Screen Listings

FAY GRIM: A pocketful of Posey.

After the Wedding

Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, After the Wedding is a family melodrama so jam-packed with explosive secrets and lies that it's simply exhausting to endure. It's like a year's worth of soap-opera material crammed into two hours: Old flames unexpectedly reconnect, a child meets a long-lost biological father, then someone dies of a terminal illness. Because the protagonist Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen of Casino Royale) oversees an orphanage in Bombay, Danish director Susanne Bier first injects powerful imagery of Third World poverty and then attempts to upstage it with petty familial issues among the First World wealthy and privileged. Instead of eliciting liberal guilt, this juxtaposition unwittingly trivializes much of the plot development. Really, shouldn't we be caring about the starving children in India rather than whether estranged lovers will rekindle their relationship? R. MARTIN TSAI. Living Room Theaters.

Avenue Montaigne

"A new life is like a house," an old man tells his son to justify his hot young gold-digging mistress: "At your age, you build one. At mine, you buy one." The tone of their conversation, like that of the whole film, swoops gracefully from angry to sad to funny to affectionate in seconds. That it works is a credit to writer-director Danièle Thompson (who also wrote Queen Margot and Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train), and to a great ensemble cast that includes Albert Dupontel, Sydney Pollack and Cécile de France, possibly the only actress adorable enough to make Audrey Tautou seem frumpy. PG-13. BECKY OHLSEN. Fox Tower.

Away from Her

I have loved Julie Christie ever since I was taken to see Heaven Can Wait as a wee bairn, and I'd hoped to love her in this, too, but Sarah Polley, making an inauspicious directorial debut, renders that impossible. Polley deprives Christie (and us) of her British accent, and without that impeccable lilt, Christie's vocal rhythms are way off. It's often hard to hear her—the movie's soundtrack is a little muddy, as if the boom mike were fulfilling the movie's title. Such miscues wreck Polley's adaptation of Alice Munro's short story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," a tale of Alzheimer's and regret. The revelation here comes from Michael Murphy in a nonverbal role as a fellow Alzheimer's patient. The frowning, silent way he passively wrests whatever power remains for him, and the burbling cries he emits when someone frightens him, are devastating reminders of what superb acting is all about. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

Black Book

Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in 23 years plays out just like the Hollywood blockbusters he has left behind. Black Book is a World War II epic complete with nail-biting twists and turns, giant explosions and bare breasts. Never mind that the director and his screenwriter, Gerard Soeteman, apparently spent 40 years researching the historical facts that serve as its basis—the damn thing is entertaining enough for the multiplexes. Carice van Houten plays a brave Jewish woman who refuses to die. After the Nazi bastards wipe out her family, she joins the resistance, bleaches her pubic hair, infiltrates Sicherheitsdienst headquarters and seduces an officer played by Sebastian Koch (of The Lives of Others). Once again, Verhoeven boldly goes where few, if any, filmmakers have gone before, not least by eschewing the somberness of most Holocaust films and including a sympathetic SS officer and a duplicitous Dutch resistance fighter. R. MARTIN TSAI. Fox Tower.

Blades of Glory

It's sad to realize that sports parodies, which once mocked formulaic athletic-redemption stories, are now a formula of their own. Take a soft satirical target (figure skating), cast two Frat Packers as the dim rivals who team up (Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as the double-dude pairs skating team) and pander to male obsession with being smacked in the testes. Then count your money. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Cornelius, Sandy, Tigard Cinemas; Wednesday-Thursday only.

*NEW* Boulder Adventure Film Festival

A two-hour block of climbin', swimmin' and hikin' movies arrives with the smell of patchouli still fresh from Boulder, Colo. Mount Hood Community College, 26000 SE Stark St., Gresham. 6:30 pm Thursday, May 24. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, May 25. $10.

*NEW* Bug

William Friedkin directs a psycho-thriller about a guy who sees insects. Max Von Sydow plays the aging exterminator. Well, that's our guess; the movie wasn't screened for critics. R. Broadway, Eastport, Division, Cornelius, Movies on TV, Sandy, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, City Center.

Burnt Chocolate Water

[SHORT RUN] An exploration of coffee culture premised by one java hater's journey to find a cup he can tolerate. Jeff Grinta's parents drank Folgers, so it's no surprise that he likens the ritual beverage to "burnt chocolate water." He even goes so far as scorching a Hershey bar in a frying pan, adding water and drinking it to prove his point. The documentary is fitfully interesting and often funny as Grinta interviews coffee enthusiasts, journalists, an addiction counselor, and even a Mormon (the golden tablets prohibit coffee). Unfortunately, it stops short of being relevant. Portland-area resident Grinta spends a lot of time looking for love at roadside espresso trailers and suburban strip malls while alluding to but not addressing the local players that have put Portland coffee on the world map. MIKE THELIN. Hollywood Theatre, Wednesday-Thursday only.

Delta Farce

Larry the Cable Guy goes to war. In Mexico. Yeah, you read that correctly. We're kind of happy this wasn't screened for critics, actually. PG-13. Forest, Sherwood.

*NEW* Donnie Brasco

[SHORT RUN, REVIVAL] So you want to see a Johnny Depp performance that's actually good? Check out Mike Newell's 1997 undercover-cop picture, with a lead turn by Depp that presages—and surpasses—Leo and Matt's work in The Departed. The generic elements of mob movies are all here, with some remarkably taut sequences on the Miami beaches, but what distinguishes Donnie Brasco is how it drains out the glamour that Coppola and Scorsese poured into the Mafia milieu. Here, the Cosa Nostra is just another dead-end job, only the end is more literally deadly than most. Much of the realism depends on an understated performance by Al Pacino (of all people), who reveals layers of disappointment and dignity that he usually covers up with irritating bluster. Presented in a 35 mm print. R. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 9:15 pm Friday-Thursday, May 25-31.

Disturbia

A bored teen on house arrest (Shia LaBeouf) spies on his neighbors and finds out more than he wanted to know in this remake of Rear Window. But where the 1955 original creeped us out with the protagonist's own voyeurism as much as with what he uncovered, this Dreamworks production replaces Hitchcock's wit with bubble-gum romance and generic scares. PG-13. JAMES PITKIN. Oak Grove, Evergreen, Movies on TV, Sandy, Sherwood.

The Ex

In a summer full of digital ghost ships, explosions and threequels, it's surprising that one of the better battles to be waged onscreen is between two sitcom stars. But in The Ex, a tasty little office revenge flick disguised as a romantic comedy, the war between Scrubs star Zach Braff and Arrested Development's Jason Bateman is supercharged. Braff stars as Tom, a new daddy who takes a job at a pretentious New Age ad agency in white-flight Ohio. His mentor is Chip (Bateman), a big-dicked, wheelchair-bound weasel who dwells on the memory of porking Tom's wife (Amanda Peet) in high school and decides to sabotage the rookie. The Ex ably balances shrewd pranks and sophomoric slapstick in a way that allows its stars to run. Braff's good, but it's Bateman who chews the scenery, crafting a slimy, manipulative and hysterical wolf in pastel clothing. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Mall, Wednesday-Thursday only.

Exterminating Angels

French director Jean-Claude Brisseau is the sort of daring visionary who sits in the cafe and thinks, "You know what was a great movie? Wings of Desire. But you know what it needed? More naked lesbian make-out scenes." Not only is he the sort of man who thinks this: He's the sort of man who goes out and does it. But don't mistake him for some provocateur getting off on girls removing their panties in restaurants and eating each other out in hotel rooms. The director would have us know that he is no mere pornographer; he's a pornographer with artistic integrity. Which means that every time he orgasms, he's looking in the mirror. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

*NEW* Fay Grim

"An honest man is always in trouble," the titular hero of Henry Fool often declared. So as director Hal Hartley reunites the cast of his 1997 comedy of letters, it's no shock to find Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) in hot water again. It's more perplexing to see Hartley turn the story of grandiloquent drifter Henry, poetry-writing garbageman Simon (James Urbaniak) and Fay Grim, the woman caught between them (Parker Posey), into a farcical espionage franchise. The first movie simultaneously satirized and celebrated literature: Simon was an artist trapped in the body of a milquetoast, while the muse living in his basement was a no-talent drifter with all the debauched, menacing charisma of Lucifer. (It was inevitable that Ryan would go on to play the devil in another Hartley movie.) The sequel, featuring Fay globe-trotting in search of Henry's notebooks, is a satire of American foreign policy without any celebration, and it's much less involving. (It's also hopelessly facile in its politics: Hartley could be accused of equivocating between Israeli agents and jihadist radicals, except that glib disinterest doesn't quite count as equivocation.) Everything about the reprise is unnecessary. But at least Ryan's performance—especially once he's discovered giving inspiration to a very different sort of coward—leaves us savoring one more dose of the diabolical. Henry Fool is still in fine form; this time it's his director who's in trouble. R. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Friday-Thursday, May 25-31.

Fracture

What fun: a suspense procedural in which the characters develop, instead of merely contorting in a third-act twist. Well, at least one of them does. Anthony Hopkins' wife-murdering businessman just provides the actor with another tour of the Lecter circuit, this time adding a Scottish brogue to the cold-eyed menace. But Ryan Gosling does some dramatic heavy lifting as Willy Beachum, a cocky prosecutor who misjudges the Hopkins trial as one last mindless chore to perform before moving to a fancier office. As a Southern golden boy confronted by an astonishing series of failures, Gosling shows that he can put those Half Nelson chops to studio use. For once, there's order in the court. R. AARON MESH. Broadway, Evergreen, Movies on TV, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinetopia, City Center.

Georgia Rule

Someone needs to tell Lindsay Lohan to put on a bra. We get it. She's supposed to be rebellious and defiant and spoiled-city-girl chic. But come on. Don't you think her raspy voice purring lines like "I don't like to listen" and "It was only a blow job" is sufficient? Georgia Rule isn't much of a departure from La Lohan's everyday life. Forced to leave her parents' digs in Cali and move in with her grandma (a headstrong Jane Fonda) for the summer 'cause no one else wants to put up with her shit (mainly her closeted-drunk mother, played by Felicity Huffman), the infamously big-titted redhead struts about Idaho in her Chloé dresses and chunky heels, raising havoc among the simple, small-town folk. She corrupts a Mormon boy (Garrett Hedlund), gives the young neighborhood boys boners, and throws all of the homely teenage girls' panties in a twist—forcing parents to tighten the leashes on their sex-deprived high-school sweethearts. But, of course, there is a reason for Lohan's teenage angst, and as it turns out, LiLo is deeply distraught from a brooding secret that tore through her formative years. Another child actor, yet another E! True Hollywood Story. Sigh. PG-13. ELIANNA BAR-EL. Broadway, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas.

Gloomy Sunday

Easily the most depressing ménage à trois movie ever made, although perhaps the misery should be expected, considering the source material: the "Hungarian Suicide Song," which reportedly drove a good number of Europeans to untimely deaths in the 1930s. (A website describes the tune, also called "Gloomy Sunday," as boasting lyrics of "crushing hopelessness and bitter despair." It was not a popular dance number.) This 1999 German drama reimagines the song as the product of two Budapest men loving the same ravishing woman (Erika Marozsán). They have a restaurant, a piano and quite a number of corpses on their consciences. And that's the happy part of the movie. Then the Nazis show up. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters, Wednesday-Thursday only.

The Great Communist Bank Robbery

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] What happens when a half-dozen former Romanian apparatchiks decide to rob the National Bank in Bucharest? They get shot, of course. The Soviet bloc wasn't much for suspense stories. But in the bizarre aftermath of the heist, the Stalinist leadership was momentarily in the business of making a suspense movie. It was crude propaganda—and it starred the original thieves. Alexandru Solomon revisits the movie Reconstruction, and his own film becomes an investigation into the warped logic that mixed show trials with showbiz. Originally aired on the BBC in 2004, the documentary is a bit muddled in its efforts to understand the bank robbers (were they Zionist freedom fighters? Despairing Party members?), but it stages a coup in interviewing a good number of the Romanian secret police, torturers who have lived dishonorably long lives and offer no regrets. The blithe reminiscences of the state's henchmen are at least as chilling as any misinformation campaign. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, May 26-27.

*NEW* Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Flashpoints correspondent Kevin Pina brings the Pacifica Radio show's wildly speculative "journalism" to the screen with a bit of agitprop accusing a good many governments of conspiring to quash democracy in Haiti. Whether any of Pina's case that Jean-Baptiste Aristide was the victim of U.S. imperialism is not a topic I feel qualified to address—but then most of the people in the documentary don't seem qualified either, or especially trustworthy. "If you supported Aristide, they killed you," claims a Haitian demonstrator in a typically wild claim (and a somewhat self-refuting one, considering that he is an Aristide supporter and not at all dead). By the time a former Haitian adviser states that Canadian soldiers were "training death squad members to be police," the impartiality of the film feels questionable at best. "It is bewildering to know why Canada would take such a role in such a heinous act," the aide continues. Not if you're familiar with the sinister history of Canadian imperialism. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, May 24. $6. Director Kevin Pina will attend the screening.

Hot Fuzz

Director Edgar Wright made his debut with flesh-craving zombies in Shaun of the Dead, but for his new feature, Hot Fuzz, the director has moved on to something truly heinous: community-improvement leagues. The Neighborhood Watch Association of Sandford, a hamlet in downcountry England, proves particularly niggling and vindictive, but at first it seems a poor match for Sgt. Nicolas Angel (Simon Pegg), the newest addition to the village's police force. Wright has a keen eye for absurdities, and it's not long before Angel and his squad pal, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), are indulging that taste with a drunken marathon of the most risible cop flicks. In its last 30 minutes, Hot Fuzz—which drags a bit during its rural criminal-conspiracy narrative—explodes into a skylarking farce, sending up every street-battle cliché ever perpetrated by Michael Bay in Bad Boys II. To his credit, Edgar Wright has no respect for his elders. R. AARON MESH. Eastport, Cinemagic, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, City Center.

The Invisible

The no-see-um in this picture is pubescent, and trapped between life and death after an assault. Not screened for critics, perhaps in anticipation of the Vatican's rejection of limbo. PG-13. Movies on TV, Cinema 99.

*NEW* Janus Classics

[SHORT RUN, REVIVAL] Yes, you've probably seen them before. But François Truffaut's most personal movie—The 400 Blows—and his best—Jules and Jim—are well worth another visit as the NW Film Center plays highlights of the Janus archives. The stories of misspent adolescence and shared love still resonate, but what most impresses from this distance is the immense immediacy of the black-and-white images. Riders pinned to the walls of a whirling fun-park ride, a car flying off a bridge, and most of all the figures running fast and free, the way a camera had never filmed them before and would rarely capture them after. Watch them well. AARON MESH. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. The 400 Blows screens at 7 pm Friday, May 25 and 9 pm Saturday, May 26. Jules and Jim screens at 9 pm Friday, May 25 and 7 pm Saturday, May 26. $4-$7.

*NEW* Jindabyne

Raymond Carver would roll in his grave if he could see how his psychologically incisive short story "So Much Water So Close to Home" has been ground into simple-minded mush. His first-person narrative portrays a woman who identifies so strongly with a murder victim (the body has been found in a river by her husband and his fishing buddies) that it all but obliterates her marriage. First-time (and, let's hope, last-time) screenwriter Beatrix Christian trashes Carver's basic good sense in favor of soap-opera clichés about "community" that are embarrassingly outmoded in their sleeve-worn political correctness. Christian makes the murdered girl an Aborigine, thereby setting the stage for all sorts of namby-pamby non-insights into race. The screenwriter has no ear for authentic speech (jokes about the Bee Gees in 2007?), but even if Jindabyne weren't sabotaging Carver, the movie would still be a stinkeroo on its own vapid terms—an exploitation picture in arthouse drag. R. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.

L'Iceberg

What exactly annoys me so much about the poker-faced mincing in the cinematic introduction of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy? It bears the marks of Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismäki—but then, I like those directors, so that's no problem. And the story, in which co-director Gordon plays a fast-food employee who gets stuck in a walk-in freezer and develops a passion for ice, is twee but inoffensive. Part of the exasperating quality of L'Iceberg lies in its hackneyed mockery of bourgeois life, which it dissects with ostensibly hilarious tableaus of a family silently buttering bread. But maybe what's most frustrating is that silent comedy, when extended to its furthest point and combined with bright music, begins to resemble mime. And I really hate mimes. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

The Lives of Others

Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) works for the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It's 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall crumbles, but despite the corruption around him, Wiesler remains committed to the cause—until he sees a production by one of East Germany's few loyal playwrights, rising star Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and instantly becomes entranced by Dreyman's leading lady (Martina Gedeck). When Wiesler is ordered to spy on the couple, the once-robotic Stasi operative is tested beyond imagining. R. BECKY OHLSEN. Fox Tower, Hollywood Theatre, Tigard-Joy.

Mafioso

[HELD OVER] It's this Sicilian thing that's been going on for 2,000 years...only this time seen from Sicily. While now compared to The Godfather and The Sopranos, Alberto Lattuada's mob comedy has a distinct, primal edge, like a pasta marinated in ink-black gravy. Maybe that's what happens when you see the Don back in his earthen villa, still ruling among the chickens. But even this indelicate Mafia proves more than a match for the exuberant naïf played by Alberto Sordi. (His character is called Antonio Badalamenti, although to my knowledge he does not go on to write music for any David Lynch movies.) Dragging his family back to the home island isn't Antonio's best idea: His mother dislikes his city-bred wife, his father calls him a coward, and everybody in that other Family seems acutely interested in his marksmanship skills. What's most sinister about the picture is how it puts Antonio's decency at odds with his happiness. What's most fiendishly enjoyable is where he ends up once he decides to compromise. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Wednesday-Thursday, May 23-31.

Meet the Robinsons

This should be prescribed 3-D therapy for anyone suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after dodging Michael Jackson's creepy-fingers in Disney's 1986 futuristic film Captain EO. The incredible Tyrannosaurus chase scene, hilarious characters and phenomenal animation are just what the doctor ordered. G. KYLE CASSIDY. Sherwood.

Mizoguchi Masterpieces

[SHORT RUN, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center wraps up its Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective with two landmark films. The final film of a storied career, Street of Shame, continues to mine the same thematic vein first struck in Sisters of the Gion. Set in a brothel with the painfully ironic name Dreamland, Street examines the trials and tribulations of five prostitutes trying to survive in postwar Tokyo. Unfortunately, their struggles are all too familiar, and the film ends up feeling like the concluding paragraph to an undergraduate essay: a quick summary of points argued more passionately somewhere else. In the West, Sansho the Bailiff is mostly overshadowed by Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, its co-winner at the 1954 Venice Film Festival. It is easy to see why: watching Seven Samurai is fun, whereas watching Sansho is like getting punched in the gut by an old lady you just helped across the street. No good deed goes unpunished, and I suppose it says something for Mizoguchi's artistry that I'm still surprised by it. When a kind governor is exiled, his family is condemned to a life of wandering. Of course, this leads to prostitution for his wife and slavery for his children. Purchased by the cruel bureaucrat Sansho, the son, Zushio, forgets his father's teachings and becomes a vicious thug; naturally, his sister remains pure and, through her sacrifices, redeems him. None of this is to say that this is a bad movie; on the contrary, it is near perfect, but it is depressing from beginning to end. JAMES LINDSAY. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. Street of Shame screens at 7 pm Thursday, May 24. Sansho the Bailiff screens at 7 pm Sunday, May 27. $4-$7.

The Namesake

Mira Nair's adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel spans the life of Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and his arranged marriage to Ashima (Tabu), a young girl in India. After immigrating to New York City, they have a son and, to his and everyone else's chagrin, name him Gogol. The grown-up version of the oddly dubbed child is played by a surprisingly mature Kal Penn, who gradually sheds his token stoner-dude persona (à la Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) and finds a deeper, softer character as a young Bengali American battling with his family name and traditions. PG-13. ELIANNA BAR-EL. Hollywood Theatre, City Center.

Next

Nicolas Cage plays a psychic who uses his powers to help the FBI stop a terrorist attack on Los Angeles. This movie is exactly as good as it sounds. After an opening car chase/Dodge Charger commercial, FBI ice queen Julianne Moore recruits Cage from his Vegas magic act. Moore is probably bitter at following up the brilliant Children of Men with this schlock—and she seems to be taking it out on the screen. Her delivery has all the emotional believability of one of those computer programs that speaks what you type. PG-13. ETHAN SMITH. Tigard Cinemas

Pine Flat

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Cinema Project presents a 2005 work from director Sharon Lockhart, who immerses herself in a 300-resident California hamlet where the whistle no longer stops, and crafts a meditative portrait of the place and its children. It's Sunday morning in our quiet white-bread redneck mountain town! New American Art Union. 922 SE Ankeny St., 232-8269. 7:30 pm Wednesday, May 23.

*NEW* Red Road

[SHORT RUN] Disturbing in about 10 different ways, Red Road is set in a Glasgow where everything is observed on closed-circuit cameras and—coincidentally?—everyone is incredibly fastidious about using condoms. Jackie (Kate Dickie) works at the City Eye, a company whose job is to monitor the cameras and alert police at signs of trouble. When she spots a man she never thought she'd see again, she starts acting crazy. But her face is so stony and unreadable that trying to guess the reasons behind her bizarre behavior creates a fascinating kind of suspense. There's not as much depth to the film as the setup could've allowed, but it's compelling anyway. BECKY OHLSEN. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, May 25-31.

Saimir

Francesco Munzi's drama follows a father and son from Albania to Italy. That's filial amore. Living Room Theaters.

Shrek the Third

To say that Shrek the Third is unavoidable is an understatement. The success of the first two films have turned the grumpy, gaseous ogre into a marketer's wet dream. His big green face is seen on hamburger packaging, toothpaste, video games, soft drinks. Hell, you can't even put on a condom these days without seeing Shrek. The Third finds Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots (Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas, reprising their voice roles) searching for a distant heir to the throne of Far Far Away. That heir is teenage nerdlinger Artie (Justin Timberlake), who attends a medieval high school complete with valley girls and "Just Say Nay" banners. Meanwhile, Shrek's wife, Fiona (Cameron Diaz), is knocked up and holding a baby shower that is interrupted by Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), the villain of the second film, who charges the kingdom with a legion of disgruntled fairy-tale villains. There are laughs aplenty in Shrek the Third. Every voice is a famous one, and the animation is top notch. And yes, kids and adults will certainly enjoy it. But the main thing the franchise had going for it all along was its wit and originality. Sadly, the third time around that's what's missing. PG. AP KRYZA. Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Eastport, Division, Moreland, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Evergreen, Lake Twin, Movies on TV, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center.

Snow Cake

[TWO DAYS ONLY] Sweet and somber, Snow Cake is the sort of drama that teeters dangerously close to becoming a high-fructose Hallmark wankfest—but never goes over the edge. Alan Rickman gives a stellar performance as British ex-con Alex, who is traveling across Canada. Along the way, he picks up a young hitchhiker and, after being involved in a fatal car accident, becomes stranded in a small town with the hitcher's severely autistic mother, Linda (Sigourney Weaver). A shut-in, Linda immediately forces Alex to stay with her. Plagued by guilt over the accident, Alex feels obligated to help Linda pick up the pieces, even if it means suppressing his own troubled past. It's not the best film about people with mental disabilities, but Snow Cake, despite its flaws, does manage to touch a nerve without milking the tear ducts. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre, Wednesday-Thursday only.

Spider-Man 3

On page and screen, Peter Parker has always been the nerd made good. Offered the chance to dim that halo—thanks to an inflated ego, a somewhat foreseeable betrayal, and an oily goop from outer space—he begins to comb his bangs over his forehead, don black dress shirts, and crush his competitors. This is, you will agree, a comparatively mild corruption. When Anakin Skywalker goes bad, he turns into Darth Vader. When Spider-Man goes bad, he turns into Bill Gates. All of Spider-Man 3's most delightful moments belong to James Franco as Harry Osborn; while Tobey Maguire is gloating and strutting, his counterpart is stealing the movie (and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane) with a lopsided grin and some Chubby Checker moves. Spider-Man 3 is a worthy addition, but it is packed with too many elements, and not enough of the ones we want to see. PG-13. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Evergreen, Movies on TV, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center.

The Valet

French director Francis Veber (The Dinner Game) offers up another false-identity truffle, this time with a nebbishy parking attendant (Gad Elmaleh) who pretends to be living with a supermodel (Alice Taglioni) to protect a millionaire (Daniel Auteuil) from divorce. Yeah, there are a lot of people running around Veber's set, and some of them manage to do funny things. But the plot mechanism isn't wound very tight here, and Auteuil's performance is disappointingly broad. Here's the rare occasion when the promised American remake could be far superior. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Wednesday-Thursday only.

*NEW* Vengeance Trilogy

[REVIVAL] The first and third film in Korean director Chan-wook Park's "Vengeance trilogy"—Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance—both have moments of cinematic brilliance. But it is the second film in these unrelated tales of revenge and retribution, Oldboy, which stands out as a masterpiece. Not to take anything away from Mr. Vengeance or Lady Vengeance, because both are stylish and beautifully crafted films (and Yeong-ae Lee's performance as a woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder out to avenge herself is exquisite). But nothing can compare to Min-sik Choi's layered performance in Oldboy as Dae-su, a man held in a mysterious prison for 15 years for reasons he does not know, suddenly released to find those who did him wrong. As Dae-su makes his way through the underbelly of the city, hammer in hand, what little humanity he had left after years of psychological torture slips away as he brings down his vengeance on anyone who gets in his way. Evoking such classic films as Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and John Boorman's Point Blank, Park has proven himself to be one of the most exciting directors in contemporary cinema, deftly mixing violent brutality with poetic grace. DAVID WALKER. Living Room Theaters. David Walker introduces Oldboy at 7:15 pm Friday, May 25.

Waitress

There's no way to write about Adrienne Shelly's first full-length directing effort without mourning her murder in her Manhattan apartment last November. The knowledge of her death seeps into her movie about a pie-baking cafe server (Keri Russell) with dreams of escape, making the movie somehow sadder and more valuable. Waitress' portrayal of rural life occasionally slips into condescension (small-town folk don't rely so heavily on no double negatives), but that's the only sour note in a sweet confection. Russell's heroine channels the misery of a loveless, abusive marriage into her cooking—giving the results names like "I Hate My Husband Pie"—but finds a new outlet in her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion, delivering his usual terrific performance), who delivers a special brand of patient care. The affair develops in unexpected directions, and the lovers are nicely supported by Andy Griffith and Shelly herself. For 107 minutes, death shall have no dominion. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Movies on TV, City Center.

Year of the Dog

Mike White's directorial debut is smart, ruthless and precisely observed. It is also, perhaps not coincidentally, mostly boring and unpleasant. It concerns a woman who gives up on life while she ostensibly celebrates it, and shows exactly why she would cash in her chips. That it will probably put its audiences in the mood for a refund is merely a corollary achievement. The heroine, a shaky creature named Peggy, is played by Molly Shannon, the Saturday Night Live alum whose humor has always edged close to hysteria. Here it drops over the edge. "People have always disappointed me," she explains. "The only ones who've been there for me are my pets." So down with people, up with dogs. Up on the furniture, even. Since making his screenwriting splash with 2000's Chuck & Buck, White has had a taste for miserable neurotics; here it swallows the entire screen. It gives Peggy nothing. It doesn't offer much to an audience, either, except some bitter laughs and a brutal reminder that in everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love. Puppy love is no replacement. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.