Short Subjectives June 29 2005

Opening Friday

HAPPILY EVER AFTER? ? ? ? ? (NR) Leave it to the French to come up with a truly revealing, profound, angst-wracked film about marital yearning and infidelity. Yvan Attal’s film concerns three male friends dealing with various romantic discontents ranging from a wandering eye to a desire to settle down. Charlotte Gainsbourg (Attal’s real-life wife) delivers the film’s truly knockout performance as a wife and mother who expresses conflicting fight-or-flight tendencies as she watches her marriage crumbling. — Felicia Feaster

REBOUND (PG) If you worried that no underdog sports comedy would open this week, rest easy. Martin Lawrence plays a disgraced NBA coach who gets a shot at redemption when he makes winners out of an inept, ragtag team of middle-schoolers. See if it strays from the same formula as Kicking & Screaming and The Bad News Bears remake.

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL: THE JOURNEY OF ROMEO DALLAIRE

? ? ? ? (NR) See review

Duly Noted

THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)? ? (PG-13) Go director Doug Liman’s espionage thriller starts well, with amnesiac Matt Damon discovering that he’s got spy skills and hit men on his trail. But the film forgets the best plot twists of Robert Ludlum’s original novel and falls into a repetitious cycle: Chris Cooper’s nasty CIA man yells at underlings, Damon hesitantly romances love interest Franka Potente, and action scenes unfold in a workmanlike manner. The sequel is better. Flicks on 5th. Wed., July 6, 9 p.m. Centergy Plaza, Technology Square, 75 Fifth Street. Free. 404-894-2805. www.flickson5th.com. — Curt Holman

GREASE (1978) (PG) John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John play high-schoolers in the peppy, silly film version of the long-running musical about the idealized 1950s. Screen on the Green. Thurs., June 30. Dusk. Meadow at Piedmont Park, 10th Street and Monroe Avenue. Free. 404-878-2600. www.turner.com/screenonthegreen.

THE OIL FACTOR (NR) Documentary filmmakers Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy examine the influence of oil in the Bush administration’s war on terror and other foreign policy decisions. Fri., July 1, 8:30 p.m. Little Five Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave. Free. 404-523-3471. www.atlanta.indymedia.org.

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.

THE SHINING (1980)? ? ? (R) “Heeeere’s Johnny!” Also, here’s Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson in the famed director’s loose, chilly and seemingly endless adaptation of Steven King’s haunted-hotel best-seller. It doesn’t completely work, but Kubrick’s moody images and Nicholson’s madcap (emphasis on the “mad”) performance of a blocked writer gone bonkers leave indelible stains on film history. Coca-Cola Summer Film Festival. Thurs., July 7, 8 p.m. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. $7. 404-817-8700. www.foxtheatre.org. — CH

SPIRITED AWAY (2002)? ? ? ? ? (PG) When her parents are turned into pigs, a Japanese girl enters the realm of spirits and deities to save them and herself. An Alice in Wonderland for the 21st century, this winner of the 2002 Best Animated Feature Oscar finds director Hayao Miyazaki (of Howl’s Moving Castle) at the height of his powers, offering mature characterizations, sharp conflicts without violence and one of the strangest, least predictable coming-of-age stories you’ve ever set eyes on. Fri.-Sat., July 1-2, midnight. Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, 931 Monroe Drive. 678-495-1424. — CH

Continuing

THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY & LAVAGIRL IN 3-D (PG) Sin City director Robert Rodriguez switches back to the kid-friendly mode of his Spy Kids flicks with this tale of an imaginative 10-year-old who teams up with the young title heroes to fight the evil Mr. Electric on Planet Drool.

BATMAN BEGINS? ? ? (PG-13) Memento director Christopher Nolan and American Psycho actor Christian Bale prove a perfectly-matched dynamic duo as they explore the psychological trauma that turned millionaire orphan Bruce Wayne into a masked vigilante. Nolan and Bale bring undeniably gritty intensity to the film’s first half, but as it works to its conclusion, it’s hard to overlook the silliness of the villains’ Evil Scheme or the miscasting of too-cute Katie Holmes as a tough D.A. It’s still the best Batman movie ever made, and the only one in which the Caped Crusader, instead of his villains, is the star. — CH

BEWITCHED? ? (PG-13) As a fading movie star, Will Ferrell insists on casting an unthreatening amateur actress (a likably girlish Nicole Kidman) to play supernatural Samantha to his befuddled Darrin in an updated “Bewitched” sitcom — not realizing that she really is a witch trying to pass as human. Co-writer/director Nora Ephron makes the most of a talented cast (including many hip supporting players from “The Daily Show”) and some fitfully funny showbiz satire. But rather than push the film’s post-modern possibilities in exciting directions, Ephron falls back on the chick-flick courtship cliches she helped set in stone with films like Sleepless in Seattle. — CH

CINDERELLA MAN ? ? ? (PG-13) Like Seabiscuit with Russell Crowe playing the inspirational racehorse, only in this case he’s Jimmy Braddock, a Depression-era boxer who endures economic deprivation to achieve one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. The first 45 or so minutes amount to little more than pious sludge, with Renee Zellweger scrunching her face up cutely as Braddock’s loving, concerned wife. Once Braddock’s comeback starts, though, Cinderella Man finds both a sense of humor and a terrific screen villain in strutting heavyweight champ Max Baer (Craig Bierko). The story and Crowe’s performance both find snap and swagger in its high-impact boxing scenes. — CH

CRASH ? ? ? (R) Writer/director Paul Haggis (whose Million Dollar Baby script won an Oscar) presents one of those sprawling multi-character films set in Southern California, only it emphasizes racism as the unifying element. Both thought-provokingly relevant and shamelessly manipulative, Crash presents a simmering melting pot of frustrated Los Angelenos waiting to take out their rage on the first person of a different color who crosses their path. The engrossing scenes and dedicated actors (including Don Cheadle in the central role as an honest LAPD detective) make up for Crash’s heavy-handed storytelling. - CH

GEORGE A. ROMERO’S LAND OF THE DEAD? ? (R) Writer/director George Romero, who virtually invented the ultra-violent zombie flick, returns to the genre after a two-decades absence with his fourth film in his Dead series. Much of the film plays like second-string Mad Max, with tough commandos trying to protect a besieged human city from an army of increasingly intelligent zombies. If you’re not already a fan of the genre, you’ll find Land a little too disgusting to stomach, but Romero’s sociopolitical consciousness remains intact. The film plays like a parable of the have-nots rising against the haves. And eating them. — CH

HERBIE: FULLY LOADED (PG) This automotive comedy harks back to the era when “The Love Bug” made us think of sentient Volkswagen beetles, not sexually transmitted diseases. Lindsay Lohan plays a spunky girl whose smart car becomes an unlikely NASCAR contender.

HIGH TENSION? ? ? ? (NC-17) Like some un-ironic, pre-Scream throwback to the convention-sodden, blood-soaked teen slashers of the ’70s and ’80s, this unimaginatively brutal tale of a French prole whose slaughter of a family living in the countryside coincides with the arrival at the farm of two nubile vixens. High Tension reworks every hackneyed bit o’ business in that crude genre, from the baroque murder techniques to the working-class killer assaulting the middle class. The film attempts to excuse its tedious by-the-books mechanics with a twist ending that renders previous events impossible. — FF

THE HONEYMOONERS? ? (PG-13) Conniving bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) and dim-witted sewer worker Ed Norton (Mike Epps) resort to crazy get-rich-quick schemes to buy a duplex for their wives Alice (Gabrielle Union) and Trixie (Regina Hall). Most of the shtick inspired by the Jackie Gleason sitcom — falling fire escapes, sewer-based mishaps, mother-in-law jokes — falls flat, and the tame PG-13 dialogue keeps Ralph and Alice from venting some creative invective. Cedric and Hall hold their own, but the remake reminds us that they didn’t call Gleason “The Great One” for nothing. — CH

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE? ? ? ? (PG) In industrial-era Europe, a repressed shop girl becomes transformed into a elderly (but spunky) woman after getting embroiled with feuding wizards. Hayao Miyazaki, the world’s greatest living director of animated films, offers some wild, whimsical variations on themes similar to his Oscar-winning Spirited Away, in which another spellbound girl found romance, empowerment and outlandish monsters. At times the rules of Miyazaki’s world can be confusing, but the director rightly appreciates that the magic of a story often lies in the mystery. — CH

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. Also, The Living Sea (NR), features humpback whales, golden jellyfish and giant clams in this documentary about the diversity of undersea life, with music by Sting and narrated by Meryl Streep. (CH) Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

LADIES IN LAVENDER? ? ? (PG-13) Two elderly sisters find a handsome Polish man (Daniel Brü hl) washed up on the shoreline near their bungalow on the remote Cornish seaside in the 1930s and nurse him back to health. The younger sister (Judi Dench), who has never married, becomes especially emotionally attached to the boy. This low-key, gentle character study, the directorial debut from actor Charles Dance, has a tendency to periodically peter out and lose focus and momentum but the performances by Maggie Smith and Dench as the two lonely, bickering sisters bring a degree of psychological urgency to this tender, understated film. — FF

LAYER CAKE? ? ? (R) A never-named London drug dealer (Daniel Craig) plans to retire from the British underworld but finds himself increasingly ensnared by it. An intoxicating, pop-scored prologue suggests that the real high comes not from doing drugs, but dealing them. Matthew Vaughn, producer of Guy Ritchie’s stylish English mob films, brings similar flash but ultimately more substance worthy of a cautionary tale. - CH

THE LONGEST YARD? ? A disgraced NFL star (Adam Sandler) leads a team of violent inmates against their sadistic guards in this remake of the 1974 Burt Reynolds comedy. The authority-defying premise and violent punch lines still click, but the relentlessly homophobic humor earns the film penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct. — CH

MAD HOT BALLROOM? ? ? (PG) Like the superior Spellbound, this documentary centers on several groups of kids who, as students enrolled in the NYC public school system’s ballroom dancing classes, hope to find themselves competing in the annual tournament. This is yet one more nonfiction film that ably extols the transformative power of the arts and its ability to allow individuals to discover the best within themselves. It’s a pleasure spending down-time with these lovely boys and girls, which is why it’s disappointing when the movie shifts away from their individuality to focus on the mechanics of the tournament. — Matt Brunson

MADAGASCAR ? ? (PG) Four pampered Central Park Zoo animals become fish out of water when a series of mishaps maroon them on the jungle isle of Madagascar. When Ben Stiller’s Alex the Lion finds himself increasingly ravenous and views best pal Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock) as prey, the computer-animated comedy briefly finds a premise to sink its teeth into. Mostly, though, Madagascar follows Dreamworks’ habit of emphasizing big-name voice actors and predictable pop references instead of strong plots and characters. - CH

MONSTER-IN-LAW? ? (PG-13) In the tradition of Meet the Parents’s in-law anxiety, Jane Fonda plays a high-powered mother-in-law who violently disapproves of her surgeon son’s choice of a new girlfriend (Jennifer Lopez), a slacker temp. Fonda has campy fun in her return to the screen after 15 years, but nothing can distract from some fairly unimaginative plotting and Lopez’s failure to hold up her end of the comedy. - FF

MR. & MRS. SMITH? ? ? (PG-13) Tabloid-fueling hottie movie stars (and supposedly just friends) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play bored spouses who turn out to be assassins unaware of each other’s true occupation. True Lies and The Incredibles beat this film to the punch by using secret identities as metaphors for marital tension. Like those recordings in Mission Impossible, the movie erases itself from your memory, but both actors prove in good form, and thanks to some smart, supple filmmaking from Go director Doug Liman, it’s fun to keep up with the Smiths. — CH

MY SUMMER OF LOVE (R) In Yorkshire, working-class lass Mona (Nathalie Press) and boarding school heiress Tasmin (Emily Blunt) become increasingly close, incurring the suspicions of Mona’s ex-con brother (Cinderella Man’s Paddy Considine).

MYSTERIOUS SKIN? ? ? ? ? (NC-17) A devastating, unforgettable and often hard to watch film about how sexual molestation changes the lives of two Kansas boys, one of whom becomes a teenage hustler (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The film features powerhouse performances by Levitt and Brady Corbet, as a shell-shocked teen who believes he was abducted by aliens as a kid. Using a purposefully candy-coated, surreal style, director Gregg Araki shoots reality through the prism of two childhoods permanently altered by abuse. — FF

THE PERFECT MAN? ? Hilary Duff, the personable but one-note Disney Channel star, plays Holly Hamilton, a teen who fabricates a Mr. Right to cheer up her lonely single mom (Heather Locklear). But it never occurs to Holly that, duh, her mom might eventually want to meet this seemingly perfect man in the flesh, and that’s when her scheme begins to unravel. Even allowing that this is supposed to be a frothy comedy aimed at younger viewers, the film is so casually cruel in its treatment of its characters (particular Locklear’s, who craves a man like a junkie craves his next fix) that a bad taste lingers in the mouth even after everybody learns their valuable life lessons during the final 10 minutes. — MB

RIZE? ? ? ? ? (PG-13) A kind of Paris Is Burning for the straight world, about how a subculture of dance can give poor black kids a sense of identity and escape from the nihilism of their daily lives. This electric documentary shot by fashion photographer David LaChapelle is enormously moving on many levels. Rize focuses on the “clowning” and “krumping” dance phenomena that originated in L.A.’s inner-city Watts neighborhood. Blending elements of African tribal movements, Maori war dance, breakdancing, stripper booty shaking and martial arts, the extensive dance footage gives the film its heady, narcotic jolt. The sheer release and exorcism of creativity is apparent as these kids living in doom-plagued neighborhoods vent all of their frustrations into art. — FF

SAVING FACE (R) A young Chinese-American lesbian (Michelle Krusiec) locks horns with her traditional mother (Joan Chen) in this culture-clash dramedy written and directed by Alice Wu.

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS? ? ? Ann Brashares’ best-selling book has been transformed into an agreeable film for those interested in an emotional high. As they prepare to separate for the summer, four high-school friends - brainy America Ferrera, shy Alexis Bledel, sexy Blake Lively and antisocial Amber Tamblyn - decide that a pair of jeans will serve as their link to each other. Statutory rape, parental abandonment, the death of a child - these are heavy issues for any movie. While Sisterhood occasionally skirts around their full import, it’s honest enough to acknowledge the perils of adolescence as well as the pleasures. - MB

STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH? ? ? ? (PG-13) George Lucas gets his Sith together for the fast-paced, thematically dark and politically pointed final chapter of his space opera saga. As Darth-Vader-to-be, Hayden Christensen still comes across as a Hitler Youth Mark Hamill, but his adolescent-sized angst doesn’t diminish the film’s increasingly apocalyptic tone. Though the nonstop battle scenes (Droids! Wookies! Duplicitous heads of state!) make the film feel like an immersive video game, the dark subject matter gives weight to the sci-fi swashbuckling. - CH

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (PG-13) See review