CALENDAR » Screen Listings
Screen Listings
For the week of Wednesday July 16th thru Tuesday July 22nd
EDITED BY AARON MESH.
To be considered for listings, send information at least two weeks in advance to:
-
Screen, c/o Willamette Week
2220 NW Quimby, Portland, OR 97210.
Phone: 503 243-2122. Fax: 503 243-1115.
Apart From That
This ensemble drama, filmed in Bellingham, Wash., features a beautician and her elderly landlord, who likes to call the fire department and disrobe when the firefighters arrive. Look for Aaron Mesh's review on wweek.com. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.
Baby Mama
Tina Fey's channeling of the preggo zeitgeist taps into a demo-specific female fear: of becoming so damn successful, and so damn monied, that you up and forget to have babies and will get to the ripe old age of 37—you know, that fertility no-man's land—where spunk and good looks do nothing to cure baby fever when your uterus lets you down. Capitalizing on her well-deserved rising star as writer/ensemble leader on TV's 30 Rock, Fey teams up with former SNL Weekend Update partner Amy Poehler to explore and exploit that bizarre Plan B (or C) known as surrogate pregnancy. As Kate Holbrook, Fey extends the career-focused, sexy-but-not-in-the-world-she-happens-to-inhabit, sweetly cynical character that's served her so well. Kate pragmatically approaches a surrogacy firm and is offered Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler), a trashy, high-fructose-corn-syrup-swiggin' would-be fashion designer, as a womb. Relocate 30 Rock to Philly, replace Alec Baldwin's wicked GE exec with a new agey Steve Martin and revisit the episode where Liz Lemon accidentally kidnaps a coworker's baby, sand down the satirical edges and you've got yourself your Baby Mama, at least in spirit. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, assuming you're a fan of what you're signing up for. PG-13. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Portlander Cinema, Valley Theater.
Baghead
Four film-industry washouts sequester themselves in a remote cabin to write a scary movie. Between heavy drinking and light relationship drama, however, they never quite get further than an initial concept: a serial killer with a paper grocery bag over his head. (It’s a costume that suggests the psychopath is a fan of a winless football team.) And just as their collaboration is imploding, one of them goes missing…and someone else arrives in familiar headdress. Mumblecore vets Mark and Jay Duplass’ follow-up to The Puffy Chair—which sold more tickets in Portland than in any other city—is likely to prove just as pleasing, since it features the same finely observed narcissists, and adds a clever genre twist. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s mumblehorror! And while it’s burdened with one too many twists, Baghead features four excellent performances (including another charming turn by Greta Gerwig, the fearlessly topless queen of the mumblers) and a mood of desperation that has as much to do with shrinking career prospects as it does with stalking and stabbing. This is what The Blair Witch Project must have been like when the cameras were off—or at least I’d like to think so. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
Brick Lane
Earnest drudgery about a young Bangladeshi woman's life in London. Tannishtha Chatterjee is pleasant enough as Nazeem, and visually the film is packed with rich detail, but it never finds room for that kind of nuance elsewhere. It's adapted from Monica Ali's novel, but feels more like a play written by high schoolers trying to warn an assembly about the dangers of arranged marriage. I actually felt proud of the film when it managed the few rare scenes of interest. They weren't good scenes, exactly, just ones that finally shook off the dull obviousness of the material, which pits a fat, disappointing husband against a young stud who awakens Nazeem to other possibilities. When the events of 9/11 go down, things look up, as it briefly appears the story will rise above its Lifetime particulars. But as with so much else, things are more told than shown, and the anti-Muslim tension in London remains a mostly offscreen presence meant to serve as a springboard for another lesson. Lessons are definitely learned, to be sure, and summarized in recap at the end—but by then I was too dazed with boredom to focus. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Look for Saundra Sorenson's second opinion (she liked it) at wweek.com. Fox Tower Stadium 10.Celebrating the Earth: The Films of Franco Piavoli
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] This series kicks off with Blue Planet, one of those quasi-mystical contemplative observations of daily life, like Baraka or the more well-known Koyaanisqatsi, that were once a minor fashion. Like the latter, it lingers from nature to the industry of man in a (nearly) wordless reverie, but without the driving Phillip Glass score and poundingly vast and glossy widescreen sweep. Rather, Piavoli's film is like those 16mm shorts they used to show on Sesame Street of an activity or scene while anonymous children babbled somewhat disinterestedly on the soundtrack about what you were seeing ("Tadpoles...The tadpoles are swimming...They live in the water..."). It's also less literally global (despite the title), focusing mainly on a small Italian village, and less concerned with delineating the patterns and rhythms that govern life than simply settling into them itself. The film's associations lead from insects to lovers in a field ("The couple...they are...uh...") to whatever else, wandering about like a curious animal from the forest to the town and then back again, gazing briefly and dispassionately at the people it finds. It's sometimes dull, and never spectacular, but it has its moments, and you can almost get lost in the drift of it. ANDY DAVIS. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, July 18-19. 6 pm Sunday, July 20.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
This C.S. Lewis adaptation is filmmaking designed to appeal to the most bloodless, conformist camps of modern evangelicalism. In assembling the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—which was not a very good movie either, but at least contained some handsome pictures of furniture—director Andrew Adamson has compounded his errors from his first effort, and once again we’re handed a series of battles shot from a long distance, so that half the film looks like a Where’s Waldo? cartoon on a magical battlefield. Once again, Aslan the lion gets a good deal less screen time than you might expect, and when he does show up, he’s a drag: He reminded me less of Jesus than of the lordly, smug kid who always gets to play Jesus in youth group skits. The film’s message echoes uncomfortably as well: Should megachurched children really be given heroes who battle incessantly over a holy land until a god-king smites their enemies? But I suspect the chief reason that Prince Caspian is a dull, enervating experience is because it is produced by computer technicians pushing buttons to make a movie that looks as much as possible like other bland fantasy movies—with the same talking animals and clanking soldiers and ambulatory trees all wandering through the same artificial glades. Prince Caspian is a triumph of the synthetic, and one more victory for moviemakers who don’t like movies. PG. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Movies On TV Stadium 16, St. Johns Pub and Theater.
The Counterfeiters
In this reimagining of concentration-camp movies, writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky tells the story of master forger Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (the long-faced Karl Markovics), an artist whose gift for amazing likenesses first grants him status as portraitist of SS officers, then as the linchpin for a Nazi operation to flood the Allies’ economies with counterfeit dollars and pounds. Among the treats in this Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film: a group of European Jews snapping their fingers, buoyantly singing the spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” and a brief yet infinitely moving scene of Sally encountering another Russian as the two are transported by cattle car from one camp to another. Instead of bemoaning the horror of it all, the men reminisce about the art teachers who influenced and inspired them. R. N.P. THOMPSON. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
Bumbling, self-absorbed boob wins vindication when others finally realize he was right to insist on saving a distant world, thanks to voices only he hears. No, President Bush’s wet dream in Iraq hasn’t come true after five years. It’s the plot for Horton Hears a Who!, the animated remake of the classic Dr. Seuss tale about a persistent pachyderm who perseveres in preserving a puny planet on a dust speck. This felt just right as a 30-minute TV show back in 1970. But there’s not enough material to carry a movie nearly three times that length. Jim Carrey as the voice of Horton is over the top in spots, and the dialogue drags in several patches without many inside jokes for adults. Carol Burnett provides some laughs as the voice for the pouch-schooling kangaroo who leads the jungle’s persecution of Horton, and the tale is a harmless one for kids. And, since it’s all about the kids, I can report that, in a miracle exceeded only by Bush being elected twice, my squirmy 4-year-old son did sit happily through the entire movie—his first in a theater. G. HANK STERN. Academy Theater.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Looks like everybody who’s been waiting for Judd Apatow’s apology for the “sexism” of Knocked Up now has an open calendar. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the Apatow company movie most desperately confused and hostile toward the women participating in its hijinks. It’s another sex comedy with another director-for-hire (Nicholas Stoller), and it takes the attitude that sex is a wholesome and laudable activity for every person to enjoy—unless that person is your ex, in which case she must be punished. Jason Segel, one of Apatow’s stock players since Freaks and Geeks, wrote the screenplay and plays Peter, who flees to Hawaii after a painful breakup, only to encounter his ex-girlfriend (Kristen Bell) and her new man (Russell Brand) at the same beach resort. For Segel and Stoller, Sarah is a representation of all the women who have ever cheated on a nice guy—she is, in other words, a synecdochebag. So even as she begins to reveal herself as a three-dimensional character, the screenplay busies itself making sure every character is granted a measure of forgiveness, except her. In fact, a movie that is ostensibly about a man dealing with rejection turns out to be a conspiracy to humiliate the woman who rejected him. Forgetting Sarah Marshall tries manfully to live up to its title, but then it remembers her—and decides to fuck her over. R. AARON MESH. Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.
Get Smart
While late-’60s spy-spoof TV series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were mostly interested in poking fun at the espionage dramas of the day with Marx Brothers-style nonsense and physical comedy, the Steve Carell-starring adaptation aims to take on the real-world intelligence community. We see beefy field agents ignoring the advice of analysts, violent squabbles between competing agencies, and a folksy president, totally subservient to his bellicose VP, reading to schoolchildren while the nation is threatened with nuclear annihilation. Ouch. Indeed, Maxwell Smart isn’t the Agent 86 we know at all. He’s, well, smarter—he starts the film as a translator and analyst—and more sympathetic, infused with the same heartfelt humanity that saved Carell’s The Office from devolving to the savagery of its British predecessor. And Anne Hathaway is an Agent 99 for the modern era, meaner, sexier and less willing to serve as a grudging foil to Smart’s gags. She’s a real ass-kicker, a none-too-subtle statement from the producers that this remake wants none of Brooks’ dated misogyny. PG-13. BEN WATERHOUSE. 99 West Drive-In, Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Forest Theatre, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
The Go-Getter
A romance paperback for indie rockers, The Go-Getter is being marketed in Oregon as the film where local singer-songwriter M. Ward met actress Zooey Deschanel on the set and, charmed by her honeyed voice and general adorability, enlisted her as the chanteuse of his side project She & Him. The movie, an agreeable little picaresque that starts in Eugene—director Martin Hynes’ hometown—and breezes its way down to Mexico, is mainly a reiteration of that happy discovery. Ward contributes the soundtrack and in the opening credits donates a car-wash uniform to the protagonist, 19-year-old Mercer (Lou Taylor Pucci, Thumbsucker). Mercer uses the outfit to steal a station wagon, which he plans to drive until he can find his estranged half-brother and inform him of their mother’s death. But the car’s owner (Deschanel) has left her cell in the vehicle, and when she calls—lo and behold—she isn’t angry, but wants him to continue his journey so long as he keeps talking to her. Considering how many laboriously idiosyncratic characters Mercer encounters before his rescue, The Go-Getter isn’t nearly as irritating as it ought to be. The M. Ward songs help a lot, as does Hynes’ mild visual experimentation. But it’s a disappointment when the voice on the other end of the line turns out to be the tender fulfillment of all young male wishes. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
A documentary directed by Alex Gibney (who just won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side), dutifully covers the swath of the mad doctor’s writing, but it is chiefly interested in Hunter S. Thompson the political animal—the man who dogged Nixon through New Hampshire and found his own reflection. It was part of the American genius for polarization that Thompson saw Nixon as his doppelgänger, his mirror. Nixon was his dark shadow. Or maybe it was the other way around. So it makes perfect sense that when Gonzo recounts Thompson’s last serious journalistic assignment—sent to cover the 1974 Ali-Frazier “Rumble in the Jungle” fight, he swallowed a cabinet of pills and wandered off to float in the hotel pool—Gibney re-creates the scene with washed-out footage of azure water and a man in a Nixon mask. The image is inspired on a number of levels, since this was the moment when a genuinely gifted writer decisively sacrificed his talent on the altar of indulgence, and when he slipped on a mask of celebrity that he would never remove. The rest of the movie, while amusing and honest, doesn’t often approach that level of perception. There are plenty of guest appearances by old cronies, few of whom can stir themselves enough to say an unkind word about the man who squandered his last two decades shooting rifles on his ranch until he finally turned a .45 on himself in 2005. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
Hancock
Will Smith is John Hancock, a surly Los Angeles superstar with a preternatural vertical leap and open contempt for his teammates, forced to disgustedly mumble his way through image-repairing press conferences after he’s sent to prison. Aside from a strong anal fixation (one jailhouse scene features an inmate’s head literally shoved into another’s rectum, and the film’s chief running gag is that its hero grows extremely peeved whenever he’s called an “asshole”), director Peter Berg’s movie is a disorienting fizz of ideas that never cohere. Its chief conceit—the superhero as a celebrity in dire need of rehab—is established by shots of the crapulous Hancock waking up next to empty whiskey bottles, either on bus-stop benches or in his dreary trailer, with Berg’s distinctive cinematography giving each shot the haze of a hangover. But Berg’s style, an agitated handheld fervor honed in Friday Night Lights, is exactly wrong for this material, which I think is supposed to be a satire. It’s hard to say for certain, since there are no funny jokes. In their place, Berg twirls his camera in paroxysms of emotion. By the time the villains return, still miffed about the head-stuffed-in-bum incident, we’re meant to cry whenever the screen starts to spin. But cry for whom? The gifted Übermensch whose fans just don’t understand him? PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
The Happening
Once a wunderkind of suspense manipulation, director M. Night Shyamalan has recoiled from the disaster of Lady in the Water by making his first lazy movie, a picture that grinds from one obligatory shock to another. Even the title is clumsy: Long after I realized The Happening was about Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel on the run from an airborne neurotoxin that provokes suicide, I kept waiting for the film to transform into a groovy, consciousness-expanding love-in. No such luck. Instead, in what may be the funniest moment in this year’s cinema, horrified commuters who’ve been told they’re fleeing a terrorist attack stop to watch a cell-phone video of a zookeeper wandering into a den of lions and getting both his arms torn off. (“Mother of God,” a woman cries, “what kind of terrorists are these?”) It’s not like there aren’t some good ideas in The Happening—the concept of death arriving as a sudden, hazy madness, like a fatal panic attack, is authentically unnerving. But Shyamalan telegraphs his every move so obviously that the movie’s B-grade horror feels like an act of contempt from a director who has seen his most beloved ideas rejected by audiences as well as critics. In one of many scenes where Wahlberg runs away from nothing, he passes a tract-housing billboard that proclaims, “You Deserve This!” Maybe this film is what the moviegoing public deserves, but it’s a shame to watch Shyamalan disdainfully hand it to them. R. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Portlander Cinema, Valley Theater.
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
The moral of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay—besides the obvious lesson that you should not smuggle a bong onto a transatlantic flight—comes in a little speech at the close of the hijinks: “You don't need to believe in your government to be a good American. You just have to believe in your country.” This is perfectly sound advice, although it’s a trifle off-putting to hear it emerging from the mouth of a doobie-puffing George W. Bush. This is the new, highly enjoyable Harold & Kumar adventure in a nutshell: It’s trying very hard to send a political message, but this involves a lot of concentration, and sometimes all that heavy thinking causes the movie to get confused. So it lights another joint and tells another joke, and hopes that the blazing and the jesting will help calm down a country that has lost its mind. Harold & Kumar is wildly, alarmingly uneven—and never subtle—but when it clicks, it’s side-splitting. (The film is at its best whenever Neil Patrick Harris appears as the franchise’s patented deus ex machina.) Like the nation it explicitly criticizes and quietly celebrates, Harold & Kumar is obscene, brash and mostly well-intentioned. It’s enough to make you believe in your country. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Mike Mignola’s comic-book demon/paranormal investigator Hellboy is an unlikely hero—and an unlikely movie star, brought to life with snarky perfection by Ron Perlman in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004’s sleeper hit. Like Mignola’s source material, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is less an action flick than an action-packed detective story filled with monsters and humor. Big Red is less superhero and more Sam Spade in a Tolkienesqe underworld of elves and trolls on the brink of war with humanity. It’s a popcorn counterpart to del Toro’s brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth, a visual feast that oozes imagination in every frame. Del Toro (soon to helm The Hobbit) throws all manner and sizes of creepy crawlies at his hero with a sparse use of CGI (until the over-computerized finale), crafting some of the best puppet creatures since Jim Henson’s heyday, and including an underground flea-market sequence that’s the best monster mash since Luke Skywalker hit Mos Isley. Like its predecessor, Hellboy II peters out toward the end. But it’s a visual feast regardless, and a hell of a kick. Del Toro and Perlman make you believe in the things that go bump in the night—the coolest thing is, they also help you relate to them. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
In Bruges
The previews for this Sundance opening-nighter made it look like another glib and obnoxious cockney shoot-’em-up in the unpleasant tradition of Guy Ritchie. They lied: British playwright Martin McDonagh’s feature-film debut has a bad-tempered integrity that makes it as satisfying as any criminal enterprise you’ll see this year. As the guilt-wracked Irish hit man forced to lie low amid medieval architecture, Colin Farrell continues to provide a clinic in little-boy-lost charm—and adds the overactive eyebrows and lilting brogue of an anxious leprechaun. Brendan Gleeson’s even better as his principled mentor, but nothing you’ve heard about the movie can prepare you for Ralph Fiennes as their boss, whose obscenity is matched only by his sentimental affection for the “fairy-tale city” he proceeds to wreck. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Laurelhurst Theatre.
The Incredible Hulk
This summer marks the debut of Marvel’s autonomous movie offshoot with a duo of unlikely movies—the electric, box-office-defying Iron Man and now The Incredible Hulk, which pretends Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk never existed and subs the excellent Edward Norton for Eric Bana as Bruce Banner. Hulk smash? Indeed. The Incredible Hulk is a barrage of razzle-dazzle. Taking a cue from the comics and the 1970s TV show (Lou Ferrigno even voices the new Hulk, and has a cameo), director Louis Leterrier’s movie follows a familiar formula. Banner’s living off the grid in Brazil, trying to cure himself between mean and green “incidents.” Government officials led by a snarling general (William Hurt, a four-star ham) periodically catch up with him and Bourne-like chases ensue. Banner gets pissed, turns green and breaks some shit. The monster intermittently looks breathtakingly real, like a sculpture carved from Irish Spring. But in the hullabaloo to reclaim Hulk, the film forgets to have fun. There’s some spectacular action—a battle on a college campus is pitch perfect—but there’s little joy, just brooding between explosions. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 99 Indoor Twin.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, once a rake and a mercenary, is now an advertisement for clean living. He’s quit the filthy whiskey, he’s a decorated war hero, and he is apparently impervious to injury. Where the Indy of old had to dodge a Nazi strongman until a plane propeller finished the fight, the Indy of Crystal Skull takes matters into his own fists, pummeling the Soviets’ largest soldier until he collapses into a hill of deadly ants. Powerful, wise, irreproachable: This man is what John McCain sees every time he closes his eyes. A pity, then, that the third reel is such a washout, with Indiana Jones subjected to the late-Spielberg sanitation treatment—all his rough edges are rubbed away, and he’s left as the upright patriarch of a ragtag family on a South American vacation. The climax brings Indy full-circle, at least geographically: He’s back in the same jungles where he boulder-dodged at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but instead of trading golden idols with Alfred Molina, he’s delivering helpful maxims like, “The treasure was knowledge.” (Indiana Jones says: Stay in school, kids!) He’s as active and robust as any geriatric hero to grace the silver screen, but there are moments—more than moments, really—when it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that this magnificent artifact is a fake. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Division Street Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.
Iron Man
Loaded to the brim with snazzy special effects and snappy dialogue, director Jon Favreau’s comic-book romp is a far smarter diversion than most of the summer fare that will follow it—smart enough, in fact, to be held accountable for its reckless ideas. To begin with, it stars Robert Downey Jr., who is asked to carry large swaths of an action movie by talking to himself. After Downey’s playboy industrialist Tony Stark returns from an Asian weapons demonstration gone awry, he has a change of heart—literally, as he builds himself a futuristic pacemaker. Then he starts work on an exoskeleton. During this substantial portion of the movie, Downey is required to voice a wry, self-amused internal monologue. Not only does Downey pull this off, he actually manages to make his solo scenes the most captivating segments of the film. Iron Man is better when Downey is alone on the screen than when he’s sharing it. It’s when those inconvenient other people show up that the movie loses its way. Iron Man is going to please the war-wearied crowds with the same illusion that was used to sell the war in the first place: that combat can be quick and tidy, and an American, acting unilaterally, can cure international ills by acting as a precisely guided missile—one that knows who the bad guys are and can eliminate them without creating more bad guys. The movie’s fantasy is one of being alone in the world—as if America could wander as it pleases, locked away in a protective suit, talking to itself. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Mt. Hood Theatre, Tigard Joy Theatre.
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
Jules Verne with REI carabiners, Walden Media’s glossy kids’ stuff is inoffensive and unassuming, taking its cues from star Brenden Fraser. He plays a geologist who travels to Iceland with his nephew (Josh Hutcherson of Bridge to Terabithia, solidifying his supremacy in the babes-in-toyland field) and a supple mountain guide (Anita Briem); the trio goes mountain climbing and plummets down a nearly bottomless volcanic tube. (They could have stayed stateside and looked for Mel’s Hole—what, is the Pacific Northwest not exotic enough for family adventures?) Down below, they encounter phosphorescent hummingbirds, ferocious flying fish and magnetically levitating boulders. All gleeful nonsense, as derivative as it is framed to leap at the audience (though my eyes grew immune to the 3-D effect after one reel), Journey is best enjoyed with low expectations: It’s actually not much less enjoyable than the latest Indiana Jones, and it contains considerably more science. I was gratified to be reintroduced to muscovite, which I had last encountered in Geology 101—where, come to think of it, many of the students bore the same guileless expression as Fraser. The movie is cinematic Rocks for Jocks. PG. AARON MESH. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema.King Kong
[REVIVAL] The greatest ape of 1933 menaces the Empire State Building once more, with simian feeling. Living Room Theaters.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
This kid's movie, based on books that come with the doll of the same name, industriously burbles along with a forced gee-whiz earnestness that will leave adult minders a little queasy and kids presumably agape with admiration for our cheerily indomitable heroine. The titular 10-year-old aspires to be a reporter but must contend with the various calamities and intrigues the Great Depression has brought into her life. Respectable work from the likes of Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci and Wallace Shawn are consistent with the overall sheen of quality, leaving the spazzy Joan Cusack looking like a party clown who's wandered into a tea party. Abigail Breslin, as Kit, is the most uninteresting kid in the picture, displaying none of the charm and individuality she had in Little Miss Sunshine, but that's to be expected in a film in which everything gets a bland makeover. Apparently there was no racism in the ’30s, only a solvable rash of hobo prejudice, and the period songs are represented not by originals but by anonymously slick and tepid remakes. It all resembles actual fun the way a porcelain doll resembles an actual kid. G. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX.
Kung Fu Panda
On paper, Kung Fu Panda is lazy. A fat panda voiced by Jack Black goes from noodle maker to prophetic Dragon Warrior with the help of a snake, a monkey, a tiger, a mantis and a crane, who each represent their corresponding martial-arts styles. Ancient China…panda…karate…moral about finding yourself and overcoming odds…ka-ching! But the biggest surprise is how well Kung Fu Panda works. Instead of Shrek meets the Shaw Brothers, it’s a martial-arts comedy with respect for the genre—Kung Fu Hustle on Sesame Street. The film has a great time riffing on kung fu conventions—from the cruel tutelage of master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to a climactic battle with a deranged leopard—and strikes a similar balance between kid-friendly jokes and blockbuster action as The Incredibles. Well, incredible it isn’t. But it is Dreamworks Animation’s best since the original Shrek. With solid comedy, stellar action and an A-list vocal cast (including Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan), the film’s destined to be a crowd pleaser. What Kung Fu Panda lacks in nuance, it makes up for with its fists of furry. If Dreamworks invested more in story development, Pixar might start sweating. PG. AP KRYZA. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.The Legend of God's Gun
[DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Mike Bruce’s grungy gunslinger homage opens with an introduction from Dandy Warhols drummer Brent DeBoer, who smokes a cigarette in a candlelit recording booth and intones: “What separates this film from its predecessors is that it was made entirely by authentic rock-’n’-roll musicians who have spent many years touring the world and living the hard life of the modern-day cowboy.” Is he kidding around? Your guess is as good as mine: The movie that follows, a handmade psychedelic trip with acting and soundtrack by Kirpatrick Thomas of Spindrift, flirts constantly with outright spoof—from the moment the narrator helpfully explains that we will not be seeing any horses in this western because they’ve all been shot dead, God’s Gun feels as close to Monty Python as it does to Sergio Leone. Lest this sound like too much fun, let me warn you that the movie is nearly as ponderous as it is parodic—it’s from the Quentin Tarantino school of tongue-in-cheek grindhouse geekdom, which smothers guilty pleasures in self-consciousness. It should give you some idea of exactly how meta the project is to note that this is the first spaghetti western I’ve seen in which a character actually eats spaghetti. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Director Mike Bruce and Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer will attend the world premiere on Friday, July 18. Hollywood Theatre.Love and Honor
Yoji Yamada has directed dozens of films, most of them installments in his 48-part (!?) Toro-san series, but he is best known in the U.S. for The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, the first two films in a “samurai trilogy” now completed by Love and Honor. Pop star Takuya Kimura stars as Shinnojo Mimura, a warrior reluctantly wasting his skills as one of his lord’s food tasters (read: poison filters). When he is blinded by some bad sashimi, he loses his station and sense, and his wife might be the next to go, blind samurais being pretty much useless to everyone. Like Mamet’s Redbelt, Love and Honor uses the fighter’s milieu to frame what is essentially a manly melodrama. Swords will cross when there is something worth crossing them for, but the build-up to battle is pure samurai-Sirk: A buttinsky aunt wheedles and meddles while a wealthy man spins his web around Shinnojo’s wife, a nobly suffering woman straight out of Mizoguchi. Like a well-made chair (or later Scorsese), it is pleasing in its predictability and comforting in its familiarity, but it’s not like I’m going to take it out to dinner or anything (sorry Marty). CHRIS STAMM. Clinton Street Theater. Clinton Street Theater.
The Love Guru
If the origins of comedy lie in the Dionysian phallus festivals of ancient Greece, then Mike Myers is nothing if not a classicist. Just when you thought he had donated his body to the science of making Shrek sequels, he returns to his great passion: soaking old Peter Sellers routines with a steady stream of penis jokes. In Austin Powers, he looted Sellers’ James Bond spoof Casino Royale, and now he resurrects Sellers’ brownface ethnic shtick (minus the actual brownface). He plays Guru Pitka, an Indian-trained New Age mystic dispensing nonsense platitudes and—what else?—scatological puns from his lucrative Hollywood compound. An hour and a half of testicular trauma ensues, and for those who appreciate verbal wit, there are characters named “Cherkov,” “Tugginmypudha,” and “Dick Pants.” The only bits I really enjoyed in The Love Guru, besides some B-side riffing by Stephen Colbert, were the gonzo musical numbers, a form that Myers arguably understands better than anyone actually directing musicals today. At one point, Jessica Alba is transformed by dubbing and subtitles into a mewing Bollywood siren, and the result is so vapidly kitsch it’s hysterical. It’s also small compensation for the price of a movie ticket, your dignity, and any Indian friends you might have. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Academy Theater, Valley Theater.
Made of Honor
Out of the swirling vortex of movies featuring "made/maid" puns in the title, weddings that need to be broken up, frustrated bridesmaids and men grappling with fear of commitment, flies Made of Honor, landing like those Skittles that fly out of the bag and hit the floor when the bag rips the wrong way. If you like the taste of My Best Friend's Wedding, just brush off the lint and enjoy. Michelle Monaghan, too pretty and superficial for her role in Gone Baby Gone, is better suited here as a perfectly nice woman whose best friend is a man-whore (Patrick Dempsey). Said Man-Whore realizes too late that Perfectly Nice Woman is the one for him and must undo her wedding—from the inside, as her maid of honor! Ha! Stop us if you've seen this one before. Seriously. Just let the projectionist know, and he will stop the movie. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Valley Theater.Maximum Car-nage Double Feature
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Clinton Street Theater operator Seth Sonstein is an unapologetic fan of Emilio Estevez. How big a fan is he? For the week of his birthday, Sonstein is showing a double bill of Maximum Overdrive and Repo Man. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, July 11-12, and Monday-Thursday, July 14-17.
Meet Dave
Eddie Murphy's latest egomaniacal yukfest spares us with a mere two Eddie Murphys, and neither in rubber masks: an Eddie Murphy-shaped spaceship from the emotionless planet Nil, and Eddie as the miniature Captain of said ship, on a mission from Nil to procure the salt that will save the tiny, doomed planet. Murphy gets a chance to Mr. Bean his way around NYC while, inside him, the Captain battles with his crew and the ship's historically inaccurate supercomputer—the basis for a majority of the script's jokes. That and an extended closeted-homo joke, because gays talk real funny. In fact, apart from the beginning "Welcome to New York" sequence featuring some classic Wu-Tang Clan music—and no dialogue—Meet Dave is painful in its entirety. That is, unless you share Eddie Murphy's opinion that everything he says and does is funny. PG. JIM SANDBERG. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Mongol
With the exception of “Bob” Genghis Khan’s sporting-goods rampage in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the Great Conqueror has gotten the silver-screen shaft. (John Wayne in brownface, anyone?) Genghis deserves one great film. Mongol, nominated for the 2007 foreign-language Oscar, gets him halfway there. The film is sympathetic to an oft-vilified legend, and director Sergei Bodrov focuses on his love and compassion rather than his violent rise. We follow Genghis (known as Temudjin in his pre-conquest days) on his childhood quest to avenge his father. Later in life, the future Khan (Tadanobu Asano) makes and breaks bonds with his blood brother, defends his love, plays with kids, and goes through a long imprisonment before rising like a bloodthirsty phoenix. Bodrov’s tale, part of a planned trilogy, is gorgeous and expertly acted. But in detailing the wrath of Khan, it veers toward The Shaw Brothers’ Braveheart, punctuated with beautifully boring stretches. Between landscape shots and bloody battles, I found myself repeating, out of tedium, a tongue-twister from Calvin & Hobbes: “How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?” Hopefully, with the origin story out of the way, future installments will grasp the ferocious greatness Mongol briefly teases. R. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21. City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre.
Murder Dot Com
A woman investigates her sister's death at the hands of online sex maniacs. (Do you want to cyber? Do you want to DIE?) Not screened for critics, online or elsewhere. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.Never Forever
Vera Farmiga (The Departed) plays Sophie, a woman who decides to get impregnated by a Korean immigrant, though this imperils her marriage. Hey, you get hitched to Sophie, you gotta live with Sophie's choices. See Saundra Sorenson's review on wweek.com. R. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.
Nim's Island
In his wildest dreams, Gerard Butler must long to play a character who is not a figment of another character’s imagination. Fresh off his turn as Hilary Swank’s dead husband in P.S. I Love You, the Scottish hunk plays Alex Rover, the fictional adventurer created by paperback writer Jodie Foster. Butler’s pulling double-duty in this movie, however; he’s also moonlighting as Jack Rusoe (ahem), a marine biologist who is lost at sea, leaving his daughter Nim (Abigail Breslin) to guard their private South Pacific island from Australian tourists. Eventually Foster overcomes her agoraphobia long enough to fly to Nim’s rescue, accompanied by the heroic Mr. Rover, whom only she can see. If this seems like an awfully convoluted plot for a family movie, consider that I haven’t even mentioned the animals that can understand everything Nim says, or the side story about Nim’s dead mother. Fortunately, whenever the movie gets confusing, directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin turn to the templates of previous films: Foster’s twitchy writer is directly stolen from Romancing the Stone, and Breslin—also typecast, and at age 11—again plays a serious girl who frets over the mistakes of her elders. PG. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema.Of Angels and Apocalypse: The Cinema of Derek Jarman
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Brit moviemaker Derek Jarman didn’t really make films as much as he made performance art he put on film. Such was the case with his masterful interpretation of the life of 16th century painter Michelangelo Mersi, aka Caravaggio. To see this tableaux film at the NW Film Center now, some 22 years past its premiere, is a true revelation. Even though at times it shucks conventions and is slower than paint drying, its theme is ageless. Stuck in the times they were given, both Counter-Reformation Caravaggio and Thatcher-era Jarman struggled to create powerful art (much of it homoerotic in nature and thumbing its nose at the standards of its time) in the short period they were on this planet. Caravaggio did it by depicting realism, and is credited with the creation of the modern still life. Jarman did it by inserting modern inventions that had yet to be created—calculators, fashion magazines—to upset the viewer’s sense of what is real and what is just artifice. Both men were ahead of their time. Speaking of time, this is also the film that launched Tilda Swinton, perhaps the most timeless actor of her generation. A must. BYRON BECK. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Caravaggio screens at 8 pm Sunday, July 20. The Angelic Conversation screens at 7 pm Wednesday, July 16.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
Naval vegetables sing about religion. Not screened for critics, though we hear Jesus got to see it early. G. Hilltop 9 Cinema.
Priceless
My expectations were low, given that I detested director Pierre Salvadori’s last film, the painfully unfunny Après Vous. What a surprise, then, to discover a near-perfect light comedy. From the animated opening credits, in which paper cocktail umbrellas lend color to black-and-white ocean waves, this movie has an assurance and an internal logic essential to good fluff. Set amid Monte Carlo’s jet-setting “beautiful people,” Priceless features a radiantly tanned Audrey Tautou (never better) as a gold digger, and a sweet, sexy comic turn from Gad Elmaleh as a hotel waiter she inadvertently draws into what might be termed “the hustling lifestyle.” Smashingly entertaining though it is, the movie isn’t without a soupçon of perception. Says one experienced seducer to a novice gigolo: “Don’t you think I know what that look means? I’ve seen it since I was 12 years old.” PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.
Roman de Gare
When Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman appeared in 1966, as stylishly vaporous as its hit theme song, it made a fashion out of being lightweight. Lelouch's continuing reputation as a master of fluff was seemingly only undermined once, by his arrest after the screening of a short film in which a car was driven without warning at 85 mph through Paris. His new film throws in a quick homage of a shot from that heedless stunt, and the production for this one was filmed under someone else's name (as a dodge against expectations), just as he now claims it was him in that speeding car and not a Formula One racer as previously thought. So it's only natural that Roman finds Lelouch more playful than usual, and finds Dominique Pinon (surprisingly normal, keeping his rubbery features in check) larking about as either a serial killer, ghostwriter or a missing husband—we don't know which. He also fakes being the fiancé of a stranger who's not who she seems either. But instead of being overdetermined, the shuffling of truth and identities is playfully brilliant, reaching a satisfying stretch of suspense and comedy as he visits her family on their farm. Unfortunately, Lelouch resolves the mysteries halfway through, and the film loses depth and intrigue as the lightweight takes back the reins from the prankster. R. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.
Savage Grace
Movies teach two probably inaccurate lessons about wealth: The newly rich have more scratch than smarts and so end in ruin, draped in tacky jewels, while heirs to old money have more leisure time than moral fiber and so end in ruin, draped over a Bauhaus loveseat. Unless you are a fan of Julianne Moore’s manic laugh—of which there are many fine examples in better films—Savage Grace, Tom Kalin’s version of the Sophoclean tragedy that befell the miserably rich Baekeland clan in 1972, succeeds only in bolstering the latter lie about cash. Perhaps the true crime-cum-oral-history account of the same name by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, on which the film is based, is too fresh in my mind, but Savage Grace seems to slouch in the shadow of the definitive book, a fractured sprawl of gossip and cocktail-clinking chatter. The Baekelands—Barbara (Moore), Brooks (Stephen Dillane) and their son Tony (Eddie Redmayne)—lounge and lunch with louche millionaires and are generally terrible to each other. The film drifts to its provocative raison d’etre with the distracted lassitude of a long, bummer vacation to a land of beautiful and opaque twits. The upper crust might be dreadfully tedious, but movies about it shouldn’t be. CHRIS STAMM. Cinema 21. Hollywood Theatre.
Sex and the City
You've had the last decade to decide whether to pass on the inevitable Sex and the City big screen edition, so it's pointless to defend or decry the movie's series of origin, beyond saying that the one thing the series consistently did well was to illustrate a support network more authentic than the squealing, imitative groups the show spawned. Three years on, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), her white whale of sorts, and she's planning their doomed wedding while he tugs at his collar in the background; lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is living the drained family life with her bartender baby-daddy in Brooklyn; sexpot PR expert Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is managing her kindly hunk of man meat's career in L.A.; and starry-eyed would-be socialite Charlotte (Kristin Davis) seems to have beaten the group's curse by living a satisfied life in a brownstone. The orgiastic cinematic splash of pink will only win over the demo that had always meant to check out the series but never did—no new converts will be persuaded. But oh, there is raunch. And there is eye candy. And in a sure sign that the series has grown a little, Carrie's plodding "I couldn't help but wonder…" gem is used only once, and only for nostalgia purposes. R. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10.
Son of Rambow
Put aside for a moment the overfamiliarity of the concept, which stretches from kids playing soldiers in Vietnam in Rushmore to the more obvious recent examples of characters and people making their own versions of cinema classics. Actually, don't bother—even if you go in braced for a cutesy English interloper coming late to the party, as I did, Rambow (the title is a kid's misspelling) should handily win you over. An innocent moppet, compulsively creative but sheltered by his religion from having ever seen a movie, Will (Bill Milner) accidentally sees First Blood and goes berserk with the need to make a violent movie (no, this isn't the story of how Paul Schrader came to write Taxi Driver). Luckily, the school bully is already hard at work doing just that, and the friendless hooligan allows Will to play the lead and infuse the project with his Howard Finster-like imaginings. It's the kind of catchy idea that usually runs out of steam by the third act, but Rambow stays remarkably consistent throughout, mostly thanks to wrinkles involving a ridiculously cool French exchange student and the school's infatuation with him. The film hums along with a sure comic touch, and the rare feel-good moments are earned by a genuinely affecting performance by the perfectly cast Milner. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Academy Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub, St. Johns Pub and Theater.
Space Chimps
If you take the kids to only one space cartoon, make it Wall-E. If that’s sold out, you could do worse than Space Chimps. It’s produced by a few of the folks responsible for Shrek, but unlike that movie, it doesn’t get bogged down in too much sketch-comedy diversion or pop-cultural reference, and there’s nary a booger joke in sight. A primate spoof of The Right Stuff, the story follows a circus chimpanzee drafted into NASA’s last grasp for legitimacy: a monkey-manned test flight to an alien world. Voiced with gentle hipster overconfidence by Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg, the aptly named Ham III has been selected as the mission’s poster child because his grandfather was the original space chimp. The cheap animation and casual tone are not a patch on the sumptuous whimsy of Pixar’s productions, but it’s an amiable adventure, shaded with the snark of a good Far Side comic strip. Ostensibly it’s about the challenges of living up to a familial legacy, though the whole thing could be an elaborate prank on our space agency and the legacy chimp who’s been setting its priorities for the past eight years. G. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Speed Racer
See review. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Valley Theater.
Speed Racer
The Wachowski brothers have twisted the Speed Racer plot into the most intricate, mystifying puzzle imaginable, but they have mainly concentrated on excreting a big shiny candy drop. It doesn’t taste very good, and in fact I can’t imagine any person over the age of 12 wanting the digital sugar rush to last more than about five minutes (in fact, it goes on for another 124), but it deserves a certain honor for being the summer movie most unapologetically dedicated to its surfaces. So, what does Speed Racer look like? It looks like a 1970s diner retrofitted as a 1950s diner by a cokehead who was not alive at any time in the 1950s. It looks like the latest upgrade of Second Life, except instead of avatars it is filled with real people, and one of them is John Goodman in an orange T-shirt. It looks like the inside of the world’s most polished pinball machine. It looks like several dozen Matchbox cars were released into the wormhole at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It looks like missing footage from Willy Wonka’s highly traumatizing ferryboat ride. It looks like an early Microsoft screen saver, complete with the two-dimensional fish and flamingos. It looks like a child’s kaleidoscope filled with Goldschläger. It looks like Arthur Fonzarelli’s acid flashback. But once the shock of the movie’s high-tech sheen wears off, little in it is very impressive. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Valley Theater.
The Strangers
James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) are staying the night at his family cabin when the prospect of death arrives in the form of three masked, taciturn strangers. Now, if an inarticulate trio in dollar store costumes came to my door, I would assume the second-worst: A shitty Providence noise band is playing in my basement. But James and Kristen are attractive and listen to Joanna Newsom on immaculate vinyl, and the rules of horror are pretty clear on this: Their tormenters will be more Manson Family than Wolf Eyes. James and Kristen are sport for three psychopaths who intend to break them down before they tear them apart. It’s a familiar premise, but The Strangers has no problem using and getting off on every familiar riff: dumb masks, skipping records, hasty lunges for knife drawers, slatted and axed doors, desperate CB radio calls. Nearly every second of it works. Director Bryan Bertino plays with the legacy of horror in the same way Girl Talk turns snatches of pop songs into a clusterfuck of joyful noise. The pleasure is in simultaneously recognizing a lift and having your reptile brain electrified by it. Bertino empties his arsenal of horror tropes and tricks with the single purpose of scaring you until you shake. You will shake. R. CHRIS STAMM. Academy Theater, Valley Theater.
Then She Found Me
April Epner (Helen Hunt) suffers from lousy timing: She’s trying her darnedest to have a baby, but she only discovers she’s conceived after her schlub of a husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her. As a first-time director, Hunt has similarly misjudged her moment. After an entire year of oops-I’m-pregnant comedies, people cracking jokes in front of the ultrasound are starting to wear thin. Then She Found Me offers a twist in the form of Bette Midler as April’s narcissist birth mother (who arrives gracelessly on the scene to become the “She” in the title), but Hunt would have been well served to experiment a touch with the casting. Colin Firth is the best thing in the film as April’s selfless, emotionally confused new man, but how much more interesting would the movie be if he played the infantile cad and let Broderick be the charmer for once? R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.Twisted: A Balloonamentary
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Almost from the outset of Sara Taksler and Naomi Greenfield’s buoyant film, I began to wonder: Why aren’t there more documentaries made about happy people? Is it a result of directors’ mistaken faith in the adage that “happiness writes white”—that other folks’ joy is boring? James Smith, a clown in urban Atlanta who makes balloon animals for children, isn’t boring. Neither is Vera Stalker, a trailer-park teen on welfare whose next-door neighbor gave her the $60 she needed to learn balloon-tying tricks she would use at family restaurants to pay her way through Northern Arizona University. And the couple—Don Caldwell and Laura Dakin—who were married in a Las Vegas chapel with the bride sporting a white dress of inflated latex? Well, they’re the furthest thing from dull. Taksler and Greenfield discovered these gleeful eccentrics at the 2005 Twist & Shout balloon-twisting convention, where in one Sheraton ballroom a class learns how to blow up balloon dicks and tits, while in the adjacent room their Christian counterparts practice latex evangelism techniques. (One man, John “The Balloon Man” Holmes, has managed to bridge the dichotomy: A five-time felon who wants to make more instructional videos than his namesake, his mission includes fashioning an anatomically correct balloon Jesus on the cross, complete with “a circumcised penis like a good Jewish boy should have.”) With such subjects, the directors could have settled for condescending whimsy, but instead they reveal the fragile, fleeting pleasure this craft and camaraderie brings to its participants. Twisted is, by its conclusion, intensely affecting. It’s got rubber soul. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, July 12-13. Hollywood Theatre.
The Visitor
As in writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s previous film, The Station Agent, strangers who have seemingly nothing in common bond with one another once in close proximity. Richard Jenkins gives a brave, incontestably fine performance as a drab dud of an econ professor drawn into new life by a couple of Syrian-Senegalese Muslims who, though well assimilated into American culture, reside in New York illegally. The movie pretends to be apolitical but in fact has much to say about our arcane immigration laws and the human wreckage they foster. McCarthy never overemphasizes his points, allowing The Visitor to unfold in unhurried, almost stately rhythms. Oliver Bokelberg’s crisp interiors and on-location cinematography cannot be improved upon, least of all in the terrific final scene on a subway platform, a shot of djembe busking glimpsed through the windows of a train whizzing by. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
The Wackness
[ONE WEEK ONLY] “I’m mad depressed, yo,” complains Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) to his therapist. It’s the summer of 1994 in New York City, so affluent Jewish hip-hop heads apparently talk this way. Get laid, replies Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), who then receives payment in the form of a baggie of dank. It’s a Sundance movie, so Upper East Side shrinks apparently have these kinds of arrangements with their weed-slingers. Plausability aside, director Joshua Levine’s movie is a diverting study in career mobility: Peck is eager to escape the Nickelodeon ghetto by playing a troubled dealer/student burdened by his inconvenient virginity, while Kingsley is in the mood to reclaim some headlines by making out with Mary-Kate Olsen in a phone booth. (Between his work as Guru Tugginmypudha in The Love Guru and this, Sir Ben has had quite the summer. Let’s pray the Academy doesn’t forget him.) Placing its gimmicks aside—and that takes quite the thorough sweeping—The Wackness has value for its dive into the roiling waters of Dr. Squires’ freethinking mentorship, and for a caustic turn by Olivia Thirlby (Juno), who plays the doctor’s daughter and the dealer’s love interest, and proves she doesn’t have to be adorable to be captivating. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, July 18-24. Cinema 21.
WALL-E
It’s appropriate, somehow, that Pixar’s most humane picture yet stars personable computers. In a depopulated future earth strewn with towering pinnacles of garbage, a lonely trash compactor named WALL-E passes his time collecting knickknacks and watching dance scenes from a Hello, Dolly! videocasette, until a flying iPod called EVE arrives on a reconnaissance mission. The movie’s first third is a peerless exercise in near-silent comedy, with the timid, smitten WALL-E equal parts E.T. and Charlie Chaplin. Director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) fills each frame with inspired details (including a resilient cockroach that functions as the robot’s house pet) and a delicate sense of yearning. The final hour—which finds WALL-E and the lady EVE onboard a spaceship filled with exiled humans, whose stationary consumption has turned them into gelatinous pink manatees—is marred by too many chases and a heavy-handed environmental message, but even Stanton’s most disposable elements are affecting. (Jeff Garlin does fine vocal work as the ship captain who rediscovers the concept of farming.) What endures from this almost perfect little movie is the image of two lovelorn robots flying together in an outer-space ballet. It’s what 2001: A Space Odyssey might have been if Kubrick had cared at all for people (or machines). It’s wondrous. G. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
