Screen Listings

17 Again

Zac Efron’s attempt to segue into slightly more mature fare than High School Musical doesn’t stretch him too strenuously: It opens with Efron’s character, Mike O’Donnell, playing point guard for his varsity basketball team (shirtless, ladies!) and break-dancing with cheerleaders before the championship game tips off. (I’ve racked my brain for a reason this scene needs to be in the movie, and there is none.) But he gives up a college hoops career to marry his pregnant sweetheart, and grows up to be Matthew Perry, who looks how Zac Efron might look if he spends the next two decades sourly complaining about how he gave up basketball to marry your pregnant ass. (Leslie Mann, playing the estranged wife, puts up with an egregious amount of this shit.) A magic janitor turns Perry back into Efron as soon as possible, and the movie becomes Back to the Future designed for the mentalities of lousy, hypocritical parents. Mike works hard to make sure his son (Sterling Knight) gets a squeeze, and his daughter (Michelle Trachtenberg) breaks up with hers. He succeeds in both goals, and the movie applauds his sitcom-dad misogyny. 17 Again is not entirely hideous, but neither is it funny (it gets closest with a vengeful running gag revolving around slapping Efron in the face). It is also not nearly as breezy or stirring as High School Musical 3. PG-13. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Tigard Joy Theatre, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Adventureland

An episodic reminiscence of Greg Mottola’s wonder years next to the Tilt-a-Whirl. His alter ego—his nom de flume—is James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), a college graduate whose liberal-arts degree has qualified him for many jobs that do not provide actual paychecks, and one that does: a carnie gig at the local fun park, Adventureland. James’ saving social grace is a big bag of weed, which is how he is introduced to Em (Kristen Stewart), who anybody with half a brain can see is the most interesting person in the park. (This is Stewart’s most layered work yet, and especially notable because it makes the movie the first Judd Apatow-produced project to allow itself a female lead with wit and awareness to outpace the boys.) When it’s not sidetracked by clowning, Adventureland is finely observed, from the Falco hit “Rock Me Amadeus” torturing the employees on PA loop to the Catholic anti-Semitism that thwarts a potential romance. (“The Jews have been through worse,” says a resigned Martin Starr.) Its tranquil, forgiving vibe exactly captures how someone who came of age in 1987 Pittsburgh would prefer to remember it. Which is also the movie’s problem. It sets up encounters freighted with real misunderstanding and pain, then glosses them with a rosy varnish of nostalgia. I can believe that these things happened, more or less, to Greg Mottola—but I don’t buy that he felt this good about them. I can’t help suspecting that if he were a little younger or a little older, the very good Adventureland would be a better movie—or at least a tougher one. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Searching vainly for someone who wanted to watch Jason Lee and shrieking rodents at 10 am, we decided to requisition WW employees with young children. A typical response: "Are you kidding? The chipmunk in the ad scared the shit out of me." So, no dice. PG. Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Anime Double Feature

[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] 35 mm prints of Japanimation classics Cowboy Bebop and Appleseed. Clinton Street Theater. Sunday-Tuesday, May 3-5.

Away We Go

With Away We Go, based on a screenplay by über-couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Sam Mendes (American Beauty) has made a slight comedy about the 21st-century version of entitled solipsism and whiny self-involvement. The problem is that Mendes appears not to know this. John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph star as Burt and Verona, a couple so solid, so damn smitten, that they manage to maintain eye contact and keep down their lunch while dropping sun and sky metaphors on each other. They are the perfect couple: sincere, sharing and impervious to shame. Verona isn’t even miffed when Burt interrupts a session of oral sex to let her know that she “tastes different.” When that earthy note in Verona’s vagina turns out to be the taste of baby, the couple decides to take a road trip, in hopes of finding the perfect place to raise their child. I don’t expect fictional characters to be likable, but I expect filmmakers to know when they are not. The magical couple is met at every turn by well meaning if sometimes kooky and fucked-up people who want to help, only to be shamed by the snide superiority of Mr. and Mrs. Right. There is potential here for a humorous study of the emotional alienation of obsessive lovers. But that would require some understanding, at some level of this dense and tired film, of what these people actually are. And what are they? Intolerant and insufferable brats. R. CHRIS STAMM. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema.

Cheri

Colette’s Belle Epoque novels Chéri and The Last of Chéri are packed with observations on French society, but the only lesson from Stephen Frears’ cinematic adaptation is that Michelle Pfeiffer makes a lousy sex teacher. She plays Léa, a Parisian courtesan who grants a favor to dearly despised colleague Charlotte (Kathy Bates) by agreeing to apprentice Charlotte’s frivolous son, nicknamed Chéri (Rupert Friend), in the ways of amour. Léa has two tasks: Make the boy a generous lover, and don’t fall in love. She fails at both. Considering they share a bed for six years, you’d think he’d have learned by his wedding night to Edmee (Felicity Jones) not to just jam it up in there—but no, that would undermine the subtext of the movie, which is that sex is only a beautiful act when it’s sex with Michelle Pfeiffer. The central problem is that it’s impossible to comprehend why Léa’s so smitten with this kid. He’s pretty—Friend looks like Robert Pattinson crossed with a baby Keith Richards—but he’s a bitch. To the bitter end, he calls Léa by childhood endearments that make him sound like a child crying for his wet nurse. This is not as erotic as the filmmakers would like it to be. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.

Coraline

Relax, everybody: Coraline is good. The feature debut by Portland's Laika animation studio tells the story of young Coraline Jones (voiced only somewhat annoyingly by Dakota Fanning), who moves with her parents to a taffy-pink apartment complex in the Cascades and then relocates again, ducking through a crawlspace door into another dimension where an uncanny button-eyed Other Mother (Teri Hatcher) woos her with a garden of unearthly delights. The stop-motion animators have prepared a bottomless visual smorgasbord—around every turn is a new wonder, from synchronized bouncing circus mice to a popcorn-defecating mechanical chicken to a theater packed with an audience of panting Scottish terriers. At its best, the movie feels like Pan’s Labyrinth reconsidered by Jan Švankmajer. But Other Mother’s pushy generosity is hard to distinguish from the project as a whole, which is so anxious to please it crams in twice as many plot elements as 100 minutes can contain—and, worse, never pauses long enough for the atmosphere or characters to resonate. Director Henry Selick has definitively proved he has imagination to burn—next time, he and his editors might consider a few relaxation techniques of their own. PG. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema.

Departures

Proudly conventional schlock, much lacerated after winning—through no fault of its own—the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film over Waltz with Bashir and The Class. Yôjirô Takita’s feature is broader and more affecting than its reputation allows; with its comedic double-takes and cathartic dead-body disposal, it’s the Japanese counterpart to Sunshine Cleaning. When easily flummoxed cellist Masahiro Motoki loses his orchestra gig (gasp!), the new job he finds in his hometown classifieds turns out to be preparing corpses for cremation (whaa?), an ignominious profession he ultimately finds noble (hmmm…). This maturation unfolds extremely slowly for a film with no discernible artistic ambitions, though some of the pauses are for peaceful scenes of domestic record-spinning and string-playing (with the evocative compositions courtesy of Miyazaki vet Joe Hisaishi). It’s hardly objectionable, especially with old mortician Tsutomu Yamazaki proving himself the Martin Sheen of Japan, all wise eyebrows and knowing smile. I almost want to see the softcore pornos Takita made before he got all awards-worthy. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Drag Me to Hell

Demons and curses and red lava lakes are the cartoon versions of real terror, and playing up the absurdity of eternal damnation is how Sam Raimi made his name. With Drag Me to Hell, he returns to the goofy realm of malediction and prayer, of grossed-out giggles and groans. Alison Lohman, a  refinement of the Jenna Fischer model of mousiness, stars as Christine Brown, whose professional aspirations are as dull as her name. Looking to prove her mettle and climb the ladder in her loan department, Christine denies a crone’s request for a mortgage extension. With her bejeweled fingers tapering to crusty yellow nails, her mismatched eyes and her Slavic croak, old Mrs. Ganush is clearly a Gypsy witch, so instead of asking to speak to Christine’s manager, she calls a curse down on the perky little loan officer’s pretty little head. What follows is, for the most part, a dispiritingly rote exercise in comic dread. Raimi’s sick sense of humor quickens the routine at intervals, never more so than in two uproarious scenes of animal sacrifice, but Drag Me to Hell squanders an ungodly amount of screen time on needless narrative explication. Imagine a version of Army of Darkness in which Bruce Campbell’s Ash sits around whining about the Necronomicon instead of questing after it. And sure, the horror that interrupts Christine’s lethargy is thrillingly ridiculous, if a bit too reliant on humorous fluids and cheap digital effects, but there’s simply not enough of it. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Earth

Disney no longer has a chokehold on fuzzy animals, animated or otherwise—the company has to negotiate with outside experts. Pixar provides the cartoons, and now Disney has contracted with the BBC to pare down its jaw-dropping documentary series Planet Earth for the big screen. The adaptation, its title now shortened to the ambitiously catholic Earth, marks the launch of Disney’s eco-friendly label Disneynature, and it is hard not to suspect that its three central narratives—following polar bears, African elephants and humpback whales—were selected for maximum mother-child reunions and plush-toy revenues. Still, the footage is spectacular: The night-vision sight of a dozen lions trying to take down a full-grown pachyderm is worth the price of a ticket. Or it would be, if not for Disney’s intrusions. Earth is narrated by James Earl Jones in chummy Burl Ives mode, and he is incessantly interrupting the mortal struggles of the beasts to instruct us, absurdly, whom to root for. The futile attempt of a famished polar bear paterfamilias to hunt is riveting, until Jones begins referring to him as “the cub’s father,” as if the old man went out for milk and walrus and never came home. “Their father’s brave spirit will live on in their young hearts,” Jones concludes. Oh, drat: Man is in the forest. G. AARON MESH. Academy Theater.

Easy Virtue

Jessica Biel does Noel Coward? Yes, and it’s an acceptable mishmash, since the role of Larita Whittaker is an American interloper who hot-and-bothers the stuffed shirts on a British estate by showing up married to the cherished only son (Prince Caspian’s Ben Barnes). Biel’s performance is unexceptional, noteworthy only for her increasing resemblance to Kim Basinger and her discomfort with the swifter passages of dialogue. If director Stephan Elliott wanted stunt casting with some frisson, he might have tried an actual comedian like Elizabeth Banks. Easy Virtue isn’t anywhere near the summit of Coward’s work, and the license taken by the filmmakers is both too much and not enough—it kills the plot’s momentum without adding anything new to the satirical jabs. But Elliott, whose last significant directing gig was The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, has better luck with a few bold decisions, including a soundtrack with flapper covers of Tom Jones, Rose Royce and Billy Ocean. Kristin Scott Thomas was born to deliver Coward’s Champagne-and-razor-blades sniping, and Katherine Parkinson has fun with a spinster sister’s glottal dowdiness. Best by far is Colin Firth as a dissipated patriarch. Uncowed by the play’s pedigree, he lolls about the movie with an ironic smirk that says he’s pissed in better rooms than this. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Eldorado

A shaggy, shambling underachiever hits the road with a junkie who tried to burgle his house in this Belgian comedy directed by Bouli Lanners, who also stars. His enormously appealing Yvan is the embodiment of the film’s scruffy, fleshed-out take on the dry, ironic humor that usually finds a more mannered, distant style in indies of the same ilk (although the shots themselves are composed with exquisite precision). The few tumbles into overt quirkiness are easily forgiven thanks to the good-natured vibe, a great soundtrack, and the fact that it’s hilarious—until the film decides that laughs aren’t what it’s after, and quietly takes a leak on your shoes. ANDY DAVIS. Living Room Theaters. No showtimes.

Food, Inc.

By now, Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan must feel like voices crying in the wilderness that, hey, there are some delicious vegetables growing in this wilderness—while on the other side of the Jordan, the villagers laugh through mouthfuls of KFC Famous Bowls. Undaunted, Schlosser and Pollan have advised the production of another reformist doc, Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. Their stomach-turning confection strikes me as far more successful than most of the previous courses in corporate-food alarm-sounding. Much of its efficacy stems from Kenner’s use of scope. You may scoff that the problem eating of this prosperous country doesn’t amount to a hill of beans—but wait until you see the actual hill of beans, the mountain ranges of shucked corn, or the writhing abattoirs of chickens. (Jesus, those chickens. Forget Jimmy Dean sausage; it’s the Dolly Parton poultry we need to be worried about, with their genetically modified breasts so hypertrophied that the birds can’t walk, and eventually collapse into their own shit, where they die.) But Kenner only glancingly addresses whether mass-produced food can ever be altered from the inside, and even if his film somehow manages to reach the masses, I suspect it would leave most feeling fat and defeated. PG. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Cinema 21.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Matthew McConaughey’s callous womanizer in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is so rich, handsome and stylish that it seems like a burden for him to have to be a world-famous fashion photographer as well. He didn’t need to be: The many women he beds are so proudly slutty and superficial it’s almost inconceivable they could care whether he’s a successful talent or just another beautiful, loafing rich kid. But since he is a world-famous glam artist, who better than notorious movie producer/playboy Robert Evans to give him relationship advice? Michael Douglas only does a lackluster impression of Evans as the ghost of McConaughey’s philandering Uncle Wayne, but a half-assed Evans is still the perfect model for the kind of glib pseudo-artist McConaughey plays. Uncle Wayne takes his nephew on a Dickensian journey through a long, shallow pool of his exes: McConaughey is haunted by the spirits of three girlfriends—past, present and future—over the weekend of his brother’s wedding. The ghosts succeed in rekindling his long-dormant need for human affection (and Jennifer Garner), but they’re helpless to spark the movie itself, which is so cynically stereotypical toward relationships it might have been dictated by the cad McConaughey was before his spectrally induced transformation. PG-13. ALEX PETERSON. Avalon Theatre, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Goodbye Solo

There are two movies running side by side in Goodbye Solo. One of them, which is predictable enough to set my watch by, is about the unlikely friendship (read: one guy’s African, one’s American) between a Senegalese cab driver named Solo and the emotionally wrecked William (Red West), who recruits Solo to drive him to his auto-da-fé in the mountains. This dolorous odd-couple tale plays out as a Jarmusch-ish lark shoehorned into a dreadfully conventional narrative. However, the other movie in Goodbye Solo introduces the world to Souleymane Sy Savane, who, as Solo, breathes real life into the tired cliché of the African immigrant seemingly overcome by joie de vivre at every turn. The sincerity of Savane’s performance is matched by director Ramin Bahrani’s eye for the grimy sadness of the motel-dwelling, tobacco-stained lives of a certain breed of working-class guy. This hard and quiet kind of life is too rarely dramatized with much success in American cinema (hey there, Darren Aronofsky), and while Bahrani does it justice, there is no ignoring that other movie right next door, nudging you out of your reflections and on to the next obvious plot point. CHRIS STAMM. Living Room Theaters.

I Love You, Man

In its need to defend the sacred bond of bromance, this genial comedy harks back to another time: the early 1990s, the era of Iron John and male-bonding retreats, when a man was a man and hugged other men and was not embarrassed about this in any way, because finally he was unleashing the hunter-warrior that had been domesticated for too long. This was, in short, a stupid time. And I Love You, Man is a stupid movie, though not without its compensations. High among them is Paul Rudd, who downplays his gift for derision to play the easily flustered Peter, who gets engaged to Zooey (Rashida Jones) and realizes that he has no friends close enough to be his best man. Enter Sydney, who describes himself as an investment broker but is obviously self-employed as a chillaxation expert. Jason Segel, last seen pink and naked in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is perfect for the role: His open face seems half-formed, like that of a fetus already addicted to Heineken and Internet porn. He reintroduces Peter to pleasures he had long forgotten: fish tacos, blunt talk and, most urgently, the music of Rush. R. AARON MESH. Bagdad Theater and Pub, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

That nut-hoarding squirrel and his pals discover that Sarah Palin was right: Dinosaurs haven't died out! WW did not attend the press screening; look for a later review on wweek.com. PG. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, 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, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Il Divo

A smooth, spectacular vehicle of heedless prowess, plowing through the byzantine details of an Italian P.M.'s corrosively corrupt life with more concern for bringing flash and wit to the biopic than for viewer comprehension. One might hunger for footnotes on subject Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo), except things get more confusing once they are explained (as with the absurdly dense pre-film “glossary”). Luckily, there’s a lot in Paolo Sorrentino's picture to sit back and enjoy. Scenes are distilled down to strikingly poetic visuals, indie rock often pounds along, and this is probably the first time you’ve seen a Vatican cardinal in a Reservoir Dogs-style group stroll. ANDY DAVIS. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.

Imagine That

So this may sound crazy, but the older Eddie Murphy gets, the more he resembles Kobe Bryant. Not only are their serpentine visages similar, but even when they succeed, they’ve alienated so many people that nobody wants to celebrate their redemption. Last weekend, Bryant won an NBA title, and Murphy released a sweet-natured family movie. Neither won over any fans. Murphy’s $5.5 million-grossing bomb isn’t in the same ballpark as atrocious hits and misses like Norbit and Meet Dave, even though it starts with a comparably awful conceit: Stock trader Evan (Murphy) learns that his daughter’s security blanket and imaginary friends are conduits to picking securities, so he decides to cozy up to the kid (Yara Shahidi, a graduate of the Olivia Huxtable School for Cuteness). Murphy’s ingrained hostility takes him beyond the usual absent dad, but as he softens, director Karey Kirkpatrick shows an honorable restraint, never resorting to CGI displays of gaudy fantasylands and instead allowing the characters to bond in something like the real world. (With its emphasis on the crucial role of fathers in the lives of pre-adolescent girls, this is going to be Atlantic contributor Caitlin Flanagan’s favorite film of the year.) The family values play better than the comedy—Thomas Haden Church grinds away with the role of an ersatz Native American financial shaman—but Murphy’s removal of his aggressive humor to goof around with kids feels like a minor exorcism. If only anybody noticed. PG. AARON MESH. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Kabei: Our Mother

A Japanese family struggles after the father is jailed for subversion during World War II, in the latest film from veteran director Yôji Yamada. Look for a review on wweek.com. Living Room Theaters. No showtimes.

Laila's Birthday

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A look at the chaotic, violent and vibrantly cultured stew that is modern Palestine, seen through a day in the life of a proud judge (Mohammed Bakri) forced by economic hardships to drive a taxi through the city of Ramallah. He wants only to get home in time to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, but all of Palestine—or rather, all of its portentously accentuated incongruities—seems to stand in his way. The After Hours-like story structure (the day is interminable and each fare Bakri takes on winds him up worse than the last) ultimately leads to a spontaneous, half-crazy diatribe screamed over a loudspeaker in public. It’s the kind of conceit that conveniently allows for a summation of all the movie’s disparate messages in one fell swoop. Such an escape is necessary because each scene in this film is like a check mark on a list of Things That Israel Has Fucked Up in Palestine, made worse by director Rashid Masharawi’s inability to draw poetic connections between them. Only the glimpses of Ramallah itself, doggedly functioning, make it occasionally fascinating, and those could be chalked up to the necessity of location shooting in an imprisoned country too poor for studios. ALEX PETERSON. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 and 8:30 pm Friday and Sunday, July 3 and 5.

Land of the Lost

“Land of the Lost will be the flop of the summer,” I wrote a day before the $200 million picture opened for a disastrous $18.8 million weekend. Does this prophecy fulfillment mean I owe America a drink? The few people who sat through the movie could use one: The refitting of Sid and Marty Krofft’s dopey television series as a Will Ferrell vehicle is a fiasco, so dismal that it appears the wrangled comedians surrendered hope early in production. The source material was never valuable—it was cheapo kiddie programming with a child in a monkey suit playing the role of Lassie—but it had certain WTF attributes, what with the cheerful actors, the rubber lizard-people and the T-Rex puppets. The movie also raises questions: What the fuck was director Brad Silberling thinking? Who the fuck hired this guy? How the fuck does Universal Pictures expect to get its money back? Land of the Lost is the most expensive Funny or Die video ever made; the death option does not seem to have been given due consideration. “When you speak of this in the future, and you will,” Ferrell pleads at the end, “be gentle.” Weirdly, this line makes Land of the Lost the second stupid summer movie—after Angels & Demons—to quote from Tea and Sympathy. In this case, it’s in reference to Will Ferrell being pooped out of a dinosaur. Perhaps it is kindest not to speak of this at all. Let’s just forget this whole movie ever happened. PG-13. AARON MESH. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Little Ashes

Li’l Surrealists is more like it. Director Paul Morrison (Wondrous Oblivion) stages the youthful larks of Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson), Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran) and Luis Buñuel (Matthew McNulty) at a university hostel, where Lorca longs for—and nearly consummates—an affair with Dali. Yes, that’s Twilight teen-swoon vampire Pattison as Dali. Yes, it’s ridiculous. “I grew this mustache!” Pattison vamps as the painter descends into eccentricity, batting his eyes. But the matinee idol mostly looks embarrassed to be stuck here, and his performance, while not remotely convincing, is no career-ender. The real mortification should belong to Morrison, who asks his actors to speak English like Desi Arnez, and imagines the love between the Andalucían and the avant-garde as an all-boys’ revue of The Blue Lagoon. It contains clips from Un Chien Andelou, but it may be the least surrealist film ever made, doggedly literal and stilted at every juncture. By the end, it suggests the political and romantic maturity of Swing Kids. R. AARON MESH. No showtimes.

Lymelife

“I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone,” moans Jimmy Bartlett (Kieran Culkin) as he realizes that his parents’ marriage is crumbling and his idolized older brother Scott (Rory Culkin) isn’t the war hero he claims to be while pummeling Jimmy’s school bullies on leave. Jimmy’s actually on suburban Long Island in the 1970s—no picnic either, judging from the many movies delivered from similar settings. Indebted to The Ice Storm but not nearly as sharp, Lymelife is a brotherly project: a showcase for the less-famous Culkins and the brainchild of writer/director tandem Derick and Steven Martini. Its chief distinction—besides using Lyme disease as a dramatic trigger—is Alec Baldwin as the Bartlett boys' philandering daddy. He’s a thick coil of potential violence, and it’s hard not to think the actor used his own notorious fathering failures as motivation. Otherwise, Lymelife is coming-of-age boilerplate, though quite self-conscious about it: “You’ve been reading that book about that kid who runs away from private school,” Jimmy notes to his potential girlfriend (admirably coy Emma Roberts) before making suffering St. Stephen eyes that would be the envy of Holden Caufield. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

Monsters vs. Aliens

DreamWorks Animation’s 3-D feature Monsters vs. Aliens is structured around a clever enough conceit: Creature-feature icons of the ’50s and ’60s are re-envisioned as misunderstood outcasts. Struck by a meteor on her wedding day, Modesto, Calif., local Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) grows to great heights, an inch shy of her Attack of the 50-Foot Woman precursor. She meets Missing Link (Will Arnett); B.O.B. (Seth Rogen, for once perfectly cast); Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie); and Insectosaurus—fellow anomalies recalling, respectively, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Blob, The Fly, and Japanese giant monster flicks. Shortly thereafter, the troupe is unleashed from a government facility in order to thwart an alien invasion helmed by Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson). Its girl-power trajectory does render Monsters vs. Aliens marginally interesting, given that animated American movies rarely feature female-led narratives. Susan, dubbed Ginormica, realizes over the course of the film that she enjoys the sense of accomplishment that comes from doing rather than sitting on the sidelines in support of her fiancé’s career; her mutation, initially lamented, is soon celebrated as a source of strength. But even this narrative theme (embrace perceived differences) has already been mined in numerous forerunners, from Shrek to The Incredibles. Hewing closely to generic conventions rather than demonstrating real innovation, Monsters vs. Aliens—as in the case of so many big-budget, high-concept projects—remains content to simply go where numerous others have gone before. PG. KRISTI MITSUDA. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

My Sisters Keeper

Hollywood boasts a proud tradition of equal-opportunity schlockery: Every testosterone-spewing blockbuster must be paired with a weepie for the ladies. And nothing guarantees gallons of tears like the phrases “little girl with leukemia” and “from the director of The Notebook.” Based on Jodi Picoult’s airport bestseller, My Sister’s Keeper is an old-school chixploitation flick that uses every swelling piano cue, slow-mo sunset, crying montage and bagpiped “Amazing Grace” epilogue in the book to serve one purpose—milking tear ducts by showing a child suffering. The film tells the story of a family divided when daughter Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) is diagnosed with leukemia. To prolong her life, the family births “donor child” test-tube baby Anna (Abigail Breslin), who exists to provide Kate organs. But when cutie-pie Anna sues for medical emancipation, director Nick Cassavetes—spawn of arthouse marvel John—makes sure every character’s anguish is shown. Control-freak mom Cameron Diaz has a mental breakdown a minute; dad Jason Patric sheds solitary tears during hugs; little Anna is chastised for wanting a say in where her kidneys go; and poor Kate just wants to die. We watch her vomit blood, pass out, vomit french fries, lose friends, go through chemo, and fade away. Any viewer would be hard pressed not to shed a tear—or see right through the manipulation. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 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, 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, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Network

Writer Paddy Chayefsky's 1977 television satire astutely predicted the degradation of the boob tube. He didn't see Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? coming—but, then, who did? R. Hollywood Theatre. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

“Did they run out of jokes at the Interesting Jokes Store you shop at?” snarks Jonah Hill in a battle of night-watchman wits with Ben Stiller. If only. Director Shawn Levy (no, not that one) has gathered a bevy of comedians for his elephantine sequel, but he doesn’t really like jokes: He prefers whimsy-tinged, computer-generated magic. A purple octopus thrashes, the Lincoln Memorial statue comes to life, and Rodin’s Thinker informs us, in a Jersey accent, that he’s thinking. The elaborate special effects leave little room for improv, so Hank Azaria (as a lisping pharaoh) and Bill Hader (playing General Custer as a mild George W. Bush parody) shuffle in, speak their allotted lines and get out of the way. (Steve Coogan finds time to ride a squirrel.) The best thing in the picture is Amy Adams, doing Amelia Earhart as Jennifer Jason Leigh doing The Hudsucker Proxy as Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. The entire movie is like this: a simulacrum of entertainment. PG. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Forest Theatre.

Obsessed

Idris Elba (The Wire) is happily married to Beyonce, but is stalked by a temp (Ali Larter). Don't stalk Stringer Bell, temp! He will murder your whole family. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Race to Witch Mountain

In remaking the 1975 Eddie Albert-and-alien-kiddies vehicle Escape to Witch Mountain, director Andy Fickman has breezed past the idea of an homage to Wonderful World of Disney movies and made an actual Wonderful World of Disney movie, complete with a leisure-suit pace, Arthur C. Clarke-inspired sets and Technicolor CGI fireballs that look like matte effects. Albert is replaced by Dwayne Johnson, playing a Sin City cabbie who picks up two blond tykes with suspiciously formal diction (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) and drives them into the desert, where they encounter said fireballs and an extraterrestrial assassin whose head is made of Silly Putty. Pursued by government agents and a chirping score, they team up with a paranormal researcher (Carla Gugino) who falls in smit with Johnson’s character, who is called Jack Bruno. You will remember that he is called Jack Bruno because the children refer to him exclusively by the full name Jack Bruno. As in: “We must hurry, Jack Bruno! Please accelerate the vehicle, Jack Bruno! This movie is not quite as bad as we expected it to be, Jack Bruno!” It’s enough to create a perverse hope that Dwayne Johnson will continue to star in Disney remakes; I for one would pay good money to see him take on the Dean Jones role in The Million Dollar Duck. PG. AARON MESH. Avalon Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

[ONE WEEK ONLY] Paul Sorvino and Paris Hilton star in a horror rock-opera about an unscrupulous organ-transplant corporation. Not screened for critics, though we very much wish it had been. R. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Thursday, Nov. 28-Dec. 4. No showtimes.

Reservoir Dogs

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Thursday, July 3-9. Clinton Street Theater.

Revanche

A naive hooker and the ex-con looking to save her. A botched bank robbery, a cop haunted by his past, and a quest for cold retribution. In the U.S., this would be standard fare. In Austrian director Götz Spielmann’s Oscar-nominated Revanche, it’s anything but. From the neon-lit brothels of Vienna to the serene Austrian countryside, Spielmann’s lens is a quiet observer as his shattered antihero seeks revenge, while a young family gropes with consequences in ways that are all too human. What could have been a standard-issue revenge flick becomes a character study in loss, sadness and rage for characters on either side of the law. Spielmann knows how to turn the screws of dread and suspense, but the film’s most rewarding aspect lies not in acts of retribution, but quiet redemption. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21. Hollywood Theatre.

Sin Nombre

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is a Honduran girl riding with her father atop freight trains through Mexico, en route to the U.S. border. Willy (Edgar Flores) is a conflicted soldier in the Mara Salvatrucha gang, still aghast at the fate of his unapproved girlfriend. What are the chances they will wind up on the same boxcar, and that Willy will take Sayra under his wing in a moment of crisis, thus sealing his own death warrant as he races her to a new life? What are the chances freshman director Cary Fukunaga had seen any other movie before making his debut? It is a matter of perspective whether the clichés of Sin Nombre’s plot are merely the clothesline for a window onto a fresh world, or whether the exoticism (including gangsters so thoroughly tattooed they look like Aztec warriors) disguises a tired and implausible story. I’m inclined toward the latter view, but I can still acknowledge Fukunaga’s adroit handling of action sequences, Flores’ sullen charisma, and two early acts of violence that are as morally weighted as they are startling. So there’s plenty to see aboard this train, though perhaps not as much to learn. Unless you are inclined to believe that Texas can be reached, rather painlessly and anticlimactically, via a rented inner tube. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Star Trek

The Star Trek brand was in dire need of new blood, and if that meant jettisoning the high-minded sermonizing for world-smashing that feels more like (gulp) Star Wars, hey, anything’s better than Star Trek: Nemesis, which I believe was made by placing Patrick Stewart in a cardboard command bridge and shaking it. A thorough rethink was in order, and so Abrams has rewound back to the future, casting the iconic Starfleet roles with fresh faces like Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. The pipsqueak effect has led some online wags to dub the project Star Trek: Muppet Babies, which is unfair—it’s far more like Star Trek: Lost. J.J. Abrams is the Ray Kroc of current television and cinema: He makes only junk food, but you can’t complain that he doesn’t melt the cheese consistently. As the producer of Alias, Lost and Cloverfield, and in the director’s chair of Mission: Impossible III, he’s honed a reliable recipe. Braise one central gimmick, stir in generous helpings of mysterious gobbledygook and garnish with bland actors who conform to instantly recognizable types. His work was half done with Star Trek, since we already knew the characters, and he could plug in young performers who look like them. Their adventuring is fleet-footed enough to make you ignore implausibilities and mediocre acting until the credits roll. It may wind up being the best summer blockbuster we’ll see this year—which says as much about our low expectations as it does about the movie’s excellence. 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, City Center Stadium 12, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Forest Theatre, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

State of Play

An effortful if highly conventional entertainment with its mind in the past—the 1970s, to be precise, when print journalism and paranoid thrillers were both at their zenith. Its first act is sparked by a script touched up by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Duplicity) and an authentically shambling performance by Russell Crowe as the heroic reporter, its second act is given a jolt by Jason Bateman as a public-relations dickweed, and its third act is resuscitated by so many electric shocks that it suffers brain damage. Meanwhile it treats investigative journalism with the high esteem that comes from having no idea how it works. There is a fleeting reference to a public-records request, and a few halfhearted knocks on doors, but otherwise Crowe’s character, Cal McAffrey, spends his time doing the kind of gumshoe double-crossing that might be practiced by a technologically savvy Sam Spade. He snoops on a crusading Congressman played (passably) by Ben Affleck, whose intern/mistress has met a regrettable fate at the business end of a subway train. This plot, with shades of the Chandra Levy scandal, is complicated by Crowe’s buddy-buddy-but-I-slept-with-your-wife relationship, the journalistic chops of the Washington Globe’s resident lifestyles blogger (Rachel McAdams) and the dark-side practices of a Blackwater-like private military contractor. The movie's hackery extends to its glut of climatic twists, which ultimately echo the thinking that has undermined newspapers: the undiscriminating assumption that all public figures are equally corrupt. This isn’t paranoia. It’s cynicism. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater.

Sunshine Cleaning

Sundance begets Sunshine: First there was Little Miss Sunshine, and now Sunshine Cleaning, which was produced by some of the same people and—as A.O. Scott has noted in the New York Times—also features Albuquerque, N.M.; a family of wounded underachievers; a darling small child; Alan Arkin; and a junker van. It is not as amusing as Little Miss, but it is also not nearly as obnoxious—it’s aided by casting Amy Adams in the lead as a single mom who still dallies in motel rooms with her married high-school sweetheart (Steve Zahn). She’s the most adorable homewrecker ever. Her sister (Emily Blunt, everywhere you look) tells scary bedtime stories about a killer with a lobster claw, her dad (Arkin) keeps frozen shrimp in the bathtub, and her critic is feeling weary just reciting all these cute eccentricities. And I haven’t even gotten to the idiosyncratic concept: Adams and Blunt make ends meet by starting a biohazard-removal company, cleaning up the aromatic former residences of murder victims and suicides. The actresses don’t go in for easy laughs or tears, and even when Adams talks to her dead mother (suicide; bathtub) on a CB radio, the acting has an intensity that precludes schmaltz. On the other hand, she talks to her dead mother on a CB radio. So don’t expect too much. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Valley Theater.

Team America: World Police

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Bed, Bath and Beyond! Fuck yeah! Matt Stone and Trey Parker's  underappreciated work of prescience (doesn't the Michael Bay evisceration seem timely now?) returns to the big screen for America's birthday. Cinema 21. 11 pm Friday, July 3. No showtimes.

Terminator Salvation

It’s hard to say when the first omen was spotted—maybe it was the trailer showing a metal foot crushing a human skull, maybe it was the leaked tape of Christian Bale politely inquiring if the cinematographer was professional—but it has for some time been apparent that Terminator Salvation was not going to be a barrel of laughs. As soon as the opening credits (featuring lethal injection), this suspicion is confirmed: Terminator Salvation is not a fun movie. It is, in fact, the most grim, despairing popcorn movie I can remember. Parts of it resemble Schindler’s List if the Nazis were played by robots. And those are the happy parts. It is filmed in a digital dust bowl that looks like director McG roasted marshmallows over Los Angeles, put out the blaze with dirty bathwater, then shot a movie the next morning in the campfire pit. Androids patrol the crispy-fried landscape. They have gotten bigger, I think. Bale takes over the role of possible redeemer John Connor. He is barking and brutal. He talks in a blank monotone, except when he gets very emotional and has to switch to the Batman voice. On the evidence seen in Terminator movies, the only difference between Bale and Arnold Schwarzenegger is that Arnie knew he was wooden and boring. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Movies On TV Stadium 16.

The Brothers Bloom

Maybe not the greatest movie of the year, but a strong contender for cutest, Rian Johnson’s sophomore feature, The Brothers Bloom, is a fairy tale about sibling swindlers. It’s too clever by half, but too fun to miss. Once upon a time, there was a pair of troublemaking foster kids named Stephen and Bloom, who never seemed to fit in with the other, WASPier children. So Stephen, the elder brother, pushed the two of them into a life of lucrative—and ludicrous—confidence games, condemning the younger Bloom to a lifelong identity crisis. Played as a nominal adult by Adrien Brody, Bloom decides to escape from his brother’s Svengali-like sway. But Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) counters with a promise: one last con. Bloom will seduce their final mark, the lovely Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a lonely orphan like him but with a sizable trust fund and as many quirky hobbies as Rushmore’s Max Fischer. From the very beginning, The Brothers Bloom carries the breeze from Wes Anderson’s island of lost boys. Yet Johnson’s follow-up to the bubble-gumshoe picture Brick is a hard film to resist, because in the grand tradition of the romantic caper, everyone involved seems to be having a ball. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D

[REVIVAL] For the past four months, if you’ve been the type of moviegoer who can’t get enough of strange monsters popping off of a movie screen into your face, you’ve been in pretty good hands. My Bloody Valentine 3-D drove a pickax between your eyes, Coraline 3-D threw evil witches at you, Monsters vs. Aliens 3-D flung a grab bag of classic Hollywood creatures, plus Up 3-D had that weird rainbow ostrich thing. And, if all this hasn’t been quite enough (and I suspect that for real 3-D fiends it has not), then the Hollywood Theatre has just the solution: Check out 1954's The Creature from the Black Lagoon in….front of your paper glasses, and see exactly where all of these recent movies got their inspiration. ALEX PETERSON. Hollywood Theatre.

The Exiles

Tommy (Tom Reynolds) sits in a crowded barroom, tickling imaginary piano ivories on the wooden table to a rockabilly tune. Like all the characters in Kent MacKenzie’s 1961 neo-realist register of young Native Americans in Los Angeles, Tommy is captive to unseen rhythms, which he tries to drown out with countless cans of cadged booze. MacKenzie trails after Tommy and Homer (Homer Nish) as they carouse through the Bunker Hill district; when the camera swings from convertible wheel up to tunnel-roof lights flashing by, it’s a frightening, dizzying shot, more effective than any MADD announcement. The movie’s social value may have been to depict the degredation of urban Indians—and there is something mortifying about a beer-fueled, stumbling powwow overlooking the city—but The Exiles maintains its freshness for anybody anywhere who’s lived night to night, bottle to bottle. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. No showtimes.

The Girlfriend Experience

Despite featuring hardcore-porn starlet Sasha Grey as a $2,000-an-hour Manhattan call girl, Steven Soderbergh’s movie isn’t about sex, power or love. It’s about money, and how it can buy imitations of sex, power and love. At age 21, Grey’s 160 credits include Asstravaganza 9, Grand Theft Anal 11 and Gang Bang My Face, so she has a fair idea of what men are willing to pay for. She projects an aura of worldly self-determination—she will do anything, except let you know when she’s faking—and The Girlfriend Experience is her attempt to diversify her portfolio. She plays an escort named Chelsea, who spends less time in bed than she does haggling over ways to expand her business. Chelsea spends each night with a different client, as if in simultaneous monogamy, and keeps records of every date, with special attention to the brands of lingerie worn. Soderbergh’s movie is a study of swank consumerism spiraling out of control. He often focuses his camera on the tony spaces—penthouses, hotel suites, restaurants—leaving the characters blurred. They’ve defined themselves by their surroundings anyway. The Girlfriend Experience is a damning portrait of overindulgence (Soderbergh made the movie immediately after Che), but it also manages to inspire sympathy for Sasha Grey: not by punishing her, but by gently, persistently reminding her that she became a commodity to achieve a lifestyle. R. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Mission Theater and Pub.

The Hangover

Director Todd Phillips’ bro-down film is set in the bro mecca of Las Vegas, a city Phillips (Old School) basically jizzes over in the establishing shots of the opening credits. The plot, too, sounds disturbingly like quintessential bro cinema: Four dudes get wasted at a bachelor party and stumble drunkenly through the repercussions. Only something funny happens on the way to a routine Hollywood man-comedy: Phillips gives a comedic genius his first big break and rediscovers the lost art of screwball. The bros’ night in Vegas is a predictably drunken (and unintentionally roofied) blur. But less predictably, we are shown none of the night’s original hijinks, only the hijinks’ aftermath—which involves a mercifully disappeared groom, an abandoned baby and Mike Tyson’s tiger. It’s in this amnesic construction that The Hangover breaks its mold. As good as Ed Helms is as the most frantic groomsman, it’s Zach Galifianakis who makes this film required summer viewing. The bearded underground comic’s character is essentially his own intense and awkward stand-up persona with a few extra-special needs thrown in for good measure. Dressed in attire that’s supposed to be outlandish but looks like your average Portland show-goer, he’s given the freedom to describe himself as a “one-man wolf pack,” and to lash out with fury when his man-purse is crushed (“Hey—there’s Skittles in there!”). Despite the character’s eccentricities, he’s actually treated with some degree of respect from his new friends. He has to be: He’s incredible. R. CASEY JARMAN. 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, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

The Merry Gentleman

On the strength of playing about a dozen close-to-the-edge types throughout the ’80s, Michael Keaton got to be Batman. While his star has undeniably faded, he remains the actor who got closest to the conflicted nature of Bruce Wayne, and can still carry that ability into excellent work. All of which is further aided by his current dedication, in The Merry Gentleman, to filming every crease and crow’s foot in his 57-year-old face. He knows that some vain attempt to hide his fading looks would betray the mood of his directorial debut, this earnest, weighty movie about aging, loneliness and faith. Keaton is a contract killer named Frank, suffering from the kind of suicidal depression that typifies Christmas in Chicago. He falls in love with the angelic image of a woman named Kate (Kelly Macdonald) when he sees it through the scope of his high-powered rifle. But Keaton, as superb as he is with actors (most likely owing to his being an underrated actor himself), doesn’t have the directorial delicacy to balance it. Given the energy he focuses into it, Keaton seems to be implying that he should have been doing this kind of work from the start, instead of blowing two decades on Multiplicity and Jack Frost. R. ALEX PETERSON. Living Room Theaters.

The Proposal

Sandra Bullock bribes Ryan Reynolds to marry her so she can get a green card. These are the indignities to which our current immigration system have brought us. Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for a review at wweek.com. PG-13. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, 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, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

The Shining

[REVIVAL] Twin girls hacked to pieces. Torrents of blood spilling from an elevator. Shelley Duvall (shudder). Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is full of creepy imagery. But it’s the film’s family dynamic that’s the stuff of real nightmares, and what makes The Shining among the most frightening films of all time—the feeling that those you love and trust are the real bogeymen. Isolated in a secluded hotel, author and recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson, one of the screen’s scariest monsters, subbing erratic eyebrows for claws and fangs) slowly descends into madness, with a literal ax to grind with his wife (Duvall) and psychic son (Danny Lloyd) as his inner demons get friendly with the real ones roaming the hotel. The simmering evil—prodded along by Kubrick’s patient buildup, then-revolutionary sound mix and Stedicam work, and a brooding score—imparts a blood-boiling sense of dread throughout. Just in time for Halloween, The Shining hits Living Room Theaters in glorious HD, while Timberline Lodge—the source of the film’s freaktastic exterior shots, but sans the hedge maze—is replicating the film’s climactic 1920s “fish and goose soiree” on All Hallow’s, complete with in-room screenings. Tell ’em Delbert Grady sent you…and stay away from Room 237. R. AP KRYZA. Living Room Theaters. Timberline Lodge party on Friday, Oct. 31. No showtimes.

The Soloist

Reporter Robert Downey Jr. tries to aid mentally ill musican Jamie Foxx. Perhaps together they can catch the Zodiac Killer. Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Academy Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Portlander Cinema, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

The Soloist

L.A. Times reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) calls the sister of the homeless, schizophrenic former Julliard student (Jamie Foxx) he found living on Skid Row: “I’m going to write a column about Nathaniel.” She asks why, and he goes silent. “Because that’s what I do,” he finally replies. Does the real Steve Lopez loathe himself this much? Probably not: He wrote a book about Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, which Joe Wright (Atonement) has turned into a kind of reparation. The Soloist studies the uses, limits and drawbacks of white guilt, and unintentionally becomes a demonstration of all three. Wright’s decorousness remains a failing, as he gallantly glides his camera over blocks of squats and betrays Nathaniel’s experience of Beethoven’s Third Concerto by visually accompanying it with an trippy light show. (I suspect that being schizophrenic does not mean you get to enjoy Laser Floyd every day.) But Downey’s performance is wise and lacerating, Foxx is very nearly believable, and Craig Berkey’s nuanced sound design uses a cacophony of voices, as if picking up a hundred radio wavelengths. The question, however, is whether all this glossy concern—which reflects Lopez’s own human-interest prose—actually makes anything better for the people it exposes. Because if that’s what it does, fine. But I’m not convinced. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Portlander Cinema, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Like a 40-handicap golfer or a special-needs student, director Tony Scott must be graded on a curve. His remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is forgettable and perfunctory—but it does not contain loving slow-motion shots of incinerated terrorism victims (Déjà Vu) or Denzel Washington detonating an explosive in a corrupt police official’s rectum (Man on Fire). It doesn’t actively debase the sensibilities of anyone who watches it. By most standards, it’s serviceable hackwork; in the canon of Tony Scott, it’s Wild Strawberries. The emotional hook is consistent with previous Scott-Washington collaborations: Everyman Denzel comes to the defense of imperiled innocents. Everything else is recycled from the 1974 hijacked-subway-car thriller. Played by John Travolta with a horseshoe mustache that makes him look ready to guest star on American Chopper, the lead hijacker behaves like a petulant Vinnie Barbarino who happens to shoot conductors in the chest and harbor a selective racism toward Italians. Most of the movie is Travolta and Washington trading demands and counteroffers in crisp exchanges, each side trying to determine how much information he can safely reveal. Since Scott shows the hostages only as much as necessary to exploit their endangerment, the negotiations are exactly as exciting as watching these two actors play hands of Texas hold ’em. R. AARON MESH. Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

The Unemployed Workers Progressive Summer Film Fest

[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The PSU Progressive Student Union offers two free films a week to the un- and underemployed, with a networking event after each movie. This week's offerings are Seabiscuit and Cradle Will Rock. Smith Center, Room 229, 1825 SW Broadway, Portland State. Seabiscuit screens at 6 pm Monday, July 6. Cradle Will Rock screens at 6 pm Tuesday, July 7.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Real talent used to appalling ends, as Michael Bay gives up on people. Although it opens with Optimus Prime (voiced by Hasbro cartoon veteran Peter Cullen) describing our setting as “Earth: birthplace of the human race,” Revenge of the Fallen exhibits not a single recognizably human behavior. It is instead the product of a director who believes that the problems of his previous fighting-robots movie can be solved by making a movie with even larger robots fighting. (Along this line of thinking, it helps to paint the robots to look like sugary candy.) The distressing thing is that he’s right: The sequel is measurably better than 2007’s Transformers, simply by virtue of its utter commitment to spectacle. Everything it does, it does with unalloyed gusto, with cameras pirouetting and engines revving. It is jaw-dropping in every aspect: in its bad taste, in its muscled militarism, in its sexual confusion, and especially in its mechanized warfare. The franchise has been tricked out of proportion, and achieves an operatic lunacy. But Bay indulges his worst instincts like he indulges all of them: completely. He introduces two new ’bots, twins named Mudflap and Skids, though they might as well be dubbed Amos ‘n’ Andy—their speech patterns are lisping gangsta jive, with Skids sporting a gold tooth and copping to illiteracy. At the same time, Transformers: ROTF emerges as the most expensive commercial for the United States Armed Services ever put to celluloid; the lone civilian bureaucrat is tossed out of a transport plane, as Bay endorses a military coup. He trusts the machine. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, CineMagic Theatre, 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, Roseway Theatre, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Tyson

As a boy, he loves pigeons, so he buys a coop with the money he gets from thieving. A neighborhood bully asks him if he loves pigeons, and when he says he does, the bully takes a bird and snaps its neck. He hits the bully upside the head; it is his first fight, and he wins. Thirty years later, he tells this story in a stream of words; he talks fast. The words are overlapped, sometimes three sentences layered at a time, and the movie is just him talking, and the fights. He is interviewed by director James Toback, who understands him, and is like him: a fast talker, a devourer of women. He talks to Toback and he remembers how all the great champions had girls, and says he now wants to meet a CEO type, somebody who will get into the ring beside him even if he’s losing, and he will “dominate her sexually.” He says he never raped anybody. He is in a macho therapy session, and he is trying to explain. Walking to the ring, he is not an animal and he is scared. In the ring, he is an animal and he is not scared. People taught him to be this way, and now they are gone. He is alone, and he is not heavyweight champion of the world. He is only Mike Tyson. He has no idea who that is. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Up

Some inspiration has made Pixar’s last three pictures—Ratatouille, WALL-E and now Up—increasingly outlandish and…well, sad. Cartoons may possess an ingrained tendency for cuteness, but not since Disney drew Dumbo has a studio so skillfully exploited the medium’s capacity for pathos. I spent much of WALL-E on the cusp of tears, and started bawling within the first five minutes of Up, pausing only to take notes. In my defense, the prologue of Up is uncommonly poignant. A little boy with huge hornrims sits agog at a 1930s movie-palace newsreel of South American adventure, then meets a little girl who is equally delighted by tales of discovery. In a montage set to Michael Giacchino’s elegiac piano score, the two kids grow up, marry, grow old. They never quite make it to the jungle of their nickelodeon dreams. She slips away in a hospital bed, and Carl—the boy’s name is Carl—has become the forlorn old coot Mr. Fredricksen, his voice growled by Ed Asner, his house besieged by progress he doesn’t understand. When he dodges an impending nursing-home confinement by packing his house with rainbow-hued helium balloons, he’s making an escape, but also retreating into a floating shrine to his late wife. Whatever brainstorming session came up with Up allowed Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson to grapple not only with old age, but with the kind of maturity rarely broached by cartoons. PG. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, 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, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Valentino: The Last Emperor

The witty title suggests a Roman demigod, and indeed Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary captures the Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani, in the twilight of his career, living the existence of a Sun King. It has been an enviable life: designing gowns for Jackie Kennedy and Julia Roberts, traveling by chartered jet with his five identical pugs, boating in Venice. But it has also been an exciting one, and is becoming unsteady. Preparing for his 45th anniversary retrospective, the 77-year-old fashion maven still imperially rages and pouts (and adorably bites his lip as he remembers his first glimpse of movie stars) but his realm is threatened by new owners interested only in the bottom line and accessory merchandising. The Last Emperor becomes a suspense movie, with the chief questions being whether Valentino will continue to preside over his namesake couture house, and whether Tyrnauer will finish filming these events—the irritable, spray-tanned subject hates the cameras, and is constantly begging his former lover and loyal consigliore, Giancarlo Giammetti, to make them go away. The movie makes an extraordinary bookend to Anvil! The Story of Anvil: One set of artists has never tasted success, another man has known nothing but success, and yet both are only happy when creating, if then. By the end, as the thin-skinned artist is swaddled in tributes, it is possible to believe Valentino has earned the accolades. Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

Valentino: The Last Emperor

The witty title suggests a Roman demigod, and indeed Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary captures the Italian fashion designer Valentino, in the twilight of his career, living the existence of a Sun King. It has been an enviable life: designing gowns for Jackie Kennedy and Julia Roberts, traveling by chartered jet with his five identical pugs, boating in Venice. But it has also been an exciting one, and is becoming unsteady. Preparing for his 45th anniversary retrospective, the 77-year-old fashion maven still imperially rages and pouts (and adorably bites his lip remembering his first glimpse of movie stars) but his realm is threatened by new owners interested only in the bottom line and accessory merchandising. The Last Emperor becomes a suspense movie, with the chief questions being whether Valentino will continue to preside over his namesake couture house, and whether Tyrnauer will finish filming these events—the irritable, spray-tanned subject hates the cameras, and is constantly begging his former lover and loyal consigliore, Giancarlo Giammetti, to make them go away. The movie makes an extraordinary bookend to Anvil! The Story of Anvil: One set of artists has never tasted success, another man has known nothing but success, and yet both are only happy when creating, if then. By the end, as the thin-skinned artist is swaddled in tributes, it is possible to believe Valentino has earned the accolades. Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The origin story we pretty much figured out from the far superior X2: Wolverine was duped into coating his skeleton with an indestructible metal courtesy of mutant-loathing Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston, filling in ably for the superb Brian Cox). The package pretty much tied its own bow. In the prequel, we learn Wolverine was born in the mid-1800s and has spent the century going berserker with his brother Victor "Sabertooth" Creed (Liev Schreiber) in major world conflicts. The film soon becomes a cheesily broody revenge flick full of action clichés. Watch Wolvie scream at the heavens in agony. Watch him walk in slow motion away from an exploding helicopter. Hell, Hugh Jackman could sit on his ass and eat sandwiches, so long as every five minutes or so he killed a fuck-ton of people with those shiny claws, right? Unfortunately, the action scenes are a series of one-on-one fights with Schreiber and a host of other cameo-ing mutants from the Marvel universe. Elements of the Schwarzenegger canon are thrown into the mix with the hope that Wolverine’s claws will make them into a fine chutney. The result is a chunky mess of uninspired slice and dice. It's better than X-Men: The Last Stand but then again, so is a colon polyp. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Year One

Perhaps man invented comedy in Year Two. OK, that’s unkind: Jack Black and Michael Cera’s search for comedy in the ancient world has a Borscht Belt eagerness for a laugh, the kind of sensibility that names a character Zaftig the Eunuch. All it manages, though, is to confirm a disappointing historical pattern: When the collaborative team behind NBC’s The Office journeys to the big screen, it gets horribly lost. This time it’s the show’s writers, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who join occasional episode director Harold Ramis (he’s done a few other things worth mentioning—Groundhog Day, say, or Animal House) in trying to wring chuckles out of the barbarity that makes up most of the Bible’s Book of Genesis. The movie is intended as a satirical riff on Roland Emmerich’s hideous 10,000 B.C., with Sunday-school characters mixed in. I take no pleasure in panning it. Ramis is a lovable, shambling comedy god—or at least a godfather—and unlike Land of the Lost, Night at the Museum or most of the big-budget “comedies” opening this summer, Year One isn’t merely a clothesline for CGI special effects—it actually wants to tell jokes, and hammers away industriously, trying to hit a funny bone. But the best it can do is inspire weak smiles. It’s like the oxen ride that causes the easily overwhelmed heroes to vomit: It’s slow, bumpy and smells of stale material. 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, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.