Short Subjectives February 01 2006

Opening Friday

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· GARÇON STUPIDE 3 stars. (NR) See review.

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· A GOOD WOMAN (PG) This adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name features Helen Hunt as a seductress who attracts the husband of a younger woman (the ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson).

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· SOMETHING NEW (PG-13) See review.

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· WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (PG-13) Increasingly ominous phone calls terrorize a baby sitter in this remake of the 1979 thriller (inspired by a famous urban legend). If it’s a hit, they can remake the 1993 sequel, the brilliantly titled When a Stranger Calls Back.

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· THE WHITE COUNTESS 2 stars. (R) A blind former diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) forms a wary romance with a Russian countess-turned-sometime-prostitute (Natasha Richardson) in 1930s Shanghai. The last in the Merchant-Ivory line of hoity-toity films (cut short with the death of producer Ismail Merchant), The White Countess presents a pair of intriguing characters and an exotic setting, but suffers from anemic passions and heavy-handed symbolism. — Curt Holman

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· THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN 3 stars. See review.

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Duly Noted

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· FEBRUARY ONE (NR) This documentary of the Civil Rights Movement chronicles the influential challenges to Jim Crow laws in Greensboro, N.C., in the winter of 1960. Movies with a Mission. Sun., Feb. 5, 3 p.m. The APEX Museum, 135 Auburn Ave. Free. 770-234-5890. www.sankofaspirit.com.

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· CORPSE BRIDE 3 stars. (PG) A sensitive groom (voiced by Johnny Depp) finds himself unwillingly wed to an alluring dead chick (Helena Bonham Carter) in Tim Burton’s darkly comic animated musical. Nearly every frame of the film drips with inventive gothic invention, but Corpse Bride’s songs, puns and plotting all pale in comparison to the director’s previous stop-motion outing, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Thurs., Feb. 2, call for times. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. $5 ($3 until 5 p.m.). 404-651-3565. www2.gsu.edu/~wwwcft. — Holman

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· INITIAL D (2005) (NR) Based on a popular Japanese manga, this change-of-pace car-racing movie depicts a nonchalant teen who becomes a champion mountain racer to give himself more time to sleep. Hong Kong Panorama. Fri., Feb. 3, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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· MY SCHOOL PAL (1960) (NR) During World War II, a postman is declared insane for writing a letter to Hermann Goring asking him to stop the war. Directed by Robert Siodmak of Cobra Woman fame. The Rühmann Film Series. Wed., Feb. 8, 7 p.m. Goethe Institut Atlanta, 1197 Peachtree St. $3-$4. 404-894-2388.

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· ONE NIGHT IN MONGKOK (2004) (NR) Derek Yee won Best Director and Best Screenplay honors at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards for this gritty crime story set on Christmas Eve in Mongkok, Hong Kong’s seediest, most densely populated district. Hong Kong Panorama. Sat., Feb. 4, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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· 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.

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· TWISTED REALTIES (NR) This program features four short films directed by Cherokee County resident Herb Henderson: “Parental Fear,” “The Unwelcome,” “The Inheritance” and “Pillow Talk.” Fri., Feb. 3, midnight. El Cine Mireles, 3378 Canton Road. $4.25-$6.25. www.elcinemireles.com.

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· WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT 3 stars. (G) Inane inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his silent, sensible dog, Gromit, take on an oversized rabbit-monster before their town’s beloved vegetable competition. Compared to Chicken Run and the claymation duo’s short films, Were-Rabbit’s script feels thin and puns feel forced, but the brilliant set-pieces wittily lampoon horror-film clichés. Thurs., Feb. 2. Cinefest, GSU University Center, Suite 211, 66 Courtland St. $5 ($3 until 5 p.m.). 404-651-3565. www2.gsu.edu/~wwwcft. — Holman

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Continuing

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· ANNAPOLIS (PG-13) James Franco plays a young man “from the wrong side of the tracks” trying to succeed in the hyper-competitive Naval Academy. With Tyrese as his tough instructor, Annapolis looks like a WB Network version of An Officer and a Gentleman.

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· BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE 2 (PG-13) Martin Lawrence reprises his role as an FBI agent with a penchant for dressing up like old ladies. This time “Big Momma” takes the job as a housekeeper/nanny to a suspected designer of deadly computer viruses.

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· BREAKFAST ON PLUTO 4 stars. (R) Abandoned on the doorstep of a priest (Liam Neeson) as a baby, a young Irish transvestite (Cillian Murphy) takes a wide-eyed ramble through 1970s Ireland and England in search of his birth mother. Co-adapting Patrick McCabe’s novel, director Neil Jordan veers from humor to drama and from realism to fantasy, as if Pluto’s spirit is too big to be confined to a single genre. You never know what will turn the next corner of this picaresque comedy — brutal IRA terrorists? Brendan Gleeson in a funny animal costume? — that boasts rich period detail, an intriguingly pacifist viewpoint and Murphy’s dreamily detached performance. — Holman

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· BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN 5 stars. (R) Ang Lee’s heart-wrenching Western one-ups the male tenderness and isolation of the traditional oater by basing this film on Annie Proulx’s short story of two cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) who fall in love in 1963 Wyoming. Lee’s film is lovely to look at and profoundly moving, touching on both the economic and spiritual isolation of the ranch hand’s life and also the more universal alienation of being a man. Ledger is superb as an archetype of male interiority, an emotionally contained man who finds his slim fragments of happiness in short, infrequent meetings with Jack, who dreams of an impossible future for their doomed love affair. — Felicia Feaster

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· BUBBLE 3 stars. (R) Hollywood playa Steven Soderbergh goes lo-fi in this working class tragedy about a pair of emotionless doll factory workers in Ohio whose humdrum lives are altered when a pretty single mother arrives on the doll-painting floor. A film founded on routine lives and repressed emotions, Bubble captures in Soderbergh’s minimalist tone, the feel of its depressing milieu (thanks in large part to its cast of nonprofessional actors). But this first of six films Soderbergh has agreed to direct for HDNet films, which in a novel exhibition strategy will release on DVD, in theaters and on TV simultaneously, doesn’t seem like an especially passionate or visionary break from Hollywood.

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· CACHÉ 5 stars. (R) Devastating and creepy, this Best Director Cannes Film Festival award winner from Michael Haneke concerns a Paris family, Anne (Juliette Binoche) and Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and their 12-year-old son (Lester Makedonsky), who are being terrorized by an unknown person sending them disturbing videotapes and drawings. Haneke’s usual critique of the European upper middle-class’s blindness to the dis-ease and trauma of the world around them is enriched by intentional and coincidental allusions to French history, the country’s miserable track record in Algeria, and the recent violence in the poor banlieues of Paris. — Feaster

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· CAPOTE 5 stars. (R) It’s hard to take your eyes off Philip Seymour Hoffman as the vain, brilliant, manipulative and also haunted writer Truman Capote. Shrugging off the limitations of the usual biopic story arc, Bennett Miller’s absorbing, thought-provoking, extremely well-crafted first fiction film (he directed the documentary The Cruise) focuses on a small but significant portion of Capote’s life during the researching of his groundbreaking work of true crime nonfiction In Cold Blood, and the unhealthy mutual dependency that develops between the writer and one of the killers (Clifton Collins Jr.) of a Kansas farm family. — Feaster

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· CASANOVA (R) After his risky role as Brokeback Mountain’s gay cowboy, Heath Ledger renews his hetero credentials by playing one of history’s most famous seducers in this frothy period romance directed by Lasse Hallström.

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· THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE 2 stars. (PG) Four plucky English youngsters step through an enchanted wardrobe and take sides in a magical kingdom’s war between good and evil. Initially charming, the lavish adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book struggles to balance the source material’s blend of English whimsy, epic violence and Christian allegory (complete with a cameo appearance from Father Christmas). Despite plenty of elaborately memorable images, Narnia feels more sterile than spiritual. — Holman

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· END OF THE SPEAR (PG-13) After Ecuadoran tribesmen kill five young missionaries in 1956, a young man (Louie Leonardo) sees his tribe change its violent attitudes.

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· FUN WITH DICK AND JANE 2 stars. (PG-13) When suburban corporate climber Dick (Jim Carrey) sees his Enron-esque employer go bust, he and wife Jane (Téa Leoni) resort to increasingly desperate lengths — including armed robbery — to keep the creditors at bay. Carrey has some genuinely funny moments running amok in the corporate world, but Dick deflates when the couple face destitution, then try to sting Alec Baldwin’s evil CEO. For a more entertaining and educational film on modern financial chicanery, rent Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room instead. — Holman

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· GLORY ROAD (PG) Hollywood’s efficiency at cranking out fact-based, Hoosiers-esque sports films can be a wonder to behold. In 1966, a coach (Josh Lucas) at Texas Western leads the first all-black starting line-up for a college team to the NCAA basketball championship.

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· GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK 5 stars. (PG) In the early 1950s, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) used his CBS show “See It Now” to take on U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “witch hunt” tactics. Every creative decision pays off in George Clooney’s second film, a black-and-white homage to the “greatest generation” of broadcast journalists, whose courage in the face of enormous pressures makes the Bush administration press corps look timid by comparison. The film succeeds enormously well at getting you under the skin of Murrow’s reporters and anticipating the increasing influence of entertainment on broadcast news. See it now. — Holman

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· HOSTEL (R) The director of the modestly acclaimed low-budget horror flick Cabin Fever presents another blood-drenched vacation getaway, in which three hedonistic backpackers learn a new meaning of “extreme” in a Slovakian city.

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· IMAX THEATER Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets (NR): This exploration of one of America’s greatest natural wonders retraces the canyon’s history, from Native Americans to modern-day white water rafters. Wild Safari: A South African Adventure (NR): This 5,000-mile journey from the lush grasslands of the Southern Cape to the desert expanse of the Kalahari tracks elephants, Cape buffaloes, rhinos, leopards and lions. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

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· KING KONG 3 stars. (PG-13) The heart of Peter Jackson’s lavish, slavish remake lies not in the giant ape’s improbable love for a screaming starlet (Naomi Watts), but the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s almost blind adoration of the original, also set in 1930s New York (and Skull Island). Jackson’s version contains sights that truly astonish — an attack by giant bugs, the Empire State Building sequence, Kong’s vivid personality — while feeling overly faithful to a story we know all too well. Still, despite labored comedy and some spotty special effects, the Beauty and the Beast story at the core can win over the most savage detractor. — Holman

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· LAST HOLIDAY (PG-13) Diagnosed with a terminal illness, a conservative woman (Queen Latifah) discovers love and other pleasures when she spends her life’s savings on a fancy vacation in this feel-good comedy. Gérard Depardieu plays a hotel chef, and brainy-artsy filmmaker Wayne Wang directs.

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· LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD 2 stars. (PG-13) Filmmaker/funnyman Albert Brooks plays a fictionalized version of himself as a clueless celebrity searching India and Pakistan for what makes Muslims — not to mention Hindus — laugh. The film’s first act proves genuinely hilarious as Brooks takes the government assignment and quickly finds himself over his head, but the humor dries up as the director makes his own ignorant complacency the butt of the comedy. American self-centeredness may be a worthy theme, but a real search for comedy in the Muslim world would have made a more intriguing film. — Holman

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· THE MATADOR 4 stars. (R) In this rollicking opposites-attract buddy thriller, Pierce Brosnan plays a smarmy, sexist, ice cold professional assassin who meets a geeky, failed American businessman (Greg Kinnear) in Mexico City. The two form an unlikely bond in Richard Shepard’s skillfully plotted action comedy that beneath its Tarantino-meets-Bond cool has a core of integrity and insight into the working man’s grind that lifts it above the ranks of most hipster crime story diversions. — Feaster

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· MATCH POINT 4 stars. (R) As Jonathan Rhys-Meyers’ calculating tennis pro ingratiates himself into a wealthy British family while pursuing a doomed affair with a self-destructive American actress (Scarlett Johansson, in her finest role to date), Match Point achieves an icily compelling tone comparable to The Talented Mr. Ripley that proves far more effective than the stodgy airlessness of Allen’s usual “heavy” pictures. In plot and theme, it plays like Crimes and Misdemeanors, only without the comedic misdemeanors. — Holman

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· MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS 2 stars. (R) In what could be billed as a great moment in female nudity on stage, this British period piece depicts a rich widow (Judi Dench) who revolutionizes London theater by producing nude revues before and during World War II. Despite its polished sheen and the comfy comedic interplay of Dench and Bob Hoskins, Mrs. Henderson offers a skin-deep appraisal of its subject, avoiding any meaty debate of sexuality and freedom of expression. — Holman

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· MUNICH 4 stars. (R) In the aftermath of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics, the Israeli government sends a cadre of assassins led by Eric Bana to Europe to kill the Palestinian organizers of the terrorist attack. Though Bana has a hard time drawing us emotionally into his moral dilemma about killing, with a script co-written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), Munich has much to say about how governments often use individuals to do their dirty work, and how it is the foot soldiers, not the intelligence agencies or politicians, who pay the psychological cost for committing murder in their country’s name. — Feaster

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· NANNY MCPHEE 3 stars. (PG) Reminiscent of the black comedies routinely made by Danny DeVito (most notably his delightful Matilda), Nanny McPhee finds director Kirk Jones and scripter-star Emma Thompson similarly employing menacing situations, questionable comic material and oversized, often grotesque characters in an unorthodox attempt to arrive at a sentimental conclusion. Thompson, delivering a sharp performance under pounds of facial latex, plays the title character, a snaggletoothed, wart-sprouting nursemaid who mysteriously shows up to help a widower (Colin Firth) contend with his seven monstrous children. Nanny McPhee should play well with the small fry, though adults may be more bothered by the clumsy shifts in tone. — Brunson

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· THE NEW WORLD 2 stars. (PG-13) Stunning 14-year-old Q’Orianka Kilcher plays the Indian maiden who captivates British explorer Captain John Smith and proves as visually intoxicating to Malick as the unspoiled Eden of 17th-century Virginia before the Jamestown settlers muck things up. But exquisite beauty can only get you so far. Director TerrenceMalick returns to a familiar theme of Eden ruined by human intervention but his often maddeningly precious vision is bogged down by molasses pacing and a belief that exposition is inconsequential next to the supremacy of an unspoiled girl and nature. — Feaster

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· THE PRODUCERS 2 stars. (PG-13) Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their stage roles as Bialystock and Bloom, embezzling Broadway producers bent on staging the worst flop in history. Susan Stroman, director/choreographer of the hit stage musical, so thoroughly botches the film adaptation, it could be an act of calculated self-sabotage worthy of her antiheroes. Some of Mel Brooks’ “joke songs” (like the “Springtime for Hitler” production number) feature hilarious showmanship, and Gary Beach and Roger Bart rise above their crudely written roles as gay clichés, but The Producers feels entirely too broad and exaggerated. This ham has passed its expiration date. — Holman

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· THE RINGER 2 stars. (PG-13) An office drudge (Johnny Knoxville) feigns developmental disability to rig the Special Olympics in this comedy that wavers between tame and tasteless. Watching Knoxville pretend to hurt himself in movies isn’t nearly as fun as watching him actually hurt himself on “Jackass.” Since the romantic subplot and slapstick stumbles so often, you suspect that a film that focused on the funny, complex dynamics among the disabled would have been more special in either sense of the word. — Holman

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· THE SQUID AND THE WHALE 3 stars. (R) Filmmaker Noah Baumbach offers a semi-autobiographical remembrance of divorce’s toll on the kids. The year is 1986, two bookish Brooklyn intellectuals (Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels) — based on Baumbach’s film critic mother and novelist father — split, shuttling their two sons (Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg) between their homes and unleashing some major anguish and anxieties. Often darkly funny in charting the effects of D-I-V-O-R-C-E for the over-analytical set not supposed to experience such mundane traumas, the film is too emotionally distant and too inconclusive to offer more than that age-old assertion that divorce sucks. — Feaster

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· SYRIANA 4 stars. (R) Brutally intelligent and often profoundly difficult to follow, Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Traffic) Stephen Gaghan’s second directing effort replaces Traffic’s drug war with the contemporary battle for oil. This engrossing, closely observed thriller concerns the interconnected lives of people touched by the international oil trade, including a CIA operative in the Middle East (George Clooney), a Geneva-based American energy analyst (Matt Damon), and a rising D.C. lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) who all have something to gain or lose from events in the oil-rich Middle East. — Feaster

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· TRANSAMERICA 2 stars. (R) Felicity Huffman (“Desperate Housewives”) deserves praise for her well-observed performance as Bree Osbourne, a pre-op male-to-female transsexual anxiously awaiting her sex change operation. A hitch is thrown in her plan when an adult son (Kevin Zegers) she didn’t know she had turns up and the pair drive from New York to California, meeting various kooks along the way. For a road movie about a trannie trying to keep her true gender a secret from her male prostitute son, Transamerica is a weirdly conventional film that ends up making Bree’s prissy she-male ways the butt of too many jokes. — Feaster

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· TRISTAN & ISOLDE (PG-13) James Franco, Sophia Myles and Rufus Sewell star in this retelling of how a legendary love affair between a warrior and a princess threatened the fragile peace between England and Ireland.

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· UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION (R) The sequel to Underworld features Kate Beckinsale reprising her role as a gun-toting, leather-clad blood-drinker caught it a centuries-old grudge match between vampires and werewolves.

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· WALK THE LINE 3 stars. (PG-13) This biopic of legendary but troubled country music star Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) focuses on his decades-long relationship with singer and muse June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Witherspoon offers a fresh, original portrayal of a weary celebrity in a vastly different era of pop culture from our own, but James Mangold’s film reveals little of Cash’s inner life beyond his drug problems and crush on June, so Phoenix often comes across as merely sullen. The cast impressively sings their own songs, and the early rockabilly tours (with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis) convey the excitement of rock’s early days. — Holman