Ask the dust

Beware the dream project: No matter how heart-tugging the story of a movie finally realized after years of struggle, there's often a good reason it's taken so long to get it made. Robert Towne has wanted to adapt John Fante's 1939 novel for nigh on three decades, but what radiates from the screen is not 30 years of accumulated passion but an overcooked mush boiled until the flavor is long gone. Towne can't seem to decide if his movie is set in the real world or in other movies. His synthetic 1930s Los Angeles (reconstructed in South Africa) is bathed in honeyed goo, and the role of Fante's alter ego Bandini is beyond Colin Farrell's talents as an actor; he can't play callow without seeming so. The story is like a papier mache sculpture that keeps turning back into pulp. Bandini holes up in an arid fleabag, waiting for inspiration or a check from H.L. Mencken, while Salma Hayek's sultry, tempestuous desert flower waits tables below. (Paging Dolores del Rio.) Towne apparently wants to make something like Paper Moon—a movie that looks like a classic but hollows out the structure from the inside. But he's so far off the mark it's impossible to tell what he's going for. To call Ask the Dust a failure, you'd first have to figure out what he's doing.

--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

ballets russes
Watching a bunch of octogenarians go on about the glory days of ballet may not sound like most people's idea of a good time, but even non-balletomanes will get sucked in by the story of the Ballets Russes. Note the plural, the result of a mid-1930s split between the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and its chief choreographer, George Balanchine. Leonide Massine (known to cinephiles from his leading roles in The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffman) took over the original company, and the booted Balanchine formed his own Ballet Russe. Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller's documentary is rich in archival footage and interviews with the surviving dancers—a surprisingly robust group, at least until you see the still-foxy George Zoritch going through his daily workout. Temporarily reunited by the exigencies of World War II, both Ballets Russes fell prey to declining interest and changing tastes in the 1950s. The brilliant Broadway choreographer Agnes de Mille took over one company, conceiving democratic dances that, Zoritch sneers, could've been performed by "anyone not in a wheelchair." But now that both kinds of dance have slipped out of the mainstream, it's possible to see more continuity than discord between the styles, and the vivid testimonies by the dancers who saw, and often joined, the Ballets Russes on their travels attest to the companies' lasting influence. --S.A.

(Ritz at the Bourse)

caché

At first, it's not clear what you're looking at: A camera holds steady on a quiet Parisian street. But when the video fast-forwards, you realize you're looking at a TV screen, watching along with Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche). The tape shows their home, shot from across the street, surveillance-style. It has arrived at their doorstep without explanation, an indication that they're being watched. By whom, they don't know. Figuring out the answer to this question becomes Georges' focus throughout Caché, Michael Haneke's latest unsettling look at the shaky foundations of bourgeois security. You're left to do your own reading. --C.F. (Roxy)

Crash

"See what that woman just did?" Anthony (Ludacris) asks his companion Peter (Larenz Tate). Spotting them from just down the street, "that woman" has clutched her handbag closer and huddled into her husband's side as they head to their shiny black Escalade. The guys are anticipating moe of the profiling that they endure every day. Paul Haggis' Crash both repeats and flips the scripts you know too well. Everyone is scared, everyone expects to be scared and everyone accepts this as the way we live now. Sprawling and ambitious, episodic and contrived, Crash laces together a series of stories concerning fears and responses.

--C.F.

(Bala; Ritz at teh Bourse; Ritz 16)

DUCK SEASON

--C.F.

(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

failure to launch

A haiku: Really it should be Sarah Jessica Parker in Failure to Lunch

(Not reviewed)

(UA Grant)

the hills have eyes

It's bad to be stuck in the desert, especially when mutants live in the hills. Alexandre (High Tension) Aja's impressive revisitation of Wes Craven's grisly 1977 original makes the same basic points: Back in 1945, the U.S. military left New Mexico miners to be irradiated during atomic testing, and the victims and their progeny remain vexed, fond of assailing and eating folks who happen through their domain. (Bad government and deranged individuals: There's no good end possible.) Enter the Gulfstreaming family headed by retired cop Big Bob (excellent Ted Levine) and recently religious wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan). When their kids start complaining about the heat and the boredom, the mutants (including Billy Drago and Robert Joy) descend in veritable droves. The mobile, precise camerawork demonstrates Aja and DP Maxime Alexandre's perverse elegance, effectively counterpointing the utter cruelty of the killing. Though parts are underwritten, the performers show proper terror when called on to do so. And, as soon as you see Bob disdaining his liberal-leaning, cell-phone-addicted son-in-law Doug (Aaron Stanford), you know wussy boy will soon find his inner brute.

--C.F.

(UA Riverview)

inside man

Spike Lee's sharp new movie begins with a close-up on Clive Owen as he describes "the perfect bank robbery" that forms the bulk of the action. While this heisty plot (script by Russell Gewirtz) includes the sorts of cunning turns familiar since Die Hard, the more compelling aspect is the film's New Yorkness, achieved with Matthew Libatique's sweeping camerawork and a complex network of characters, including a charismatic hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) and his partner (Chiwetel Ejoifor), a turf-protecting Emergency Services Unit captain (Willem Dafoe), a bank board chairman (Christopher Plummer), and a shady, well-paid fixer (Jodie Foster, introduced as she's arranging for Bin Laden's nephew to purchase a condo). The film cites '70s crime movies (Dog Day Afternoon, by name), and incorporates current anxieties (terrorism, corruption) as well as Lee's signature concerns (a gangsta video game) and techniques (the blasted white-light interview scenes of Clockers; the moving sidewalk of nearly every Lee movie, deployed brilliantly here). Tense, showy and shrewd, the movie is Lee's most generic (i.e., "accessible"), though its cleverest moments involve odd and telling details (the credits sequence use of A.R. Rahman's "Chaiyya Chaiyya"; the city worker who recognizes Albanian; the Sikh who resents being profiled as "Arab").

--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Ritz 16; Narberth; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Joyeux Noël

It's Christmastime during WWI and fierce young German commander, Horstmayer (Daniel Bruhl), disdains the "artist" among his otherwise working class troops, an opera singer named Sprink (Benno Furrman). His life and professional partner, the Danish-born Anna (Diane Kruger), arranges to bring Sprink to occupied France for a holiday concert then accompanies him to the front, where she greets gaping-mouthed troops. Here, on Christmas Eve, Sprink is overcome with sentiment, and begins singing "Silent Night" for his men, and, given their close spacing, the French and Scots as well. Before they all quite know what's happened, they call a ceasefire for the night, share prayer, wine, chocolate and a bit of soccer. The movie's hardly subtle when it comes to debunking the "romance" of war: When the troops and officers face punishment from their superiors for such fraternization, the men write letters in protest against the war, to the "bastards, sitting pretty, who sent us here to slug it out." Pressing the broad, rather obvious point—war is absurd, politically motivated—Joyeux Noël overlooks complications to achieve another sort of romance.

--C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

larry the cable guy: health inspector

A haiku: And on the eighth day,

God said, "Let there be rednecks,

to annoy us all."

(Not reviewed) (UA Riverview)

the LIBERTINE

The love child of Casanova and Esther Kahn, Johnny Depp's John Wilmot, aka the Earl of Rochester, is a blindingly profane poet (excerpted to only middling use here) whose anti-authoritarian tendencies run him afoul of his sometime ally King Charles II (John Malkovich). Samantha Morton, whom casting directors must speed-dial when the script uses the word "homely," plays Elizabeth Barry, a determined actress whose tutelage Rochester takes up to ruinous effect. Everything in Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' play looks as grotty as humanly possible, beginning with the candlelit closeup of Rochester, addressing the camera and practically begging us not to like him. It's easy to oblige, not because Rochester's vulgarities are at all offensive, but because they seem tawdry and juvenile.

--S.A. (Roxy)

madea's family reunion

A haiku: Who's the best fat chick—

Madea or Big Momma?

Like we really care. (Not reviewed.) (AMC Orleans; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

mrs. henderson presents

Doubtless hoping to recapture Oscar gold, Judi Dench reprises her Shakespeare in Love performance as the titular widow, a wealthy ex-colonial who returns to England bereft of ritual propriety. Engaging Bob Hoskins' music-hall impresario to revive a shuttered theater, she finds the between-the-wars crowds difficult to impress, but Mrs. H. knows how to woo the locals: boobies, and lots of them. A little seductive bullying of Christopher Guest's jelly-spined minister, and they've got a license to stage tableaux vivants rife with unclad country girls.

--S.A. (Bryn Mawr)

the shaggy dog

A haiku: Tim becomes a dog.

So he can hump Tool Time's Al.

Then turns back to man. (Not reviewed.) (AMC Orleans; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

she's the man

Viola (Amanda Bynes) loves soccer. So much that when her high school girls' team is cut, she masquerades as her brother Sebastian (James Kirk: someone named their child after the captain?), in order to make his school's team, hoping to prove that girls can be boys, at least on the playing field. She's soon distracted by a crush on Sebastian's cute, sensitive roommate Duke (Channing Tatum), while he has a thing for their conventionally beautiful classmate Olivia (Laura Ramsey). But while Andy Fickman's clunky comedy claims "inspiration" from Twelfth Night, mostly it's a showcase for the delightful Bynes, whose energetic gender turns make the generic script largely irrelevant. True, her costars tend to seem bland or too broad (Julie Hagerty as mom, David Cross as the headmaster) by comparison. Watching her, so cute and committed, you hope she avoids the depressing paths of other recent girl-TV stars.

--C.F. (AMC Orleans; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

16 blocks

Given that 16 Blocks is only Richard Donner's second film as director since the end of the 1990s, he could be forgiven for seeming unaware that the decade has ended. Richard Wenk's script reads like something Donner stuck in a drawer around the time of the last Lethal Weapon and has only now gotten around to dusting off. Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) is corralled to usher a crucial witness (Mos Def) to a courthouse 16 blocks from where he's being held. A group of officers bound to be implicated in the trial sets out to prevent the pair from reaching its destination, led, naturally, by Mosley's ex-partner (David Morse). For a plot hinging on its hero's quick wit, there is a dearth of clever twists; the deceptive parallel-editing gag from The Silence of the Lambs is ripped off not once, but twice. Bruce Willis must feel a hint of deja vu whenever he walks onto a police station set looking shabby and drunk, but Richard Donner's recycled ideas recall another '90s film, though not one of his own: Groundhog Day.

--S.B.

(Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

stay alive

A haiku: Teens' deaths mimic their

favorite video game.

Hope it's not Frogger.

(Not reviewed)

(AMC Orleans; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

street fight
The combatants in Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated documentary, set during the 2002 Newark mayoral campaign, are four-term incumbent Sharpe James and 32-year-old challenger Cory Booker. Although Booker establishes himself as a classic reform candidate, Curry glosses over both sides' rhetoric, focusing instead on the bare-knuckle tactics James uses to cut his opponent off at the knees. Police try to eject Booker from a public housing project, while his supporters report a campaign of harassment from city officials. Things get spectacularly ugly when James plays the race card—no less so because both candidates are black. Though Curry criticizes the media for treating the campaign as a "sport," he gets swept up himself in the down-and-dirty tactics; dislikable as James' actions are, it's not clear if or why Booker would be better for the people of Newark, which undermines the movie's portrait of them as easily manipulated dupes.

--S.A. (Roxy)

thank you for smoking

A satire so incompetent it only wings its barn-door target, Jason Reitman's glib gloss on Christopher Buckley's novel hauls out the heavy artillery but loads it with spitwads. Aaron Eckhart, essentially downloading his performance from In the Company of Men, plays Nick Naylor, a tobacco flack whose slick cig-talk undermines his attempts to play sporadic dad to his 12-year-old son (Cameron Bright). Trafficking in stereotypes broad enough for puppet theater (William H. Macy's Birkenstock-sporting Vermont senator, Adam Brody's obsequious H'wd assistant), Thank You flings mud in all directions, as if blanket ridicule were the same as equal time. At least the typecasting protects Reitman from repeating the movie's most glaring malfunction: putting Katie Holmes in the role of a take-no-prisoners journalist (which means, of course, that she's a slut). Too bad Holmes' post-TomKat prudery renders the script's references to her amply displayed rack nonfunctional. Not only is she unfailingly buttoned up to the neck, but the look on her face in the movie's ultra-tame sex scenes suggests Golgotha rather than gratification.

--S.A. (Bryn Mawr; Ritz 5; Ritz 16)

transamerica

Learning that she has a 17-year-old son named Toby (Kevin Zegers) from her days as Stanley, pre-op transsexual Bree (Felicity Huffman) must come to terms with her past before stepping into her future. This takes the form of a cross-country road trip, during which she pretends to be a Christian missionary and learns of his abusive stepfather, prostitution and tendency to lie and cheat. This means the conflict between parent and child must accommodate or reflect the sorts of anxieties that such viewers recognize and smile at, tiffs that don't quite reach crisis points but instead allow the free-to-be-you-and-me vibe to permeate the film. --C.F. (Bryn Mawr; Ritz at the Bourse)

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Tsotsi Tsotsi
(Presley Chweneyagae) and his crew live in Soweto, South Africa, where they deal drugs, steal and scavenge to get by. After a botched robbery, Tsotsi finds his ostensible fate in a BMW he carjacks while the driver waits for her gate to open. She fights him hard for her vehicle—too hard, it seems, until he gets down the road and discovers her infant in the back seat. Abruptly, Tsotsi has strange new options. His choice to keep the baby and leave the car changes everything and nothing. At home he feeds the baby condensed milk from a can, diapers it with newspaper and leaves it in the bag under his bed while he goes out cruising for new trouble. When he returns to find the filthy baby covered in ants, he suddenly confronts the consequences of a decision he's made. The winner of this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Tsotsi's earnestness and occasional awkwardness are assuaged by Lance Gewer's sharply affecting cinematography and Chweneyagae's remarkable (first-time) performance. --C.F.

(Bala; Ritz 5; Ritz 16)

v for vendetta

Violence can be used for purposes good, ill and incoherent. So observes V for Vendetta, an earnest, angry, vaguely philosophical but ultimately generic action movie. The underlying, irresolvable question here has to do with terrorism: Why and how are people pushed to commit it, and what might it achieve, aside from terror? The terrorist at the center of James McTeigue's film is V (Hugo Weaving), a masked revolutionary in post-WWIII police state England. V first appears in a dark alley, where he saves Evey (Natalie Portman) from being raped by grubby cops. Initially she is appalled by the violence he deploys, but she's intrigued by V's promise of a new and improved state since her activist parents were murdered by the government. While the movie allows that torture only reproduces terrorism and violence, it also presents V's own scheme as revolutionary and effectively symbolic. Such irritating distrust of the audience to keep up makes V for Vendetta's political and social commentary seem more cartoonish than insightful. Yes, imperialism is really bad, and yes, a reliance on Nazi-ish iconography is a sure sign of a regime's need for change. What's less clear, and could use some reflection, is how V's own violence will or will not produce more victims and vigilantes. "Freedom and justice are more than words," he says. "They are perspectives." And as such, they need rethinking at every step.

--C.F. (AMC Orleans; Narberth; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

WHY WE FIGHT

Even though Why We Fight draws its title from Frank Capra's rousing WWII propaganda series, Eugene Jarecki's new film poses the phrase as a question. Capra's newsreelish films laid out reasons for going to war, based in moralistic oppositions. Jarecki's documentary argues, convincingly, that war is a business. As the film traces the steady slide into militaristic presumption, it does not blame any single administration or party. The film keeps a remarkably sharp focus on both the big picture and the individuals who suffer or sustain it. --C.F. (Ritz East)