Films Shown in 2006

SYRIANA - Rated R - 128 minutes - Scope

GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER! Best Supporting Actor George Clooney

Syriana Stephen Gaghan's film (with Executive Producer Stephen Soderbergh) doesn't reveal the plot, but surrounds us with it. Interlocking stories again: There is less oil than the world requires, and that will make some rich and others dead, unless we all die first. The movie has been called "liberal," but it is apolitical, suggesting that all of the players in the oil game are corrupt and compromised, and in some bleak sense must be, in order to defend their interests -- and ours. The story involves oil, money and politics in America, the Middle East and China. The CIA is on both sides of one situation, China may be snatching oil away from us in order to sell it back, and no one in this movie understands the big picture because there isn't one, just a series of tactical skirmishes. "Syriana" argues that in the short run, every society must struggle for oil, and in the long run, it will be gone. The brightest lights are George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, and Alexander Siddig, all of whom deserve recognition (if not by the Academy then by those who see this film). Clooney steps outside his usual image, sporting a scruffy beard and having gained 35 pounds. This is not an heroic role, but he does what's required, and it may open eyes.

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PARADISE NOW - Rated PG13 - 90 minutes - Scope - In Arabic and Hebrew

GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER! Best Foreign Language Film

Paradise Now This drama about two Palestinians, best friends from childhood, chosen to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv is a superior thriller whose shrewdly inserted plot twists and emotional wrinkles are calculated to put your heart in your throat and keep it there. "Paradise Now," a taut, ingeniously calculated thriller, fixates on the flashpoint where psychology and politics ignite in self-destructive martyrdom. Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), best friends from childhood, belong to a terrorist cell in Nablus on the West Bank that is about to undertake its first suicide mission in two years. The film, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, an Israeli-born Palestinian, from a screenplay he wrote with Bero Beyer, the film's Dutch producer, follows them over the two days leading up to the climactic deed. Beginning shortly before they are tapped by an unidentified Palestinian organization to carry out the mission, the movie culminates less than 48 hours later in a denouement whose outcome remains uncertain until the last second. Along the way, "Paradise Now" sustains a mood of breathless suspense.

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BREAKFAST ON PLUTO - Rated R - 129 minutes - Flat

Breakfast on Pluto "Breakfast on Pluto," tells the story of an Irish orphan, left on the steps of a priest's rectory and raised by a strict foster mother. Patrick discovers his identity at an early age. One day the woman finds him trying on her dresses and shoes. "I'll walk you up and down the streets before the whole town in disgrace!" she screams. "Promise?" says Patrick. The enchanting and hopeful "Breakfast on Pluto," adapted by Neil Jordan from a novel by Patrick McCabe, has a hero who is a little mad and a little saintly. Many saints insist on living in their own way regardless of what the world thinks. Some climb trees or pray in caves. Some work among the poor. Some, like Kitten, insist on optimism in the face of absolutely everything. In his case, it could be sainthood, could be denial, could be insanity. Whatever it is, Kitten so stubbornly insists on it that motorcycle gangs, London cops and IRA killers all realize that they can kill him, but they can't change him. The movie is like a Dickens novel in which the hero moves through the underskirts of society, encountering one colorful character after another. Kitten believes his birth mother may have moved to London. His only clue is that she looked like Mitzi Gaynor. Of course Kitten would know who that was. In the course of his journey to find her, he sings with a rock band, becomes a magician's assistant, is a suspected IRA bomber and is reduced to street prostitution, although he handles it with a kind of dreamy denial. The movie becomes a series of seductions, with the goal not sex but acceptance. Kitten has less to do with sexual unorthodoxy than knowing what you must be and do, and being and doing it. This drive toward individualism is an encouraging counterforce to the relentless team spirit that seems to drive so much unhappiness in our society. While it is true that in some times and places Kitten would be murdered, it is also true that Kitten might be given a pass by dangerous characters who either recognize a kindred independence, or envy it. Neil Jordan returns after a three-year absence at the absolute top of his game. As meals go, this Breakfast is filling. In every way, Jordan's return is a triumph.

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MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - Rated PG13 - 146 minutes - Scope

Memoirs of a Geisha Sold into slavery by her parents as a child, Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang, in a stunning performance) is resigned to a life of hardship and abuse. Raised amongst geishas, including the bitter Hatsumomo (a delectably vile Gong Li), Sayuri dreams of their educated and venerated lifestyle. When an unexpected benefactor (a scene-stealing Michelle Yeoh) comes looking for Sayuri, the frightened girl begins her long and arduous training to become a geisha. During this time, Sayuri rises to power, commanding the attention of every man she meets, and enraging Hatsumomo further. Nevertheless, all the adoration in the land can't help satisfy Sayuri's love for the one person, The Chairman (Ken Watanabe), who was kind to her while she was a frightened little girl. Based on the best-selling book of the same title, "Memoirs of a Geisha" is also director Rob Marshall's long awaited follow-up to his Oscar-winning smash hit, the glammy musical, "Chicago." It might sound absurd, but Marshall is an appropriate choice for "Geisha," as the story centers on the theatricality of these women, and how they hide their emotions in the pursuit of performance. Meticulously produced and detailed, "Geisha" is a veritable feast for the eyes. The scope of craftsmanship on display in the film is largely impressive; it's clear that Marshall knows how to photograph a pretty picture and set a specific mood. Production designer John Myher has worked miracles to encapsulate the insular pre-war atmosphere of Japan, using the narrow walkways and claustrophobic native paper-and-wood construction to set the right tempo in Sayuri's escapeless surroundings. Marshall continues the general theme of oppression through the use of continuous rain and secretive nightfall to accompany the actors almost anywhere they go. Any doubts about three Chinese actresses speaking English with Japanese accents vanish in the face of their deeply felt performances and the world Marshall conjures with magical finesse.

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WALK THE LINE - Rated PG13 - 136 minutes - Scope

Walk the Line "Walk the Line" opens in 1944 Dyess, Arkansas, where it introduces us to a 12-year old Johnny Cash, and depicts one of the key events and driving forces in his early life. The film then skips forward to Landsberg, Germany in 1952 (with Joaquin Phoenix taking over the part of Cash) and Memphis in 1955. While there, living with his then wife, Viv (Ginnifer Goodwin), and young daughter, he starts a band: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. After a successful audition with a record producer, Johnny finds himself on tour with Jerry Lee Lewis and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). His music elevates him to stardom, but drug use and alcohol abuse threaten to drag him down. They also impede a possible romance with June, the love of his life, even after Viv has left him. The film continues Cash's story into the late 1960s, including scenes from the famous Folsom Prison concert, and ends on an up note. Director James Mangold has streamlined his film to focus on two things: the music (a number of Cash songs are played uninterrupted) and the love story. Johnny's drug use becomes a key element in the romance, since it's ultimately June's perseverance that saves Johnny, not some innate desire to get clean. What adds boundless energy to "Walk the Line" is the performance by Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. We're told in the movie that June learned to be funny onstage because she didn't think she had a good voice; by the time John meets her she's been a pro since the age of 4, and effortlessly moves back and forth between her goofy onstage persona and her real personality, which is sane and thoughtful, despite her knack for hitching up with the wrong men. Johnny Cash for that matter seems like the wrong man, and she holds him at arm's length for years -- first because he's a married man, and later because he has a problem with booze and pills. Phoenix and Witherspoon turn in dead-on performances in their respective portrayals of Johnny and June. It is by now well known that Phoenix and Witherspoon perform their own vocals in the movie; it was not well known when the movie previewed. But it's not just that the two stars credibly do their own singing -- they also keep a close watch on the bruised hearts and healing humor of their characters. The script, shaped by Mangold and Gill Dennis from Cash's books Man in Black and Cash: The Autobiography, benefits by focusing on the young John and June. It ends in 1968 with Cash, 36, giving his landmark concert at California's Folsom Prison and June, 38, by his side as she would be until they died within four months of each other in 2003.

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MATCH POINT - Rated R - 123 minutes - Flat

Match Point Anyone going into Match Point expecting a typical Woody Allen movie will be sorely disappointed. Anyone expecting a fantastic story with a stellar cast and a knockout ending however will be thrilled. Set in London, it tells the story of Chris Wilton (Rhys-Meyers, who's probably best known as the Coach in Bend it Like Beckham), a former tennis pro from a working class background, who becomes involved with the very wealthy Hewett family. He becomes friends with the son, Tom, and begins dating the daughter, Chloe. When it becomes serious with Chloe, her father finds him a job with the family firm. Everything seems to be coming together for Chris, but he falls in lust with Tom's American fiancée (Johansson) and endangers his potential for a rich and successful life by beginning an affair with her. An affair that can obviously only end badly. One of the brilliant moves by Allen, who as usual also wrote the screenplay, is to make the protagonist of the movie the villain of the piece. Chris is obviously a social climber who loves his newfound wealth much more than his wife. He cheats, he lies and he uses the people around him for his own advantage and yet sometimes you can't help but root for him, even when he's doing the most despicable things. Match Point, a meditation on crime and luck, has the design - the formal elegance - of a thriller, yet it has been made with a sublime eye for why people do what they do that marks it as Allen's finest movie since Manhattan.

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CASANOVA - Rated R - 111 minutes - Scope

Cassanova As the legendary lover of 16th-century Venice, Casanova has seldom been summarily dismissed by a woman. But Francesca Bruni has no interest in the Lothario's romantic whims and sexist ways. Francesca is a woman of letters - and a feminist long before her time - and has far more on her mind than becoming Casanova's latest conquest. It all befuddles Casanova, who has never been told "no" so forcefully before. That's the setup for "Casanova," director Lasse Hallstrom's delightful confection, an effervescent film that puts "Casanova" in the midst of romantic farce. Casanova's tale has been told many times before, but seldom with such lighthearted flair and puckish humor. Heath Ledger delivers a sprightly, self-effacing performance, creating a likable rogue with just enough spunk to counter Francesca's naysaying ways. Ledger's work as the outgoing, thoroughly heterosexual and very sensual Casanova establishes a perfect contrast to his monosyllabic, introverted cowboy, agonizing through a gay affair in "Brokeback Mountain." Actors can only dream of two such diverse portrayals opening in the same season. Sienna Miller creates a lovely if elusive Francesca, expressing her character's intelligence and fire, as well as the passion beneath the surface that inspires Casanova's devotion. Further enlivening the film are two classic scene-stealers - Jeremy Irons in a rare comic turn as a determined bishop of the inquisition, in pursuit of the nefarious Casanova, and Oliver Platt as a competing suitor with a nature both pompous and insecure. Hallstrom (of "The Cider House Rules" and "Chocolat") brings a swift pace and light touch to the film, while he and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton joyfully revel in Venice's evocative locales.
By Jack Garner - Gannett News - JANUARY 6, 2006

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CAPOTE - Rated R - 114 minutes - Scope

Capote On Nov. 15, 1959, Truman Capote noticed a news item about four members of a Kansas farm family who were shot gunned to death. He telephoned William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, wondering if Shawn would be interested in an article about the murders. Later in his life, Capote said that if he had known what would happen as a result of this impulse, he would not have stopped in Holcomb, Kan., but would have kept right on going "like a bat out of hell." At first Capote thought the story would be about how a rural community was dealing with the tragedy. "I don't care one way or the other if you catch who did this," he tells an agent from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Then two drifters, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, are arrested and charged with the crime. As Capote gets to know them, he's consumed by a story that would make him rich and famous, and destroy him. His "non-fiction novel," In Cold Blood, became a best seller and inspired a movie, but Capote was emotionally devastated by the experience and it hastened his death. "Capote" is a film of uncommon strength and insight, about a man whose great achievement requires the surrender of his self-respect. Philip Seymour Hoffman's precise, uncanny performance as Capote doesn't imitate the author so much as channel him, as a man whose peculiarities mask great intelligence and deep wounds. If In Cold Blood drew an enigmatic picture of an America both as rooted and as uprooted as the killers, "Capote" gives us a riveting depiction of an artist who desperately straddled the border between those two worlds.

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THE WHITE COUNTESS - Rated PG13 - 135 minutes - Flat

Countess Notable as the final collaboration between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, (Merchant died just as this movie was being completed) "The White Countess" is a typically classy period piece that fits in well with the pair's considerable oeuvre. Featuring stellar performances by Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson, the film, boasting an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro ("The Remains of the Day"), was recently showcased at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival prior to its December theatrical release. Both stars showcase their skill with accents in the story, set in Shanghai in the late 1930s. Fiennes plays Todd Jackson, an embittered former American diplomat who lost both his daughter and his eyes in a terrorist bombing, while Richardson is the titular figure, Sofia Belinsky, a Russian countess reduced to working as a dance-hall girl and prostitute in order to support her extended family, which includes her young daughter and several disapproving in-laws (two of whom are played by Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave in their first feature pairing). The film concentrates on the friendly but formal relationship that develops between Jackson and Belinsky, one that turns deeper as he fulfills his dream of owning a swanky nightspot. Dubbing it "The White Countess" in her honor, he hires her as its chief hostess, and the business becomes a raging success. In the best tradition of foreign-set melodramas, their happiness becomes short-lived thanks to the unrest created by the impending Japanese invasion of the city. Ishiguro's screenplay contains more than a few hokey moments and familiar elements, featuring influences ranging from "Casablanca" to his own "The Remains of the Day," but it manages to work nonetheless, aided in no small degree by the polished production and the committed performances. Fiennes, playing the sort of role that would have been essayed by Bogart, Gable or Cooper in their heyday, displays both his gift for incisive characterization and no small amount of movie star charisma. Richardson, though saddled with an accent that makes her unintelligible at times, is equally fine, showcasing her intelligence and sensuality in equal proportions. Redgrave siblings Vanessa and Lynn clearly seem to be enjoying their onscreen time together, and such British thesps as John Wood, Madeleine Potter and Allan Corduner deliver vibrant turns in smaller roles. Hiroyuki Sanada, as Jackson's driver with a shady past, displays the subtle power that has made him a star in his native Japan. The director has staged the elaborate production in his usual stately but impressive manner, and the production values boast the usual Merchant/Ivory stamp of quality. By Frank Scheck -The Hollywood Reporter - Nov. 15, 2005

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THE NEW WORLD - Rated PG13 - 135 minutes - Scope

The New World Even the late Stanley Kubrick would have to admire how Terrence Malick has constructed his mystique. Press-shy and reclusive to a degree that makes Kubrick seem like an extrovert, Malick remains the last true enigma in American cinema, a filmmaker of profoundly personal vision whose meager oeuvre -- only four films in 30 years, with a legendary two-decade pause in the middle -- has become as intensely scrutinized as that of any other major American filmmaker, past or present. With "The New World," that body of work now presents itself in two distinct phases -- Malick's '70s-era classics "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven" on the one side and 1998's "The Thin Red Line" and 2005's "The New World" on the other. Notwithstanding the considerable merits of the individual works, it is their confluence that most intrigues, as if each is but one chapter in a broader, ongoing work whose overarching themes have yet to fully manifest themselves. Love, violence, the nature of man and the tides of time figure prominently in all four, but it wasn't until "The Thin Red Line" that Malick seemed to finally begin finding answers to his nagging questions. Ironically, "The New World" doesn't so much add anything new as unearth a profound thematic communion between the plight of "The Thin Red Line's" daunted soldiers and the similarly daunted English settlers who formed that first ragtag community of Jamestown, Virginia, in the early 1600s. In one sense, it is among the most familiar narratives is the annals of American history -- how a certain Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) fell captive to a hostile Native American tribe, only to be saved from execution by the intervention of the chief's daughter, Pocahontas (newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher). Through Malick's magnificent prism, however, the timeworn clichés (many of them fostered by the animated Disney film) are sloughed away to reveal an almost primal tale of love and survival, with Smith and Pocahontas -- whose native name is never actually indicated -- serving as stripped-down emblems of raw humanity perpetually at odds with the prevailing moral and ethical codes of their respective societies. Sumptuous photography and production design, stunning sound design and period recreation so convincing that it sometimes seems to have replicated an alien world are the added hallmarks of Malick's method, so seamlessly integrated that "The New World" cascades through one's senses like a dream. And, like a dream, it embraces a narrative construct that wafts and wanders without any consistent momentum. Part of this is Malick's praiseworthy determination to defer to the historical record rather than the usual Hollywood practice of compromising the facts for the sake of entertainment. But Malick also seems to have little interest in closure -- open-ended philosophizing suits him just fine, even if it's sometimes a bit much to digest in one sitting. This is, after all, but one chord in what may eventually become a supremely talented visual artist's great cinematic symphony. Wade Major, Boxoffice Magazine

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TRANSAMERICA - Rated R - 104 minutes - Flat

Transamerica To call Felicity Huffman's performance in "Transamerica" persuasive would be an understatement, as well as somewhat misleading. Her character, Bree (short for Sabrina), is a pre-operative transsexual who lives in a modest bungalow in Los Angeles and in a condition she refers to as "stealth." In other words, though still technically male, Bree passes for a woman, though there is nothing very stealthy about her elaborate, almost theatrical displays of femininity. In her tasteful pink outfits and meticulously applied makeup, she presents an image of womanliness that harks back to an earlier era. Her voice soft and breathy, she avoids cursing and peppers her conversation with Latinate words and foreign phrases. In this debut feature by Duncan Tucker, who wrote and directed it, "Transamerica" sets out to affirm Bree's dignity, to liberate her and others like her from any association with camp or freakishness. That the film succeeds without slipping too far into sentimentality or didacticism is in no small measure the result of Ms. Huffman's wit and grace. (She may also be the first film actor of either sex to do frontal nudity, in a single movie, as both.) Her work on "Desperate Housewives," for which she won an Emmy earlier this year, suggests a knack for gender parody, since that series is in essence a drag show that happens to star real women. The challenge Ms. Huffman faces here is more complicated: she must convey the layers of Bree's identity and the spaces between those layers. It is not just that the actress must play a man who is playing a woman - that much is a matter of technique (with some prosthetic assistance, to be sure) - but also that she must impersonate a performer in the midst of learning a complicated role. Her performance is a complex metamorphosis, and it is thrilling to watch. Mr. Tucker is a subtle and conscientious writer; he takes care to treat Bree as a person rather than a case study. His individual scenes are more convincing than the narrative as a whole, which seems at times too neat, at times too ragged. But Ms. Huffman carries herself with such sensitivity and authority that you never doubt Bree for an instant. A. O. SCOTT, The New York Times

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MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS - Rated R - 102 minutes - Flat

Mrs. Henderson Presents For all those who think movies don't have enough naked female flesh, welcome to Mrs. Henderson Presents. It would have been interesting to witness the MPAA's deliberations about this film. There's some violence, but not much. There's no sex or sex-related situations. There's only one instance of notable profanity (a single f-word), but there's a lot of "artistic" nudity. Breasts. Buns. Pubic hair. Even a penis or two (including one belonging to Bob Hoskins). This should be a PG-13 movie - there's nothing salacious or erotic about the naked women. It's all very tasteful. Ironically, one of the subjects tackled by Mrs. Henderson Presents is the ridiculous nature of governmental objections to public nudity. The film argues its case persuasively on three grounds: the artistic merit of the female form, the fact that we shouldn't be hiding what God gave us, and the way the fear of nudity has forced many young men "underground" in their natural desire to view the female form. Men will always seek to glimpse naked women, argues director Stephen Frears, so why turn this into something dirty and clandestine? Celebrate the female form; don't hide it. The film, Frears' first since 2002's "Dirty Pretty Thing," opens in London between the two world wars. It continues into the blitz, giving us a good perspective of the city before and during World War II. Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) is a rich, recently widowed aristocrat. She is bored with widowhood, so a friend offers her some advice. She can try embroidery (which she's no good at), take a lover (she believes she's too old), or buy whatever she wants. The last option appeals to her, so she purchases the run-down West End showplace, the Windmill Theater, and decides to renovate it. She wants to present a revue, but that's where the inspiration ends. To handle the production, she hires Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins), a prickly sort of man who demands complete creative control. He and Laura are immediately at odds, but the result of their collaboration is "Revudeville," an immediate success. However, after getting off to a smashing start, the show sputters. That's when Mrs. Henderson comes up with a revolutionary idea to boost business - take a page from the French and make the showgirls nude. The Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest), who must okay this sort of thing, agrees, but with one proviso: when the girls are naked, they must remain unmoving. The film's haphazard and uneven structure is offset by its effective mixing of three genres: comedy, drama, and musical. Mrs. Henderson Presents is at times funny, at times poignant, and at times uplifting. And it avoids a common pitfall for movies focused on stage shows: it does not turn the lives of the performers into soap operas. Only in the case of one girl are we given a back-story, and, even in this situation, there is limited development. 75% of the film centers on the evolution of the stage show (including showing us numerous full production numbers). The other 25% delves into Mrs. Henderson's life, giving Judi Dench an opportunity to shine. Like Dench, Bob Hoskins is in fine form. The two veteran actors play off one another as only seasoned thespians can - sit back and watch the sparks fly. Relative newcomer Kelly Reilly, as Maureen, impresses. And Christopher Guest is dryly funny in a small role. Frears is one of the most versatile directors working today, and his resume speaks for itself. Mrs. Henderson Presents represent another success for the English-born filmmaker. It offers a feel-good experience, but without the heavy dose of schmaltz that often accompanies such a production. It comes highly recommended and is right at home in the company of other end-of-the-year "prestige" pictures. 2005 James Berardinelli A. O. SCOTT

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THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN - Rated PG13 - 127 minutes - Flat

The World's Fastest Indian Burt Munro has spent many years working on his vintage 1920 Indian motorcycle with his goal being to turn it into a machine capable of breaking the land-speed record. Finally, he's ready to take the bike to Utah's famous Bonneville Salt Flats and give his competition a run for its money. Anthony Hopkins plays against type to deliver one of his finest performances. Audiences love a good triumph-over-adversity movie. They're the sorts of films that have us jumping up from our seats at the end vowing to do something useful with our lives. In that respect they're life affirming and extremely exciting. And it's even better when the adversity-challenged lead is an all-round lovely person. So it's unsurprising that The World's Fastest Indian is so quick to knock us off of our feet and take us along for its ride. Contrary to the rather odd title, this is not about a runner from Mumbai, but rather a story about a bike, an Indian, and the man who would take it to the US in 1967 and break the land-speed record with it. Part biopic, part road-movie, part wholesome-drama; The World's Fastest Indian sticks so closely to convention that it's not surprising the ride comes easily. But convention works here, sucking us into a story that's as full of charm and joyous enthusiasm as its lead, Burt Munro. As Munro, Anthony Hopkins is a delight; naively chatting away in a wonderfully-realized New Zealand drawl, convincing us from the moment he's first on screen that we're not watching a seasoned, proper British actor, but a rough-and-ready Kiwi who's willing to give all in pursuit of his dream, even if it means being knocked off his bike and cracking his head on the rough Utah salt flats every other run. Brimming with enthusiasm and so downright endearing that even the sternest of moviegoers would be hard pressed not to fall in love, The World's Fastest Indian is light, enjoyable and entertaining; a real family treat. Joe Utichi

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WHY WE FIGHT - Rated PG13 - 99 minutes - Flat

Transamerica Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight," winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a searing look at the dangerous collusion of big business and defense known as the military-industrial complex. This immensely powerful and substantive documentary skillfully juxtaposes archival footage, alarming statistics, and commentary from a veritable Greek chorus of politicians, military historians, soldiers, and Iraqi civilians, among others, to examine the consequences of the American war machine, both at home and abroad. Impassioned yet never sanctimonious, Jarecki's provocative exposé of how business has shaped American foreign policy since the end of World War II couldn't be more timely-or necessary. Taking its title from the series of morale-boosting documentaries Frank Capra made for the U.S. Government during World War II, Jarecki's film poses the same question to average Americans about the current Iraq War. But whereas Capra's films point to clear-cut reasons for the American entry into World War II, i.e., defeating fascism, Why We Fight reveals no such consensus about invading Iraq. Some people cite spreading freedom and democracy, while others cry it's a matter of "blood for oil." For Jarecki, the ongoing American military presence in Iraq is the latest manifestation of the military-industrial complex flexing its economic might-the very thing President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 farewell address. As this film demonstrates, Eisenhower's warning has gone unheeded by members of both political parties, to the point that the United States spends more on defense than all other 18 members of NATO, plus Russia and China. The pervasive influence of the vast, growing military-industrial complex on Capitol Hill goes virtually unchecked, with lobbyists and other politicos facing "zero accountability" for their ethically challenged actions, despite monitoring by non-partisan watchdog groups like the Center for Public Integrity. According to political scientist/former CIA official Chalmers Johnson, the inevitable result is a form of "economic colonialism" that positions America as the "new Rome" in a world with hordes of barbarians just lying in wait at our gates. Although Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) does include commentary from neo-conservative cheerleaders like Richard Perle and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard, the filmmaker's leftist sensibility is patently obvious in Why We Fight, which investigates Vice-President Cheney's questionable ties with both the Pentagon and Halliburton. Jarecki also trots out some of the usual suspects, namely Gore Vidal, to spew their bilge at "Dubya" and his buddies. But if Vidal's snide rant against the "United States of Amnesia" sounds increasingly like shtick, other Why We Fight interviewees give us plenty of new food for thought, like veteran Pentagon desk officer Karen Kwiatkowski. In frank, no-nonsense language, the career Air Force officer explains how neo-conservative civilian Pentagon staffers trumped up the case for invading Iraq. And most poignantly, the documentary follows the emotional and political journey of retired New York City cop/Vietnam veteran Wilton Sekzer, whose son died on 9/11. Initially gung-ho about invading Iraq, due to Bush's claims of Hussein's links to the 9/11 terrorists, Sekzer is blindsided when the president later disavows making any such statement. Opening nearly 45 years to the day that Eisenhower delivered his all-too prescient farewell address, Why We Fight will undoubtedly prompt right-wing bloviators to condemn Jarecki's film as leftist agitprop. In light of the anti-American sentiment spreading around the world, however, Jarecki's brilliant film ultimately raises questions that need to be addressed by the "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" Eisenhower referred to in his speech. It ranks with The Fog of War as one of the best political documentaries of the last few years. TIM KNIGHT, REEL.COM

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THE MATADOR - Rated R - 97 minutes - Scope

The Matador I walked into "The Matador" expecting one film, and saw another. On paper, this sounds like a formula thriller, and the casting seems to confirm that: Pierce Brosnan as a hit man, and Greg Kinnear as a businessman who meets him in a hotel bar. But Brosnan redefines "hit man" in the best performance of his career ("I facilitate fatalities"), and Kinnear plays with, and against, his image as a regular kinda guy. By the time Hope Davis, Kinnear's wife, meets this killer her husband has told her so much about, she has her first question ready: "Did you bring your gun?" The movie has a plot in which I suppose it matters who gets whacked, and why, but it's essentially a character study, in which Brosnan, Kinnear and Davis are invited to riff on the kinds of characters they often play -- maybe even get even with them. Every actor who has ever played James Bond spends years reading about how his latest role helps him to "shed the Bond image," but Brosnan appears in "Matador" with his character so firmly in place that no shedding, molting or other divestment is necessary. Brosnan is so intriguing to watch in the movie. Unshaven, trembling, hung-over, fearful, charming, confiding, paranoid, trusting, he clings to Danny and Bean like a lost child at the zoo. Where did he get those shirts he wears? They look like they were bought six at a time out of the back of a van at a truck stop. The richness of his comic performance depends on the way he savors and treasures this character; at no point does Brosnan apologize for Julian, or stand outside of him, or seem to invite our laughter. He is like the charming stranger you meet in a bar, who you know could become your best friend if he were not so obviously a time bomb. Against Brosnan, Kinnear and Davis are perfect foils, enjoying his character as much as he does. The three actors do something that is essential to this kind of comedy: They refuse to be in on the joke. It's not funny for them. They never wink. The movie's writer-director, Richard Shepard, balances the macabre and the sentimental, and understands that although his film contains questions like "don't successful people always live with blood on their hands?" its real subject is friendship. BY ROGER EBERT / January 6, 2006

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THANK YOU FOR SMOKING - Rated R - 92 min - Scope

Film Photo "Thank You for Smoking" was directed by Jason Reitman, the 29-year-old son of director Ivan Reitman. Based on Christopher Buckley's scathing 1994 novel, "Thank You for Smoking" is a straight-faced dark satire about the all-American pastimes of spin doctoring, lying and bullying your opponent with so much rhetoric that people start to think HE'S the liar. "If you argue correctly, then you're never wrong." Big Tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) works and lives by this philosophy, relying on his ability to twist the truth in his favor, whether he is convincing a talk show audience that his industry wants cancer patients to live (and keep puffing away), browbeating a young girl while speaking to his son's class, or arguing to Congress that Vermont cheddar cheese is just as deadly as the cigarettes he sells. However, "Thank You For Smoking" isn't so much about smoking as it is about the endless spin cycle that politicians, journalists, agents, and lobbyists use to fulfill their various agendas, and writer/director Reitman manages to shamelessly satirize each of its many perpetrators to superb effect. Each and every cast member hits their notes perfectly, from Maria Bello and David Koechner as fellow lobbyists (for alcohol and firearms, respectively) to Rob Lowe's amusing appearance as a top Hollywood agent that Naylor taps to put his product back into movies and "the sex back into cigarettes." (Adam Brody also does a fine job in his brief role as Lowe's assistant.) As Nick's impressionable son, Joey, young Cameron Bright is finally beginning to act his age, which very much works in his favor as he decides to show some interest in his father's job and pick up some serious debating tactics along the way, and Sam Elliott brings the right amount of gruff hostility towards Naylor, who arrives with a financial understanding in an effort to buy some silence from the dying "Marlboro-man" spokesman. Robert Duvall tries to provide a sort of father figure as the tobacco czar keen on Naylor's ideas, and Katie Holmes does a suitable job as the reporter looking to get her scoop by any means necessary. No matter how good the supporting cast and script may be, the burden lies on the shoulders of Aaron Eckhart, who brings Naylor to life with just the right blend of sarcasm, arrogance, and a sense of ethical elasticity. Though it may feel like a variation of a role Eckhart has done before (particularly In The Company of Men), he has his cockiness honed in so fine that the viewer has no choice but to surrender to such a scheming schmuck, because he has pretty much earned it, personal integrity aside. While Naylor might not make the perfect antihero, audiences are less likely to support the agenda of Vermont Senator Finistirre (William H. Macy), whose intent to slap a gaudy poison warning on cigarettes and simultaneously earn some re-election support is frequently foiled by Naylor's rather effective spin campaign. In adapting Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel, Reitman still keeps the material fresh over a decade later, yet manages to avoid dating himself for years to come. Although it's hard to imagine any other ensemble pulling off the zingers with the same zest, most of the bite comes from the dialogue itself, which is equal in confidence as his direction. (It should be noted that, although nicotine does turn out to be life saving at one point, not a single character actually smokes on screen.) One can also take comfort that Reitman never pulls any punches when lesser filmmakers would opt out with cheap conscience and resort to a false sense of last-reel redemption. The film does sag slightly before the climax, where it returns the humor to its aptly caustic level. Characters with such disregard for typical ethics or values would not, and do not, change their wicked ways overnight, which brings a refreshing consistency to their behavior throughout. Last year's 'Lord of War' also asked viewers to sympathize with a lead character with morals flexible enough for him to make a living as a merchant of death. Even though Nicolas Cage could certainly deliver droll dialogue, he lacked the smarmy, snarky persona that only Eckhart so effortlessly embodies, and frankly, a lot of it does have to do with his looks: that hair, that chin, those eyes, and that smile, all of which lend to him a certain arrogant charm that very few other actors can pull off. Eckhart's grin of spin, combined with the gift of gab, ultimately allows for him (and Reitman consequently) to blow smoke wherever they damn well please. It's cool, available, and addictive, but beware: satire this sharp may be habit-forming. This film has all the makings of one confident, razor-sharp comedy.

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SOPHIE SCHOLL, THE FINAL DAYS - Not Rated - 117 min - FLAT

Film Photo "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" (aka: Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage) conveys what it must have been like to be a young, smart, idealistic dissenter in Nazi Germany, where no dissent was tolerated. This gripping true story, directed in a cool, semi-documentary style by the German filmmaker Marc Rothemund from a screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances. Would you risk your life the way Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) and a tiny group of fellow students at Munich University did to spread antigovernment leaflets? How would you behave during the kind of relentless interrogations that Sophie endures? If sentenced to death for your activities, would you still consider your resistance to have been worth it? In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here? Scholl, whose story has been told in at least two earlier German films (Michael Verhoeven's "White Rose" and Percy Adlon's "Five Last Days"), is regarded today in Germany as a national heroine. Much of the movie, an Oscar nominee this year for best foreign-language film, is based on documents and court transcripts hidden in East German archives until 1990. The movie follows the last six days of Sophie's life, after she and her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) are arrested at Munich University in February 1943 for printing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. Their arrest takes place in a political climate of panic and denial after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad. News of the rout has begun to circulate, but the powers-that-be dig in their heels. The Scholl siblings belong to the White Rose, a tiny resistance movement at Munich University. The pamphlet they distribute in the university's empty halls, while classes are in session, declares that the war cannot be won and urges Germany to sue for peace. They naïvely hope to ignite a spontaneous student rebellion but the Nazi attitude toward the reversal of Germany's fortunes on the battlefield is one of enraged denial. The shrill accusations leveled against Sophie and two of the other accused in the interrogation room and in court by the fulminating judge, Dr. Roland Freisler (André Hennicke), have a tone of desperate, hysterical fury. "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" pointedly steers away from unnecessary melodrama and sentimentality to deliver a crisp chronology of events told entirely from Sophie's perspective, with minimal back story. Yes, Sophie is a heroine, but not one given to Joan of Arc-style theatrics. An optimistic, life-loving student with a boyfriend and a rich future ahead of her, she is the kind of decent, principled person we would all like to be. (In German with English subtitles) By STEPHEN HOLDEN, New York Times

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HEART OF GOLD - DOCUMENTARY - RATED PG13 - 117 MIN - FLAT

film photo During a panel discussion on "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the star of the documentary and legendary musician noted about his onscreen collaboration with helmer Jonathan Demme that it "only looks like a concert film." At first glance, the comment seems misleading, considering the film features all the manifestations of the genre, including specific venue (Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium), performance dates (two shows in the summer of 2005), playlist (songs from Young's albums "Harvest," "Harvest Moon" and his latest release "Prairie Wind") and performers (Young, his profuse band and the Fisk University Jubilee Singers gospel choir). Young's observation, however, makes itself clear as "Heart of Gold" unfolds, revealing a production as dedicated to the visual and emotional impact of the songwriter's artistry as it is to his intrinsic musical merit. Demme, whose previous concert films include the landmark "Stop Making Sense" featuring The Talking Heads, revealed at the same Sundance panel that the stylings of his latest musical documentary are modeled after the impact of Young's music, commenting, "Neil's lyrics evoke images in my head." With those images as a catalyst, Demme presents Young's concerts more as a series of song performances, definitively breaking between each tune, rather than a showcase of a single event from opening to closing numbers. Instead of producing a disjointed feel, the effect is an emphasis on the individual song, with onstage background sets and lighting tailored to fit the mood of each number. At the same time, Demme is respectful enough of the lyrical and historical dimensions of Young's oeuvre to avoid imposing his personal interpretation of the "images" derived by the musician's lyrics, instead allowing the music to inspire on its own. The concert film's unifying force is, of course, Neil Young himself. Long hailed as a troubadour, Young's introduction of certain songs by way of storytelling -- such as the acquisition of Hank Williams' guitar before performing "This Old Guitar" -- serves as the connecting points between his classic and brand-new material. Anecdotes about his agrarian childhood in Canada and his late father, to whom the performances are dedicated, as well as a solo performance of "The Old Laughing Lady," with neither his band nor a live audience present, further personalize the mesmerizing and touching narrative that weaves throughout "Heart of Gold." Francesca Dinglasan, BOXOFFICE.COM

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DON'T COME KNOCKING - Rated R - 110 minutes - Scope

film photo Howard Spence (Sam Shepard), is an aging Western star who has suddenly gone AWOL from the set of his latest picture, literally riding off into the sunset on his trusty "steed" wherein he makes the first of many stops in what look for all the world to be ghost towns. Howard returns home to visit his mother (Eva Marie Saint) and learns of an old flame who claims to have a child by him, intrigued and itching just badly enough to get out of town again he journeys to Butte, Montana where his past and future intersect. Doreen, the flame in question still works at a local diner and their son, Earl (Gabriel Mann) is a country western singer at a local bar. There is also Sky, an urn-toting stranger with an unnatural curiosity regarding Howard. Everyone in the cast is uniformly excellent and each given their moment to shine whether or not it is a moment of great revelation. Tim Roth invests the bail bonsdman Sutter, with subtle little tics, Fairuza Balk plays Earl's infectiously loopy girlfriend and offers the closest thing to a misstep the film has but still manages to come out on top. Sam Shepard with his snaggle tooth grin and hangdog looks has the self-deprecating appeal of a big star, but if you look closely enough you will see that his face has been singed with resignation and regret. Jessica Lange has a moment in the film (familiar to anyone who has seen the trailer) where she admonishes that Howard is too gutless to see this thing through, the thing being Howard's son and his attempt at reconciliation or whatever can be done when you offer your fatherly services twenty plus years after the fact, yet even after giving it to Howard with both barrels she kisses him with tears in her eyes. It is one of the first of the film's many truly sublime moments, she loves Howard but he is the bane of her existence. Howard is, in fact, the bane of many existences and the center of the misery, discontent and emptiness of three of the film's key players. Sarah Polley (whom I forgot how much I liked until I saw this) as Sky, the urn toting stranger reminds me a lot of Peter Falk in Wim Wender's own Wings of Desire in that she seems the most disconnected from Howard's story but also has the most understanding of everything and it's directly connected to the secret that she harbors. The discovery of that secret is just one more thing about the movie to love, it feels as if though the surprise springs from the direction the story is taking and not like something that was planned from the outset. I'm a firm believer that the best stories you tell are ones that can get away from you just a little bit because if you can't surprise yourself you can't surprise anyone. Sky also has a monologue at film's end that seemingly addresses every concern ever voiced by anyone wondering if they truly are a part of their father. Some films are particularly adept at evoking a time and a place, this one does a fine job with the old west and the passing of an age (like I said, most of the sets look like ghost towns and Howard saunters down most of them like it's high noon and he's got demons to face) but it's harder to find films that evoke a feeling. Sure a movie can get an emotional reaction from you but to isolate one emotion (let alone the entire spectrum) and capture it so perfectly as if it were to be bottled for mass consumption is another feat entirely. "Don't Come Knocking" manages to do that time and time again. A Review by Brandon Curtis 05/01/2006

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AKEELAH AND THE BEE - Rated PG - 112 minutes - Scope

film photo Akeelah Anderson can spell. She can spell better than anyone in her school in South Central Los Angeles, and she might have a chance at the nationals. Who can say? She sees the National Spelling Bee on ESPN and is intrigued. But she is also wary, because in her school there is danger in being labeled a "brainiac," and it's wiser to keep your smarts to yourself. The story of Akeelah's ascent to the finals of the National Spelling Bee makes an uncommonly good movie, entertaining and actually inspirational, and with a few tears along the way. Her real chance at national success comes after a reluctant English professor agrees to act as her coach. This is Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), on a leave of absence after the death of his wife and daughter. Coaching her is a way out of his own shell. Akeelah is mocked not only at school. Her own mother is against her. Tanya Anderson (Angela Bassett) has issues after the death of her husband, and values Akeelah's homework above all else, including silly afterschool activities like spelling bees. Akeelah practices in secret, and after she wins a few bees even the tough kids in the neighborhood start cheering for her. The sessions between Akeelah and the professor are crucial to the film, because he is teaching her not only strategy but how to be willing to win. No, he doesn't use self-help clichés. He is demanding, uncompromising, and he tells her again and again: "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." Now I am going to start dancing around the plot. Something happens during the finals of the National Bee that you are not going to see coming, and it may move you as deeply as it did me. I've often said it's not sadness that touches me the most in a movie, but goodness. Under enormous pressure, at a crucial moment, Akeelah does something good. Its results I will leave you to discover. What is ingenious about the plot construction of writer-director Doug Atchison is that he creates this moment so that we understand what's happening, but there's no way to say for sure. Even the judges sense or suspect something. But Akeelah, improvising in the moment and out of her heart, makes it air-tight. There is only one person who absolutely must understand what she is doing, and why -- and he does. This ending answers one of my problems with spelling bees, and spelling bee movies. It removes winning as the only objective. Vince Lombardi was dead wrong when he said, "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing" (a quote, by the way, first said not by Lombardi but in the 1930s by UCLA coach Henry "Red" Sanders -- but since everybody thinks Lombardi said it, he won, I guess). The saying is mistaken because to win for the wrong reason or in the wrong way is to lose. Something called sportsmanship is involved. In our winning-obsessed culture, it is inspiring to see a young woman like Akeelah Anderson instinctively understand, with empathy and generosity, that doing the right thing involves more than winning. That's what makes the film particularly valuable for young audiences. I don't care if they leave the theater wanting to spell better, but if they have learned from Akeelah, they will want to live better. By Roger Ebert; rogerebert.com

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HARD CANDY - Rated R - 99 minutes - Scope

film photo Every day, it seems, brings another report of an adult who uses the Internet to seduce the underage, only to wind up ensnared by the cops. That might be a happy fate, though, compared to the one that awaits Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a Los Angeles fashion photographer who, in Hard Candy, makes a racy on-line connection with 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page). The two hook up at a coffee bar, where Jeff, a smug sophisticate, works hard to create the impression that he respects this teenager for her mind. They go to his place, they drink screwdrivers at noon, he takes out his camera, and...bam, he falls to the floor, drugged. You see, after chatting online for several weeks, Hayley (Ellen Page) and Jeff (Patrick Wilson) have finally arranged a real-world rendezvous. Hayley, however, is actually a 14-year-old student; Jeff, a 32-year-old photographer. As uncomfortable as this may make the viewer (and it will), the pair hit it off, discussing Goldfrapp and Zadie Smith while digesting the person behind the screen name. Soon enough, Jeff invites Hayley back to his place, and it becomes apparent that not only is this a cat-and-mouse game, but the mouse is the one pulling all the strings. Entertaining? No. Intensely riveting and immensely rewarding? Absolutely. The debut of both director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson, Hard Candy is a gripping masterpiece of manipulation, and as Page and Wilson push each other's buttons, Slade and Nelson push the viewer's with a precise pressure that prevents the material from slipping into slick schlock or mere exploitation. The discomfort sets in immediately, with genuine concern and dread permeating the all-too-real first act; then, the filmmakers ratchet up the tension with a masterfully executed set piece that, although not explicit in depiction, provokes an undeniable effective reaction, particularly on one gender over another. After that, the film concludes with a fittingly frantic finale as the pair faces off, neither one able to take advantage of the other as previously possible, in a level - and lethal - confrontation. Be warned: Hard Candy is extreme - a battle of the sexes that glides from tricky to angry to shockingly ugly. As Jeff is forced to confront the ultimate male nightmare, the movie flirts with exploitation, only to be saved, somewhat, by the cleverness of its observations about male hypocrisy and female wrath. Mostly, it's worth seeing for Ellen Page. Looking like a baby Sigourney Weaver, she takes off from the script's dexterous sarcasms to play Hayley with an enlightened lack of mercy, an ability to stare down her enemy by thinking just like him. To watch Hard Candy is, at moments, to be very afraid, but the scariest thing about it is the fury of Page's talent. By William Goss; efilmcritic.com

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THE PROPOSITION - Rated R - 104 minutes - Scope

film photo "I will civilize this land," declares Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), the English officer in charge of a hellish region in the Australian Outback. But words and deeds are two separate things in "The Proposition," a brutal, poetic, and eerie Western from director John Hillcoat and screenwriter/composer Nick Cave that transcends genre in its depiction of the forces roiling the land in the late 1800s. The captain's idea of civilization is immediately evident from the house he keeps in the middle of this arid inferno. From his genteel wife, Martha (Emily Watson), a woman he does his utmost to protect from unsavory news, to a home filled with fine china and knickknacks to-most poignantly-the roses that decorate his yard, he has re-created his former home country. But he is not such a gentleman when it comes to those on the other side of the law, be it the indigenous folks hidden in the hills, declared enemies of the state simply for defending their homeland, or outlaws like the Burns brothers. The eldest Burns brother, Arthur (Danny Huston), particularly vexes the captain. Though he has a love of poetry, song, and the natural beauty of his adopted country, the Irish brigand is also a rapacious psychopath with a reputation so fearsome that he has already been elevated to Aboriginal myth. When a local family-friends of the Stanleys-is savagely murdered, the captain has no doubt that the Burns gang is the responsible party. But Arthur is already gone; the only ones Stanley can capture are his younger brothers, Charlie (Guy Pearce), and slow-witted, 14-year-old Mike (Richard Wilson). Though Charlie protests that the captain cannot act as judge and jury, the Burns brothers' fate is entirely up to his discretion, but he realizes that executing the two of them will not solve anything as long as Arthur lives. So Stanley devises an ingenious solution: he will pardon both brothers if Charlie finds and kills Arthur. If he doesn't, young Mike will hang on Christmas Day. The moral quandary all Charlie's, who is not the unconscionable criminal his older brother is. In a sense, Captain Stanley turns the Biblical story on its head, expecting Abel to slay Cain and, in making his monstrous proposition, unleashing forces far beyond his control. Nothing in this wild land is within his purview; in reality, his authority does not mean much to people who have grown used to meting out their own extravagant forms of justice. This is a fictional story, but Cave colors it with historical detail: the British prejudice against the Irish; the imperial (and murderous) attitude of the white ruling class toward the Aboriginals; the collaboration of some tribes with the Brits and the resulting black-on-black violence. It is a frequently ugly story with no good guys in sight, but at the same time, it is impossible to dismiss any character as simply evil: not the captain who senses too late what he has done, and not even Arthur, who is every bit as bad as Stanley thinks he is, yet is still capable of tenderness toward his brother. For such a bloody movie, "The Proposition" is uncommonly beautiful. Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme shoots in Panavision, all the better to capture the outback's epic scale. And Hillcoat's fondness for that magic hour when daylight turns to dusk is evident in so many breathtaking scenes. But the pretty pictures are beside the point; this is an Australian Wild Bunch that goes even further than Sam Peckinpah dreamed. Not only are the outlaws about to be trampled by the onslaught of Stanley's precious "civilization," but even those who consider themselves part of that new world are not exempt. It is an enthralling story full of unforgettable characters given life by a group of actors at the top of their form. It is a harrowing, magnificent drama, once upon a time down under. BY PAM GRADY, REEL.COM

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PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION - Rated PG13 - 105 min - Scope

film photo What a shame the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences decided to give a lifetime achievement Oscar award to director Robert Altman in 2006. Had they only waited a year, they may have finally been able to give him an actual Best Director award. "A Prairie Home Companion" is that good. For those who aren't in the know (like I was) or know nothing of the plot, "A Prairie Home Companion" is actually a long running radio variety show put on by author Garrison Keillor. He has musical acts, serials, stories and the like and Keillor himself runs the show as host. This film is an adaptation of the radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," with a movie plot thrown in with great effect. We join the cast on the night of their final performance as a big corporation has bought the theater where the show is performed and plan to tear it down. Fictional characters from the radio show, like gumshoe Guy Noir (Kline) are brought to life, but still maintain the basic character that they do on the radio show. It's really pretty brilliant and cool. Other radio show characters are brought to life onscreen such as the old-timey singing Johnson Sisters, (Streep and Tomlin) comedy cowpokes Dusty and Lefty (Reilly and Harrelson) and narrator Keillor. As the show (and the film) goes on, layer upon layer of character depth is revealed as each member of the cast thinks back with fondness and pain to old songs, romances and funny occurences. Each radio person has made the show their life and what they will do next is up in the air, at least for some. A mysterious, "dangerous woman" (Madsen) wanders about the theater and as she does, strange things begin to happen. What makes "A Prairie Home Companion" so good and such a bold move from Altman likely lies in the script by Garrison Keillor. Altman's "fly on the wall" style is here in all its glory as are his innovative uses of sound and overlapping dialogue, but this film just feels warmer than any other Altman film I've seen before. Sometimes that almost generic look through Altman's eyes can seem cold or detached, yet here you feel as if you're backstage at the show, going through all the emotions with the players. We learn so much about each of them as they talk about old times and then launch into songs that tell more than the stories do. There's also many "real" characters running around such as Johnson Sister Yolanda's daughter Lola Johnson (Lohan), your a-typical depressed teen. She dabbles in suicidal poetry while proclaiming to think the show "lame," but by films end we see her true feelings. All the characters (save Keillor) are fictitious, but there's a group of "radio show characters" and "real life characters" and they blend together without seamlessly. The songs in the film are a blast and John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson share one of the funniest singing moments onscreen ever. Streep and Tomlin can't really sing, but their acting makes that fact nearly invisible. Kevin Kline as the wannabe cool Noir is also great and Keillor brings his drawling, deep narrative self to life as he runs the show, all the while shilling phony products like "Powdermilk Biscuits" and frozen rhubarb pie. "A Prairie Home Companion" is nothing short of a real treat and an experience lovers of the radio show and future lovers of it shouldn't miss. Don R. Lewis "Hollywood's Independent Indie Voice"

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AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - Rated PG - 100 min - Flat

film photo Global warming is real. It is caused by human activity. Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it. If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet. After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action. These facts are stated by Al Gore in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Forget he ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis. "There is no controversy about these facts," he says in the film. "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero." He stands on a stage before a vast screen, in front of an audience. The documentary is based on a speech he has been developing for six years, and is supported by dramatic visuals. He shows the famous photograph "Earthrise," taken from space by the first American astronauts. Then he shows a series of later space photographs, clearly indicating that glaciers and lakes are shrinking, snows are melting, shorelines are retreating. He provides statistics: The 10 warmest years in history were in the last 14 years. Last year South America experienced its first hurricane. Japan and the Pacific are setting records for typhoons. Hurricane Katrina passed over Florida, doubled back over the Gulf, picked up strength from unusually warm Gulf waters, and went from Category 3 to Category 5. There are changes in the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. Cores of polar ice show that carbon dioxide is much, much higher than ever before in a quarter of a million years. It was once thought that such things went in cycles. Gore stands in front of a graph showing the ups and downs of carbon dioxide over the centuries. Yes, there is a cyclical pattern. Then, in recent years, the graph turns up and keeps going up, higher and higher, off the chart. The primary man-made cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels. We are taking energy stored over hundreds of millions of years in the form of coal, gas and oil, and releasing it suddenly. This causes global warming, and there is a pass-along effect. Since glaciers and snow reflect sunlight but sea water absorbs it, the more the ice melts, the more of the sun's energy is retained by the sea. Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still "debatable" that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future, starting in the lives of those now living. "The world won't 'end' overnight in 10 years," Gore says. "But a point will have been passed, and there will be an irreversible slide into destruction." Roger Ebert

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DOWN IN THE VALLEY - Rated R - 117 min - Scope

film photo "This ain't the Old West!" Bruce Dern's agitated rancher barks. "It's the goddamned Valley!" His anger is directed at would-be cowboy Harlan Carruthers, played magnificently by Edward Norton, and it's a case of time being out of step with romance. If this really were the Old West, some 125 years ago, chances are the rancher wouldn't have minded that Harlan borrowed one of his horses to take a girl for a ride, especially since the beast was returned safe and sound. But it's the 21st century in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley, and all thoughts of the community sharing of livestock now reside mainly in the imaginations of Hollywood moviemakers, just up the road. It seems likely that Harlan has seen a few too many westerns himself. It's about this point in Donald Jacobson's unsettling Down in the Valley that reality starts to set in, even if Harlan continues to resist the cold water of truth. When Harlan pops into view at the start of the film, riding his horse past the freeways and strip malls of modern suburbia, we might easily confuse him as an actor working on a role. He's got the look: Stetson, handlebar moustache, feather tattoo, western gear, holstered guns and a lasso that has seen some twirling. Harlan has the confidence of a man who knows what he's doing, which is why he doesn't blink when a car full of teenage girls pulls up next to him and the sassiest one asks, "Are you for real?" "I think so," Harlan replies. He's real enough to have a quick story about having worked at a ranch in South Dakota, but he's come to L.A. to try to make a new life. One that could include the comely Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), who sits smiling in the back seat of the car. She is intrigued by Harlan's old-fashioned charm, and not bothered at all by his age - he's a good 15 years older than her, probably more. No such luck with Tobe's dad Wade (David Morse), who takes one look at Harlan and sniffs hard. No amount of aw-shucks stroking from Harlan is going to change the mind of Wade, a jail guard by profession. The two ironically have a lot in common - they're both gun nuts and both love Hank Williams and playing guitar - but the simpatico vibes don't jibe with Harlan's interest in Tobe. She's too young and Harlan is just too intense. Especially when he starts doing things like taking horses for rides without permission, or vanishing with Tobe's younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) for hours at a time, whereabouts unknown. When people start to seriously question Harlan's buckskin bona fides, that's when trouble really begins. Writer/director Jacobson does a masterful job setting the stage for a modern-day western, one in which the protagonist seems to have arrived by teleportation tube from another century. In a different context, this could be a sci-fi movie or time-travel comedy, with Harlan being a real cowboy who suddenly finds himself in the wrong century. This isn't that type of movie. It's a study of a character deeply alienated from society, much like the central figures of Jacobson's two earlier films, Dahmer and Criminal. This is familiar turf for Norton, who memorably played an alienated cipher in his Primal Fear breakout role of a decade past, and again as a neo-Nazi skinhead in the under-appreciated American History X. But familiar doesn't mean stale in this case, and he's well matched with Wood, who brought parental nightmares to life in Thirteen. There's a tragic quality to their romance, made plain as the movie shifts - at a trot rather than a gallop - into more dangerous thriller territory. Never losing hold of the reins, however, is Edward Norton, who reminds us of how frightening a smile can be when it masks deeper intent.

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FORGIVING DR. MENGELE - Not Rated - 80 min - DVD

film photo In a famous film clip of the liberation of Auschwitz, a long line of survivors make their way out of the camp, led by two little girls holding hands. Those girls were Eva and Miriam Moses, identical twins who had been kept alive to be used as subjects for the genetic experiments of the notoriously sadistic Dr. Josef Mengele. Today, Eva Moses Kor, now in her 70's, is a real estate agent living in Terre Haute, Ind. In 1993, after Miriam, her only surviving relative, died of a rare form of cancer that may have been related to the experiments, Ms. Kor became obsessed with tracking down Mengele's missing files. She never found them, but in the process decided to make peace with her past by publicly declaring her forgiveness of Mengele, and by extension all Nazis, for the harm she had suffered at their hands. Although she takes pains to speak only for herself and not in the name of other victims, Ms. Kor's beliefs have made her persona non grata among many of her fellow Holocaust survivors, and in this documentary's best scenes they engage her in a vigorous debate about the meaning of forgiveness, retribution and justice. For a film about death-camp survivors "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" is surprisingly uplifting and, at times, even lighthearted. Ms. Kor, a stout little sparkplug of a woman with energy to burn, charges around Terre Haute in a red-white-and-blue pantsuit, selling houses, giving speeches at schools and museums, and cheerfully reminding her interviewer that "there's more to life than Auschwitz." Whether or not you agree with her decision to forgive her torturers, it's impossible not to be moved by her fierce capacity for life. By DANA STEVENS, NYT May 18, 2006

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ICE AGE: THE MELT DOWN - Rated PG - 91 min - Flat

film photo Global warming has hit the Ice Age and things are getting a little drippy. Most of the prehistoric creatures are basking in the weather change, but Fast Tony the turtle (voiced by Jay Leno) is predicting impending disaster. When a hungry vulture (voiced by Will Arnett) confirms that a huge deluge of water is about to flood the valley, the animals all decide to head for higher ground. Among the migrants are Manny the wooly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano) and his buddies, Diego the saber-tooth tiger (voiced by Denis Leary) and Sid the sloth (voiced by John Leguizamo). Although the trio survived the cold spell, Manny's grumpy temperament hasn't softened at all. Worried about the reality of extinction, he is on the look out for others of his kind. Unfortunately, Sid only adds to Manny's misery by singing parodies of popular songs where the changed lyrics detail the mammoth's likely demise. Still, when Manny finally meets Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), he's not so sure his problems are over. The megaton mammoth has some quirky behaviors of her own. Adopted by possums, the orphaned Ellie has adapted to climbing trees and sleeping upside down. And among other things, she's oblivious to the obvious size discrepancy between her and her brothers, Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck). Identity issues aside, however, the biggest disparity between Ellie and Manny is her fun-loving spirit and his stick-in-the-mud seriousness. Yet, in spite of the odd make-up of their herd, these critters manage to avoid the distinction of extinction by working together. Learning to appreciate individual peculiarities, they help one another face the fears and uncertainties of their changing world and ride out the rising tides in Ice Age: The Meltdown. As with the original film, "Meltdown" provides excellent voice work from the cast, all of whom seem very comfortable with their characters for this go-around. Clearly, Leguizamo is the MVP here, frequently making Sid the most entertaining character in the bunch. Sid gets bumped up to matchmaker status in "Meltdown," which hands Leguizamo even greater room to roam for jokes involving the mammoth love connection.

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FRIENDS WITH MONEY - Rated R - 88 min - Scope

film photo Frank talk about money is the last taboo, a prohibition with a particularly weird effect on women. The same brassy babe who will describe her sex life in fearless gynecological detail gets all demure when it comes to describing her financial bottom line, even to her closest friends. And how she feels about that money - whether it's a lot or a little, whether earned or bestowed, and whether she envies Friend X's suspected greater wealth or knows with smug satisfaction that she's better off than Friend Y - is more likely to remain a secret than her kinkiest bedroom fantasy. Writer-director Nicole Holofcener, whose previous two features, Lovely & Amazing (2002) and Walking and Talking (1996), also offer insights into neurotic gynocentricity, appreciates this peculiar twist in female wiring. And she seizes on the subject with sisterly rue, donating the best moments in Friends With Money to a dissection of feminine net-worth envy. To be clear, Holofcener is talking about bank- account competition in Los Angeles (where wealth loves to preen) among an elite quartet of uncommon women who will never have to take the bus in their own City of Tangible Goods. Not even Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), by far the most struggling of the foursome in Holofcener's setup and ostensibly the chick around whom the three more affluent friends cluck, is that poor: A former teacher at a tony private school, she quit her salaried position for unspecified reasons of malaise and is currently self-employed as a freelance housekeeper, relieving dull hours spent with a vacuum cleaner with more exciting moments spent with a vibrator found in a client's bedside drawer. Or as one friend bluntly puts it, ''She's unmarried, she's a pothead, and she's a maid.'' Christine (stalwart Holofcener muse Catherine Keener) frets about her pal to husband David (Jason Isaacs), Christine's status-conscious partner in lucrative screenwriting and floundering marriage. Franny (Joan Cusack), the girlfriend happiest in motherhood and marriage (to Greg Germann as appreciative hubby Matt) and most cushioned by wealth, worries about Olivia with gentle distraction when not working out with a personal trainer or looking for worthy causes on which to bestow big bucks. Meanwhile, Jane (Frances McDormand), a successful fashion designer married to supportive, ambiguously gay Aaron (British theater director Simon McBurney) - irresistible in his excitement about cashmere and Nip/Tuck - doesn't so much worry as fume about injustice everywhere: In her early 40s, she's so sick and tired of life's daily frictions that she can't be bothered to wash her hair. (In an excitingly offbeat cast, McDormand stands out, loose and lively.) But the most interesting player in Friends With Money is Aniston, who exhibits previously unseen acting chops as the believably insecure Olivia. She made this movie last year while she was in the early throes of breaking up with Brad Pitt, and that surely added to her unhappiness, but it would be unfair to suggest that she was drawing entirely from her own tabloid traumas. Her Olivia is a woman living in the midst of plenty who feels alienated and unfulfilled. She is starting to realize just how miserable she is, and it's that hard-won enlightenment that drives the movie home. Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum/Entertainment Weekly

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RUNNING BRAVE - Rated PG - 106 min - DVD

film photo Running Brave is based on the true story of Sioux athlete Billy Mills. Billy attended the University of Kansas in the 60s, where he excelled in sports but had to contend with his fellow classmates' virulent racism. Billy's athletic career culminated in 1964, with the winning of a gold medal for long distance running at the Tokyo Olympiad. Mills' victory is considered by many to be one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Olympic Games. While there are many films made "based" upon a true story, few come as close to portraying the actual events as Running Brave. Billy Mills' amazing finish to win the gold medal in the 10,000 meters, not to mention announcer Jim McKay's call of this race, have become legendary. Robbie Benson's understated acting style and athleticism made him an ideal choice to play the shy Mills, a Native American who was uncomfortable with the attention and notoriety his Olympic fame caused. Also, watch for veteran character actor, Pat Hingle, who gives an excellent performance in the role of Mills' hard-nosed college coach at Kansas.

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ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL - Rated R - 102 min - Flat

film photo For Art School Confidential, director Terry Zwigoff has re-teamed with Daniel Clowes for an offbeat and bitingly satirical look at the college era coming of age story. Considering Zwigoff's resume, which includes Bad Santa and Ghost World (based on one of Clowes' comic series), one should not expect Art School Confidential to be a cheerful romantic comedy/underdog overcomes tale. In fact, this is as dark as Zwigoff has gotten - arguably even darker than Bad Santa. And, while it's legitimate to label Art School Confidential as a "comedy," the movie is more clever than it is funny. Zwigoff and Clowes have two apparent goals with this film. For the first, they parody the popular genre in which a virgin goes off to college and falls in love with a beautiful co-ed while trying to make his mark on campus. For the second, they send up the elitist and pretentious world of art, where the more obtuse the work, the more celebrated it becomes. One professor is hailed for his visionary style of painting triangles. A student's drawing, which is little more than scribbles, is lauded for its freshness and humanity. The reason Art School Confidential works, however, is because the filmmakers choose not to make a mockery out of their lead characters. Rather than ridiculing Jerome (Max Minghella) and Audrey (Sophia Myles), the film treats them respectfully and allows the audience to sympathize with them. Jerome has come to art school to hone his craft of painting - and to get laid. Okay, so being an 18-year-old virgin may not be impressive as being a member of the 40-year-old club, but it can be an ego-killer. The young man shortly discovers two muses. One is fellow student Audrey, whom he first encounters when she poses as a nude model in the class of Professor Sandiford (John Malkovich). He strikes up a friendship with her and, although he lusts after her, he remains a gentleman. She treats him more like a brother than a potential lover. Jerome's other influence is Jimmy (Jim Broadbent), a misanthrope given to bouts of violent temper, whose outrage at the hypocrisy of man knows no bounds. Jerome's artistic endeavors aren't going well. His paintings are seen as too conventional by his oddball fellow classmates. And a handsome poser named Jonah (Mat Keeslar) is not only taking the spotlight in Professor Sandiford's class, but has replaced Jerome as the guy Audrey would most like to spend time with. All of this transpires against a gloomy backdrop - the school's environs are being stalked by a serial killer who has just strangled victim #5. If the devil is in the details, then Zwigoff has caged this demon. Art School Confidential starts with that age-old college ritual: moving-in day. 20 seconds took me back 20 years. As far afield as the film goes at some points, there are always recognizable touchstones that keep it grounded. Even as you observe the satire, you recognize nuggets of your college experiences in what these characters are going through. The film freely crosses genres - romance, parody, comedy, mystery - without caring that there are times when the transitions are bumpy and the ingredients begin to curdle. Overall, however, Art School Confidential works because it provides nicely developed characters to accompany us on the journey into black satire, and because it refuses to pull punches. by James Berardinelli 2006

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THE PROMISE - Rated PG 13 - 103 min - Scope

film photo Set in an enchanted, fantastical China where the boundaries between the human and the supernatural are often blurred, "The Promise" occupies a curious landscape somewhere between opera and cartoon. Its director, Chen Kaige, is best known for historical epics like "The Emperor and the Assassin" and "Farewell My Concubine," the first and still the only Chinese film to win the top prize at Cannes. After an unhappy Hollywood adventure, Mr. Chen has returned home, and returned to lavish, large-scale cinema. Reportedly the most expensive movie ever made in mainland China, "The Promise" is full of grand, wide screen set pieces. Some are breathtaking, others merely out of breath. Like his old friend Zhang Yimou, the other international star to emerge from China's "Fifth Generation" of filmmakers, Mr. Chen has rediscovered the ancient genre known as wuxia, which combines tales of doomed love with feats of martial (and cinematic) bravura. Like Mr. Zhang's "House of Flying Daggers," "The Promise" tells a story of longing, honor, disguises and multiple identities. The crux is a romantic triangle involving the vainglorious general Guangming (Hiroyuki Sanada), his shaggy slave Kunlun (Jang Dong-Gun) and Princess Qingcheng (Cecilia Cheung), who languishes under a curse bestowed by a goddess (Chen Hong) with remarkable, gravity-defying hair. According to the goddess's prophecy, Qingcheng is doomed to lose every man she loves, unless winter follows spring, and the course of time reverses. "The Promise" takes its time arranging the busy elements of its plot, and Mr. Chen squanders some emotional intensity along the way. Still, in spite of its longueurs, and in spite of a visual scheme that occasionally resembles a pirated video game, there is enough grandeur and magic in the story - and enough melodramatic conviction from the cast - to make the film at least a partial comeback for this gifted director. (Chinese w/ subtitles) By A. O. SCOTT

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WORDPLAY - Rated PG - 85 min - Flat

film photo There are certain things in life you instinctively hold at arm's length, or they will move in with you and put their feet on the furniture. I've spent enough time working crossword puzzles to know I could become addicted. In the documentary "Wordplay," we observe that to be a crossword champion, you have to be incredibly intelligent; be capable of intuitive, lateral thinking; know everything, and focus your knowledge into a narrow and ultimately meaningless pursuit. Yes, that makes you an obsessive eccentric, but they're really the only interesting people left, don't you sometimes think? The movie centers on the 28th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, hosted every year in Stamford, Conn., by Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzles. It also visits fans of the Times puzzles (which run in the Sun-Times and countless other papers). These include Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, Yankee pitcher Mike Mussina and the Indigo Girls among others. The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity. Patrick Creadon, the director, uses graphics to show us crossword grids with the problem areas highlighted, and then we see the letters being written in. In one especially ingenious montage, he has all of his celebrities working on the same puzzle in interlocking shots. During the final championship round, with three contenders working on giant crosswords on a stage, he makes their progress easy to follow; I can imagine another film in which it would have been incomprehensible. You have to be very well-informed to be a crossword puzzle champion. Scrabble and spelling bees require knowledge of a lot of words, but crosswords require unlimited facts, encyclopedic knowledge, and an ability to figure out the author's unstated assumptions about the nature of the clues. The puzzles can be tricky; both Dole and Clinton remember that on the day after their presidential campaign, one clue asked for the name of the winner. Diabolically, the correct seven-letter word could be either CLINTON or BOBDOLE. All of these people think Merl Reagle is about the best crossword author now active. Mike Mussina, the pitcher, says solving a Reagle puzzle "is like pitching to Barry Bonds." Jon Stewart laments that the Times has banished certain words, including those involving bodily functions: "Words like urine and enema," he says, "are terrific, because they pack a lot of vowels in five letters." We meet some of the stars in the crossword world, including a former champ, Trip Payne, and 20-year-old Tyler Hinman, who is the kid to watch. We also absorb the sense of a family reunion at the crossword tournament; the annual talent show is so democratic, it includes baton twirling. Will Shortz has been the god of this world since he founded the tournament, shortly after taking over as editor of the Times puzzles. How do you prepare for such a career? He went to Indiana University, which permits students to design their own majors, and got a degree in "enigmatology." He created the rules for the annual tournament. The final championship round is incredibly intense. Not only do the finalists stand onstage in front of big boards that everyone can see, but they wear headphones that pump music at them, so they can't hear clues or comments from the audience. There is a finalist this time who rips off his headphones, throws them to the ground and uses a banished word involving a bodily function, and believe me, he has his reasons. BY ROGER EBERT / June 23, 2006

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CLERKS 2 - Rated R - 98 min - Flat

film photo Kevin Smith's directorial debut Clerks has become a masterpiece of raunchy humor and offbeat dialogue, a sort of memorial to the daily worker and the heated-yet pointless-arguments he becomes involved in. The original film is a dialogue-driven machine with characters that audience members actually care about-real people with great senses of humor. So once Clerks II was in production, I had my hopes up. My hopes rose with every screening of that trailer, and once I was finally watching it, I couldn't believe it. Not only was this a good sequel, it was the perfect sequel-a flippant sensation, with so much heart and soul pumped into it, I couldn't believe. Not since Anchorman and Team America have I laughed so hard at a comedy, and it gives great pleasure to say Clerks II is (so far, but it'll be hard to top) the best comedy of the year. Dante and Randal are back in full form, with plenty to say-after nearly a decade of change in the world. This is not a movie for the easily offended, as it will enervate groups ranging from the NAACP to PETA to the average online Lord of the Rings forums. But its comedy is unbeatable, its romance is believable, and when it speaks from the heart-it's unforgettable. And then there's Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith). Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith are again the ubiquitous Jay and Silent Bob, always appearing at the right times to mix with the eclectic humor the director infuses with the scene. Rosario Dawson gives a sweet performance as a wholly believable non-romantic-a woman whose views of "love" are unconventional, yet she cannot hide her love for Dante. And newcomer Trevor Fehrman seems to blend in just right with Smith's little Jersey universe, as he plays Elias, the evangelical Christian teenager with an affinity of Lord of the Rings and Transformers.but don't ask him about his girlfriend. That's a whole other story. Randal describes himself and Dante as being the 'yin and yang', and how true it is for actors Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson. These two average guys who eventually became actors just seem to have the perfect buddy chemistry-one agrees, the other disagrees. The duo are a regular Gallant and Goofus show, arguing which menial tasks they have to do, or whether Anne Frank or Helen Keller was disabled. There's so much to talk about in Clerks II, despite its lack of people and places it involves. But in that one little Mooby's store, a lot goes down. The humor does cross the line at times, and that is sure to off-put many audience members. Joel Siegel from 'Good Morning America' walked out at the beginning of the third act, involving a "donkey show" that results in one of the year's funniest climaxes. Director Smith, who has had trouble in the past sewing together his own filthy humor with serious material (see Dogma, an irreverent skidmark on his resume), but Clerks II does it with taste and precision. The finale has Dante, Randal, Jay, and Silent Bob sitting in jail after their messy goodbye party to Hicks goes awry. Here, despite the occasional curses and swipes, is where the true talent in Smith is revealed. The scene projects a sign of maturity for the director, a coming-of-age revelation for the characters that the average audience will embrace. It highlights the importance of friendship and the life events that can single-handedly alter said friendships, and love-all surrounded by a shell of ribald jokes and profanity. The action gets out of hand, and its offbeat humor seldom upstages the character's human nature, but overall the film is a massive achievement on Smith's part. Imagine if Frank Capra directed the Marx Brothers in one final production-Clerks II is a part Dadaist, part realist portrait of growing up. This is a very different work than Clerks, where Dante and Randal are introduced as pawns in the grueling workplace, then fleshed out as interesting and complex characters. It feels more sturdy, more intimate-and dirtier. As the last scene crescendos into a black-and-white shot of the Quick Stop, you'll already feel back at home. Bravo, Kevin Smith. by Phil Calabro, Editor of The Cineman

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A SCANNER DARKLY - Rated R - 100 min - Flat

Directed and written by Richard Linklater, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick | With Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane

film photo Richard Linklater has been preoccupied with dropout culture since the earliest days of his career: in the loopy Slacker (1991) and the larky Dazed and Confused (1993) he developed archetypal characters fueled by experimental lifestyles, mood- and mind-altering substances, and endless conversation. But more recently, as in the vertiginous Waking Life (2001), he's tracked the gradual disillusionment of the dissolute, the drift of those once-sunny optimists toward an uneasy dystopia. Nowhere is this more evident than in his newest film, A Scanner Darkly, an ambitious animated adaptation of one of the most personal novels by sci-fi visionary Philip K. Dick. Published in 1977 and set in 1994, Dick's lurid, pulpy story follows a quartet of intensely verbal, directionless drug addicts as they lose their grip on reality. Linklater's version is set "seven years from now" in Anaheim, California, a world in which the sort of genial potheads the director once let run wild in Texas have been worn down by a hard hallucinogenic drug known as Substance D. Twenty percent of the population is addicted. "There are no weekend warriors on the D," comments one of its devotees, snaky motor mouth Barris (Robert Downey Jr.). "You're either on it or you haven't tried it." Paranoid doped-up citizens inform on each other as frequently as East Germans under the Stasi, either to save their own skins or to burn their friends and neighbors. Barris fingers his own druggie housemate, Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), whom he happens to owe a considerable amount of back rent, but has no idea how close to the truth he is when he suspects there's more to Arctor than meets the eye. Arctor is leading a double life as a narc named Officer Fred, working in a disguise so convincing he's unidentifiable even to other cops. But he's become addicted to the drugs he's selling and using to blend in with dealers, and his deteriorating job performance has prompted concern among his supervisors. They assign him to a desk job, monitoring holo-scanners hidden in the suburban tract home of a suspected narco-terrorist-the house he shares with Barris and fellow doper Luckman (Woody Harrelson, gleefully taking his hemp advocate persona to another dimension). Fred's job is to spy on Arctor-a daunting task, given they are one and the same. A Scanner Darkly focuses on the nature of reality, perception, and identity, dreaming and waking, hallucinating and projecting, remembering and forgetting. To help actualize these multiple layers of reality Linklater has again teamed up with Bob Sabiston, whose interpolated rotoscoping software-which allows animators to paint over digitally recorded performances. The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of The Matrix and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes? Reeves is at his best conveying Arctor's growing dependency, his isolation, and his angst over his unrequited love for Donna. His pain is all the more moving for its senselessness: how can you really expect to connect when your circuits are fried? As his holo-scanner surveillance of his own life increases, so does his paranoia and despair, and he reflects that "if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed . . . and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too." As uncompromising and biting as it is, A Scanner Darkly resists indicting those who have too much time on their hands or those who've played too heartily. As Linklater wrote in a 1991 essay, opting out of conventional society for many is a deliberate choice that entails a lot of effort and ingenuity. The pursuit of transcendence-spiritually, intellectually, or through chemical assistance-is in and of itself far from suspect, and neither he nor Dick sits in moral judgment of the characters' excesses. But they do flash a warning: danger can lie in too much of a good thing, especially when it threatens human connections and personal integrity. With any luck, at some point in adulthood, reviewing who and where you are, you discover the picture gets better when there's no interference. By Andrea Gronvall, chicagoreader.com

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LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - Rated R - 103 min - Scope

Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin

film photo The first thing we see are the blue eyes of a little girl staring right at us so intently, it seems she could peer right into our souls. Only she's not looking at us. The reflection in her big plastic glasses reveals she's gazing at a beauty pageant on TV, at the moment the winner is being crowned. She's studying this moment, rehearsing it and rehearsing for it. Just a few seconds into "Little Miss Sunshine" we know it's a movie about dreams -- and illusions. A couple days later, after an eventful 700-mile journey with her family in a vintage VW van from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, the girl's dream at last appears within reach. They approach the Ramada Inn where the pageant is being held, they can see the building from the freeway -- it looks close enough to touch, but they can't find the exit that will actually get them there. That moment has a lot to say, not only about the illusive, ever-shifting concrete landscape of Southern California, where you always seem to be moving down some predefined course but never quite arriving -- and about the elusive nature of those American Dreams we all chase, the detours we follow -- and the roads we don't. A gentle family satire and a classic American road movie, "Little Miss Sunshine" harks back to the anti-establishment, counter cultural comedies of the 1970s such as "Smile" or "Harold and Maude" -- satirical fairy tales that preached the virtues of nonconformity over the superficiality of conventional American values. "Little Miss Sunshine" shows us a world in which there's a form, a brochure, a procedure, a job title, a diet, a step-by-step program, a career path, a prize, a retirement community, to quantify, sort, categorize and process every human emotion or desire. Nothing exists that cannot be compartmentalized or turned into a self-improvement mantra about "winners and losers." The opening montage introduces us to the Hoover family one at a time: Olive (Abigail Breslin) is the aspiring beauty queen. Her dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) is an astonishingly unsuccessful motivational speaker. He's pathologically obsessed with winning because he's never tasted it himself. Olive's mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) values family above all else, and her nerves are fraying over trying to hold this one together. After our initial introductions, "Little Miss Sunshine" does something quite extraordinary: It gives us a single, nearly 20-minute scene built around a family dinner of takeout fried chicken in which we learn everything about Hoover family dynamics. It's a daring move that establishes the movie's characters and comedic tone, and then ... road trip! You just won't see a better acted, and better cast, movie than "Little Miss Sunshine." By Jim Emerson Editor, RogerEbert.com / August 4, 2006

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FACTOTUM - Rated R - 94 min - Flat

film photo The writings of Charles Bukowski come to life in Bent Hamer's "Factotum." A sludgy, bottle-of-scotch look at life at the bottom, the film is a drag, but a convincing, entertaining one. A great lead performance by Matt Dillon keeps the episodic film moving forward, with each new tale of depression and vomit darkly hilarious and amazingly engaging. Henry Chinaski (Matt Dillon) is an alcoholic shuffling through job after job while trying to land a writing gig for his short stories. He lives in a world of misery, destitution, and depression, but the people (including Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, and Marisa Tomei) that he encounters on a daily basis shape his life and writing, and slowly push Henry to a small sense of artistic accomplishment. Bent Hamer's "Factotum" is a study of minimalist mood, not some extravagant tale of despair to get lost in. Adapted from the lurid stories of Charles Bukowski (Chinaski was his fictional alter-ego), the picture is far from a gentle portrayal of the writing process, but more a pit-stained, VD-infested, vomit-splattered look at the bottom of the garbage can called life. If the viewer can adjust to the pitch-black temperament of the story, there's some truly appealing filmmaking to witness. There's no real plot to "Factotum," and the picture lacks proper characterizations, motivations, and general structure. Hamer (the charming Norwegian film "Kitchen Stories") uses the episodic nature of Bukowski's writing to arrange a sickly journey of a man who wants to express himself, but can't resist his celebratory urge for failure. Hamer doesn't pull many punches envisioning Chinaski's dreary existence, sticking like glue to all the icky personal defects that define the character. For instance, one scene consists entirely of Chinaski and his lover Jan (Taylor) in grimy apartment taking turns throwing up in a nearby toilet while the morning sun breaks in the fresh new day. Trust me, that's a highlight in the day of Henry Chinaski. It's not quite the stuff that dreams are made of, but Hamer finds a terrific equilibrium to the misery, takes great care exploiting Bukowski's darkly comedic leanings (the film is, against all odds, genuinely funny) and drowning the entire film in a punch-drunk fog to bring the viewer slowly into Chinaski's orbit. There's an odd, burpy rhythm to this miscalculated life as he stumbles around looking for employment, taking anything (pickle factory, bike shop, janitor) that will pay for a bottle, and that directorial patience helps the film from buckling under the weight of all this misery. In playing Chinaski, Matt Dillon transforms himself entirely, using the contradiction of the character's sleepy, slushy exterior with his sharp, literate mind to challenge the audience. There's nothing to embrace here, but Dillon somehow gets Chinasky under the skin, further illuminating Bukowski's primal appeal. Also terrific is Marisa Tomei as one of Chinaski's revolving door of hopeless lovers. Not known for her character work, Tomei smothers her bunny-slipper personality and reemerges as a hard-edged vixen of limited means, who gives herself to Chinaski just for the thrill of bottom feeding. Using vivid, unexpected Minneapolis locations to backdrop Chinaski's travels and isolation (it ain't exactly Hell-A, but it works), "Factotum" exists in its own bleak bubble of isolation. It isn't an accessible picture, for sure, but that defining characteristic works in the film's favor, and it's an absorbing, hypnotic piece of scotch-soaked filmmaking. By BrianOrndorf, filmjerk.com

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WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? - Rated PG - 91 min - Flat

film photo The first startling fact revealed in WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? is that the concept isn't new. A century or more ago, the electric car gave gasoline-powered ones a run for their money before falling by the wayside because of a starter issue. The other startling facts come thick and fast as this documentary by Chris Paine tells the tale of nefarious doings perpetrated for reasons that will raise both the hackles and the righteous indignation of its audience. That part starts with the mock solemnity of a funeral for the eponymous electric car, and then unfolds the story of who and what ended its modern life, unmasking villains and victims, the latter, who, for the most part, have yet to realize that a fast one was perpetrated upon them. Spiced up with celebrity clips, including Tom Hanks who opines that driving an electric car is saving America, the film mostly features smooth-talking corporate spokespersons and passionate advocates for clean energy face off as the film lines up the murder suspects: car companies, consumers, big oil, hydrogen cells, the California Air Resources Board, and battery technology. It then cogently and with a whiff of snarkiness, including showing a sequence under the narration of a corporate shill that directly contradicts what he's saying, either makes the case or debunks it. As it turns out, few are innocent, but the measures taken by the worst offenders boggle the mind. Forced by a state mandate to come up with a zero emissions vehicle to reduce pollution, the car companies, as the film puts it, could either comply or fight. They chose to do both. Manufacturing a car that they would not sell, only lease, mounting an ad campaign for it that scared consumers, and refusing to manufacture enough to meet the demand that arose despite those efforts. One of the commercials is included and its bleak shadows and somber tone is more suitable for warning about the dangers of nuclear fallout. The car companies also sued California to repeal the mandate, a suit that was joined by Bush administration, rife with former oil men and women who are identified by their names and former positions. In considering the oil companies, the film takes the position that there are no reasons beyond greed for them to pay for ads that carefully misinform the public about the drawbacks of vehicles that run on a fuel source in which they would have no share, and at the same time to enthusiastically support hydrogen cells, which is a fuel source from which they could potentially reap profits. And it backs it up. When someone else in the film mentions that the price of gas while their filming only a year ago is over $2 a gallon, it's a concept that comes home in a very real way. Thirty years after Jimmy Carter tried to wean the country off oil, we import more oil and have less fuel-efficient car engines running on it. In the fine tradition of such works as Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly" and Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent", WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? addresses how that happened, but it also asks the larger questions of who manufactures consumer demand and, more insidious, what are the economic and political ramifications for the United States both domestically and in the world economy if it remains hopelessly addicted to oil? There is no way to see this film and not be unsettled by what it reveals. By Andrea Chase , Killer Movie Reviews

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SCOOP - Rated PG13 - 96 min - Flat

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY WOODY ALLEN, STARRING WOODY ALLEN, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, HUGH JACKMAN, IAN MCSHANE

film photo Woody Allen's "Scoop" is a comfortable old shoe. It reflects the filmmaker's proprietary love for his female characters, his adoration of old movies, his new affection for London and his fascination with the American psyche, including his own. It all adds up to a cozy fit. It never matches "Match Point," Mr. Allen's 2005 salute to foggy London nights, but it's a charmer all the same. This time, Woody's out to challenge neither the audience nor himself. He simply wants to supply us with a good time. And he does. Scarlett Johansson plays Sondra Pransky, an American journalism student vacationing in London. She comically discovers a major suspect in a rash of London slayings committed by the Tarot Card Killer. Aiding her efforts is the ghost of master journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane, Deadwood's nasty Al Swearengen). Attempting to aid her, not always successfully, is non-master Brooklyn magician Sid Waterman (Mr. Allen). Sondra's prime suspect is aristocratic, amiable Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman). Strong circumstantial evidence points to Peter, but his natural charm makes him as unlikely a murderer as Cary Grant in Charade. Inevitably, he and Sondra become romantically involved. Like Mr. Allen's most memorable female protagonists, Sondra shows emotional growth. At first she seems too much a prototype of the breathless "girl reporter" stereotype. But it's fun watching her evolve into a resourceful, assured young woman. Like most of Mr. Allen's recent offerings, Scoop borrows from old movies, including his own. Sid and Sondra's constant banter seems a father-daughter variation of 1934's The Thin Man's Nick and Nora. When we first meet deceased journalist Strombel, he's on a ghostly boat navigated by the Grim Reaper, prompting images from Mr. Allen's Love and Death. Coupled with Match Point's caste-conscious story line, one of Scoop's vignettes will make you wonder if the Woodman will ever get A Place in the Sun out of his system. Woody's screenplay also includes variations of lines from his own films. If they don't quite shine like new, they still sparkle. Some observers may feel that one of Sid's best lines reveals Woody's psyche: "I was born to the Jewish persuasion but converted to Narcissism." Woody manages to play a befuddled, awkward, sometimes irritating character without giving an irritating performance. And the rest of the cast performs with credible comic bounce. Possibly directed to initially overdo the cub reporter routine, Ms. Johansson eventually proves an engaging and endearing heroine. Mr. Jackman effortlessly delivers the kind of charm that could be either spontaneous or fatally deceptive. Mr. McShane's spectral reporter has the edge you'd expect of a ghost on a mission. Some may dismiss Scoop as "minor Woody Allen" because it doesn't traffic in major psychological probes. But it makes you smile. And that's not such a minor accomplishment. By PHILIP WUNTCH / Movie Critic

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THE HEART OF THE GAME - Rated PG13 - 97 min - Flat

film photo "The Heart of the Game" tells the story of Darnellia Russell, a young woman who leads her Seattle high school basketball team to a state championship, graduates with honors, and is a mommy -- despite the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, which sues to prevent her from playing during her senior year. It is also the story of Bill Resler, a professor of tax law who looks like Santa Claus and coaches like a saint. "Have fun!" he says after every time out. "The Heart of the Game," like "Hoop Dreams," is a basketball documentary that began with no idea of where its story would lead. It begins in the classroom of Resler, a professor at the University of Washington, who hears that Roosevelt High School is looking for a new women's basketball coach, and applies for the job. A man in his 50s, he has three grown daughters and always followed their teams; now he gets to coach, although he keeps the day job and we get the impression that as coach his salary is little or nothing. Resler's coaching philosophy is simple: "A full-court press the whole game. No offensive strategy, just run like hell." He runs his first team up and down the court until they drop, but he turns Roosevelt's Roughriders around and they start winning. "You can't defend against them," an opponent complains, "because even they don't know what they're going to do next." Resler names each of his Roughrider teams. We live through the seasons of the Pack of Wolves, the Tropical Storm, the Pride of Lions. He takes them to state finals Darnellia's sophomore and junior year; then she gets pregnant by the boy she's been dating since ninth grade. She drops out to have the baby. Her mother and grandmother support her, and she applies to return for a senior year. That's when the WIAA steps in and sues to prevent her from playing again, threatening the Roughriders with forfeiting every game. The team votes to play anyway. It's here that the film's politics become fascinating. The interscholastic association's bylaws allow exceptions in the cases of "hardships," but the WIAA says pregnancy is not a hardship: "She made her own choice." Callers to local talk shows argue against her. But Seattle lawyer Kenyon E. Luce volunteers to represent Darnellia in court, and wins. The WIAA appeals. His argument is that since male players are not punished when they're responsible for a pregnancy, it is discriminatory to penalize a pregnant woman. Consider the WIAA argument: "She made her own choice." Yes, she did. She chose to have her baby. If she had chosen to have an abortion, she could have played next season, no questions asked. It is here that the values of the talk show callers get confused. They apparently believe Darnellia should have the baby, but be penalized for having it. Yes, abstinence is also a choice, but tell that to a weeping teenage girl locked in the bathroom with a drugstore pregnancy kit. Darnellia's final season combines the legal court battle with a cross-town rivalry; its traditional arch-enemy Garfield is now coached by the women's basketball legend Joyce Walker. Garfield has a tall team; Darnellia is 5-7, and Resler lists all of his starters as "guards." Director Ward Serrill, who has been following Resler since the day he took his job, is allowed into practice sessions and halftime locker rooms, but not into the "inner circle," a meeting of the team members themselves, with no one else present -- including Resler. "Look in their eyes!" Resler screams from the sidelines, a reminder that lions are the only animal that will return man's gaze. Is he obsessed with winning? There are more important things. Since the whole team voted to risk forfeiting their season, he decides that every single team member will play in the state championship game, no matter what the score is. "The Heart of the Game" has the potential, like "Hoop Dreams," to win a large audience. And Darnellia Russell, like William Gates and Arthur Agee in that film, has the potential to use basketball as a way to graduate from college and have a better life. BY ROGER EBERT / June 16, 2006

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HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS - Rated PG - 84 min - Scope

film photo Walden Media, the studio that prides itself on faithful adaptations of beloved children's books from Holes to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, makes a radical departure in co-producing Thomas Rockwell's 1973 book, How to Eat Fried Worms. Now, instead of Billy betting his friend $50 that he can eat 15 worms in 15 days as in the book, Billy bets a bully that he can eat 10 worms on one Saturday by 7 p.m., with the loser having to go to school with worms in his pants. Thanks to the thoughtful, entertaining screenplay by director Bob Dolman, it works. Mr. Dolman pulls out a winning performance from Luke Benward as Billy, an 11-year-old fifth-grader who just moved to town and is determined to re-create himself as something tougher than the fearful kid with the queasy stomach he had been. But Mr. Dolman also tells a touching story about bullies that makes you wonder how kids get that way and how they can be transformed. And you gotta love those worm-eating scenes. In the book, Billy gets to cook the worms any way he likes. In the Austin-shot film, the red-headed freckle-faced bully, Joe (Adam Hicks), puts his posse in charge of the culinary duties. And they come up with some doozies: fried, boiled, smashed, squished and microwaved with everything from The Green Slusher (puréed with spinach) to The Burning Fireball (a hot sauce-spiked stew) to The Barfmallow (sweetened with marshmallow fluff). In too many kid-oriented films, the child actors mouth off like small, sassy adults, in that creepy way that little girls are painted and teased and costumed to look like mini-models in beauty pageants. Here, the kids, refreshingly, act like kids. Hallie Kate Eisenberg gives a fine, understated performance as Erika, a girl who shrugs off bullies daily to do the right thing, such as helping Billy when he's lost on the first day. And kids may remember the voice, if not the face, of Alexander Gould, who voiced Nemo in Finding Nemo. Here, he shows comic flair as Twitch, who helps Joe conjure up worm cuisine. Best of all, the script doesn't skirt tough moments. Billy starts off giving his brother, 5-year-old Woody (cute Ty Panitz), a really hard time. It's so bad that Woody tells Erika, who baby-sits him while Billy eats worms, that he wishes his brother were dead. It's a punch in the gut moment, but it should ring true for many veterans of sibling battles. The brothers' relationship has its arc, but it's not one with a big speech and hug at the end. Instead, when Billy observes the ugly aftermath of another boy's sibling relationship gone wrong, we see him thinking. Later, we get a sense that Billy may have changed when he makes a friendly joke the next time Woody goads him. The worms drive the laughs. But it's little moments like this that give the film heart. By NANCY CHURNIN / Staff Writer, The Dallas Morning News

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HALF NELSON - Rated R - 107 min - Flat

film photo "Half Nelson" offers an opportunity to marvel, once again, at the dazzling talent of Ryan Gosling for playing young men as believable as they are psychologically trip-wired. In a performance spectacular and ''invisible'' at the same time, the Canadian-born former child actor, who blew the roof off five years ago as a neo-Nazi in The Believer (and then went on to make The Notebook halfway palatable), stars as Dan Dunne, a charismatic, dedicated inner-city Brooklyn junior high school teacher by day. By night, though, he's something else - just another white, middle-class crackhead. Dan, in other words, is a disaster waiting to happen, and a heartbreaker, too: He cares about his kids (most of them African-American) with the fervor of a valiant inner-city educator - but with none of the cliché heroics we've seen throughout Stand and Deliver history. Instead, when he wastes himself at night, he's a wreck the next day, too (both in the classroom and in the gym where he coaches basketball). And that vulnerability doesn't go unnoticed by Drey (newcomer Shareeka Epps, a poised, powerful match for Gosling's intensity), a prematurely wise 13-year-old who has seen drug dealing up close in her own family. There's no easy way out of Dan's self-imposed headlock of self-destruction and disillusionment. Half Nelson conspicuously offers no tidy resolution or concluding uplift, which only makes the movie that much more trustworthy, and the unflashy, documentary-style filmmaking more artful. Working from a script he co-wrote with Anna Boden (shot three years ago as a short called Gowanus, Brooklyn), first-time feature director Ryan Fleck keeps the story low to the ground, organic, honest. In response, every choice the star makes is fresh, from the way his Dan rubs his bloodshot eyes to how he attempts to straighten up his crummy apartment. Without ever appearing to act, Gosling is the most exciting actor of his generation. Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly 08/09/06

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JET LI'S FEARLESS - Rated PG-13 - 103 min - Scope

film photo While the bone-snapping energy of this period martial arts movie is thrilling, it's the peace that Jet Li brings to the material that convinces the most. A smart, sharply made action spectacle, "Fearless" might bring in the masses looking for the slapfight, but you just might leave the theater with an unexpected dose of enlightenment. In turn of the century China, young Huo Yuanjia (Jet Li) desires to become his land's most famous fighter, much to the disapproval of his father. Training himself to become a lethal weapon, Yuanjia soon achieves his goal, and proceeds to decimate his competition. Consumed by the thrill of victory and the lust of fame, Yuanjia's egotistical stance brings him to the dark places of his soul. When tragedy leaves him spiritually shattered, Yuanjia begins a long journey to self-discovery, relearning the ethics of martial arts along the way, and preparing for a fight competition in Shanghai where he can showcase his newfound appreciation of sportsmanship and respect. With "Fearless," Jet Li bids a fond farewell to the martial arts genre that made him a superstar. Looking to exit the business of bashing heads on a graceful note, Li selected this delicate true story to best display his philosophies on fighting and honor. Li and director Ronny Yu are both returning to their homeland after years toiling away in Hollywood to mixed results. "Fearless" is a labor of love piece that uses storytelling methods coasting on operatic heights, allowing the talent to pass along their profound messages on the futile nature of violence to even the most dense of audience members. Yu is traditionally a fairly showboat director, but here he slows his visual tempo and finds a perfect sync with Yuanjia's ideas and passions. "Fearless" is an elegant film, and gets away with a noticeable lack of subtlety because Yu and Li commit entirely to the bigger picture of blunt communication. If "Fearless" keeps Yu contained, the material allows Li to free himself up as an actor after of years of stoic, tough guy roles. Building off his vulnerable work in "Unleashed," Li moves even closer to a rounded, fully realized performance. This is the most deeply shaded work I've seen from Li yet, and I was impressed by the way the actor could embrace the largeness of the screenwriting without submitting to melodrama. Yuanjia's life covers some extraordinary twists and turns, and Li registers each emotion with elegance, and seems lit from within when the character starts on his pathway to enlightenment. Just because "Fearless" is a movie about the insanity of revenge doesn't mean Yu and Li haven't failed to provide the requisite ass kickery to appease fans. Bringing on legendary choreographer Yuen Wo Ping as an architect for Yuanjia's battles, "Fearless" charges hard at the camera with its whirlwind menagerie of wire-assisted competition combat. At the center of the hurricane is Li, tossing around contestants with ease while shuffling through a laundry list of martial art styles. There's little argument from me that "Fearless" is thrilling, but in the end I was more taken with Yuanjia's personal journey from god to servant. In this day and age when the world grows more unstable by the second, Li's efforts here to encourage reflection on the ideas of inner peace and the uselessness of violence are resoundingly welcome. By Brian Orndorf, FilmJerk.com September 22, 2006 (Chinese w/ subtitles)

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THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED - NR - 97 min - Flat

film photo "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," Kirby Dick's cunningly outraged documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America and its infamous, dogged ratings board, is a movie that might just shake up the world of movies. People have been complaining about the MPAA for so long, and the gripes are by now so familiar - the system is arbitrary! Sex is judged more harshly than violence! The stigma of the X rating was never resolved by NC-17! - that it can seem a little like grousing about dorm food or campaign finance law. There may be good reasons to object to the status quo, but that doesn't mean that anyone expects anything to change. Yet "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" has a bright, dishy spirit, an eagerness to provoke of the very sort that the MPAA has always tried to put in its place. Filmmakers like Kimberly Peirce, John Waters, Mary Harron, Kevin Smith, and Atom Egoyan share their inside-the-star-chamber horror stories about the relatively unsensational scenes (a lengthy female orgasm in Boys Don't Cry; a mention of the word ''felching'' in A Dirty Shame) that resulted in their films being threatened with the box office oblivion that is NC-17. We're made privy to the ratings board's obsession with pelvis thrusts, as well as details of its hypocritical double standards - the preferential treatment given to studio over independent films, and to straight over gay sex. Matt Stone, of the South Park duo, is quite amusing recalling his experiences with the indie midnight movie Orgazmo versus the big-studio Team America: World Police, which was submitted with a great deal more sick puppet sex than the filmmakers ever intended to use (so that the board could pat itself on the back for nixing something naughty). The liveliest gambit in This Film Is Not Yet Rated was Dick's decision to hire a private detective to expose the identities of the ratings board members. Yanking these professional fuddy-duddies out of the shadows, Michael Moore-style, turns out to be just the hot poker this debate needed. As Dick and his investigator, Becky Altringer, who's sort of like Ann B. Davis with attitude, sit in a car in downtown Los Angeles, watching the board members drive out of the MPAA's slightly sinister mini-mall complex, with its tinted windows and security guard, the movie develops the cheekiness of a put-on conspiracy thriller. With a hidden camera, Dick, in a restaurant, photographs veteran rater Joann Yatabe, a 61-year-old mother of grown children who stares at him with her Imelda Marcos scowl. Yes, she has just been ambushed, but that pinched, joyless face speaks volumes. It's the face of a punisher, and it becomes the film's emblem of how the ratings board turned from a defensible watchdog into an executioner of art. In 1968, when the MPAA's ratings system was created by Jack Valenti as a more enlightened successor to the Production Code, Hollywood films were just starting to grow violent, dangerous, and erotically explicit, and the groundbreaking ones, like Bonnie and Clyde and Rosemary's Baby, were disturbing to just about everyone - even liberal film critics. The ratings board was conceived as a buffer for children, but also as a force to ward off government regulation, and that, more or less, is how it worked. So what changed? In the '80s and '90s, pop culture became more extreme (slasher flicks, porn on demand, gangsta rap, Basic Instinct), yet Hollywood, in tandem, grew more homogenized, less enamored of raciness for the sake of creativity. The key point I'd criticize "This Film Is Not Yet Rate" for failing to explore is the way that the gradually increasing puritanism of the MPAA now serves the consumerist priorities of a PG-13-centric Hollywood. If everything is blander, then in theory it becomes more marketable. Which is certainly why the industry has winked at the board's transformation into a vehicle of censorship. There, I finally said it. The C-word! But does it truly apply? The ratings board's chosen mission is to protect children. That it undoubtedly does. Yet over the years, as This Film stingingly captures, too many filmmakers of too much ambition have had to compromise or destroy too much of their work to now consider this organization the safeguard of an open society. As the raters sit in their screening rooms, in dour anonymity (at least until now), toting up the bad words and the body parts, timing orgasms, turning the very force of their reactions into a strike against the movies they're watching, they have become bureaucrats of oppression, starkly out of touch with their era. To save the children, this agency of white-rubber-glove lab technicians now treats adults the way the rest of Hollywood does, as if too many movies made in freedom could kill them. Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

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THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP - Rated R - 105 min - Flat

film photo Gliding airily past the occasional narrative rough patch, Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep is a beguiling romantic fantasy of extravagant imagination and whimsical good humor. The director/co-writer of the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) brings a childlike sense of playfulness to this loosely autobiographical collage of animation and live action starring the wonderful Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries) as Gondry's cinematic alter ego. Playing an introverted eccentric shuffling back and forth between his real and waking lives, the gifted and supernally handsome young Mexican actor holds The Science of Sleep together, even as it becomes increasingly clear that Gondry is more visual stylist than storyteller. The Science of Sleep is set in contemporary Paris, which Gondry and cinematographer Jean-Louis Bompoint shoot in drab, wintry colors to suggest the mundane existence of artist/inventor Stephane Miroux (Bernal). Languishing in a dead-end job at a calendar company, where his boss regularly shoots down his quirky ideas, Stephane much prefers the magically unfettered world of his dreams. Here, as the star of "Stephane TV," he shares recipes for dreams, and lectures imaginary viewers on "The Science of Sleep." Whatever he experiences during the day finds it way to that night's episode of "Stephane TV," yet over time, Stephane's dreams and everyday life begin to overlap, often at the worst times-and much to the frustration of his neighbor Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is charmed and exasperated by him. Unless Stephane stops looking for happiness with Stephanie primarily in his dreams, he may ruin his chance at real-life happiness with the woman across the hall who may be his soul mate. Fresh from his disturbing performance as a sociopath wreaking havoc on a Texas family in The King, Bernal shifts effortlessly into his role here as the goofily endearing, Walter Mittyesque Stephane, seemingly content to dream away his life. Whether he's lost in one of Gondry's outrageous and witty dreamscapes (conjured with deliberately simple, stop-motion animation techniques, rather than gleaming CGI) or bumbling his courtship of Gainsbourg (the spitting image of her mother, 1960s "bird" Jane Birkin), Bernal is winning throughout The Science of Sleep. He imbues Stephane with a wistful, puppyish longing that's neatly offset by the character's hilariously awkward, often tactless remarks. As for the pale, reed-thin Gainsbourg (21 Grams), she brings a quick intelligence and delicacy to Stephanie that makes Stephane's infatuation with her wholly believable. For much of the film's running time, its dazzling imagery and clever wit are captivating, but just as Stephanie tires of Stephane's erratic behavior, so does the viewer tire of Gondry's repetitious narrative. In lieu of a fully realized storyline that builds to a satisfying conclusion, he floods the screen with striking but ultimately wearying dreamscapes that are an all too apt reflection of the hero's arrested development. At times, you want to reach into the screen and shake both Stephane and Gondry awake. Yet in the end, there's so very much that's charming and inventive about Gondry's highly personal film that you're willing to forgive its storytelling lapses and immerse yourself in The Science of Sleep. - TIM KNIGHT, REEL.COM

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - DEAD MAN'S CHEST - Rated PG13 - 151 min - Scope

film photo Picking up a few months after the end of the first film, Dead Man's Chest quickly puts the players together again for another adventure. It seems that Pirate Jack, Miss Elizabeth, and Mr. Turner are all wanted (along with the former Commander Norrington) for acts of piracy, and so it is to Mr. Turner and Miss Swann that an agent for the East India Ink Company comes. But it isn't them that the company wants. Not at all. What they want is Jack Sparrow, and more specifically his compass. Fearing that he and his betrothed will be killed, Will Turner agrees to find Jack and to retrieve the pirate's prized compass in exchange for a full pardon for all involved. Things are not as easy as all that though as Jack won't part with his compass unless Will helps him with a wee task - the finding of a certain strange key. Not knowing how difficult and dangerous this task will be, Will re-joins Jack's crew and the two head off to find the key. The key goes to a box that holds the still-beating heart of Davy Jones, a monstrous demon of the deep that Sparrow has pledged his soul to. Upon the Flying Dutchmen, Jones's ship, are lost souls that had been left to the sea and who, fearing death, have pledged themselves to make up the crew of the haunted ship. Though Jack and Will are able to procure the key to the chest that contains Jones's heart, finding, keeping, and retaining that chest are entirely different things altogether, and when Commander Norrington resurfaces to join Jack's crew and Elizabeth throws in with the group as well, things get very complicated and very dangerous. As the film reaches its climax the question is raised - how much is Jack willing to risk to retain his soul? Being a cliffhanger, things are left decidedly undecided, but rest assured friend, there is at least one surprise awaiting you at the end of this film, one that should leave for a very interesting finale. Me, I loved the hell out of this movie. There, I said it. I loved it. What I love about this film is that it slips right into the vibe of the first film but ups the ante. Things are more dangerous, the story is bigger, and we learn more about who these people are and what they're about. I love that some things we thought we knew are changed, and that some characters change. The direction is just as engaging and involving, the acting is just as fun, and the scope of the entire film is much bigger. What I loved more than anything were Davy Jones and his crew, which is some of the best creature effects work I have seen in probably a decade. I realize they are digital effects, and I wish they weren't, but if filmmakers can utilize their effects as well as Gore Verbinski does, and can achieve what the actors here do, then hell, bring it on. Davy and his crew are scary, real characters and they add a strong element of Lovecraftian horror to the film that really had me giggling. As for the ill, well, hell, it's a cliffhanger so that's always a drag. There is a lot to the film, and it gets convoluted as hell. Who is after whom, what is after which, and then you leave it all up in the air. Wha? For some, too, the addition of monsters and more elements of the macabre will turn them right off as it's not as much of a hardcore pirate movie as the first one. But, really, seriously, people will always whine that the first of ANY series is better than the movies that come after it, so who really cares? A rare case of a damned good movie making the money it deserves at the box office and I couldn't be happier. If I had my druthers they'd end the series with the third film and let the series die a dignified death but we KNOW that won't happen. Oh well, I am just hoping that the third is as good as the second and I can live with that. And remember, don't be like me - stay until the credits are over. It's worth it. Review by: The Grim Ringler, www.jackasscritics.com

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INFAMOUS - Rated R - 118 min - Flat

film photo Another year, another movie about Truman Capote. However, despite covering much the same ground as last year's Capote, Douglas McGrath's Infamous doesn't feel like a remake. The events are the same, but the tone and perspective are different. Capote was at times cool and antiseptic, but Infamous is warmer and more emotionally satisfying. The deep-rooted cynicism that characterized Capote isn't missing here, but it has been muted. It's fair to argue that, while Capote may have the better lead acting performance, Infamous may be more accessible. In the autumn of 1959, Truman Capote (Toby Jones) reads a newspaper article about a quadruple murder on a Kansas farm. Intrigued and thinking it might make a good topic for a magazine article or a non-fiction novel, he enlists his good friend, Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock), to accompany him on the journey to Kansas. Once there, he contends with a dour prosecutor, Alvin Dewey (Jeff Daniels), who initially rebuffs Capote's request for "special access" until the eccentric New Yorker regales him with stories of his interaction with Humphrey Bogart and John Huston. Once the killers, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and Dick Hickock (Lee Pace), are found, Capote visits them in jail. It takes little effort for the author to coax Hickcock into talking, but the more intellectual Smith is reticent. Eventually, he and Capote bond, and this leads to an unconsummated love affair. Following the execution of Smith and Hickcock, Capote has an ending to his book, In Cold Blood. Its publication represents both Capote's triumph and his ruin. He will never complete another novel and, although he will live until 1984, the final two decades of his life will be unhappy ones. There's no question that Infamous has a higher profile cast than Capote. The supporting players include Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, and Jeff Daniels in significant parts, and Peter Bogdanovich, Hope Davis, Sigourney Weaver, and Gwyneth Paltrow in "color" roles. Bullock is effective as Harper Lee, coming on equal par with Catherine Keener's interpretation of the same character in Capote. Daniel Craig, soon to be known (and typecast?) as James Bond, provides a powerful and emotionally raw portrayal of Perry Smith. He outshines his co-stars, including Toby Jones. It is perhaps unfair to compare Jones to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, since the latter provided what could be considered the definitive Capote. His Oscar win was deserved. Jones inhabits Hoffman's shadow; for the most part, his performance works, although there are times early in the film when he seems to be feeling for the role. Hoffman managed to exhibit Capote's eccentricities without turning the man into a caricature. Jones isn't quite as successful. However, once he gets into the meat of the story, he brings out the writer's humanity. Infamous illustrates how Capote becomes caught in his own trap. In order for his book to achieve the balance that will make it unique, Smith's viewpoint has to be represented. To get that, Capote must give the convict what Lee describes as "what he wants" - a kindred spirit. For this to happen, Capote must bare his soul. He achieves what he desires, but at a price. He comes to care for Smith to the point where they both wonder if they are doomed soul mates. In the end, Capote becomes conflicted - for his book to have the "proper" ending, the man he loves must die by the hangman's noose. To interrupt the linear chronology, director Douglas McGrath inserts "talking head" interviews with Capote's contemporaries. It's not clear when these supposed interviews are intended to take place, although it's after Capote's death. The segments provide useful background information while contributing a quasi-documentary feel. It's almost like watching a History Channel biography, where conversations with real people are interspersed with re-creations of scenes from the subject's life. Since Capote and Infamous were both in production at the same time, it's unfair to label either as the work of a copycat. Superficially, they are so similar, it's almost eerie (and a testament to how fascinating this era of Capote's life is to current filmmakers). It's the differences in approach that makes both movies worth watching on their own terms. Capote is the more intellectual of the two films; Infamous is the more emotional. They exist to complement, not eclipse, one another. Review by James Berardinelli, reelviews.net

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THE US VERSUS JOHN LENNON - Rated PG13 - 99 min - Flat

film photo Although it paints a somewhat idealized portrait of the legendary rocker/political provocateur, The U.S. vs. John Lennon is nonetheless a fascinating, richly detailed documentary chronicling the "smart Beatle's" evolution from pop idol to persona non grata-at least in the eyes of President Nixon, who reportedly placed John Lennon on his notorious "enemies list." Skillfully combining archival footage, Yoko Ono's home movies, and interviews with everyone from Gore Vidal to G. Gordon Liddy, filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld explore Lennon's peace activism against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent decades in recent American history, 1966-1976. The result is an eye-opening, at times infuriating exposé of the covert tactics "Tricky Dick" Nixon and his cronies used in their efforts to deport Lennon in the 1970s. Made with Ono's full cooperation-hence the film's tendency towards hagiography-The U.S. vs. John Lennon introduces the Liverpudlian as a rebel whose distrust of authority dates from childhood. Never shy about speaking his mind, Lennon famously incurred the record-burning wrath of Bible Belt fundamentalists in 1966 by saying about The Beatles, "We're more popular than Jesus Christ now." But while the uproar surrounding this statement would gradually subside, Lennon would stoke even greater controversy with his anti-Vietnam War activism. With Ono at his side, Lennon began staging political demonstrations, like the "Bed-In for Peace," and taking up the causes of Sixties-era radicals like Black Panther Bobby Seale and yippie Abbie Hoffman. But it was his appearance at a 1971 benefit concert for John Sinclair-a political activist arrested for selling two joints to an undercover cop-that ultimately put Lennon on Nixon's watch-list. Three days after the concert, the Michigan Supreme Court released Sinclair (he'd received an unduly harsh prison sentence for marijuana possession) in a decision that many attributed to Lennon's appeal on the activist's behalf. Lennon's apparent political influence was not lost on either Nixon or the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who stepped up the agency's monitoring of Lennon. Thus began the musician-cum-activist's painful and prolonged struggle against the Nixon Administration, which tried to get him deported on the pretext of a 1960s-era drug bust in London. In addition to the revealing home movies and stills that Ono generously shared with the filmmakers, the documentary offers a wealth of extraordinary archival footage covering key moments between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Seventies, from the 1968 Democratic National Convention to Nixon's 1974 resignation. And Leaf and Scheinfeld have corralled an incredibly diverse array of public figures from the era-Walter Cronkite, Noam Chomsky, and Tom Smothers, to name three-to comment on both Lennon's activism and the corrupt Nixon administration. Yet while it's consistently engrossing, the film would ultimately be much stronger if Leaf and Scheinfeld had tempered their admiration for Lennon and taken a more even-handed look at this undeniably witty, intelligent, and passionate man, whose flaws and failings they gloss over a bit too neatly. If they had focused solely on the political activism, their bias wouldn't be so glaring, but Leaf and Scheinfeld seemingly can't resist the urge to romanticize Lennon the man, and his relationship with Ono, by conveniently ignoring some of the more unpleasant truths and consequences of their actions. It's not that Lennon comes across as some "peacenik" martyr-he was too irreverent and self-aware, as the footage of his talk show appearances indicate-but The U.S. vs. John Lennon comes perilously close to framing his fight with the U.S. Government in overly simplistic, black-and-white terms. In the end, however, the film's many strengths far outweigh its flaws. Whether you're a Lennon fan, or an American history aficionado, The U.S. vs. John Lennon is an illuminating documentary that captures a time of sociopolitical unrest with strikingly vivid immediacy. - TIM KNIGHT, reel.com

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BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES - NR - 90 min - DVD

film photo Never have so few companies controlled so much of the music played on the radio and for sale at retail stores. At the same time, there are more bands and more ways to discover their music than ever. Music seems to have split in two - the homogenous corporate product that is spoon-fed to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country. BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES tells the story of American music at this precarious moment. Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation. The answers they found on this journey-ultimately, the promise that the future holds-are what makes BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES both riveting and exhilarating. At the heart of BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES are interviews with musicians, industry insiders, music critics, and fans that reveal how music has reached this moment of truth. Featured performances from a truly diverse group of artists, ranging from The Dave Matthews Band and Erykah Badu to Seattle street performers and Mississippi gospel singers show us that great music is always out there. as long as you know where to look. BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES will renew your passion for great music, and inspire you to play an active part in its future. - See more at: beforethemusicdies.com

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