Short Subjectives March 12 2003

?Opening Friday
AGENT CODY BANKS (PG-13) Like Spy Kids hitting puberty, this action comedy stars “Malcolm in the Middle’s” Frankie Muniz as a teen superagent trained for every conceivable mission — except talking to girls. With Hilary Duff and Angie Harmon.

LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970) (NR) A masterpiece from hard-boiled film stylist Jean-Pierre Melville, this gangster classic has never been seen in its complete form in America. Alain Delon is a recently sprung criminal who teams up with a former police sharpshooter for a spectacular jewel heist. Trouble is, from the onset of Melville’s heavy-with-despair, existential crime thriller, one senses things won’t turn out well. A film as visually sensational as it is psychologically unshakable.--Felicia Feaster

DAUGHTER FROM DANANG (NR) Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, this wrenching reunion of a Vietnamese woman and her daughter, given up to American adoption in 1975’s “Operation Babylift,” illustrates the profound gaps between East and West. At Marietta Star Cinemas.--FF

THE HUNTED (PG-13) William Friedkin directs this thriller about a rogue commando (Benecio Del Toro) tracked by a grizzled veteran (Tommy Lee Jones). Imagine First Blood by way of The Fugitive.

OPEN HEARTS (R) In this sudsy Danish melodrama filmed under the Dogme 95 restrictions on cinematic “artifice,” a young woman (lovely Sonja Richter) sees her boyfriend run down in a car accident, and has an affair with the driver’s husband (brooding Mads Mikkelsen). Director Susanne Bier has a surer hand at hinting at the lovers’ mixed motivations than she does with the most overtly emotional scenes, but the nervy, jittery visual style keeps the action from feeling too conventional. --CH

WILLARD (PG-13) Rats! In a textbook example of casting to type, Crispin Glover stars in this remake of the scary 1971 sleeper about a put-upon young man and the horde of rodents that do his bidding.’’

?Duly Noted
ARARAT (R) Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan’s film about the mass genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkish army during World War I is a demanding, complex story that interweaves historical re-enactments of those events with the complicated relationship between an Armenian mother (Arsinee Khanjian) and her 18-year-old son (David Alpay) living in modern Canada and how their lives are haunted by that forgotten event. As intellectually rich as the best Egoyan films, Ararat unfurls many profound musings on family, the subjective, personal dimension to history and the value of artworks where historical records fail. Peachtree Film Society, March 18, 7:30 p.m. Lefont Garden Hills Cinema. $7.50 ($6.50 for PFS members). 770-729-8487. www.peachtreefilm.org — FF

MOLTKE (1988) (NR) A German inspector suspects the title character, a bank robber he once put behind bars, as being the perpetrator of a grisly murder with a personal touch. Germany in the Crosshairs: German Detective Thrillers on TV. March 12, 7 p.m. Goethe Institut Inter Nationes, 1197 Peachtree St., Colony Square. $4. 404-892-2388.

MOULIN ROUGE (1928) (NR) Don’t get-your ya-ya’s out: This is not the Baz Luhrmann musical but E.A. DuPont’s silent romantic triangle about a Moulin Rouge showgirl, her daughter, and the man they both love. Keyboardist Don Saliers provides live musical accompaniment. Silent Film Society of Atlanta, March 14, 8 p.m. Eyedrum, 290 MLK Drive, Suite 8. $5. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org

PEPE LE MOKO (1937) (NR) A sublimely moody, often surreal classic recently restored by Rialto Pictures, this hybrid thriller/fantasy stars an elegant, incomparably cool Jean Gabin as a French gangster hiding out from the police in the Casbah, the Arab district of Algiers. In one of the most erotic exchanges in cinema, Pepe finds his desire for Paris, escape and sexual fulfillment embodied in a beautiful French tourist (Mireille Balin) slumming in the Casbah who tempts Pepe dangerously beyond its borders. Films at the High. French Film: Yesterday and Today, March 15, 8 p.m., Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.--FF

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 Meatloaf gets killed. Dress as your favorite character and participate in this musical on acid. Midnight Fri. at Lefont Plaza Theatre and Sat. at Marietta Star Cinema.

LOS TRABAJADORES (NR) This documentary focuses on immigrant laborers in Austin, Texas, to explore the contradictions of America’s dependence on and discrimination against workers from other countries. March 17, 6:30 p.m., Latin American Association, 2750 Buford Highway. Free. 404-638-1800.--FF

br>?Continuing
ABOUT SCHMIDT (R) Jack Nicholson does an about-face in his performance as a smaller-than-life midwestern insurance executive facing multiple crises — mostly funny ones — upon retirement. Election director Alexander Payne’s critique of American mediocrity can feel snnide and elitist, but also has considerable comic invention.--CH

ADAPTATION (R) One of the best and brightest films of the year, this brilliant follow-up to director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich follows the self-loathing tribulations of Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) as he struggles to adapt cerebral New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean’s (Meryl Streep) book The Orchid Thief for the screen. --FF

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE (PG-13) An ex-convict (Queen Latifah), insisting she was framed, forces a whiter-than-white attorney (Steve Martin) to try to clear her name. The story is utter nonsense, but what makes the film work are the terrific comic performances driving it: Martin hasn’t been this engaging in years; Queen Latifah is sexy, spirited and smart; and Eugene Levy, as a nerd who finds his inner funk, continues to prove that he’s one of the best second bananas in modern movie comedy. — MB

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (PG-13) Steven Spielberg’s most purely entertaining film since the early 1980s finds Leonardo DiCaprio as a chameleon-like high schooler who flees his broken home by brazenly passing as an airline pilot, an Atlanta pediatrician and more. Tom Hanks finds plenty of rueful humor as the Joe Friday-esque FBI agent who’s always one step behind. --CH

CHICAGO (PG-13) First-time feature director Rob Marshall reclaims the musical genre from Moulin Rouge with this sexy, robust, big-screen version of Bob Fosse’s cynical stage hit. As Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones play Jazz Age murderesses vying for the attentions of superlawyer Richard Gere, showbiz and the legal system prove to be opposite sides of the same tarnished coin.--CH

CITY OF GOD (R) This gritty crime drama from Brazil uses the flashy, pulp-fiction techniques of Tarantino and Scorsese to draw attention to the violence and crushing poverty in Rio’s sprawling slums. Tracking a bloodthirsty drug dealer and a meek photographer from the ’60s to the ’80s, the filmmakers make the most of every cinematic trick at their disposal, although their greatest resource is a sense of social outrage that mourns how penniless orphans become larcenous killers. At Lefont Plaza Theatre.--CH

DAREDEVIL (PG-13) The same accident that blinded Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck) also enhanced his other senses, giving him a bat-like sonar vision that he uses to fight crime. Though Jennifer Garner (“Alias”) sparkles as ninja vixen Elektra, and Colin Farrel makes bad-guy Bullseye an almost likable psychopath, the film fails to live up to the standards set by X-Men or Spider-Man, other recent adaptations of Marvel comic books. — TB

DARK BLUE (R) Director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) has a tendency to bluntly overstate his points, but his cop thriller has a gripping, nihilistic story reminiscent of the B- and C-noirs of classic Hollywood. Kurt Russell delivers a powerful performance as a corrupt L.A.P.D. cop whose own personal meltdown parallels the 1992 trial of four white officers for the beating of Rodney King and the verdict that set the city on fire.--FF

DELIVER US FROM EVA (R) When constructing a romantic comedy, it’s usually not a good idea to make your central character so odious that audience members won’t care whether he or she finds romance or not. Yet that’s the case with this clumsy effort in which a shrew (as in Shakespeare’s The Taming of...) begins to thaw in the presence of a sympathetic player. Gabrielle Union’s broad performance doesn’t help, meaning that only LL Cool J’s considerable charisma keeps this from completely sinking. — MB

GANGS OF NEW YORK (R) Though Martin Scorsese’s historical epic has a more conventional plot line than his more morally ambiguous, violence-soaked films, Gangs of New York is no small feat. A vortex of crime and corruption based on the real life mire of 1800s Manhattan street gangs, Gangs is a smarter than average epic, though far short of Scorsese’s best work. --FF

GODS AND GENERALS (PG-13) Ted Turner Pictures offers a would-be epic of the first two years of the Civil War that feels like it was shot in real time. Gettysburg writer-director Ronald Maxwell does a fine job at battlefield reenactment, especially for the extended sequence of Fredericksburg, but has no clue how to make such figures as Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephen Lang) into intriguing characters. --CH

HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (PG-13) Kate Hudson’s magazine columnist puts her ideas about feminine dating mistakes to the test with Matthew McConaughey, who believes he can win any woman in 10 days. Though predictable to a fault, the romantic comedy wrings a certain charm out of the formula and takes a couple of well-placed stabs at the genre in the process.--Tray Butler

THE HOURS (PG-13) Stephen Daldry’s splendidly literate film uses Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to unite three women, cutting between the day Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is writing it, a 1950s housewife (Julianne Moore) is reading it, and a 2002 book editor (Meryl Streep) is somehow living it. The film’s increasing reliance on theatrical monologues means the pay-off doesn’t equal the brilliant set-up, but its nevertheless a lush, rich film experience, with Kidman donning a prosthetic nose and being more liberated as an actress than she’s ever been.--CH

IMAX Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (NR) Jeff Bridges narrates this sweeping documentary that traces the famed explorers’ 8,000-mile trek across America. Through March 28. Whales (NR) Follow orca, blue, humpback, right whales and dolphins through oceans around the globe in this doc narrated by Patrick Stewart. Through March 28. Africa: The Serengeti (NR) The year-long Great Migration of more than 1.5 million African animals is recorded on film, with narration by James Earl Jones. 8 and 10 p.m. Fridays through March 23. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. www.fernbank.edu.

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE (R) A reporter (Kate Winslet) races the clock to learn whether a condemned “death penalty abolitionist” (Kevin Spacey) was framed for murder. The preposterous sleuthing provides a weak vehicle for the film’s anti-capital punishment boilerplate. The flashbacks about how the Spacey character’s life was ruined by false accusations and politically correctness play better, but the actor still hasn’t rediscovered the icy charisma that drove his work before his American Beauty Oscar.--CH

THE LION KING (G) Disney’s highest grossing film ever gets the IMAX treatment. Sort of like Hamlet on the plains of Africa, it depicts a young lion trying to reclaim his place atop the food chain from his usurping uncle. It’s not really in the league of classics like Pinocchio or Beauty and the Beast, despite its all-star voice cast and Elton John/Tim Rice songs that a generation of kids knows by heart. Regal Cinemas Mall Of Georgia IMAX, 3379 Buford Drive, Buford.--CH

LOST IN LA MANCHA (R) Director Terry Gilliam’s doomed attempt to film a fantasy-inspired Don Quixote prove both heartbreaking and hilarious. Documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe paint affectionate portraits of the filmmaker and his behind-the-scenes crew, who watch with mounting dismay as the production is plagued with mishaps including health problems, torrential rains and F-16s roaring overhead during outdoor shoots. The documentary reminds us that so many things can go wrong with film productions that it’s amazing any of them ever get finished. At Lefont Plaza Theatre--CH

THE PIANIST (R) Though less stylish and darkly humorous than typical Roman Polanski fare, this true story of Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) will be fascinating stuff for Polanski fans who will find copious allusions to the director’s life and films in this somber and enlightening story.--FF

THE QUIET AMERICAN (R) This respectable, nuanced, if at times slightly passionless adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1955 novel is well-served by Michael Caine’s cynical personification of a classic emotionally and morally detached Greene hero. Caine is a jaded British correspondent whose neutral view of politics in a ’50s Saigon where French, Communist and American forces vie for power begins to change with his growing friendship with a mysterious American (Brendan Fraser).--FF

SHANGHAI KNIGHTS (PG-13) The sequel to Shanghai Noon gives Jackie Chan a fine foil in Owen Wilson and some wonderful slapstick fight scenes that use every available prop from umbrellas to Ming vases. But the action comedy set in Victorian London denies its stars a decent script, instead marching them through lazy historic anachronisms and Brit-bashing stereotypes more shameless than Austin Powers.--CH

TALK TO HER (R) A surprisingly grown-up and restrained Pedro Almodovar shifts into hyper-serious mode in this disappointingly inert film with the ardent tone of a women’s picture but dominated by the romantic agonies of two men. Sensitive guys Javier Camara and Dario Grandinetti try to sustain relationships with women who have both ended up in a coma on the same hospital ward and end up developing a deep bond with each other. All of Almodovar’s inventive, garish imagination seems to have flown the coop in this soapy stab at adult themes with occasional forays into creepy, kinky sexual compulsion. At Lefont Garden Hills Cinema. --FF

TEARS OF THE SUN (R) On the heels of Hart’s War, Bruce Willis returns to combat duty in this plodding drama that’s about as battle-fatigued as they come. This simplistic story about a Navy SEAL (Willis, all grunts and squints) protecting Nigerian villagers from rebel extremists results in a picture that’s painted in wide swaths of soldier-boy posturing and pontificating. It may serve as a slick piece of propaganda but won’t satisfy anyone who prefers to be challenged by military movies. Rent the superior Three Kings instead. — MB

THE WAY HOME (2002) (PG) This pleasant, modest Korean import depicts a bratty boy from Seoul forced to stay with his deaf, penniless grandmother in the country. The tale finds both comedy and larger cultural commentary in the boy’s addiction to American-style pop — he whines and throws tantrums when cut off from “Kentucky Chicken” and replacement batteries for his video game. Fortunatelly, the film allows a sweet relationship to develop without overplaying the sentiment or romanticizing the hardships of rural life.--CH’’