Also this issue: Snap Judgments Paul Schrader on Bob Crane: star, sex addict and unwitting icon. -Cindy Fuchs Nouvelle Vagueness Jonathan Demme chokes on his baguette with The Truth About Charlie. -Sam Adams Screen Picks -Sam Adams New Repertory Film Showtimes

October 24-30, 2002

movie shorts

Continuing

ABANDON

According to a piece he wrote for the New York Times last month, Stephen Gaghan set out to make a movie about “college students under far too much pressure.” You can see that movie in Abandon, but it’s rather obscured by the miserably rattly plot laid on top of it. At its center is November’s Cosmopolitan cover girl and Movieline’s choice for “Hollywood’s Jackpot Star,” Katie Holmes: She’s about to graduate from a small New Hampshire college, her thesis is due, she has nightmares about her father leaving her, a huge job interview and a “townie cop” (Benjamin Bratt) is asking questions about the disappearance of her boyfriend (Charlie Hunnam, of the U.K. Queer As Folk). That happened two years ago, when Joey -- er, Katie (Holmes’ character’s name here) -- was a wide-eyed, hopeful sophomore and boyfriend was a wealthy genius-poet-performer-archaeologist-musician-whatever-else. Now she’s feeling murky and frazzled, not quite confiding in her scene-stealing roommate Zooey Deschanel or friends Gabrielle Union and Gabriel Mann, and strangely attracted to the detective, even as she starts seeing Hunnam on campus. The plot descends quickly into nonsense. Katie goes into the requisite nearby scary abandoned building without a second thought. The cop (also a recovering addict) falls for her, despite the fact that mousy Julie (Melanie Lynskey) and about 12 other characters warn him not to. And no one else notices Hunnam skulking about, despite the fact that he’s something of a local legend. The film’s time-warpy structure and darkly elegant composition don’t quite make up for this silly plot. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

Barbershop

As The Girl in Barbershop, Philadelphia’s own E-V-E shows again that she plays very well with boys. In her first extended film role (that is, more than the few lines she had in XXX), she holds her own on screen with some very charismatic actors, including Ice Cube, Sean Patrick Thomas, Cedric the Entertainer, Anthony Anderson, Michael Ealy and Keith David. The film, directed by Tim Story, has the sort of charm and easy pacing of one of Cube’s Friday films -- the characters, most of whom work in Cube’s Chicago barbershop, share experiences and jokes (with Cedric, unsurprisingly, generating most laughs). The plot is basic, though more strained than it needs to be, with Cube selling the shop (in his family for over 40 years) to gangster David in the morning, then endeavoring to reverse the decision over the rest of the day, and Anderson and his partner Lahmard Tate wrestling, quite literally, with an ATM they’ve stolen, transporting it from place to place in hopes of getting access to its hidden riches. Cube comes to realize the importance of the shop as community gathering place. And everyone learns a useful lesson.--C.F. (AMC Andorra; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)

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BLOODY SUNDAY

If watching Bloody Sunday isn’t like reliving the events in question -- and it would be foolish to pretend that it could be -- it’s still as visceral an experience as you’re likely to get from a fictional film. Shot in jagged, hand-held style, the film recreates the events of Jan. 30, 1972, when British troops fired into a crowd of civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13. Writer/director Paul Greengrass, working from Don Mullan’s non-fiction account, leaves some questions open, like the matter of which side fired the first shot, and clearly depicts angry Catholic youths firing (albeit ineffectually) at British troops. But there’s no ambiguity as to the deaths involved, the one-sidedness, or the fact that the victims were unarmed civilians. Greengrass’ approach means those unfamiliar with the tragedy (or who only know the song) won’t be able to pick out most of the characters, although James Nesbitt makes a strong impression as Ivan Cooper, the pacifist politician who orchestrated what was supposed to be a peaceful civil rights protest against the odious practice of “internment without trial.” But you don’t need to develop sentimental attachments to understand the horror of what’s going on -- Bloody Sunday makes you feel every bit.--S.A. (Ritz Five)

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Michael Moore, even if, or especially if, you agree with his politics. Moore specializes in political theater, but his record on follow-up isn’t great, to say nothing of his willingness to trim the truth to fit an easy argument. That’s what makes Bowling for Columbine such a surprise: it’s not afraid to ask questions it doesn’t know the answers to. Calling it disorganized or inconclusive misses the point; Moore has deliberately taken on a subject -- the American propensity for violence -- that can’t be explained, just to see how close to the impossible he can get. Ranging all over the place, both physically and thematically, Bowling begins, of course, with our fondness for guns, but Moore, an NRA member and former child marksman, pushes past that answer; Canada, he points out, has more guns per household, although nothing remotely approaching our gun deaths. Moore points fingers at retailers who offer cut-rate ammunition, at racial and economic disparities, and at a media that makes it seem like we’re more violent than we actually are. He goes to Columbine, and to Littleton, interviewing people from Marilyn Manson to South Park’s Matt Stone -- who, with his account of growing up bullied in Colorado, emerges as the movie’s voice of reason -- to NRA President Charlton Heston, who blames the U.S.’s rate of violence on “ethnic mixing.” Bowling is a sprawl, it’s true, but it’s ambitious, not confused.--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

BROWN SUGAR

The first single off the Brown Sugar soundtrack is Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life (Ode to Hip-hop),” and the first scenes of Rick Famuyiwa’s film offer an ode of their own. A series of hip-hop artists -- including Common, Kool G Rap, Pete Rock, Talib Kweli, Big Daddy Kane, ?uestlove, and Russell Simmons -- describe their passion for their art and culture. With hip-hop as its primary metaphor, history and setting, this romantic comedy gets over on its standard plot: Sanaa Lathan, newly hired NY editor for XXL must discover and declare her love for her childhood friend, Taye Diggs, now a producer at a commercial label, even as they both become entangled in other relationships. That is, he marries upper-crusty Nicole Ari Parker, and she thinks about marrying basketball star Boris Kodjoe. Supporting plots include Diggs’ signing of cab driver/ MC Mos Def, and Lathan’s friendship with Queen Latifah (who warns her that she’s “turning into a Terry McMillan character, which she was, in HBO’s Disappearing Acts). Lathan also provides ongoing narration of her efforts to reconcile her love for the ideals of hip-hop and its commercial imperatives, often crass: the example here is a duo called the Hip-Hop Dalmatians (Erik Weiner and Reggi Wyns), complete with spotted fur jackets, who cover McCartney and MJ’s “The Girl is Mine” as “The Ho is Mine.” Jokes aside, the film is earnest about its dedications -- to hip-hop and, happily, to strong women overcoming familiar plot set-ups. --C.F. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

FORMULA 51

In Ronny Yu’s rock-’em-sock-’em careener, Samuel L. Jackson plays McElroy, a chemical whiz busted for smoking reefer on his graduation from pharmaceutical college in 1971 (under Buddy Miles’ “Them Changes”). Thirty years later: Declaring that he’s invented the ideal party drug (“51 times stronger than cocaine, 51 times more hallucinogenic than acid and 51 times more explosive than ecstasy,” all over-the-counter ingredients), he kills off his former bosses (in a drug biz headed by Meat Loaf), dons a kilt and heads to Liverpool, where he befriends amiable gangster Robert Carlyle. While they seek out a buyer (Rhys Ifans) for the super-drug (a “personal visit from God”), they’re stalked by Carlyle’s ex, super-assassin Emily Mortimer (so great in Lovely & Amazing, so bereft of a role here). With music by the Headrillaz (including tracks by PJ Harvey and Nelly), and Poon Hang Sang’s creative camerawork, the film moves, but nowhere special (except for the historical payback punchline, long time coming). Amid the shooting, car chasing and buildings exploding, executive producer Jackson suffers black-penis jokes, his own signature shouting-spree (curse Quentin Tarantino for giving him that brilliant “When I lay my vengeance upon you” speech, as he’s been asked to repeat those rhythms ever since) and, worst of all, overseeing the white folks’ romance. Enough with the helpful black buddy already. --C.F. (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Dear Michael Myers,

I’ve got dibs on Busta Rhymes.

Hugs, Jason Voorhees.

(UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham)

HEAVEN

Philippa (Cate Blanchett) enters a Turino office building, goes up in the elevator and deposits a homemade bomb in a trash can. Once she’s descended again, she stops at a pay phone to call the carabinieri to inform them of the explosion, now seconds away. What Philippa cannot know is that a janitor has picked up the trash and gotten on one of those elevators that crawls up the building’s side, with a man and his two young daughters. The explosion kills them. Minutes later, armed officers burst into Philippa’s apartment and drag her down to headquarters. Interrogators call her a terrorist and demand to know her affiliation. Unaware what has happened, she is horrified to learn that she killed innocents; she crumbles and faints. When she comes to, she insists -- in English translated by novice policeman Filippo (Giovanni Ribisi) -- that her target was one wealthy businessman, Vendice (Stefano Santospago), who sells drugs, in particular to her recently overdosed husband. Her interrogators see her as a terrorist. Filippo falls in love with her and helps her escape. Weird, startling and heartbreaking, Heaven combines the interests and sensibilities of two remarkable filmmakers. Written by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (with Krzysztof Piesiewicz), and intended as part of a trilogy (Heaven, Hell and Purgatory), it explores accident and fate, guilt and grief, time and truth. These themes also interest the expansive and provocative director Tom Tykwer, used to exploring desire and need, fear and audacity, individuals in perpetual search of companionship and hope for a future that might only be imagined, all through the trope of “lovers on the run.” Heaven breathes delicate new life into all of these ideas, in Tykwer’s peculiarly deliberate fashion. The questions emerging in Philippa and Filippo’s trajectory -- toward capture? toward flight? -- are unanswerable and increasingly abstract. Alongside such intangibles, the pain and ecstasy revealed in Blanchett’s and Ribisi’s equally luminous performances are surprisingly corporeal.--C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

IGBY GOES DOWN

Burr Steers’ first feature is populated by extremely quirky characters, most related by blood. Bad mom Susan Sarandon dies in the first scene, attended by her sons, harried Igby (Kieran Culkin) and supercilious Oliver (Ryan Phillippe). Flashbacks recount how they’ve come to this moment, part liberation, part horror show. Participants in this disaster include increasingly incapacitated dad Bill Pullman, wealthy godfather Jeff Goldblum, his junkie-dancer girlfriend Amanda Peet, her performance-artist caretaker-friend Jared Harris and Igby’s inadvertent girlfriend Claire Danes, who really wants to be sensible but can’t help but be sucked into the eccentric vortex. Though it’s structured as a series of clever dialogue exchanges (the sort of things people don’t say, but wittily literate characters do), striking compositions (shot by Wedigo von Schultzendorff), and dire, occasionally violent vignettes (the things these characters do to one another!), Igby Goes Down doesn’t feel remote, strangely. In part, you may be sucked in by Culkin’s admirable performance, subtle and not too earnest. --C.F. (Bala; Ritz Five)

JONAH: A VEGGIETALES MOVIE

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Christian cucumbers?

Spiritual sprouts? Question is:

Which would Jesus eat?

(UA Riverview)

KNOCKAROUND GUYS

Rumor has it that Brian Koppelman and David Levien’s movie has been knocking around on a backshelf for a couple of years, arriving now in theaters to exploit Vin Diesel’s currently risen star. It goes to show that shelves exist for good reasons. Diesel is the only performer who comes out relatively unscathed, mostly because he plays an early, slightly rougher, slightly less cool version of the character he’s played in his three star-making films (Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious, and that other one). Here, that character is gangster’s son Barry Pepper’s longtime friend and muscle-when-needed. Pepper inexplicably sends his other friend, a notorious screw-up (Seth Green as a mob kid?), to pick up $500,000; Green loses it, snaky smalltown Montana sheriff Tom Noonan grabs it and Pepper and pals need to retrieve it, lest his father (Dennis Hopper, in a non-role) be killed for it. John Malkovich plays Pepper’s Uncle Teddy, with an unplaceable accent and few snappy lines (to the loser sheriff: “I know you thought this was a manageable situation, but some situations are unmanageable”). Still, Diesel -- whose wardrobe consists of a chest-hugging wifebeater and a chest-hugging longjohns shirt -- has the pithiest line. When Pepper thanks him for his help, Diesel sighs, “It’s just more of the same for me, just more of the same.” Right he is. --C.F. (AMC Andorra; UA Riverview)

MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS

Andy Garcia is feeling inadequate, a novelist who can’t catch a break, supported by his lovely, stoic wife (Julianna Margulies). Encouraged (effectively seduced) by the proprietor of Elysian Fields escort agency (Mick Jagger), he tries upscale “dating,” and lands a huge catch right off: the delicately sensuous Olivia Williams, married to multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning and recently reclusive author James Coburn. Servicing the wife, Garcia also comes to service the husband, by helping him to complete (reshape, rewrite) his last novel. Trite as they are, these plot pieces might have come together in a compelling whole, except that the plight of Garcia’s sulky novelist remains stuck at the level of his limited vision, with most events leading to further confirmation that he is destined to ruin everything: He’s dishonest with the perfect wife, sulky with the perfect lover, self-involved with the perfect mentor. Mick Jagger, in fact, has the clearest sense of what’s actually going on and offers the wittiest observations (trouble is, he appears infrequently). Alas, when it seems that Garcia’s destiny is self-fulfilling (he will fail because he can’t imagine another way), the movie backs off and gives him the (close-to) happy ending that everything else here argues against.--C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

MOONLIGHT MILE

As Moonlight Mile begins, Joe (Jake Gyllenhaal) is dressing for his fiancee’s funeral, in her parents’ home on Boston’s North Shore. Jo (Susan Sarandon) and Ben (Dustin Hoffman) are very nice; still, understandably, the mood is somber and tense. The townsfolk give. Jo a pile of self-help books, one titled These Things Happen. The truth is, these particular things don’t happen very often: Diana was shot in an ice cream parlor, hit by a bullet meant for the killer’s estranged wife. Loss is hard any time, but the suddenness and violence of Diana’s death, not to mention the lingering duress of the trial, make this “thing” especially difficult. Such details also make Brad Silberling’s movie fit a little too neatly with the recent popularity of media grieving and death ritualsAs Ben, Jo and Joe try to get on with their lives, they handle their horror, anger and despair very differently. Joe specifically wants to please Ben, by accepting his offer of partnership in business. But soon he starts dreading the future he’s falling into, out of an inability to move, a combination of depression and sympathy. Meanwhile, Jo, so sensible, spirited and generous (and so crisply played by Sarandon), is yet brought low by her heartache, sometimes more visibly than others, and always apparently surprised by her vulnerability. When she learns that Joe has been sneaking out to see a woman he’s met, Jo is momentarily undone, but speaks her piece straight-up, confessing that she has trouble with “this next part, you with another girl.” Moonlight Mile also has trouble with this part, as it stumbles toward its efficient resolution, where everyone can come away feeling better.--C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse)

MOSTLY MARTHA

Martha (Martina Gedeck) lives a precise life. The much-acclaimed chef at a fine Hamburg restaurant, she makes perfect food, maintains a strict routine, and sees a shrink because her boss (Sibylle Canonica) thinks she’s neurotic. (True, she hides in the freezer at work for “time out,” but she is admirably efficient, proud of her control of all “logistics.”) All this changes when her niece Lina (Maxime Foerste) comes to live with her. Suddenly, Martha’s routine is undone: she’s sleeping on the couch (giving Lina her room), cooking an 8-year-old who refuses to eat, and repeatedly late getting her to school. Almost worse: there’s a new chef hired to helped out in her kitchen, an Italian (Sergio Castellitto) who plays “Volare” and dances while working. While the rest of the plot is wholly unsurprising, Gedeck’s convincingly taut performance (food is full of “issues” for her, not just a means to externalize her inner glow and nourish others) and director Sandra Nettelbeck’s preference for crisp, careful compositions help the film avoid both the mushiness of a “food” movie like Chocolat and the sensual-saturation of a Babette’s Feast. --C.F. (Bala)

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING

Toula (Nia Vardalos) is Greek, 30 and unmarried. It’s the last part that is killing her hyper-Hellenic family, who thinks she should quit dabbling at college courses (“She’s got enough education for a woman” says her father) and just settle down and start a family. So when Toula falls in love with Ian, the man of her dreams (Sex in the City’s John Corbett), everything’s just wonderful -- except he isn’t Greek. What follows is essentially Meet the Greek Parents: The large, gregarious family is suspicious of Ian the Protestant and -- gasp -- vegetarian, who tries his best but obviously doesn’t fit in, and Toula becomes increasingly embarrassed by her ethnicity’s eccentricities. Will the couple gain the family’s approval and end up having the wedding? If so, will it be big, fat and Greek? Well, I don’t want to give anything away. Second City alum Vardalos wrote the screenplay, based on her semi-autobiographical one-woman show, so her knowing, frazzled performance and many of the details of her character’s over-attentive family life ring true. Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan shine as Nia’s restaurant-owning parents; Dad Gus’s fixation on Windex as a panacea is particularly amusing. If director Joel Zwick’s staging is a smidge too hammy and sitcommy to work completely, keep in mind that this 25-year TV vet learned ethnic comedy working with the likes of Chachi, Balki and Mork.--Ryan Godfrey (UA Grant; UA Main St.; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE

Part of growing is admitting your age. So if Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love strains less overtly for “mature” themes than his overreaching Magnolia, it’s because Anderson is beginning to stop pretending to be his 60-year-old idols. That interest is repaid in a performance of surprising depth from Adam Sandler, who plays Barry, a variation on his own honed-to-bluntness comic persona -- with the catch that the world around him is anything but comic. Sandler is as much of a manchild here as in any one of his tiresome movies, but his boyish façade is frequently shattered by explosive fits of rage. When, at a family gathering, Barry is pressed by his many sisters (including the wonderfully sluggish Mary Lynn Rajskub) about his awkward meeting with the shy Lena (Emily Watson), he frets and writhes, and just when everything seems to have calmed down, puts his foot through the sliding glass door. Since at times, Anderson seems merely to be testing his audience’s capacity for annoyance, the challenge for Sandler and Watson, then, is to meet cute amid the din, which they do with ample charm. Anderson still loves his damaged dreamers, and still thrives on outré plot twists: in this case, Barry calls a sex chat line one lonely night, and ends up targeted for theft and beatings by the service’s sleazy owner (Anderson vet Philip Seymour Hoffman). But Punch-Drunk Love has the focus that’s been missing from Anderson’s films, along with a manic energy all its own.--S.A. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

RED DRAGON

As Red Dragon begins, we’re invited to titter as Hannibal Lecter, many years before The Silence of The Lambs, serves the brains of an inept flautist to the symphony orchestra’s board; Lecter’s transformation into a cannibalistic comedian is complete. Serial killer movies have spread like mold in the years since Silence, often featuring a profiler who can catch the killer because somewhere, deep down, they’re just alike. Never mind that profiling is a borderline sham science with a success rate about equal to ESP; the profiler’s presence is the rationale for the movie’s existence -- it’s not prurient or seedy or exploitative, it’s about us. Red Dragon, based on the same book that spawned 1986’s Manhunter, steals more than a few pages from Silence’s book; plot dictates that Lecter be found in the same cell where he’d be visited by Clarice Starling years later, but director Brett Ratner (the Rush Hours) seems like he’s determined to copy the infinitely superior film shot for shot, at least in the confrontations between Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, once again) and profiler Will Graham (Ed Norton). The setup is similar to Silence, with Lecter enlisted to help catch a killer (Ralph Fiennes) who’s been murdering families and replacing their eyes with shards of mirror. It’s the most vicious of Thomas Harris’ books -- at one point, the killer bites the lips off a tabloid reporter who’s gotten in the way -- but Ratner’s affectless hack direction abandons any moral sense; it’s all show business, folks. At this point, you’d have to say the series’ true auteur is producer Dino de Laurentiis, who’s steered the films ever more towards cheap sensationalism, to the point where they’d have to climb up to be in the gutter. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Bryn Mawr; Cinemagic; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

The Ring

The director of Mouse Hunt and The Mexican doesn’t seem like the greatest choice to remake a cultishly popular Japanese horror movie, but The Ring is easily the most terrifying movie to come out of Hollywood in years. (That is not, by the way, a cue to gird yourself for the fright of a life, then come out and brag that “it wasn’t that scary.” Too many people ruined The Blair Witch Project for themselves that way.) Despite a foolish opening nod to Scream (which probably played a lot better in Japanese), The Ring is blissfully free of the deadend self-consciousness that has rendered American horror movies almost unwatchable. The premise is simple, creepy, and inescapable: a videotape which kills everyone who watches it after exactly seven days. Skeptical reporter Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) watches the tape after her niece dies mysterious, and then the clock starts ticking. Though Watts’ investigation takes her all over gloomy Seattle (and even off the coast), you hardly ever see more than two or three people in the frame -- the film thrives on isolation, the product of a society centered around the TV. (At one point, Watts stands on her apartment balcony and gazes at the building across, each apartment with its television facing outward, communicating more than the back of the person watching it.) Though The Ring abuses the loud-noise scare, it successfully rachets up the tension and never goes slack, meaning you keep having to find new edges on your seat. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; Narberth; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

SECRETARY

Secretary is about anxiety, depression, the inability to communicate. It also turns into a romance, when Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a depressivewith ahabit of cutting herself, gets a job as a secretary for attorney E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Lee works hard, but still, she makes mistakes, typos that Edward marks with a big red pen. Nervous as she is, Lee finds herself liking his reprimands, and starts making errors on purpose, so he’ll call her into his office. At the same time, he’s noting her tremulous behavior, the cuts on her legs, and, no small thing, her beautiful behind. Finally, Edward confronts. One thing leads to another and then, he spanks her. And Lee, bent over his desk, her face red from hurt and ecstasy, has found the man of her dreams. Adapted by playwright Erin Cressida Wilson from a Mary Gaitskill short story, Steven Shainberg’s first feature juggles several attitudes at once: Lee’s narration establishes not only her self-awareness, but also her insights into those around her. She’s no simple victim, but evolves into a submissive partner in a relationship predicated on desire. That her desire might not be yours makes her difficult, even “freaky.” That she comprehends and articulates her journey -- away from her clueless family, toward a relationship that makes sense of her pain -- makes the film’s focus less Lee’s various abilities than your willingness to go along with her.--C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse)

SPACE STATION

Somewhere between the phantasmagorical revolving station of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame and the cramped quarters of a Volkswagen bug (and a major improvement over Mir -- the decrepit Soviet space home that deserved a tabloid headline of “Oy, Vey Is Mir”) the International Space Station is lofty testament to the wonders of worldwide cooperation in the name of science. It also makes for some amazing cinematography. Space Station, the latest IMAX film, gives viewers the typical IMAXian bird’s-eye view of things -- in this case, life aboard a space station -- with a twist. The film, a co-production of IMAX and Lockheed Martin, was shot by astronauts, who not only master the elements of space travel, but do a very fine job taking pictures as well. As astronaut Brian Duffy explained at a press conference, he and his fellow space travelers spent nearly three years not just training for their mission, but they learned the intricacies of filmmaking as well. All in all, Space Station is one small step for man, one giant leap for audiences.--Howard Altman (Tuttleman Imax Theater, Franklin Institute)

SPIRITED AWAY

As impossible as authorship is on any commercial film, it’s trebly so for animation -- who could divine the difference between John Lasseter’s Toy Story 2 and Peter Docter’s Monsters, Inc.? But his singular vision is only one of Hayao Miyazaki’s accomplishments. The most success ful director in Japan, Miyazski pursues his visions with unbridled imagination, and Spirited Away is as pure an expression of that vision as we’ve seen. Melding the child’s-eye view of Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro with the dark, spiritualist overtones of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away takes Chihiro, its young female protagonist into an enormous bathhouse for wayward spirits, where she’s mystified, occasionally enchanted, and often threatened, most notably by the tyrannical Yubaba, who resembles John Tenniel’s drawings of the Queen of Hearts -- if her head inflated to equal size with the rest of her body. Miyazaki never fails to reimagine each aspect of his world; you can get the greatest joy from the tiniest of details. Chihiro’s adventures take her throughout the towering bathhouse and include run-ins with polluted river gods and ill-tempered, oversized babies, not to mention the dragon spirit (who’s also a cute boy) who volunteers to help rescue her parents who’ve been turned into pigs after stumbling into spirit territory. Chihiro’s escapades don’t always proceed one from the other, but let yourself go and you’ll be swept away as well. --S.A.(Ritz East)

SPY KIDS 2: THE ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS

Juni (Daryl Sabara) and Carmen Cortez’s (Alexa Vega) adventures form the center of Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams; Their perspective, part convincingly ingenuous and part movie-kid wise, organizes the film’s general view of things: Adults tend to err and children tend to save the world. As in their first excursion, the pair stumble into a case, here involving a gizmo called a Transmooker that shuts down anything that works by electricity, which is to say, just about everything the spies like to use. At film’s start, the Cortez children find themselves bested by their nearest rivals, Gary and Gerti Giggles. Then all four are sent to rescue the U.S. president’s daughter Alexandra (Taylor Momsen), who’s stranded on a ride at an amusement park. Juni saves the girl, but Gary retrieves the Transmooker. When it is, inevitably, stolen by a crew of villainous magnet-heads, Juni is removed from service until his sister hacks into the computer system, reinstates him and gets them assigned to a secret island, where they befriend “mad” genetic scientist Romero (Steve Buscemi), who’s afraid of his own creations, now “run amok.” These are different animals spliced together, like a spider monkey, catfish and something called a slizzard (part lizard, part snake). Looking less like state-of-the-art digital effects than like they’ve descended from Ray Harryhausen heaven, the beasts are corny and fun, not very scary. More cute diversion than thrillsville outing, Spy Kids 2 shows Juni having more trouble dealing with Carmen’s crush on smarmy Gary than with any of the island’s ostensible “dangers.”--C.F. (UA Main St.)

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

Golden girl/good sport Reese Witherspoon has been calling this lackluster romantic comedy a “return” to her own Southern roots (including her sweet home accent). But Andy Tennant’s film only revisits a pile of clichés. She plays a fancy-pants NYC fashion designer, planning to marry up-and-coming Patrick Dempsey, son of snippy, egotistical NYC Mayor Candice Bergen. But before she does, she has to go home to sort out her secret past. First, she is not the daughter of a plantation owner, but of poor folks (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place) and second, she’s still married to childhood sweetheart (Josh Lucas), once a good old boy and now -- to her surprise -- turned cute, thoughtful and successfully entrepreneurial. This last allows her to make the right decision (the one indicated by the film’s title) and not have to live in a double-wide. The performances are pert, the characters stale and the inevitable showdown between suitors (and mothers) quite humdrum. Tellingly, the most enthusiastic audience response came not when Witherspoon and her beau clinch, but when her gay designer mentor from the city (Nathan Lee Graham) exchanges meaningful glances with her gay best friend from the country (Ethan Embry): Perhaps that’s the movie that Tennant should have made.--C.F. (AMC Andorra; Baederwood; Cinemagic; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

THE TRANSPORTER

Ex-Special Forces operative Jason Statham transports packages for wealthy, not exactly legal clients. He doesn’t want to know reasons or contents, just destinations and payments. He’s a brilliant fighter (director Cory Yuen is also an action choreographer), phenomenal driver (the film opens with a terrific chase scene), and painstaking planner, keeping his tricked-out BMW in perfect order and adhering to a strict set of rules to ensure he never gets caught off guard. When he discovers that one of his packages is a girl in a duffel bag (Shu Qi), his order comes undone, and he must save her, stop a plot to enslave a truckload of illegal Chinese émigrés, take down a smarmy villain called Wall Street (Matt Schulze) and perform any number of breathtaking martial arts, underwater and road-warrior-style stunts. Speedy, colorful and clever, this Luc Besson-produced film sets up Statham as yet another next-generational, hybrid action hero, fond of Bondish gizmos, haul-ass extreme like Diesel, supremely confident like The Rock, and phenomenally, precisely athletic like Jet Li. The fact that he’s survived his share of Guy Ritchie films doesn’t hurt either. --C.F. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)

THE TUXEDO

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Hey Jennifer Jugs,

Jackie Chan's stuntwork is real

but your boobs are not.

(AMC Andorra; UA 69th St.; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD

Based on Mario Monicelli’s 1958 film Big Deal on Madonna Street, this George Clooney-Steven Soderbergh production is a jolly little heist movie set in Cleveland, in which petty loser-crooks pursue a Bellini, a dream job. As in Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks (also inspired by Big Deal), a motley crew -- bad boxer Sam Rockwell and homies William H. Macy, Isaiah Washington, Patricia Clarkson, Michael Jeter and Andrew Davoli -- find out (from Luis Guzman) about a jeweler’s safe waiting to be cracked, with a relatively easy entry through the wall of an adjoining building. Following safecracking instruction by an expert now limited in his movements due to his being in a wheelchair (quietly raucous George Clooney), Rockwell undertakes to seduce a maid (Jennifer Esposito) working for this building’s owners, but actually falls in love by accident, which makes using her for access a little dicey. One thing after another goes wrong on heist night, which allows for much broad physical comedy, balanced by the performers’ sharp relational nuances. Economical, mostly clever and quite pleased with itself, the film offers minor diversion. --C.F. (Bryn Mawr)

WHITE OLEANDER

Bad enough to ensure you never read the novel (by Janet Fitch) it’s based on, White Oleander seems like Warner Bros.’ bid for American Beauty gold, but it’s not even as good as that overheated chestnut. Based on ideas about womanhood that never quite translate themselves into, you know, drama, the story follows young Astrid (Alison Lohman) as she bounces from her murderous mother (a not-entirely-convincing Michelle Pfeiffer) to foster home to foster home, meeting born-again stripper Robin Wright Penn and fragile actress Renée Zellweger along the way. “They don’t destroy us; we destroy them” is the movie’s idea of profundity, though Astrid never shows any signs of following her mom down the boyfriend-poisoning route. Perhaps the idea is that womanhood can itself be toxic, whether to others or oneself. It’s hardly worth figuring out, since the movie’s sappy denouement removes what few teeth it’s shown along the way. Nice puppy-dog stuff between Lohman and Almost Famous’s Patrick Fugit, though. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; Baederwood; Bryn Mawr; Ritz 16; Roxy; UA Grant)