Short Subjectives February 23 2005

Opening Friday
BRIDE AND PREJUDICE (PG-13) Bend it Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha switches from phys ed to Eng lit to offer a Bollywood musical-style version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, transplanted to contemporary India, England and America.

CURSED (PG-13) Scream director Wes Craven and scripter Kevin Williamson reunite for this troubled production about young Los Angelenos (including Christina Ricci) who might be turning into werewolves. In Los Angeles they should fit right in.

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (PG-13) See review on p. 51.

MAN OF THE HOUSE (PG-13) Tommy Lee Jones’ tough Texas Ranger teams with Cedric the Entertainer’s streetwise informant to go undercover to protect five University of Texas cheerleaders who happen to be witnesses of a crime.

NOBODY KNOWS (PG-13) See review on p. 50.

Duly Noted
THE ART & CRIMES OF RON ENGLISH (NR) Ron English’s artworks featuring renditions of corporate henchmen like Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse were prominently featured in Morgan Spurlock’s fast-food expos&233; Super Size Me. Fans of English’s culture jamming will find even more fodder in Pedro Carvajal’s documentary, in which English’s paintings are often a detour from his real love: creating mock billboards lampooning our fast food, gas-guzzling, Bush/Cheney warmongering nation. It’s easy to admire English’s chutzpah (a parody of Apple’s “Think Different” ad campaign featuring Charlie Manson-as-spokesman is genius) in beating advertising at its own game, even if his tactics can seem a little drama queen, and at times just plain obnoxious. Feb. 24. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. $5 ($3 until 5 p.m.). 404-651-3565. www.cinefest.org. - Felicia Feaster

THE DAILIES PROJECT: LOSING CONTROL (NR) See review on p. 54.

DOLLS (2003) (NR) Takeshi Kitano, director of last year’s Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman presents three quiet, delicate tales of love taken to extremes. Feb. 25-March 3. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. $5 ($3 until 5 p.m.). 404-651-3565. www.cinefest.org.

THE END OF SUBURBIA (NR) The film collective subMedia and the Positive Energy Foundation present this documentary about oil depletion, renewable resources and the collapse of the American dream. Feb. 26, 8 p.m. Eyedrum. 290 Martin Luther King Jr Dr., Suite 8. 404.522.0655. www.submediatv.com.

THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943) (NR) This rarely seen film noir stars John Garfield as a Spanish Civil War veteran who returns to New York to investigate a friend’s death at the hands of fascists. On the Side of Freedom. Feb. 26, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

FILM LOVE 3 (NR) In the third “Film Love” program, Frequent Small Reveals presents short films, all made and released in the 1960s, that depict the African-American experience during the tumultuous decade, from Black Power to the “I Have a Dream” speech. Feb. 25, 8 p.m. Eyedrum. 290 Martin Luther King Jr Dr, Suite 8. $6. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.

I WAS BORN A BLACK WOMAN The Latin American and Caribbean Community Center, WRFG 89.3 and the US Human Rights Network present the life of Benedita da Silva, the first Afro-Brazilian woman elected to Brazil’s Senate. Da Silva will speak. Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m. Little Five Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave. Call for price. 404-523-3471.

REQUIEM FOR A ROMANTIC WOMAN (1998) (NR) In 1807 Frankfurt, a 30-year-old poet and a 16-year-old girl fall into a life-changing affair. Recent Films from Germany. March 2, 7 p.m. Goethe Institut Inter Nationes, 1197 Peachtree St., Colony Square. $4. 404-892-2388.

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.

RUNNING ON KARMA (2003) (NR) Andy Lau of House of Flying Daggers and Infernal Affairs stars in this comedic action film as a muscle-bound monk who gets a job as an exotic dancer, then teams up with a cop (Cecilia Cheung) to catch a murderous contortionist. Hong Kong Panorama. Feb. 25, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

YUMEJI (1991) (NR) Seijun Suzuki’s film, loosely based on the life of early 20th-century painter Yumeji Takeshi, presents a dreamlike series of interconnected vignettes of the artist drifting from one beautiful woman to another. Great Japanese Filmmakers. Feb. 24, 7:30 p.m. 205 White Hall, Emory University. Free. 404-727-5087. www.emory.edu/college/film.

Continuing
ARE WE THERE YET? (PG) Ice Cube follows the accident-prone trail blazed by the Vacation movies as a child-hating bachelor who delivers two hostile tots (Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden) from Portland to Vancouver. Are We There Yet? amusingly plays off Cube’s crabby demeanor, but for every honest laugh there’s a lame gross-out or a shameless bid for sentiment. Rather than ask Are We There Yet? just stay home. - CH

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (R) A snowbound Detroit station-house falls under siege from a death squad of crooked officers out to kill Laurence Fishburne’s dapper crimelord and any witnesses inside, cop and robber alike. This remake of John Carpenter’s tense, lo-fi 1976 action flick features bigger-name actors (Gabriel Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Drea de Matteo) and slick effects, but never makes good on the promise its exciting prologue. Consider it an assault on Carpenter’s originality and your own spare time. - CH

THE AVIATOR (PG-13) It’s not perfect, but Martin Scorsese’s biopic of ingenious, mentally unbalanced billionaire, aviator and film director Howard Hughes is as entertaining as all get-out, capturing both his nearly supernatural creativity and his debilitating, obsessive manias. DiCaprio proves up to the task of embodying this wildly contradictory man, adding both pathos and perversity to Scorsese’s portrait of a deeply flawed but iconoclastic American. This meaty epic provides the added bonus, for Scorsese fans, of shedding light on his career-long propensity for obsessive, charismatic film anti-heroes, and for illuminating the many connections the director undoubtedly sees between Hughes and his own creative pursuits always endangered by human fallibility and even madness. - FF

BAD EDUCATION (NC-17) Borrowing influences from Fassbinder, Sirk, Hitchcock and Buuel, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar creates one of his most satisfying, emotionally fraught film fantasias to date. Centered on how the sexual abuse of a schoolboy (played as an adult by the astounding Gael Garcia Bernal) at the hands of a Catholic priest effects his grown-up relationship with a long-lost lover (Fele Martinez), the film moves back and forth in time and never quite assures us as to the truth or fantasy of the unfolding events. Loaded with melancholy and lensed in the director’s familiar candy-coated tones, Bad Education is a study in stirring, powerful contradictions. - FF

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE (PG) A kid’s movie about a girl and her dog set in the dying Southern town of Naomi, Fla., this film by Wayne Wang mixes cornball pratfalls aimed at the Nickelodeon set with a surprisingly substantive statement about maternal abandonment and how the collapse of Naomi’s industry trickles down to infect its despairing population. Like The Apostle crossed with Lassie, the film marks yet another bizarre but compelling entry in Wang’s schizophrenic career that has encompassed brainy eros (The Center of the World), Hollywood product (Maid in Manhattan) and indie fare like (Smoke) - FF

BEING JULIA (R) In this adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s novel Theatre, Annette Bening gives one of the year’s best performances as a 1938 London stage diva who falls in love with a much younger man and learns the difference between acting and living. Apart from Bening’s rich, rewarding portrayal, Being Julia offers a light-hearted but fairly frivolous melodrama about temperamental theater artists. But the story builds to a satisfying conclusion and Juliet Stevenson provides an amusing turn as Bening’s no-nonsense dresser. — CH

BIGGER THAN THE SKY (PG-13) A lonely guy (Marcus Thomas) finds himself cast as the big-nosed title character in a small town theater’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac, cast opposite “Sex and the City’s” John Corbett and “Felicity’s” Amy Smart.

BOOGEYMAN (PG-13) Get boogie fever in this horror film about a man, traumatized by mysterious events from his childhood, who must face his demons when he returns to the old homestead. Lucy Lawless of “Xena: Warrior Princess” has a supporting role.

THE CHORUS (PG-13) Sure it’s a sack of clich&233;s that those with an intolerance to glucose will want to avoid. But if you’re in the mood for something unthreatening and mildly sweet, then this crowd-pleaser that made French audiences go gaga and Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee is an expectation-affirming diversion. The appealing G&233;rard Jugnot plays a failed musician who takes a job at a remote reform school for boys at the end of World War II. As one might guess from the title, he do-re-mi’s the delinquent children into a chorus of angels. - FF

COACH CARTER (PG-13) This sports drama drafts Samuel L. Jackson as a basketball coach who benches his undefeated team due to their poor academic record. It’s directed by Thomas Carter, which sounds like nepotism but probably isn’t.

CONSTANTINE (R) Chain-smoking, foul-mouthed exorcist John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) matches wits with demons and angels to help a Los Angeles cop (Rachel Weisz) investigate her twin sister’s death. This loose, flashy adaptation of DC Comics’ Hellblazer Americanizes the character nearly out of existence, and Reeves lacks the presence to credibly play a ghostbusting Dirty Harry. The film provides some exciting visual flourishes and fresh perspectives on redemption and damnation, but mostly Constantine lacks soul. - CH

FINDING NEVERLAND (PG) Director Marc Forster finds a connection between Scottish author J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his most famous creation, Peter Pan. Both desire to avoid the bitter realities of death and growing up by escaping to a Neverland of perpetual childhood. Depp gives a magical performance in this wonderfully bittersweet, loose adaptation of Barrie’s life, which imagines how his friendship with four young boys and their widowed mother (Kate Winslet) - and their shared experience of death - might have inspired him to create Peter Pan. - FF

GUERILLA: THE TAKING OF PATTY HEARST (NR) Filmmaker Robert Stone harks back to one of America’s strangest cases of home-grown terrorism when a band of radicals kidnapped and brainwashed heiress Patty Hearst into joining their cause. Stone opted not to interview Hearst and instead focus on the Symbionese Liberation Army, but with the primary kidnappers dead or incommunicado, the account feels second-hand, like following the case in the media of the mid-1970s. Guerilla provides a frequently gripping account despite its limited perspective. - CH

HIDE AND SEEK (R) Robert De Niro follows up last fall’s creepy-kid movie Godsend with another creepy-kid movie as the father of Dakota Fanning, whose imaginary friend seems to be disturbingly real.

HITCH (PG-13) It’s a rare director and actor who can handle the contrapuntal demands of romantic comedy. As inoffensively lovable as Will Smith is, he makes a far better class clown than a love-burned romantic lead. “Hitch” is a Manhattan matchmaker schooling nerdy guys to romance their dream girls who must learn to love again from a newspaper gossip columnist (a brittle Eva Mendes). When Hitch coasts on factory-assembled comic convention (black guy teaches white guy how to play it coooool) the film is on firm ground. When it asks Mendes and Smith to summon up some chemistry, and heads toward a canned matrimonial denouement, the fun turns into grueling ordeal. - FF

HOTEL RWANDA (PG-13) Don Cheadle superbly portrays a middle-class Rwandan hotel manager who rescues hundreds of Tutsis during the country’s 1994 genocide. Irish filmmaker Terry George uses suspense film techniques to seize our attention for the film’s angry themes, holding the nations of the West directly responsible for their inaction during the massacres. Hotel Rwanda combines a compelling narrative with moral clarity better than any political film of the past year. - CH

HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (PG-13) Chinese director Zhang Yimou (Hero) continues to apply his art-film aesthetics and critiques of violence to the Hong Kong action film in this romance set in 859 A.D. China as the Tang dynasty crumbles. Undercover cop Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is assigned to track blind courtesan Mei (Zhang Ziyi) who may be a member of the underground rebel group, the House of Flying Daggers. Yimou’s treatment of two lovers struggling between weightless, acrobatic highs and earthbound obligations give the film a trace of substance amidst the requisite, often taxing martial arts fighting scenes. - FF

IMAX THEATER: Bugs! (NR) A praying mantis and a butterfly “star” in this documentary about the insects of the Borneo rainforest - some of whom will be magnified 250,000 times their normal size on the IMAX screen. Africa: The Serengeti (NR) An East African safari captures “the Great Migration” of more than two million wildebeests, zebras and antelope over 500 miles across the Serengeti plains, with such predators as lions and cheetahs in hot pursuit. The Greatest Places (NR) It’s location, location, location in this de facto “Best of IMAX” overview of the world’s most spectacular places. Fridays at 10 p.m. (CH) Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

MEET THE FOCKERS (PG-13) Meet the Parents’ Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) introduces his prospective in-laws, including Robert De Niro’s control freak, to his touchy-feely parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand). Streisand and Hoffman take palpable pleasure at teasing De Niro and provide broad but rich comic turns that, alas, can’t redeem Fockers’ forced humor of Stiller’s humiliation. Plus, with so many jokes about breast milk, procreation and parenting, it’s like a commercial to get out there and breed. - CH

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (PG-13) While America’s critics are busy hurting themselves trying to come up with more accolades for this “masterpiece” by American film “genius” Clint Eastwood, the rest of us scratch our heads in utter disbelief, wondering what all the fuss is about. This clich&233;-addicted boxing drama, laquered with a feigned working class melancholy cribbed from previous pugilist pictures, depicts a spunky blue collar boxer (Hilary Swank) who lives out her daddy fantasies when a grizzled boxing trainer (Eastwood) overcomes his aversion to girl fighters and coaches her to victory. - FF

ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR (R) You may not think you want to see a subtitled movie about Thai kickboxing, but believe me, you do. Watching Tony Jaa punch, flip and propel himself through this pulpy, fast-paced tale gives you a heady thrill of discovery akin to the ground-breaking, head-breaking early work of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Apart from the exotic opening scene (a kind of Extreme Capture the Flag game in a tree), the plot won’t win any prizes for originality, but with such brutal brawls and exuberant chase scenes, Ong-Bak is a kick in the head. - CH

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (PG-13) A crazed musical genius (Gerard Butler) bedevils a 19th century French opera house, especially a lovely ingenue (Emmy Rossum). Fans of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical will lap up director Joel Schumacher’s faithful film adaptation: The baroque, lavish production design serves the excesses of the musical score, and gives you the feeling of being immersed in an elephantine Broadway show. - CH

POOH’S HEFFALUMP MOVIE (G) You can always trust your pre-Pixar-age kids with Winnie the Pooh and his neighbors, but the latest visit to the Hundred Acre Wood will prompt grown-ups to groan, “Oh, bother.” A heffalump scare puts Pooh and company in a tizzy until young Roo discovers that the elephantine critters are just plain folks. With sappy songs by Carly Simon, the film can’t tell outright treacle from the pleasing, gentle whimsy of the early Pooh films, but the toddlers won’t mind. - CH

RACING STRIPES (PG) This mix of live action and animation depicts an ambitious zebra (voiced by Frankie Muniz) who longs to compete against professional race horses. Other voices for talking animals include Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Foxworthy, Snoop Dogg and Dustin Hoffman.

THE SEA INSIDE (PG-13) See review, p. 52. - CH

SIDEWAYS (R) A failed novelist (Paul Giamatti) takes his oldest friend, a has-been actor (Thomas Haden Church) for a pre-wedding trip through California wine country in the latest examination of American mediocrity from About Schmidt director Alexander Payne. The most highly praised film of 2004, Sideways expounds a surprisingly sincere belief in wine as a metaphor for life, and for a while unfolds as a mellow, impeccably acted idyll (with terrific supporting turns from Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh). Payne eventually sheds his merciless insights on his self-absorbed male characters, but like a fine wine, his harsh sensibilities have mellowed with age. - CH

SKY BLUE (NR) In this Korean animated film derivative of Japanese anime, the last major city of 21st Earth becomes the battleground between the pampered, ruling minority and an oppressed underclass. The film uses spectacular computer effects to render to the city’s monstrous industrial works, but the bland, hand-drawn animation only emphasizes the flat stereotypes of the story. — CH

SON OF THE MASK (PG) This sequel to Jim Carrey’s fun special-effects comedy The Mask stars neither Carrey nor Cameron Diaz, but Jamie Kennedy as a would-be cartoonist who stumbles across the magical headgear of the title. In nods to Norse mythology, Bob Hoskins and Alan Cumming play Odin and Loki, respectively.

THE WEDDING DATE (PG-13) To spite her ex-fiancee a single New Yorker (Debra Messing) pays a suave male escort (Dermot Mulroney) $6,000 to pose as her new boyfriend for her sister’s lavish wedding in England. On “Will & Grace,” Messing’s acting style could be called “Jennifer Aniston for the hearing impaired,” but Date derives instead from Julia Roberts’ hit films: It’s a nuptial spoof with Dermot Mulroney, like My Best Friend’s Wedding, a romantic comedy set in England like Notting Hill and a glorification of prostitution, like Pretty Woman. Talk about “something borrowed.” - CH

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE This adaptation of Shakespeare’s problem comedy puts the stereotypical portrait of moneylender Shylock (Al Pacino) in the context of the anti-Semitism of 16th century Venice. Director/adaptor Michael Radford brings nothing to the film that Shakespeare’s text can’t support, and with Pacino’s smoldering, reined-in performance, persuasively turns the comedy into Shylock’s tragedy. Despite the effervescence of Lynn Collins’ Portia, the airy romantic subplots never meet the level of Shylock’s fiery drama, but Venice still proves to be one of the wisest yet least jokey Shakespearean film comedies. - CH??