Short Subjectives December 28 2005

Opening Friday

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· ELLIE PARKER HH (NR) See review on page 46.

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Duly Noted

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· THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) (R) The cult classic of cult classics, the musical horror spoof follows an all-American couple (Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) to the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a drag-queen/mad scientist from another galaxy. It’s all fun and games until Meat Loaf gets killed. Dress as your favorite character and participate in this musical on acid. Midnight Fri. at Lefont Plaza Theatre and Sat. at Peachtree Cinema & Games, Norcross.

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· SPARE PARTS (2003) (NR) This grim Slovenian film dramatizes the plight of illegal immigrants smuggled across Croatia into Italy. Sat., Dec. 30, 1 p.m. Covington Library, 3500 Covington Highway, Decatur. Free. 404-508-7180.

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Continuing

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· AEON FLUX (PG-13) Oscar-winner Charlize Theron fleshes out (and how) MTV’s ass-kicking animated commando Aeon Flux in this incoherently structured, futuristic action flick. Though the film features some clever visual motifs and high-tech gadgets (Flux’s explosive marbles, a four-handed sidekick), the bad acting and confused themes evoke such hippy-dippy sci-fi throwbacks as Zardoz and Barbarella. — Curt Holman

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· BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN HHHHH (R) Ang Lee’s heart-wrenching Western one-ups the male tenderness and isolation of the traditional oater by basing his film on Annie Proulx’s short story of two cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) who fall in love in 1963 Wyoming. Lee’s film is lovely to look at and profoundly moving, touching on both the economic and spiritual isolation of the ranch hand’s life and also the more universal alienation of being a man. Ledger is superb as an archetype of male interiority, an emotionally contained man who finds his slim fragments of happiness in short, infrequent meetings with Jack, who dreams of an impossible future for their doomed love affair. — Felicia Feaster

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· CAPOTE HHHHH (R) It’s hard to take your eyes off Philip Seymour Hoffman as the vain, brilliant, manipulative and also haunted writer Truman Capote. Shrugging off the limitations of the usual biopic story arc, Bennett Miller’s absorbing, thought-provoking, extremely well-crafted first fiction film (he directed the documentary The Cruise) focuses on a small but significant portion of Capote’s life during the researching of his groundbreaking work of true crime nonfiction In Cold Blood, and the unhealthy mutual dependency that develops between the writer and one of the killers (Clifton Collins Jr.) of a Kansas farm family. — Feaster

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· CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2 (PG) This sequel to the Steve Martin vehicle about a family teeming with 12 kids involves a rivalry between a similarly crowded brood led by Eugene Levy.

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· CHICKEN LITTLE H (G) In this computer-animated catastrophe, Chicken Little (Zach Braff) of nursery-rhyme fame warns the cuddly critters of Oaky Oaks of an imminent alien invasion. Disney Animation flailingly emulates the pop references of the Shrek movies and, after about five minutes, stomps all over its promising jokes. In the spirit of such monickers as Foxy Loxy and Turkey Lurkey, Chicken Little would be better named Sucky Clucky. — Holman

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· THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE HH (PG) Four plucky English youngsters step through an enchanted wardrobe and take sides in a magical kingdom’s war between good and evil. Initially charming, the lavish adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book struggles to balance the source material’s blend of English whimsy, epic violence and Christian allegory (complete with a cameo appearance from Father Christmas). Despite plenty of elaborately memorable images, Narnia feels more sterile than spiritual. — Holman

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· THE FAMILY STONE HHH (PG-13) Entertaining though uneven, this home-for-the-holidays trauma fest has uptight New York City executive Sarah Jessica Parker accompanying fiancé Dermot Mulroney home to Connecticut to meet his family. The WASPy, bohemian Stones take an immediate, often incomprehensible dislike to Meredith and spend the duration of the film raking her over the coals until the tale suddenly switches direction and becomes a celebration rather than an indictment of familial togetherness. — Feaster

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· FUN WITH DICK AND JANE HH .See review above.

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· GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK HHHHH (PG) In the early 1950s, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) used his CBS show “See It Now” to take on U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “witch hunt” tactics. Every creative decision pays off in George Clooney’s second film, a black-and-white homage to the “greatest generation” of broadcast journalists, whose courage in the face of enormous pressures makes the Bush administration press corps look timid by comparison. The film succeeds enormously well at getting you under the skin of Murrow’s reporters and anticipating the increasing influence of entertainment on broadcast news. See it now. — Holman

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· HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE HHHH (PG-13) Love and death are in the air at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the fourth Harry Potter film. Director Mike Newell presents the grandest, scariest spectacle in the franchise so far, featuring an exciting dragon chase and the worth-the-wait appearance of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). In bringing a novel of more than 700 pages to the screen, Newell can resemble a frantic vaudeville plate-spinner: He revs up one subplot, and the others slow down. But Goblet proves an exciting and mature chapter in a (seemingly) never-ending story. — Holman

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· IMAX THEATER Mystery of the Nile (NR): This IMAX adventure follows a small group of reporters and filmmakers as they travel 3,000 miles up the Nile River. Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets (NR): This exploration of one of America’s greatest natural wonders retraces the canyon’s history, from Native Americans to modern-day white-water rafters. Wild Safari: A South African Adventure (NR): This 5,000-mile journey from the lush grasslands of the Southern Cape to the desert expanse of the Kalahari tracks elephants, Cape buffaloes, rhinos, leopards and lions (opens Jan. 2). Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

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· IN THE MIX (PG-13) Haven’t seen an usher in a cinema in a while? That changes when singer Usher plays a DJ who saves a Mafia princess and becomes her de facto bodyguard.

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· KING KONG HHH (PG-13) The heart of Peter Jackson’s lavish, slavish remake lies not in the giant ape’s improbable love for a screaming starlet (Naomi Watts), but the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s almost blind adoration of the original, also set in 1930s New York (and Skull Island). Jackson’s version contains sights that truly astonish — an attack by giant bugs, the Empire State Building sequence, Kong’s vivid personality — while feeling overly faithful to a story we know all too well. Still, despite labored comedy and some spotty special effects, the Beauty and the Beast story at the core can win over the most savage detractor. — Holman

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· MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA HH (PG-13) Chicago director Rob Marshall stocks his adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-seller with a bevy of Chinese and Malaysian beauties, perhaps hoping with that and some Oscar-bait cinematography, he will have a Raise the Red Lantern on his hands. Ziyi Zhang (and her co-stars Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li) is easy on the eyes as the up-from-her-bootstraps daughter of a fisherman who is sold to a geisha house and rises to the top of Kyoto’s geisha ranks. But there is something Hollywood-sleazy in the way Marshall transforms what might have been a drama about a woman struggling for self-determination within sexual slavery into a prolonged girl fight between geishas cat-fighting for men and power. — Feaster

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· MUNICH HHHH (R) Steven Spielberg is in a surprisingly thoughtful mood in this provocative consideration of the costs of violence for those who carry it out. In the aftermath of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics, the Israeli government sends a cadre of assassins led by Eric Bana to Europe to kill the Palestinian organizers of the terrorist attack. Though Bana has a hard time drawing us emotionally into his moral dilemma about killing, with a script co-written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), Munich has much to say about how governments often use individuals to do their dirty work, and how it is the foot soldiers, not the intelligence agencies or politicians, who pay the psychological cost for committing murder in their country’s name. — Feaster

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· PRIDE & PREJUDICE HHH (PG) 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, 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). Romanticists who fell hard for Colin Firth’s 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. — Matt Brunson

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· THE PRODUCERS HH (PG-13) Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their stage roles as Bialystock and Bloom, embezzling Broadway producers bent on staging the worst flop in history. Susan Stroman, director/choreographer of the hit stage musical, so thoroughly botches the film adaptation, it could be an act of calculated self-sabotage worthy of her antiheroes. Some of Mel Brooks’ “joke songs” (like the “Springtime for Hitler” production number) feature hilarious showmanship, and Gary Beach and Roger Bart rise above their crudely written roles as gay clichés, but The Producers feels entirely too broad and exaggerated. This ham has passed its expiration date. — Holman

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· RENT HHH (PG-13) In Chris Columbus’ adaptation of the Broadway musical, a group of twentysomething artists (played mostly by the now-thirtysomething original cast) wrestle with AIDS, drug addiction and creative compromise in Manhattan. At best, numbers like “La Vie Boheme” capture the same intoxication of creative urban youth in the film Fame; at worst, the overwrought, operatic romance plays like a long-form Bon Jovi video. Unlike the Oscar-winning Chicago, it seldom finds the right scale to play on the big screen, but it hits enough high notes to justify renting a theater seat for a couple of hours. — Holman

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· THE RINGER (PG-13) In this comedy from the Farrelly Brothers, former “Jackass” frontman Johnny Knoxville plays a con artist who feigns mental disability to rig his participation in the Special Olympics.

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· RUMOR HAS IT ... H (PG-13) A newly engaged, neurotic New Yorker (Jennifer Aniston) obsesses over a rumor that her Californian family inspired the cross-generation trysts of The Graduate in the early 1960s. Perhaps that could have worked in some alternate universe where Anne Bancroft could reprise her Mrs. Robinson role opposite Dustin Hoffman in a meta-cinematic joke. As it is, director Rob Reiner pushes the most mechanical rom-com buttons, vainly seeking humor in a quasi-incestuous situation. To sum up the film’s comedy, humor, acting and tone, I have just one word: plastics. — Holman

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· THE SQUID AND THE WHALE HHH (R) It’s a hard fact of life whether crowed by Tammy Wynette or Park Slope eggheads: Breaking up is hard to do. Filmmaker Noah Baumbach offers a semi-autobiographical remembrance of divorce’s toll on the kids. The year is 1986, two bookish Brooklyn intellectuals (Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels) — based on Baumbach’s film critic mother and novelist father — split, shuttling their two sons (Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg) between their homes and unleashing some major anguish and anxieties. Often darkly funny in charting the effects of D-I-V-O-R-C-E for the over-analytical set not supposed to experience such mundane traumas, the film is too emotionally distant and too inconclusive to offer more than that age-old assertion that divorce sucks. — Feaster

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· SYRIANA HHHH (R) Brutally intelligent and often profoundly difficult to follow, Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Traffic) Stephen Gaghan’s second directing effort replaces Traffic’s drug war with the contemporary battle for oil. This engrossing, closely observed thriller concerns the interconnected lives of people touched by the international oil trade, including a CIA operative in the Middle East (George Clooney), a Geneva-based American energy analyst (Matt Damon), and a rising D.C. lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) who all have something to gain or lose from events in the oil-rich Middle East. — Feaster

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· WALK THE LINE HHH (PG-13) This biopic of legendary but troubled country music star Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) focuses on his decades-long relationship with singer and muse June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Witherspoon offers a fresh, original portrayal of a weary celebrity in a vastly different era of pop culture from our own, but James Mangold’s film reveals little of Cash’s inner life beyond his drug problems and crush on June, so Phoenix often comes across as merely sullen. The cast impressively sings their own songs, and the early rockabilly tours (with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis) convey the excitement of rock’s early days. — Holman

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· WOLF CREEK HHHH (R) In the spirit of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this taut, textured horror film from Down Under draws inspiration from true events in its depiction of three likable young people stalked by a psycho in the middle of nowhere. Writer/director Greg McLean retains sympathy for his appealing characters and takes wicked pleasure in tweaking the Australian stereotype of outdoorsy blokes. The last act’s grim inevitability lacks the punch to make Wolf Creek a terrifying classic, but it’s nevertheless a remarkably atmospheric thriller in which casual sensuality takes a horrific wrong turn. — Holman

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· YOURS, MINE AND OURS H (PG) A descent into the pits of hell disguised as a motion picture, Yours, Mine and Ours is the sort of broad, insincere schmaltz that movie-goers seem to eat up at this time of year. A widower (Dennis Quaid) with eight kids bumps into his former high school sweetheart (Rene Russo), now a widow with 10 children. On a whim, they decide to get married, but managing a household comprised of 18 minors proves to be a formidable challenge. Somebody please kill this before it breeds again. — Brunson