gallows humor provided by writer-director Lone Scherfig and co-scripter Anders Thomas Jensen is the film's strongest suit, followed by its gallery of sympathetic characters, most of whom are simply seeking companionship in a cold world. Less successful is its eventual segue way into melodrama, with an inherently tearjerking development bucking awkwardly against Scherfig's chilly direction. 
CURRENT RELEASES
THE ALAMO Forget The Alamo... again. John Wayne's 1960 take on the historic battle of 1836 was fairly useless as history and barely involving as entertainment, but it at least had the benefit of a sterling cast and a marvelous Dimitri Tiomkin score. This version can't even match those modest achievements -- it's the equivalent of one long drone from a stiff Social Studies teacher who can scarcely be bothered to add any sort of relevancy to the topic. Even with his charisma kept in check, Billy Bob Thornton still fares best as Davy Crockett. The other leads -- Dennis Quaid as Sam Houston, Patrick Wilson as William Travis and especially Jason Patric as Jim Bowie -- resemble waxworks at a history museum; if the characters they're portraying had been this boring, they simply could have lulled the Mexican army to sleep. 1/2
CONNIE AND CARLA Although it cribs shamelessly from Some Like It Hot and Victor/Victoria, this at least finds writer-actress Nia Vardalos breaking away from her bread-and-butter -- on the heels of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the TV series My Big Fat Greek Life, I was dreading My Big Fat Greek Divorce, My Big Fat Greek Funeral, etc. Instead, this finds Vardalos and Toni Collette cast as airport lounge singers who take it on the lam after they witness a murder. Hoofing it to LA, they hide out as drag performers -- in short, they're girls pretending to be guys pretending to be girls. As writer, Vardalos couldn't be less interested in the plot -- the crime escapades wouldn't even have been approved for an episode of Hawaii Five-O -- but the characters are engaging and the musical routines fun to watch. 1/2
DOGVILLE The latest drama from writer-director Lars von Trier, following the powerful Breaking the Waves and the insufferable Dancer In the Dark, is equally guaranteed to disturb and divide audiences. Nicole Kidman (in a strong performance that goes with the flow) plays a Depression-era fugitive who shows up in a small Rocky Mountain town, whereupon the locals grudgingly come to accept her as part of their community. But as time progresses and suspicions are aroused, the residents eventually turn on her, treating her as nothing more than a slave and laying the groundwork for the film's cathartic climax. Armed with the minimalist trappings of a filmed stage play, this is a movie of our times, a cautionary tale railing against the uninformed conformity that too often soils the legacy of this great country. 1/2
ELLA ENCHANTED Freely adapted from the book by Gail Carson Levine but completely owing its body and soul to Shrek, this is yet another fractured fairy tale designed for kids living in a postmodern age. Anne Hathaway, the wide-eyed star of The Princess Diaries, plays Ella, a young woman who tries to break a spell that forces her to obey every command directly aimed at her. The film is largely missing any semblance of a through line -- plot points are brought up and then abandoned, and characters appear randomly for no pressing reason other than the story requires their presence at that exact moment -- but the movie's still reasonably entertaining, thanks to an able cast as well as its own infectious commitment to Happily Ever After principles. 1/2
HELLBOY The beginning of Hellboy looks like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that's a good thing. But the rest of the movie brings to mind last year's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and that's not a comparison anyone would clamor to receive. That's a shame, because this comic book adaptation about a demonic superhero appeared to have the right director in Guillermo del Toro and the right actor in Ron Perlman. But despite their combined efforts, this grungy movie isn't original enough, exciting enough, or humorous enough to sustain interest, let alone spawn the expected sequel or two.
JOHNSON FAMILY VACATION A game Cedric the Entertainer headlines this sloppy comedy about a man who packs up his family -- estranged wife (Vanessa Williams), smart-aleck teenage son (dreadful Bow Wow), impatient teenage daughter (Solange Knowles), and Cosby-kid-cute little daughter (Gabby Soleil) -- and embarks on a cross-country trip to attend a family reunion. The script is mostly comprised of isolated on-the-road vignettes, each one exhibiting a small measure of comic potential before invariably collapsing with nary an adequate punchline in sight. Cedric pops up in a second role, as lecherous Uncle Earl, and a little of this character goes a long way -- say, roughly the distance from Anaheim to Albany. 1/2
KILL BILL VOL. 2 The inability to notice that the emperor had no clothes -- not even a bandanna -- helped turn Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 into a critical darling and a favorite of fan-boys everywhere. But although originally conceived as one movie until the length dictated the creation of two separate flicks, the Kill Bill volumes couldn't possibly be further apart -- in style, tone or content. Volume 1 diehards will inevitably feel let down by the emphasis on talk rather than action, but Volume 2 is nevertheless the superior movie. It's better written, better acted (especially by Uma Thurman and David Carradine), and more emotionally involving, although it's still obvious that Tarantino should have taken the scissors to his project and carved out a single kick-ass movie instead of two bloated ones. 1/2
LAWS OF ATTRACTION The 1950 comedy Adam's Rib cast Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as husband-and-wife lawyers who end up on opposite sides of a major case; this clearly hopes to be its modern-day equivalent, but it's so inconsequential that it wouldn't even cut it as Adam's Hangnail. That's a shame, because the star pairing of Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore promises much more than this movie actually delivers. Brosnan is as casually charismatic as always, while Moore, taking a break from award-friendly projects, gleefully throws herself into her change-of-pace role. They're an engaging team, which makes it all the more frustrating that they're let down by a trite screenplay.
MAN ON FIRE This is a remake of a forgotten 1987 flick starring Scott Glenn; that version barely ran 90 minutes, and it's a sign of director Tony Scott's arrogance that this ugly revamping clocks in at 140 minutes. The movie starts off OK, with Denzel Washington effectively cast as a former government assassin whose constant boozing is interrupted once he agrees to serve as the bodyguard for an American girl (Dakota Fanning) living with her parents in Mexico City. Scott's meaningless stylistics immediately grate on the nerves, but the strong work by Washington and Fanning -- and the bond they create together -- cuts through all the hipster b.s. and draws us into the picture. But once the child gets kidnapped and is then believed to be dead, this turns into a tedious revenge yarn. 1/2
THE PUNISHER One of the most popular of the latter-day (read: 1970s onward) Marvel Comics heroes, this one-man killing machine first saw his exploits translated to film in a 1989 Dolph Lundgren vehicle that went straight to video. Now here comes the more polished and more expensive version (with Dreamcatcher's Thomas Jane in the lead), and perhaps the best that can be said about it is that it's more watchable than the equally sadistic Man On Fire. It's tolerable junk if viewed in the right frame of mind, if one is willing to overlook the poor dialogue, John Travolta's colorless villain, and the ludicrously overplayed death scenes.
13 GOING ON 30 Starting off in 1987, this engaging comedy centers around 13-year-old Jenna Rink, an awkward girl whose only desire is to be "thirty, flirty and thriving." She magically gets her wish granted, waking up in 2004 at the age of 30 and not remembering anything that has transpired over the course of the last 17 years. As she begins to piece together the missing years, she realizes that she doesn't like the person she's become. Jennifer Garner, the versatile star of Alias, is irresistible here -- she possesses the flair and instincts of a screwball comedienne -- and if her performance ultimately isn't quite as moving as Tom Hanks' in the thematically similar Big, that might be because the script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa doesn't delve as deeply into the dark side of being a child trapped in a grownup's body.
WALKING TALL A remake of 1973's sleeper hit (itself based on a true story) about an upstanding man saving his town from the clutches of crooks, this is an example of what I like to call the "2am movie." It's the type of film invented for night owls and insomniacs, the sort of unexceptional, no-deep-thinking-required fare that plays best with a slice of cold pizza, a can of Coke, and the neighbor's dog incessantly howling in the background. To actually spend money to see something like this in a theater defies all logic: It's the equivalent of using a $20 bill to create an origami elephant. The Rock possesses natural screen charisma, but there's not much about this generic action flick that sticks in the mind. Ask me about it next month, and I probably won't even remember if I saw it.
THE WHOLE TEN YARDS Never mind the yards: There are at least 100 whole reasons why The Whole Ten Yards is easily the worst movie to (dis)grace movie screens so far in 2004. A sequel to a so-so film that barely anyone remembers (The Whole Nine Yards), this again finds gruff hit man Bruce Willis and nerdy dentist Matthew Perry mixing it up with gangsters. This attempt at comedy is so unspeakably awful that I actually felt precious brain cells melting away as my eyes took in this horror. The experience left me shell-shocked to the point that I was wandering the parking lot afterward in a daze, dependant on the kindness of a fellow scribe to remind me who I was, what I was doing there, and where I was parked. I'm no expert on the subject, but shouldn't Workers' Comp be covering my recuperation?
OPENS FRIDAY:
NEW YORK MINUTE: Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen.
VAN HELSING: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale.
WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF: Jamie Sives, Adrian Rawlins.
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