CALENDAR » Screen Listings
Screen Listings
For the week of Wednesday March 26th thru Tuesday April 1st
EDITED BY AARON MESH.
To be considered for listings, send information at least two weeks in advance to:
-
Screen, c/o Willamette Week
2220 NW Quimby, Portland, OR 97210.
Phone: 503 243-2122. Fax: 503 243-1115.
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.
Babylon A.D.
Vin Diesel saves the world from Michelle Yeoh's genetically modified babies. Confused? So are we: It wasn't screened for critics. PG-13. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Bottle Shock
Vintner Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) and his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine) eye each other warily from opposite corners of a makeshift boxing ring. “That chardonnay is gonna be clear!” barks Pullman, underscoring his point with a swift right hook. I detect the fruity, full-bodied wine culture of Sideways, with…wait…is that a hint of Rocky? Yes, it’s the thrilling true story of the little Napa Valley vineyard that could. Will long-haired layabout Bo earn his father’s respect? Will their Chateau Montelena earn the respect of British wine seller Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) and the snooty French judges at his historic 1976 blind tasting? Will Rickman bite hesitantly into a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken? Apparently the movie itself is an underdog, self-distributed by its director since the studios abandoned it at Sundance. For once, I think I sympathize with the corporate suits. Pullman’s bitter divorced dad is a great character, ripe for some Hollywood uplift, but the filmmakers dilute the drama with tasteless filler. Fellow vintner Freddy Rodriguez becomes a half-written immigrant pride subplot, while Rachael Taylor keeps showing up to model tight T-shirts and make out. The actors rinse, swallow, and close their eyes in ecstasy, but it’s all for naught—this thing tastes like it was poured from the squarest of boxes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Fox Tower. City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.
Brideshead Revisited
Temptation—and the requisite Catholic guilt—are the crux of Julian Jarrold’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel. In the luxurious and stiff 1920s, a prince-and-pauper relationship forms between penurious Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), whose wealthy family resides at Brideshead Castle, a behemoth piece of architecture filled with treasures and set on acres of croquet greens, fountains and pools. The two meet at Oxford and, after two summers of intense friendship, furtive (and perhaps romantic) glances and lots of wine, Sebastian is deeply in love with Charles and Charles has become smitten with Sebastian’s sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell). Trysts take place, friendships are bruised, and always present is the intense Catholicism of the Flyte matriarch, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who trumpets her religion and holds it over the heads of everyone around her. Guilt and oppression are handed down at every chance, but Sebastian and Julia relish the sinful and hedonistic path they have chosen outside their faith. For a while, anyway. Then Sebastian gets all jealous and Julia gets all Jesus-lovin’, and sorry, Evelyn, we’re heathens and we don’t care. At least the lush scenery and expansive sets are pretty to look at. PG-13. SARA MOSKOVITZ. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre.College
A campus preview weekend turns into a riot of debauchery. We just plagiarized that synopsis from the Internet, because the movie wasn't screened for critics. R. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Sherwood Stadium 10, 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.
Constantine's Sword
“I was a young Catholic brought into this perfect church,” says James Carroll in this nonfiction adaptation of the former priest’s 2001 bestseller. That was a fantasy with which millions of dead Jews would beg to differ. Carroll’s roundabout exploration of the cruelties heaped for centuries upon Europe’s Jewish population by Rome—and Christians in general—doesn’t break any new ground, though it uncovers some rarely visited graves. (It also finds a pre-scandal Ted Haggard defending strong-arm evangelical tactics with a frothy fervor that puts one in mind of Paul Lynde.) Christians looking for “reconciliation” could do worse than to follow Carroll’s model of rueful polemic, as he traces the faith’s militaristic bent back to homicidal Emperor Constantine. Carroll has a gift for the cockeyed historical observation: “And why wouldn’t Constantine, a man who had murdered a son, be drawn to a God who required the death on the cross of his son?” This sort of thing would grow tiresome if not for the inspired direction of Oren Jacoby (Sister Rose’s Passion) and Carroll’s willingness to probe his own biography. He’s intelligent, disillusioned and mournful, and the movie follows suit. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Monday, Aug. 30-Sept. 1. Hollywood Theatre.
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan continues deconstructing the Batman franchise from superhero camp to a cry of universal despair, with souped-up cars. As the sequel to Batman Begins marches from cruel bereavement to spirit-crushing martyrdom, it plays like a funeral dirge for the late Heath Ledger, who died—maybe you heard—shortly after completing his role as the Joker. The movie operates in the pall of this demise, and its polished gloom carries the scent of an undergraduate term paper on the futility of human existence. This is the summer action movie that stopped taking its antidepressants. In fact, the only element in Nolan’s film with any life—and the sole reason why it’s worth seeing immediately—is Ledger’s work. He’s caked in grimy clown greasepaint with echoes of John Wayne Gacy, and trying out a sneering singsong that sounds a little like that of a demented Bugs Bunny. To watch him menace Gotham City with an arsenal of knives—and a No. 2 pencil—is to witness a gifted actor dedicate all his energies to gracefully waltzing through trash. Meanwhile the movie positively wriggles in masochistic delight at the prospect of heroic anguish. The Dark Knight lives up to its title, yeah—in the world of comic-book movies, it’s a Suicide Girl at a sorority house, showing off its freaky tattoos. Audiences who stuff its coffers will leave knowing they’ve seen a special performance, but also feeling that they’ve endured something suffocating. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Forest Theatre, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Death Race
In 1975’s Roger Corman-produced ultraviolent camp favorite Death Race 2000, racers David Carradine and a porn-era Sly Stallone raced souped-up cars through a dystopian wasteland, getting extra points for splattering pedestrians. It’s the world’s most popular sport—so much so that nurses roll wheelchair-old people into the street to be crushed by their favorite drivers. Like the original, the wholly unnecessary remake of Death Race is gory, exploitive, loud, absurd, cheesy and violent. And while Corman sports a producer credit, a main Corman conceit is missing. The schlock king understood sadism is supposed to be a taboo pleasure, a kink enjoyed by its administrator that trickles down to the audience. There’s plenty of splatter and ka-bang in Paul W.S. Anderson’s Neanderthal videogame of a remake, but very little pleasure. Nobody knows how to better phone in badass and charisma in bad movies than Jason Statham—here butting heads with a facelifterrific Joan Allen—but the movie sucks all the fun out of the original. A movie that exists to create car chases and fireballs should never be a snoozer. Those responsible should be wheeled out into the streets and ceremoniously hit by Carradine. R. AP KRYZA. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, 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.
Disaster Movie
Because if Hancock, like, pooped on Batman, that would be funny, right? Not screened for critics. PG-13. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Elegy
Every fall season brings with it another movie about an old lion lying down with one final lamb—previous incarnations have included Peter O’Toole in Venus and Frank Langella in Starting Out in the Evening—so it’s no shock that a filmmaker has finally tackled Philip Roth’s novella The Dying Animal, the acme of the old-dudes-boning canon. Unfortunately, that filmmaker is Isabel Coixet, whose take on the material is summed up in the title change. The Dying Animal is a lacerating, snarling, defiant throe of a book—complete with Roth’s septuagenarian alter ego David Kepesh lapping up his young lover’s menstrual blood—while Elegy is a mournful, tasteful picture that gilds Penélope Cruz’s breasts in amber light. Cruz, dialing down the crackling energy she gave to Woody Allen in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is Consuela, the pliant Cuban foil to another aging perv, Ben Kingsley’s Kepesh. Sir Ben’s performance isn’t nearly priapic enough—the actor remains far too dignified to evoke the ridiculous plight of a man who’s maintained his emotional barriers until the next-to-last moment. And Coixet has changed Roth’s ending, too, assuring that it contains exactly enough pablum to please the art-house regulars. Torpor is relieved by feisty supporting work from Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard as Kepesh’s aggrieved son—their filial exchanges bring out the best in Kingsley, and are the only thing in Elegy with the bitter tang of genuine Roth. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.Encounters at the End of the World
[ONE WEEK ONLY] Werner Herzog is not a man to be dissuaded from his fixations, which in this documentary about Antarctica once again include the ruination of cute, helpless creatures. “I had left no doubt that I would not come up with another film about penguins,” he begins his narration, and goes on to take several more thinly veiled jabs at the hit 2005 doc March of the Penguins. (Later he asks a biologist, with great hope in his voice, whether penguins ever go insane.) Encounters is principally a collection of Herzog’s Antarctic vacation pictures; the movie feels like an episode of Travels with Rick Steves if the show were hosted by a perpetually gloomy German. But the truth is that I would TiVo such a program faithfully, and Encounters is just as wonderful: Herzog discovers the planet’s southernmost ATM, dives into waters filled with icky, unnerving creatures, and chats with the peripatetic scientists who study seals and volcanoes off the Ross Ice Shelf. Their findings of climate change kindle Herzog’s warmest ruminations, about how “the end of human life on this earth is assured.” The only sensible response to this sort of thing is to admit that it’s probably true but, on the other hand, we’re still alive. So is Werner Herzog—and while it may be hard to listen to him with a straight face, it’s equally difficult to imagine the globe without his morose presence. G. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Aug. 15-21. Hollywood Theatre.
The Fall
An injured stuntman (Lee Pace), malingering in a 1920s California hospital, improvises a swashbuckling tale to amuse an audience of one 5-year-old Romanian farm laborer, Alexandria (Cantinca Untaru), who can innocently provide him enough morphine to stop his broken heart. The ideas in his story are all a little mad, and sometimes maddening, but you can’t question that they’ve emerged from a marvelously strange place. They certainly didn’t come from a computer. The Fall’s director, Tarsem, is well acquainted with the wonders of technology—in 2000, he helmed The Cell—but he has evidently converted to the desert of the real, and decided to return to filming real deserts. For the past decade, while directing music videos and sneaker commercials, he shipped his long-suffering actors to locations from Namibia to Bali, perching them atop catwalks, at the edge of wastelands, and in the most dizzying catacombs of castles. His style still shows traces of his slick advertisements, but the exotic locations make The Fall look like a coffee-table book photographed in a fever dream. Tarsem finishes his picture with a montage of stunts from Hollywood’s silent comedies—the collapsing houses, the leaps from train cars—and he earns the right to them, because his film is just as dedicated to the beauty of actual bodies in spectacular places. It hearkens back to when the movies sought genuine wonder. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.
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.
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. Laurelhurst Theatre.
Frozen River
Eddy Ray is a recently single mom deep in the snowy Wal-Mart country of upstate New York. When her jerky husband steals their nest egg a few weeks before Christmas, she is forced to seek fortune outside the law in order to buy a dream double-wide for her two sons (caring elder son/surrogate dad played by Charlie McDermott is easily the show’s best performance). Opportunity knocks in the form of a nearsighted Mohawk girl named Lila from the neighboring reservation who has a gig smuggling illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants over the Canadian border. The film’s entire subtext is based on consequences of the way these women attempt to fend for their families amid financial ruin, wintry climate, small town mentality and a frozen river on the reservation. Veteran actress Melissa Leo reprises her role as Ray from a shorter 2004 version of the picture, and is generating a great deal of Oscar buzz in the process. While Leo and supporting actress Misty Upham quite ably make this movie work, there are a number of dramatic moments where the characters seem a lot less freaked out than they ought to be. High points include a baby in a duffel bag, people being shot and repeated car trips across the border. I have to admit morbidly hoping for the worst at several points, as so much can go wrong when driving a trunkload of people over a frozen river…. R. NATHAN CARSON. Fox Tower Stadium 10.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.
Get Smart
While late-’60s spy-spoof TV series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were mostly interested in poking fun at the espionage dramas of the day with Marx Brothers-style nonsense and physical comedy, the Steve Carell-starring adaptation aims to take on the real-world intelligence community. We see beefy field agents ignoring the advice of analysts, violent squabbles between competing agencies, and a folksy president, totally subservient to his bellicose VP, reading to schoolchildren while the nation is threatened with nuclear annihilation. Ouch. Indeed, Maxwell Smart isn’t the Agent 86 we know at all. He’s, well, smarter—he starts the film as a translator and analyst—and more sympathetic, infused with the same heartfelt humanity that saved Carell’s The Office from devolving to the savagery of its British predecessor. And Anne Hathaway is an Agent 99 for the modern era, meaner, sexier and less willing to serve as a grudging foil to Smart’s gags. She’s a real ass-kicker, a none-too-subtle statement from the producers that this remake wants none of Brooks’ dated misogyny. PG-13. BEN WATERHOUSE. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
A documentary directed by Alex Gibney (who just won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side), dutifully covers the swath of the mad doctor’s writing, but it is chiefly interested in Hunter S. Thompson the political animal—the man who dogged Nixon through New Hampshire and found his own reflection. It was part of the American genius for polarization that Thompson saw Nixon as his doppelgänger, his mirror. Nixon was his dark shadow. Or maybe it was the other way around. So it makes perfect sense that when Gonzo recounts Thompson’s last serious journalistic assignment—sent to cover the 1974 Ali-Frazier “Rumble in the Jungle” fight, he swallowed a cabinet of pills and wandered off to float in the hotel pool—Gibney re-creates the scene with washed-out footage of azure water and a man in a Nixon mask. The image is inspired on a number of levels, since this was the moment when a genuinely gifted writer decisively sacrificed his talent on the altar of indulgence, and when he slipped on a mask of celebrity that he would never remove. The rest of the movie, while amusing and honest, doesn’t often approach that level of perception. There are plenty of guest appearances by old cronies, few of whom can stir themselves enough to say an unkind word about the man who squandered his last two decades shooting rifles on his ranch until he finally turned a .45 on himself in 2005. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.
The Grocer's Son
The dad hates the son, the mom hates the dad, and the brothers hate each other. The Grocer’s Son, a French film directed by Eric Guirado, seeps with family dysfunction. Set in a small town nestled amid the rolling hills of France, the film spotlights Antoine Sforza (played by Nicolas Cazalé), the hunky twentysomething son of a man who operates a portable grocery store (like an ice cream truck, with canned peas instead of Scooby-Doo Push-Ups). When the elder Sforza is banished to bed rest after collapsing, Antoine grudgingly uproots from his city life and moves into his parents’ countryside home—which he hasn’t visited in 10 years. Without telling his mother, Antoine totes his love interest, a sexy, rail-thin brunette named Claire, along for the ride. The back-and-forth flirtation between Antoine and Claire, coupled with the constant confrontation boiling between Antoine, his mother, father and successful older brother Francois, makes The Grocer’s Son stressfully sexy...in that pouty, cute, French way. WHITNEY HAWKE. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.
Hamlet 2
Steve Coogan is the master of center-stage asshattery. He gnaws quite effectively on writer-director Andrew Fleming’s script for Hamlet 2. In place of an arrogant blowhard, Coogan is reduced to the drama teacher who cares a little too much and is painfully oblivious to the way his effeminate enthusiasm alienates his students. But even through his spot-on (if fey) American accent, Coogan delivers his lines with subtle British panache, and he approaches his role of New Age sensitive everyman with the skill of, say, a classically trained Shakespearean actor. And like a valiant attempt at Richard III staged by a community troupe, Hamlet 2 comes within spitting distance of being a sharp production. Coogan plays Dana Marschz, a recovering alcoholic who directs annual stage adaptations of high-grossing Hollywood flicks (we’re treated to a scene from Erin Brockovich in a high-school cafetorium) until budget cuts threaten his entire program and he writes a sequel to the Bard. Fleming is pleasantly subdued in his presentation of what exactly Hamlet 2 is. He treats us to a highlights reel, and we discover that Albert Einstein makes a cameo and Jesus Christ gets his own greaser-style number (the rollicking “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus”), but we are never entirely sure what the hell happens, only that Hamlet is given a chance to set everything right. And that a lot of it is set to New Wave. R. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.
Hancock
Will Smith is John Hancock, a surly Los Angeles superstar with a preternatural vertical leap and open contempt for his teammates, forced to disgustedly mumble his way through image-repairing press conferences after he’s sent to prison. Aside from a strong anal fixation (one jailhouse scene features an inmate’s head literally shoved into another’s rectum, and the film’s chief running gag is that its hero grows extremely peeved whenever he’s called an “asshole”), director Peter Berg’s movie is a disorienting fizz of ideas that never cohere. Its chief conceit—the superhero as a celebrity in dire need of rehab—is established by shots of the crapulous Hancock waking up next to empty whiskey bottles, either on bus-stop benches or in his dreary trailer, with Berg’s distinctive cinematography giving each shot the haze of a hangover. But Berg’s style, an agitated handheld fervor honed in Friday Night Lights, is exactly wrong for this material, which I think is supposed to be a satire. It’s hard to say for certain, since there are no funny jokes. In their place, Berg twirls his camera in paroxysms of emotion. By the time the villains return, still miffed about the head-stuffed-in-bum incident, we’re meant to cry whenever the screen starts to spin. But cry for whom? The gifted Übermensch whose fans just don’t understand him? PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.
The House Bunny
Anna Faris might have the most interesting career in Hollywood. Since her big break in 2000's oft-sequeled but never-equaled Scary Movie, Faris has worked steadily in one comedic role after another, usually playing various incarnations of the same character: the cute, but not too cute, blissfully aloof sweetheart with a tendency toward slapstick. This is interesting because Faris isn't that funny. She can be funny and do funny things, but as a whole is not a funny person—which is basically how The House Bunny works. Everyone, meet Shelley Darlingson (Faris), a down-on-her-luck former Playboy bunny who's been put out to pasture and now needs to build a new life for herself outside The Mansion. Now, meet the girls of Zeta house, a down-on-its-luck, soon-to-be-closed sorority in desperate need of a makeover to bolster its slumping recruitment numbers. You can do the math, but it goes something like this: (hot simple girl) + (drab brainy girls) / (Sephora cosmetics and American Apparel jackets) = fabulousness. Throw in a dash of love story and set it to a Top 40 soundtrack and you have pure magic. PG-13. JORDAN CRUCCHIOLA. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Love is a battlefield in director Alex Holdridge’s festival-circuit romantic comedy featuring decidedly unromantic characters. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) is a depressed screenwriter who we meet masturbating to a Photoshopped nude of his roommate’s girlfriend. His pals decide Wilson might need a relational jump-start—it is New Year’s Eve, after all—and toss him headlong into the world of Craigslist, where he meets Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a pill-and-booze-fueled blond nut-cutter in dark sunglasses, who is interviewing potential dates a half-dozen at a time. The charming couple goes bickering into the late Los Angeles afternoon, and while their skirmishes aren’t always as funny as Holdridge thinks they are, their combat zone is sublimely beautiful. Cinematographer Robert Murphy and Holdridge do for L.A. what Gordon Willis did for Manhattan, lovingly bathing the city’s abandoned theaters and shuttered financial district in rich black-and-white. The imagery adds resonance to the characters’ fears that they too are washed up and rejected. When it isn’t straining too hard for poignancy, Midnight Kiss is the rare indie comedy with characters both recognizable and treated with sympathy. It might be too much to ask that they be likable as well. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, once a rake and a mercenary, is now an advertisement for clean living. He’s quit the filthy whiskey, he’s a decorated war hero, and he is apparently impervious to injury. Where the Indy of old had to dodge a Nazi strongman until a plane propeller finished the fight, the Indy of Crystal Skull takes matters into his own fists, pummeling the Soviets’ largest soldier until he collapses into a hill of deadly ants. Powerful, wise, irreproachable: This man is what John McCain sees every time he closes his eyes. A pity, then, that the third reel is such a washout, with Indiana Jones subjected to the late-Spielberg sanitation treatment—all his rough edges are rubbed away, and he’s left as the upright patriarch of a ragtag family on a South American vacation. The climax brings Indy full-circle, at least geographically: He’s back in the same jungles where he boulder-dodged at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but instead of trading golden idols with Alfred Molina, he’s delivering helpful maxims like, “The treasure was knowledge.” (Indiana Jones says: Stay in school, kids!) He’s as active and robust as any geriatric hero to grace the silver screen, but there are moments—more than moments, really—when it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that this magnificent artifact is a fake. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, 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. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.
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.
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
Jules Verne with REI carabiners, Walden Media’s glossy kids’ stuff is inoffensive and unassuming, taking its cues from star Brenden Fraser. He plays a geologist who travels to Iceland with his nephew (Josh Hutcherson of Bridge to Terabithia, solidifying his supremacy in the babes-in-toyland field) and a supple mountain guide (Anita Briem); the trio goes mountain climbing and plummets down a nearly bottomless volcanic tube. (They could have stayed stateside and looked for Mel’s Hole—what, is the Pacific Northwest not exotic enough for family adventures?) Down below, they encounter phosphorescent hummingbirds, ferocious flying fish and magnetically levitating boulders. All gleeful nonsense, as derivative as it is framed to leap at the audience (though my eyes grew immune to the 3-D effect after one reel), Journey is best enjoyed with low expectations: It’s actually not much less enjoyable than the latest Indiana Jones, and it contains considerably more science. I was gratified to be reintroduced to muscovite, which I had last encountered in Geology 101—where, come to think of it, many of the students bore the same guileless expression as Fraser. The movie is cinematic Rocks for Jocks. PG. AARON MESH. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema.
Kabluey
With her husband’s deployment to Iraq extended by six months and her two screaming hellions in need of day care (and probably Ritalin), frantic mom Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) turns to brother-in-law Salman (Scott Prendergast), a mouth-breathing spaz who’s just been laid off from a copy shop after growing a touch too engrossed by the laminating machine. Helpfully, Prendergast is also the writer-director of Kabluey, so he’s able to pull himself and his extended family together, though not before trading a bit heavily in the suburban nervous-breakdown satire popularized by Showtime’s Weeds. The movie is improved enormously, however, by one inspired, droll conceit: Salman finds part-time employment as a mascot for a ruined Internet start-up trying to rent out space in its vast, secluded office park—a job that requires him to don a baby-blue costume with a giant head. The outfit makes Prendergast—who already has a touch of Buster Keaton in him—look like a cross between Charlie Brown and a dejected sperm. It’s a wonderful minimalist joke, and Kabluey’s best scenes are the patches of quiet physical comedy where Salman stands by a rural highway like a melancholy symbol of the flatlining economy, trying to hand out flyers despite not having any hands. PG-13. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
This kid's movie, based on books that come with the doll of the same name, industriously burbles along with a forced gee-whiz earnestness that will leave adult minders a little queasy and kids presumably agape with admiration for our cheerily indomitable heroine. The titular 10-year-old aspires to be a reporter but must contend with the various calamities and intrigues the Great Depression has brought into her life. Respectable work from the likes of Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci and Wallace Shawn is consistent with the overall sheen of quality, leaving the spazzy Joan Cusack looking like a party clown who's wandered into a tea party. Abigail Breslin, as Kit, is the most uninteresting kid in the picture, displaying none of the charm and individuality she had in Little Miss Sunshine, but that's to be expected in a film in which everything gets a bland makeover. Apparently there was no racism in the ’30s, only a solvable rash of hobo prejudice, and the period songs are represented not by originals but by anonymously slick and tepid remakes. It all resembles actual fun the way a porcelain doll resembles an actual kid. G. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Academy Theater, Valley Theater.
Kung Fu Panda
On paper, Kung Fu Panda is lazy. A fat panda voiced by Jack Black goes from noodle maker to prophetic Dragon Warrior with the help of a snake, a monkey, a tiger, a mantis and a crane, who each represent their corresponding martial-arts styles. Ancient China…panda…karate…moral about finding yourself and overcoming odds…ka-ching! But the biggest surprise is how well Kung Fu Panda works. Instead of Shrek meets the Shaw Brothers, it’s a martial-arts comedy with respect for the genre—Kung Fu Hustle on Sesame Street. The film has a great time riffing on kung fu conventions—from the cruel tutelage of master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to a climactic battle with a deranged leopard—and strikes a similar balance between kid-friendly jokes and blockbuster action as The Incredibles. Well, incredible it isn’t. But it is Dreamworks Animation’s best since the original Shrek. With solid comedy, stellar action and an A-list vocal cast (including Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan), the film’s destined to be a crowd pleaser. What Kung Fu Panda lacks in nuance, it makes up for with its fists of furry. If Dreamworks invested more in story development, Pixar might start sweating. PG. AP KRYZA. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Valley Theater.The Last Mistress
[ONE WEEK ONLY] The tempestuous, hot-blooded Latin ladyfriend is this month’s cinema stereotype of choice. Penelope Cruz plays it twice over in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Elegy, and now it’s Asia Argento’s turn as a half-Spanish firebrand turning the heads of 19th-century France in the latest from French director Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl). Fu’ad Ait Aattou is Ryno, the rake who has to explain to his surpassingly understanding future mother-in-law (Claude Sarraute) why he’s still lingering around the doorway of notorious woman Vellini (Argento). She turns out to be a hard girl to forget. She licks ice-cream cones with sensuous fervor. She licks the blood from an open wound in Ryno’s chest after he is shot by her husband. When her baby son dies, she makes love stark naked in the sand next to the kid’s funeral pyre. She holds a rifle to her bosom and begs Ryno to shoot her. She’s a handful. But she’s also Breillat’s symbol of unquenchable female sexual energy, and Argento doesn’t have the chops to deepen the characterization. (She is still more of a presence than an actor.) It’s a startling performance—Argento thrashes through the period setting like a bitch in a china shop—but not an enduringly interesting one. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Aug. 29-Sept. 4. Cinema 21.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.
The Longshots
Ice Cube coaches his daughter to Pop Warner football glory in a kiddie comedy directed by...Fred Durst. We agree that this choice of director is terribly confusing, yet somehow it makes us want to see the movie even less. Fortunately, it wasn't screened for critics. PG. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.
Love Comes Lately
Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories are adapted into the tale of an septugenarian (Otto Tausig) who can't stop cheating on his girlfriend (Rhea Pearlman). This fall's triumphant run of old-man sex continues unabated! Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.
Mamma Mia!
So here it is, folks, straight from Broadway: the story of blushing bride Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who invites her three potential papas to her big fat Greek wedding, announcing her intentions through the timeless melody of ABBA. In other words, Mamma Mia! is just like your nuptials, except the disco jockey has started work a full day early. Let me be perfectly clear: This thing is a terrible idea and its theatrical acceptance signals the death of civilization as we know it. But just when I was choking on the bubblegum, Sophie pipes down and makes room for single mom Donna, who’s supposedly outraged at the arrival of her three former flames, though we know better—they’re played by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth! As the repressed hausfrau, Meryl Streep pads in like she owns the place—she does—and belts out a lament about “a rich man’s world,” but it’s Meryl’s world, and we’re just living in it. The actress’s ruddy nose and watery eyes are a great comfort, suggesting a normal allergic reaction to the songs of ABBA, as digitally tacky as the Mediterranean sun glaring in the background. Streep and fellow baby boomers Julie Walters and Christine Baranski vamp their way through the repertoire like the Sex and the City gang gone to flaxseed. It’s trash cinema at its finest, fueled by trash music at its catchiest, plus enough estrogen to put Pierce Brosnan out of breath, though I suspect he’s just having trouble with the long notes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.
Man on Wire
On Aug. 7, 1974, Philippe Petit spent 45 minutes crossing back and forth over the chasm separating the World Trade Center towers in New York City. On a tightrope. Without a net. Without permission. When asked why, he said, and I’m paraphrasing: “Why not?” Petit’s stroll in thin air bore hints of guerrilla theater, performance art and suicidal stunt, but it was something more, or less: the actualization of impish personal obsession. James Marsh’s Man on Wire echoes Errol Morris’ slick approach to slippery truth—which has become standard operating procedure in nonfiction cinema—interweaving archival footage, interviews and re-enactments to elucidate the logistics of the seemingly impossible trick. This is the exceptional film that matches not only Morris’ method, but his keen narrative sense as well: The bracing escalation from plan to action is as thrilling as any heist film. The international crew assisting Petit devises and carries out a scheme involving fake names, forged documents and scale models. Sound familiar? But while the attacks that brought down Petit’s beloved buildings 27 years later are never mentioned, the staging, setting and eventual midair strutting of Man on Wire constitute a kind of inverted terrorism whose awesomeness affirms instead of destroys life. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
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.
Mirrors
Horror whiz-kid Alexandre Aja haunts Kiefer Sutherland with evil forces that enjoy reflecting glass surfaces. Not screened for critics, but we hope Kiefer asks "Who are you working for?" at least once. R. Century Eastport 16, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Forget the tree falling in the forest. If two undead armies—both CGI—decimate one another in the middle of the Chinese desert, has anything actually happened? Does anyone care? Those are questions prompted by The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a meaningless romp through an imaginary China. It doesn’t help that the two central story lines are so vastly unrelated that they might as well be separate movies. On one hand, a crowd of familiar Chinese actors fight an age-old battle around the ominous resurrection of the Dragon King (Jet Li). They speak Mandarin and perform stylized martial arts in flowing robes. On the other hand, a crowd of American actors, led by Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello, bluster their way through some hilarious family antics. They speak English and fire automatic weapons while wearing J. Crew. The two groups occasionally meet. Roll credits. The 1999 Mummy owed its charm to a precise balance of adventure and romance, believable special effects and campy humor. But if you can do something well with $80 million, why not botch it for $175 million? After the spectacular success of garbage sequels The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, fans expect nothing less. PG-13. JOHN MINERVINI. 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, Sandy Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.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.
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.
Pineapple Express
Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote the script) is a process server in a shabby suit, who witnesses a drug-cartel murder and flees the scene as conspicuously as possible, leaving behind a half-smoked joint (the artisanal weed of the title) that implicates him and his dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco). The duo go on the lam, though they’re not sure where to run; Saul’s suggested destinations are “nowhere and Quiznos.” This plan is a hilarious non sequitur, as is just about every event in Pineapple Express. The jokes are made exponentially funnier by the addled reactions of the heroes—especially Danny McBride as an indestructible lowlife and Franco, who reveals previously unsuggested brilliance as a deadbeat with delusions of profundity. These aspirations—Saul wants to be a civil engineer, and he’s memorized the work of famous architects—are the heart of Pineapple Express, and they hint, finally, at a shift in the Judd Apatow company’s feelings about beauty. Saul’s artistic dreams, however hopeless, aren’t mocked by the movie, but seen as suggestions of something better in him—just as director David Gordon Green hints at his own love of Terrence Malick by pausing from the mayhem to film Dale and Saul playing leapfrog in a sun-dappled forest. The movie is packed with car crashes and gunfire (and a severed ear), but it floats along in a dreamy, innocent haze, like a buddy picture reenacted in suburban backyards: Son of Tango & Cash. R. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, 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, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Tigard 11 Cinemas.
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. Living Room Theaters.
The Rocker
“John Lennon’s spinning in his grave…from the boner you just gave him,” says Jason Sudeikis upon hearing a young band midway through The Rocker. Lennon would be flaccid, and if The Rocker is any indication, the only spinning corpse is that of the once-great rock movie—and Rainn Wilson’s star. Wilson, brilliant as conniving weirdo Dwight Schrute on The Office, is front and center—proving, sadly, he’s a perfect supporting actor. Wilson plays Fish, a hyperactive drummer kicked out of Whitesnake-ish Vesuvius the night before it becomes the world’s biggest band. Twenty years later, burnt-out Fish joins his teen nephew’s wussy emo band. A strong premise dissolves into neutered teenybopper tripe—the fat kid meets a chick, the songwriter finds himself, the audience is silent. Meanwhile, Fish mugs, meets an alarming number of SNL actors in cameos, teaches life lessons, and exhibits a lot of To Catch a Predator behavior (including naked webcam appearances with teens). Director Peter Cattaneo revisits his sugary Full Monty roots with disastrous results. The Rocker is looking to become a sleeper hit. With any luck, it’ll simply be put to sleep, allowing Wilson to return to his beet farm and poor John Lennon’s penis to rest in peace. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 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.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.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.
Sex and the City
You've had the last decade to decide whether to pass on the inevitable Sex and the City big-screen edition, so it's pointless to defend or decry the movie's series of origin, beyond saying that the one thing the series consistently did well was to illustrate a support network more authentic than the squealing, imitative groups the show spawned. Three years on, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), her white whale of sorts, and she's planning their doomed wedding while he tugs at his collar in the background; lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is living the drained family life with her bartender baby-daddy in Brooklyn; sexpot PR expert Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is managing her kindly hunk of man meat's career in L.A.; and starry-eyed would-be socialite Charlotte (Kristin Davis) seems to have beaten the group's curse by living a satisfied life in a brownstone. The orgiastic cinematic splash of pink will only win over the demo that had always meant to check out the series but never did—no new converts will be persuaded. But oh, there is raunch. And there is eye candy. And in a sure sign that the series has grown a little, Carrie's plodding "I couldn't help but wonder…" gem is used only once, and only for nostalgia purposes. R. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Academy Theater, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Valley Theater.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was hitherto unfamiliar with the epic saga of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It appears to follow the familial and romantic foibles of four young women, united in friendship, as they study the magical disciplines of drawing, theater, filmmaking and archaeology at the Hogwash School of Arts, Crafts and Frippery, or, as this movie refers to it, “college.” To keep the sisterhood tangibly alive from their respective institutions, Lena, Carmen, Tibby and Bridget exchange their sacred totem, a pair of jeans, via post. But the bond begins to weaken, as personal struggles take precedence. Portrayed with sensitivity and wit by actresses Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Blake Lively, these characters face some genuine life challenges, so why does the solution invariably involve a market-tested serving of ethnic beefcake? (Or in Bridget’s case, a campy reconciliation with estranged granny Blythe Danner, straight out of Tennessee Williams?) It’s Sex and the City: The Salad Days, and it feels like an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog spread—Castro hats are in! This impression was magnified at my screening, as the film kept riding up in the projector, reducing the cast to headless mannequins. The resultant chest-to-chest dialogue was certainly amusing, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX.