Screen Listings

What Would Jesus Buy?

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. 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. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99. Bridgeport, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Forest, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

August Rush

For anyone who's ever stayed up late trying to get good at something, director Kirsten Sheridan's August Rush is insulting. Little August (Freddie Highmore), the love child of a renowned concert cellist (Keri Russell) and an Irish rock guitarist (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), is put up for adoption and spends his life in an orphanage, until he escapes and sets out on a journey to New York City to find his real parents. Turns out he's an uncanny musical prodigy, and can master just about any instrument within five minutes of touching it. After a series of urban misadventures, his talent is discovered by Robin Williams, playing a street-musician pimp dressed like Bono. And soon enough, August is picked up by Juilliard and performing his compositions in Central Park. It all sounds peachy keen, but accepting that August is the new millennial Mozart and, beyond that, ingesting August Rush's shopping cart full of all-too-convenient plot points, rampant clichés (someone actually says, "Run, August, run!" with a straight face) and overbearing narration requires more suspension of disbelief than it's worth. PG. LANCE KRAMER. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Badagwell in Action

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] The Union Haitian Brothers Theater of Portland has made a movie about (and here we quote from the press release, because we're otherwise pretty confused) "the Lifestyle of Immigrants and the Corruption of the Church World." Hollywood Theatre. Thursday, Nov. 22.

Bee Movie

Jerry Seinfeld's insect cartoon is 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, Bridgeport, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Any movie that opens in the middle of graphic sexual intercourse between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei is going to have to do quite a bit to keep the audience's attention at the same level. Fortunately, director Sidney Lumet has plenty up his sleeve for an encore; his movie is absolutely riveting. It takes its title from the old Irish blessing, "May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead"—and the initial copulation must count as half an hour, because everything that happens to the characters from that point on is a building catastrophe. Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play brothers who plan to rob their parents' strip-mall jewelry store; when the plan goes wrong, the sins of the sons are visited on the father (a fierce Albert Finney). Lumet , revisiting the triumphs of 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon, slices his story down to bone and tendon, and the stark emotions suit the actors—especially Hoffman, who winces at every kind touch, rejects the easy comforts of playing likeable, and makes a case for himself among the pre-eminent actors of his generation. R. AARON MESH. City Center, Fox Tower.

Bella

A noble cook comes to the rescue of a pregnant waitress. Toronto Film Festival audiences loved it, New York critics hated it, and Portland critics...well, we weren't allowed to see it. PG-13. Bridgeport, Lloyd Mall, Moreland, Movies on TV.

Beowulf

Thirteen centuries of poetic tradition, and here is the reward: Anthony Hopkins' digitally enhanced naked ass. This is one of the first sights in Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, which translates the Old English epic into motion-capture computer animation—and 3-D animation at that. There's more nudity where that came from: A running theme is stripping Ray Winstone naked and strategically placing his sexy beast behind long, pointy objects—a candle, a broadsword, a claw and, yes, a helmet—that jut out at the audience. Indeed, a desire for penetration is the prevailing mood, especially after an action scene climaxes with a money shot of its hero bursting through a sea monster's eye while screaming his own name. ("Beeoowuuuulf!" Really.) It's all achingly bad, and it appears to be a result of the screenwriters—Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary—listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin at age 12, then moving on to watch Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies while reading Maxim. This seems increasingly likely as time is devoted to the monster Grendel, a music-hatin' troll that looks suspiciously like Gollum, and his mother. That would be Angelina Jolie, nude, with her naughty bits covered in gold body paint. Forget all that ancient guff about honor and glory; Grendel's mom was a MILF? PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Beyond the Call

Director Adrian Belic follows three foul-mouthed heroes as they deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn regions around the world. The documentary, which has been making the film festival rounds for the past year, shows that you too can change the world, if you are independently wealthy and have a lot of free time. The three men, who call their organization Knightsbridge International, show up in these chaotic regions wearing American-flag emblems and literally carrying suitcases full of money, all the while managing not to get kidnapped or shot. The subject matter is intrinsically thought-provoking, but the narrative ultimately fails as a cohesive story line, instead skipping from one urgent circumstance to the next. This light treatment also leaves too many questions about the organization's affiliations and where the money is coming from. While the group's founder, "Sir" Ed Artis, states they are not interested in changing people's politics or religion, it is worth noting a scene later in the film in which he is "knighted" by the U.S. priory of the Knights of Malta, a 967-year-old Christian society like those you might read about in The Da Vinci Code. It's certainly not implausible that members of this group could also be involved in independent humanitarian work, but the failure to explain where they get the said briefcases full of money leaves something to be desired. JOE JATCKO. Hollywood Theatre.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

[HELD OVER, FINAL FIVE DAYS] 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. Wednesday-Sunday, Nov. 21-25.

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.

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. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Forest, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard.

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. Cinemagic, Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall, St Johns Twin Cinema Pub, Tigard-Joy.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack

"Your brother wants you to get his girlfriend pregnant?" It certainly is an unusual proposition that the imprisoned Antonio (Antonio de la Torre) places before his janitor brother, Jorge (Quim Gutiérrez), but it's just the tip of the complicated family bonds in freshman director Daniel Sánchez Arévalo's portrait of slacker Madrid. Paula (Marta Etura), the girl Antonio wants knocked up, is also in prison, and eyeing a transfer to the maternity ward. Jorge is chafing against caring for his stroke-addled father and pining for the childhood sweetheart he never feels comfortable with. Jorge's best friend Sean (Raúl Arévalo) is starting to feel quite comfortable with getting hand jobs from a male masseuse—but he's leery of his dad receiving the same tender ministrations. The soap here is so pure it floats, but the movie sails along thanks to characters who are self-aware without being wised up. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Electric Apricot: The Quest for Festaroo

[ONE WEEK ONLY] If any musical scene is still ripe for satire 23 years after This Is Spinal Tap, it's the jam-band scene—a refuge for people with questionable hygiene and a weakness for tie-dye to dance to self-indulgent noodling. Unfortunately, Electric Apricot is not the sharpest parody; it's fairly self-indulgent itself. Produced under the umbrella of National Lampoon and directed by guitar whiz Les Claypool, the mockumentary follows its eponymous quartet as it seeks entry to the hallowed Festaroo celebration. The improvisational humor is uneven; Claypool himself comes off best as a drummer who, in his spare time, makes exceptionally small dildos with a glass blower. Not far behind him is Adam Gates, vying for the title of the world's smuggest hippie. ("If you really want to stick it to your government," he editorializes, "you don't even have to vote. Just put on a few bumper stickers, man.") So Electric Apricot has its moments, but it's like any Phish album: You have to sit through a lot of goofing around to find the stuff worth your time. R. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Thursday, Nov. 23-29.

Enchanted

Where the Shrek trilogy needled the Disney corporate hierarchy in not-so-subtle terms, Disney's own Enchanted reclaims the studio's time-honored fairy-tale archetypes, repackaging saccharine princesses and lethally gorgeous evil queens in both CGI and live-action landscapes. When creature-friendly Giselle (Amy Adams) waltzes into the arms of virtuous Prince Edward (James Marsden), their hand-animated happy ending is interrupted by the machinations of a bitchy stepmother, voiced by Susan Sarandon. The witch's sleight of hand reroutes the disoriented Giselle to modern-day New York, where she is taken in by divorce lawyer and single dad Robert (Patrick Dempsey). Marsden bounds onto the scene with panache; Dempsey watches the musical montages Giselle unleashes onto Central Park with the quiet bemusement that's become his calling card on the small screen. Adams has studied the Disney heroines closely, and her stylish homage to the wide-eyed waifs makes for an enjoyable 107 minutes. While tweaking the Disney formula, Enchanted is still pretty damn formulaic, but the sweet, all-age-appropriate flick at least attempts to patch the real-world plot hole (and fairy-tale staple) of unconditional love at first sight. It is Adams' indie cred and undeniable charm, however, that give the soft-hearted parody a more satirical edge. PG. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lake Twin, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Fat Girls

A critical and fan favorite on the indie festival circuit from actor-turned-director Ash Christian. Filmed outside 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 a genuine story of what it's like finally to 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 looks close there for a while. 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. Explaining the awfulness requires remembering it—which I would decidedly prefer not to do—but let it suffice 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. PG. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, 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 Indoor Twin.

Glass Lips

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR APPEARANCE] Polish artist Lech Majewski introduces his own film, about a poet abandoned to a madhouse. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum.

Helvetica

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Orson Welles' famous speech in The Third Man observes that the nation of Switzerland enjoyed "500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." In fact, the Swiss did not invent the cuckoo clock. They invented the font Helvetica. And as Gary Hustwit's strangely engrossing documentary amply demonstrates, the typeface is the epitome of Modernist design: It elevates neutrality to an art. Both elegant and bland, the sans-serif font can now be found everywhere, from New York subway signage to the side of the Space Shuttle. It's a sign of conformity (dozens of corporate logos) and a suggestion of subversion (the credits of The Office). "American Apparel uses Helvetica and it looks cheeky," says one designer. "And American Airlines uses it and it looks sober." After 80 minutes playing this game, Helvetica starts to look almost oppressively pervasive—an anesthetizing agent shielding the West from thinking about its place in history. Or maybe it just looks nice on letterhead. Either way, Helvetica—the font and the movie—is captivating. AARON MESH. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 23-24.

Hitman

Matt Damon stirred up an extremely silly controversy this summer when he claimed his Jason Bourne character was a direct rebuke to the imperialist tradition of James Bond. He was wrong. The opposite of Bond isn't Bourne: It's Number 47, the assassin at the center of the video-game adaptation Hitman. As played by Timothy Olyphant, this hired gun has no sense of humor, no sex drive, no charisma and no guiding morality. He's instantly forgettable—well, except for the bar code tattooed on the back of his bald cranium, a mark that makes his supposed anonymity in crowds slightly difficult to believe. The movie doesn't have even that much distinction. It's not vigorous enough to be bad. Thirty minutes into this soporific blandness, relieved only by Olyphant's glowering and leading lady Olga Kurylenko's admirable breasts, I was praying for a laughable line—anything to break the torpor. Even the heroine thinks Hitman is boring. "You don't want to kill me and you don't want to fuck me," she complains. "I've never felt such indifference in all my life." Neither have I, darling. R. AARON MESH. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

It's hard to fight the temptation to join the critical voices comparing Jeff Garlin's new comedy to Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Garlin plays David's chubby, amicable sidekick on the HBO show, and for his own movie has borrowed the jaunty music and the humor of awkward confrontation. So I'm not going to resist temptation. Where Larry David hates everyone around him, Garlin's James is a plus-sized mensch—he eats because he's unhappy and he's unhappy because he eats—who has mastered "the magic of self-loathing." If Larry David had wanted the same jazz album as Bonnie Hunt in a record store, he would start a lifelong feud; James just gives her the album and weakly flirts. Larry David probably wouldn't get to sleep with the foxy, insane Sarah Silverman, but he certainly wouldn't have his heart broken by her. This contrast is impossible to overlook, because while I Want Someone has regular moments of charm, at only 80 minutes it feels like a toothless episode of Curb stretched too long. It's nice, but it needs to trim some fat. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

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. City Center, Hollywood Theatre, Lake Twin, Tigard-Joy, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, St Johns Twin Cinema Pub, Tigard.

Ira & Abby

The neurotics take Manhattan in a romantic comedy starring and written by Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein). Living Room Theaters.

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.

King Corn

The best and most important movie yet made about the American diet—in no small part because it is the most open-minded and inquisitive. The kernel of the film is the decision by Portland native Curt Ellis and his college buddy Ian Cheney to embark to Greene, Iowa, where—under the watchful eye of director Aaron Woolf—they will grow one acre of corn and see where their crop ends up. It's not pretty. The gorging of cattle with thick, corn-based feed is explored in nauseating detail, as is the movie's chief target, high-fructose corn syrup. That's the processed sweetener used in foods from hot-dog buns to ketchup, and that downright floods bottles of soda. Here's where King Corn has every opportunity to go wrong, to degenerate into pedantic sermonizing. But the filmmakers have the nerve to learn as much about the people raising corn as they do about the product itself. King Corn feels like a tonic not only for the ills of American food production, but for the shrillness of the nation's documentaries as well. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.

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, the hero played by Ryan Gosling also has to be sweet and charming—ideal dating material, if not for that whole deranged talking-to-a-plastic-woman thing. I watched 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. . PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, City Center.

The Life of Reilly

Most people of my generation regard Charles Nelson Reilly as the butt of a joke—Will Ferrell's joke, from a Saturday Night Live skit where he described Reilly's screechy voice as "like looking into the face of God and seeing him smiling back." Reilly, the veteran of countless '70s panel game shows, may have been an easy satirical mark, but he got the last laugh with a one-man live show, "Save It for the Stage." The show ended with Reilly's death this spring, but directors Frank L. Anderson and Barry Polterman have preserved its finer moments. And fine they are: Reilly, whose monologues usually crescendo from a whisper to a scream, tells of surviving a circus fire, taking acting lessons with Hal Holbrook, and being tossed from the NBC president's office with the dismissal, "They don't let queers on television." He proved them wrong, but the most impressive—and moving—parts of Reilly's show are his memories of an unhappy childhood: A mother who screamed abuse at neighborhood Jews, and an artist father who never recovered from the regret of turning down a partnership offer from Walt Disney. Reilly relates these sad, funny stories in a hush that hypnotizes his audience. He is, in a word, scrumtrilescent. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. ?

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 at least Redford gave it the old college try. R. AARON MESH. Broadway, Bridgeport, Eastport, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Tigard, Sherwood.

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.

Love in the Time of Cholera

At the outset of director Mike Newell's turgid romance, Benjamin Bratt is bitten by a parrot, falls out of a tree and promptly dies. This is a mixed blessing for him, since it means he is spared two hours of hot-blooded Latin-lover folderol. Adapting Gabriel García Márquez's beloved novel, Newell (Mona Lisa Smile) interprets "magic realism" as a nod to the Magic Kingdom, and decks out his Cartagena, Colombia, with enough artificial greenery to fill Disney's Adventureland. Javier Bardem manages to find a bashful nobility as Florentino, the hopeless romantic who pines hopelessly for Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), even though the girl has all the charisma of wallpaper paste. Florentino passes the time by bedding 622 women; like his lays, the movie's scenes are of varying quality. Almost everything with Bardem in it has a certain grace; much of the rest is pitched at the level of a sitcom. (John Leguizamo achieves a special ripeness as Fermina's father, who talks with his mouth full in a distinctly Brooklyn accent.) Finally, it's on to the least convincing old-age makeup in recent memory. At least after watching this dumbed-down exercise, you can say you've seen Love in the Time of Cholera and you think you understood it. It's about girls, right? R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Bridgeport, Lloyd Mall, Eastport.

A Man Vanishes

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The NW Film Center's series of films by the acclaimed Japanese director Shohei Imamura opens with the serial-killer noir Vengeance is Mine (7 pm Friday, Nov. 23) and the folk-tale horror movie The Ballad of Narayama (7 pm Saturday, Nov. 24). Look for reviews on wweek.com. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum.

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. 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, Bridgeport, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV.

The Mist

It looks like Frank Darabont is still a touch bitter about The Majestic. Six years after his maudlin Jim Carrey movie tanked, the director has returned to his specialties—claustrophobic horror and Stephen King adaptations—with an unremittingly grim new vision of human nature. Thomas Jane (The Punisher) stars as a family man who gets trapped with most of his Maine neighbors in the local supermarket when a thick fog rolls in, carrying inside it some very ugly visitors. It doesn't take two days before Jane is in Lord of the Flies territory—only with the addition of real, venomous flies on the other side of the grocery-store glass. Marcia Gay Harden is even more annoying than usual as the demented Bible-thumper who makes matters far worse; Toby Jones more than compensates with sharp work as a resourceful clerk with much-needed shooting-range experience. After a year of ironic tributes to '70s B-movies, it's a pleasure to watch Darabont unabashedly deliver the genuine article; by the time the bleak final act arrives, we're in the middle of an H.P. Lovecraft nightmare. "There's something in the mist!" a man cries as the bad weather first descends. My, is there ever. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Dustin Hoffman plays Edward Magorium, a lisping Dr. Seuss copyright infringement and the 243-year-old owner of a magical toy store. Natalie Portman is his predictably sweet store manager and eventual heir; Jason Bateman plays the store's predictably stuffy accountant who, of course, does not believe in magic; and Zach Mills plays a random kid who seems to have unlimited time and resources to spend on toys. They each do a good job with what they're given, though there is almost no plot other than Magorium's occasional mention that he will be "going away" soon. On the upside, for a movie that looked as if it were bound to be one of the most irritating in years, it could have been a lot worse. G. JOE JATCKO. Eastport, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cornelius, Evergreen, Division, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.

Music Within

An appealingly acerbic performance by Ron Livingston as disabilities activist Richard Pimentel is matched by a startling tour de force by Michael Sheen (last seen as Tony Blair in The Queen) as a foul-mouthed raconteur with cerebral palsy. 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. Tigard.

No Country for Old Men

Reading through Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel now, it seems inevitable not only that it would be made into a movie, but that it would be made into a Coen brothers movie. The prose and story are such a natural fit, they feel expressly tailored to the Coens. Both works cover the same territory, which is the desert just north of the Rio Grande and, more specifically, a desolate valley where a marksman named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles onto the aftermath of a drug deal and reaches for a bag filled with $2 million cash. Soon he's racing across Texas from motel to motel, pursued by a Mexican cartel, an upright sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), and an implacable killer called Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Who is this Chigurh? "He's a psychopathic killer, but so what?" explains a bounty hunter played by Woody Harrelson. Of course, the bounty hunter soon learns exactly what. Chigurh's name sounds like a beast from folklore (something that sucks the blood from chickens, maybe), and he's played by Bardem with the merciless logic of a classic movie monster—he even decides the fates of bystanders by flipping a coin. The Coens have crossbred the Western with the vampire movie, and this sleight of hand transforms the carnage that follows into a haunting cosmic joke. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center.

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.

Southland Tales

Once upon a time, writer-director Richard Kelly gave us the fine and sensitive Donnie Darko, a work that succeeded because Kelly created believable, empathetic characters, no small accomplishment in a sci-fi thriller. What's more, Kelly managed to build eeriness and foreboding with minimal violence. Not so in Southland Tales, his sophomore (and sophomoric) effort, a movie that places Kelly squarely in the pantheon—the pantheon of Ed Wood. There are killings aplenty in Kelly's vision of global apocalypse, as it detonates in and around Hermosa Beach, Calif., but we neither know nor care about the ciphers getting blown away, so the blood-spattered corpses sprawled onscreen mean nothing. The movie reaches its nadir in a sequence as overtly racist as it is disgusting. It involves the mutilation of Japan's prime minister. We're meant to get off on his anguished screams; it's like a porno-violent variation on a 1960s Jerry Lewis racial impersonation. The cheapness of Kelly's sensibility emerges loud and clear: He's made a film about how reprehensible Republicans are with their endless wars, yet he tries to score laughs from dismemberment. R. N.P. THOMPSON. Broadway.

This Christmas

Preston A. Whitmore II, director of the unforgettable basketball movie Crossover, has made a family-reunion picture. Guess what holiday it's about. Guess who wasn't allowed to screen it. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cornelius, Division, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove.

A Touch of Spice

Tassos Boulmetis' film relates the story of Fanis (Georges Corraface), a professor of astrophysics who learned to correlate spices with the planets at his grandfather's store in Istanbul in 1959. 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.

What Would Jesus Buy?

[ONE WEEK ONLY, PRODUCER APPEARANCE] Though Morgan Spurlock's new production, directed by Rob VanAlkemade, is billed as a documentary, one gets the feeling the filmmakers are in cahoots with the gregarious Reverend Billy, a character played by performance artist/activist Bill Talen. The first half of the film batters the audience with its simplified, didactic chapters: Christmas shopping is ruining the essence of the holiday, ruining the family and ruining our great nation. Reverend Billy, an obvious parody of Billy Graham mixed with the madness of Klaus Kinski, takes his "Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir" on a tour of the U.S., spreading their anti-consumerist message and the plight of small businesses in the shadow of Wal-Mart. However, after a jarring accident occurs in the middle of the film, the madcap pace slows and allows us to breathe and think about the Reverend's message and how we all could use a bit of Billy for the holiday. JIM SANDBERG. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Nov. 23-29. Morgan Spurlock will attend screenings Friday-Saturday, Nov. 23-24.