Short Takes for Week of July 12-18, 2007

Special screenings

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian. Directed by Larry Charles. 84 minutes. Rated R.

Mockumentary about clueless and vulgar Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev (Cohen) on assignment in America. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 7/14, 2 pm, free.

Dale

Directed by Rory Karpf and Mike Viney. 120 minutes. Not rated.

Archival race footage, outtakes, home videos and interviews with Dale Earnhardt’s friends, family and competitors are used in this documentary on the late NASCAR legend. Regal Colonnade, 8880 S. Eastern Ave., 221-2283. 7/19, 7:30 pm, $10. Info: www.fathomevents.com.

Dam Short Film Festival

Screening of selected short films from past installments of the Dam Short Film Festival. Las Vegas Art Museum, 9600 W. Sahara Ave. 7/16, 8 pm, $5. Info: www.damshortfilm.org.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson. Directed by Chris Columbus. 161 minutes. Rated PG.

Second film in the series about the adventures of boy wizard Harry Potter. Enterprise Library, 25 E. Shelbourne Ave., 507-3760. 7/14, 11 am, free.

IMAX Theatre

Deep Sea 3D, Fighter Pilot, Mystery of the Nile, Lions 3D: Roar of the Kalahari

Call for showtimes. $11.99 each show.

Luxor, 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 262-4629.

Las Vegas International Film Festival

Film screenings, panels, awards ceremony. The Orleans, 4500 W. Tropicana Ave. 7/13-7/15, $8 per screening. Info: www.lvfilmfest.com.

Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Joe Morton. Directed by John Sayles. 135 minutes. Rated R.

When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town. Screening presented by Las Vegas Weekly film critic Josh Bell. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 7/17, 7 pm, free.

Mars Attacks!

Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Pam Grier, Jim Brown. Directed by Tim Burton. 106 minutes. Rated PG-13.

 The Earth is invaded by Martians with irresistible weapons and a cruel sense of humor. Henderson Pavilion, 200 S. Green Valley Parkway, Henderson, 267-4849. 7/14, 8:30 pm, free.

Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald. Directed by Kirk Jones. 97 minutes. Rated PG.

Thompson stars as a governess who uses magic to rein in the behavior of the ne’er-do-well children in her charge. East Las Vegas Community/Senior Center, 250 N. Eastern Ave., 229-1515. 7/12, 2 pm, free.

Open Season

Voices of Ashton Kutcher, Martin Lawrence, Gary Sinise. Directed by Roger Allers and Jill Culton. 86 minutes. Rated PG.

A domesticated grizzly bear and a fast-talking mule deer form an unlikely friendship and must quickly rally other forest animals to form a rag-tag army against a group of hunters. Baker Park, St. Louis Ave. & 10th St., 229-1087. 7/19, 8 pm, free.

Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson. Directed by Sam Peckinpah. 108 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security. Whitney Library, 5175 E. Tropicana Ave., 507-4010. 7/15, 11:30 am, free.

Voices of Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell. Directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick. 83 minutes. Rated PG.

A scheming raccoon fools a mismatched family of forest creatures into helping him repay a debt of food by invading the new suburban sprawl that popped up while they were hibernating. Baker Park, St. Louis Ave. & 10th St., 229-1087. 7/12, 8 pm, free. Nature Discovery Park, 2627 Nature Park Drive, North Las Vegas, 866-874-6393. 7/14, 7:30 pm, free.

Queen Christina

Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. 97 minutes. Not rated.

A film about the enigmatic, crossdressing 17th-century queen of Sweden, who abdicated her throne for love. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 7/17, 1 pm, 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. Tropicana Cinemas, 3330 E. Tropicana Ave., 243-7469. Sat, midnight, $10. Info: www.rhpsvegas.com. 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.

Zathura

Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard. Directed by Jon Favreau. 113 minutes. Rated PG.

Two young brothers are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is magically hurtled through space because of the board game they are playing. East Las Vegas Community/Senior Center, 250 N. Eastern Ave., 229-1515. 7/19, 2 pm, free.

New this week

Brooklyn Rules **

Freddie Prinze Jr., Scott Caan, Mena Suvari, Alec Baldwin. Directed by Michael Corrente. 99 minutes. Rated R.

Captivity (Not reviewed)

Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Directed by Roland Joffe. 85 minutes. Rated R.

A man and a woman awaken to find themselves captured in a cellar. As their kidnapper torments them, the truth about their horrific abduction is revealed.

Golden Door *1/2

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vincenzo Amato, Vincent Schiavelli. Directed by Emanuele Crialese. 120 minutes. Rated PG-13. In Italian with English subtitles.

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint. Directed by David Yates. 138 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Anthony Hopkins, Kim Cattrall. Directed by Alec Baldwin. 99 minutes. Rated PG-13.

You Kill Me ***

Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson. Directed by John Dahl. 92 minutes. Rated R.

Now playing

1408 ***

John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack. Directed by Mikael Hafstrom. 94 minutes. Rated PG-13.

As writer Mike Enslin, who pens cheapo nonfiction guides like Ten Haunted Houses and Ten Haunted Castles, Cusack uses his sarcastic, hangdog style to sell the character’s cynicism, along with his loneliness. Mike’s at New York’s Dolphin Hotel to stay in the titular room, the site of numerous suicides and natural deaths over the last hundred years or so. Once inside, Mike gets down to the business of being terrorized by the never-defined evil presence in the room. Cusack carries it all, especially when there aren’t any other actors around for him to interact with. –JB

Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham. Directed by Tom Shadyac. 94 minutes. Rated PG.

God (Freeman, reprising his Bruce Almighty role) has set his sights on Evan (Carell), who’s left his TV job in Buffalo after being elected to the U.S. Congress. Evan’s barely had time to settle into his new house and job before the smarmy deity shows up and demands that he build an ark in anticipation of a coming flood. Predictably, the ark is less about global disaster and more about Evan learning some important lessons about making time for his family and—most relentlessly and heavy-handedly—caring for the environment. Not that what passes for humor is worth a whole lot—there’s an entire montage of Carell falling down and/or getting hit with things, and far more jokes about bird poop than should ever be in one movie. –JB

Evening **

Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy. Directed by Lajos Koltai. 117 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Redgrave is the aged Ann, lying on her deathbed and attended by her two daughters (Collette and Miranda Richardson). While Ann wastes away from some unspecified cinematic illness, she flashes back to her early 20s, when she was played by Claire Danes and attending the wedding of her best friend, Lila (Mamie Gummer). While at Lila’s picturesque summer home, Ann falls in love with stoic doctor Harris (Wilson), a childhood friend of Lila’s who’s also an object of unrequited love for Lila herself and her sexually confused brother Buddy (Dancy). Koltai literalizes the symbolism and drowns everything in a sappy, overpowering score; the characters end up sounding like they’re reading dialogue from a bad novel. –JB

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer **

Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis. Directed by Tim Story. 92 minutes. Rated PG.

In the new sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the superhero team’s problems begin when first class is overbooked. Their problems continue in the same vein. The million-dollar wedding between Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Girl (Alba), is over-publicized, and Sue worries about how they’re going to raise a family when they’re so famous. Their wedding is subsequently interrupted when the Silver Surfer begins blowing holes in the planet and knocking out electrical systems. Unfortunately, he’s just the minion of the planet-eater Galactus, who has now been informed that Earth is on the menu. The film hinges entirely on these gigantic, yet straightforward, simple conflicts, resulting in little or no emotional involvement in the characters. –JMA

Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann. Directed by Judd Apatow. 129 minutes. Rated R.

The wholesome values in Knocked Up are effectively intermixed with the movie’s real selling point, its outrageous humor, but it’s clear which side wins out. That makes the film either an act of subversive genius—getting stoners and slackers to appreciate the importance of parenthood—or a strangely conservative scolding in the guise of a dumb comedy. As tempting as it is to give Apatow credit for subversion, it might be safer to say that he’s really just telling his audience to grow up and accept some responsibility. That’s exactly what happens to Ben Stone (Rogen), a prototypical representative of the Apatow demographic, when his one-night stand with driven E! news producer Alison Scott (Heigl) results in an unplanned pregnancy. –JB

License to Wed *1/2

Robin Williams, Mandy Moore, John Krasinski. Directed by Ken Kwapis. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

You’ve seen Meet the Parents, right? Well, here comes Meet the Pastor! Instead of Robert De Niro’s intimidating paternal figure, we get Williams’ oddball religious figure, but everything else remains the same. The character is still the only thing standing in the way of marital bliss between the well-meaning would-be groom and his personality-deprived bride-to-be. There will be awkward moments with the potential in-laws and escalating slapstick abuse that culminates in the alienation of the young man’s fiancée, who must inevitably call off the wedding by the end of the second act. But when hero and antagonist finally bond, the whole debacle will end in wedding bells. It’s a tired formula even when done right, but License to Wed gets it all wrong. –MSH

Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Directed by Len Wiseman. 128 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth installment in the increasingly ludicrous action series about everyman New York City cop McClane (Willis) single-handedly stopping massive terrorist attacks. Criminal mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Olyphant, coolly menacing) is a former U.S. intelligence expert now bent on taking down the system he was once hired to protect. McClane’s (and the country’s) only hope against Gabriel’s crippling of the U.S. transportation, financial and utilities infrastructure is hacker/slacker Matt Farrell (Long). Wiseman seems far more interested in concocting ever-more-gigantic action sequences than in examining McClane’s personal life. But, oh, those action sequences: Using a minimum of CGI, Wiseman stages some mind-boggling stunts. –JB

A Mighty Heart **

Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. 100 minutes. Rated R.

The title of Mariane Pearl’s memoir, A Mighty Heart, presumably refers to her late husband, Daniel, the reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists in the winter of 2002. In Winterbottom’s new film adaptation, however, the coronary mightiness is all Mariane’s. Save a hasty account of the events leading up to his disappearance, the doomed man (Futterman) appears only in bittersweet flashbacks and recreated photos; the bulk of the movie depicts the efforts of his pregnant wife (Jolie) and various others to secure his safe return—efforts that we observe with sorrow, knowing they will fail. A Mighty Heart doesn’t exactly qualify as a procedural, and it certainly isn’t a thriller or a drama. Instead, it’s a hectic testament to Mariane Pearl’s courage and self-possession—the hagiography of a grieving widow who doesn’t yet know for certain that her husband is dead. –MD

Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook. Directed by Bruce A. Evans. 120 minutes. Rated R.

Mr. Brooks (Costner) has a slight addiction to bloodshed. He’s been going to AA meetings to help suppress these urges, but that little devil on his shoulder keeps egging him on. Temptation is beautifully personified by Marshall (Hurt), who’s not so much Brooks’ alter-ego as he is a bad-influence type of imaginary friend. Marshall periodically pops up to offer Brooks fathering advice, remind him of little details he might forget and, of course, persuade him to massacre copulating couples for kicks. In spite of the convoluted finale, Mr. Brooks still ends up being good, twisted fun. –MSH

Nancy Drew ***

Emma Roberts, Tate Donovan, Max Thieriot, Laura Elena Harring. Directed by Andrew Fleming. 99 minutes. Rated PG.

Crafty teen detective Nancy (Roberts) enters the picture fully formed (no prologue necessary). She solves a crime, negotiates with the robbers and scales down the side of a building before leaving her hometown of River Heights for Los Angeles, where her lawyer father (Donovan) has picked up some temporary work. He makes her promise not to sleuth in the big city, but Nancy has already found a mystery in their rented house. Decades earlier, a movie star (Harring) disappeared, then turned up murdered. Nancy tries to figure out whodunit and why. Fleming creates a clever, snappy, self-aware picture in which Nancy thrives. –JMA

Ocean’s Thirteen ***

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Al Pacino. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.

As in the first film, our heroes have targeted a fabulous Las Vegas casino—this one owned not by Andy Garcia’s Terry Benedict, who’s partially bankrolling the operation, but by a preening, back-stabbing mogul named Willie Bank (Pacino). Their objective isn’t quite what you’d expect, though. Ocean & Co. don’t want Bank’s vast fortune for themselves—they’d just prefer that Bank, who’s both humiliated and hospitalized their jovial mentor, Reuben (Elliott Gould), possess a whole lot less of it. For the most part, Ocean’s Thirteen reverts to the breezy, weightless antics—charismatic men plotting byzantine schemes in exotic locales—that made Eleven such forgettable fun. –MD

Once ***1/2

Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, Geoff Minogue. Directed by John Carney. 85 minutes. Rated R.

Once is a musical expressly designed for people who think they hate musicals—a movie that takes full advantage of the genre’s expressionistic power, conveying heightened emotions entirely via libretto, while at the same time remaining firmly grounded in gritty, mundane reality. Carney’s means of achieving this apparent contradiction is refreshingly simple: Both of his lead characters are aspiring musicians, and their week-long relationship is ostensibly a musical collaboration, as they jointly compose, arrange and record a demo. Nobody ever really bursts into song in Once—it’s more as if they stumble into song, tentative and uncertain, finding their confidence and their passion as they go along. This approach lacks the razzle-dazzle of the classic musical, but it has an endearingly awkward charm of its own. –MD

Paprika ***1/2

Voices of Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Furuya, Kôichi Yamadera. Directed by Satoshi Kon. 90 minutes. Rated R. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Psychiatrist Dr. Atsuko Chiba (Hayashibara) has recently begun analyzing her patients’ dreams via the use of a new device called the DC-Mini. When inside others’ heads, Dr. Chiba becomes spunky, busty, red-headed, saucer-eyed Paprika (also Hayashibara, but breathier)—a more proactive version of the doctor who gradually begins to develop her own separate identity. Which is a good thing, since no amount of sober analysis is likely to halt the psychotic collective nightmare that now threatens to merge with and subsume the waking world. None of this makes a whole lot of sense, but it does give Kon license to serve up pretty much anything he thinks might tickle us, astound us, or just plain creep us out. –MD

Paris, Je T’Aime ***1/2

Juliette Binoche, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Gérard Depardieu, Marianne Faithfull, Ben Gazzara, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Bob Hoskins and others. Directed by various. 120 minutes. Rated R. In French with English subtitles.

Like other anthology films, the new Paris, Je T’Aime has its strong points and its low points, and no two viewers will agree on which is which. Eighteen directors participated in this tribute to the City of Lights, each assigned to a different neighborhood. Each short film runs an average of eight minutes, so even if you get stuck with a clunker, it’s not long before the next one starts. Overall, the filmmakers manage to capture a sense of wonder and romance about the city, even if the “neighborhood” concept isn’t consistent. –JMA

Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush. Directed by Gore Verbinski. 168 minutes. Rated PG-13.

At World’s End picks up, as these things tend to do, roughly where its slightly less inflated predecessor ended, with Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) allied with Captain Barbossa (Rush) and the surviving swabbies of the Black Pearl to rescue Jack Sparrow (Depp) from the very euphemistically named Davy Jones’ locker. Even if you loved The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, this dour, tedious, aggressively unfunny, egregiously padded helping of celluloid fluff will only waste your time and money. –MH

Voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo. Directed by Brad Bird. 110 minutes. Rated G.

It’s a cute and well-animated movie about a Parisian rat named Remy (Oswalt) who has a taste for gourmet food and idolizes a rotund celebrity restaurateur named Gusteau (Garrett). Gusteau’s gone to the great kitchen in the sky, and his eponymous eatery has been taken over by his money-grubbing sous-chef. When Remy finds himself by chance in the restaurant’s kitchen, he inadvertently helps busboy Alfredo Linguini (Romano) create a marvelous dish and becomes a sort of culinary Cyrano de Bergerac to the nervous young man. The plot moves along familiar beats, setting up its conflicts simply and resolving them the same way. –JB

Shrek the Third **

Voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas. Directed by Chris Miller. 92 minutes. Rated PG.

The loveable titular ogre (voiced by Myers), already saddled with talking-animal sidekicks Donkey (Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Banderas) and married to princess-turned-ogre Fiona (Diaz), acquires a horde of new friends and foes in this latest installment. Chief among them is the supremely uninteresting Artie, cousin to Fiona, and Shrek’s choice to succeed Fiona’s late father as the king of Far, Far Away, because the ogre himself would rather not rule. What started out as a genial stab at Disneyfied fairy tales has morphed into a catch-all parody with no focus and even less bite. It’s hard to buy into the movie making fun of anything when it’s become such an easy target for mockery itself. –JB

Sicko **1/2

Directed by Michael Moore. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Sicko isn’t a bad film, exactly, but anyone who’s ever seen even one of Moore’s previous screeds-cum-documentaries could probably give a fairly accurate summary of its content, sight unseen. As in Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore leans heavily on admittedly affecting but patently manipulative sob stories, introducing us to various ailing Americans whose claims were inexplicably rejected, denied or even rescinded by their health insurers. Trouble is, he has fewer facts and arguments to buttress the human-interest element this time—or, rather, the problem with the U.S. health-care system is so obvious (in a word: capitalism) that even the for-Dummies version requires only a few minutes of screen time. –MD

Spider-Man 3 ***

Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Sam Raimi. 140 minutes. Rated PG-13.

You want villains? Our boy Spidey must contend not just with the Sandman (Church), an ex-con brawler capable of departiculating his entire body at will; not just with Harry Osborn (Franco), who’s discovered his late father’s secret laboratory and refashioned himself as a junior version of the Green Goblin; but also with a malevolent hunk of symbiotic black goo from outer space, which first attaches itself to one of Spider-Man’s costumes and later transforms snotty rival Daily Bugle photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) into a fanged mutant Spider-Clone known as Venom. You want romance? Mary Jane (Dunst) is still around, but she’s now simmering with jealousy at the vapid blond advances made by Peter’s science lab partner. The overall game plan involves tossing so much sheer stuff at us that we’ll be too dizzy and distracted to notice that no single element is actually working. –MD

Surf’s Up **1/2

Voices of Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel. Directed by Ash Brannon and Chris Buck. 85 minutes. Rated PG.

Cody Maverick (LaBeouf) doesn’t fit in with his penguin kin, preferring to surf over gathering fish and tending eggs. Cody travels to fictional Pen Gu Island for a big surf competition, where he falls for a lifeguard named Lani (Deschanel) and learns totally deep life lessons from his idol, an aging surf champion named Big Z (Bridges). It’s breezy and fitfully amusing stuff, and directors Brannon and Buck make at least a token effort to break out of the monolithic computer animation pack with the mockumentary gimmick, although livening up one tired genre by combining it with another is not necessarily a formula for success. –JB

Transformers **

Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel. Directed by Michael Bay. 140 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Giant robots that beat each other up are inherently exciting, so it’s frustrating to see the filmmakers behind this behemoth actually turn such a premise into something tedious and boring, stretched out to nearly two-and-a-half hours and saddled with a tone too somber for camp and too silly to be taken seriously. Basically, there’s this thing that’s really important, and both the good guys and the bad guys are after it. Given the relative simplicity of the story and fans’ desire to see as much hot robot-on-robot action as possible, it’s baffling that Bay and his writers pace the movie so slowly, with numerous diversions and dull sidetracks delaying the inevitable Autobot/Decepticon showdown. –JB

Waitress ***1/2

Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto. Directed by Adrienne Shelly. 107 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Jenna (Russell) is an unhappily married—and very unhappily pregnant—waitress at a small-town diner who’s constantly dreaming up exotic pies and naming them after whatever crisis she’s currently undergoing. Abortion, it seems, is out of the question—the possibility is never so much as raised—but Jenna’s red-state family values don’t stop her from embarking upon a guilty, start-stop affair with her hunky but equally married new obstetrician (Fillion). This all goes more or less where you’d expect it to, but it’s hard to begrudge familiarity when it’s accompanied by such dizzy warmth and offbeat charm. –MD

JMA Jeffrey M. Anderson; JB Josh Bell; MD Mike D’Angelo; MH Mark Holcomb; MSH Matthew Scott Hunter; BS Benjamin Spacek