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.

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.

The Cackle Factor—Kranked 7

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Mountain-bike footage, somehow linked to the theme of insanity, presumably giving it weight, heft and totally mind-blowing shit it would otherwise lack. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Saturday, May 10.

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, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

Harold and Maude

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Those obsessed with the detailed, melancholic worlds of Wes Anderson would do well to witness what director Hal Ashby accomplishes with a 79-year-old free spirit, a bug-eyed suicidal teen, a flaming Jaguar hearse and an LP full of Cat Stevens tunes. The (grand)mother of all odd-couple stories, this 1971 sleeper hit revolves around the budding romance between rich, disconnected would-be corpse Harold (Bud Cort) and a worldly, whimsical rebel named Maude (Ruth Gordon). The pair's anti-establishment antics (liberating trees from sidewalks, crashing funerals and lifting cars) still often elicit claps and hoots from theatergoers. But perhaps the real reason Harold and Maude has aged so well is that its delightfully oddball theme of intergenerational ugly-bumping is secondary to its sheer generosity of spirit and belief that you can change yourself by touching others—in all sorts of ways. KELLY CLARKE. Cinema 21. 7 pm Wednesday-Thursday, May 14-15.

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, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, 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.

Japanese Sexploitation Double Feature

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A twin bill of 35-mm Asian erotica, with suitably preposterous plots: Slave Widow focuses on a woman sold into the sex trade, while The Bite spotlights a gigolo who seduces virgins while his clients—a gaggle of imperious dowagers—watch in evident approval. The Bite (the one of these movies that was screened for critics) is mostly demure and restrained, with many black-and-white shots of nipples and direction by Hiroshi Mukai that suggests he wanted to be the Truffaut of jerk-off pictures. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday, May 9 and Sunday, May 11.

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.

Knowing All of You Like I Do

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] The fate of Music Millennium’s Northwest 23rd Avenue location was well documented in these pages, but there’s something terribly poignant about seeing what happened after it closed. First-time filmmaker Ivy C. Lin documents the gutting of the store with spare images—a Primal Scream poster torn down with a claw hammer, a hand-painted sign reading “Please leave all bags at counter” in a spot where there is no longer any counter—that hint at the “friendly ghosts” fleeing the neighborhood. There’s a lovely a cappella performance by WW cartoonist John Callahan of “Purple Winos in the Rain,” a song that fights for room above the sounds of destruction. Northwest Examiner editor Mike Ryerson also stops by, offering a depressing analysis of urban change along with a charming guided tour of the CD labels stuck to the corner trash can. (Somehow that tiny monument to Music Millennium seems especially fragile.) The film has been expanded from a short that ran at this year's NW Film Center Reel Music festival to a full 90 minutes. AARON MESH.

Lawrence of Arabia

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Never seen David Lean’s desert epic on the big screen? Never watched it in what Anthony Lane rightly described as “its natural habitat—the only place, you might say, where its proud and leonine presence has any meaning”? Here’s your chance. After this week, we stop feeling sorry for you and start holding you in contempt. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, May 9-15.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

Paprika

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Even within the strange world of Japanese anime, Paprika deserves special mention for just how ingenious—and weird—it is. The latest contribution from Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers) concerns a dream-sharing headset called the DC Mini, which looks like an iPod gone very, very sinister, and is mostly a pretext for a movie about dreams within movies within dreams. The standard anime elements are here—cute girls kicking ass, teleportation and a bulging substance that threatens to destroy the world in the final reel—but what distinguishes Paprika is its exploration of the Japanese obsession with kitsch. That preoccupation manifests here as a hulking, pulsing parade of geisha dolls, plush frogs, Shinto gates and porcelain kittens, a procession that consumes everything in its path. It's all rather disturbing, yet it's hard to resist joining the mad party. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. 9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, May 14-15.

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.

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.

A Quest for the Sublime: The Films of Werner Herzog

It’s Klaus Kinski Week at the NW Film Center—an event something like Shark Week, if sharks were blonde and prone to going batshit crazy on set. Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Cobra Verde both feature Herzog’s famed “best fiend” going batshit crazy in the jungle—to various levels of effect, though Aguirre includes the salutary sight of Kinski at odds with a monkey—and Woyzeck showcases the actor going batshit crazy as a cuckolded barber. Think Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, only German and not entirely acting. AARON MESH. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Woyzeck screens at 7 pm Thursday, May 8 and 9 pm Saturday, May 10. Cobra Verde screens at 7 pm Friday, May 9. Aguirre screens at 7 pm Saturday, May 10. Echoes from a Somber Empire screens at 7 pm Sunday, May 11.

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.

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.

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.

Son of Rambow

Put aside for a moment the overfamiliarity of the concept, which stretches from kids playing soldiers in Vietnam in Rushmore to the more obvious recent examples of characters and people making their own versions of cinema classics. Actually, don't bother—even if you go in braced for a cutesy English interloper coming late to the party, as I did, Rambow (the title is a kid's misspelling) should handily win you over. An innocent moppet, compulsively creative but sheltered by his religion from having ever seen a movie, Will (Bill Milner) accidentally sees First Blood and goes berserk with the need to make a violent movie (no, this isn't the story of how Paul Schrader came to write Taxi Driver). Luckily, the school bully is already hard at work doing just that, and the friendless hooligan allows Will to play the lead and infuse the project with his Howard Finster-like imaginings. It's the kind of catchy idea that usually runs out of steam by the third act, but Rambow stays remarkably consistent throughout, mostly thanks to wrinkles involving a ridiculously cool French exchange student and the school's infatuation with him. The film hums along with a sure comic touch, and the rare feel-good moments are earned by a genuinely affecting performance by the perfectly cast Milner. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Speed Racer

See review. AARON MESH. 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, 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.

Speed Racer

The Wachowski brothers have twisted the Speed Racer plot into the most intricate, mystifying puzzle imaginable, but they have mainly concentrated on excreting a big shiny candy drop. It doesn’t taste very good, and in fact I can’t imagine any person over the age of 12 wanting the digital sugar rush to last more than about five minutes (in fact, it goes on for another 124), but it deserves a certain honor for being the summer movie most unapologetically dedicated to its surfaces. So, what does Speed Racer look like? It looks like a 1970s diner retrofitted as a 1950s diner by a cokehead who was not alive at any time in the 1950s. It looks like the latest upgrade of Second Life, except instead of avatars it is filled with real people, and one of them is John Goodman in an orange T-shirt. It looks like the inside of the world’s most polished pinball machine. It looks like several dozen Matchbox cars were released into the wormhole at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It looks like missing footage from Willy Wonka’s highly traumatizing ferryboat ride. It looks like an early Microsoft screen saver, complete with the two-dimensional fish and flamingos. It looks like a child’s kaleidoscope filled with Goldschläger. It looks like Arthur Fonzarelli’s acid flashback. But once the shock of the movie’s high-tech sheen wears off, little in it is very impressive. AARON MESH. 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, 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.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Depending on the all-too-familiar premise of recently single-parented family that must now move out to a sketchy house in the middle of nowhere, The Spiderwick Chronicles pits a young, bitter boy (Freddie Highmore, of Finding Neverland fame) against his mother (Mary-Louise Parker) and two siblings. With the family laid bare for some supernatural goings-on that threaten to break them apart, there are a few witty digs at New Age parenting philosophy, but the story is essentially formulaic. While enfant terrible Highmore rails (in dual duty as twin brothers who apparently had unfortunate dialect coaching), he finds occasion to sneak into the creepiest inner crevices of his new home as his family sleeps. He finds a bipolar bogart (voiced by a theatrical Martin Short) and book of fairy secrets written by his great-great-uncle (David Strathairn). Far cooler aspects of fairy lore are thrown over—the precarious relationship between fairies and humans, for example—and the flick maintains flimsy tension by referring to the danger of goblins and ghouls just outside the house’s protective perimeter. We’re left with an epic battle between good and a demonic Nick Nolte. Joan Plowright cameos as a questionably delusional great-aunt, but as tiresome and age-inappropriately graphic battle scenes abound (would you want your elementary schooler to watch goblins get decapitated?), the flick is more of a study in the restorative powers of Strathairn, who lends an unprecedented elegance and even legitimacy to the mythology of the story. We are teased by shots of the book’s secrets; what we get is a very limited field guide and some CGI-style ass-kicking. PG. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Valley Theater.

Street Kings

Not to be confused with Street Knights, the mindlessly fun nonexisistent ’80s movie starring Keanu Reeves as a rogue cop operating outside procedure with a sidekick nicknamed Disco. This is Street Kings, and despite the current vintage, the details are the same except for the fun. It may be cartoonishly dumb, but not in an intentional, pleasant way—more in a so-self-serious-it-trips-over-its-own-feet sort of way. The only moments of levity, apart from cheesily familiar lines of dialogue, come from indulging in racial stereotypes and mocking reports of police brutality. David Ayer's first film, Harsh Times, had a better take on both race and macho gun culture, but not many saw it, so he's apparently dropped the personal and grabbed a script that cobbles together a few cop genres for minimum effect and maximum cash-out. Screenwriter James Ellroy borrows less successfully from his L.A. Confidential than he did borrowing that from Chinatown, giving us a few humdrum conspiracies. Keanu is well-cast as the only person in the film or audience too dense to know the big secrets Street Knights would have at least saved for last. Probably would have had a bunch of car crashes, too. Oh well. R. ANDY DAVIS. Kiggins Theatre, Valley Theater.

Then She Found Me

April Epner (Helen Hunt) suffers from lousy timing: She’s trying her darnedest to have a baby, but she only discovers she’s conceived after her schlub of a husband (Matthew Broderick) leaves her. As a first-time director, Hunt has similarly misjudged her moment. After an entire year of oops-I’m-pregnant comedies, people cracking jokes in front of the ultrasound are starting to wear thin. Then She Found Me offers a twist in the form of Bette Midler as April’s narcissist birth mother (who arrives gracelessly on the scene to become the “She” in the title), but Hunt would have been well served to experiment a touch with the casting. Colin Firth is the best thing in the film as April’s selfless, emotionally confused new man, but how much more interesting would the movie be if he played the infantile cad and let Broderick be the charmer for once? R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Trailermania 8

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Another collection of vin