Screen Listings

10,000 B.C.

Roland Emmerich (The Patriot) is a primitive director, and his new movie, 10,000 B.C., is a missing link: half-formed, lumbering and useless. It shamelessly cobbles together its thin narrative from Apocalypto, 300 and countless versions of The Ten Commandments: A mammoth-hunting tribesman pursues kidnappers to a foreign land, where he persuades a ragtag group of warriors to defeat a Mesopotamian despot and liberate pyramid-building slaves. All of this, I realize, sounds like a lot of campy fun. It isn’t. It’s richly ludicrous, yes, but all the joy is sapped out of the proceedings by Emmerich’s ponderous direction. And when the much-hyped woolly mammoths show up, they do not do anything noteworthy. They especially do not stomp on people or gore them or bite them in half, because that would jeopardize 10,000 B.C.’s PG-13 rating. There’s not a single person crushed by a mammoth in the entire movie—and trust me, I looked, because when you’re attending a movie that's advertised with images of people about to be trampled by woolly mammoths, you expect to see some mammoth-trampling. No dice. 10,000 B.C. is equally divided among things we’ve already seen, discoveries we’ve already made and events we do not have any reason to care about. And in case that isn’t enough to discourage you from seeing the movie, I will remind you: There are no mammoth stompings. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater.

21

It’s easy to forget now that Kevin Spacey used to be one of our most magnetic actors—that he had an uncanny ability to seem like the smartest guy on the screen. He shows flashes of that old intelligence in 21, where he plays an MIT professor who trains his students to count cards at the blackjack tables in Vegas. In those moments, he makes this fantasy, adapted from Ben Mezrich’s true account Bringing Down the House, appear far more clever than it actually is. Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) plays the card sharks’ most preternatural talent, and he has a palpable chemistry with teammate Kate Bosworth. While director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) concentrates on the mechanics of the casino sting, the movie hums along just fine. But its second half deteriorates into a series of obligatory double crosses and moral lessons, and the table cools. It’s almost worth staying, however, to see Spacey disguised in a mullet and goatee he might have borrowed from country singer Trace Adkins. PG-13. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

August the First

Director Lanre Olabisi's lens focuses on Tunde's (Ian Alsup) high-school graduation back-yard barbecue party in New Jersey, with his whole family there to celebrate. An invite was even extended to Tunde's father, Dipo (D. Rubin Green), who, having been away from the states and his three now-grown children for the past decade, shows up fresh from Lagos, Nigeria, to celebrate with his son. His arrival is greeted tensely by everyone but Tunde, whose sincere attempt to reconnect the family unit through childhood food and games results in an amalgam of mixed emotions. Uncomfortable scenes of inter-sibling bickering ensue. As vulnerable, long-harbored sentiments surface and as the fete unfolds, Dipo is there, carrying with him sub rosa motives to go with his platters of fried plaintains and gari dumplings. August the First does a good enough job hitting fam-dynamic cross-cultural soft spots, but I would've liked to see a bit more acting finesse and plot on the grill. SARA MOSKOVITZ. Living Room Theaters.

Baby Mama

Tina Fey's channeling of the preggo zeitgeist taps into a demo-specific female fear: of becoming so damn successful, and so damn monied, that you up and forget to have babies and will get to the ripe old age of 37—you know, that fertility no-man's land—where spunk and good looks do nothing to cure baby fever when your uterus lets you down. Capitalizing on her well-deserved rising star as writer/ensemble leader on TV's 30 Rock, Fey teams up with former SNL Weekend Update partner Amy Poehler to explore and exploit that bizarre Plan B (or C) known as surrogate pregnancy. As Kate Holbrook, Fey extends the career-focused, sexy-but-not-in-the-world-she-happens-to-inhabit, sweetly cynical character that's served her so well. Kate pragmatically approaches a surrogacy firm and is offered Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler), a trashy, high-fructose-corn-syrup-swiggin' would-be fashion designer, as a womb. Relocate 30 Rock to Philly, replace Alec Baldwin's wicked GE exec with a new agey Steve Martin and revisit the episode where Liz Lemon accidentally kidnaps a coworker's baby, sand down the satirical edges and you've got yourself your Baby Mama, at least in spirit. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, assuming you're a fan of what you're signing up for. PG-13. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Forest Theatre, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

The Band's Visit

The first few scenes of an Egyptian police orchestra wandering lost in and around an Israeli airport in the Negev desert are uncomfortably reminiscent of Milos Forman’s early Czech comedies. But then Eran Kolirin’s movie comes into its own when the band’s handsome young violinist (Saleh Bakri), a long-limbed, curly-headed fellow with a Chet Baker fixation, begins to sing “My Funny Valentine” to a woman attendant in a glass booth. Even though her window microphone compresses his mellifluous voice into something metallic, his passion still wows her. That’s the movie’s real subject: how music stirs us up. A group of men at a dinner table launching impromptu into Gershwin’s “Summertime” becomes ineffably funny—both from the guttural rumble of their voices and the way they salivate over the lyric “And your mama’s good-lookin’.” I roared with laughter (the roller-disco sequences) until I welled up with tears—an unhappily married butch offering a clarinetist advice on how to end an unfinished concerto may be the dramatic high point of any movie this year. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

The Bank Job

The blunt title of this uneven heist movie disguises everything that’s interesting and problematic about the film. Launching from a real-life 1971 Lloyds robbery in London that was quickly whitewashed from the newspapers, The Bank Job speculates wildly—and amusingly—about compromising photos of Princess Margaret held in a bank vault by a Caribbean demagogue calling himself Michael X. (He was real, and his ambitions are nicely summarized in his name.) A less-than-crack team of scoundrels, led by Jason Statham, is assembled to break into the deposit boxes; when the plan goes awry and the robbers find themselves pursued by three groups of law enforcement officials (two of them corrupt), the movie grows agreeably labyrinthine. But an entire intelligent caper is a bit much to ask of director Roger Donaldson (Dante’s Peak, The Recruit), and the movie is often overwhelmed by ominous bass chords and a clumsy use of Michael X (Peter De Jersey) as a black bogeyman. At the movie’s climax, Donaldson loosens his already unsteady grip on logical coherence, and allows Statham to unleash his fury on the villains, kicking a decrepit pornographer in the kidneys and disarming a thug with a brick. Statham, who has never fully embraced acting, seems immensely relieved to get on with it. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Be Kind Rewind

Ever since he parted ways with Charlie Kaufman and embraced his own I’ve Been Twelve Forever aesthetic, director Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) has blurred the boundary between childlike imagination and outright mental illness. In his confounding new picture Be Kind Rewind, he has waved sanity goodbye without a backward glance. Everyone in the comedy is a little nuts—and in the case of Jack Black, stark mad. He’s not fun, wacky crazy. He’s crazy as in “wearing tin foil to protect his mind from the thought-controlling waves of the local power plant” crazy. His delusion results in a wearying series of hijinks with Mos Def, eventually leading to the erasure of all content from the VHS tapes in Danny Glover’s video store—so Black and Def team up to reshoot the movies themselves on an old camcorder. The idea of crude, handcrafted remakes is charming, and it inspires a handful of lovely visual inventions: Ghostbusters filmed entirely among library stacks, 2001: A Space Odyssey re-created with a rusting icebox as the monolith. But these marvels are achieved by characters who are practically indigent and deeply disturbed; I half feared one of them would start harassing me for spare change. Gondry, who hasn’t bothered to request coherent performances from any of his actors, treats every unhinged action as another amusing quirk. Be Kind Rewind is what happens when a director has a sense of wonder and no sense of humor. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.

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 likable, and makes a case for himself among the pre-eminent actors of his generation. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Caramel

Caramel has the spirit of a Lebanese Sex and the City, and that’s quite a feat, considering the Middle East isn’t exactly the most sexually liberated region of the world. With the kind of woman-centered energy and gusto reminiscent of a Pedro Almodóvar film, the movie deftly follows the desires and exploits of five vivacious female beauticians in recent (but pre-bombed) Beirut. Though not quite as masterful or outrageous as Almodóvar, the extremely talented and beautiful writer, director and leading lady Nadine Labaki still manages to bring together extramarital sex, premarital sex, feminism, lesbian attraction and the schism between traditional values and modern society in an entertaining film full of metaphors and Maxi Pads. PG. LANCE KRAMER. No showtimes.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The Big Friendly Jesus Lion makes his triumphant return. Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for Aaron Mesh's review on wweek.com. PG. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Moreland Theatre, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Come Hell or Highwater

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Local director Todd E. Freeman (Reynard the Fox) returns with a mighty creepy-looking vengeance flick. Expect facial disfiguration and rear-projection screens. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Sunday, March 30.

The Counterfeiters

In this reimagining of concentration-camp movies, writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky tells the story of master forger Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (the long-faced Karl Markovics), an artist whose gift for amazing likenesses first grants him status as portraitist of SS officers, then as the linchpin for a Nazi operation to flood the Allies’ economies with counterfeit dollars and pounds. Among the treats in this Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film: a group of European Jews snapping their fingers, buoyantly singing the spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” and a brief yet infinitely moving scene of Sally encountering another Russian as the two are transported by cattle car from one camp to another. Instead of bemoaning the horror of it all, the men reminisce about the art teachers who influenced and inspired them. R. N.P. THOMPSON. City Center Stadium 12, Hollywood Theatre.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Director Julian Schnabel’s adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s 1997 memoir begins sublimely. Charles Trenet croons “La Mer” over opening credits, and his song floats through shadows of bone and muscle. The X-rays, in grayish black-and-white, are striking in themselves; when set to a jaunty, Gallic pop tune of 1946 vintage, sight and sound merge into a nifty emblem for the movie’s subject—a bon vivant confronting mortality. Bauby, editor-in-chief of Elle, suffered a debilitating stroke in his early 40s that paralyzed him entirely, save for his left eye. That’s how we enter the movie’s world, through the fluttering of that eyelid as it closes and opens. Schnabel uses a swing-and-tilt lens to achieve stunning distortion effects: blurring and rippling, point-of-view shots as Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) awakens before a team of doctors in a blue-green hospital room. Bauby’s memoir, blinked out a letter at a time, was filled with fantasies and dreams; in the best of these onscreen, the gourmand Bauby, now fed through a tube, imagines a lavish meal in which he and his transcriber smear oysters on the half-shell into each other’s mouths, before exuberantly kissing across the table. But there’s a problem. In the pages of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, what endures is the testament of a romantic sensibility whose desires ranged from elite to plebeian and back again. Amalric, who was an ideal choice for the role, doesn’t fully inhabit Bauby, because of what Ronald Harwood’s screenplay leaves out: the author’s voice, his humor. The movie misses the spirit of the man. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. No showtimes.

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

Bumbling, self-absorbed boob wins vindication when others finally realize he was right to insist on saving a distant world, thanks to voices only he hears. No, President Bush’s wet dream in Iraq hasn’t come true after five years. It’s the plot for Horton Hears a Who!, the animated remake of the classic Dr. Seuss tale about a persistent pachyderm who perseveres in preserving a puny planet on a dust speck. This felt just right as a 30-minute TV show back in 1970. But there’s not enough material to carry a movie nearly three times that length. Jim Carrey as the voice of Horton is over the top in spots, and the dialogue drags in several patches without many inside jokes for adults. Carol Burnett provides some laughs as the voice for the pouch-schooling kangaroo who leads the jungle’s persecution of Horton, and the tale is a harmless one for kids. And, since it’s all about the kids, I can report that, in a miracle exceeded only by Bush being elected twice, my squirmy 4-year-old son did sit happily through the entire movie—his first in a theater. G. HANK STERN. Tigard Joy Theatre.

Drillbit Taylor

A limp Judd Apatow-factory comedy about three high-school freshmen so cowed by bullies that they hire Owen Wilson as a bodyguard. As directed by Steven Brill and scripted by Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown (from a story treatment by teen-movie legend John Hughes), Drillbit Taylor flaunts its pedigree, but the characters seem like parodies of Apatow characters. And parodies of Apatow characters aren’t very different than the stereotypes of nerds that ruled the movies before Apatow began to give the dorks some dignity. Even worse, the ethical code that deepened prior projects like Superbad has been replaced by a cavalier malice displayed toward anybody who isn’t like our heroes—say, a kid like the one played by Portland's Alex Frost, who isn’t given a single redeeming feature. He isn’t even popular, exactly. He’s cruel. He’s scary. He’s different. Which means he’s obviously loathsome. This movie is exactly the kind of entertainment Apatow and Paul Feig were so proud of rejecting with their seminal television show Freak and Geeks. The lesson of Drillbit Taylor may prove to be the one moral the movie most carefully avoids mentioning: Beware of popularity, lest it turn you into the status quo you once chafed under. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Edgefield Powerstation Theater.

The Duchess of Langeais

Honoré de Balzac may have been known for his keen observation of Parisian society’s ills, but in an adaptation of his novel by Jacques Rivette (Céline and Julie Go Boating), the lady in the tower just comes across as a playa. The Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar) has an absent husband and a sadistic interest in keeping Napoleonic war hero Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu) in her life but out of her bed. What begins as a battle of the sexes turns into an overwrought argument about propriety, and the occasional kidnapping and fleeing to the nunnery isn’t enough to keep things compelling. Balibar plays a complicated ice queen, but Depardieu (who is apparently adhering to France’s one-Depardieu-per-film proviso) has only two speeds: brooding and seething. Still, the duo makes the best of two hours of reversals and plain old bad timing. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.

Eraserhead

The student film to end all student films, Eraserhead, David Lynch’s 1977 feature debut, is the rare work that satisfies every twittering expectancy stoked by whispering and myth. It is also unequaled as an abstinence tool. Jack Nance (Twin Peaks and scads of Eraserhead T-shirts) stars as Henry Spencer, a slouching mouse of a man who sleepwalks into the family way with his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart). The keening, deformed product of their union is only the most nightmarish of many unsettling visions in Lynch’s gray quasi-dystopia. Puerile as the central sex-panic is, Lynch’s invocation of primal shock and elaboration of dream logic is unimpeachable. And, if you are thinking about having kids, possibly unwatchable. As a friend of mine kept repeating, on our drive back home from Berkeley after finally seeing the legendary Eraserhead: “The crying. The crying. I can still hear the crying.” CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Nixon speechwriter and pretend schoolteacher Ben Stein advocates intelligent design. Not since Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason has a title so fully and unintentionally conveyed the contents of an argument. Fox Tower. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

The Faux Film Festival

Another April Fool's Day, another lineup of spoofs and satires. This year's entries include the prequel to Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (titled, naturally, Plan 1 through 8) and a reenactment of Boogie Nights performed by pickles. The festival's centerpiece, however, is Being Michael Madsen, a mockumentary in which the Reservoir Dogs actor begins stalking a paparazzo. See wweek.com for further coverage. Hollywood Theatre. Friday-Sunday, March 28-30. Being Michael Madsen screens at 7 pm Friday, March 28.

First Blood

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] This winter, he killed one third of Myanmar during a hyper-steroidal midlife crisis. In the ’80s, throbbing with human growth hormone, he ripped through Afghanistan and Vietnam. But before massacring Third World villains by the score, John Rambo rampaged through the Northwest and killed…well, nobody, technically. In 1982’s First Blood, Rambo wanders into small-town Washington, fresh outta ’Nam and vagabonding. Upon arrest by Sheriff Brian Dennehy, Rambo’s PTSD switches to “flashback freakout.” He stabs, he shoots, he blows shit up, busts bones and breaks faces. He even sheds a tear. Yet the ultraviolent First Blood’s onscreen body count is lower than The Lion King’s (although at least a dozen people probably died of Rambo-related injuries a few days later). Now—ahead of the fourth film’s May 27 DVD release—First Blood gets a one-night big-screen revival in all its dumbass glory, fully restored and including a special interview with the aged Sly Stallone. Most interestingly, it also includes an alternative ending in which—SPOILER WARNING—his mentor, Col. Trautman (Richard Crenna), shoots him in the gut, effectively saving the lives of 3,598 Asians in the future. R. AP KRYZA. No showtimes.

Flawless

Well, no, it isn’t—but it’s passable entertainment for folks who don’t want to be overexcited by their heist movies. Director Michael Radford’s smoothly retro picture certainly doesn’t strain for effects; it rides along on the back of Michael Caine’s performance as a resourceful janitor who decides to rob London Diamonds. He recruits frustrated junior executive Demi Moore to aid his scheme, and together they…oh, sorry, I must have dozed off there for a minute. The enterprise might have been truly compelling if Radford (Il Postino) had chosen a more expressive actress than Moore: They say age adds character to a face, but it helps if that face was distinctive to begin with, and Demi has always been a beautiful blank. It doesn’t help matters that the scheme mainly serves to perturb a glut of anonymously jowly, mumbling British character actors who purse their lips and burble about insurance. Actually, insurance consumes a surprising amount of the plot. Health insurance, especially—another sign that Flawless is sensitive to the concerns of its target demographic. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Living Room Theaters.

Flight of the Red Balloon

Much like its 1956 inspiration The Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s latest project uses attention and the way it is directed to underscore the different values of adults and children, favoring the latter. Overlong at an hour and 45 minutes, it is nevertheless impeccably acted; Juliette Binoche particularly stands out in her role as a Parisian single mother and part-time voice talent for puppet shows. The plot is hard to pin down, but on a surface level at least, it has nothing to do with balloons: Binoche hires a Chinese exchange student (Song Fang) to take care of her young son. At times dangerously meta-cinematic—in one instance, the characters walk around holding a video camera, discussing The Red Balloon—the whole thing risks becoming an academic exercise. JOHN MINERVINI. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.

Fool's Gold

Lunkheaded sunken-treasure hunter Matthew McConaughey has just been divorced by wife Kate Hudson, but they share a continued attraction and a passion for Spanish gold. But standing in their way is a hip-hop mogul and Theo from The Cosby Show. Fortunately they happen upon millionaire Donald Sutherland and his bimbo daughter, and together all of them…you know what? I don’t want to waste any more time with this. Neither should you. Fool's Gold goes on far too long as it is—at nearly two hours, the movie is quite the slog. Why Hudson—a perfectly serviceable screen presence—continues to star in this kind of dreck is beyond me; McConaughey gets to perform most of his scenes with his shirt off, and that seems to make him happy. All in all, it’s slightly less feeble and forgettable than the last feeble and forgettable treasure-hunting movie, whatever that was. PG-13. AARON MESH. Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater.

The Forbidden Kingdom

People have been daydreaming about the Orient for centuries. The problem is that it actually exists. China is an actual place, where you can actually go. Actually, it’s a nightmare of human-rights violations. So when a movie comes along that imagines China as a hybrid of Ninja Turtles and The Wizard of Oz—a magical place, full of cherry blossoms and helmeted goons—it’s troubling, and only slightly less fraught than making a laugh-out-loud ice capade about European Jews in the ‘40s (with apologies to Mel Brooks’ The Producers, a brilliant piece). It doesn’t help that The Forbidden Kingdom is so poorly executed. Jet Li and Jackie Chan finally meet on the screen in this little slice of hell from director Rob Minkoff. In it, dopey kung-fu film fan Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano) is somehow transported from modern-day Boston to ancient “China.” In order to get back home, he must overcome some truly unappetizing chest hair, return a mythic bo-staff to its rightful owner and—get ready for this—free the Monkey King. The film begins with someone spazzing out on a mountain-top in “China”; it ends with someone spazzing out on the roof of an apartment building in Boston; and there’s a lot of spazzing out in between. For goodness’ sake, the kung fu isn’t even well-choreographed. Makes you miss John Woo, if you can imagine that. PG-13. JOHN MINERVINI. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Looks like everybody who’s been waiting for Judd Apatow’s apology for the “sexism” of Knocked Up now has an open calendar. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the Apatow company movie most desperately confused and hostile toward the women participating in its hijinks. It’s another sex comedy with another director-for-hire (Nicholas Stoller), and it takes the attitude that sex is a wholesome and laudable activity for every person to enjoy—unless that person is your ex, in which case she must be punished. Jason Segel, one of Apatow’s stock players since Freaks and Geeks, wrote the screenplay and plays Peter, who flees to Hawaii after a painful breakup, only to encounter his ex-girlfriend (Kristen Bell) and her new man (Russell Brand) at the same beach resort. For Segel and Stoller, Sarah is a representation of all the women who have ever cheated on a nice guy—she is, in other words, a synecdochebag. So even as she begins to reveal herself as a three-dimensional character, the screenplay busies itself making sure every character is granted a measure of forgiveness, except her. In fact, a movie that is ostensibly about a man dealing with rejection turns out to be a conspiracy to humiliate the woman who rejected him. Forgetting Sarah Marshall tries manfully to live up to its title, but then it remembers her—and decides to fuck her over. R. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

George Catlin: Painter, Preservationist and Ethnologist

[ONE DAY ONLY] With the upper spectrum of the cable dial dominated by cheesy Wake Island reenactments and computer-generated Aztec temples, the historical documentaries of Thomas Vaughan stand out like a shoebox diorama. The longstanding director of the Oregon Historical Society, Vaughan crafted movies like George Catlin by filming his personal collection of prints, paintings and drawings. In this case, most of the art is from Catlin himself, who lived among the Mandan tribes in the 19th century. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. 2 pm Sunday, March 30.

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

The moral of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay—besides the obvious lesson that you should not smuggle a bong onto a transatlantic flight—comes in a little speech at the close of the hijinks: “You don't need to believe in your government to be a good American. You just have to believe in your country.” This is perfectly sound advice, although it’s a trifle off-putting to hear it emerging from the mouth of a doobie-puffing George W. Bush. This is the new, highly enjoyable Harold & Kumar adventure in a nutshell: It’s trying very hard to send a political message, but this involves a lot of concentration, and sometimes all that heavy thinking causes the movie to get confused. So it lights another joint and tells another joke, and hopes that the blazing and the jesting will help calm down a country that has lost its mind. Harold & Kumar is wildly, alarmingly uneven—and never subtle—but when it clicks, it’s side-splitting. (The film is at its best whenever Neil Patrick Harris appears as the franchise’s patented deus ex machina.) Like the nation it explicitly criticizes and quietly celebrates, Harold & Kumar is obscene, brash and mostly well-intentioned. It’s enough to make you believe in your country. R. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

In Bruges

The previews for this Sundance opening-nighter made it look like another glib and obnoxious cockney shoot-’em-up in the unpleasant tradition of Guy Ritchie. They lied: British playwright Martin McDonagh’s feature-film debut has a bad-tempered integrity that makes it as satisfying as any criminal enterprise you’ll see this year. As the guilt-wracked Irish hit man forced to lie low amid medieval architecture, Colin Farrell continues to provide a clinic in little-boy-lost charm—and adds the overactive eyebrows and lilting brogue of an anxious leprechaun. Brendan Gleeson’s even better as his principled mentor, but nothing you’ve heard about the movie can prepare you for Ralph Fiennes as their boss, whose obscenity is matched only by his sentimental affection for the “fairy-tale city” he proceeds to wreck. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Academy Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Valley Theater.

Iron Man

Loaded to the brim with snazzy special effects and snappy dialogue, director Jon Favreau’s comic-book romp is a far smarter diversion than most of the summer fare that will follow it—smart enough, in fact, to be held accountable for its reckless ideas. To begin with, it stars Robert Downey Jr., who is asked to carry large swaths of an action movie by talking to himself. After Downey’s playboy industrialist Tony Stark returns from an Asian weapons demonstration gone awry, he has a change of heart—literally, as he builds himself a futuristic pacemaker. Then he starts work on an exoskeleton. During this substantial portion of the movie, Downey is required to voice a wry, self-amused internal monologue. Not only does Downey pull this off, he actually manages to make his solo scenes the most captivating segments of the film. Iron Man is better when Downey is alone on the screen than when he’s sharing it. It’s when those inconvenient other people show up that the movie loses its way. Iron Man is going to please the war-wearied crowds with the same illusion that was used to sell the war in the first place: that combat can be quick and tidy, and an American, acting unilaterally, can cure international ills by acting as a precisely guided missile—one that knows who the bad guys are and can eliminate them without creating more bad guys. The movie’s fantasy is one of being alone in the world—as if America could wander as it pleases, locked away in a protective suit, talking to itself. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cine Magic Theatre, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

It Don't Worry Me: A Tribute to Robert Altman

A young woman takes up with one of a trio of Depression-era bank robbers in Thieves Like Us, which uses the same source novel as They Live by Night. Robert Altman deliberately avoids the noir and melodrama of the latter, but the result is merely enervated, and lacks much of the unique stamp that makes even his lousiest films more compelling than this. Altman's alternate take on the noir detective genre in The Long Goodbye is far more successful. It drops the hard-boiled swagger and keeps the old-fashioned sense of honor, making Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) a jokester who knows his ways are antiquated in a world of yoga and treats it like a joke he's come up with himself. It coasts quietly on charm, but Gould's rambling odyssey through ’70s Hollywood lurks in the mind long after. In another part of California, in a quiet stretch of desert, lonelyheart Millie (Shelley Duvall) takes creepily immature Pinky (Sissy Spacek) under her wing in 3 Women. Duvall's usual air of otherworldly guilelessness is brilliantly paired with misguided self-assurance to create one of the most deliciously conceited characters in movie history. Groove on the lonely ’70s singles-apartment stylings, and the dreamlike fracturing of character and narrative into an intuitive meditation on identity (shades of Bergman's Persona). Absolutely recommended. ANDY DAVIS. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Thieves Like Us screens at 7 pm Friday, March 28. The Long Goodbye screens at 7 pm Saturday, March 29. 3 Women screens at 7 pm Sunday, March 30.

Jumper

Hayden Christiansen discovers he has the ability to teleport. It makes him no less boring. Nothing in Doug Liman’s movie—not pouty Rachel Bilson, not a fun performance by Jamie Bell, not even Samuel L. Jackson’s powdery white hair—can make Hayden Christiansen less boring. He is a black hole of infinite dullness. At 88 minutes, Jumper is a flick so swift and fragmented that it’s almost a trailer for itself (or its inevitable sequel), but it at least contains a ton of kinetic energy. Liman (The Bourne Identity) manages to keep his orientation during action sequences that literally bounce across the globe; no mean feat when most of his peers can’t handle chase scenes in one location. But the movie is oddly amoral: Christiansen’s hero shows a criminal indifference toward the safety and well-being of bystanders, including his best girl Bilson. He’s a handsome, entitled, supernatural jerk who learns no lessons. Maybe we’re supposed to feel sorry for him because he was bullied as a kid. But who wouldn’t want to knock Hayden Christiansen around? PG-13. AARON MESH. Mission Theater and Pub, Mt. Hood Theatre.

Kiss the Bride

The bride is Tori Spelling. The groom might be gay. The best man is definitely gay. Complications ensue. Living Room Theaters. No showtimes.

Leatherheads

The George-Clooney-is-the-new-Cary-Grant movement reaches its logical end with Clooney directing himself in a screwball comedy set in the barnstorming early days of professional football. The throwback atmosphere works intermittently—it's best during the gridiron scenes, which recall the 1944 Disney cartoon How to Play Football. It helps that John Krasinski (The Office), cast as a collegiate phenom, has a ridiculously gangling frame; when he runs down the field, he looks just like Goofy. His comic timing is underused by Clooney, but the director grants himself plenty of repartee with Renee Zellweger, miscast as a latter-day Rosalind Russell. The script (co-written by Sports Illustrated hack Rick Reilly) is filled with snappy lines—my favorite is Clooney’s retort “You’re as young as the women you feel”—but it drags from act to act, with a lot of nonsense about Krasinski’s dubious war heroism interrupting the comedy. It’s certainly not a terrible little comedy, and Clooney already proved himself a capable director with Good Night, and Good Luck, but Leatherheads suggests he needs an editor. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Bagdad Theater and Pub, City Center Stadium 12, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater.

Live and Become

Following his mother’s instructions, a young Ethiopian boy pretends to be Jewish so that he can be repatriated to Israel and raised there. After a difficult passage, he is given the name “Schlomo,” assigned a foster family and raised in their all-white, French-Jewish household. But Schlomo is as black as they come—and secretly not even Jewish—so understandably his formative years in racially polarized Israel are more difficult than most. It sounds hokey, but it’s historically accurate. In 1984, more than 10,000 Ethiopian Jews (“Falashas,” ostensibly the sons of the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon) were secretly shipped from Sudan to Israel to become citizens. The story is so interesting that you can almost forgive director Radu Mihaileanu for trying to squeeze it into 140 minutes. But the absurd foreshortening of whole epochs in Schlomo’s life, as well as the unwieldy dialogue, which sags under the weight of excessive exposition, ultimately makes Live and Become play like an Ethiopian-French-Israeli episode of The Wonder Years, complete with a cute-as-a-button high-school girlfriend and a big bar mitzvah. It’s worth a look, but don’t expect stab-out-your-eyes-with-brooches catharsis. That’s what Live and Become is meant to deliver, but it tries to cover too much ground, and it misses the mark. JOHN MINERVINI. Living Room Theaters.

Made of Honor

Out of the swirling vortex of movies featuring "made/maid" puns in the title, weddings that need to be broken up, frustrated bridesmaids and men grappling with fear of commitment, flies Made of Honor, landing like those Skittles that fly out of the bag and hit the floor when the bag rips the wrong way. If you like the taste of My Best Friend's Wedding, just brush off the lint and enjoy. Michelle Monaghan, too pretty and superficial for her role in Gone Baby Gone, is better suited here as a perfectly nice woman whose best friend is a man-whore (Patrick Dempsey). Said Man-Whore realizes too late that Perfectly Nice Woman is the one for him and must undo her wedding—from the inside, as her maid of honor! Ha! Stop us if you've seen this one before. Seriously. Just let the projectionist know, and he will stop the movie. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Married Life

It's not entirely clear why anyone decided to make Married Life. It surely wasn't to walk us through the rote paces of the noir setup: Harry (Chris Cooper, looking fussy and uncomfortable) decides the most humane way to leave his wife (Patricia Clarkson) for another woman is to kill her, while his best friend (Pierce Brosnan) is closing in on the woman who launched this particular ship. And I'm not being flip: Deciding it's the most humane thing is actually what Harry does. If this doesn't sound plausible, the film doesn't strain to make it so. He's simply a normal guy who comes to a sociopathic decision in a simple instant, and carries on from there. This gives the ’40s-set film the character of a thinly sketched pulp short story whose charms are meant to lie elsewhere—in the intricacies of the plot perhaps, or in the manner of the telling. No luck here on the first, and Brosnan alone contributes to the second, lending a jocular air to what would have made sense only as a comedy. Rachel McAdams provides a feeble presence as the other woman, tiptoeing through the role without being bad, exactly, but coming far shy of inhabiting it. The same could be said for the movie. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Living Room Theaters.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

To keep from sleeping on the streets, inept governess Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) pretends to be a social secretary and hires herself out to an American actress, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). But Guinevere is in for a disappointment—despite the luxurious life Delysia leads, she’s just as broke as her new employee. Together, the two spend a dizzying day in 1940s London, attending lingerie shows, beguiling rival suitors, and ducking under tables when air raid sirens sound. McDormand makes the best of a bad job, but seriously, who wants to see a movie about an inept governess? Also, I could have done without the gimmick: Trying to squeeze a whole life’s worth of spectacle into a single day in London makes director Bharat Nalluri’s film play like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Actually, if it weren’t for all the sex, it would make a solid children’s movie: Just add a few sound effects (boing, crash). Visually, it’s clean as a whistle. London never looked so good, nor did Adams, wearing a bath towel, re-creating Boticelli’s Venus. PG-13. JOHN MINERVINI. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Valley Theater.

My Blueberry Nights

Wong Kar-Wai has slowed down his gorgeous ruminations on desire and loneliness over time, jumping from the fast and loose kaleidoscopes of Chungking Express and Happy Together to the period romance of In the Mood for Love, and finally sliding into the glamorous stasis of 2046. He has broken that trajectory in a new film that somewhat returns to the flash and verve of the earlier work but leaves Hong Kong and usual leading man Tony Leung behind, striking out for America with mixed results. It’s perhaps most charitably viewed as an anthology film of sorts, with a feeble framing device that overstays its welcome. That would be the meet-cute scenario between Norah Jones and Jude Law, which finds them separated for most of the movie as she travels the country waiting tables and mending an unrelated broken heart before finally...well, you can guess. The other lives she encounters provide the emotional resonance of the picture, even if the actors have to deliver the same hackneyed speeches as everyone else. America has apparently inspired Wong to drop his usual restraint and mystery for obviousness, which does acting newcomer Jones no favors, although Law fares little better, mostly due to a mismatch of acting and directorial styles. Natalie Portman, whose own days of wooden acting appear to be behind her, is weirdly cast as a gambling trollop, but superlative, and Wong really finds his pace with her story, finally getting the style and the content to meet up beautifully. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Hollywood Theatre.

My Brother Is an Only Child

Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, who co-wrote the sublime The Best of Youth, return to the theme of two brothers pursuing radically dissimilar political paths during Italy's turbulent ’60s and early ’70s. This time, working with director Daniele Luchetti, the family squabbles are comically staged. Luchetti’s constantly shifting camera set-ups evoke the rhythms and patterns of petty bickering elevated to an art form. Vittorio Emanuele Propizio, who plays Accio as a child, has some of the androgynous, old-soul grace of Giulietta Masina; he proves a tough act to follow for the adult Accio (Elio Germano), a man with scant identity beyond his right-wing leanings. Although the movie’s ambitions fly apart at the seams in the final half-hour, it remains well worth seeing for several brilliantly funny passages, including a student orchestra performing a “de-fascistized” version of Beethoven’s Ninth—the “Ode to Joy” becomes a paean to Chairman Mao. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

Mysterious Objects: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The name is difficult, yes, but so are the movies. These selections from the Thai experimental filmmaker (whose feature Syndromes and a Century was highly lauded last year) are culled from the output he produced after getting his master’s at the Art Institute of Chicago; they share a balls-out zest for confounding expectations. Anthem, for example, is designed to replace that Thai national anthem that runs before full-length films as an opening reel; it features two long shots of chitchatting grandmothers and tennis players, all scored to a pop ditty. Other movies sample Bangkok stock footage, or stage tropical singalongs. The most ambitious project, Malee and the Boy, begins with a text running up the screen, telling a cautionary folktale of a shopping-mall demon that deflowers foolish girls, then transitions to overheard conversations in a market, and a child reciting his own, more benign fantasy tale. After a while of this, I found it helpful to think of Weerasethakul as a Southest Asian jungle equivalent to Matt McCormick. (Or, if you prefer to avoid any hint of imperialism, perhaps McCormick is the Portland industrial waterfront’s answer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul.) Both filmmakers are boundlessly creative, and with their shared interest in static shots, both are engaged in a project to improve motion pictures by making them move more languidly. AARON MESH. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, April 1-2.

Nim's Island

In his wildest dreams, Gerard Butler must long to play a character who is not a figment of another character’s imagination. Fresh off his turn as Hilary Swank’s dead husband in P.S. I Love You, the Scottish hunk plays Alex Rover, the fictional adventurer created by paperback writer Jodie Foster. Butler’s pulling double-duty in this movie, however; he’s also moonlighting as Jack Rusoe (ahem), a marine biologist who is lost at sea, leaving his daughter Nim (Abigail Breslin) to guard their private South Pacific island from Australian tourists. Eventually Foster overcomes her agoraphobia long enough to fly to Nim’s rescue, accompanied by the heroic Mr. Rover, whom only she can see. If this seems like an awfully convoluted plot for a family movie, consider that I haven’t even mentioned the animals that can understand everything Nim says, or the side story about Nim’s dead mother. Fortunately, whenever the movie gets confusing, directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin turn to the templates of previous films: Foster’s twitchy writer is directly stolen from Romancing the Stone, and Breslin—also typecast, and at age 11—again plays a serious girl who frets over the mistakes of her elders. PG. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Sherwood Stadium 10, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Paranoid Park

In the year since Gus Van Sant’s latest Portland portrait made its Cannes debut, it has been commonplace to see it described as a skater-punk Crime and Punishment—a handsome phrase, but not an entirely accurate one. Accident and Avoidance is more like it. Van Sant has fiddled with Blake Nelson’s young-adult novel so that its protagonist, a latchkey kid named Alex (Gabe Nevins), emerges not as a neurotic Raskolnikov but as a holy innocent. His crime—a fatal shove of a security guard—is panicked and unintentional, and his feelings of guilt don’t lead to a moral awakening so much as a haze of isolation. He’s not just an unreliable narrator: He doesn’t really want to be narrating at all. That makes him a perfect fit for Van Sant, who in the most recent chapter of an elastic career has often seemed like he didn’t want to tell any stories either. But with Alex, Van Sant has finally found a character as alienated as he is, and he engages fully with the kid’s state of mind. Maybe it’s a happy accident, maybe it’s a stroke of genius, but Van Sant has stopped simply gazing at teenagers and finally evoked what it feels like to be one of them: detached, drifting and unsure which events in your own life are going to matter. R. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.

Penelope

A well-meaning movie that tells young ladies: Don’t worry, people will still like you even if you have a pig snout for a nose. No, really, that’s the plot: Thanks to a witch’s curse, Penelope Wilhern is a porker, and she’ll stay one until somebody falls in love with her. (Not to give too much away, but that somebody might be herself.) As ideas for female-empowerment pictures go, this is only slightly better than the one about the vagina with the teeth. It helps a little that Penelope is played by Christina Ricci, who even with a pig snout is easier on the eyes than most people who don’t have pig snouts. Ricci has been choosing eccentric projects for so long now (dating a high-functioning mentally disabled man in Pumpkin, dating a lesbian serial killer in Monster, dating a radiator in Black Snake Moan) that she no longer seems to notice when anything is out of the ordinary; her unperturbed manner offsets much of the more strained, fantastical elements of the story. Mark Palansky’s direction brings to mind Tim Burton on a heavy dose of Wellbutrin—it’s fanciful, but very cozy. But this is a candy-covered movie with an ugly center: the story of an abused girl who is shunned until she learns to love herself, at which time all her problems magically disappear. PG. AARON MESH. Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater.

Persepolis

As sketched by Marjane Satrapi in her autobiographical graphic novel and animated for the screen by her and co-director Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis manages to fit 16 years of Iranian disaster into the perspective of a single girl. More than anything else, the movie—especially in its first act, filled with little round-headed kids—resembles Peanuts in a war zone. Marjane, the Lucy Van Pelt of Tehran, is a precocious girl who in 1978 loves Bruce Lee movies and the bedtime stories of her Uncle Anoushe—who, following the deposition of the Shah, has returned from exile in the Soviet Union. But the revolution is soon overtaken by angry men in beards and harsh women swallowed by their chadors, and by 1982 Marjane is sneaking through back alleys where black-market salesmen in trench coats offer bootleg cassettes of “Jichael Mackson.” The movie’s minor structural problems are more than offset by the scope, as a delicate balance of moods—irreverent yet tender, skeptical but hopeful—creates a reminder of what cartoons can do. Not simply what they can look like, but what kind of stories they can tell: They can bridge the fantastic and the ordinary, and can pull us close to places that previously seemed alien and hostile. PG-13. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Portland Instant Movie Project

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Why watch live, unedited improv when you could see a movie, acted and filmed on the fly by the ambitious folks at Curious Productions? Directed by Bob Ladewig, P.I.M.P. is shot at three locations—edited, scored and projected almost live. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday, March 28.

Priceless

My expectations were low, given that I detested director Pierre Salvadori’s last film, the painfully unfunny Après Vous. What a surprise, then, to discover a near-perfect light comedy. From the animated opening credits, in which paper cocktail umbrellas lend color to black-and-white ocean waves, this movie has an assurance and an internal logic essential to good fluff. Set amid Monte Carlo’s jet-setting “beautiful people,” Priceless features a radiantly tanned Audrey Tautou (never better) as a gold digger, and a sweet, sexy comic turn from Gad Elmaleh as a hotel waiter she inadvertently draws into what might be termed “the hustling lifestyle.” Smashingly entertaining though it is, the movie isn’t without a soupçon of perception. Says one experienced seducer to a novice gigolo: “Don’t you think I know what that look means? I’ve seen it since I was 12 years old.” PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Prom Night

Save the last dance for me, slasher victims—I'll be outside with all the other critics who weren't allowed to screen this schlock remake. PG-13. No showtimes.

Redbelt

The best part about watching most David Mamet films is the anticipation of knowing that someone is going to get screwed over. In his latest film, set within the world of mixed-martial-arts fighters and aging action-film stars, the person we know is going to be on the receiving end of a Mamet cornholing is Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A highly principled fight instructor who does not believe in competition fighting, Mike, as is the case with most Mamet character/victims, is in a dire financial situation. When he saves the life of washed-up action star Chet Frank (Tim Allen), Mike is brought into a world of film that appears to be the answer to his fiscal woes. But this is a movie by the man who brought us classics like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, where our hero is a poor sap who finds himself on the losing end of an elaborate con, and must then extricate himself from the unpleasantness. Ejiofor gives a great performance, and while this is not Mamet’s best film, it is still very good, and it should please his true fans. R. DAVID WALKER. Fox Tower. Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Run Fat Boy Run

Let’s just say I'm somewhat emotionally invested in the fate of David Schwimmer post-Friends. At first blush, he seems to have done swimmingly. Or Schwimmingly, if you will (and you probably won’t). His feature directorial debut, Run Fat Boy Run, looks great on paper—Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg wrote the screenplay; Pegg, Dylan Moran and Thandie Newton star; and Hank Azaria gets naked. Even writing that last sentence makes me excited about the movie again—and I’ve seen it already. And it’s not very good. I suspect that Pegg and Black are beta-testing a new screenwriting program that writes algorithmic comedies that aren’t funny. Yet another pear-shaped schlemiel (Pegg) loses yet another out-of-his-league woman (Newton), and commits himself to yet another grand folly (running a marathon) in order to win his lady back from the clutches of yet another suspiciously perfect boyfriend (Azaria). The film contains brief moments of divine ridiculousness, but they are seemingly unintentional. Pegg’s Dennis leaves Newton’s Libby at the altar, an event that sets this mess in motion while constituting the most ludicrous thing to happen on film since Charlton Heston played a Mexican. Does Dennis not notice that Thandie Newton is our generation’s Helen? And I don’t mean Helen Hunt or Helen Mirren or Helen Keller. I’m talking Helen of Troy—ships launching, epic wars fought in her name, dithyrambs and shit. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Bagdad Theater and Pub, Mission Theater and Pub.

Run Fatboy Run

Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) plays a chubby man who plans to win back his ex-fiancée by running in a marathon. (That poor woman.) Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for Chris Stamm's review on wweek.com. PG-13.

Shelter

It's Brokeback Mountain starring surfer dudes, but with none of Larry McMurtry's spare, explosive dialogue or Ang Lee's breathtaking cinematography. What's left is a simple and attractively shot love story featuring two hotties: the achingly beautiful Trevor Wright as gay-conflicted and struggling artist Zach, and goateed, butch Brad Rowe as his patient, father-figure lover (and, strangely, former childhood friend) Shaun. Zach confronts his sexuality (bi-curious or 100 percent homo?), family drama (helping raise a sister's kid) and artistic dreams (CalArts or bust) in idyllic San Pedro, with Shaun's mild-mannered guidance and the help of a few beer-induced make-out sessions. A slickly produced romance sure to inspire fag-surfer frenzy. STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN. Living Room Theaters.

Shotgun Stories

A substantial part of Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories involves its characters—the brothers Son, Boy and Kid—having King of the Hill moments: just sitting on the porch, in their Chevy conversion van, or down by the river of their slow-as-molasses rural Arkansas hometown, drinking beers, saying jack squat and contemplating their own respective existential crises. So when they become wrapped up in a devastating, life-or-death family feud, it’s both surprising and strangely captivating. The film (produced by David Gordon Green) hits some heavy dramatic chords but still keeps a healthy sense of humor throughout, striking some great, almost Bottle Rocket-like comic moments. Shotgun Stories is not perfect, but it’s an inspired and impressive debut from a filmmaker we’re sure to hear more from in the coming years. PG-13. LANCE KRAMER. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.

Smart People

The title spells out the pandering premise: A family of intellectuals drive each other crazy until their carefree, irresponsible uncle (Thomas Haden Church) helps everybody appreciate that some things are more important than book-learnin’. Having sex with Sarah Jessica Parker, for example. A knockoff designed to profit from the popularity of Alexander Payne’s Sideways without all the wine mumbo-jumbo and self-loathing, Noam Murro’s movie casts Dennis Quaid as a neurotic, narcissistic English professor: The role is one part Paul Giamatti in Sideways (for the lovable misery) and two parts Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale (for the pathetic pretension). Ellen Page is even more embittered and superior as his Young Republican daughter—and that character detail is a tip-off because, really, what kind of movie is called Smart People and has one of its titular characters protesting stem-cell research, except for a movie that really thinks it’s about stupid people? Everyone learns their requisite lessons about love being more important than faculty promotions, Quaid gets laid, and the movie ends with a smug sense of accomplishment. But take it from somebody who knows: Pompous, elitist, emotionally clogged know-it-alls are a lot more fucked up than this. We’re also a great deal funnier. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Snow Angels

David Gordon Green (George Washington, Undertow) has a problem with plots: He keeps allowing them into his movies. The weak link in the otherwise astonishing Snow Angels is its central incident, an unconvincing act of vengeance from Stewart O’Nan’s novel. It keeps the movie from being an unalloyed masterpiece, but that hardly matters. Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale play Glenn and Annie, an estranged small-town couple that unsteadily care for a 3-year-old daughter; Glenn's overeager wooing of his ex-wife swerves with brilliant uncertainty between comedy and disaster. Green remains without peer at summoning the intimate feelings in individual human experience: a first kiss, an alcoholic hitting bottom (and the side of his truck), a father trying to explain his philandering to his teenage son. He’s terrific with actors, too. The young Michael Angarano gets his breakout role as a shy high-school trumpet player, Olivia Thirlby (the best friend in Juno) is his equal as his potential girlfriend, and Rockwell has never been better than he is in a strange, transfixing scene in which he dances with an old drunk by the light of a barroom pinball machine and the candles on a birthday cake. The pieces add up to my favorite movie so far this year. R. AARON MESH.