Short Subjectives June 03 2004

Opening Friday
DIVAN (NR) Documentarian Pearl Gluck reflects on her Jewish heritage as she travels to Hungary to acquire a couch prized by her family for its former use by Hassidic rabbis. At Madstone Theaters Parkside

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (PG) See review.

I VITELLONI (1953) (NR) See review.

LIFE OF BRIAN (R) See review.

LOVE ME IF YOU DARE (R) Eight-year-old sociopaths Julien and Sophie sublimate their mutual affection in a game of Dare that continues until they’re 35, becoming progressively more adult. Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet star in Yann Samuell’s first feature, which — on its own terms — qualifies as one of the most romantic films ever made. At Lefont Garden Hills. --Steve Warren

?Duly Noted
BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (NR) Gene Saks’ adaptation of Neil Simon’s Broadway play provides light entertainment about newlyweds moving into a fifth-story Manhattan walkup who begin to wonder if they are truly compatible. Jane Fonda captivates as the effervescent, adventurous wife, while Robert Redford shows a flair for understated comedy as the fussy, conservative straight-arrow husband. Fonda and Redford introduce the film in person. Screen on the Green. June 10 at sunset. Piedmont Park meadow near 10th and Monroe. Free. 404-878-2600. --Felicia Feaster

BIG AIN’T BAD (R) Little ain’t necessarily bad either, but Ray Culpepper and Brian D. Poe’s romantic comedy, shot in Atlanta on film, doesn’t project well in theaters. Sean Blakemore and Jenise Dixon look good and act as well as the script allows as they break up, deal with personal issues and possibly reunite. The pace, however, rarely advances from lethargic to leisurely. Coca-Cola Summer Film Festival. June 7, 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. $7. 404-881-2100. www.foxtheatre.org. --SW

THE EVIL DEAD (1983) (R) See review.

ICE AGE (2002) (G) In this computer-animated family film, a mammoth, a sabre-tooth tiger and a giant sloth (voiced by, respectively, Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo) help return a child to his family during an encouraging ice age. Sort of like The Day After Tomorrow for tots. June 9, 7:30 p.m. Mick’s Bennett Street, 2110 Peachtree Road. Free with dinner. 404-351-6425.

IN THE SHADOW OF POWER (2002) (NR) The second chapter in this two-part dramatization of German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s final days in office. A trailblazing advocate for detente in the early 1970s, Brandt (Michael Mendl) saw his government collapse in a scandal that combined espionage and sex. Biographies: History, Politics and Scandals. June 9. 7 p.m. Goethe Institut Inter Nationes, 1197 Peachtree St., Colony Square. $4. 404-892-2388.

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (PG-13) Russell Crowe lightens up to play Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), captain of the HMS Surprise as he matches wits with a bigger, faster French ship in this Napoleonic-era nautical adventure. The film’s impeccable approach to period detail will appeal more to History Channel fans than the general movie-going audience, but it boasts exciting set-pieces and a colorful cast of character actors. June 3. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. 404-651-3565. www.cinefest.org. and Coca-Cola Summer Film Festival. June 10, 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. $7. 404-881-2100. www.foxtheatre.org. --Curt Holman

PHANTASM (1979) (R) Two brothers investigate creepy goings-on at the neighborhood mortuary, including hooded dwarves, a cadaverous undertaker and a flying silver ball that embeds itself in people’s heads. On a double bill withThe Evil Dead’‘. Rock N Roll Monster Mash, June 6 at dusk. Starlight Drive-In, 2000 Moreland Ave. $10. 404-627-5786. www.starlightdrivein.com.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) (PG-13) Mel Brooks’ funniest and most accomplished comedy remains his spoof of Frankenstein (that’s pronounced “Fronkensteen”). Unlike nearly every other Brooks effort, the film’s loving, pitch-perfect recreation of black-and-white Universal horror films keeps a straight face no matter how zany it gets. Gene Wilder plays the title scientist like a hyperactive John Barrymore, while Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle and (briefly) Gene Hackman take turns stealing the show. Cloris “Frau Blucher!” Leachman introduces the film. Screen on the Green. June 3 at sunset. Piedmont Park meadow near 10th and Monroe. Free. 404-878-2600. --CH

?Continuing
BOBBY JONES — STROKE OF GENIUS (PG) Jim Caviezel brings what passion he can to the role of our local hero, arguably the greatest golfer ever (certainly the best who never turned pro), but writer-director Rowdy Herrington paints Jones as almost as saintly as Jesus. There’s no drama, as the people around him don’t change — or age — over some 25 years. Unless you’re a golf nut it’s just two-plus hours of men hitting little white balls with sticks. --SW

BON VOYAGE (PG-13) A group of frivolous French aristocrats (including Isabelle Adjani and Gérard Depardieu) don’t let the Nazi occupation dampen their spirits in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s World War II lark.

BREAKIN’ ALL THE RULES (PG-13) Daniel Taplitz’ amusing relationship comedy has a plot like a sitcom written by Shakespeare. Jamie Foxx writes a handbook on breaking up, then accidentally steals Gabrielle Union from his cousin (Morris Chestnut) and gets mixed up in his boss’ (Peter MacNicol) romance with gold-digger Jennifer Esposito. You won’t remember it tomorrow but it’s a fun date movie while it lasts. --SW

COFFEE & CIGARETTES (R) Over the past two decades in between his feature film projects quintessential New York indie Jim Jarmusch has been making a series of short films in which a variety of music and film personalities, including members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Cate Blanchett, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits act out slice-of-life moments over a cup of joe. Though viewers will undoubtedly choose their favorite moments amongst a mixed bag in this anthology film, these quirky shorts work in wonderful tandem. Jarmusch shows how much can be revealed in life’s little in-between moments, and the power dynamics and insights that can emerge over a simple coffee break. --FF

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (PG-13) Insane heroics match impossible catastrophes in Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick that offers jingoism for the locals and anti-Americanism for the international market. The visuals all have that made-in-the-computer look but still provide good, cheesy fun — though not as much fun as the political debates to be generated by its global warming warning. --SW

ENVY (PG-13) An office drudge (Ben Stiller) burns with jealousy when his neighbor (Jack Black) gets rich off an invention that vaporizes dog doo. As an anarchy-spouting barfly, Christopher Walken acts with greater comic depth than Stiller or Black, who essential do sketch comedy here. An unattractive, shapeless waste of funny performers, the film leaves you green with something other than envy. --CH

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (R) Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play former lovers who use a high-tech procedure to erase their memories of their affair in the latest celluloid mind game from Being John Malkovich scripter Charlie Kaufman. The film drops the audience into so many hallucinatory sequences that for a while the story seems like merely a pretext for head trips. But Carrey and Winslet’s fleshed-out performances eventually help bring out Kaufman’s sensitive — if not always comforting — insights into the nature of love and memory. --CH

GODSEND (R) The latest version of an old story features Robert De Niro as a Dr. Frankenstein-wannabe geneticist who thinks he can reproduce a dead child through cloning, and Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as the grieving parents who just lost their eight-year-old son. Director Nick Hamm doesn’t maximize what thrills the screenplay offers, leaving a potential horror film in the “psychological thriller” category. --SW

IMAX THEATER: 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. (SW) Ghosts of the Abyss (G) James Cameron heads back to the subject that made him “king of the world,” only this time he tackles the Titanic in a documentary format. The director employs all the state-of-the-art technology at his disposal to travel underwater and take us inside the legendary shipwreck. (Matt Brunson) Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

KILL BILL VOLUME 2 (R) When the Bride (Uma Thurman) announced her plan to kill Bill in last fall’s first volume of Quentin Tarantino’s revenge epic, who expected her to talk him to death? Tarantino trades swords for words in the second part, which plays like a deliberately-paced, character-driven commentary on the kind of shlocky films he celebrated in Volume 1. Darryl Hannah’s glam, one-eyed assassin and a flashback to ’70s-style kung fu training provide kitschy kicks, but the emphasis rests on Thurman and David Carradine’s soft-spoken, drawn-out conversations of a love gone wrong. --CH

KLEZMER ON FISH STREET (NR) Yale Strom’s documentary recounts the resurgence of Jewish culture in Poland and focuses on Krakow, one of the epicenters of the Holocaust. At Madstone Theaters Parkside.

MEAN GIRLS (PG-13) “Saturday Night Live“‘s Tina Fey puts a salty, fun spin on the pop psychology book about cutthroat girl cliques Queen Bees and Wannabes in her Heathers-esque screenplay about a home schooled nerd-turned-hottie (Lindsay Lohan) who attempts to infiltrate the A-list girl clique the Plastics. The usual teen girl comedy stereotypes are here — like the nearly slasher film sense of rage directed at the Plastics queen bee — but Fey has enough been-there perspective and shrewd attentiveness to the absurdities of the form to make it all work. --FF

NEW YORK MINUTE (PG) Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have come a long way since the slew of ’90s straight-to-video fodder that made them rich, but their filmmaking skills haven’t. In the jail-bait twins’ first big-budget movie, perfectionist Ashley and free-spirited Mary-Kate head to New York City for a scholarship competition and Simple Plan video shoot, respectively. The girls face a series of pointless and predictable misadventures, sparked by a Eugene Levy’s obsessive truancy officer and Andy Richter’s bumbling limo driver. --KK

RAISING HELEN (PG) Kate Hudson’s Manhattan club-hopper gets tied to the Mommy track when she becomes legal guardian to her deceased sister’s kids. As Helen evolves from “fun aunt” to firm Mom, the film doesn’t sugarcoat the financial and disciplinary challenges of parenting. But director Garry Marshall sets a sluggish pace and waffles on the whole “You can’t have it all” theme. Hudson tends to smile no matter what happens in her scenes, suggesting that her mother Goldie Hawn only handed down the “cute” DNA. --CH

THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (NR) Those already acquainted with Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s loopy melodramas will find fresh delight in this tale of a Winnipeg beer company villainess (Isabella Rossellini) staging a demented contest to find the world’s saddest music. Those unfamiliar with Maddin’s iconoclastic work may think they’ve fallen down the cinematic rabbit hole. Maddin embellishes his Vaseline-glazed world-in-a-snow-globe atmosphere with a meaty treatment of the melodramatic one-upmanship of sorrow, played out on the familial and world stage. --FF

SHREK 2 (PG) Big green ogre Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) and his bride Fiona (Cameron Diaz) learn that her seething father (John Cleese) and a scheming fairy godmother (a hilarious Jennifer Saunders of “Absolutely Fabulous”) want to ruin their marriage. The sequel emphasizes quantity of jokes over quality, although some definitely hit, especially when Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots is on-screen. But most of the pop references feel too safe and familiar, as if entirely written by DreamWorks’ publicity department. Two hulks are not better than one. --CH

A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE (R) This long-shelved adaptation of an early Anne Tyler novel casts Lili Taylor as a mousy Southern mope obsessed with a faux-profound local rock singer (Guy Pearce). The film’s have-faith-in-love theme uneasily fits with the leading characters’ shaky grasps on reality. Adrift in the funny-sad territory of Tyler’s fiction, writer-director Toni Kalem loses her way like an accidental tourist. --CH

SOUL PLANE (R) With so many funny people — and Tom Arnold — aboard you’d expect a lot more than Soul Plane delivers. What could have been a black Airplane! settles for being Friday at 30,000 Feet, with about 1 percent wit to 99 percent crude, vulgar and mostly sexual humor. Several of the actors have done better airline material in their stand-up routines than what they’re given here. --SW

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... AND SPRING (NR) This critically-acclaimed Korean film depicts life at a Buddhist temple in five seasonal vignettes than span decades and convey both the serenity of Zen contemplation and the power of earthly temptations.

SUPER SIZE ME (NR) Shocked at the growing number of obese American children and adults, New York filmmaker Morgan Spurlock wondered if fast food was to blame. Using himself as a guinea pig, he tested his hypothesis by eating nothing but McDonald’s morning, noon and night and got an engorged liver, major weight gain and a serious health crisis in return. Like Michael Moore’s personality-driven muckraking documentaries, Spurlock’s jolly approach to depressing material ensures that it will be multiplex-accessible, even if the results are more lightweight and disposable. --FF

13 GOING ON 30 (PG-13) Jenna Rink is a sweet but awkward teen circa 1980s who only wants the simple things in life — a date with Rick Springfield, boundless popularity and to skip adolescence and be 30 already. With the aid of a birthday wish, the 13-year-old wakes up to find herself in 2004 as 30-year-old Jennifer Garner, a sexy, successful magazine editor in New York. The territory is familiar (thinkBig or Freaky Friday), but Garner keeps things interesting. --Karen Kalb

TROY (R) Everyone has an Achilles’ heel in Wolfgang Petersen’s high-testosterone spectacle loosely based on Homer’s Iliad. The full-scale, widescreen war between Greece and Troy thrilling narrows to a duel between two souls: steadfast, doomed Hector (Eric Bana) and arrogant, conflicted Achilles (Brad Pitt). At times Troy suffers from the bloat-for-bloat’s-sake of a DeMille epic, yet the flawed protagonists make the film far more complex and engrossing than Gladiator. --CH

VAN HELSING (PG-13) Bram Stoker’s elderly vampire hunter becomes a buff, gadget-toting action figure (played by Hugh Jackman). Writer-director Stephen Sommers blows a fortune in computer effects to desecrate our memories of Dracula, The Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster. Overblown and dimwitted in every respect, Van Helsing unintentionally reaches heights of comedy and camp undreamed of by The Rocky Horror Picture Show. --CH

YOUNG ADAM (NC-17) In post-WWII Scotland, Ewan McGregor plays a young laborer living side by side with a husband (Peter Mullan) and his bitter, unhappy wife (Tilda Swinton) on their river barge. The nearly simultaneous discovery of a young woman’s body in the river and the beginning of Swinton and McGregor’s torrid affair creates a vortex of sex and death which gives the film its exquisite, unshakable gloom. --FF’’