CALENDAR » Screen Listings
Screen Listings
For the week of Wednesday July 23rd thru Tuesday July 29th
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.
After Hours
[FIVE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Mid-period Martin Scorsese serves up an early-morning nightmare about looking for love in all the wrong diners. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Sunday-Thursday, July 27-31. Clinton Street Theater.
Apart From That
This ensemble drama, filmed in Bellingham, Wash., features a beautician and her elderly landlord, who likes to call the fire department and disrobe when the firefighters arrive. Look for Aaron Mesh's review on wweek.com. Living Room Theaters. No showtimes.
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. No showtimes.
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. Living Room Theaters.
Brick Lane
Earnest drudgery about a young Bangladeshi woman's life in London. Tannishtha Chatterjee is pleasant enough as Nazeem, and visually the film is packed with rich detail, but it never finds room for that kind of nuance elsewhere. It's adapted from Monica Ali's novel, but feels more like a play written by high schoolers trying to warn an assembly about the dangers of arranged marriage. I actually felt proud of the film when it managed the few rare scenes of interest. They weren't good scenes, exactly, just ones that finally shook off the dull obviousness of the material, which pits a fat, disappointing husband against a young stud who awakens Nazeem to other possibilities. When the events of 9/11 go down, things look up, as it briefly appears the story will rise above its Lifetime particulars. But as with so much else, things are more told than shown, and the anti-Muslim tension in London remains a mostly offscreen presence meant to serve as a springboard for another lesson. Lessons are definitely learned, to be sure, and summarized in recap at the end—but by then I was too dazed with boredom to focus. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Look for Saundra Sorenson's second opinion (she liked it) at wweek.com. No showtimes.Celebrating the Earth: The Films of Franco Piavoli
[FOUR NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center rounds out its series of what WW critic Andy Davis called "those quasi-mystical contemplative observations of daily life, like Baraka or the more well-known Koyaanisqatsi, that were once a minor fashion." This time Piavoli contemplates life cycles in Lombardy (Voices Through Time), languid afternoons in Italy (At the First Breath of Wind) and the journey of Ulysses (Nostos, the Return). Expect a leisurely trip. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. Voices Through Time screens at 7 pm Friday, July 25 and 9 pm Saturday, July 26. Breath of Wind screens at 9 pm Friday, July 25 and 7 pm Sat., July 26. Nostos screens at 6 pm Sun., July 27 and 7 pm Mon., July 28. ly 28.
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. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.
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. Laurelhurst Theatre.
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan continues deconstructing the Batman franchise from superhero camp to a cry of universal despair, with souped-up cars. As the sequel to Batman Begins marches from cruel bereavement to spirit-crushing martyrdom, it plays like a funeral dirge for the late Heath Ledger, who died—maybe you heard—shortly after completing his role as the Joker. The movie operates in the pall of this demise, and its polished gloom carries the scent of an undergraduate term paper on the futility of human existence. This is the summer action movie that stopped taking its antidepressants. In fact, the only element in Nolan’s film with any life—and the sole reason why it’s worth seeing immediately—is Ledger’s work. He’s caked in grimy clown greasepaint with echoes of John Wayne Gacy, and trying out a sneering singsong that sounds a little like that of a demented Bugs Bunny. To watch him menace Gotham City with an arsenal of knives—and a No. 2 pencil—is to witness a gifted actor dedicate all his energies to gracefully waltzing through trash. Meanwhile the movie positively wriggles in masochistic delight at the prospect of heroic anguish. The Dark Knight lives up to its title, yeah—in the world of comic-book movies, it’s a Suicide Girl at a sorority house, showing off its freaky tattoos. Audiences who stuff its coffers will leave knowing they’ve seen a special performance, but also feeling that they’ve endured something suffocating. PG-13. AARON MESH. 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, Roseway Theatre, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
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. Hollywood Theatre.
Flicks on the Bricks
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The downtown starlight screenings open with (surprise!) The Goonies. Pioneer Courthouse Square. Dusk Friday, July 25.
The Foot Fist Way
Since his promising 2003 debut as Bust-Ass in David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls, Danny R. McBride has been slouching in the corners of (usually lousy) studio comedies, sporting a paunch, a trash ’stache and delusional confidence. Those who hoped he could do better will be glad to know he’s been lying in wait with this ramshackle kickboxing farce, in which he plays Fred Simmons, a preening, self-aggrandizing North Carolina tae kwon do instructor. A black belt who motivates his students through browbeating and insults, Simmons is convinced of the superiority of his sport (“meditation is great and all, but I never heard of it saving anyone’s life from a gang rape-type situation”) and himself, but the repeated straying of his slatternly wife (Mary Jane Bostic) begins to rob him of his poise. The movie is divided into five lessons—Courtesy, Self-Control, Perseverance, Integrity and Indomitable Spirit—that provide a loose framework for McBride’s preening monologues. (The Indomitable Spirit segment begins, naturally, with Simmons passed out next to the freeway with a bottle of Smirnoff.) McBride, following in the footsteps of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, proves that nothing’s as funny as a bully with a soft center and a Southern accent. R. AARON MESH. Mission Theater and Pub.
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. Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Mission Theater and Pub.
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, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.
The Girl on a Motorcycle
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] A 1968 biker-chick love-in gets wheeled out again. Clinton Street Theater. 9 pm Thursday, July 24. No showtimes.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.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
A documentary directed by Alex Gibney (who just won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side), dutifully covers the swath of the mad doctor’s writing, but it is chiefly interested in Hunter S. Thompson the political animal—the man who dogged Nixon through New Hampshire and found his own reflection. It was part of the American genius for polarization that Thompson saw Nixon as his doppelgänger, his mirror. Nixon was his dark shadow. Or maybe it was the other way around. So it makes perfect sense that when Gonzo recounts Thompson’s last serious journalistic assignment—sent to cover the 1974 Ali-Frazier “Rumble in the Jungle” fight, he swallowed a cabinet of pills and wandered off to float in the hotel pool—Gibney re-creates the scene with washed-out footage of azure water and a man in a Nixon mask. The image is inspired on a number of levels, since this was the moment when a genuinely gifted writer decisively sacrificed his talent on the altar of indulgence, and when he slipped on a mask of celebrity that he would never remove. The rest of the movie, while amusing and honest, doesn’t often approach that level of perception. There are plenty of guest appearances by old cronies, few of whom can stir themselves enough to say an unkind word about the man who squandered his last two decades shooting rifles on his ranch until he finally turned a .45 on himself in 2005. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.
Hancock
Will Smith is John Hancock, a surly Los Angeles superstar with a preternatural vertical leap and open contempt for his teammates, forced to disgustedly mumble his way through image-repairing press conferences after he’s sent to prison. Aside from a strong anal fixation (one jailhouse scene features an inmate’s head literally shoved into another’s rectum, and the film’s chief running gag is that its hero grows extremely peeved whenever he’s called an “asshole”), director Peter Berg’s movie is a disorienting fizz of ideas that never cohere. Its chief conceit—the superhero as a celebrity in dire need of rehab—is established by shots of the crapulous Hancock waking up next to empty whiskey bottles, either on bus-stop benches or in his dreary trailer, with Berg’s distinctive cinematography giving each shot the haze of a hangover. But Berg’s style, an agitated handheld fervor honed in Friday Night Lights, is exactly wrong for this material, which I think is supposed to be a satire. It’s hard to say for certain, since there are no funny jokes. In their place, Berg twirls his camera in paroxysms of emotion. By the time the villains return, still miffed about the head-stuffed-in-bum incident, we’re meant to cry whenever the screen starts to spin. But cry for whom? The gifted Übermensch whose fans just don’t understand him? PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 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, 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, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, 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. Avalon Theatre, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Milwaukie Cinema, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater.
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.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Mike Mignola’s comic-book demon/paranormal investigator Hellboy is an unlikely hero—and an unlikely movie star, brought to life with snarky perfection by Ron Perlman in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004’s sleeper hit. Like Mignola’s source material, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is less an action flick than an action-packed detective story filled with monsters and humor. Big Red is less superhero and more Sam Spade in a Tolkienesqe underworld of elves and trolls on the brink of war with humanity. It’s a popcorn counterpart to del Toro’s brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth, a visual feast that oozes imagination in every frame. Del Toro (soon to helm The Hobbit) throws all manner and sizes of creepy crawlies at his hero with a sparse use of CGI (until the over-computerized finale), crafting some of the best puppet creatures since Jim Henson’s heyday, and including an underground flea-market sequence that’s the best monster mash since Luke Skywalker hit Mos Isley. Like its predecessor, Hellboy II peters out toward the end. But it’s a visual feast regardless, and a hell of a kick. Del Toro and Perlman make you believe in the things that go bump in the night—the coolest thing is, they also help you relate to them. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 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.
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. No showtimes.
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 Indoor Twin, Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater.
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. 99 Indoor Twin, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16.
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. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Mt. Hood Theatre, Tigard Joy Theatre, Valley Theater.
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
Jules Verne with REI carabiners, Walden Media’s glossy kids’ stuff is inoffensive and unassuming, taking its cues from star Brenden Fraser. He plays a geologist who travels to Iceland with his nephew (Josh Hutcherson of Bridge to Terabithia, solidifying his supremacy in the babes-in-toyland field) and a supple mountain guide (Anita Briem); the trio goes mountain climbing and plummets down a nearly bottomless volcanic tube. (They could have stayed stateside and looked for Mel’s Hole—what, is the Pacific Northwest not exotic enough for family adventures?) Down below, they encounter phosphorescent hummingbirds, ferocious flying fish and magnetically levitating boulders. All gleeful nonsense, as derivative as it is framed to leap at the audience (though my eyes grew immune to the 3-D effect after one reel), Journey is best enjoyed with low expectations: It’s actually not much less enjoyable than the latest Indiana Jones, and it contains considerably more science. I was gratified to be reintroduced to muscovite, which I had last encountered in Geology 101—where, come to think of it, many of the students bore the same guileless expression as Fraser. The movie is cinematic Rocks for Jocks. PG. AARON MESH. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema.Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
This kid's movie, based on books that come with the doll of the same name, industriously burbles along with a forced gee-whiz earnestness that will leave adult minders a little queasy and kids presumably agape with admiration for our cheerily indomitable heroine. The titular 10-year-old aspires to be a reporter but must contend with the various calamities and intrigues the Great Depression has brought into her life. Respectable work from the likes of Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci and Wallace Shawn is consistent with the overall sheen of quality, leaving the spazzy Joan Cusack looking like a party clown who's wandered into a tea party. Abigail Breslin, as Kit, is the most uninteresting kid in the picture, displaying none of the charm and individuality she had in Little Miss Sunshine, but that's to be expected in a film in which everything gets a bland makeover. Apparently there was no racism in the ’30s, only a solvable rash of hobo prejudice, and the period songs are represented not by originals but by anonymously slick and tepid remakes. It all resembles actual fun the way a porcelain doll resembles an actual kid. G. ANDY DAVIS. Fox Tower. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX.Kuchar Brothers Film Festival
A two-weekend restrospective of camp pioneers George and Mike Kuchar (with George in attendance) begins with a double bill of new oddities from down Frisco way. Clinton Street Theater. 8:30 pm Friday-Saturday, July 25-26. Clinton Street Theater.
Kung Fu Panda
On paper, Kung Fu Panda is lazy. A fat panda voiced by Jack Black goes from noodle maker to prophetic Dragon Warrior with the help of a snake, a monkey, a tiger, a mantis and a crane, who each represent their corresponding martial-arts styles. Ancient China…panda…karate…moral about finding yourself and overcoming odds…ka-ching! But the biggest surprise is how well Kung Fu Panda works. Instead of Shrek meets the Shaw Brothers, it’s a martial-arts comedy with respect for the genre—Kung Fu Hustle on Sesame Street. The film has a great time riffing on kung fu conventions—from the cruel tutelage of master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to a climactic battle with a deranged leopard—and strikes a similar balance between kid-friendly jokes and blockbuster action as The Incredibles. Well, incredible it isn’t. But it is Dreamworks Animation’s best since the original Shrek. With solid comedy, stellar action and an A-list vocal cast (including Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan), the film’s destined to be a crowd pleaser. What Kung Fu Panda lacks in nuance, it makes up for with its fists of furry. If Dreamworks invested more in story development, Pixar might start sweating. PG. AP KRYZA. Movies On TV Stadium 16.The Legend of God's Gun
[DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Mike Bruce’s grungy gunslinger homage opens with an introduction from Dandy Warhols drummer Brent DeBoer, who smokes a cigarette in a candlelit recording booth and intones: “What separates this film from its predecessors is that it was made entirely by authentic rock-’n’-roll musicians who have spent many years touring the world and living the hard life of the modern-day cowboy.” Is he kidding around? Your guess is as good as mine: The movie that follows, a handmade psychedelic trip with acting and soundtrack by Kirpatrick Thomas of Spindrift, flirts constantly with outright spoof—from the moment the narrator helpfully explains that we will not be seeing any horses in this western because they’ve all been shot dead, God’s Gun feels as close to Monty Python as it does to Sergio Leone. Lest this sound like too much fun, let me warn you that the movie is nearly as ponderous as it is parodic—it’s from the Quentin Tarantino school of tongue-in-cheek grindhouse geekdom, which smothers guilty pleasures in self-consciousness. It should give you some idea of exactly how meta the project is to note that this is the first spaghetti western I’ve seen in which a character actually eats spaghetti. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Director Mike Bruce and Dandy Warhol Brent DeBoer will attend the world premiere on Friday, July 18. No showtimes.
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. Academy Theater.
Made of Honor
Out of the swirling vortex of movies featuring "made/maid" puns in the title, weddings that need to be broken up, frustrated bridesmaids and men grappling with fear of commitment, flies Made of Honor, landing like those Skittles that fly out of the bag and hit the floor when the bag rips the wrong way. If you like the taste of My Best Friend's Wedding, just brush off the lint and enjoy. Michelle Monaghan, too pretty and superficial for her role in Gone Baby Gone, is better suited here as a perfectly nice woman whose best friend is a man-whore (Patrick Dempsey). Said Man-Whore realizes too late that Perfectly Nice Woman is the one for him and must undo her wedding—from the inside, as her maid of honor! Ha! Stop us if you've seen this one before. Seriously. Just let the projectionist know, and he will stop the movie. PG-13. ANDY DAVIS. No showtimes.
Mamma Mia!
So here it is, folks, straight from Broadway: the story of blushing bride Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who invites her three potential papas to her big fat Greek wedding, announcing her intentions through the timeless melody of ABBA. In other words, Mamma Mia! is just like your nuptials, except that the disco jockey has started work a full day early. Let me be perfectly clear: This thing is a terrible idea and its theatrical acceptance signals the death of civilization as we know it. But just when I was choking on the bubblegum, Sophie pipes down and makes room for single mom Donna, who’s supposedly outraged at the arrival of her three former flames, though we know better—they’re played by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth! As the repressed hausfrau, Meryl Streep pads in like she owns the place—she does—and belts out a lament about “a rich man’s world,” but it’s Meryl’s world, and we’re just living in it. The actress’s ruddy nose and watery eyes are a great comfort, suggesting a normal allergic reaction to the songs of ABBA, as digitally tacky as the Mediterranean sun glaring in the background. Streep and fellow baby boomers Julie Walters and Christine Baranski vamp their way through the repertoire like the Sex and the City gang gone to flaxseed. It’s trash cinema at its finest, fueled by trash music at its catchiest, plus enough estrogen to put Pierce Brosnan out of breath, though I suspect he’s just having trouble with the long notes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. 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, Moreland Theatre, 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.
Meet Dave
Eddie Murphy's latest egomaniacal yukfest spares us with a mere two Eddie Murphys, and neither in rubber masks: an Eddie Murphy-shaped spaceship from the emotionless planet Nil, and Eddie as the miniature Captain of said ship, on a mission from Nil to procure the salt that will save the tiny, doomed planet. Murphy gets a chance to Mr. Bean his way around NYC while, inside him, the Captain battles with his crew and the ship's historically inaccurate supercomputer—the basis for a majority of the script's jokes. That and an extended closeted-homo joke, because gays talk real funny. In fact, apart from the beginning "Welcome to New York" sequence featuring some classic Wu-Tang Clan music—and no dialogue—Meet Dave is painful in its entirety. That is, unless you share Eddie Murphy's opinion that everything he says and does is funny. PG. JIM SANDBERG. No showtimes.
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, Hollywood Theatre.
Murder Dot Com
A woman investigates her sister's death at the hands of online sex maniacs. (Do you want to cyber? Do you want to DIE?) Not screened for critics, online or elsewhere. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.Never Forever
Vera Farmiga (The Departed) plays Sophie, a woman who decides to get impregnated by a Korean immigrant, though this imperils her marriage. Hey, you get hitched to Sophie, you gotta live with Sophie's choices. See Saundra Sorenson's review on wweek.com. R. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.
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. No showtimes.Of Angels and Apocalypse: The Cinema of Derek Jarman
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center presents two more from the queer Brit radical: The Last of England (1988) explores the decline of, well, England, while Wittgenstein (1993) mixes philosophy with Carmen Miranda. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. The Last of England screens at 7 pm Wednesday, July 23. Wittgenstein screens at 8 pm Sunday, July 27.Okie Noodling 2
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Brad Beesley's 2001 documentary Okie Noodling delved into the Oklahoma hobby of bare-handed catfishing. Now he's back for another nibble. Not screened for critics. Hollywood Theatre. Friday, July 25.
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.
Quid Pro Quo
A deeply warped premise, ineptly executed, but forcefully performed by Vera Farmiga. The actress, so dull as a shrink in The Departed, here is anything but as a New York City art restorer with mental distress of her own. Farmiga’s Fiona is kinkily fixated on becoming paralyzed—she won’t feel satisfied until she can’t feel her legs. She tells her story to paraplegic public-radio reporter Isaac (Nick Stahl), who starts off skeptical but soon warms to Fiona’s manically batting eyelashes (Faminga summons memories of Sarah Chalke on the sitcom Scrubs) and her eagerness to minister to regions of his body that can still feel perfectly well. It’s an engrossing story, once you get past the gross-out factor, and Farmiga’s single-minded zeal is arresting and eerie. “It’s important to be an authentic person to the best of your ability,” she tells Isaac as she blackmails him into procuring her some spine-damaging elixirs. Unfortunately, freshman director Carlos Brooks debilitates his story with series of mystic psychological curlicues; no fair giving the twists away, but they involve “magic shoes.” What’s left is the disquieting work from Farmiga, and some handsome shots of tulip farms. The flowers, comfortingly, remain content to be themselves. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Hollywood Theatre.
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.
The Royal Tenenbaums
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] You're in love with Richie. Which is sick and gross. R. Broadway. 7:30 pm Monday, July 28.
Savage Grace
Movies teach two probably inaccurate lessons about wealth: The newly rich have more scratch than smarts and so end in ruin, draped in tacky jewels, while heirs to old money have more leisure time than moral fiber and so end in ruin, draped over a Bauhaus loveseat. Unless you are a fan of Julianne Moore’s manic laugh—of which there are many fine examples in better films—Savage Grace, Tom Kalin’s version of the Sophoclean tragedy that befell the miserably rich Baekeland clan in 1972, succeeds only in bolstering the latter lie about cash. Perhaps the true-crime-cum-oral-history account of the same name by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson, on which the film is based, is too fresh in my mind, but Savage Grace seems to slouch in the shadow of the definitive book, a fractured sprawl of gossip and cocktail-clinking chatter. The Baekelands—Barbara (Moore), Brooks (Stephen Dillane) and their son Tony (Eddie Redmayne)—lounge and lunch with louche millionaires and are generally terrible to each other. The film drifts to its provocative raison d’etre with the distracted lassitude of a long, bummer vacation to a land of beautiful and opaque twits. The upper crust might be dreadfully tedious, but movies about it shouldn’t be. CHRIS STAMM. Cinema 21. Hollywood Theatre.
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. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10.
Shaolin vs. Wu Tang
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The Grindhouse Film Festival brings a 35-mm print of this kung-fu flick, as a reminder that Wu Tang ain't nutin' to fuck with. Hollywood Theatre. 7:45 pm Saturday, July 26.
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, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre.
Space Chimps
If you take the kids to only one space cartoon, make it Wall-E. If that’s sold out, you could do worse than Space Chimps. It’s produced by a few of the folks responsible for Shrek, but unlike that movie, it doesn’t get bogged down in too much sketch-comedy diversion or pop-cultural reference, and there’s nary a booger joke in sight. A primate spoof of The Right Stuff, the story follows a circus chimpanzee drafted into NASA’s last grasp for legitimacy: a monkey-manned test flight to an alien world. Voiced with gentle hipster overconfidence by Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg, the aptly named Ham III has been selected as the mission’s poster child because his grandfather was the original space chimp. The cheap animation and casual tone are not a patch on the sumptuous whimsy of Pixar’s productions, but it’s an amiable adventure, shaded with the snark of a good Far Side comic strip. Ostensibly it’s about the challenges of living up to a familial legacy, though the whole thing could be an elaborate prank on our space agency and the legacy chimp who’s been setting its priorities for the past eight years. G. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
Speed Racer
See review. AARON MESH. No showtimes.
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. No showtimes.Sputnik Mania
With the newest X-Files movie opening the same weekend, the timing couldn’t be better for David Hoffman’s documentary about a time when the world did watch the skies for an extra-terrestrial circling ominously above the earth. That metallic orb was Sputnik, a Soviet satellite that, when blasted into the heavens in 1957, confirmed American fears of a Russian nuclear strike. With the passage of time, the space race seems ever more fantastic and no less frightening: With both Cold War powers designing vast rockets and apocalyptic weapons—Hoffman has collected declassified test-blast footage from both sides—it’s easy to see how paranoia overshadowed human thinking. “The Russians will be dropping bombs on us from space,” Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson announced, “like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses.” A lesser craftsman could have used such footage to mock a benighted time, but Hoffman grasps the wonder and terror of the images, and allows us to travel the same perilous path—though not without comic relief, as anti-Soviet fears are briefly relieved by an outbreak of pro-dog concern after the Commies launched a mongrel named Laika into space. (The National Canine Defense League held candlelight vigils in a futile attempt to speed the pup’s return.) The hero of the era, at least in Sputnik Mania’s formulation, is President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who de-militarized NASA and broadcast a Christmas message on the first satellite transmitter. “That’s one of the most astounding things,” Ike marveled when he heard his voice. It still is. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, July 26-27. Hollywood Theatre.
The Strangers
James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) are staying the night at his family cabin when the prospect of death arrives in the form of three masked, taciturn strangers. Now, if an inarticulate trio in dollar store costumes came to my door, I would assume the second-worst: A shitty Providence noise band is playing in my basement. But James and Kristen are attractive and listen to Joanna Newsom on immaculate vinyl, and the rules of horror are pretty clear on this: Their tormenters will be more Manson Family than Wolf Eyes. James and Kristen are sport for three psychopaths who intend to break them down before they tear them apart. It’s a familiar premise, but The Strangers has no problem using and getting off on every familiar riff: dumb masks, skipping records, hasty lunges for knife drawers, slatted and axed doors, desperate CB radio calls. Nearly every second of it works. Director Bryan Bertino plays with the legacy of horror in the same way Girl Talk turns snatches of pop songs into a clusterfuck of joyful noise. The pleasure is in simultaneously recognizing a lift and having your reptile brain electrified by it. Bertino empties his arsenal of horror tropes and tricks with the single purpose of scaring you until you shake. You will shake. R. CHRIS STAMM. No showtimes.
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.
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.
