Short Subjectives August 17 2005

Opening Friday

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· ASYLUM 4 stars 4 stars (R) See review on p. 62.

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· 5X2 3 stars (R) See review on p. 61.

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· THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN 4 stars (R) See review on p. 59.

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· SUPERCROSS: THE MOVIE (PG-13) Two brothers seek championship status in the world of supercross racing, where the women are fast and the bikes are faster.

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· VALIANT (G) In this computer-animated family comedy similar to the likes of Chicken Run, a diminutive wood pigeon becomes an unlikely hero in the Royal Air Force Homing Pigeon Service during World War II. Voice talents include Ewan McGregor, Tim Curry, John Cleese, “House’s” Hugh Laurie and “The Office’s” Ricky Gervais.

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Duly Noted

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· BUTTERFLY IN THE WIND (2004) (NR) Newly released after a 10-year prison sentence, a woman must make a grueling trek across the desert to reunite with her daughter. Iranian Film Today. Sat., Aug. 20, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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· MOUSE HEAVEN 3 stars (NR) See review to right.

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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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· UNWANTED WIFE (NR) A well-off teacher with a 5-year-old daughter and a philandering husband discovers an unexpected kinship with a man who murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy. Iranian Film Today. Fri., Aug. 19, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. 1280 Peachtree St. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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Continuing

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· THE ARISTOCRATS 4 stars (NR) George Carlin, Gilbert Gottfried, Sarah Silverman, John Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg and scores of other comedians take turns telling — or commenting on — an old, notoriously offensive joke usually reserved for other comedians, instead of their audiences. Depending on your tolerance for humor based on every imaginable human depravity, you might not always find “The Aristocrats” a very funny gag, but this documentary (from Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette) earns some honest laughs while offering fascinating — and uncomfortable — insights into the minds of professional jokemeisters. — Curt Holman

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· BAD NEWS BEARS 2 stars Hollywood’s penchant for recycling continues with this update of the 1976 film about a beer-guzzling guy (Walter Matthau) who turns a team of Little League misfits into contenders. Alas, the underdog angle has since suffered from overexposure, and in today’s anything-goes society, the sight of 12-year-olds cussing like sailors no longer carries any novelty — if anything, the incessant scatological humor in this new take grows tiresome. Billy Bob Thornton (in Bad Santa mode) is funny as the uncouth coach, though his character — harsher than Matthau’s — seems out of place in a movie that’s being positioned as a family film. — Matt Brunson

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· BAILEY’S BILLION$ (G) A billionaire widow’s fortune goes to the dogs — literally — when she bequeaths her money to her favorite canine (voiced by Jon Lovitz), outraging her conniving relatives (including Tim Curry and Jennifer Tilly).

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· BATMAN BEGINS 3 stars (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 district attorney. 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. — Holman

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· THE BEST OF YOUTH 4 stars (R) Luigi Lo Cascio and Alessio Boni star in this epic family melodrama set from 1966 to the present day, as brothers who take radically different paths, one as a psychiatrist crusading for the dignity of the mentally ill, the other a police officer who channels his rage at social injustice into his work. The six-hour film (viewable in two parts, with two separate admissions) can detour into soap opera territory, showing telltale signs of its origin as an Italian TV miniseries, but director Marco Tullio Giordana’s life-affirming tone, his fine cast and the film’s simple affirmation of the power of a guiding morality through life’s tragedies could move even the most jaded among us. — Felicia Feaster

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· BROKEN FLOWERS 2 stars (R) Cinema’s two reigning Zen masters of deadpan understatement, Bill Murray and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, dial it back a little too far in this melancholy comedy. Murray’s aging Don Juan road-trips to see which of four ex-lovers (played superbly by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton) is the mother to the son he never knew. With such self-conscious tedium and heavy-handed symbols, Broken Flowers feels wasteful of its terrific cast, although Murray’s touchingly subtle work strikes some highly affecting chords in the last 15 minutes. — Holman

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· CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY 4 stars (PG) Tim Burton’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s hallucinatory children’s story makes a vast improvement on the clunky 1971 version with Gene Wilder as the kid-sadist Willy Wonka. Managing scathing commentary on contemporary permissive parenting, this Charlie follows four brats and one near-cherub (Freddie Highmore) on a tour through the phantasmagorical factory of Johnny Depp’s chocolatier. Burton’s film is a mad-capped riff on the cornpone head shop comedy of Willy Wonka, but goes much further in its hilarious send-up of the equally psychedelic, excessive qualities of film history, from Busby Berkeley musicals to film noir and Stanley Kubrick. — Feaster

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· CRASH 3 stars (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. — Holman

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· DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO (R) In one of those inexplicable sequels to movies you can’t imagine anyone going to see the first time around, Rob Schneider plays a male “ho” tricked into whoring around Amsterdam. Bound to make you miss that “Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute” sketch from “Saturday Night Live.”

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· THE DEVIL’S REJECTS (R) The wait is over: Musician Rob Zombie has written and directed another movie, taking up where House of 1000 Corpses left off. I guess House of 1001 Corpses wasn’t as good a title.

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· THE DUKES OF HAZZARD 1 star (PG-13) This revved-up, big screen version of the cornpone series casts Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott as the country cousins foiling the latest evil scheme of Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds). Director Jay Chandrasekhar tries to pay homage to the 1970s Southern car crash flicks that inspired the show, but casts pop icons like Jessica Simpson for their kitsch factor, not acting talent. Apart from a great gag about Atlanta traffic, Dukes humor runs on empty. Good race scenes, though. — Holman

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· FANTASTIC FOUR 3 stars (PG-13) Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis star in a tale of four “imaginauts” who survive an accident in outer space, only to be granted super powers. Although director Tim Story, of Barbershop fame, tweaked Marvel Comics’ original, Cold War-tinged comic book, the film stays surprisingly faithful. And while it serves up loads of CGI-laden action sequences, the hilarious performances by Chris Evans and tender moments provided by Chiklis really make this movie fantastic. — Carlton Hargro

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· FOUR BROTHERS 3 stars (R) The adopted sons (two white, two black) of a slain Detroit woman seek the truth about their mother’s death. This lo-fi urban thriller from John Singleton may be heavy-handed and silly, but it captures the spare, edgy fun of cult blaxploitation films far better than the director’s own remake of Shaft. Atlanta’s Andre Benjamin of Outkast fame comports himself comfortably as the most respectable of the title siblings. — Holman

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· THE GREAT RAID (R) John Dahl (The Last Seduction) directs this old-school World War II drama about a daring mission to rescue U.S. P.O.W.s, based on the book Ghost Soldiers.

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· GRIZZLY MAN 3 stars (R) Legendary German director Werner Herzog contemplates the call of the wild by recounting the true story of ill-fated wildlife activist Timothy Treadwell, the self-appointed “guardian” of Alaska’s grizzly bears up until he and his girlfriend were fatally attacked by one. Herzog edits nearly 100 hours of Treadwell’s own footage to reveal a man so dedicated to wildlife that he lost perspective on its genuine dangers. Herzog’s intrusive narration diminishes Grizzly Man’s impact, but the film’s portrayal of nature — at once beautiful and brutal — has a lingering force. — Holman

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· HUSTLE & FLOW 4 stars Writer-director Craig Brewer mixes a heady cocktail of pimp life and crunk hip-hop in one of the best films of 2005 — and arguably the most honest, eye-opening screen portrayal of rap music ever made. Terrence Howard gives a sensitive, complex performance as Djay, a two-bit Memphis pimp and pusher who sees hip-hop as his last chance to escape criminal life. We don’t sympathize with him, exactly, but Hustle & Flow doesn’t do justice to Djay’s contradictions: talented artist, exploiter of women, melancholy soul. Brewer captures the infectious thrill of musical creation in Djay’s makeshift recording sessions (you’ll find yourself singing along to his song “Whoop That Trick”) and even generates nail-biting suspense when he tries to win the favor of rap star Skinny Black (played with appropriate arrogance by Atlanta’s Ludacris). — Holman

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· IMAX THEATER: The Living Sea (NR) Humpback whales, golden jellyfish and giant clams star in this documentary about the diversity of undersea life, with music by Sting and narrated by Meryl Streep. Mystery of the Nile (NR) this IMAX adventure follows a small group of reporters and filmmakers as they travel 3,000 miles up the Nile river. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu.

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· THE ISLAND 3 stars (PG-13) Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson play the childlike citizens of a futuristic community who become fugitives when they discover their sinister origins. The style-over-substance instincts of director Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) prove highly effective in the paranoia-inducing first half set in a chillingly controlled, sterile society. But the second half trades the script’s moodiness and provocative ideas for the thud and blunder of standard-issue action flicks, as if the heroes escaped onto the set of Bad Boys 2. — Holman

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· LAST DAYS 2 stars (R) Gus Van Sant has made a welcome turn away from Good Will Hunting hokum in recent projects with the art house experimentalism of Gerry and Elephant. His biopic Last Days, very loosely based on Kurt Cobain, falls within that risk-taking tradition. But for all of its audience-challenging, somnambulist pacing and beautiful camerawork, it fails to evoke anything pressing on Van Sant’s mind other than a desire to make sure his film about a heroin-addicted musician who committed suicide is as unglamorous as possible. — Feaster

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· MARCH OF THE PENGUINS 2 stars(G) This French documentary, a kind of inferior, non-flying version of Winged Migration, concerns the annual migration of Antarctica’s Emperor penguins from their bachelor digs across inhospitable climes to their mating grounds. The doc features adorable birds, cloying, hard-to-take narration from Morgan Freeman and the not exactly original assessment that nature is cruel. — Feaster

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· ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW 2 stars (R) Performance artist and filmmaker Miranda July’s debut film has garnered awards at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals, though its mixture of saccharine sweetness and sordid sexual provocation makes for a very overspiced brew. In this quirky, deadpan love story, geeky video artist Christine (July) falls for recently separated geeky shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes). Like a feel-good Todd Solondz, July interweaves into that spazzy romance countless poetic moments that range from the keenly observed to the self-consicously precious. — Feaster

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· MURDERBALL 4 stars (R) Eschewing the usual pity party of films about disability, this award winning Sundance documentary about Team USA quadriplegic rugby players preparing for the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece conveys the sport’s violent, rough -and-tumble nature. The testosterone feeding frenzy of the rugby matches where Team USA and their bitter rivals Team Canada duke it out is rendered with a ripping, stylish fury. But it’s when directors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro probe deeper into these men’s lives that you see how much of their fighting spirit and determination occurs far beyond the extreme sports battleground. Though it ropes you in with the sports, Murderball tends to buck the feel-good and good guy-bad guy arc of that genre. Everyone, after all, goes home with his own cross to bear, victory or no victory. — Feaster

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· MUST LOVE DOGS 3 stars Many of the elements that have made the contemporary romantic comedy such a grueling, formulaic experience are present in Must Love Dogs, and yet the movie nonetheless will work for those willing to surrender to its dreamy passion. Diane Lane, so beautiful that it almost hurts to look at her, plays a recent divorcee who takes a chance on meeting single men who contact her through an Internet dating service. John Cusack, so adorable that even heterosexual men might feel inclined to give him a big bear hug, portrays Jake Anderson, one of her prospective suitors. You either buy into this fantasy or you don’t — me, I happily wallowed in it. — Brunson

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· SARABAND (R) For possibly his final film, legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman presents a drama about three generations of a family, including a long-divorced couple (Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson) from the filmmaker’s Scenes of a Marriage.

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· THE SKELETON KEY 3 stars (PG-13) Kate Hudson stars as Caroline Ellis, a caretaker hired to look after a stroke victim (John Hurt) residing in a creaky mansion in the middle of the Louisiana swamps. The patient’s wife (Gena Rowlands) views Caroline with suspicion, but before long it’s Caroline who has to keep her guard up, as mysterious events suggest that a paranormal presence might be living within the house. The supernatural element might extend to Rowlands, who’s high camp performance suggests she was possessed by Bette Davis circa What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? While enjoyable, her overripe turn dilutes the story’s potency, though the movie rights itself in time for a satisfying twist ending. — Brunson

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· SKY HIGH 3 stars Better than Fantastic Four but falling far short of The Incredibles, Sky High is yet another feature film that centers on a family of superheroes. Here, teen Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano), tries to live up to the expectations of his parents, superhero legends The Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), by excelling in school. As long as Sky High tweaks the superhero genre, it remains on solid ground, thanks to savvy dialogue and smart casting (Russell and Bruce Campbell have the square jaws required of superheroes, and former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter appears as the school principal). But whenever the movie gets distracted by the conventions of the typical teen flick, it becomes a pale imitation of Mean Girls, Clueless and half the John Hughes oeuvre. — Brunson

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· STEALTH 1 star (PG-13) Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, joined by Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel, slums in this clumsy Top Gun-meets-the-Terminator tale of military technology gone awry. Awkwardly mixing a trio of cute actors with a gaggle of badly-rendered CGI, Stealth seems like the bastard child of a formula-centric marketing department. — Hargro

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· WAR OF THE WORLDS 3 stars (PG-13) A deadbeat dad (Tom Cruise) learns to be an attentive, protective father when alien war machines attack the American heartland. Director Steven Spielberg uses a sci-fi action premise comparable to Jurassic Park or Close Encounters of the Third Kind to air some serious themes about how a catastrophe brings out the best and worst in Americans. Imagery reminiscent of 9/11 abounds and Spielberg’s command of terrifying set pieces remains unequaled, yet the script feels thinner than it should be and the “easy” resolutions make the end of the world feel oddly inconsequential. — Holman

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· WEDDING CRASHERS 2 stars(R) Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson spend their weekends crashing weddings in a search for Ms. Right Now. But they just can’t seem to consistently sustain the laughs. Ultimately, the film comes across as a great setup without a satisfying punch line. — Hargro