CALENDAR » Screen Listings
Screen Listings
For the week of Wednesday May 7th thru Tuesday May 13th
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.
August the First
Director Lanre Olabisi's lens focuses on Tunde's (Ian Alsup) high-school graduation backyard 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.
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. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater.
Baghead
Four film-industry washouts sequester themselves in a remote cabin to write a scary movie. Between heavy drinking and light relationship drama, however, they never quite get further than an initial concept: a serial killer with a paper grocery bag over his head. (It’s a costume that suggests the psychopath is a fan of a winless football team.) And just as their collaboration is imploding, one of them goes missing…and someone else arrives in familiar headdress. Mumblecore vets Mark and Jay Duplass’ follow-up to The Puffy Chair—which sold more tickets in Portland than in any other city—is likely to prove just as pleasing, since it features the same finely observed narcissists, and adds a clever genre twist. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s mumblehorror! And while it’s burdened with one too many twists, Baghead features four excellent performances (including another charming turn by Greta Gerwig, the fearlessly topless queen of the mumblers) and a mood of desperation that has as much to do with shrinking career prospects as it does with stalking and stabbing. This is what The Blair Witch Project must have been like when the cameras were off—or at least I’d like to think so. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
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. Fifth Avenue Cinemas.Bloodline
If the two years since The Da Vinci Code have eroded your memory of the Priory of Sion and the living grail and associated piffle, this expeditionary account from Brit hokum vet Bruce Burgess—director of The Bermuda Triangle Solved? and The Ark of the Covenant Revealed—will serve as an instant reminder of how enervating it all is. Burgess is, to his credit, slightly better than Tom Hanks at pretending he believes in conspiratorial intrigue; he’s especially masterful at weasel words, with a special affinity for “seems to be.” This snark hunt seems to be based on Burgess finding sources who apparently tell him exactly what he hopes to hear, while he nods at the camera significantly and looks shocked by information that I suspect he already knows. (Burgess and his cohorts are constantly being surprised in Bloodline; the film could be re-titled Holy Blood, Holy Shit!) On the way to unearth the body they think might be that of Mary Magdalene (in France!) our team encounters significant peril—“There were spiders. Lots of spiders”—not the least of which is the Catholic church, which is dedicated to concealing its dark secret, but is evidently incredibly shitty at it. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. 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
This C.S. Lewis adaptation is filmmaking designed to appeal to the most bloodless, conformist camps of modern evangelicalism. In assembling the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—which was not a very good movie either, but at least contained some handsome pictures of furniture—director Andrew Adamson has compounded his errors from his first effort, and once again we’re handed a series of battles shot from a long distance, so that half the film looks like a Where’s Waldo? cartoon on a magical battlefield. Once again, Aslan the lion gets a good deal less screen time than you might expect, and when he does show up, he’s a drag: He reminded me less of Jesus than of the lordly, smug kid who always gets to play Jesus in youth group skits. The film’s message echoes uncomfortably as well: Should megachurched children really be given heroes who battle incessantly over a holy land until a god-king smites their enemies? But I suspect the chief reason that Prince Caspian is a dull, enervating experience is because it is produced by computer technicians pushing buttons to make a movie that looks as much as possible like other bland fantasy movies—with the same talking animals and clanking soldiers and ambulatory trees all wandering through the same artificial glades. Prince Caspian is a triumph of the synthetic, and one more victory for moviemakers who don’t like movies. PG. 99 Indoor Twin, Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 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. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Dalai Lama Renaissance
[TWO DAYS ONLY] Harrison Ford narrates a documentary about His Holiness (and, presumably, saves his life from the Thugee cult). Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, June 28-29. Hollywood Theatre.Dalai Lama Renaissance
You may not be aware that Thom Hartmann is among “40 of the world’s most innovative thinkers.” But here he is in the Indian Himalayas, attending the 1999 Synthesis Dialogues with a bevy of New Age physicists and progressive economists (two of them on loan from What the #$*! Do We Know!?), tasked with offering world-changing ideas to the 14th Dalai Lama. Title notwithstanding, it quickly emerges that this movie is not about the Dalai Lama so much as the “experts” who are quite pleased with themselves for speaking with him. “You have all these people with this tremendous amount of experience, sitting here,” explains one participant while still en route. “The whole train is like a womb, a cauldron of becoming.” Needless to say, I hated these people. More surprising is that director Khashyar Darvich seems at least slightly skeptical of them, and shows the enlightened souls preening, posturing and jockeying for status. Not a single global solution is reached—or, so far as I could tell, suggested—though there are many personal epiphanies, and His Holiness arrives to give a little sermon. Harrison Ford contributes his voice to reciting some interstitial proverbs. (Knowledge was their treasure!) AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. 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. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kennedy School Theater, Milwaukie Cinema.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.
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. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
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. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.
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. 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, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
The Gits
[ONE WEEK ONLY, BAND MEMBERS ATTENDING] In 1993, Mia Zapata was a singer with a voice like honey-covered nails, fronting a punk band on the verge of stardom and serving as de facto den mother to the Seattle music scene. Then, for no reason, she was dead: raped and murdered walking home from an evening with friends at a local bar. Her killing became a cold case, and the inspiration for Home Alive, a women’s self-defense training organization. Ten years after the crime, just as DNA evidence led to a breakthrough in the case, director Kerri O’Kane began to chronicle the reverberations of Zapata’s band, the Gits, on Seattle, girl power and grunge. The movie, which reached its completed version last year, focuses more on Zapata’s life—and that bluesy voice—than on her death. That’s exactly as it should be, though the project is hamstrung somewhat by a lack of recorded concerts, and by the reluctant of Gits members to disclose private feelings onscreen. Guitarist Andrew Kessler (whose stage name is Joe Spleen, and who wrote most of the band’s arrangements before Zapata penciled in lyrics) is especially reticent. And good for him, too—it’s rare to see a documentary where the crucial figure isn’t some emotional exhibitionist. But The Gits has a hard time balancing the dignity of Zapata’s survivors with the rawness of her music and the absurdity of her death. It’s still worth a look. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. Saturday-Thursday, July 5-10. Clinton Street Theater.
The Go-Getter
A romance paperback for indie rockers, The Go-Getter is being marketed in Oregon as the film where local singer-songwriter M. Ward met actress Zooey Deschanel on the set and, charmed by her honeyed voice and general adorability, enlisted her as the chanteuse of his side project She & Him. The movie, an agreeable little picaresque that starts in Eugene—director Martin Hynes’ hometown—and breezes its way down to Mexico, is mainly a reiteration of that happy discovery. Ward contributes the soundtrack and in the opening credits donates a car-wash uniform to the protagonist, 19-year-old Mercer (Lou Taylor Pucci, Thumbsucker). Mercer uses the outfit to steal a station wagon, which he plans to drive until he can find his estranged half-brother and inform him of their mother’s death. But the car’s owner (Deschanel) has left her cell in the vehicle, and when she calls—lo and behold—she isn’t angry, but wants him to continue his journey so long as he keeps talking to her. Considering how many laboriously idiosyncratic characters Mercer encounters before his rescue, The Go-Getter isn’t nearly as irritating as it ought to be. The M. Ward songs help a lot, as does Hynes’ mild visual experimentation. But it’s a disappointment when the voice on the other end of the line turns out to be the tender fulfillment of all young male wishes. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
See review. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21.
Hancock
See review. PG-13. AARON MESH. 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.
The Happening
Once a wunderkind of suspense manipulation, director M. Night Shyamalan has recoiled from the disaster of Lady in the Water by making his first lazy movie, a picture that grinds from one obligatory shock to another. Even the title is clumsy: Long after I realized The Happening was about Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel on the run from an airborne neurotoxin that provokes suicide, I kept waiting for the film to transform into a groovy, consciousness-expanding love-in. No such luck. Instead, in what may be the funniest moment in this year’s cinema, horrified commuters who’ve been told they’re fleeing a terrorist attack stop to watch a cell-phone video of a zookeeper wandering into a den of lions and getting both his arms torn off. (“Mother of God,” a woman cries, “what kind of terrorists are these?”) It’s not like there aren’t some good ideas in The Happening—the concept of death arriving as a sudden, hazy madness, like a fatal panic attack, is authentically unnerving. But Shyamalan telegraphs his every move so obviously that the movie’s B-grade horror feels like an act of contempt from a director who has seen his most beloved ideas rejected by audiences as well as critics. In one of many scenes where Wahlberg runs away from nothing, he passes a tract-housing billboard that proclaims, “You Deserve This!” Maybe this film is what the moviegoing public deserves, but it’s a shame to watch Shyamalan disdainfully hand it to them. R. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.
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. Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub.
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. Laurelhurst Theatre.
The Incredible Hulk
This summer marks the debut of Marvel’s autonomous movie offshoot with a duo of unlikely movies—the electric, box-office-defying Iron Man and now The Incredible Hulk, which pretends Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk never existed and subs the excellent Edward Norton for Eric Bana as Bruce Banner. Hulk smash? Indeed. The Incredible Hulk is a barrage of razzle-dazzle. Taking a cue from the comics and the 1970s TV show (Lou Ferrigno even voices the new Hulk, and has a cameo), director Louis Leterrier’s movie follows a familiar formula. Banner’s living off the grid in Brazil, trying to cure himself between mean and green “incidents.” Government officials led by a snarling general (William Hurt, a four-star ham) periodically catch up with him and Bourne-like chases ensue. Banner gets pissed, turns green and breaks some shit. The monster intermittently looks breathtakingly real, like a sculpture carved from Irish Spring. But in the hullabaloo to reclaim Hulk, the film forgets to have fun. There’s some spectacular action—a battle on a college campus is pitch perfect—but there’s little joy, just brooding between explosions. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 99 West Drive-In, 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 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.
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. 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 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.
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. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 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.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 are 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. 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, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.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.
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. 99 Indoor Twin, 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, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.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.
The Love Guru
If the origins of comedy lie in the Dionysian phallus festivals of ancient Greece, then Mike Myers is nothing if not a classicist. Just when you thought he had donated his body to the science of making Shrek sequels, he returns to his great passion: soaking old Peter Sellers routines with a steady stream of penis jokes. In Austin Powers, he looted Sellers’ James Bond spoof Casino Royale, and now he resurrects Sellers’ brownface ethnic shtick (minus the actual brownface). He plays Guru Pitka, an Indian-trained New Age mystic dispensing nonsense platitudes and—what else?—scatological puns from his lucrative Hollywood compound. An hour and a half of testicular trauma ensues, and for those who appreciate verbal wit, there are characters named “Cherkov,” “Tugginmypudha,” and “Dick Pants.” The only bits I really enjoyed in The Love Guru, besides some B-side riffing by Stephen Colbert, were the gonzo musical numbers, a form that Myers arguably understands better than anyone actually directing musicals today. At one point, Jessica Alba is transformed by dubbing and subtitles into a mewing Bollywood siren, and the result is so vapidly kitsch it’s hysterical. It’s also small compensation for the price of a movie ticket, your dignity, and any Indian friends you might have. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. 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, Forest Theatre, 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.
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. Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Valley Theater.
Mongol
With the exception of “Bob” Genghis Khan’s sporting-goods rampage in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the Great Conqueror has gotten the silver-screen shaft. (John Wayne in brownface, anyone?) Genghis deserves one great film. Mongol, nominated for the 2007 foreign-language Oscar, gets him halfway there. The film is sympathetic to an oft-vilified legend, and director Sergei Bodrov focuses on his love and compassion rather than his violent rise. We follow Genghis (known as Temudjin in his pre-conquest days) on his childhood quest to avenge his father. Later in life, the future Khan (Tadanobu Asano) makes and breaks bonds with his blood brother, defends his love, plays with kids, and goes through a long imprisonment before rising like a bloodthirsty phoenix. Bodrov’s tale, part of a planned trilogy, is gorgeous and expertly acted. But in detailing the wrath of Khan, it veers toward The Shaw Brothers’ Braveheart, punctuated with beautifully boring stretches. Between landscape shots and bloody battles, I found myself repeating, out of tedium, a tongue-twister from Calvin & Hobbes: “How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?” Hopefully, with the origin story out of the way, future installments will grasp the ferocious greatness Mongol briefly teases. R. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21. City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10.
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. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Valley Theater.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.
Planet of the Apes
Charlton Heston would probably like to be remembered for championing gun rights. Still, one immortal phrase rings louder than any NRA battle cry: “Take yer stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” Planet of the Apes’ reverse-Darwinist vision of a world ruled by monkeys (a world of human-slave babes in fur bikinis, to boot) became an instant classic in 1968. It resulted in four sequels, the lowest notch on Tim Burton’s belt, and one of the greatest Simpsons parodies (“C’mon and rock me, Dr. Zaius”). Along with phenomenal makeup effects, the film’s trick ending set the watermark for cinematic “gotchas,” and even haters can’t deny that Heston’s charisma rises above his god-awful overacting. Hell, he even makes out with a monkey and prances in a loincloth—it doesn’t get manlier than that. The rifle was finally pried from Chuck’s cold, dead hands, but a brand-new print of Planet of the Apes on the big screen is reason for anybody, armed or otherwise, to rally for Heston. G. AP KRYZA. Hollywood 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. Living Room Theaters.
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.
Roman de Gare
When Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman appeared in 1966, as stylishly vaporous as its hit theme song, it made a fashion out of being lightweight. Lelouch's continuing reputation as a master of fluff was seemingly only undermined once, by his arrest after the screening of a short film in which a car was driven without warning at 85 mph through Paris. His new film throws in a quick homage of a shot from that heedless stunt, and the production for this one was filmed under someone else's name (as a dodge against expectations), just as he now claims it was him in that speeding car and not a Formula One racer as previously thought. So it's only natural that Roman finds Lelouch more playful than usual, and finds Dominique Pinon (surprisingly normal, keeping his rubbery features in check) larking about as either a serial killer, ghostwriter or a missing husband—we don't know which. He also fakes being the fiancé of a stranger who's not who she seems either. But instead of being overdetermined, the shuffling of truth and identities is playfully brilliant, reaching a satisfying stretch of suspense and comedy as he visits her family on their farm. Unfortunately, Lelouch resolves the mysteries halfway through, and the film loses depth and intrigue as the lightweight takes back the reins from the prankster. R. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.
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. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Tigard Joy Theatre.
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.
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. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Valley Theater.
Speed Racer
See review. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater.
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. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater.Still Life
The calamitous fact of the Three Gorges Dam shadows everything that happens in director Jia Zhangke’s Still Life, but we see China’s concrete monster only once, looming behind a halting break-up scene. The dam isn’t there to carry metaphorical weight, and Jia doesn’t flatter the structure with a single glamour shot. The dam is there because the dam is there, in all its undeniable splendor and incontrovertible folly. It doesn’t need Jia’s help, and Still Life doesn’t need the dam’s. Among the rubble and disrepair of the village of Fengjie, which is marked for flooding and undergoing slow demolition, Han Sanming and Shen Hong search for their lost spouses. Their respective quests are connected only by the geography of the city, where billboards spiked into hillsides announce future water levels. Jia shares Antonioni’s affection for the dour amble: Sanming and Hong wander the falling city in attempts to save failed marriages, and the camera pans into and out of immaculate compositions of bodies moving, then still, then moving again against the mementos mori of whole streets, whole buildings, whole clutches of sweating shirtless men hammering away at foundations. It is a visually startling, simply gorgeous film, and the images build slowly and quietly to art’s great reason: a feeling that is something like truth. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.
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. Living Room Theaters.Trailermania 8
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Another collection of vintage coming attractions, including The Green Slime and Soylent Green. (Spoiler warning: It’s people.) Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Monday-Tuesday, May 12-13.The Virgin Suicides
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Sofia Coppola’s debut now seems like a buffet of mostly unrealized potential: The director has never quite recaptured her knack for late-afternoon melancholy, Kirsten Dunst has never seemed mysterious again, and Josh Hartnett turned out to be just as vapid as his character. But at least, for one brief moment, they came together to craft the greatest teen make-out scene of the ‘90s. AARON MESH. Broadway. 7 pm Monday, May 12. $5.
The Visitor
As in writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s previous film, The Station Agent, strangers who have seemingly nothing in common bond with one another once in close proximity. Richard Jenkins gives a brave, incontestably fine performance as a drab dud of an econ professor drawn into new life by a couple of Syrian-Senegalese Muslims who, though well assimilated into American culture, reside in New York illegally. The movie pretends to be apolitical but in fact has much to say about our arcane immigration laws and the human wreckage they foster. McCarthy never overemphasizes his points, allowing The Visitor to unfold in unhurried, almost stately rhythms. Oliver Bokelberg’s crisp interiors and on-location cinematography cannot be improved upon, least of all in the terrific final scene on a subway platform, a shot of djembe busking glimpsed through the windows of a train whizzing by. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
WALL-E
It’s appropriate, somehow, that Pixar’s most humane picture yet stars personable computers. In a depopulated future earth strewn with towering pinnacles of garbage, a lonely trash compactor named WALL-E passes his time collecting knickknacks and watching dance scenes from a Hello, Dolly! videocasette, until a flying iPod called EVE arrives on a reconnaissance mission. The movie’s first third is a peerless exercise in near-silent comedy, with the timid, smitten WALL-E equal parts E.T. and Charlie Chaplin. Director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) fills each frame with inspired details (including a resilient cockroach that functions as the robot’s house pet) and a delicate sense of yearning. The final hour—which finds WALL-E and the lady EVE onboard a spaceship filled with exiled humans, whose stationary consumption has turned them into gelatinous pink manatees—is marred by too many chases and a heavy-handed environmental message, but even Stanton’s most disposable elements are affecting. (Jeff Garlin does fine vocal work as the ship captain who rediscovers the concept of farming.) What endures from this almost perfect little movie is the image of two lovelorn robots flying together in an outer-space ballet. It’s what 2001: A Space Odyssey might have been if Kubrick had cared at all for people (or machines). It’s wondrous. G. 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, 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.
