Special screenings
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 94 minutes. Not rated. In German with English subtitles.
The story of the bumpy love affair between a 60-ish German floor-washer and an inarticulate Arab mechanic barely half her age. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 3/4, 7 pm, free.
David Lynch Mini-Festival
Thru 2/28, documentary Lynch and restored print of Eraserhead. Galaxy Theaters Neonopolis, 450 E. Fremont St., 383-9600. Various times and prices. Info: www.cinevegas.com.
IMAX Theatre
Deep Sea 3D, Mystery of the Nile, Dinosaurs 3D: Giants of Patagonia, Lions 3D: Roar of the Kalahari, Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure
Call for showtimes. $11.99 each show.
Luxor, 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 262-4629.
Out of the Past
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. 97 minutes. Not rated.
Mitchum is a detective hired by gangster Whit Sterling (Douglas) to track down his girlfriend, who Sterling says ran off after stealing $40,000. Tracking her to Mexico, the detective falls for her and tries to help her elude Sterling and his henchmen. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 3/4, 1 pm, free.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, John Rhys-Davies. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 115 minutes. Rated PG.
Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. Whitney Library, 5175 E. Tropicana Ave., 507-4010. 3/2, 11:30 am, free.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Tim Curry. Directed by Jim Sharman. 100 minutes. Rated R.
The perennial 1975 cult classic is a mix of horror, comedy and musical, featuring sex, transvestites and the Time Warp. Augmented by a live cast and audience participation. Onyx Theater inside The Rack in Commercial Center, 953 E. Sahara Ave., #101. First & third Sat of month, 11:30 pm, $7. Info: 953-0682 or www.divinedecadence.org.
Windy City Heat
Perry Caravello, Don Barris, Tony Barbieri. Directed by Bob Goldthwait. 87 minutes. Rated R.
A documentary (or is it?) about a man caught up in the glamour of being a Hollywood celebrity who has no idea that the production he’s in is a fake. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 3/6, 7 pm, free.
New this week
Bonneville (Not reviewed)
Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen. Directed by Christopher N. Rowley. 93 minutes. Rated PG.
A woman takes a road trip to Santa Barbara with her two friends in order to deliver the ashes of her dead husband to his resentful daughter.
City of Men ** 1/2
Douglas Silva, Darlan Cunha, Jonathan Haagensen. Directed by Paulo Morelli. 110 minutes. Rated R. In Portuguese with English subtitles.
See review Page 31.
The Other Boleyn Girl ** 1/2
Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana. Directed by Justin Chadwick. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13.
See review Page 30.
Penelope ***
Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, Peter Dinklage. Directed by Mark Palansky. 102 minutes. Rated PG.
See review Page 31.
Semi-Pro ** 1/2
Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin. Directed by Kent Alterman. 90 minutes. Rated R.
See review Page 30.
Steep (Not reviewed)
Directed by Mark Obenhaus. 92 minutes. Rated PG.
Documentary tracing the legacy of extreme skiing from its early pioneers to today.
The Walker ** 1/2
Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall. Directed by Paul Schrader. 108 minutes. Rated R.
See review Page 31.
Now playing
27 Dresses ***
Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Edward Burns. Directed by Anne Fletcher. 107 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Romantic comedies don’t come much more by-the-numbers than 27 Dresses. It begins and ends with a wedding, the inevitable lovers initially hate each other in order to have sexual tension, and, by the end, all conflicts and rivalries are resolved without a single sore feeling. But this story of the eternal bridesmaid finally getting her day begins to grow on you, courtesy of Heigl’s effortless charm. Her chemistry with Marsden is intoxicating enough that we don’t see some of the requisite reversals and temporary heartaches coming. –MSH
Alvin and the Chipmunks (Not reviewed)
Jason Lee, voices of Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney. Directed by Tim Hill. 91 minutes. Rated PG.
Three chipmunk brothers are adopted by a man named Dave (Lee) and turned into singing sensations.
Atonement ***
Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai. Directed by Joe Wright. 122 minutes. Rated R.
Atonement is best in its first third or so, which focuses on a tense day at the English country estate of the Tallis family on the eve of the Second World War. Precocious and self-important 13-year-old budding writer Briony (Ronan) witnesses a series of incidents between her older sister Cecilia (Knightley) and Robbie Turner (McAvoy), the son of the family’s housekeeper. Misinterpreting the pair’s budding love as something more sinister, Briony, through a series of tragic coincidences, ends up condemning Robbie to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. When the film switches perspectives and time frames to focus on Robbie, now a soldier in the war a few years later, it’s less effective. Filmmaking skill aside, Wright never quite connects the emotion of the story to his awe-inspiring presentation of it, and that leaves the film beautiful but always just out of reach. –JB
Bee Movie ** 1/2
Voices of Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick. Directed by Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith. 90 minutes. Rated PG.
Disaffected honeybee Barry B. Benson (Seinfeld) is unwilling to commit himself to a regimented life of honey production and eager to experience life beyond the hive. So Barry ventures into the human world, where he breaks the bee law against communicating with people and strikes up a friendship with florist Vanessa (Zellweger). There are a few funny lines here and there, and the bee society is sometimes creative and clever. But the film is mostly a collection of tired celebrity voice cameos and stale Seinfeld riffs repackaged to relate to the bee world. –JB
Be Kind Rewind ***
Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover. Directed by Michel Gondry. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13.
There’s a corner video store—Be Kind Rewind—that has never made the transition from VHS to DVD. Jerry (Black), pal of employee Mike (Mos Def), absorbs a massive electrical charge one night, and upon entering the store the following day, demagnetizes the entire inventory. Fearful of losing a valued customer who’s keen to catch up with Ghostbusters, Jerry and Mike proceed to grab a cheap video camera, scrape up some chintzy costumes and produce a 15-minute version starring themselves. Before you can say “yeah right okay sure,” their renditions of everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Rush Hour 2 have the neighborhood lined up around the block. Be Kind Rewind just sorta ambles along, goofy as hell, hoping you’ll be charmed by its absence of flash; only the homemade-movie excerpts are genuinely funny. –MD
The Bucket List ** 1/2
Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes. Directed by Rob Reiner. 97 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Early in The Bucket List, each of the film’s protagonists (auto mechanic Carter Chambers and hospital magnate Edward Cole) discovers that he has only a few months left to live—a year at most. Chambers (Freeman) draws up a list of things he’d like to do before his final kick, Cole (Nicholson) adds several items, and the next thing you know they’re flitting around the globe in Cole’s private jet, carpe-ing the holy hell out of every precious diem they have left. Any buddy movie rises or falls on the chemistry between its stars, and Freeman’s avuncular warmth offsets Nicholson’s irascible cynicism in a predictable but nonetheless satisfying way. And even at its most formulaic, the film manages the occasional surprise. –MD
Charlie Bartlett ***
Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings. Directed by Jon Poll. 97 minutes. Rated R.
After getting expelled from yet another ritzy private school, Charlie (Yelchin) enrolls at the local public school. Once there, he starts a prescription-drug ring in the boys’ bathroom and adopts the toilet seat as the new psychiatrist’s couch. As an added bonus, the pest of the principal’s office falls in love with none other than the principal’s daughter. The movie tends to ramble, frequently including scenes that fail to progress the story. Director Poll would have benefited from a dose of some Charlie-prescribed Ritalin to maintain his focus. But Yelchin’s performance as the ever-endearing Charlie makes up for Poll’s concentration problems. His onscreen presence makes it easy to sit back and be entertained. –TC
Charlie Wilson’s War *** 1/2
Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Julia Roberts. Directed by Mike Nichols. 97 minutes. Rated R.
Hanks puts his enormous charm to use as the seemingly oblivious politician who latched onto the conflict between the Russians and the Afghans in the 1980s and made it into his personal crusade, increasing funding for covert operations and, as the movie would have it, becoming almost single-handedly responsible for repelling the Russians from Afghanistan. This, apparently, is what has been missing from all of this year’s movies about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East: humor. It seems like a simple thing, but the reason that Charlie Wilson’s War is just about the only one of these films worth seeing is that it actually cares about entertaining its audience, about giving them something to laugh at and have fun with before hitting them over the head with how bad things are. –JB
Cloverfield *** 1/2
Michael Stahl-David, Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller. Directed by Matt Reeves. 84 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A group of Manhattan twentysomethings throw a going-away party for their friend Rob (Stahl-David), about to take a new job in Japan. The mundane relationship dramas among Rob and his buddies are all documented by the appealingly goofy Hud (Miller), who for the bulk of the movie wields the handheld camera that provides the viewer’s only perspective. For 15 minutes or so, we’re watching what look like everyday home movies, and then something happens: A giant monster attacks Manhattan, and all hell breaks loose. What makes Cloverfield stand out from a Roland Emmerich movie is that it eliminates almost all of the big-picture storytelling (the politicians, the military, the scientists) and keeps its focus solely at ground level, on the average people whose lives are forever changed by this inexplicable and horrific event. –JB
Definitely, Maybe **
Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, Abigail Breslin. Directed by Adam Brooks. 105 minutes. Rated PG-13.
The film’s strained gimmick is that Will (Reynolds), about to get a divorce from his unseen wife, recounts the story of their romance to his curious daughter, Maya (Breslin), who has somehow gone all of her 10 years of life without ever learning how her parents met or where they lived or what they did before she was born. Will variously seems ready to commit to college sweetheart Emily (Banks); free-spirited writer Summer (Weisz); and cynical co-worker April (Fisher). Since none of them can be knocked out of the running right away, the movie equivocates on each, never tipping the sympathy too far toward one particular object of affection, and the result is three movies’ worth of rom-com clichés stuffed into one. –JB
Diary of the Dead **
Joshua Close, Michelle Morgan, Shawn Roberts. Directed by George A. Romero. 95 minutes. Rated R.
Romero’s latest foray into zombie territory takes him back to his low-budget indie roots, which means some horribly awkward acting from a cast of unknowns, and much less lavish special effects. That might be forgivable if Romero’s writing or directing were up to his old standards, but it’s at least as awkward as the performances, and certainly can’t be excused for inexperience. Romero structures his film like a collection of found footage, made by a group of college students who were shooting a movie when people starting rising from their graves. The stilted dialogue declares the subtext in bold, unwieldy pronouncements, and Romero proves that, blank slates as they may be, zombies do have a limit when it comes to serving as carriers for his increasingly heavy-handed messages. –JB
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ***
Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze. Directed by Julian Schnabel. 112 minutes. Rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.
Schnabel’s biopic is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of France’s Elle magazine. In his early 40s, Bauby suffered a severe stroke that left him entirely paralyzed aside from his left eye, which he used to write an acclaimed memoir by blinking words out one letter at a time thanks to a code devised by his speech therapist. Although the instinct to canonize his subject must have been strong, Schnabel concentrates mostly on atmosphere over melodrama, and thus ends up with a movie that is creative and often touching, if a little thin beyond its stylistic departures. –JB
Enchanted *** 1/2
Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden. Directed by Kevin Lima. 107 minutes. Rated PG.
Adams plays Giselle, an animated Disney girl hoping to marry a prince. The cartoon Prince Edward (Marsden) rescues Giselle, and they fall in love. But Edward’s stepmother, a bitter, evil queen, throws Giselle down a well that leads to live-action, modern New York City. Divorce lawyer and single dad Robert (Dempsey) finds her and reluctantly lets her stay on his couch. Although Enchanted doesn’t fully take advantage of its unique idea, it’s still a hugely entertaining, clever comic fairy tale. –JMA
The Eye (Not reviewed)
Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey. Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. 97 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A woman (Alba) receives a corneal transplant that allows her to see into the supernatural world.
First Sunday (Not reviewed)
Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Katt Williams. Directed by David E. Talbert. 96 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Durell (Cube) and LeeJohn (Morgan) are best friends and petty criminals. When told they have one week to pay a $17,000 debt or Durell will lose his son, they come up with a desperate scheme to rob their neighborhood church.
Fool’s Gold * 1/2
Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland. Directed by Andy Tennant. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A murderous rap star/loan shark using his incompetent cronies to recoup his investment. An overly generous multimillionaire trying to connect with his tabloid-fodder daughter. A newly divorced pair of treasure hunters who give new meaning to the words “sexual history.” What do they have in common? Not as much as Fool’s Gold would like you to believe. The movie expects audiences to simply accept that this motley crew of characters might actually come together in pursuit of an 18th-century sunken treasure. But Fool’s Gold’s players are more caricatures than characters; only Hudson manages to infuse the otherwise absurd film with a hint of believability and comedy. Fool’s Gold delivers too many fools and too little comedy gold. –TC
Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (Not reviewed)
Directed by Bruce Hendricks. 74 minutes. Not rated.
Concert film from the recent Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour, presented in 3D.
I Am Legend **
Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan. Directed by Francis Lawrence. 100 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A few years after an “elegant” man-made virus has wiped out most of the world’s human population, Robert Neville (Smith), a military microbiologist stationed in Manhattan and the city’s last healthy biped inhabitant, scavenges the island for supplies in the company of his German shepherd. Battling loneliness, he also conducts experiments to reverse the effects of the disease on “dark-seekers”—physically ravaged, vampire-like victims of the disease who huddle in cavernous hovels during the day and feed by night. The introduction of a pair of healthy, itinerant survivors (Braga and Tahan) midway through is the final straw, and from there the movie lumbers toward a hasty, predictable conclusion that even manages to mangle the meaning of Matheson’s lovely title. –MH
In Bruges ****
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes. Directed by Martin McDonagh. 107 minutes. Rated R.
The surreptitious plot revolves around two less-than-superb hitmen. In fact, they hardly seem suited for contract killing at all. The younger of the two, Ray (Farrell), has only performed two murders, and both at the same time. Only one of them was intentional. The elder assassin, Ken (Gleeson), is gentle and relaxed, seeming less interested in taking lives than in taking in the sights of Bruges, the well-preserved medieval town the two men are sent to following Ray’s debacle of an inaugural hit. The screenplay’s like a superb hitman—by the time you realize what it’s actually been doing, it’s already done. The difference is, after experiencing In Bruges, you’re still around to appreciate its brilliance. –MSH
Jumper 1/2
Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Samuel L. Jackson, Rachel Bilson. Directed by Doug Liman. 88 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Teleporting Jumpers like David Rice (Christensen), who have existed in secrecy for millennia, are constantly hunted by a group of xenophobic zealots known as Paladins, whose mission in life is to exterminate David’s kind. Why? Beats me. The chief Paladin, Roland (Jackson), repeatedly intones that “only God should have such power,” and suggests that Jumpers are invariably corrupted by their absolute freedom of movement. Liman and his effects team do their damnedest to dazzle us, warping the frame at the point of rupture and accompanying each jump with a vaguely metallic “whoosh!” noise, but the novelty, which is negligible to begin with, wears off in a big hurry. Jumper’s most serious problem is its leading man, whose overpowering aura of whiny entitlement could make any film insufferable. –MD
Juno *** 1/2
Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner. Directed by Jason Reitman. 92 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Pregnant high-school student Juno (Page) is a sullen indie-rock chick who sleeps with her best friend/bandmate Bleeker (Cera) because she’s “bored,” listens exclusively to punk rock made before she was born and peppers her speech with self-consciously artificial language that proves how much smarter she is than just about everyone she interacts with. Reitman continues to show his aptitude for sharp comedy in the face of situations that most people would find appalling, and he brings the at-times overly mannered screenplay to life in a visually inventive way, downplaying the preciousness that could make it come off like a riot-grrrl version of a Wes Anderson movie. –JB
Mad Money ***
Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes. Directed by Callie Khouri. 104 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Our band of thieves includes Keaton as a woman who just wants to preserve her quality of life; Latifah as a single mother who just wants to provide for her two children; and Holmes as a spunky and sweet girl who joins the thieving duo just because she’s tickled to be included. They’re not even stealing money that anyone would suffer to lose. They’re taking worn-out cash scheduled to be shredded. The heists are clever enough to make us forgive their implausibility, and the significant others of these lady thieves offer touching support and hilarious one-liners. Mad Money’s no classic, but you won’t mind giving the price of a ticket to these lighthearted hoodlums. –MSH
Meet the Spartans (Not reviewed)
Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Ken Davitian. Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. 84 minutes. Rated PG-13.
The creators of Date Movie and Epic Movie parody the latest blockbusters.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (Not reviewed)
Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Diane Kruger. Directed by Jon Turteltaub. 124 minutes. Rated PG.
Treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) looks to discover the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by uncovering the mystery within the 18 pages missing from assassin John Wilkes Booth’s diary.
No Country for Old Men ****
Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones. Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. 122 minutes. Rated R.
While hunting in the West Texas mountains, Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a hard-luck but humane Vietnam War vet, stumbles across a botched heavyweight drug deal and impulsively makes off with a $2 million cache of very dirty money. When a delayed bout of guilt inadvertently tips off his identity to the thugs involved, Moss becomes the quarry of ultraefficient psychopathic hit man Anton Chigurh (Bardem) and kind-hearted but demoralized small-town sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones). In a return to the bleak physical setting and hair-trigger brutality of 1984’s Blood Simple, the brothers Coen pull out of their multi-film slump and then some with this violent, pitch-black adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 chase thriller. –MH
Persepolis ****
Voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux. Directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi. 95 minutes. Rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.
At age 9, Marjane Satrapi saw her entire world changed when the Islamic Revolution hit Tehran. Women were forced to wear the veil, and people were being imprisoned and executed. In private, Marjane listens to her educated parents and their opinions on the war and its outcome. It fuels her imagination, and she seeks her own types of freedom, including bootleg cassettes of Iron Maiden. As a teenager, she travels to Austria but can’t make a home for herself there. Paired with co-director Paronnaud, Satrapi has turned her graphic novel into a powerful animated feature. Though the film leaves out the subtle and complex political nuances of the book in favor of speed and brevity, it’s also a good deal livelier and funnier. –JMA
Rambo **
Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden. Directed by Sylvester Stallone. 93 minutes. Rated R.
Rambo (Stallone) has been living in Thailand for some time, world-weary and cynical, catching snakes and piloting a longboat up the Salween River for a living. American missionaries approach him for a ride into Burma, a deadly war zone, so that they can hand out Bibles and encouraging words. Not surprisingly, their chosen village is attacked, and they are captured. So a band of scurvy, tattooed mercenaries join Rambo on a rescue mission that lasts the entire second half of the film and results in mighty amounts of carnage. Stallone plays Rambo with very little dialogue, which is good, because whenever anyone speaks, it’s cringe-worthy. Rambo really doesn’t bother to ask where this relic of a character fits today. –JMA
The Savages ***
Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco. Directed by Tamara Jenkins. 113 minutes. Rated R.
Forty-ish Jon (Hoffman, really working the schlump), a college professor specializing in Brecht, and Wendy (Linney, surprisingly manic), a failed playwright subsisting on temp work, must put aside decades of interpersonal rancor in order to tend to their ailing father, Lenny (Bosco), whom they both resent for having been a distant and demanding figure throughout their motherless childhood. Black humor abounds, but the prevailing mood is one of defeat and frustration, especially since both of these adult children are struggling at work and hopelessly entangled in failed relationships. What keeps you from wanting to slit your wrists is the typically nuanced work of Linney and Hoffman, both of whom mine coarse nuggets of emotional truth from the sediment created by years of buried discontent. –MD
The Spiderwick Chronicles ****
Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary-Louise Parker. Directed by Mark Waters. 97 minutes. Rated PG.
Show me a world with cell phones, single moms and SUVs and then reveal that every dandelion seed has a hidden mystical creature in it, and I’m as amazed as the film’s hero. The Spiderwick Chronicles never feels slow, but it is very deliberate in its pacing, and only gradually shows us the hidden magic in the mundane world we all know. Truth be told, the special effects aren’t even that convincing. The trolls and goblins look cool, but they also look very digital. But by the time the epic battle between the movie’s child heroes and the evil Mulgarath finally takes place, the spectacular images involved seem truly spectacular. This is also the first fantasy movie I’ve seen in a long time that didn’t set itself up for a sequel (or trilogy), and it’s the first one in a long time that I kind of wish had. –MSH
Step Up 2 the Streets (Not reviewed)
Briana Evigan, Robert Hoffman, Telisha Shaw. Directed by Jon M. Chu. 98 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Romantic sparks occur between two dance students from different backgrounds at the Maryland School of the Arts.
Strange Wilderness (Not reviewed)
Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, Jonah Hill. Directed by Fred Wolf. 87 minutes. Rated R.
With the ratings dropping for a wilderness-themed TV show, the hosts go to the Andes in search of Bigfoot.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street *** 1/2
Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman. Directed by Tim Burton. 117 minutes. Rated R.
Demented barber slits the throats of his customers, who are then ground up and baked into meat pies by his equally amoral accomplice, Mrs. Lovett. Sweeney Todd is the alias of a man named Benjamin Barker, who was falsely imprisoned by a corrupt judge with designs on Barker’s lovely wife. Freed from prison some 15 years later, Barker/Todd returns to London seeking revenge, only to be informed by Mrs. Lovett, whose mingy bakery is just downstairs from his former home, that his wife is long dead and his daughter is now the judge’s ward. The film veers back and forth between intimacy and extravagance, and the juxtaposition of Sondheim’s lyrical melodies and intricate wordplay with Burton’s great geysers of arterial blood—this is decidedly not a film for the squeamish—produces a delectable cognitive dissonance. –MD
There Will Be Blood ****
Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 158 minutes. Rated R.
The film, which spans the period from 1898-1927, follows the meteoric rise to fortune of a rapacious prospector, Daniel Plainview. Unforgettably embodied by Day-Lewis, Plainview is first seen mining silver in an astonishing wordless prologue that lasts nearly 15 minutes. A few years later, he’s established himself as an oil man, traveling with his adopted son H.W. (Freasier) from one impoverished burg to another. All goes smoothly until Plainview runs up against his equal in greed and hypocrisy, a boy preacher by the name of Eli Sunday (Dano), who uses his influence to blackmail Plainview into supporting his Church of the Third Revelation. The ensuing battle of wills between the forces of capitalism and organized religion could scarcely be uglier. Anderson’s mastery of the medium has never been in doubt, but There Will Be Blood is even more impressive for the comparative restraint he shows here. –MD
U2 3D (Not reviewed)
Directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington. 85 minutes. Rated G.
Concert film of U2 performances from their most recent tour, in 3D.
Untraceable * 1/2
Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks. Directed by Gregory Hoblit. 100 minutes. Rated R.
Following pretty much every cliché known to the serial-killer genre, Untraceable has its particular psychopath broadcasting his grisly killings online, with the speed at which his victims die determined by how many sickos (just like the people who watch this movie!) log on to his website. Although Hoblit has made his share of passable-to-more-than-passable thrillers, here he and his three screenwriters generate essentially no suspense, showing us the killer early on and then having Lane’s FBI agent solve the whole case in one rushed, exposition-heavy scene. Instead of genuine tension, we get cheap gross-outs ripped off from movies like Hostel, making Untraceable into torture porn for housewives. –JB
Vantage Point ** 1/2
Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Matthew Fox. Directed by Pete Travis. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Quaid plays a Secret Service agent just returning to duty after taking a bullet for the president (Hurt) during an assassination attempt. He ends up caught in the middle of another assassination attempt, an elaborate and often nonsensical terror plot carried out during a peace summit in Spain. After shots are fired and two bombs go off, the movie is essentially one long chase sequence, but the filmmakers drag it out by employing a useless gimmick that keeps restarting the story from a different character’s perspective. It’s merely a cheap way to create false suspense, and also robs the movie of any chance for meaningful character development, so that we might care whether these people get blown up, or catch the undermotivated bad guys. –JB
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins *
Martin Lawrence, James Earl Jones, Joy Bryant. Directed by Malcolm D. Lee. 114 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Lawrence stars as the successful host of a sleazy talk show, engaged to a Survivor winner (Bryant). They visit his Southern family, the source for a lot of unsolved childhood anguish. Funny people abound, such as Cedric the Entertainer, Mo’Nique and Mike Epps, but their antics can’t save this lazy, bloated, stupid affair. Writer-director Lee sets up all the typical jokes with no skill or timing, and his attempts at heartfelt drama flop; in fact, his camera seems to have trouble even following any kind of physical movement. This is the type of thing his cousin Spike has railed against for years. –JMA
Witless Protection (Not reviewed)
Larry the Cable Guy, Jenny McCarthy, Ivana Milicevic. Directed by Charles Robert Carner. 99 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A small-town sheriff (Larry the Cable Guy) stops what he thinks is two men kidnapping a woman, only to discover they’re FBI agents protecting a witness.
JMA Jeffrey M. Anderson; JB Josh Bell; TC Tasha Chemplavil; MD Mike D’Angelo; MH Mark Holcomb; MSH Matthew Scott Hunter