Also this issue: Wide Open Spaces Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries give reality time to breathe. -Sam Adams Web Pierce Spider delves into a madman’s mind, but leaves the door open a crack. -Sam Adams Interview: David Cronenberg -S.A Backwards Thinking Irréversible’s reverse philosophy undoes the logic of vengeance. -Cindy Fuchs Screen Picks -Sam Adams New Repertory Film Showtimes

March 13-19, 2003

movie shorts

Continuing

ABOUT SCHMIDT

About Schmidt isn't just the best performance Jack Nicholson has given in nearly two decades; it's practically the only one that matters. Nicholson doesn't so much discard his star image as aid director Alexander Payne in destroying it. It's easy for stars to play "brave" by dipping their manicured toes into the misery of "ordinary people," but it's far more honest to play outwardly unexceptional people as we all see ourselves: as the star of our very own show. From the outside, Nicholson's insurance salesman Warren Schmidt may seem like an average schmo, but seen through his eyes, he's King Lear. When we first meet him, he's sitting at his desk waiting for the wall clock to tick off the last seconds of his career. The best Schmidt's friends -- who, incidentally, we never see again -- can say of him is that he was an exceptionally enthusiastic drone. With the days at home with his wife (June Squibb) dragging on endlessly, Schmidt one night calls a number off the television to sponsor a young Tanzanian boy; before long he's sending letters off to the other side of the world on a regular basis, pouring out his heart in a way you sense he never has. When even his meager domestic security is stripped away from him, Schmidt hits the road in a 35-foot Winnebago: Crossing the Midwest, he discovers his childhood home has been replaced by a tire store, while his only daughter (Hope Davis) desperately tries to prevent him showing up even a few days before her impending marriage to a water-bed salesman (a rat-tailed Dermot Mulroney). The Midwest serves Payne as a satirist because it's so easy to play off coastal assumptions of heartland virtue: Schmidt has lost any reason to put on a good face, and any conviction that it would help.--S.A. (Baederwood; Bryn Mawr; Ritz 16)

AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR-PART HARMONY

"When you finally finish that song, people be like, Damn, I know where you niggas is coming from.'" Once-exiled South African musician Sifiso Ntuli's words, which come at the beginning of Lee Hirsch's lively documentary, establish the power of song right off the bat; they convey instantly what words can take forever to get across. The strength and the weakness of Amandla! is Hirsch's reliance on the "freedom songs" of the struggle against apartheid -- strength because the movie comes alive every time musicians, famous or not, burst into song; weakness because you want to sit down and listen, and the movie's already rushing off to the next subject. The film includes interviews with internationally famous figures like Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, but its heart are those locally or not-at-all famous figures who made up the struggle, and the music that seems simply to pour out of them. Songs like "Beware Verwoerd" (addressed to South Africa's then-president) and "Makuliwe" may not be well-known outside the country, but everyone seems to know them there; in one memorable sequence, Hirsch cuts between three unrelated groups of people, all singing the same song (and, miraculously, in close to the same key); music is common currency here. The fact that Amandla! isn't totally satisfying may be a measure of its success; no matter how much you get, you want more.--Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse)

BIKER BOYZ

The undisputed "King of Cali" is Laurence Fishburne's Smoke, president of the Black Knights biker club and speedster nonpareil, who meets with cyclists from all walks of life at night to burn sweet, sweet rubber. When beloved Black Knight Slick Will is killed in a freak racing accident, his young, photogenic son Kid (Antwone Fisher's Derek Luke) decides he doesn't want to wait his turn as a BK acolyte any longer, and forms his own club, Biker Boyz, with the intention of unseating Smoke as the chopper chieftain. Although the Boyz win a few legit races, most of their brand-building stems from less-than-honest misdirection: mostly confusing their opponents with flashy but unnecessary stunts at speed.--R.G.(UA Riverview)

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

Michael 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. Bowling begins, of course, with our fondness for guns, but Moore pushes past that answer, pointing 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..--S.A. (Roxy)

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE

Lonely, depressed tax lawyer Steve Martin meets witty, well-read "lawyer girl" in a chat room. How surprised he is when she arrives on his doorstep: Boisterous ex-con (and executive producer) Queen Latifah wants him to help her clear her record of the felony burglary for which she was framed. And how unsurprised you are that she teaches this uptight white man to shake his booty, open up to his two kids, lust after his ex (Jean Smart) and even outsmart Latifah's thuggish ex (Steve Harris). The broad comedy derives from standard class and race frictions, helped along by Martin's neighbor, Betty White (fearful of "Negroes") and his no. 1 client, Joan Plowright (fond of plantation songs that remind her of childhood servants). Latifah is delightful, and as the man who wisely falls in love with her on first meeting, Eugene Levy brings a welcome dryness to the otherwise predictably soppy proceedings.--Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Narberth; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

CHICAGO

Set in Depression-era, tabloid-driven Chi, Chicago splits off Kander and Ebb's cracking songs from the rest of the story, setting them in a fantasy nightclub space that is interwoven with the real-life setting. Following in Stanley Donen's footsteps, Rob Marshall is a choreographer turned director, and the movie's dance sequences fall together like little bits of magic, though the faux-retro salaciousness sometimes comes off more Broadway crass than le jazz hot (and Catherine Zeta-Jones is too hippy for her high-cut costumes). Zellweger, though, proves to be an honest-to-goodness triple threat; while hardly a belter, she finds her way into Roxie's go-getter bite, and she's as light on her feet as any good comic actress. Who knew, what's more, that Richard Gere had been hiding a mean lyric tenor all these years? Chicago may not rank with the classics, but it's the best traditional movie musical in many a moon. --S.A. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16; UA Grant)

CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE

X gon' give it to ya. Deemed "The Next Tom Cruise" by GQ, the charismatic DMX continues to power his way into the movies. What with his star turns in Belly and Exit Wounds, and his recent announcement that he's quitting music (because the business is skewed to the detriment of the artists), his focus, if not his success per se, seems assured. In his third film with director Andrzej Bartkowiak, X is a super-excellent thief (teamed with Gabrielle Union, Drag-On and the irrepressible Anthony Anderson) who happens on a source of plutonium disguised as "black diamonds." He's also a dedicated dad, so when one of several bad guys (Mark Dacascos) kidnaps his daughter, the Dark Man goes into serious action. Joined by Taiwanese special agent Jet Li and (God help him) a fence played by Tom Arnold, he zooms around L.A. in various vehicles, visits cigar-smoking crime boss Chi McBride in prison and gets clocked by The Shield's Michael Jace in a black velvet jacket. Many explosions, kick-fights and shoot-outs later, X and Li save the girl and, oh yes, the planet. I'll say it again: he's a movie star, surviving even such silly dialogue as "Break out the heat." --C.F.

(AMC Orleans; Bridge; Roxy; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

DAREDEVIL

With its in-joke references to Marvel artists, a cameo by glory-hound Stan Lee and a bit part for Kevin Smith (who's recently taken a turn writing the comic), Daredevil is the comic-book geek movie par (lack of) excellence. Despite the fact that it's a story about a blind man who's given amplified senses after being dunked in chemical waste, then decides to dress up in an oxblood leather suit and fight crime, the movie unfolds with the portentousness of a Sunday school class. Like Spider-Man, Daredevil demands a setting that appears to be seedy but is actually nostalgic -- one where the villains are colorful crimelords and self-advertising underworld types are so obviously criminals that even a blind man (heh) could see it. Like Spider-Man, the comic-book version of Daredevil tied his foes up and left them for the police; now he either dispatches them with bone-crunching force or maneuvers them into situations where the elements (or the C train) can finish them off. Aren't these things supposed to be fun? As blind defense attorney Matt Murdock, Ben Affleck seems like he doesn't know how to spell "law," let alone practice it. When billionaire businessman (and not-so-secret baddie) Michael Clarke Duncan tries to engage Murdock's services, he retorts, "We only handle innocent clients." So justice really is blind.--S.A.

(AMC Orleans; UA Cheltenham; Ua Main St; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

DelIVER US FROM EVA

Get past the sophomoric title and you'll find more second-year stuff. LL Cool J (keeping his abs under wraps for once) plays the player hired to take Eva (Gabrielle Union) off the hands of three very harried fellows, each dating one of three sisters and menaced by Eva, the fourth. The premise is pure beer-commercial misogyny -- the guys would all be happy if Eva would stop warping the sisters' priorities, which she only does because she's a frigid bitch -- despite buppie craftsman Gary Hardwick's attempt to take the edge off with a completely extraneous opening number where the cast dances to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "You're All I Need to Get By." (That and a totally extraneous LL voiceover make it pretty clear Deliver Us has been through the reshoot wringer.) LL's supposed to seduce Eva, get her to move away with him, and then dump her (oh, the chuckles), but wouldn't you know it, they end up falling for each other -- which might be a cliché, but the moments when the pair are on screen together are the only moments the movie comes even close to being tolerable. --S.A. (UA Riverview)

FAR FROM HEAVEN

Todd Haynes' magnificently obsessed version of a Douglas Sirk melodrama introduces Cathy (a blond, peppy Julianne Moore), the perfect suburban wife and hostess, with two children, a black maid (Viola Davis) and a hard-working husband, Frank (Dennis Quaid) who slips out of work one night, to a dimly lit underground bar. Frank's plight is portrayed as it would have been at the time, but we're understanding, not clucking our tongues. The resurgence of the passion Frank thought he'd quelled is hardest on Cathy, who turns to her black gardener Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) for help. Far from Heaven is a stylistic marvel: though it's still a little more impressive than impassioned, the sophistication with which Haynes has intermingled the modern and postmodern is awe-inspiring.--S.A.(Bala)

FINAL DESTINATION 2

Don't fret if you haven't seen the first one (called, I believe, Penultimate Destination). FD2 recaps everything you need to know: specifically, that Death is a malevolent force surrounding us at all times that takes being cheated very personally. When Kimberly (A.J. Cook) has a premonition of a horrific -- and imaginatively choreographed -- traffic accident, she blocks the highway on-ramp just long enough to save her life and those of a handful of strangers behind her. This group's still-aliveness apparently causes "a rift in Death's design" that Death wastes no time in rectifying. You've got to hand it to Death and its strict but arbitrary code of Deathics: each make-up slaying has to happen in reverse order from Death's original intent, be red-herringed in a vision to Kimberly, involve a literally ungodly number of elaborate coincidences and finish up with a gruesome and deal-sealing mutilation. This would all be really scary if people ever actually died like this; I guess we can be grateful that Death is not yet a second-rate horror screenwriter. Still, there's a certain amount of fun to be had in the Theater of the Absurd Demises. No matter how ridiculous the premise, it's all in the execution.--R.G. (Cinemagic;

UA Riverview; UA 69th St.

)

FRIDA

It's well known that Frida (played by Salma Hayek) suffered mightily and throughout her life, emotionally, spiritually and physically: this film focuses on blurring that experience with her art. Throughout Frida's recovery, her photographer father (Roger Rees) dotes on her, while her mother (Patricia Reyes Spíndola) frets that her chance for proper marriage is over. This parental divide sets up Frida's lifelong investment in genderfuck: She rejects expectations that girls should stay home and cook, throwing herself into her painting and politics. --C.F. (Baederwood)

GERRY

Whether it's Gus van Sant's ticket back from the wilderness or just a blip in his otherwise steady downward slide, Gerry is the first significant movie the once-promising auteur has made since My Own Private Idaho, and the first watchable one since Good Will Hunting. Heavily influenced by the works of Béla Tarr and Chantal Akerman, Gerry follows two callow young men (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) into the desert, where they promptly get lost. The film, co-written by van Sant and the actors, becomes increasingly absurd and bleak as the men's chances of finding their way back to civilization diminish; at first, they're wandering in what looks like New Mexico, but by the end, they're criss-crossing a salty plain and hiking through snow-crusted mountains. The movie opens with two shots, running perhaps 10 minutes between them, of the two men driving silently in their car, a warning to the audience to shift into low gear. What keeps Gerry from drowning in its own art-ness are Damon and Affleck's fratboy take on Vladimir and Estragon; rather than bemoaning their fate, they're more likely to boast of their video game accomplishments or get hopelessly marooned atop a high rock. You don't want to be in the position of lauding van Sant simply for making a movie many people won't like, but if you're open to its charms, Gerry is a thoroughly engaging experience.--S.A. (Ritz East)

The Guru

The similarities between porn and musicals have been frequently noted. In both, character and plot take a back seat to a series of set pieces designed for visceral, immediate pleasure. Daisy von Scherler Mayer's movie takes this confluence a step further, bringing cross-cultural desire together with the sheer delight of Grease. Dance instructor Jimi Mistry comes to New York to become a star. The first acting job he lands is a porn movie, where he meets the self-assured Heather Graham. Silly plot turns and energetic Bollywood-style song-and-dance numbers lead him into the arms of a rich girl (Marisa Tomei), seeking spiritual guidance. With Tomei's financial support and Graham's lessons in healthy sexual performance, Mistry becomes the Guru of Sex, a star as beloved and desired as Deepak Chopra. Lively, smart, and executive produced by Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen), the film challenges typical trajectories of cultural influence by reversing and celebrating them. It's also so completely charmed by itself that it's impossible to resist.--C.F. (Ritz East)

THE HOURS

Directed by Stephen Daldry and scripted by David Hare, The Hours translates the complex organization of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel -- three women in different times and places, each struggling with depression and desire -- as a kind of puzzle, each piece interlocking. Essentially three separate films, The Hours deploys clever matching shots to shift between them. The movie opens on the suicide of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman), in the London suburb of Richmond, 1941. She writes a note to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), then walks down to the river, where she puts stones in her pockets and wades in. From here the film cuts back in time, to 1923, as Woolf is writing Mrs. Dalloway, visiting with her sister, Vanessa Bell (Miranda Richardson), and her children and confronting her own evolving madness. The second story takes place in 1951 Los Angeles, where housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is reading Mrs. Dalloway, and in the process, facing doubts concerning her marriage to gentle Dan (John C. Reilly), for whom she and her young son (Jack Rovello) endeavor to make a birthday cake. Dan sees her melancholy, but has no concept of how to help, or even talk with her. For her part, Laura is seriously considering Mrs. Dalloway's example, planning not only her husband's party, but also her suicide. The third piece, set in 2001 Manhattan, follows Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) as she puts together a party for ex-lover Richard (Ed Harris), a novelist now dying of AIDS-related illness. Much of The Hours is about grief, focused through the prism of women oppressed by culturally ordained and personally absorbed obligations. Its female subjects are, on one hand, unfathomable prisms of passion, rendered in brilliant performances. But they're also functions of a coherent narrative. As sensitive as Leonard, Richard or even Dan might strive to be, he just can't get it: Women's stuff remains mysterious. This seems somehow reductive, political oppression creating an insular emotional world where culpability and generosity may never be known.--C.F. (Bala; Bridge; Ritz 16)

HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS

You may think it unlikely that women's mag columnist Andie (Kate Hudson) has decided to write a what-not-to-do article, using her own experience with an actual Guy to be named later and an actual span of 10 Days in which to make said Guy first fall for her and then drop her like a spoonful of black hole. You may think it somewhat more unlikely that at the same time, ad copywriter Ben (Matthew McConaughey) is betting his boss that he can make a girl -- again, chosen at random -- fall in love with him in the same 10-day span. And yes, it's pretty darn unlikely that they would choose each other as unwitting test subjects, plus not be able to immediately see behind the other's ruse. What really strains the old credulity, though, is that much of the action depends on the Knicks being in the NBA Finals; is this a romantic comedy or science fiction? Still, if you can manage to accept all that, and don't mind rooting for liars, and the sight of ex post fratboy mating rituals and inexplicable female behavior and one enormous Adam's apple isn't too off-putting, there is some fun to be had here. What else are you going to watch after Joe Millionaire is over? --Ryan Godfrey

(UA Main St.; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

John Goodman's the bear;

Haley Joel is the man cub.

Plus Phil Collins squawks.

(AMC Orleans; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

KANGAROO JACK

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

"He stole the money

And he's not giving it back."

Because he stole it.

(Roxy; UA Riverview)

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE

Director Alan Parker's new film argues -- vigorously and sanctimoniously -- against the death penalty. Kevin Spacey plays David Gale, a philosophy professor and anti-death penalty activist currently on death row in Texas for the rape and murder of his colleague, the significantly named Constance (Laura Linney). With four days to live, he invites a famously principled reporter (named Bitsey and wanly played by Kate Winslet) to interview him so that he might tell his side. Her uncovering of the truth is painfully slow, especially since the mystery is wholly unsurprising and dependent on glaring character inconsistencies. Perhaps worse, the film's argument against capital punishment -- it's bad because mistakes can be made -- is needlessly overstated (the activists are set against a smarmy governor ominously named Hardin; Gale's lawyer screwed up repeatedly; pro-death penalty interviewees appear in grainy TV close-ups, etc.). Definitely worse, the focus on Gale -- privileged and white, even if alcoholic and fired for having sex with an ex-student (bad choice, that) -- leaves out the vast majority of death row cases: black and Hispanic men without money or choices concerning representation.--Cindy Fuchs (Baederwood; Ritz 16; UA Main St; UA Riverview)

LOST IN LA MANCHA

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary witnesses art in the un-making -- the disintegration and eventual collapse of Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, what was to have been his first production from his own script in over a decade. The production begins with a budget so tight nothing can go wrong, and then practically everything does: actors don't show up, locations turn out to be uncomfortably close to NATO bombing ranges and Gilliam's Quixote turns out to be too frail to ride a horse. Fulton and Pepe, former Temple grad students who filmed Gilliam's production of Twelve Monkeys for their documentary The Hamster Factor, have what looks like unrestricted access, eavesdropping on conflicts, tantrums and moments of utter despair, and their detailed approach helps make the case that even an auteur as singular as Gilliam needs a team. Gilliam's detractors might watch the film and see evidence of the mania for minutae that dooms all his films, but even those with a passing interest in things Gilliam will find this up-close look at the death of a dream tough to watch. In animated sequences by locals Chaim Bianco and Stefan Avalos, La Mancha points out that for all his out-of-control rep, Gilliam is "a responsible enfant terrible," and if it doesn't exactly make its subject heroic, the film is certainly in his corner. The "Coming Soon" trailer for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote which follows Lost in La Mancha's credits cements the symbiosis. --Sam Adams. (Ritz Five)

OLD school

The premise has promise, in an I-love-the-'80s teen movie redux way: The near-campus house of newly single Mitch (Luke Wilson) is rezoned by the butthole dean (Jeremy Piven) for college-related use only after a housewarming party gets too raucous, so married but terminally juvenile best friends Frank (Will Ferrell) and Beanie (Vince Vaughn) convince Mitch to turn the house into a rule-flouting, cross-generational fraternity. What should follow, and what the trailer promises, are beer-soaked, increasingly transgressive shenanigans involving hazing, sex and that old-time rock 'n' roll. What actually follows is anarchic only in the sense that it's badly structured, arbitrary and -- despite Ferrell's ample and omnipresent bare backside -- half-assed. Why, for example, does the dean threaten the frat's charter by making them debate economic policy with James Carville and compete against the men's gymnastics team, when he could just kick them out for being mostly nonstudents using school-controlled property? Because our lovable losers are "really good at paperwork." Why does a character have to die during K-Y Jelly wrestling? So Frank can sing "Dust in the Wind" at the funeral. Maybe this is all very funny if you're wasted; without the benefit of chemical stupefication it's nonsensical and even tame. Don't expect Animal House -- it's more like a big fat Greek petting zoo.--R.G. (Bridge; Bryn Mawr; UA Grant; UA Main St; UA Riverview)

the pianist

A Polish Jew hiding from the Nazis in Warsaw, sometimes looked after by friendly non-Jews, Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), the titular artist, is near starving, his hair hanging in clumps off his skull, his skin pale and gray. Commanded to play something by a German officer (Thomas Kretschmann), he's playing for his life, but it's difficult to know exactly what that life might mean now. Yet Szpilman will survive this encounter. You know this because Roman Polanski's film is based on his memoirs (published in 1946). Opening in September 1939, The Pianist introduces the young artist as he is playing, refusing to acknowledge that life is already changed forever, that the Germans had invaded weeks before. Tragically, Szpilman and his family stay in their apartment; they can't quite act. And so they wait, until they too are moved to a barracks, and then taken to a camp. The film mostly takes Szpilman's view, showing the atrocities he sees; Polanksi and cinematographer Pawel Edelman hardly linger on any of these images. Finally forced to evacuate, Szpilman spends the rest of the film keeping out of sight. While the "action," such as it is, now decreases, the film becomes almost unbearably acute, approximating the man's psychic state, his process of internalization. This attenuation -- Szpilman's diminished view, his simultaneous dread of seeing and need to see -- is The Pianist's most startling effect. Brody's physical and emotional reduction is part of it, but even more extraordinary is the paring away of the film's self-image, its presumed capacity to elucidate and illustrate. The Pianist attends to the senses in ways that grander pictures cannot.--C.F. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

THE QUIET AMERICAN

Phillip Noyce's adaptation of Graham Greene's avowedly "anti-American" novel makes the political personal, collapsing a pivotal moment in the history of American involvement in Vietnam into the story of two men battling over a woman. Fowler (Michael Caine) is a British journalist who's living the good life in 1952 Saigon until Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) walks into the picture. Fowler starts to see a darker side to Pyle when he introduces him to the beautiful Phuong (The Vertical Ray of the Sun's Do Thi Hai Yen), who's been Fowler's girlfriend for the last two years. Pyle seizes on the fact that Fowler cannot get a divorce from his long-estranged English wife and begins to woo Phuong, always in the name of what's best for her, but ruthlessly all the same. However, Greene's love-triangle allegory is so overwhelming, however, that the film loses sight of the larger questions it makes signs of addressing. We're stuck looking through Fowler's eyes, never getting a sense of what life was like for the Vietnamese, any more than, for all the arguing Fowler and Pyle do over what's best for Phuong, we get a chance to hear her own thoughts on the subject.--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

THE RECRUIT

If CIA agents are really as hung up on father issues and rocky romances as they appear in the movies, the so-called free world is in even more trouble than the agency's bungled info-deciphering would indicate. In director Roger Donaldson's version of this recurring "troubled agent" scenario (see also Tony Scott's Spy Game), Colin Farrell is the gifted trainee, Al Pacino his brilliant recruiter/father figure, and Bridget Moynahan his rocky romantic interest. For half the film, they're claustrophobic at a training camp called "the Farm." Here they learn that "everything is a test" and "nothing is what it seems." Apparently, this is news for the newbies, because they repeat both phrases like mantras. They also work with those huge-type movie-computers, emote flagrantly, drive like crazy people and miss obvious cues concerning plot turns, all of which suggests they're not exactly cut out for the spy biz, where acumen and precision are reputedly valued.--C.F. (Ritz 16)

THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS

Rose Troche's adaptation of M. Homes' short stories offers a series of disturbing relationships between humans and their chosen objects, most obsessive or destructive, all selfish and heedless; these are illustrated by four families, harboring a lot of secrets. Lawyer Jim Train (Dermot Mulroney) is passed over for a promotion and walks out. When he suspects that his wife, Susan (Moira Kelly), is having an affair (and feels pressured by her request for a new dishwasher), Jim resets his own sights on a great big object -- an SUV being given away by a radio station. Esther Gold (Glenn Close) is also trying to win the car for her daughter, Julie (Jessica Campbell). Julie's reason for being needy is obvious; for months, Esther has been spending all her time attending to another object, Julie's comatose brother, Paul (Joshua Jackson). While Julie and Paul's father (Robert Klein) withdraw in horror, his girlfriend, Annette (Patricia Clarkson), feels herself the object of everyone's accusations. For all the objectification and distraction going on in The Safety of Objects, one relationship stands out. Taking a cue from his frustrated father, Jim, young Jake Train (Alex House) has found the ideal target for his energetic adoration, a Barbie-type doll named Tani; she belongs to his sister, Emily (Charly Chalom), but whenever Jake has a chance, he takes her away for a bit of kissy-face and lustful chatter. Jake reflects the extended community of self-involved individuals that comprises the 'burbs. This makes his story funny, if you're feeling superior, and tragic, if you're feeling sympathetic. In any case, if you're feeling anything for someone who's not you, you're a step ahead.--C.F. (Ritz East; Ritz 16)

SHANGHAI KNIGHTS

The best thing that might be said about this sequel to Shanghai Noon is that it gives Jackie Chan a chance to dance, sort of. Translating the famous Gene Kelly number from Singin' in the Rain, he uses a street vendor's stash of umbrellas to outwit and outstep a throng of thugs. They're chasing him for a reason, though it hardly matters. He and partner Owen Wilson are tracking Chan's father's assassin in London, which grants them excuses to visit the wax museum, commit homoerotic slapstick on the hands of Big Ben and pillow-fight with prostitutes (granted, this might have occurred in the wild West too), and for Wilson to make fun of British wussiness, Scotland Yard and the Queen's guards. Chan has a sister this time, too, played by Fann Wong, and her martial arts are faster and more wire-worky than Chan's own (though he also submits to wires and a couple of stunt double moments, too). It all goes to show that the first film's "chemistry" had a lot to do with a semi-clever script, which this one sorely lacks.--C.F. (AMC Orleans; UA Riverview)

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)

TALK TO HER

It's notable that Michael Cunningham's The Hours shows up on a bedside table in Pedro Almodóvar's newest movie, because in a way, it more fully seizes the notion of improbable emotional connections than the novel's upcoming movie adaptation. The plot takes so many turns, it's unfair to reveal too much, but its basis is the relationship that develops between two men -- Benigno (Javier Cámara) and Marco (Darío Grandinetti) -- who are both attached to comatose women, the former professionally, the latter romantically. In fact, they first connect while watching a dance performance, when Benigno notices Marco tearing up, and it's a key clue to Almodóvar's real subject: the way fictions, either those created for us or the ones we create ourselves, fill the gaps between people, for good or for ill. Repeatedly making nods to other types of art -- including a mesmerizing silent-film interlude, filmed by the director, which is transportingly beautiful but hides a sinister meaning -- Talk to Her perhaps spreads itself too thin, but it's a movie about passions, so if they overrun, it's almost appropriate.--S.A.

(Ritz Five)

TEARS OF THE SUN

Bruce Willis doesn't do much talking in Antoine Fuqua's mostly somber action picture, set during a fictionalized Nigerian civil war. He's a hardcore Navy SEAL Lieutenant assigned to extract American citizen/French-born physician Monica Bellucci from the jungle. When she says she won't leave without "my people" (Nigerian refugees), he and his team (including Eamonn Walker and Cole Hauser) proceed to escort her and the refugees to Cameroon. Witnessing the rebels' brutality, Willis is increasingly scrunch-faced, indicating conflict over his dedication to duty (embodied by captain Tom Skerritt back on an aircraft carrier) and sympathy for his new charges. His decision to go off-mission leads to combat scenes, in which the U.S. military is alternately thrillingly precise (though they arrive too late to save one village, they do punish the killers) and horribly outnumbered by very mean-looking rebels (led by Malick Bowens). It's like Black Hawk Down with a "happier" ending: The U.S. troops do an obvious right thing, and are loved for it. Given the current moment, this moral lesson (help real people, rather than follow orders) reads like an endorsement of "preemptive" striking if you leave out the bomb-dropping part.--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)