DATE MOVIE

A haiku:

Film spoofs romance flicks.
Starring that chick from Buffy.
At least a cat poops.

EIGHT BELOW
Some things just always work, and man-vs.-nature battles in picturesque settings replete with wildlife are at the top of that list. Disney knows how to do that better than anyone, and at the outset of Eight Below, all the elements seem to be neatly in place: Risk-taking guide and dedicated scientist take dog sled far out onto thin Antarctic ice while storm approaches. By casting professional nonentities Paul Walker and Bruce Greenwood, Frank Marshall ensures that he can focus on lovely ice-covered landscapes without personalities getting in the way. But before half an hour is up, the perils have been overcome and the party is back at base camp. The remainder of the film is split between two parallel stories—Walker's attempts to get back to his dogs, left behind in the haste to evacuate before the storm hit, and the dogs' own struggle for survival, left behind for six months to fend for themselves. The latter is more Dog Fancy than National Geographic, anthropomorphizing the animals to tell the story of a young hothead maturing to earn the respect of a noble leader, while the human half wastes an inordinate amount of screen time on fighting bureaucracy rather than nature. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

FREEDOMLAND
See Cindy Fuch's review. (AMC Orleans; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

HEART OF GOLD
Like Greendale, Neil Young's Prairie Wind makes a better movie than it does an album. Holding court at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry, Young makes his way through all but one of Prairie Wind's 10 songs, a loosely focused suite whose intimations of mortality were prompted by a brain aneurysm. Jonathan Demme, whose music films form a body of work equal to and even surpassing his fiction films, holds tight on Young's deep-lined face, amplifying the sense of solitude even though he's sometimes only one of several dozen musicians on stage. The cutting is languorous, the settings fairly sedate—only a few backdrop changes and lighting effects bridge the gap between years as the movie slides into its second extended-encore half. But it turns out the reaper has always been Young's co-pilot; stretching back as far as "Old Man" and "The Needle and the Damage Done," the run through Young's back catalogue fitfully extends Prairie Wind's focus on the harsh beauty of the natural order. Despite the subject matter and Ellen Kuras' autumnal lighting (not to mention Demme's fondness for inserts of the band's senior members), Heart of Gold doesn't feel like a swan song. It's just the latest step in Young's journey, and we're along for the ride. --Sam Adams (Ritz East)

Neil Young: Heart of Gold

TAMARA
With a conviction not seen since early Van Halen videos, buxom Internet babe Jenna Dewan plays the titular bookworm, a sheepish schoolgirl whose extracurricular reading includes a few dusty grimoires. Thus it is that, when a few of her classmates (none of whom is convincingly under 25) play a prank that ends with Tamara squishing her skull against a bedside table, she returns as a tarted-up vengeance goddess with the power to make frat boys buttfuck each other and sentence popular girls to death by eating disorder. Unfortunately, Jeremy Reddick's script leans less toward Heathers than Carrie, with a few sequences Reddick apparently couldn't squeeze into the Final Destination franchise. Dewan can walk and talk, and looks vaguely fetching in her maroon corset, but the movie's tame eroticism is like a 12-year-old's idea of what high school might be like—girls in jog bras! Hot guidance counselors! Etc. Too professionally bloodless to enjoy as camp, Tamara lacks the fast-forward and still-frame commands its target audience demands. --S.A. (UA Riverview)

TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY
See Sam Adams' review and interview with Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and director Michael Winterbottom. (Ritz 5; Ritz 16)