Short Subjectives March 11 2004

Opening Friday
AGENT CODY BANKS 2: DESTINATION LONDON (PG) Frankie Muniz of “Malcolm in the Middle” returns as the eponymous spy kid in this sequel featuring comedian Anthony Anderson.

MONSIEUR IBRAHIM (R) See review.

MY ARCHITECT: A SON’S JOURNEY (NR) See review.

SECRET WINDOW (R) After his Oscar nomination for Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp plays a successful novelist who faces accusations of plagiarism from a drawling psycho (John Turturro). Based on a novella by Stephen King.

SPARTAN (R) Playwright David Mamet writes and directs this thriller about a government agent (Val Kilmer) investigating the kidnapping of the president’s daughter. The cast includes Mamet favorite William H. Macy.

?Duly Noted
AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR PART HARMONY (2002) (PG-13) This Sundance-award winning documentary traces the role of music in the struggle against South African apartheid, and features performance footage and interviews with activists and artists such as Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim. Films at the High. African Film Showcase. March 12, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

BAD SANTA (R) Advocate for the anti-consumerist, retro-obsessed values of the splenetic counterculture, director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) tries to apply his misanthropic perspective to mainstream Hollywood comedy. His alcoholic Santa (Billy Bob Thornton), who robs the same shopping malls where he plies his trade, is another antisocial cult figure infused with the values of Zwigoff’s alternative comix imagination. But the director can certainly do better than this thin parody of the saccharine, smarmy Christmas comedy. March 15-18. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. $5 ($3 until 5 p.m.). 404-651-3565. -- Felicia Feaster

GIRL WRESTLER (NR) Diane Zander’s documentary personalizes the clash of gender and sports with a profile of Tara Neal, a 13-year-old who defies high school tradition by challenging boys in wrestling matches. IMAGE Film & Video Center. March 18, 7:30 p.m. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, 450 Auburn Ave. Free. 404-352-4225. www.imagefv.org.

A LITTLE COLOR (2002) (R) A hairdresser (Anouk Grinberg) learns to appreciate life’s simple pleasures in this French-Swiss comedy reminiscent of Bagdad Cafe. Francophonie 2004. March 11, 8 p.m. Lefont Garden Hills Cinema, 2835 Peachtree Road. $8-$10. 404-875-1211. www.afatl.com.

A NIGHT OF FEROCIOUS JOY (NR) See review.

PRISONER OF PARADISE See review.

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 Marietta Star Cinema.

SISSI (1955) (NR) Austria’s young emperor falls in love with Sissi (Romy Schneider), the spirited sister of his bride-to-be, in the first of three sentimental German hits from the 1950s. March 17, 7 p.m. Goethe Institut Inter Nationes, 1197 Peachtree St., Colony Square. $4. 404-892-2388.

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984) (PG) Rob Reiner’s hilarious “rockumentary” turns it up to 11 to depict a disastrous American tour: Spinal Tap, one of England’s “loudest” bands. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer offer spot-on portrayals of fictitious head-bangers — and parlay their improvisational musical teamwork for subsequent films like A Mighty Wind. In its way, one of the most influential films of the past 20 years. March 17, 7 p.m. Mick’s Bennett Street, 2110 Peachtree Road. Free with dinner. 404-355-7163. -- Curt Holman

?Continuing
THE ADVENTURES OF OCIEE NASH (G) Not to be confused with Eddie Murphy’s The Adventures of Pluto Nash, this locally-filmed family picture follows the tomboyish title role (Skylar Day) from her father’s Mississippi farm to her stuffy aunt’s Asheville home in 1898. The novelty of seeing numerous Atlanta stage actors in extensive big-screen parts keeps you awake through this wholesome yet dull tale. --CH

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (R) In Canadian director Denys Arcand’s follow-up to his 1986 The Decline of the American Empire the same group of jaded, sexually adventurous intellectuals reunite around the bedside of Rémy (Rémy Girard) who is dying of cancer in an overcrowded, understaffed Montreal hospital. An unforgettable, moving film about dying, this near-masterpiece parallels Rémy’s loss of faith with a post-Sept. 11 world that has also had its dreams and illusions shattered. Arcand’s film takes you by surprise as its intellectual chattiness soon reveals a world defined by regret and doubt, where the only comfort seems to be the friends and family who remain. --FF

BARBERSHOP 2: BACK IN BUSINESS (PG-13) Business as Usual is more like it. It may be slicker than the original by a hair but the series hasn’t lost its funky charm. Ice Cube fights gentrification-minded developers and Cedric the Entertainer rants hilariously about celebrities instead of beloved historical figures. Our familiarity with the characters makes as enjoyable as an old sitcom, and the presence of Queen Latifah, setting up her Beautyshop spinoff, makes this a “very special episode.” --SW

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1965) (NR) A revolutionary film classic, this mock-documentary based on fact details the 1950s battles between the French colonial army and the Algerian National Liberation Front for Algerian independence. The 1965 film still incites with its you-are-there newsreel style immediacy and political passion. Battle recently asserted its continued relevance when the Pentagon arranged a screening to allow its military officials to gain a better understanding of the legacy of Muslim guerrilla warfare in Iraq. Lefont Garden Hill Cinema. --FF

BIG FISH (PG-13) On his deathbed, a colorful Southerner (Albert Finney) tells his fanciful life story to his skeptical son (Billy Crudup) in Tim Burton’s latest tribute to the imagination. With Ewan McGregor radiantly playing Finney’s younger self, the tall tales that dominate the film are comic, magical and appropriately “Southern.” Only the present-day scenes with the humorless son drag on the film’s otherwise delightful pageant of witches, giants and misguided poets. --CH

BROKEN LIZARD’S CLUB DREAD (R) If the Lizard’s broken, fix it. The less-than-super troupe behind Super Troopers returns with a comedy-thriller that’s better in its latter half as a slightly exaggerated slasher movie than in its first half, a sex comedy too juvenile to amuse anyone old enough to get past the R rating. Bill Paxton plays a less successful and thus more resentful Jimmy Buffett type who runs the Costa Rican island resort where the mayhem takes place. --SW

CATCH THAT KID (PG) Another imPerfect Score, this one by three 12-year-olds who rob a bank to pay for a girl’s father’s operation. Not recommended for anyone older than the protagonists. At the rate the criminal age is dropping, this year’s big Christmas movie should be a remake of Bonnie and Clyde with a cast of fetuses. --SW

CLIFFORD’S REALLY BIG MOVIE (G) The famed big red dog joins a carnival for his first animated feature film adventure. Voice actors include John Goodman, Wayne Brady, Jenna Elfman and the late John Ritter as the title pooch.

THE COOLER (R) Director Wayne Kramer takes a humorous premise — a man so unlucky that a Vegas casino pays him to jinx (or “cool”) more fortunate gamblers — and inexplicably treats it as the stuff of serious drama. The film features tender, insightful bedroom scenes and substantial acting from Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy in the title role, but its morality tale of honor in Vegas gambling dens never convinces. If The Cooler were a bet, you wouldn’t take it. --CH

DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS (PG-13) Full of eye and ear candy, this remake set in Cuba on the eve of Castro’s revolution starts out as a guilty pleasure but leaves you feeling more pleasure than guilt. Romola Garai plays the American teen who picks local Diego Luna for her partner in a dance contest. Politics stays in the background until the climax of what, like Footloose, is essentially a ’50s drive-in flick with better production values. --SW

THE DREAMERS (NC-17) Californian Matthew (Michael Pitt) goes to Paris in the spring of 1968 to study French but finds himself first consumed by the film offerings at the Cinémathèque Française, and then by the sexual charms of two inseparable French siblings (Eva Green and Louis Garrel). Bernardo Bertolucci’s shockingly beautiful, sexy film revels in the erotic triangle that envelops the three beauties, even as it shows how sex shuts them off from the outside world, on fire with anti-war demonstrations. His film manages to be both sublime in its connection between the waking dream of sex and cinema, and profoundly relevant as it suggests a continuum between the bloodshed in 1968 and the continuing violence of 2003. --FF

EUROTRIP (R) This overly raunchy comedy includes an absurd set-up and confirms Europeans’ and Americans’ worst stereotypes of each other, but also offers several of the most original and hilarious incidents in a long time. (The robot mime fight is a classic.) It brings out star potential in leading man Scott Mechlowicz and especially his comic sidekick, Jacob Pitts — a younger, better-looking version of Steve Buscemi. --SW

50 FIRST DATES (PG-13) Adam Sandler plays a commitment-phobic Hawaiian veterinarian who falls into love with a cutie (Drew Barrymore) with Memento disease, so she forgets him everytime she falls asleep. Sandler finds some unexpected pathos in the film’s lovelorn premise, but vandalizes the script’s own gentle qualities with loud, cruel jokes calibrated to his fan base. Admirably, the film never takes the easy way out, but any movie with both a vomiting walrus and Rob Schneider can’t be all good. --CH

THE FOG OF WAR (PG-13) Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, emerges as commanding yet enigmatic in Errol Morris’ urgent, intricate documentary. The title evokes the gray areas of military decisions as well as the contradictions in McNamara’s own character. At times evasive about his legacy of Vietnamese military escalation, McNamara offers keen insights into the Cuban Missile Crisis and a harsh assessment about the firebombing of Japan. It’s essential viewing, particularly when America flexes its military muscles abroad. --CH

HIDALGO (PG-13) Superficially, this limp entertainment follows a pony express courier (Viggo Mortensen) and his eponymous mustang on in 3,000-mile race across the Sahara Desert. But as the story persistently extols the superiority of Western values over Middle-Eastern culture, it increasingly feels like a propaganda piece to justify U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf. The filmmakers attempt to pay homage to the adventures of 1930s Hollywood, but merely repeat their most heavy-handed racial stereotypes. --CH

IMAX THEATER: Roar: Lions of the Kalahari (NR) The “circle of life” plays out in the Botswana desert in an unusually focused IMAX documentary, as two male lions fight for domination over a water hole. Kudos to Tim Liversedge, a rare filmmaker with the balls to set his camera in the middle of a pride of lions. Don’t always believe what the narrator tells you and juxtaposed shots appear to show. Just be amazed by what you actually see. Through Apr. 30 Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees (NR) As much about the lady as the animals she’s studied for more than 40 years, this pleasant but unexciting film features more observation than information about an extended family of Tanzanian chimps and their baboon buddies. Johnny Clegg’s music is a plus. Through July. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu. --SW

IN AMERICA (PG-13) My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan builds his partially autobiographical tale of an Irish immigrant family on sweetness and sentiment, but without sugar-coating or safety nets. Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine give emotionally complex performances as the parents dealing with the death of their youngest child, while their two daughters find their first year in New York to be thrillingly exotic. Musical choices like “Do You Believe in Magic” overemphasize the themes of miracles, but In America feels like an honest attempt to transform painful personal experience into an accessible artistic catharsis. --CH

THE LAST SAMURAI (R) Edward Zwick’s samurai epic falls short of its potential with the miscasting of Tom Cruise as boozing, battle-weary soldier hired to help put down an insurgency (led by the charismatic Ken Watanabe) in 19th century Japan. The film’s last act, with its lavish battle scene, lives up to its ambitions, but Cruise never conveys the haunted gravitas of his role, and only emphasizes the overly simplistic, romanticized screenplay. --CH

LATTER DAYS (NR) A promiscuous young Californian bets $50 he can seduce his pious Mormon neighbor, but grows to regret his spiritually empty life, in this romantic comedy with a gay twist.

THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA (PG) Writer/director/star Larry Blamire attempts to satirize the worst of 1950s sci-fi with this ludicrous black-and-white B-movie about hypnotic skeletons, unconvincing mutants, animal women and inept aliens. The script winks at the audience with knowingly sucky dialogue that drags on like bad Mike Meyers’ shtick. The film gets its biggest laughs from it’s technical aspects, like the visible wires that animate the attacking skeleton, but you’ll have a better time with a “true” bad movie like Plan Nine From Outer Space. --CH

MADE UP (NR) The title applies as much to its improvisational, theatrical air as it does to the subject matter, about the role of beauty in women’s lives. Brooke Adams plays a scorned wife and mother left devastated, inside and out, when her husband (Gary Sinise) leaves her for another woman. The mockumentary format seems an excuse for the film’s storytelling sloppiness, but the film contains some very pertinent and valuable points about the role vanity plays in women’s lives, as well as all human relationships. Madstone Theatres Parkside. --FF

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (R) This unrelentingly violent, often depressingly ugly Passion is for neither children nor the faint of heart, though it plays into a strain of evangelical belief that sees graphic depictions of Christ’s suffering as the most powerful propaganda. Mel Gibson’s third directorial effort has certainly progressed from his hackish Braveheart and often proves a grim but moving account of faith confronting unimaginable human cruelty. It may be possible to both admire Gibson’s desire to tell a very un-Hollywood story and lament the often crass and sensational manner of its telling. --FF

STARSKY & HUTCH (PG-13) Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson team up — again — to play the undercover police officers from that 70s show. Mostly the film traffics in buddy-cop film clichés, but it finds comic gold when it explicitly notices the genre’s tendency to homoeroticism, and starts implying that the partners might be more than just friends. But Old School director Todd Phillips only gradually introduces the gag, abandons it too quickly and otherwise leaves the talented twosome in threadbare crime comedy situations with no payoff. --CH

TOUCHING THE VOID (NR) A bigger miracle than any Olympic victory, this true tale of survival after a 1985 climbing accident in the Andes combines a reenactment of the event with an excellently written account by the climbers themselves. Knowing the outcome doesn’t spoil the suspense. At Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. --SW

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (PG-13) An elderly Frenchwoman and her obese dog face harrowing yet ridiculous obstacles to rescue her bicyclist grandson from French mobsters. Like a Gallic “Wallace & Gromit,” this French cartoon feature superbly embraces silent movie-style slapstick and deadpan character animation. The film’s bouncy, haunting music have justly earned it a Best Song Oscar nomination. --CH

TWISTED (R) If one of Clint Eastwood’s plodding ‘80’s thrillers and a Lifetime movie of the week had a love child, it might resemble this murky thriller. Bearing a striking resemblance to Ashley Judd’s previous detective-in-distress vehicles, Twisted casts her as a hard-drinking cop who becomes the prime suspect following the serial murders of her ex-lovers. A more compelling mystery is why Judd and co-star Samuel L. Jackson seem to accept every formulaic script they’re offered. --KK

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT (PG-13) TV stars Ray Romano, Maura Tierney, Christine Baranski and Fred Savage back up Gene Hackman in an election-year comedy about an election. Hackman plays a U.S. president who retires (love that premise!) to his vacation home in Maine, where competes with Romano’s hardware store owner Romano the post of mayor and the hand of Tierney. After an efficient setup, the story finds nowhere special to go. --SW