Screen Listings

Lions for Lambs

30 Days of Night

A gang of hungry vampires turns a small Alaskan town into an all-you-can-eat buffet just as the sun goes down for a month's rest. Basing 30 Days on his graphic novel of the same name, screenwriter Steve Niles is so enamored with this twist on vampire mythology that he has one of the vamps mention they should've done this a long time ago. Regardless of such self-congratulatory meta-dialogue, the movie is a fresh take on an old legend. Much as Danny Boyle did for zombies in 28 Days Later, Niles and director David Slade (Hard Candy) have re-envisioned vampires—as lightning-fast Eastern European nihilists. R. RYAN HUME. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Division, Movies on TV.

Across the Universe

A dreamboat named Jude meets a sweetheart named Lucy, and they accompany her brother Max on a voyage through the Beatles songbook. This initially sounds like a spectacularly irritating idea (let's play Moulin Rouge! with the Fab Four!), but in practice it's often astonishing, and might have worked even better if director Julie Taymor had followed her literal notion to its logical end and simply made a Beatles opera. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.

American Gangster

Ridley Scott, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe unite their powers to make a blunt brick of a movie; neither very stylish nor terribly complex, it still takes 157 minutes to batter home its muscular tale of men who speak softly and carry big guns. Scott has based his film on the true story of Frank Lucas (Washington), a man who ran dope directly from Thai poppy fields to Harlem's 116th Street, and Richie Roberts (Crowe), who rose in the New Jersey police ranks before trying to take down the New York City drug trade. Washington and Crowe both play men of watertight integrity, in their own ways, men whose stolid principles enable them to get what they want. I kept waiting for a tragic flaw to emerge in either character, if only to precipitate a turn in the story, but the heels stood firm, and eventually I realized that this was going to boil down to a test of will between two square-jawed, rather dull strongmen. American Gangster isn't a dreadful movie—as second-rate crime epics go, it's perfectly watchable—but it slowly begins to resemble an arm-wrestling match, or a staring contest. By the standards of drama, that isn't very powerful. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The long-delayed, obnoxiously titled Assassination has the makings of a classic Western, starting with powerhouse performances. Playing the legendary outlaw in his last days, Brad Pitt is masterful. He's matched step for step by Casey Affleck as Ford, a fanboy whose admiration for the famed robber takes a dark turn. Yet, although these ingredients are great, sophomore writer-director Andrew Dominik (Chopper) just can't make his story move. Boy howdy, is Jesse James a boring heap of uninspired dialogue and unnecessary subplots. R. AP KRYZA. Movies on TV.

Bee Movie

It would have been impossible for Jerry Seinfeld to know that while he was assembling a cartoon about bees who refuse to produce any more honey for their human overlords, 35 percent of the species Apis mellifera would go missing, presumed dead. So you can't justly accuse Seinfeld of having been insensitive to the honeybee loss, though a moment of silence before the movie—or maybe a respectful buzzing of "Taps"—might have been a nice gesture. But then Bee Movie is pretty evidently not the product of people who have asked a lot of hard questions about their material. No one seems to have considered whether children—presumably the target audience for jaunty animation—would be entertained by a courtroom drama, or by jokes about TiVo or by an unconsummated love story between a bee (Seinfeld) and a human woman (Renee Zellweger). But what does plot matter—it's just a clothesline for the Jerry Seinfeld observational humor, which is...remarkably unfunny, actually. The jokes are flat, self-satisfied and hopelessly dated. Seinfeld's participation in Bee Movie is evidence that celebrities, like insects, are attracted to bright, shiny things—with equally messy results. PG. AARON MESH. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Lake Twin, Moreland, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, Sandy, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

[HELD OVER] Blade Runner has been such a milestone of neo-noir sci-fi for 25 years that it's easy to forget just how big an impact the film had on the genre. The rain-soaked streets, the post-apocalyptic future, the robots rebelling against their masters; hell, Blade Runner is now used as a reference point for a certain mindset, a tone that wouldn't exist without Ridley Scott's haunting, ground-breaking film. And seeing it all on the big screen, digitally remastered and expanded and buffed up and generally just looking fantastic, brings home again just how influential this film has been. It's a shame it took Scott 25 years to lock the thing down, but I'm glad it's finally here. R. DANIEL CARLSON. Cinema 21. Wedmnesday-Thursday, Nov. 7-15.

The Bothersome Man

Dropped off by bus in an antiseptic purgatory where the wine contains no alcohol and the food no flavor ("hot chocolate, pussy, burgers: Nothing tastes any good," a fellow citizen complains), a man tries to find some snatch of beauty or love. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Broken English

As imagined by director Zoe Cassavetes (yes, the daughter of John), Parker Posey's Nora self-medicates the way real people do: She feels intoxicated because it's better than feeling something worse. It's not terribly difficult to imagine where Broken English goes from there, but it's not so easy to predict the dimensions of acting Posey shows. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Control

Everything that needed to be said onscreen about Ian Curtis—Joy Division frontman, tortured songwriter, 23-year-old suicide—was said to my satisfaction by Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. The Curtis of that movie, played by Sean Harris, was socially bizarre and hopelessly callow—and then he was dead, leaving Steve Coogan to mumble "bloody stupid bugger" and his bandmates to form New Order. That movie, like the world, moved on. The one person who hasn't abandoned the Legend of Ian, it seems, is music-video director Anton Corbijn who, 27 years after shooting the morose black-and-white video for "Atmosphere," makes his feature-length debut in the exact same place: Inside the sullen, self-dramatizing head of Ian Curtis. Corbijn's eulogy is a chronicle of his subject's sufferings, with the occasional break allowing lead actor Sam Riley to take a stab at the singer's wind-up tin-soldier dance moves. The movie makes the case that Curtis had real problems: An early marriage and epileptic seizures made him ill-suited for a rock-star lifestyle. Rotten luck, chum. But it's impossible to get past the suspicion that Curtis simply refused to make choices—any choices—in his own life. My sympathy runs to band manager Rob Gretton (a refreshingly blunt Toby Kebbell), who assures Curtis before a show that he should "take all the time you need," then pauses. "How much time do you need?" Two very long hours, it turns out. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.

Dan in Real Life

Two things make me automatically hate a romantic comedy. One is shitbag Dane Cook. The other is the presence of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door." So why is it that, midway through Dan in Real Life, when Dane Cook sings the wretched song, it didn't make me hate the movie? Two words: Steve Carell. As a milquetoast columnist and widower with three young girls, Carell's at his subdued, tortured best. Carell packs his girls off for a family vacation, falls for his brother's girlfriend (the ever-stunning Juliette Binoche, inexplicably dating Cook), and spends the majority of the film with a case of blue balls while his family prods him to find romance. Director Peter Hedges (Pieces of April) grounds the film in reality, and instead of offering a lackluster dramedy, he keeps it real and heartfelt. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson's fifth film is not his best, but it contains moments of maturity he has never shown before. Adrian Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson play three brothers who have boarded an ornate Indian train for a "spiritual journey," which mostly seems to consist of consuming a lot of spirits, along with tranquilizers and prescription medications. The question at the heart of any criticism of The Darjeeling Limited—and Anderson's directorial vision—is whether he knows what to do with the messy, absurd world. I don't think this movie provides a definitive answer, but it contains some encouraging signs. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinemagic, City Center, Fox Tower.

Ed Wood Film Festival

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] The worst director of all time (other than Jared Hess, of course) is celebrated with screenings of his home movies and Plan 9 from Outer Space—which could have been a home movie, really. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Thursday, Nov. 9-15.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Shekhar Kapur's sequel to 1998's Oscar-garnished Elizabeth is an overripe bodice-ripper, complete with gauzy images, a militaristic score and a ceaselessly swirling camera. It starts out bad, and swiftly descends into the stupefyingly awful. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Broadway.

Fat Girls

A critical and fan favorite on the indie festival circuit from actor-turned-director Ash Christian, Fat Girls is finally getting a full run one year after screening in the Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Filmed outside of Dallas, Texas, in less than two weeks, the movie tells the story of chubby, gay Rodney (Christian cast himself as the lead) and his really fat straight friend, Sabrina (Ashley Fink), who both not only end up happy as the film comes to a close, but also get laid. It's not the best movie in the world—Christ, how many more gay coming-of-age-films do we have to sit through?—but for a time, it was one of the most buzzed-about. That's not only because Christian is being touted as the next big thing in queer cinema (think low-budget meets high art with just enough Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes and John Waters tossed in to make it interesting), but because it's a genuine story of what it's like to finally come to terms with who and what you are. BYRON BECK. Living Room Theaters.

Fred Claus

David Dobkin has not directed the worst Christmas movie ever—though, golly, it looked close there for a while. Less the Bad Santa retread the trailers promised and instead dangerously similar to the Santa Clause movies, Fred contains nearly two hours of Vince Vaughn (as the titular, estranged brother of St. Nick) motor-mouthing his way through thick treacle and mirthless buffoonery. It's complete with clanks and whistles when characters get hit on the head—appropriate, since the movie's first hour feels much like being beaten about the head and shoulders with an oversized candy cane. Explaining its awfulness requires remembering it—which I would decidedly prefer not to do—but suffice it to say it involves elves. Breakdancing elves. Also ninja elves. Paul Giamatti sporadically plays his Santa as a W.C. Fields impression, while a persnickety Kevin Spacey (now more closeted than ever!) stops in as an efficiency inspector. The second half of Fred is mildly more bearable, if only because naked sentiment is a little better than digitally enhanced slapstick, and it's almost pleasant to see familiar eyes (including those of Rachel Weisz) getting all misty around each other. Almost. PG. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

The Game Plan

Do you smell what Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is cookin'? It's pretty pungent. The former WWF star's newest vehicle, The Game Plan, is the Jersey Girl of sports movies—a Disney-produced piece of cinematic poo that stings the nose like a burnt, sugar-coated baby turd. PG. AP KRYZA. 99 West Drive-In, Eastport, Movies on TV, Vancouver Plaza.

Global Concern: Human Rights on Film

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The United States' election process is a sloppy, disjointed and all-around insane feat. Every state has a different way of conducting voting, and many of those ways are ridiculous. The filmmakers behind Election Day decided to shine a light onto this madness and sent out nearly a dozen film crews to wildly different locations (a North Dakotan Native reservation, New York City, and Florida, naturally) to document how 2004's presidential election unfolded for many Americans. What they found was fascinating: frustrated, disenfranchised voters, confused and underinformed volunteers, passionate watchdogs, baffled international observers, optimistic and empowered ex-felons, and working-class families struggling to stay above the poverty line—all presented in a tidy and endlessly entertaining film. Election Day's smooth and rapid pace is absolutely necessary for it to drive home so many points. NW Film Center, Whitsell Auditorium. Election Day screens 7 pm Wednesday, Nov. 7. Lumo screens 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 8.

Gone Baby Gone

Ben Affleck's first whack at directing suffers from any number of problems, not the least of which is that Ben has tried to establish his brother Casey as a viable tough guy. Investigating the kidnapping of a little Southside girl, Casey Affleck makes his way into several hostile barrooms, where the regulars take one glance at him and appear to consider whether they should bend him in half and use him as a toothpick. But the movie, based on a Dennis Lehane novel—yes, the guy who wrote Mystic River—shares and even exceeds the earlier film's sense of place. Credit the Afflecks' Boston origins—but give at least as much acknowledgement to Amy Ryan (The Wire), who delivers a knockout performance as the world's least sympathetic mother. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, City Center, Fox Tower.

Horror Comedy Double Feature

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The titles—Murder Party and Blood Car—give a fair indication of what to expect. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Wednesday, Nov. 7.

Into the Wild

There are all kinds of movies that could be made from Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild, which recounts the short life of Christopher McCandless—a young man who left everyone he knew to live off the Alaskan wilderness, and wound up dying of starvation in an abandoned bus. The one made by Sean Penn is infuriating, self-important, bewitching and poignant—which is appropriate, since McCandless (Emile Hirsch) was all of those things as well. R. AARON MESH. Eastport, Cinetopia, City Center, Fox Tower, Hollywood Theatre, Lake Twin, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Tigard-Joy.

The Jane Austen Book Club

A group of California women (and one clueless gent) join a reading group devoted to you-know-who. And who's in The Jane Austen Book Club? Complete tools. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters.

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten

[ONE WEEK ONLY] Julien Temple's celebratory, convivial documentary has its moral tattooed on its title: There can be second acts in the lives of British punk stars. Much of the film follows a common trajectory—the Clash fight the power, the Clash become the power, the Clash are powerless against their own appetites—but the final reels show Joe Strummer marshalling his energies and restoring connections he severed while sneering and living hard. Before his sudden death in 2002, Strummer gathered friends for campfire sing-alongs across the globe, and Temple (who found his own punk fame with the 1980 Sex Pistols doc The Filth and the Fury) wisely follows suit, conducting most of his interviews by glowing embers. The portrait of Strummer isn't all rosy: One associate openly calls him a coward, and many reminiscences conclude with Joe dropping colleagues when they couldn't keep up with his pace. The film is equally flawed; I for one could have done without the symbolism-heavy clips from a BBC production of 1984. But Temple's movie serves as a tonic against the doomed-rocker myth (for this week's example, see Control), and instead offers the possibility of a redemption song. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Nov. 9-15.

Lars and the Real Girl

What kind of emotionally damaged man buys an anatomically correct Real Doll on the Internet, declares that it is his religiously conservative girlfriend Bianca, and asks his brother and sister-in-law if Bianca can stay in the guest room? He would have to be a deeply troubled individual. But to be in director Craig Gillespie's whimsical heartwarmer Lars and the Real Girl, he also has to be sweet and charming—ideal dating material, if not for that whole deranged talking-to-a-plastic-woman thing. I watched Ryan Gosling's performance as Lars with a kind of dumbstruck awe, wondering exactly what he was doing with his bulging eyes, hesitant speech and eager overbite. And then it hit me: He was doing an impersonation of Andy Kaufman's Latka from Taxi. Not everything in the movie is quite as ludicrous as Gosling's performance. Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer, as Lars' bewildered relatives, do the best they can to find the proper emotional register while playing scenes with an uncanny, blank-faced co-star. I mean Gosling, of course. Bianca is pretty convincing. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, City Center.

Lions for Lambs

If Robert Redford wants to make a noble, earnest political-science lecture about American foreign policy, more power to him—but maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't signal his intentions so blatantly as to cast himself as a noble, earnest political science lecturer. That's about the level of subtlety achieved in Lions for Lambs, which is far from the most obnoxious or least honest of the new crop of Middle-East quagmire flicks, but may be the most hectoring, and is certainly the most completely scraped clean of drama. In three parallel plots, Redford scolds a cynical undergraduate (Andrew Garfield), a TV reporter (Meryl Streep) quizzes a Republican senator (Tom Cruise), and two young platoon buddies face death in computer-generated Afghan mountains. The conversational volleys are sub-West Wing rapid-fire patter, but they at least match their combatants evenly—though it's a shame that Cruise's casting telegraphs his senator as a used-car salesman. The best work comes from Derek Luke and Michael Peña (Hollywood's Era of Terror victim du jour) as the idealistic soldiers; their performances have enough life to make the movie feel momentarily like something more than a stilted, flaccid homily. Well, at least Redford gave it the old college try. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard.

The Lives of Others

Gerd Wiesler (the late Ulrich Mühe) is ordered to spy on a theatrical couple, and the once-robotic Stasi operative is tested beyond imagining. R. BECKY OHLSEN. Living Room Theaters.

Manufactured Landscapes

What a lovely mess. Canadian doc-maker Jennifer Baichwal follows photographer Edward Burtynsky as he globe-hops from one environmental disaster to the next, making a convincing case that at least some of the seven wonders of our world are trash heaps. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

Martian Child

The story of an eccentric sci-fi author and widower who adopts a weirdo kid who thinks he's from Mars seems the perfect vehicle for John Cusack to milk some tear ducts. With Martian Child, though, Cusack's charm has officially become shtick. A golden premise like this one—combining elements of Starman and the unfortunate K-PAX—seems a fine choice for Cusack's charismatic idiosyncrasies. Alas, director Menno Meyjes (who also directed Cusack in Max) puts the whole thing on autopilot, taking no chances in his it's-OK-to-be-different narrative. There's nothing wrong with a little sweet sappiness, and while Martian Child isn't without charm (and Lucky Charms product-placement), its swelling orchestral score and too-cute predictability packs enough saccharine to rot teeth. PG. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard.

Michael Clayton

George Clooney plays the titular guy behind the guy behind the guy, a law-firm "fixer" who finds himself embroiled in a sinister case not so easily fixed. It tends to throw a wrench into your legal strategy when your chief counsel (Tom Wilkinson) has stopped taking his medication, declared himself "Shiva, the god of death," and is holed up in his loft with damning evidence and a month's supply of baguettes. The directorial debut of writer Tony Gilroy (the pen behind all three Bourne movies) is literate, sleek and elegant—and certainly never dull, though the material feel a touch rehashed. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, City Center, Movies on TV, Fox Tower.

Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint

First-time director and longtime Buddhist lama Neten Chokling tells the story of Tibet's most beloved yogi, Jetsun Milarepa, in the initial installment of a series on his life. As ninth-century legend has it, Milarepa was sent by his mother to study sorcery so as to exact revenge on his dead father's brother. While Milarepa is an interesting figure, you really wouldn't know it aside from the explanation at the beginning of the film telling you he is an interesting figure. The hokey special effects and excessive amounts of simulated lightning make this look like something you might see while flipping past the Trinity Broadcasting Network late at night. JOE JATCKO. Hollywood Theatre.

Music Within

As a matter of policy, I try to give high marks to movies shot in places where I purchase Diet Cokes and cigarettes. Music Within fits the bill—it was filmed in Northwest Portland's 23rd Avenue Market—and has several additional virtues to recommend it. There's an appealingly acerbic performance by Ron Livingston as disabilities activist Richard Pimentel, and a startling tour de force by Michael Sheen (last seen as Tony Blair in The Queen) as a foul-mouthed raconteur with cerebral palsy. The two men meet after Pimentel returns from Vietnam with tinnitus, a riotous ringing in the ears that the movie's sound design convincingly evokes. But as soon as director Steven Sawalich's movie establishes its insolent heroes—the kind of guys who pass around a joint with an artificial limb—it sends them hurtling down the road to maturity, accompanied by obvious soundtrack cues. (A lot of that music should have stayed within.) The life lessons feel rushed and glib; the characters learning them are too smart for their own feel-good movie. R. AARON MESH. Bridgeport.

Once

A winsome romance about a street musician trying to finish a demo tape, Once has the same ratio of irritation and appeal as a first album by any lachrymose singer-songwriter: You can condemn it for being histrionic and self-pitying, but you'll have to do so with a lump in your throat. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

Optimistic?

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Snowboarders fight global warming. Can global warming perform a Backside 720? No way, man. That's what snowboarders do! Hollywood Theatre. 8 pm Thursday, Nov. 8.

P2

A woman is menaced by a parking-garage security guard obsessed with Elvis. Expect a little less conversation, a little more action. And look for a review on wweek.com. R. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Eastport, City Center, Division, Movies on TV, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

Paprika

The latest anime contribution from Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers) concerns a dream-sharing headset called the DC Mini, which looks like an iPod gone very, very sinister, and is mostly a pretext for a movie about dreams within movies within dreams. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Saw IV

Jigsaw the insane serial killer does not torture people. He sticks to U.S. law and his international obligations. Not screened for critics. R. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

Sharkwater

Director and conservationist Rob Stewart's forceful documentary serves as an urgent corrective to the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week fear mongering—Stewart shows that sharks don't kill people; people kill sharks. And damn, do we kill them. Stewart exposes the increasing slaughter of great whites and hammerheads by long-line fishing (the oft-illegal but common practice of throwing out miles of hooks to snare anything that swims) and an insatiable Asian appetite for sharkfin soup. He even uncovers a Taiwanese "shark-fin mafia" putting the screws to Costa Rica, a country that makes its money on eco-tourism and sharkocide. Stewart isn't above some tiresome self-mythologizing, but he more than compensates for his egotism by showing how the seas' dominant predator is has been turned into helpless prey. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

Sleuth

Kenneth Branagh's remake of the 1972 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film is entertaining enough, if you watch it as a British comedy about a thriller, rather than a thriller itself. Michael Caine plays Andrew Wyke, a crime novelist who spends his free time sitting in expensive-looking furniture and pointing a remote control around his mansion, activating an assortment of sliding doors and other eccentric-millionaire doodads. Jude Law plays another variation of his Jude Law character—this time called Milo Tindle, an actor who has been you-know-whating Wyke's wife. When Tindle shows up requesting that Wyke grant his wife a divorce, excessive quipping, drinking and the waving around of firearms ensues. Caine and Law could act these parts in their sleep and pretty much do, but the laziness of Branagh and his crew is spectacular. R. JOE JATCKO. Fox Tower.

This Is England

The affable skinhead Woody (Joe Gilgun) takes young Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) under his wing, and then Combo (Stephen Graham) emerges from prison and offers himself as a less-benign father figure. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

A Touch of Spice

Many films, from Like Water for Chocolate to Babette's Feast, have dealt with food as a synonym for the delicacies of life. Now comes A Touch of Spice, a movie by Tassos Boulmetis that won eight awards in Greece in 2004. The film relates the story of Fanis (George Corraface), a professor of astrophysics who learned to correlate spices with the planets at his grandfather's store in Istanbul in 1959. When Fanis is told that his grandfather is dying, the film flashes back to his formative years. Told in the context of a seven-course dinner, A Touch of Spice is a lesson in politics, but more a memory of the past, and what was good in life. MICHAEL SAMACHSON. Living Room Theaters.

Tripping Through the Twilight Zone

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Three classic Rod Sterling episodes shown on 16 mm, along with a live performance of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." (That's the one with "that thing out on the wing.") Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Thursday, Nov. 8.

Wristcutters: A Love Story

"Three days after I killed myself, I got a job at Kamikaze Pizza." That's Patrick Fugit reporting from the afterlife, and his droll narration quickly establishes the tone Wristcutters is shooting for: a Harold and Maude-style celebration of existence by way of the extremely morbid. For about an hour, it works surprisingly well. Fugit, looking nearly as open-faced as he did in Almost Famous, bleeds out in a bathroom and finds himself in a circle of purgatory reserved for suicides—a place that turns out to be a bleached-out Bakersfield, Calif. It's all very What Hipster Dreams May Come, minus the visual histrionics and with most of the sentiment wiped off. But the third act, complete with a Tom Waits cameo, much metaphysical dithering and a sudden deluge of signs and wonders, amps the whimsy beyond endurance. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.