New Movie Shorts

MR. 3000
Don't be fooled by a few four-letter words; Bernie Mac has been thoroughly Disneyfied in a role that would have been played by Tim Conway a generation ago. Mac is cocky Milwaukee Brewers star Stan Ross, who retires after his 3,000th hit, believing his place in the hall of fame secured. Ten years later, when it turns out the stats were wrong and he is actually three hits shy of the magic number, "Mr. 3000" stages a comeback full of exercise montages accompanied by "YMCA" (and, just to prove that the songs were chosen by the Ronco Soundtrack-O-Matic, his return to success triggers James Brown's "I Feel Good"). Soon enough, Bernie is imparting valuable life lessons to his teammates, converting their star player from brash glory hound to morale-boosting cheerleader with the power of one speech. Given that corporate logos pack every frame and more screen time is spent in press conferences than on the field, criticism of the money- and media-corrupted modern game seems obvious, but the eager involvement of virtually every cable sports show on TV (not to mention Jay Leno and cameo whore Larry King) ensures that satire is pushed aside in favor of easy "no I in team" platitudes. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
Like Thunderbirds without those temperamental marionettes, Kerry Conran's first film fits actors — Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Angelina Jolie, as well as a reconstituted Lawrence Olivier — into a digital backdrop, the better to tell its WWII-era story of a high-flying crusader (Law) saving the world from an army of clankety robots. Expertly placed photo essays in otherwise respectable publications notwithstanding, the look of Sky Captain is nothing special, especially as Conran has to bleach out the faces of his human cast to match his limited digital palette. Leaving aside the hundreds of millions spent on a story that could have been filmed in a basement with action figures, Sky Captain's biggest problem is that it doesn't seem Conran has informed the actors of the essential silliness of his enterprise. Law needs the derring-do Spielberg pried out of him in A.I. , but substitutes po-faced heroism, and Paltrow plays a girl reporter Rosalind Russell would have eaten for lunch. Only Jolie, with a British accent and eyepatch, gets the tone right, as the swaggering commander of an airborne fueling station who makes Paltrow seem positively pallid. She comes to the movie late and stays too little, but at least for a few minutes, it's alive. --S.A.(AMC Orleans; Bridge; Bryn Mawr; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

TOUCH OF PINK
Alim (Jimi Mistry) knows he should come out to his mother (Suleka Mathew). But she's so intent that he'll marry a proper Indian girl, and besides, she lives in Toronto. So he stays closeted in London, where he lives with his Caucasian boyfriend (Kristen Holden-Reid), until that inevitable day when mom arrives, planning to bring him back for his cousin's wedding. The gay boys put up a good front, moving their clothing and decor about so they look like chaste roommates, but Alim is increasingly inclined to confide in his spiritual mentor, a sort of ghost of Cary Grant (Kyle MacLachlan), who likes to call Alim "my little samosa" and appears in his various film role incarnations. For all the movie's good intentions, the comedy is stale and the plot holds no surprises, save perhaps for a scene near the end when Grant shows up in his Gunga Din gear at the Indian wedding party. The visible collisions of fantasy and racism, colonialism and desire, and history and Hollywood, are here quite vivid, especially given the rest of the film's inclination not to pursue such complications. — Cindy Fuchs (Ritz at the Bourse)

UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ
Robert Greenwald's documentary (a half-hour longer here than on TV or DVD) builds what ought to be an irrefutable case that the Bush administration warped, misstated and otherwise finessed the case for war. Among Greenwald's flotilla of anti-Bush docs, which also includes Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, Uncovered stands out for its imposing cast of interviewees and its preference for fact over innuendo. Skirting the blood-for-oil route, Uncovered focuses on the ideological underpinnings of the Iraq war. Greenwald goes point by point through George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address and Colin Powell's remarks to the United Nations, rebutting each claim as it's made. In the long run, the Bush administration's once-rigid rhetoric has proved surprisingly malleable, not to say opportunistic, so it's worth going back to the scene of the crime and remembering just how overstated the case for war was. Bush touts our "good, sound intelligence," Iraq's "long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations," not to mention those infamous 16 words. Are Iraqis better off now than they were four years ago? Some undoubtedly are. But by the Bushies' own logic, the real question shouldn't be if they're better off, but if we are. --S.A.(Ritz East)

WHAT THE #$*! DO WE KNOW!?
Apparently deemed a "cult favorite" even before it hit theaters, this new-agey explication of quantum mechanics unto cognitive therapy is part talking heads and coming-to-consciousness saga. The first features a diverse array of experts (philosophers, scientists and a 35,000-year-old mystic named Ramtha). While it's intriguing to note that matter, at the atomic level, is comprised mainly of space and particles bumping into one another, the suggestion that collective or personal thought might control material experience stretches credulity, especially if you're living below poverty level. The film's fictional section, intercut with the documentary, stars Marlee Matlin as a Portland, Ore., photographer unhappy with her foofy assignments and living arrangements (for one thing, she has a terminally upbeat artist friend staying in her small apartment). Once she gets a load of how the universe really works (courtesy of a kid playing basketball and a philosopher on a subway platform), she's able to shoot a Polish wedding party, get drunk and come to appreciate herself (this last indicated as she draws little hearts all over her body). If the concepts are provocative, the scattershot execution (time-lapse photography, animated dancing fat cells and colorful auras) is unpersuasive … unless, of course, you're already feeling cultish. --C.F.(Ritz East)

WIMBLEDON
Lanky, sweet-faced and casually charming even when playing neurotic, Paul Bettany eases the tedium of Richard Loncraine's formulaic sap-fest. As a "veteran journeyman" tennis player who makes it to the Wimbledon finals on the eve of his retirement, he's backed by the usual coterie of quirky supporting characters (Bernard Hill and Eleanor Bron as his squabbling parents, James McAvoy as his irresponsible brother, Jon Favreau as his pushy agent, not to mention John McEnroe as himself — courtside commentator). At the same time, he falls in love with cocky American tennis star Kirsten Dunst. Accompanied by her trainer-father (Sam Neill) on tour, she's both rebellious and focused on her game; imagine everyone's surprise when he starts playing better after their nightly trysts and she starts playing worse. Frustrated, she tries to dump him, going so far as to utter the words, "Love means nothing in tennis, zero." There's not a surprise in sight, as the film follows the course of any number of Hugh Grant comedies, with tennis as backdrop (and not very convincing digitized play). Though he's saddled with a voiceover that tends to be self-deprecating and meditative ("Sport is cruel"), Bettany maintains an oddly believable lack of cynicism throughout. — C.F. (Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

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