SALT: 3 STARS
 
Movies don't come more "ripped from the headlines" than "Salt." The story of a sleeper agent living in the United States unfolded in real life recently but wasn't nearly as exciting or as silly as its on-screen counterpart.
 
When we first meet Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) she is an American hero after surviving a brutal interment in North Korea. "Do you know what she's done for her country?" asks her boss (Liev Schrieber). Actually we don't, but she did have a nasty black eye when she was rescued. She's married to Michael Krause—the world's leading arachnologist—and is happily riding a desk at an undercover CIA office in Washington. Everything suddenly changes one day, however, when a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) shows up with a wild tale of a sleeper agent named Evelyn Salt who is going to assassinate the Russian president in order to trigger a war. Accused, she makes a run for it—searching for her husband and the truth.
 
"Salt" has a Cold War inspired plot that even James Bond creator Ian Fleming, no stranger to elaborate plot musings—he once created a villain who killed his victims with liquid gold—would have rejected as over-the-top.
 
Logic flies out the window early on, leaving room only for outlandish plot turns unlikely twists and an ending that can only be described as preposterous.
 
That said, "Salt" is a lot of fun but it's not a story that will hold up to a great deal of scrutiny. Hitchcock would have referred to it as a refrigerator movie. It seems to (mostly) make sense while you are watching it, but later, when you are home in front of the fridge making a snack and thinking about the film you realize it doesn't hold up. But that's OK when the action is as relentlessly paced and fun as Phillip Noyce delivers here. The escalation from accused spy to fugitive happens very quickly—it's exaggerated—but once the action starts it covers for the trite dialogue—"You're not safe with me!"—and silly plotting.
 
The part of Evelyn Salt was originally written for Tom Cruise, who eventually walked away because he felt the story too closely resembled his “Mission Impossible” movies. Good thing too. Cruise would have brought his usual hero persona along with him, taking away some of the down-and-dirty pleasure of the film. Besides it's way more fun to see Angelina Jolie jump from building to building and use dead guys as a silencer for her gun. Cruise would have insisted on less good-or-evil ambiguity. Jolie oozes bad girl vibes and it works very well here. As Evelyn she's two parts bombshell, one part “MacGyver” and all badass. She has more lives than Felix the Cat, but that's all part of the fun.
 
Less than fun is the end of the movie. There will be no spoilers here, but the preposterous finale makes me think that a.) it was written to set "Salt" up for a sequel—can “Salt and Pepper” be far behind? or b.) Noyce didn't know how to end it and went for the easiest and least logical way out.
 
"Salt" is silly fun. A summer spy romp that works as an action film but doesn't bear up to scrutiny.

THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: 3 ½ STARS

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a remake of the famous segment in Disney’s “Fantasia” in name only. Sure there are a few lively mops and other cleaning supplies that come to life, echoing Mickey Mouse’s symphonic cartoon, but in the new version there is also wild special effects, Nic Cage’s crazy hair and best of all, Jay Baruchel as the title character.

The story begins in 740 AD, when Merlin is betrayed by one of his three apprentices. A battle between loyal Merlinians Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) and Veronica (Monica Bellucci) and the turncoat Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina) ends when Veronica is trapped in a magic nesting doll called a Grimhold with Horvath and evil sorceress Morgana (Alice Krige). Cut to the 21st century. Balthazar has searched for one thousand years to find “the Prime Merlinian,” the only person powerful enough to kill Morgana and free Veronica from the Grimhold. The centuries long search ends up at the door of Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) a nerdy New York City physics student who sounds a lot like the guy from “How to Train Your Dragon.” In the coming days Dave not only learns about sorcery, but also a thing or two about self confidence, his love interest (played by ScarJo look-a-like Teresa Palmer) and how to defeat the forces of evil.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is the second Jerry Bruckheimer movie of the summer season, following “The Prince of Persia.” Like “The Prince of Persia” this movie takes a thin premise and stretches it to feature length, but unlike the ill fated “Prince” “Apprentice” dishes up fun characters to go along with the trademark Bruckheimer action.

Baruchel, Cage and Molina ground the movie with, if not exactly believable characters—I believe Cage as a thousand year old sorcerer, but I don’t believe that hair is actually his!—then characters that can hold their own against the film’s frenetic pace and wild action. Director Jon “National Treasure” Turteltaub keeps the pedal to the metal, plunking in an action sequence about every ten minutes. The action is typical Bruckheimer CGI overdrive but is inventive and mostly family friendly. There are a couple of images that may disturb very young kids, but anyone over the age of ten shouldn’t find anything here they haven’t already seen in videogames.

Cage and Molina bring a larger-than-life feel to their characters. Cage isn’t exactly in his extreme “Bad Lieutenant” form here, but he is clearly having fun; ditto Molina who clearly relishes playing the bad guy.  

Those guys eat up the scenery but it is Baruchel who provides the heart of the film. He brings the same charm and way with physical comedy to this mega-budget film as he does to the smaller character based movies he makes like “The Trotsky.” He’s appealing and even when the romance aspect of the story starts to drag Baruchel keeps us on side.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a great air conditioner movie for these thermometer-busting summer days.

SPLICE: 3 ½  STARS

They grow up so quickly, don’t they? One day they are slimy bipedal creatures who look like a cross between Yul Brenner and a slug, the next they are flesh eating, underwater breathing alien looking supermodel types. At least that’s the way it is in “Splice,” a new sci fi thriller starring Sarah Polley and Oscar winner Adrien Brody, about a creature who goes from newborn to troubled teen in a matter of weeks.

Clive (Brody) and Elsa (Polley) are bio chemists (and boyfriend and girlfriend) who develop a splicing technology which binds the DNA from multiple animals to create new life and, possibly, cures for everything from Parkinson’s to cancer. It’s the medical breakthrough of the century. The next logical step is to fuse human and animal DNA but despite their success in the lab, their employers, the evil conglomerate Newstead Pharma, is wary of the publicity such a radical step would incur. Secretly the pair go rogue, continue their experiments, and give “birth” to a new life form they dub Dren (that’s “nerd” backwards), a tailed creature resembling a bald dinosaur. Clive, conflicted by the ethical and moral issues of cloning, wants to kill the creature but Elsa won’t have it. “Human cloning is illegal,” she says, “but this won’t be entirely human.” Dren develops at a rapid pace, changing from unrecognizable organism to something akin to a humanoid kangaroo. Soon though problems arise. The creature becomes Daddy’s little… whatever, leaving Elsa to deal with Dren’s difficult puberty.

Like the hybrid creature at the center of the action “Splice” is a cross of genres—part b-movie sci fi and part body horror à la David Cronenberg. Liberally mixing “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Frankenstein” and “The Brood,” “Splice” examines ideas of life and death, of playing God, of what is human (and what is not) and even touches on Woody Allen style relationships. There are plenty of moral concepts to chew on, many ruminations to be had on what it is to be human, but only if you look past the b-movie thrills director Vincenzo Natali slathers on with a trowel.

Splice goes places that bigger budget science fiction wouldn’t dare to tread. This isn’t the enviro-friendly sci fi of James Cameron or the space opera of George Lucas. No, this has more in common with the exploitation films of Roger Corman. There’s an icky creature, some scientist sexy time and loads of crazy science. Corman might not have been as successful at layering in the love, jealousy and real human emotions Natali heaps on his characters but I think the b-movie king would approve of “Splice’s” overall tone. It’s doesn’t skimp on the blood and guts but it’s funnier than you think it is going to be, wilder than expected—Sarah Polley’s maternal instincts towards Dren are right out of “Mommie Dearest”—and takes several unexpected twists and turns.

“Splice” is giddy good fun, the rare sci fi flick that revels in its b-movie roots while also offering up something to think about over a beaker of coffee afterward.  

SEX AND THE CITY 2:
FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT LOUBOUTONS ARE: 1 STAR
FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW THAT BIG’S LAST NAME IS PRESTON: 4 STARS

Two years ago I learned a very important lesson. After giving the original “Sex and the City” movie a so-so review I was deluged with hate mail. My favorite letter suggested I “shut my damn manhole,” and never speak of the show or the movie again. What did I learn? I learned that you must never mess with Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha. Too bad series creator and “Sex and the City 2” director Michael Patrick King hasn’t learned the same thing.

Since the last movie Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) have settled into the comfortable life of ordering in food from fancy restaurants instead of getting dolled up and eating out in fancy restaurants five nights a week. She misses their old glamorous life, he likes putting his feet up on the coach and watching television in bed. Meanwhile gal pals Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are respectively, gulping down pre menopausal hormones, struggling to find a balance between work and child rearing and fretting that a busty nanny (Alice Eve) is attracting too much attention around the house. Their carefully manicured lives are fraying ever so slightly at the edges so what do they do? They head off for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirate of course!

As I watched “SatC 2” the phrase “leave well enough alone” came to mind. On television Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha became icons; cutting edge characters with verve, style and chutzpah. In the movies, however, it seems like they have been blunted. They still have style—the first obligatory Louboutin shot happens about sixty seconds in—but the verve and chutzpah seems forced. Michael Patrick King has allowed these once-upon-a-time titans of female empowerment to be trivialized. In other words he has messed with what made the show great. Whatever “SatC” is now, it is a much different thing than the television show.

There are flashes of the old magic every now and again. The iconic shot from Carrie’s old Upper East Side brownstone window to Big’s limo parked down below is a reminder of the good times and the quartet has undeniable chemistry. So when King allows the characters to be true to themselves the movie works, but a 146 minute movie needs more than flashes.
It’s hard to know exactly when “SatC 2” nukes the fridge (apparently the term “jump the shark” has jumped the shark). Perhaps it’s when Miley Cyrus shows up wearing the same dress as Samantha. Perhaps it’s during the intolerably bad “I Am Woman” karaoke scene, which is meant to be a grrl power anthem, but frankly, is just embarrassing. Or perhaps it is when the movie leaves its NYC home base and becomes the culturally insensitive “Carrie of Arabia.”

Whenever it is that it goes wrong, and believe me, it does go wrong, it probably won’t matter much to “SatC” fans. The audience I saw it with treated the movie as an interactive experience, commenting on the clothes, the relationships and the plot revelations as if they were enjoying a Cosmo with the girls at Buddakan. 

Fans have a real life loyalty to these characters that isn’t dissimilar to the bond the fictional Miranda, Charlotte, Carrie and Samantha share. I guess that’s what it means to be friends, you stick with them during good times and bad, but in “Sex and the City 2” there are more bad times than good. 

SHREK FOREVER AFTER: 3 ½ STARS

Once upon a time, in 2001, a green ogre named Shrek lumbered on to screens, bringing with him a different kind of animated story. The original “Shrek” was a fairy tale that mixed family friendly characters with a edgy sense of humor—like a Gingerbread Man tortured with a milk dunking. It was a monumental hit, so it wasn’t long before “Shrek 2” and “Shrek the Third” came along, each time with diminishing results. Luckily, the new “Shrek Forever After,” the fourth and final installment takes us off into that fairy tale happily-ever-after on a high note.

The 3D “Shrek Forever After” sees the giant green ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) in the midst of a mid-life crisis. He’s feeling bogged down by the responsibilities of marriage to Fiona (Cameron Diaz), raising his three kids and trapped by his newfound celebrity as the friendliest ogre on the block. “I used to be an ogre,” he says, “but now I’m a jolly green joke.” Longing for the days when life was simple he strikes a deal with an evil magician (voiced in an apparent tribute to Pee Wee Herman by story editor Walt Dohrn. In exchange for one day of freedom he will give the magician one day from his life. In a prime example of “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it” the unsuspecting Shrek signs the deal and begins a nightmarish “It’s a Wonderful Life” journey into a world completely different than any he could have imagined. Only the kiss of his true love—Fiona—can break the spell, but does she love him anymore?

Call this “Shrek the Metaphysical” if you like, one thing is for sure, it is darker than the preceding “Shreks”—although dark is still a relative term in the world of kid’s entertainment. The “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” message isn’t much different from anything you’d see in a regular children’s flick, but the journey to get there is.

In its opening moments this grim fairy features a tour-de-force sequence illustrating how snowed under Shrek feels by his new responsibilities. It’s a scene that will likely seem familiar to some of the parents in the audience, what follows—the well worn puns both vocal and visual, classic rock music cues and pop culture references—will seem familiar to anyone else who’s seen “Shrek” one through three. Even the bodily function jokes make an appearance—Shrek is described as “a lovable lug who showed that you don’t have to change your undies to change the world”—but instead of the been there, done that feel of “Shrek the Third” the new film weaves the familiar elements together into something resembling a large helping of comfort food. It doesn’t have the sparkling freshness of the first installment, but it has heart, some good jokes for both kids and adults and is a fitting send off to the series.

SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE: 2 STARS PLUS ½ STAR BECAUSE HE’S SO NICE AND ½ STAR BECAUSE HE’S SO FUNNY
TOTAL: 3 STARS

“She’s Out of My League,” the new romantic comedy starring Jay Baruchel as a 5 dating a 10, exists in a fictional movie universe where men lose the ability to speak in the presence of a beautiful woman and airport security guards are friendly and helpful.

Baruchel, a Canadian actor best known for his roles in “Tropic Thunder” and “Knocked Up,” plays Kirk, a moodle—that’s a man poodle—who lets women walk all over him. Single for two years, he still pines for his ex-girlfriend even though she has long since moved on. When Molly (Alice Eve), a pretty blonde party planner, leaves her i-phone at his security check point she is thoroughly charmed when he goes out of his way to return it and despite their differences they begin seeing one another. He’s not the kind of guy she usually ends up with, but she responds to his sense of humor and honesty, until his insecurities drive a wedge between them.

The structure of “She’s Out of My League” is pure rom com formula. Unlikely couple meets, falls in love, has conflict, cut to happily ever after. It’s Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts or King Kong and Naomi Watts, only without the happily ever after part. The rom com recipe only really cooks, however, when the cast is interesting and luckily “She’s Out of My League” has charm to burn.

Alice Eve is genetically blessed enough to play the traditional blonde knock out Molly, but brings more to the role than curves and flowing hair. She takes a character that could have been smug and makes her likeable; bringing a sweetness that keeps the audience on side even when her relationship with Kirk gets rocky. If Amy Adams, normally a very likeable actress, had half the charm Eve oozes here then maybe her rom com, “Leap Year” from earlier this winter, wouldn’t have been such a disaster.

Most of the heavy lifting, however, is left to unlikely leading man Baruchel. Baruchel, an Ottawa native, has been lurking around the edges of Hollywood success for the last few years. Memorable roles in big films like “Million Dollar Baby” and some frat pack comedies and lead roles in some cool Canadian films (like the upcoming “The Trotsky”) have prepped him for his first lead in a studio picture. His low key charm and deadpan wit carry every scene he’s in—and he’s in almost every frame if the film. He’s believable as slacker Kirk, sweet Kirk and boyfriend Kirk.

Not that “She’s Out of My League” is all sweetness and light though. There are some crude jokes from the Apatow school of bathroom humor, some silly “guy” talk about relationships and a climax that goes on a bit too long, but any movie that uses Branson, Missouri as a metaphor for mediocrity and twists the rom com formula in such sweet ways is worth a look.

SHUTTER ISLAND: 3 ½ STARS

The last time Martin Scorsese went to Boston he had the biggest mainstream hit of his career and won an Oscar as Best Director. “The Departed’s” change of scenery seemed to do him good so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his latest film is also set in the New England city, this time however, he isn’t telling a tale of gangsters, but a story of the criminally insane—“the bugsies” they call them—on an piece of land in Boston harbor called Shutter Island.

Returning for his fourth outing with Scorsese Leonardo DiCaprio headlines the all star cast, playing Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient on the isolated Shutter Island asylum. Working with Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), his new partner, he must keep a close grip on his own sanity. Is he insane or is he being driven insane?

I’ve kept the synopsis deliberately vague because there is so much going on in “Shutter Island,” it is such a house of cards that revealing one detail too many could bring the whole thing down and spoil the experience of seeing it through fresh eyes. This will be a no spoiler zone, but that means being light on the details.

“Shutter Island” (adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel) is likely the most enigmatic movie Scorsese has ever made. It’s a bold, risk-taking film, ripe with dramatic music, sweeping photography and unapologetically strange storytelling. It’s a story of paranoia, a deeply psychological thriller that pays homage to Hitchcock films like “Vertigo” and “North By Northwest.” Throw in a dollop of “The Snake Pit” and some Mario Bava you get an idea of the tone of the film.

He uses flashbacks, odd and deliberate lapses in continuity, weird camera tricks—he runs the film backwards in one scene so it looks like smoke is flowing into, rather than out of DiCaprio’s cigarette—to create an atmosphere of creeping dread, one in which the viewer, and perhaps even the characters don’t know what is real and what is not. Where many of his earlier films like “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” are about a state of existence, “Shutter Island” is all about a state of mind.

Anchoring the film is a fantastic performance from DiCaprio who by times seems to be channeling Jimmy Stewart. Not the “Philadelphia Story” Stewart but the edgy, post war Stewart of “Rope” and “Vertigo.” His performance seems artificial, as though he has spent too much time watching film noirs, but watch for the subtleties, the way he suggests his character’s hidden depths with interesting line readings and reactions. It’s a brave performance and one that doesn’t reveal itself entirely until the film’s final moments, but it’s one that will hold up to multiple viewings.

The movie, for all its boldness, however, may not. It is perhaps a bit too enigmatic for its own good, its twist ending is unconvincing and a bit of a letdown, (for once I was wishing for a little M. Night Shyamalan influence), but even Scorsese’s missteps have more interesting filmmaking than most other films at the multiplex. 
         
“Shutter Island” is a difficult movie that demands more than most audiences are probably willing to give these days. It’s an art film disguised as a police drama and will probably leave the crowds who loved “The Departed” scratching their heads.

SAINT JOHN OF LAS VEGAS: 3 STARS

“Saint John of Las Vegas” is the sort of movie that exists solely to give quirky actors like Steve Buscemi a chance to strut his stuff as the lead actor, rather than playing second fiddle to more traditionally handsome actors in studio pictures. It’s the story of a man whose life didn’t turn out the way he planned and Busicemi, with his cartoony hang dog expression was born to play him.

Buscemi is John, a compulsive gambler whose luck left before his habit did. Fleeing Las Vegas he drove until he ran out of gas, landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Leaving the high life behind he finds work as a desk-bound insurance claims adjuster. When he asks his boss (Peter Dinklage) for a raise he is instead told to accompany Virgil, a hardnosed fraud investigator (Romany Malco) back to Vegas. Leaving behind his new love (and the boss’s ex-girlfriend), Jill (Sarah Silverman), John and Virgil they set out, encountering a surreal collection of people, including wheelchair bound lap dancer, a skittish park ranger, a human fireball sideshow performer and a mysterious man named Lou Cypher.

“Saint John of Las Vegas” isn’t exactly laugh-out-loud but it will raise a smile or two. Buscemi takes a thinly drawn character—we never really know much about him other than he has strange dreams and was once a high roller in Vegas—gives him pathos and makes him likeable and watchable, but it would have been nice to know a bit more of his back story.  

Buscemi is at the center of virtually every scene of the film which is a good thing when he’s sharing the screen with Silverman or Dinklage—those scenes have some real spark to them—but not always great when he’s opposite Malco.

Romany Malco is a talented actor—his credits include “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, “Weeds” and the title role in “Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story”, and anyone who could survive that and go on to have a career must have something going for him—but here he seems to be trying to out quirk Buscemi, which is a fool’s game. In some scenes, as when he beats up a stuffed happy face pillow at a fair ground, he seems to be performing simply to be noticed. His strange posturing in these scenes doesn’t add anything to his character or the movie and he would have been better served paying attention to how Buscemi can own the screen without resorting to cheap attention getting tricks.

“Saint John of Las Vegas” is a slight movie, both in running time—it clocks in around 75 minutes—and in content. Buscemi, Silverman (as the “happy face” loving girlfriend) and Dinklage keep things interesting but this may be more of a rental than a night out.   

THE SPY NEXT DOOR: 0 STARS

In “The Spy Next Door” Jackie Chan does a Hannah Montana routine. By day he is Bob, a mild mannered pen salesman, at night, however—or whenever duty calls—he’s actually a Chinese secret agent working with the FBI. Like Hannah, whose father Billy Ray co-stars with Chan, Jackie leads a double life. Unlike Hannah he isn’t popular with kids. Or more precisely he isn’t popular with his girlfriend’s three precocious children who think he is a dweeb. He is, however, determined to win them over. “I’ve brought down dictators,” he says, “how tough can three kids be?”

The kids turn out to be just as tough as the Boris and Natasha wannabes (Magnús Scheving and Katherine Boecher) who are after Bob, thinking that he has downloaded a secret formula that turns oil into dust. That formula will make them rich and they desperately want it back.

Coming hot on the heels of one of the best years in kid’s entertainment I had hoped the bar would be raised somewhat. 2009 gave us “Up”, “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Coraline” and “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, all of which are about as good as it gets in the line of cinematic amusement for teacup humans. Those movies treated kids like real, thinking people, engaging their imaginations, minds and emotions. Compared to those movies “The Spy Next Door” is a let down, as it connects with none of those elements. It’s a throwback to the kind of lame Saturday morning matinee action-adventure that passed for kid’s flicks in less adventuresome times.

It’s an old formula. Take a silly premise—undercover spy in love with a civilian—add some “heartwarming” moments—Chan lectures the oldest daughter on the importance of family—mix with one popular, yet unlikely star—Chan doing his take on the Vin Diesel role in “The Pacifier”—and the result is… a warmed over family movie that won’t appeal to adults and has little entertainment value for the kids.

The gags—like “He’s as gone as a rum cake at an AA meeting”—which I guess, are aimed at the adults in the audience, were old the first time they aired on “Hee Haw” and children may giggle when Chan answers the phone with the greeting, “Yo, it’s Ho,” but his earnest speeches about togetherness will likely send them to snores-ville.

Of course, Chan’s larger-than-life antics have always been popular with kids but there isn’t enough high flying action. There is way too much downtime between the kid friendly action sequences to keep little minds interested and even when the pace does pick up it never feels like it kicks in high gear.

Compared to the kind of kid’s films we’ve been treated to recently “The Spy Next Door” feels like a relic from a different time; a time before 2009 when the bar for this type of entertainment was raised very high.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: 2 ½ STARS

Robert Downey Jr.’s entrance in the opening minute of “Sherlock Holmes”—he leaps off a buttress, effortlessly rolls down a set of stairs stopping just in time for the camera to catch his close-up—suggests that this isn’t your father’s—or your grandfather’s or mom’s or anybody else’s—Sherlock Holmes. The ensuing kung fu battle and satanic ritual confirms it.
 
Set in 1891 the story centers on Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), doctor, war veteran and best friend, getting to the bottom of a case involving the supernatural, an ex-flame (Rachel McAdams) of the great detective, The House of Lords and deadly cult leader named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). It plays like Holmes meets “The DaVinci Code.”

With “Sherlock Holmes” director Guy Ritchie has created the darkest movie of the Christmas season. Mimicking the depressing fog and industrial smoke that colored Victorian London, he’s made a drab and dreary looking movie that never met a shade of gray it didn’t like. That would be fine if the story or the performances added some color to the film, but unfortunately for Holmes (and for the audience) not only is “Sherlock Holmes’s” color palate a bit monochromatic but the whole film is a little on the dull side.     

The story is suitably convoluted for a Holmes story, there is plenty of intrigue, much deducing and loads of clues, trouble is, nothing much happens. The game may be a-foot but it feels more like a loose collection of action sequences bound together by some witty “Odd Couple” style banter between the leads and Downey’s quirky performance.

Downey plays Holmes like a cross between Robert Langdon and a Victorian street urchin. Apparently being brilliant means you don’t have to wash. Or tuck your shirt in. Or shave or clean your fingernails. Downey throws out the image of the debonair Basil Rathbone Holmes in a deerstalker hat for something much more bohemian. In fact, it’s closer to the description of the detective offered up in Conan Doyle's books and short stories. Downey plays the role with suitable gusto (and acceptable English accent), but is let down by a script that is a non-starter.

Downey has good chemistry with Jude Law but the same can’t be said for Rachel McAdams as his love interest. Guy Ritchie isn’t known for his way with female characters and “Sherlock Holmes” and she suffers for it. The movie wastes McAdams in a damsel in distress role that requires her to do little other than leer in Holmes’s general direction. She’s more a plot point than a character and it’s a shame to see McAdams wasted like that. She gets lost in the über-maleness of it all.

“Sherlock Holmes” gets the spirit of Holmes but doesn’t deliver the goods. Big budget action scenes are sprinkled throughout, but even the huge set pieces like the fight in the shipyard—which must have cost a fortune—contains no drama and the only real mystery here is how Guy Ritchie managed to take good elements—like Robert Downey Jr and Sherlock Holmes, one of the most popular characters of the last one hundred years—and make such a lackluster movie.

SHORTS: 3 STARS

Robert Rodriguez is possibly the most two-faced filmmaker working today. For every one of the movies on his resume like the hard R rated “Sin City” or “Planet Terror” that splatter the screen with blood and guts there is a kid friendly title that the whole family can enjoy. He’s half grindhouse director, half low budget Walt Disney. His new film “Shorts” follows in the same footsteps as his other Saturday matinee movies “Spy Kids” and “Shark Boy and Lava Girl.”

The movie is set in the community of Black Falls, a small company town where everybody works for the same business, the “all-in-one gadget” makers Black Box Industries. When a freak thunderstorm deposits the mysterious Rainbow Rock in the neighborhood, which grants wishes to anyone who finds it, the area transforms from suburban to strange overnight. As the strange rock passes from person to person it becomes clear that you really have to be careful what you wish for because you might just get it.

That’s the condensed version. Because the Rainbow Rock throws the town into such chaos, the story is told in a series of nonlinear episodes or shorts. Think of this as “Pulp Fiction” for tots.

There’s a hint of 1960s Saturday matinee charm to “Shorts.” It’s a clearly low budget—Rodriguez famously made his first movie for $7000 and then wrote a book about filmmaking on a shoe string budget—but despite looking like it cost a $1.25 to make, it has a hip action adventure feel that kids should be drawn to. This isn’t slick Disney style kid’s entertainment—I doubt that any of Walt’s movies would feature a character named The Booger Monster—it’s a little more down and dirty than that, a little more like the way kids really think and act.      

Coupled with the movie’s anarchic spirit are the usual messages for kids about the dangers of bullying, the advantages of teamwork and saving the environment. Also prominent is the less seen (on screen at least) lesson about not eating boogers.  

“Shorts” is an entertaining blast from an inventive filmmaker who seems to understand what kids want to see on screen. I’m not sure that parents will have much interest in the film, but 10 and 11 year olds will likely enjoy.

SHRINK: 2 STARS

It’s no secret that the ratio of neurotic, narcissistic people to regular folks is higher in Los Angeles than almost anywhere else on earth. Tune into Entertainment Tonight or Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew if you need proof. In fact, there’s more than enough proof of that city’s deep vein of self-importance all around us on television, in literature and in the movies which makes the mere existence of Shrink, a new film starring Kevin Spacey, all the more baffling.

Spacey plays an LA based shrink to the stars and bestselling author. His practice is thriving, his book is on the best seller charts but his life a mess since the suicide of his wife. He wanders aimlessly through life, self medicating with powerful weed as his scruffy beard grows scruffier and the bags under his eyes look like they could be charged as oversized should he ever decide to fly with Air Canada. He’s at the center of Shrink, the hub of a universe of characters who also includes a litany of Tinsel Town stereotypes like the aggressive agent, a sex addicted, alcoholic older star, an aging actress, drugged out Irish movie star (if I was Colin Farrell I’d be calling my lawyer right about now), a struggling screenwriter and a troubled inner city teen. The story lines mix and mingle, inevitably weaving all the disparate stories into one, frankly, unbelievable conclusion.

Like the recent flop Crossing Over and so many other ambitious films that attempt to unveil the human condition with a multi-character narrative, Shrink has trouble blending the stories into one cohesive whole. The storytelling is choppy and some characters ultimately get the short end of the stick. Robin Williams’s character adds nothing but a bit of star power to this small indie, although in one of the film’s better exchanges Keke Palmer’s character tells him, “You should make better movies.” Amen to that. Eliminating several of the peripheral characters would have streamlined the story and focused the storytelling where it counts, on the Spacey character.

As Henry Carter Spacey revisits the ennui of his breakout role in American Beauty. He anchors the film with a good performance that only occasionally slips into his now regular master thespian moments. When he underplays—as he does in a nicely calibrated scene in which he reads a patient’s mother’s suicide note— he shines, but sometimes the big moments get the best of him.

He’s not helped by a script that seems to try too hard. Like the pace of the film the script is choppy and inconsistent. The film is best when it trusts the actors and allows them to do their work without burdening them with artificial sounding dialogue. The super agent scenes, for example, are overwritten and, by comparison to Entourage’s Ari Gold, feel derivative; ditto Robin William’s scenes, which appear to have been written by a David Mamet wannabe. Couple that with a thoroughly unbelievable and unsatisfactory conclusion that relies on amazing coincidences and you’re left with a film that over reached its grasp. 

Over written and occasionally over acted Shrink tries to pack too much into its 110 minute running time.

STAR TREK: 4 ½ STARS

After five television series, ten movies, countless books, comics and video games, a stage version and even an Ice Capades style show is there anything left, story wise, to do with Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise? Director J.J. Abrams, the brains behind hit TV shows like Felicity, Lost and Fringe, thinks so and has re-launched the big screen franchise, which has lain fallow since 2002’s Nemesis. Simply called Star Trek, he takes audiences where no man (or director) has gone before, back to the very beginning of the story before Kirk bore an uncanny resemblance to T.J. Hooker.

In this prequel to the original series James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) is a young punk; a thrill seeking juvenile delinquent son of a dead hero recruited to join Starfleet Academy by an associate of his father’s. On another planet is Spock (Zachary Quinto), a half human, half Vulcan outcast who becomes the first of his race to be accepted into the Starfleet Academy. Soon their paths will cross as they are assigned to the maiden voyage of the most advanced starship ever created, the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood). On their first dangerous mission they will become the original intergalactic odd couple as they find a way to stop the vengeful Romulan villain Nero (Eric Bana with Mike Tyson-esque tattoos on his face) from destroying all of mankind.

With Star Trek J.J. Abrams has made the first great popcorn movie of the year. Notice I didn’t say sci-fi movie. Star Trek is a lot of things but despite all the talk of warp speed, black holes and time travel, it can’t be classified as science fiction. This is a character based space serial more concerned with the burgeoning relationship between Spock and Kirk than with photon thrusters. That may bother the purists and the Roddenberries but shouldn’t trouble anyone simply looking for a good time at the movies.

Abrams gets right into the thick of things, front loading the movie with two wild action scenes in the first ten minutes. It’s edge of the seat stuff that neatly gives Captain James T a back story and sets the tone for the rest of the film. It’s big. It’s loud. It’s bombastic. It’s also the best Trek since The Wrath of Khan.  

Abrams succeeds because he isn’t precious with the source material. All the prerequisite catchphrases—“Live long and prosper”—are there, coupled with some sly homages to the show’s history—Trekkers will note the fruition of Kirk’s flirtation with the green Orion woman from the TV show—but he’s more interested in creating an overall entertainment experience than displaying reverence for Roddenbery’s creation. The subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) social commentary of the series has gone the way of the spent lithium crystals from season two, episode four, replaced by flat out action that engages the eye but not the brain. In terms of CGI Abrams has set phasers to stunning. It’s state of the art and will make your eyeballs dance.   
Star Trek is an origin story that works. It has heart, ferocious CGI and is dead cool. It’s the best movie geek-out since Iron Man. In the words of Scotty (Simon Pegg), “I like this ship. It’s exciting.”

THE SOLOIST: 2 STARS
 
The Soloist is the great award hope from last year that never happened. Originally slated to open in late November, just in time for Academy Award balloteering, the film sounds like sure fire Oscar bait—between them co-stars Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr have two nominations and one Best Actor win and director Joe Wright a BAFTA contender—but at the last minute the movie was shuffled to an April release, and very likely, out of Oscar consideration.

The film is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a musical prodigy who developed schizophrenia during his second year at Juilliard School, and wound up living on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a disenchanted Los Angeles Times columnist who discovers Ayers and bases a series of columns on Ayers and his life. Over time they form a friendship based on the liberating power of music.

On paper this sounds like a sure Oscar bet. The Academy loves redemption stories, bio pics and big names in dramas, but, as any bookie can tell you, there’s no such thing as a sure bet. The Soloist is a non-traditional biography that suffers from Wright’s focus on style over story.

It’s a great looking film. Wright loads the screen with artful pictures and stylish flourishes such as a symphony of color that fills the screen when Nathaniel listens to a live symphony orchestra, but it often feels like more thought was given to the movie’s technique than to the story. Wright is clearly in love with the film’s style, I just wish he had loved the characters as much.

Although it’s based on a complex and interesting relationship between these two very different men, the movie feels padded. It’s not trite, it just doesn’t get very far past the main thrust that music has the power to transform everyone, no matter what your station in life. It is one idea stretched to 105 minutes.   

That’s not to say it doesn’t have some nice, interesting moments. There’s good interplay between Downey Jr and Catherine Keener as his ex-wife and current boss and Foxx has thrown vanity out the window in an unpredictable performance that veers between sweet and menacing. It’s a brave, but not completely successful performance. Ditto Downey Jr. Both actors are riding the razor’s edge of emotion here, and both occasionally go overboard, as if they are fighting to be noticed amid the movie’s overwhelming stylistic affectations.    

The Soloist is an art film disguised as an uplifting drama, and is only partially successful on both counts.

STATE OF PLAY: 3 ½ STARS

State of Play is an all star two hour movie based on a popular six hour British miniseries. It’s not unheard of for films to be inspired by television serials, Brideshead Revisited is a recent example, but usually it’s the other way round. Remember The Shining miniseries that riffed on the Stanley Kubrick film? Or how about Traffic: The Miniseries? The question State of Play raises is how can director Kevin The Last King of Scotland Macdonald convey the miniseries’s six hours of intrigue, tension, detail and dazzling complexity of plot in just 120 minutes?

The trick he’s tried to pull off is to condense and change certain aspects of the original 6-part program while maintaining the integrity of the story. Fans of the miniseries will be relieved to hear that he has retained most of the main characters and much of the plot, but may be less enthusiastic that he’s switched the location from Britain to the United States.  

The film tells of Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) a dogged Washington Post journalist investigating the suspicious death of the mistress of his old college roommate, Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). Collins is a rising star in his party (the movie doesn’t make it clear which); a seemingly incorruptible politician fighting against a multi-billion dollar deal to privatize homeland security by Pointcorps (think Halliburton). Torn between his responsibilities as a journalist and his loyalty to his friend Cal must find the correct angle with which to cover the story. As he digs deeper, with the support of his testy editor Cameron Lynne (Oscar-winner Helen Mirren) and fellow reporter Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), he becomes involved in a massive and dangerous cover-up. “It’s not a story. It’s a case,” says Det. Donald Bell (Harry Lennix) as the action heats up.  

State of Play does a good job of boiling the six hour miniseries down to it bare essentials. Director MacDonald keeps the pacing tight and presents enough plot twists and turns to keep fans of the longer version satisfied. Less pleasing is the introduction of clichéd, hardboiled reporter dialogue. If you took a drink of “Irish wine”—that’s the Jamesons that Cal drinks throughout—every time a character said something like, “Now you have blood on your hands!” you’d be drunker than Hunter S. Thompson in the depths of a three day Chivas binge, but that is a small quibble when the action and suspense are this good.      

State of Play is informed by the films of the 1970s like All the Presidents Men and Capricorn One, movies that exalted the fourth estate, exploring journalistic independence and the sometimes tenuous relationship between politicians and the press. It’s an ode to journalism and the fading art of newspaper reporting. As newspapers watch their circulation nosedive and newsrooms slash budgets it’s interesting to get a glimpse into a world where the public’s right to know is paramount, no matter what the cost or circumstances.

At the center of this old school approach is Crowe’s character Cal who has all the qualities legendary journalist Gay Talese says all top reporters must possess: the ability to pry "into other people’s affairs, [chase] after information [and wait] outside the doors of private meetings for official statements.” He’s the kind of intrepid reporter who only actually exists in the movies but Crowe pulls it off, creating a real character out of a pile of newsman clichés.

State of Play is a fast-paced thriller—with a scene stealing performance from Justin Bateman—that harkens back to the grand old days of investigative reporter movies like The China Syndrome which mixed complex, compelling stories with action and suspense.

SIN NOMBRE: 3 ½ STARS

Sin Nombre, a gritty new Mexican film about love, loyalty and redemption, comes to our screens after scooping prizes for best direction and cinematography at Sundance. It’s a darkly beautiful film that weaves two stories together. One of illegal immigrants making their slow, grim journey to the United States from Honduras, the other story a portrayal of gang life and the dangers of living by a code of violence. At the film’s midway point the two plotlines merge when the young gangster Willy (Edgar Flores) commits the ultimate act of treason and kills his leader in a moment of passion. On the run, Willy connects with Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teenager trying to make it across Mexico to the Texas border. Their paths crossed, their future uncertain, the two make their way to a new life in America.   

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga manages a skillful mix of grit and sentimentality, blending the brutal gang story with an emotional tale of hope. It’s a tricky mix to pull off without stooping to melodrama but apart from a lapse or two the film is uncompromising. It’s chilling to watch a group of eight and ten year olds discuss the best way to kill Willy and it is heartbreaking to see the plight of Sayra and her family as they trudge from border to border to hoping for a better life.

Sin Nombre is a character driven drama with the pacing of a thriller and the heart of an art-house tragedy.

THE SPIRIT:
3 STARS FOR THE LOOK
1 STAR FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
2 STARS TOTAL

It’s interesting to note that The Spirit isn’t listed under “notable works” on comic book artist-turned-director Frank Miller’s Wikipedia page. After bringing his film noir vision to live action as co-director of Sin City he now plunges headlong into a story that has the same dark spirit that has influenced so much of his work, but none of the grit. The Spirit looks great, but has little else going for it leading me to believe that Miller hasn’t directed the film as much as he has simply styled it.

Based on a 1940s newspaper strip of the same name created by Will Eisner The Spirit skips the superhero’s origin story, preferring to jump right into one of his escapades. Along the way we learn that he used to be a Central City cop but after a fatal shooting was brought back to life and now leads a life of avenging crime and chasing skirts. This time out he’s battling against an old foe, The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a violent megalomaniac who desperately wants a vase which is in the possession of Sand Saref (Eva Mendes as the “lady with a thing for the bling”). Conveniently he has something she wants and if they can arrange a trade everyone walks away happy. Everyone, that is, except The Spirit.

I don’t think The Spirit is a very good movie but I sure enjoyed its hyper stylized film noir look. Miller presents every frame as a gorgeous black and white (with only the occasional burst of color) page from a graphic novel. Many of its high contrast images look as though they were shot under a black light.

It’s great eye candy but unfortunately Miller has set the tone for the rest of the film somewhere on a scale between over-the-top and Rip Taylor. The campy hard-boiled dialogue—it’s as if Raymond Chandler was writing lines for Paul Lynde—and lame story of The Spirit make Sin City look like Shakespeare by comparison.

Only Samuel L. seems to have the right attitude towards this material, over-playing it for all he’s worth. Others, like Gabriel Macht in the lead role and Scarlett Johansson as the excellently named and interestingly attired Silken Floss, never seem to get a grip on the words. Granted they aren’t given much to work with. Macht is essentially Mr. Exposition when he isn’t fighting crime and while Johansson rocks the costumes her role is extraneous at best. A never ending succession of cloned henchmen, all played by character actor Louis Lombardi, run the gamut from annoying to really annoying or, as Octopus says over and over, “plain damn weird.”     

The Spirit, despite some arresting images is as colorless as its black and white color palate.   

SEVEN POUNDS: 3 STARS

In his last film Will Smith played an alien with an anger management problem. In the new movie Seven Pounds he once again plays a creature that doesn’t exist in real life—an IRS tax collector with a conscience.

Seven Pounds has one of the most opaque trailers I’ve seen in a long time. Those looking for clues as to what the movie is about won’t find them in the promo clip. Is it a comedy or a drama? A love story or a thriller? Well, it’s all of those things—excepting comedy; this is one of the most low key, minor chord films of the year—and I’m loathe to expand on the trailer for fear of giving away the film’s big secret. I can tell you that Smith plays a troubled man determined to change the lives of seven carefully chosen strangers. To find out why he’s so eager to help, and how he helps, you’ll have to plunk down twelve bucks at the box office. I’ll try and let you know if it’s worth the money.  

Seven Pounds re-teams Smith with Gabriele Muccino, the director of The Pursuit of Happyness. Muccino is the guy Smith turns to when he wants to do something different, something that stretches his well known, and well loved comic screen persona. This time out they have dialed Smith way back. Fans of the Men in Black Will Smith beware; he plays Ben Thomas as a man crushed by the weight of his emotions, a walking zombie who has given up on life. When a smile does cross his lips it looks insincere, as though he has to try a little too hard to curl his lips upwards. It’s a far cry from the Fresh Prince.

Smith pulls it off, but the film takes a little too long to get where it is going. In the first hour Muccino doesn’t give much away, keeping the reasons for Thomas’s behavior close to the chest. We are given hints as to what is going on and the odd snippet of a flashback suggests a tragedy in Thomas’s past, but we aren’t given any firm details.

This could have been an effective set-up for a thriller, but Smith plays Thomas in such a low key way—he spends a lot of time sitting in silence in a dowdy motel room waiting for the phone to ring—the audience doesn’t have any reason to really care what happens to him. Smith is a charming actor and can usually sell even the thinnest of premises, but here his minimalist character—at one point he says calling himself unremarkable would be a step up—doesn’t connect.  

Seven Pounds is an interesting premise with some nice supporting performances—Rosario Dawson is lovely as the ailing Emily and Woody Harrelson, although he is given little to do, makes the most of his short time on screen—but lacks the heart to be truly memorable.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: 4 STARS

At a time when many directors are leaving Bollywood for less exotic locations, Irish director Danny Boyle, following in the footsteps of Wes “Darjeeling Limited” Anderson, set his latest film in the New York of India, Mumbai, the most populous city in the world. Taking the lead from its setting Slumdog Millionaire is a chaotic movie; part nightmare, part fairy tale.

When we first meet Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), he’s an eighteen-year old orphan at a crossroad. As a contestant on India’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? he is just one question away from winning it all—20 million rupees, but as the show breaks for the night he is arrested for cheating. After a brutal night of questioning he begins to tell his story in an attempt prove his innocence.  Told primarily in flashbacks Jamal recounts a troubled life in the slums of Mumbai with a violent brother and a mother killed when he was just a child. The only ray of hope in his life was Latika (Freida Pinto), an orphan girl who enters and exits his life. Each story reveals the life experience that taught him the answers to the game show’s questions; all set against the vibrant backdrop that is India. 

Slumdog Millionaire is a wild ride from Boyle’s hyper visual style, to the pulsating musical score, to the elements of the story that binds together Romeo and Juliet, Bollywood gangster pictures, the Usual Suspects and an occasionally tender coming-of-age story. Boyle pulls out all the stops, leaving the quiet, austere feeling of his last film, Sunshine behind for a frenetic pace that assaults the senses—in a good way. Like the slum lifestyle he portrays the film is relentless, a barrage of images, music and sound. His characters are constantly on the run, and the movie is just as restless as they are but luckily for us Boyle keeps the story on track pushing it forward with every frame.

Boyle is a chameleon of a filmmaker, switching styles with every film, but he is a master of telling realistic stories with complicated parallel character threads. From the edgy Trainspotting to the heartwarming Millions to the intense 28 Days Later his films are immersive experiences that use images and music to maximum effect. Slumdog Millionaire is his most complex movie yet encompassing everything from romance to action, comedy to anguish, treachery, greed and yes, even a musical number (stay through the credits!). Exhilarating filmmaking and one of the year’s best. 

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES: 3 ½ STARS

The trailer for The Secret Life of Bee looks life-affirming. I hate life-affirming movies. I truly dislike being manipulated into feeling a certain way, feeling as though if a tear doesn’t come to my eye that I don’t “get it” or have a heart like a cherry pit. Nothing irks me more than swelling orchestral music, timed to coincide with a first tender kiss, the death of a loved one or a warm embrace between long-lost relatives. So I went to The Secret Life of Bees expecting a slight story buoyed by a handful of cinematic tricks geared to turn me into a ball of mush. Instead I found a rarity, a life affirming movie that didn’t make me want to reach for a barf bag.

Based on the Sue Monk Kidd bestselling novel the movie is set in the American south in 1964. Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) is an emotionally damaged fourteen-year-old being raised by her abusive single parent father (Paul Bettany) after she accidentally shot her mother ten years previously. President Lyndon B Johnson has just written a Civil Rights Bill into law promising equality to all, but when Lily and her nanny Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) try and exercise that equality Rosaleen is brutalized by bigoted townsfolk. Following the beating the pair go one the run—Lily from her father, Rosaleen from police custody. They end up at the Pepto Bismol-pink home of the bee-keeping Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Sophie Okenodo and Alicia Keys) in the nearby town of Tiburon. It’s a sanctuary and, as Lily soon discovers, a link to her former life.

Yes, it’s a dreaded coming of age story. Ugh. Yes, it is manipulative and yes, it is life affirming. Then why did I like it so much? I liked it because although it is all of the above it is also a well crafted, warm hearted story with compelling characters, good performances with an interesting dollop of civil rights history thrown in. The combination of personal stories set against the backdrop of Jim Crow America isn’t a new idea, but The Secret Life of Bees manages a hopeful tone, despite the hatred and bigotry contained in the story.

Leading the cast is Dakota Fanning, the young actress best known as the pre-teen star of War of the Worlds, Charlotte's Web and Man on Fire. She’s now fourteen and on the cusp of adult roles and with The Secret Life of Bees takes a big step forward. Her work here is wonderful. It’s an understated and natural performance that feels utterly real. She barely moves, as though she’s almost paralyzed by a lifetime of hurt and anguish but when the levee breaks and she bursts into tears, screaming that she is “unlovable” it is heart wrenching.  
The rest of the cast follows suit delivering good, solid work. Jennifer Hudson proves that her Oscar for Dreamgirls wasn’t just a fluke; Queen Latifah is dignified and matronly as the oldest of the Boatwright sisters; Alicia Keys gives firecracker June unexpected depths and Sophie Okonedo, in the film’s most thankless role as the emotionally fragile May, takes a character that could have been parody and gives it a sense of vulnerability, turning her into a real person.

The Secret Life of Bees is everything I hate in a movie, and much that I admire. Luckily the strong characters and good performances lift the “life affirming” curse.   

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS 2: 3 STARS

Clothes, as the old saying goes, may make the man, but according to a best-selling series of novels by Ann Brashares a pair of magical jeans changed the lives of four young women. The 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants told the story of BFFs Bridget, Lena, Tibby and Carmen—played by Gossip’s Girls’ Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn and Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera—four teens at crossroads in their lives who will be separated on summer break for the first time.

Their transition to adulthood is eased by a pair of magical thrift store jeans that fit each of them, despite their varying sizes. In the story the pants become the link that joins them together. It’s a bonding movie like Sex and the City minus the Manolo Blahniks (and a few years) or Thelma and Louise without the guns that reveled in female friendship and confidence.

The new film, inventively titled The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, picks up the story three years later and sees the girls about to begin their summer break from college. Largely taken from the series' fourth book the girls are once again separated by geography. Bridget, still stinging from her mother’s suicide has buried herself in work on an archeological dig in Turkey. Lena is now at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has fallen for a nude figure-drawing model. Tibby is enrolled in film school in New York and Carmen, on break from Yale, is in Vermont appearing in a summer stock production of The Winter’s Tale. Time and distance has forced them to drift apart, but the pants draw them together as they navigate through life’s trials and tribulations. 

As in the first film, Sisterhood 2 is essentially separate stories intercut together and linked thematically. Each story follows one of the characters as they fall in or out of love; as they learn what a mean place the world can be and finally, as they discover that friendship can trump all. At almost two hours it’s a bit overlong, but video director Sanaa Hamri keeps a steady pace, skillfully interconnecting the four stories until the inevitable reunion brings them all together in the last reel.

Of the four leads it’s America Ferrera who really impresses. Her’s is a naturalistic performance with warmth, humor and sparkle. The others get by mostly through charm and batting eyes, but overall the appealing lead actors carry the movie.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is a good escapist coming-of-age story that drew frequent choruses of oohs! and aws! from the mostly teenage female audience I saw it with. I’m not sure that the young men in the audience will find much here other than eye candy, but those willing to get involved in the story will find good messages regarding loyalty and self-belief. 

SPACE CHIMPS: 2 STARS

The new computer animated film Space Chimps can best be described as a simian reworking of The Right Stuff. In place of Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn and Ed Harris as the intrepid pioneers of space flight we’re given the voices of SNL star Andy Samberg, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines and cartoon Seinfeld’s Puddy, Patrick Warburton as Ham III, Luna and Titan, three chimps who boldly go where no chimp has gone before.

The action begins when Ham III, the circus-performing grandson of the first chimp astronaut, is recruited to join a space mission with two experienced chimp astronauts. Sent to a galaxy far, far away, they land on a planet whose peaceful inhabitants have been enslaved by the megalomaniac dictator Zartog (Jeff Daniels). Because Space Chimps is aimed directly at the tween and younger crowd, in the process of saving the planet and its people Ham III learns valuable about himself and how to get along with others. In short, he proves he has “the right stuff.”

The first thing you’ll notice about Space Chimps is that it looks as though it was animated by chimps. Rudimentary in the extreme, it pales by comparison to Pixar, looking more like video game graphics from the late 90s. With the exception of Kilowatt (Kristin Chenoweth), an adorable big-headed creature who screams operatically when scared, the characters look stilted and don’t move realistically.

The animation wouldn’t be as big an issue if the script had more going for it. The screenplay doesn’t exactly feel like it is the result of one hundred monkeys typing on a hundred typewriters but whoever wrote lines like “Whoa Furious George!” and “We’ll have to chimpervise a solution” isn’t that much further up on the evolutionary scale.

Still it is a good hearted little movie. Forgettable maybe, and not particularly interesting for anyone over the age of ten, but Space Chimps may appeal to kids too old for Curious George but not quite old enough for Planet of the Apes. 

SEX AND THE CITY: 2 ½ STARS

The world’s population is split divided like this: 60% women, 40% men. That means 60% of the world’s population will likely squeal with delight at the mention of the names Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte, while 40% will likely scratch their heads, wondering what all the fuss is about.

If the names don’t ring a bell they are the Sex and the City mainstays; the four women who navigated New York City’s treacherous relationship waters for six seasons on HBO. Four years after wrapping up their small screen adventures the foursome is back with a feature length, (and then some), movie that sees them older, but not necessarily wiser.

As the movie plays catch-up with the Fab Four best-selling author Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), a fashionista so fabulous she even wears a pearl necklace to bed, is still with her longtime paramour Mr. Big (Chris Noth), the kind of businessman who instead of sending a love letter to his girlfriend would be more likely to have his secretary send a love fax.

Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), the no nonsense lawyer, has settled into a comfortable but boring relationship with Steve (David Eigenberg), the father of her child.

Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) perfect life has gotten even more perfect with the addition of an adopted daughter and the notoriously self-centered Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has relocated to Los Angeles to manage the career of her hunky boytoy Smith (Jason Lewis).

The players firmly in place, the characters then spend the next two hours and twenty minutes changing in-and-out of designer clothes, sitting in expensive Eames chairs while pondering whether marriage ruins everything in a relationship. The interpersonal questions and glamorous style are vintage Sex and the City, but somewhere in the years since the show went off the air whatever edge the writing once had became blunted.

The wisecracks are still there—Candace Bergen as Vogue editor Enid Frick has the movie’s best line when she says, “Forty is the last age a woman can be photographed in a wedding dress without the unintended Diane Arbus subtext”—and there is certainly more than enough talk of relationships but the rebellious spirit of friendship that guided the girls through a mountain of men has evaporated.

Where these women had once been sexual suffragettes who thumbed their noses at traditional morality, they now seem much more conventional, looking to men as the fonts of all happiness. I’m afraid that the relationship gladiators Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte of the edgy television series would barely recognize their namby-pamby big-screen counterparts.

On other counts though, the movie, which is as review proof as any to be released this year, continues the traditions of the television show. The lifestyle porn—prominent designer labels on everything, a walk-in closet that could only exist in Manolo Blahnik’s wildest dreams and enough expensive shoes to shod and entire army of Vivienne Westwood wannabes—is lovingly photographed and should please audiences more concerned with couture than story.

Despite its turn toward a more conservative tone, the Sex and the City movie will please fans, who will likely find the experience somewhat akin to watching an entire season of the show on DVD. Others—that 40% I mentioned earlier—may be put off by the improbable “Oh Puleeze!” ending and left wondering what all the fuss was about to begin with.   

SPEED RACER: 4 STARS FOR VISUALS, MINUS ONE FOR A LAME STORY AND MINUS ANOTHER FOR THE VISUAL OVERLOAD I EXPWERIENCED AT THE TWO HOUR MARK FOR A TOTAL OF 2 STARS

The late 60s cartoon series Speed Racer (AKA Mach GoGoGo) was a ground breaker, becoming one of the first anime franchises to become popular in the United States and was even hailed by TV Guide as providing one of the most memorable moments in TV history. A new live-action screen adaptation of the series from the Wachowski Brothers breaks new ground in its visual presentation of the story, but I’m afraid, won’t be winning any awards for story.

Into the Wild’s Emile Hirsch is Speed Racer, a car crazy kid with enough natural driving ability to make him a superstar. When the flamboyant owner of Royalton Industries (Roger Allam) offers him a place on his team the youngster is flattered but declines, opting to support his family’s business. Rebuffed and angered, Royalton, who Speed discovers fixes races, vows to destroy Speed’s career and bring down the family’s business. With the help of his parents Pops (John Goodman) and Mom (Susan Sarandon) and girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) Speed and the mysterious Racer X set out to rescue the family business and maybe even the sport of racing from the grips of evil gamblers like Royalton.

Visually Speed Racer is so over-the-top it makes other CGI movies like 300 and Spy Kids look as austere as a Bergman film. The Wachowskis have created something singular; a film unlike any other in which colors swirl, scenes transition in wild swoops of color and images and every frame is geared to pop your eyes out of their sockets. There are some undeniably cool visuals but they are so relentless it becomes overwhelming by the two hour mark.  

For the cast fighting to be noticed over the film’s graphic design is a losing proposition. There are several intimate scenes in which Speed confides in his parents or girlfriend, but those scenes, meant to add some pace to the film and break up the wild action sequences, get lost in the general visual mêlée. These scenes don’t add much to the story, anyway. They have very little emotional heft and, even though they are performed by accomplished actors—Sarandon, Goodman, Hirsch and Ricci—feel stilted and unnatural, much like the look of the film.

Unlike the Wachowski’s previous films, Bound and The Matrix Trilogy, Speed Racer is geared to younger viewers. Tweens will likely find the art-directed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life look to be delicious eye candy and the races exciting in a surreal video game kind of way, while teens may relate to the Davy verses Goliath storyline—that’s Speed, the little guy who takes on the big bad corporation—but older viewers, however, may wish the Wachowskis had spent more time on the story and less on the visuals.

It’s true that Speed Racer looks cool. I’m just don’t think that alone makes it a good movie.

THE STONE ANGEL: 3 STARS

Margaret Laurence's Manitoba-based novel The Stone Angel has been the inspiration for many, many high school book reports since its 1964 release. Now, it is the inspiration for a new film starring Ellen Burstyn as the head strong Hagar Shipley.

The sweeping story begins as the prideful and cantankerous 90-year-old Hagar is about to be placed in a nursing home by her son Marvin (Dylan Baker). Instead she makes her way to her old prairie home, and begins a process of self examination, intertwining present day with her memories of her tumultuous life.

For the most part director Kari Skogland does an admirable job of adapting Laurence’s novel for the screen. In an economical ninety minutes she condenses the book’s 400 pages, nicely balancing the aspects of Hagar’s current life with her memories. Margaret Laurence fans should be pleased that most of the major plot points from the book are intact, but anyone who spent all night cram sessions writing about the story’s heavy metaphorical content will notice that much of that aspect of the book has gone missing.    

At the core of The Stone Angel are two remarkable performances. Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn is commanding as the older Hagar. Fearless in the role, she’s unafraid to be unlikable and it is that commitment to presenting Hagar, warts and all, that brings the character to life. The strength of Burstyn’s performance also helps to smooth over some of the rougher edges of the story telling. Also effective is new comer Christine Horne who plays the younger version of Burstyn's character.

The Stone Angel is a powerful, if slightly uneven film, but one with several surprises, good performances and an ending with real emotional heft.

SMART PEOPLE: 3 STARS

At the center of Smart People is one of those curmudgeonly professor characters so self-absorbed, so pedantic it’s almost impossible to like him. He’s intelligent, but if there ever was a human embodiment of the saying “too smart for his own good” this is it. He pretentiously drones on and on about Victorian literature. He’s the kind of guy who says, “adopted brother,” when introducing Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), his middle-aged sibling. He’s a widower and we get the impression early on that the only person he could relate to was his late wife and with her gone he is completely socially adrift. In real life you wouldn’t want to spend one second with Lawrence Wetherhold, but as portrayed by Dennis Quaid he’s a compelling character who sets a number of storylines in motion.

He’s the patriarch of a suitably quirky family. Daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is an acid-tongued neo-con brainiac—think Ann Coulter only slightly less annoying—who longs for the glory days of Ronald Reagan and is obsessed with acing her SATs. Son James (Ashton Holmes) is distant—think every underwritten troubled teenage character you’ve ever seen on film—living in the shadow of his brilliant father and sister. The professor cares more for his unpublished manuscript than his kids or his students. He is shaken out of his mid-life self-pitying trance when his brother—adopted brother, that is—and a former student in the form of Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker)—who works at the least busy ER ever seen on film—enter his life.

Five minutes into Smart People you know that the characters will emerge on the other end as better people, enriched in unlikely ways from unlikely sources; it’s that kind of movie. Since there are very few surprises (although there are a couple of unusual twists) in the story it’s up to the characters to carry the show. Luckily Smart People can boast a solid cast doing good work.

At the helm is Dennis Quaid who has thrown vanity out the window to play the paunchy professor. His leading man good looks still sneak through a scraggly beard and lined face, but the cocky swagger of past roles like Remy McSwain in The Big Easy or Great Balls of Fire’s Jerry Lee Lewis has been replaced with a limping gait. It looks good on him. It’s a role where character is utmost and his world weary take on the pompous professor is spot on.

Ellen Page, the Halifax-born Hollywood “It-Girl” hands in another nice performance. Her take on Vanessa is the polar opposite of the free-spirited character she played in Juno, which earned her an Academy Award nomination this year. She’s a Young Republican of the Alex P. Keaton School, complete with portraits of Ronald Reagan on her bedroom walls. She could easily be a conservative caricature but Page digs a little deeper and gives Vanessa insecurities and weaknesses that lie just under the surface of her carefully manicured Fox News façade.

In the supporting roles Sarah Jessica Parker is solid but gets steamrolled by a scene stealing Thomas Hayden Church as Chuck the down-on-his-luck brother. Wetherhold refers to him as a “giant toddler” and he’s always grasping at some kind of get rich quick scheme, but in his own homespun way he has far more understanding of the human condition than either of his more learned relatives. It’s his light touch, reminiscent of his work in Sideways, which gives Smart People its best moments.

Smart People is a well-written film with sparkling dialogue and good actors who know how to deliver the material. Best of all it’s peppered with laughs and doesn’t try that hard to be heartwarming. 

STREET KINGS: 3 STARS

Once again Keanu Reeves is battling evil. This time though instead of fighting foes in the underworld or in the Matrix he’s on the more mortal plane of LA’s mean streets. He’s Tom Ludlow a veteran LAPD cop who isn’t above bending or actually twisting and mutilating the rules to get his own brand of vigilante justice. His boss, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), calls him “the tip of the spear,” the only man on the force who can “hold back the animals.” A more objective observer might call him a sociopath with a badge.

In a violent story thick with double-crosses and deep-rooted duplicity Reeves, the alcoholic trigger-happy cop, is the closest thing to a hero the movie offers up. He begins his journey into the abyss when    evidence implicates him in the execution of his former partner. To get to clear his name he goes head-to-head with the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career. 

Street Kings returns to a favorite topic of screenwriter James Ellroy and director by David Ayer—police corruption in Los Angeles. They’ve both examined the topic before. Ellroy most notably in LA Confidential and the novel White Jazz, set to hit the screen in 2009, and Ayer’s dirty-cop screenplay for Training Day earned Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar, but rarely has the subject been so savagely presented. The corruption on display here is pervasive. It’s everywhere and everyone has dirty hands.

Bleak though the story may be, the film rockets along, bounding from one violent scene to the next, rarely pausing to catch its breath. That’s probably a good thing because there are logic holes in the story big enough to drive a squad car through. It’s what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a “refrigerator movie.” It seems to make sense while you’re watching it, but later, when you’re at home in front of the fridge looking for a snack and thinking about the story you realize it doesn’t really hold together.

Better than the improbable plot twists (and melodramatic ending) are the characters that populate the story. Writers Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss circle around the usual cop clichés but manage to avoid repeating too many of the same crooked cop chestnuts we’ve seen before. Their “shoot first, ask questions later” cop characters are well written, with sharp dialogue and swagger to spare. The same can’t be said about the female characters who are relegated to the girlfriend and weepy widow roles.  
Street Kings shows the side of Los Angeles you don’t see in movies very often. It’s the LA of the Rodney King video and the Rampart Scandal. It’s a gritty, violent film that succeeds despite a lack of logic and touches of melodrama because of its colorful characters and adrenaline fueled pacing.

SNOW ANGELS: 4 STARS

This is the feel bad movie of the year.

Based on Stewart O'Nan's 1994 novel of the same name, it is the tragic story of loss of innocence in a small town. It’s the kind of movie that can be difficult, but rewarding to sit through.

Structured like a film noir Snow Angels begins in the present before jumping backwards in time to show us the events that lead up to the two mysterious gunshots that kick off the movie. We meet Annie Marchand (Kate Beckinsale), a single mom and waitress in a Chinese restaurant. She is recently separated from her high school sweetheart, Glenn (Sam Rockwell), a recovering alcoholic and born-again Christian who has trouble holding down a job, but is desperately trying to change his ways to earn back the right to spend time with their four-year-old daughter Tara (Grace Hudson). 

Working with Annie at the restaurant is busboy Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano), a shy boy dealing with his parent’s recent separation. His life changes for the better when he meets Lila (Olivia Thirlby), a charmingly offbeat girl who brings him out of his shell.

Inevitably these storylines mesh in heartbreaking ways, brought together by Annie’s affair with Nate Petite (Nicky Katt), the husband of her hard-edged co-worker Barb (Amy Sedaris).

Director David Gordon Green does a fine job of balancing the stories, skillfully weaving Arthur’s coming-of-age story throughout the considerably more morose story of Annie’s sordid life, but make no mistake there are few bright spots here. The story is almost unrelentingly tragic but Green and his cast keep things compelling by creating believable, convincing characters.  

At the top of the heap is Sam Rockwell’s take on the troubled Glenn. One of the best and most underrated actors working today, Rockwell brings a tangible sense of despair to his character. He presents Glenn as someone who recognizes his shortcomings, but is almost incapable of straightening up, no matter how hard he tries. He’s by times charming and funny, by times dangerous and unhinged, but never less than interesting.

Kate Beckinsale also impresses. Best known for her leather clad vampire “Death Dealer” character from the silly Underworld movies, she proves there is more to her than the tight sweaters and the high wire action of her best known franchise. Her Annie is a quietly desperate character, a woman whose life has become frayed at the edges and the struggle to maintain normalcy for herself and her daughter is wearing her down. Beckinsale does a nice job at identifying Annie’s world weariness while putting on a brave face to those around her.

The misfortune in Snow Angels breathes the same air as the family heartbreak of The Sweet Hereafter in that they are both riveting slice-of-life dramas that examine the effects of tragedy on life in small communities. It isn’t easy viewing but its taut and uncompromising look at the dark side of relationships turned sour and great performances make Snow Angels worth a look.

SHINE A LIGHT: 3 ½ STARS

The Rolling Stones are one of the most documented bands in rock ‘n’ roll. A quick glance at IMDB has them headlining no fewer than a dozen documentaries and concert films, including an IMAX extravaganza. They’ve contributing to over 100 soundtracks and both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have appeared on the big screen in acting roles. From their infancy the band has never met a camera they didn’t like and as a result it is possible to follow their progression from young blooze singing Turks to rock ‘n’ roll royalty while literally watching the wrinkles around Mick Jagger’s mouth and eyes blossom.

With such a wealth of archival footage already available the first question you ask when presented with a new concert film from the band is “Why?” Even with a director like Martin Scorsese behind the camera isn’t this simply an exercise in repetition?

The answer is yes and no, depending on your level of commitment to the ageless appeal of The Rolling Stones. If The Beatles were more your bag then Shine A Light will seem little more than a retread of the band’s greatest hits. If, however, you buy into the “greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Band Ever” mantra the movie will be a chance to see a classic group, while maybe not exactly aging gracefully, at least proving that collecting a social security check doesn’t mean you still can’t rock the rafters.

Shot at New York’s Beacon Theatre in fall of 2006, the movie documents a two night stand in honor of Bill Clinton’s sixtieth birthday. The set list may seem familiar; Satisfaction, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar and no less than four tunes from Some Girls get dusted off, but it isn’t so much the songs as how the band plays the songs that impresses.

Forty plus years after their first gigs you don’t expect to hear the kind of raucous commitment to the music on display here. Jagger, who must have the smallest buttocks in the business, is as frenetically fey here as he was at his androgynous heyday in 1972. Watching him brought to mind a quote from Performance, his acting debut. “You're a comical little geezer,” Chaz (James Fox) says to Jagger. “You'll look funny when you're fifty.” Bang on brother, but he’s still as compelling a front man as rock ‘n’ roll has ever produced. 

Old dog Keith Richards prowls the stage, cigarette clenched in his teeth, guitar weaving effortlessly with second stringer Ronnie Wood. Because these two have been playing off one another for so long it is easy to forget how magical it can sound when they are in sync.

As a document of the Stones in the 21st century Shine a Light does a stylish job at presenting them as an impressive live band, but little else. It’s odd that Scorsese, whose Last Waltz is considered one of the great rock ‘n’ roll films of all time and whose Dylan doc elevated the music biography to epic proportions, didn’t seize the chance to provide some insight into the band or perhaps attempt to provide some social context. (Also odd is the exclusion of Gimme Shelter, a song Scorsese has used in three films, Goodfellas, Casino, and The Departed, but is conspicuously absent here.)

As it is it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s OK, it’s really good rock ‘n’ roll, but as a document of the group it doesn’t have the depth or support the repeated viewings of earlier Stones’ films like 1970’s Gimme Shelter. The newer, more unique material in the form of duets with a variety of musicians, ranges from the exciting Jack White / Jagger’s double teaming of Loving Cup, to classic a blast of blues from Buddy Guy to a downright creepy dirty dancing routine between Jagger and Xtina Aguilera, who is almost four decades his junior.

In the end Shine a Light is a completely unnecessary film, unless you are a Stones fan or need to be reminded of why Keith Richards is the coolest guitar slinger in rock ‘n’ roll history.   

SEMI PRO: 3 ½ STARS

Comedian Will Ferrell graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Sports Information. This bit of trivia becomes significant when you take a look at his career and note that time after time he has been drawn to playing professional athletes.

There was Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, Phil Weston, an over-the-top soccer coach in Kicking and Screaming and championship skater Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory. In Semi Pro Ferrell is Jackie Moon the owner-coach-player of the American Basketball Association's Flint Michigan Tropics. All that despite his complete lack of a sportsman’s body.

Set in 1976 Semi Pro takes place just as the nine year old wild and crazy outlaw league The ABA is about to merge its best teams with the more established and certainly more traditional NBA. 

Ego maniac Jackie “I’m the greatest man in the world!” Moon (Ferrell) is a former pop star, a one hit wonder, whose tune Barry White inspired disco tune Love Me Sexy—“Let’s get sweaty. Let’s fill the bathtub with sweat”—earned enough cash for him to buy a basketball team, the Flint Michigan Tropics. Trouble is, they are the worst team in the league and will be faced with extinction when the merge goes through unless they turn things around.

Jackie tires everything to increase attendance at the games, including outlandish stunts like a roller skate jump over forty-seven feet of cheerleaders laid end-to-end and, in a scene that is definitely not PETA approved, wrestling a large angry bear. To score more points he trades the team’s old washing machine for washed-up ex-NBA player Monix, played by Woody Harrelson.

Unlike the bloated Blades of Glory which was simply a funnyish idea hung around Will Ferrell’s unbridled antics, Semi Pro actually has a fully fleshed out story and knows when to use, and more importantly not use Ferrell’s manic energy. A little of Ferrell can go a long way, and here, director Kent Alterman seems to understand that less is more. He’s dialed back on Ferrell’s screen time and uses him more effectively when he is on screen. Scenes don’t drag on too long, and at a tight hour-and-a-half it is punchier than Ferrell’s recent two plus hour comedy epics that contain as much dead air as laughs.

Semi Pro is a hybrid of sports movie—underdog team wants to prove their worth, although in this case they have the more humble goal of striving to come in at fourth place—seventies homage and Will Ferrell comedy. By reigning in Ferrell’s scattershot approach to comedy and using him only when necessary, Semi Pro delivers his best work since Anchorman.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES: 3 ½ STARS

The Spiderwick Chronicles, a new film starring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Freddie Highmore in a double role, is, like Harry Potter and The Golden Compass, another children's adventure fantasy based on popular books. Drawing from the first five novels in the Spiderwick series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, the movie hopes that its faeries and goblins will work the same kind of magic on family audiences as the charms and spells of a certain boy wizard. 
 
The movie starts with a breezy prologue in which we see fairy expert Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) dot and cross the final i’s and t’s on his life’s work, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You.

Jump ahead eighty years. Following a split with her husband Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) and her kids, Jared, his twin brother Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore) and Mallory (Sarah Bolger) are forced to leave New York and relocate to an isolated family estate once owned by their eccentric great, great uncle Arthur Spiderwick. “It has that old people smell,” says Simon. “It’s the house that time forgot,” adds Jared of the Addam’s Family-inspired mansion. 

Jared, angry about the move, discovers a dumb waiter on the first morning in the house when he pokes a series of holes in the wall. He takes the lift up to a secret office—a wonderland of creepy crawlies—where he finds a large, dusty old book. Ignoring the warning not to open the tome he, like any curious young boy would, turns the pages of his Great Uncle’s scrapbook and unwittingly unleashes a Pandora’s Box of goblin fury.

He has resuscitated the goblins that live in the forest who are now desperate to get their hands on the book’s secrets. The Grace family will now have to battle dark forces—and one really unpleasant ogre voiced by Nick Nolte—to save their lives and preserve the sanctity of the book.

Shot in Montreal, The Spiderwick Chronicles does a good job of balancing the fantasy elements with the human drama, and even effectively mixes in a bit of comedy. Often in this kind of special effects driven film the cast plays second fiddle to the CGI. Luckily Freddie Highmore, in a double role and sporting an American accent is more than up to the task of distinguishing himself amid the animated characters. He hands in two nice performances and anchors the fantastic elements of the film in reality. Also listen for Vancouver’s Seth Rogan to voice a cowardly hobgoblin and look for Nick Nolte, who doesn’t need much make-up to convincingly play the evil ogre in human form.

The Spiderwick Chronicles may be a bit too intense for the five and under set, but should suit the rest of the family just fine until the next time Harry Potter comes to town. 

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL DVD: 3 STARS

Shake Hands with the Devil is an account of Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire and his experiences during the 1994 Rwandan genocide when his pleas for aid went ignored by the United Nations. It’s a familiar story, having made headlines and been the subject of Dallaire’s autobiography and the Oscar winning film Hotel Rwanda. 

Shot on location where the atrocities actually took place, Shake Hands with the Devil is a no-holds-barred retelling of Dallaire’s heart wrenching story. French Canadian actor Roy Dupuis plays the general as a publicly stoic man trying desperately in private to hang on to his sanity. Driven to the brink by the violence around him, Dallaire is seen cutting himself with razors to distract himself from the painful truth that he was unable to do anything to stop the carnage that surrounds him.

It’s powerful stuff that doesn’t pull any punches. At the center of the film is Genie Award nominee Dupuis who at first seems stiff, wooden even, in his portrayal of the general, but as the film progresses the inner life of the character starts to seep through his austere façade. It’s a performance that exists almost totally in the actor’s eyes, and in this case we really do begin to believe that these are eyes that have witnessed too much suffering.
 
Director Roger Spottiswoode handles the material with an even hand, presenting the facts of the case in a straightforward—although sometimes graphic—manner. He doesn’t pander to the audience or try and manipulate them to feel a certain way. This is one story that needs no embellishment to wring emotion from the audience.

Shake Hands with the Devil may not be for everyone, but it is a powerful portrait of a man who stayed in Rwanda to “bear witness to that which the world does not want to see.”

SHOOT ‘EM UP DVD: 3 STARS FOR ACTION FANS
½ STAR FOR THE SQUEAMISH OR EASILY UPSET

For once a movie really lives up to its title. The name Shoot ‘Em Up is the perfect label for this action flick in which Clive Owen’s character uses 18 different guns, fires off countless rounds and spills (according to IMDB) 15 gallons of fake blood. Finally there’s some truth in advertising. Now the question is whether or not you want to rent a movie so over-the-top it makes Natural Born Killers look subtle.

Owen is the singularly named Smith (like Cher or Madonna only with big guns), a carrot-chomping transient with an extensive military background. He has stepped away from polite society in the hopes of leading his own, quiet life. Of course that hasn’t worked out for him—otherwise this movie would be called Leave ‘Em Alone. Instead of tranquility he finds himself embroiled in Byzantine political conspiracy, on the run with a baby and a prostitute (Monica Bellucci) all the while tracked by a bloodthirsty hit man named Hertz (Paul Giamatti) and a swarm of assorted bad guys.

Shoot ‘Em Up is kind of review proof. If it is crazy action you want then you’ll love it. If not, the frenetic pace and relentless bang bang of the movie will be headache inducing. It’s that simple.
I thought it was great mindless fun and at least features good actors—Owen and Giamatti are both Oscar nominees—who seem to be having fun shooting guns and uttering snappy one liners like, “Guns don't kill people! But they sure help!”

SWEENEY TODD: 4 STARS

A hullabaloo arose in 1924 when sex symbol Rudolph Valentino, nicknamed The Shiek, was seen sporting a Van Dyke beard, cultivated for his upcoming role in The Hooded Falcon. The Barbers of America, fearing a loss of business if the famous actor made beards chic, threatened to boycott his films unless he shaved his beard.

Now comes Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, surely to be a target of another nation-wide barber boycott for it’s depiction of hairstylists as bloodthirsty fiends.

Sweeney Todd, the latest collaboration between director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp is the darkest musical you’ll likely ever see, a vivid restaging of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim stage musical that doesn’t spare the gore.  Based on the classic penny dreadful story about a barber who slits the throats of his clients and his accomplice who then grinds up the bodies and turns them into meat pies, the tale doesn’t seem to lend itself to a musical treatment. The hills are alive with the sound of… gushing blood?

In fact, the musical has always divided audiences. On the opening night of its original Broadway run half the audience reportedly left in disgust at intermission but the show was a hit nonetheless and ran for a healthy 557 performances. The movie is likely to be as divisive. It’s bloody—geysers of arterial plasma spurt from slashed throats before the sliced bodies are unceremoniously dumped down a chute to land on crushed skulls with a sickening thud—but in the best Grand Guignol tradition it’s bleakly beautiful.

In the lead role is Johnny Depp in his sixth partnering with Burton. The deranged barber is another in a long line of risky roles from the actor who once said he would do anything for Burton, adding “If he wants me to have sex with an aardvark in one of his next movies, then I will do that.”

Luckily there’s no bestiality in Sweeney Todd, but that’s about the only sin left undone. Depp’s Sweeney—nee Benjamin Barker—looks like one of the characters from The Corpse Bride come to life. He’s so pale he makes Nicole Kidman look sun burnt and the stripe of grey in his hair brings to mind a German Expressionist version of Jay Leno. Wrongly imprisoned for fifteen years by a judge who coveted his wife, Todd has come back to London with revenge on his mind. His retribution takes the form of a bloody ballet of throat slashing unparalleled since the days of Freddy and Jason. Depp’s memorable performance heightens the drama, perfectly capturing the pent up rage of a man whose life is being overtaken by obsession.

Balancing out the gore is Sondheim’s intriguing light operetta score and Helena Bonham Carter’s take on Mrs. Lovett, the cannibal baker. Before the movie opened online pundits were commenting that she was only cast because she’s Mrs. Tim Burton. Not only is that dismissive and rude, it’s also far from the truth. Living with the director may have given her better access to the part, but she is the perfect choice from her Victoriana Goth looks to the much needed light touch she brings to the grim proceedings.   

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street isn’t your father’s musical, but it is beautifully realized vision from one of the most interesting director / actor teams working today.

SLEUTH: 3 ½ STARS

Don’t call it a remake of the classic 1972 film based on Anthony Shaffer's stage play which starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier as two men locked in a tricky and sometimes vicious game of verbal one-upmanship. No, the new Sleuth, penned by the Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter, has, for better and for worse, only a passing relationship with the original.

In the new film, directed by Kenneth Branagh, Caine graduates to the role of Andrew Wyke, the oddball crime novelist originally essayed by Olivier. Jude Law is Milo Tindle, an out of work actor and the paramour of Wyke’s estranged wife. When Milo visits Andrew at his eccentric country mansion to convince him to grant his wife a divorce the pair engage in a power struggle. Each man is pushed to his emotional limit, but who will come out on top?

The first thing you’ll notice about Sleuth is that it looks great. Branagh has set the entire movie in Wyke’s house, a strange and wonderful place that looks like a cross between The Jetson’s living room and a museum tableau of 21st century furniture design. Filled with stylish but uncomfortable looking chairs and filled with sharp edges, it perfectly captures the prickly, uneasy feel of the script.

Pinter has crafted a script that seems deceptively simple on its face, but reveals much for those willing to dig a little deeper. As the two actors parry back and forth even a line as innocuous as “Would you like a drink? I’m having vodka,” becomes laden with meaning. It would be a throw-away line in any other script, but here, as Wyke offers Milo a cocktail it reveals much about his character. He’s the perfect host, but also a controlling one. When he says “I’m having vodka,” it’s a passive aggressive way of suggesting that Milo also have a vodka. It also sets him up as a egomaniac. Who cares what he’s having? Certainly not Milo, but Wyke feels the need to announce everything in his life, even the most banal tidbits as if they were fascinating nuggets of wisdom.

Caine perfectly captures the rhythms of Pinter’s dialogue. He is to Pinter what Madonna is to the pointy bra. That is he was born to say those words. Law less so. The first hour of Sleuth crackles with snappy wordplay, humor and the two actors seem to relish every second of screen time, particularly Caine who fully embodies the Wyke’s English eccentric character.

Regrettably as the running time creeps up to the hour-and-a-half mark the story takes an unfortunate turn into psycho drama, and while Caine shines, Law’s work becomes over-the-top and even a bit screechy. His transformation in the movie’s final third didn’t work for me, and threatens to sink the entire film. Luckily Caine’s strong performance anchors the final moments of the movie.

Sleuth is a flawed, but interesting movie and worth the price of admission to see Michael Caine, one of film’s great actors, really strut his stuff.

SYDNEY WHITE: 3 STARS

Amanda Bynes is the Lucille Ball of the pre-teen set. Her popular television shows on Nickelodeon turned her into a comedy icon for tweens and in recent years she has made the leap to the big screen. In her latest film, an update of the Snow White fairy tale, she is Sydney White, a plumber’s daughter who tries unsuccessfully to pledge to the same sorority that her late mother belonged to twenty years before.

Rejected by the snooty Kappa girls she finds refuge on campus in the nerd house, known as The Vortex because it sucks all the losers in. Her roommates are seven dorks who have familiar traits: there’s the guy who sleeps a lot, the one who is allergic to everything and sneezes constantly, one is dumb as a stump, another is so shy he only communicates through a hand puppet, while the edgy roomie takes out his ire at the world in a rabble rousing blog, as the socially awkward but super smart and the eternally optimistic housemates round out the cast.

Add to that an evil witch in the form of Rachel (Sara Paxton) the Kappa Queen and Student Council President, a good looking love interest called, what else, Tyler Prince (Matt Long), a computer age poisoned Apple and the update is complete.

Sydney White is a cute idea, but cute ideas don’t usually make very good movies. In this case, however, the predictable story is saved by winning performances from the young cast. The seven dorks are just this side of annoying, but kind of endearing in a Revenge of the Nerds kind of way. One actually manages to breathe some life into a “Hi Ho” joke that shouldn’t work but does. Ultimately thought, it’s Amanda Bynes who carries the show. She’s funny, in a goofy way, and is a likeable presence on screen.

Sydney White is a fairy tale remake and an underdog story all rolled into one, but it would be nothing without Bynes in the lead role.

SUPERBAD: 4 STARS

Superbad is Porky's for a new generation. It’s a throwback to the teen comedies we used to love before John Hughes got his hands on the genre and smoothed out the rough edges. It’s rude, has no boundaries and is laugh out loud funny.

Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Brampton, Ontario born Michael Cera) are BFFs with just weeks to go before their high school graduation. In the waning days of their high school careers they decide to launch a full scale mission to land girlfriends and get some much needed experience with the opposite sex before heading to college in the fall.

When the class hottie Jules invites them to a party, they’re thrilled. There’s just one problem, she asks them to bring alcohol. That’s were their nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) come in. He’s the classic pencil necked geek and a chick repellant, but he’s the only one with a fake ID and access to booze.

The bulk of the film follows the exploits of this trio as they try and score alcohol so they can in turn score some girls. Underage, but blinded by their sex drives, they risk it all against slacker cops, a maniacal homeless man and jealous boyfriends to track down booze for their dates. It’s the stuff that parent’s nightmares are made of.

Superbad is shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s the kind of coming-of-age flick Hollywood has been churning out for years, but it has a few things going for it that make it worthwhile.

First, it was co-written by Knocked Up’s Seth Rogen, who also plays one of the cops. Rogen and childhood pal Evan Goldberg penned Superbad while still in high school, and like Knocked Up the raunchy humor here plays off the more human aspect of the relationships between the friends. The kids in American Pie were funny, but unrealistic in unrealistic situations. Ditto Road Trip and most other teen comedies made in the last ten years, but Superbad succeeds because it treats its characters like real people—albeit real people who do crazy things because they are ruled by their hormones. 

The script is smart and funny, the direction solid, but it is the three lead actors, Hill, Cera and Mintz-Plasse that really sell this movie. Hill’s comic timing is bang on; Cera, so excellent as George Michael on the late, great Arrested Development is in top deadpan form as the straight-laced Evan while Mintz-Plasse, in his first acting role, could give Anthony Michael Hall a run for his money as the King of the Movie Nerds. These three play off one another really well, building a believable relationship that is by turns hilarious, by turns touching, but above all convincing.

Super funny, and super vulgar, Superbad is the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. I’m McLovin’ It! (You’ll have to see the movie to get the joke.)

STARDUST: 3 ½ STARS

Stardust, a new movie starring Claire Danes and Robert De Niro evokes the fantasy films of the 1980s. Movies with titles like Labyrinth and The Princess Bride were sweeping whimsical epics that combined flights of the imagination with, as Peter Falk says in the latter, “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...” Stardust, based on a graphic novel by fantasy superstar Neil Gaiman, breathes the same air and is a welcome blast of originality in a summer of remakes and sequels.

The story begins with a young man named Tristran (Charlie Cox) who sets out to win the heart of the beautiful, but shallow Victoria (Sienna Miller). He promises to fetch her a fallen star as a sign of the lengths to which he will go to prove his love. To do so he must cross The Wall, a barrier separating his sleepy village from the strange, supernatural land that lies beyond. To his shock he discovers that the fallen star has assumed human form. Named Yvaine (Claire Danes) she is beautiful, feisty and completely unaware of the trouble she is in. 

She is sought after by not only the King’s (Peter O’Toole) ruthless sons, who need her secret power to secure the throne, but also by a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) who needs the star’s youthful vitality to restore her beauty and achieve eternal youth.

When Yvaine’s cosmic countenance takes a more earthly turn she falls in love with Tristan and as their adventures deepen and become more perilous—they meet a flamboyant pirate captain (Robert De Niro) and shifty merchant (Ricky Gervais)—the young man and former heavenly body discover the true meaning of love and their real destiny.

Usually this kind of thing puts me to sleep before the opening credits have finished. The first mention of forbidden lands or evil witches and I’m out, but Stardust has more going for it than the run-of-the-mill fantasy. It’s quite funny, a welcome change from a genre that often takes itself a little too seriously and has a top-flight cast that includes superstars Ian McKellen, De Niro, O’Toole, Pfeiffer and Gervais in concert with up-and-comers like Claire Danes and Charlie Cox.

Each play to their strengths but it is De Niro who really makes an impression as a cross-dressing pirate. That’s right, he wears a dress and minces across the screen in a way that we have never seen before from the tough-guy actor. He’s made comedies before, but usually playing a riff on his well-established heavy characters. This time out he shakes it up and it is great to see him have some fun on screen in a role that is a polar opposite from the kind of thing he usually does.

Stardust is a beautifully realized fantasy that takes many of the standard features of the genre, dying Kings, a quest to find true love and evil witches and throws them together in a way that avoids cliché. It’s magical and fun, and best of all, it ain’t Rush Hour 3.

THE SIMPSON’S MOVIE: 3 ½ STARS

Some movies cry out to be seen on the big screen. Gone with the Wind’s breathtaking scenes of the burning of Atlanta simply don’t cut it on the small screen. Ditto Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s fight in the bamboo trees, but not everything needs the big screen treatment.

The Simpsons have been the world’s most popular television family for 18 years. Week in and week out they have tickled our funny bones on Sunday nights and in re-runs that play almost twenty-four hours a day. Time called the series the “best TV show of all time” and named Bart one of the most influential people of the 20th century. At one point they were so popular that t-shirts with Bart’s picture on them were selling at the rate of 1 million a day.

They’re popular all right, but I have just a couple of questions now that they have made the trip to the theaters: Does bigger mean better? Will The Simpsons, available around the clock on TV, make an impression on movie goers?

The story isn’t much different from the kind of thing we’d see on the television show. Homer creates an environmental catastrophe when he dumps a leaky silo of pig droppings into Lake Springfield. The resulting disaster forces President Schwarzenegger to sign a bill to encase the entire city under a giant glass dome, cutting Springfield and all its residents off from the world. When it is discovered that Homer is the cause of the problem an angry mob descends on the Simpson household. The family narrowly escapes and relocates to Alaska, far away from their troubled former lives. When Marge sees a news report about the devastation in their old hometown she knows she must return, with or without Homer. To redeem himself Homer must save his town from destruction.

It’s a funny movie. Way funnier than my description suggests but is it worth the money? The first twenty-minutes are very good—Homer even breaks the fourth wall to mock the audience that pays to see something at the theatre they can see at home for free. It’s as good as anything from the show’s heyday in the first eight seasons. The laughs thin out a bit through the mid section of the film but stay steady enough to keep a grin on your face.

Laughs aside, The Simpsons haven’t changed much during their transition from the small to big screen, and there really isn’t anything much here that you can’t see on the TV show, unlike the South Park movie of a few years ago which pushed the envelope and created a new, exciting life for the show in 35mm.  

The Simpsons Movie is funny, bigger than usual, but I couldn’t get past the nagging feeling that I should have been sitting in my living room watching it on television.

SICKO: 4 STARS

Sicko, the new film from Michael Moore, marks a different approach from the filmmaker, best known for his agitprop takes on gun control, big business and George Bush. The Moore who takes on America’s lucrative but appallingly inefficient health care system, is kinder and gentler, but still drives his point home with the power of a jackhammer.

For much of the film Moore casts himself as the wide-eyed traveler, an American abroad in Canada, France and England where he discovers health care systems that offer a level of care to everyone that is simply not available to all Americans. His glasses are certainly tinted a certain shade of rose, but his point is clear, the American health system is run by insurance companies who are more interested in profit than they are the health of their policy holders.

In the most provocative sequence in the film Moore takes a group of 911 rescue workers, now suffering from respiratory illnesses, to Guantanamo Bay to demand the same kind of health care for them as the Al Queda prisoners housed within. From a boat in the bay Moore bleats through a megaphone that they only want the same care offered to the “evil-doers” behind the imposing grey walls of the prison. It’s striking, incendiary and a near perfect Moore moment. When they are met with alarms instead of offers of help, Moore and his guests continue on to Cuba where they are received with open arms and given the care they need.

No health care system is perfect. Anyone who has sat in an emergency room in Toronto or Vancouver for three hours to get five stitches can tell you that, but the point Moore makes is that at least we are offered medical attention regardless of our age, the state of our existing health or income level. With that in mind I wanted to kiss the ground when I left the theatre, happy to live in a country where, by our taxes at least, we look after each other when we need the help most.   

SURF’S UP: 3 ½ STARS

Penguins are the new dogs. Not since the heyday of dog movies like Benji and Lassie has one species won over the hearts of so many. March of the Penguins was a left field hit a year or so ago and an R-rated parody of that movie, Farce of the Penguins, soon followed. The little furry birds have recently appeared in Happy Feet, Madagascar, the 3-2-1 Penguins series and even something called Penguins Behind Bars. Everybody loves penguins, but will they love penguins who surf? Disturbia star Shia LaBeouf is counting on it.

LeBeouf provides the voice for Cody Maverick, a young penguin who idolizes legendary surfer Big Z. When he is scouted to compete in the Big Z Memorial Surf Off he soon comes up against stiff competition in the form of Tank Evans, the surfing champion who beat Big Z, and forced him into taking his last, fatal ride on a surfboard.

After Cody takes a nasty spill he is rescued by lifeguard Lani (Zooey Deschanel) who introduces him to Zeke (real life surfer Jeff Bridges doing his best Big Lebowski routine). Turns out Zeke isn’t just a washed-up old surfer, he also has valuable life lessons— "It's not the destination, it's the journey,” and "Winning isn't everything,"—for his young protégé.

On the surface Surf’s Up doesn’t seem to offer much we haven’t seen before. There’s animated penguins, goofy sidekicks and lots of poop jokes, but Surf’s Up is a cut above the rest.

First of all is the style of the film. Instead of the usual animated movie approach, which is often the standard wide shot, close up, television framing, Surf’s Up takes it’s inspiration from documentary films and reality television. Jittery camera work is mixed with the usual documentary clichés—talking head interviews, confessionals and historical footage—to tell the story.

Imagine Dogtown and Z Boys and The Real World with penguins and you get the idea. It’s a simple, but effective trick and it separates Surf’s Up from the rest of the animated pack.

Kids might not get all the jokes—many are clearly aimed at mom and dad—but they will certainly love the surfing sequences, the jokes they understand and the penguins.

If this movie does well—and it deserves to—expect to see penguins in absolutely everything next year. Indiana Jones and the Dancing Penguins anyone?