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| PING PONG: Crouching tiger, hidden paddle. |
Adam's Apples
The madness of Mads Mikkelsen endures a spiritual and physical assault in Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen's facile theodicy. Mikkelsen plays a minister whose irrational optimism rankles a neo-Nazi (Ulrich Thomsen) rehabilitating at a rural parish. So Mikkelsen, an actor best known stateside for his portrayal of the bloody-eyed villain in the latest Bond picture, takes it on the chin. Then he takes it on the nose (donning a brace, he resembles the Tin Man; taking it off, he looks not unlike an bipedal tapir). Then he bleeds from the ears, orifice-bleeding having become an occupational hazard of Mikkelsen's career. Finally he gets a bullet in the brainpan. These assaults don't damage his cheer (neither does the Bible: Confronted by the story of God destroying Job's family, health and camels, he mildly observes, "I don't have any camels"), but they bury the actor under layers of grotesquerie. Jensen's movie also hides behind its bizarre, sadistic humor, which often resembles Diary of a Country Priest as staged by the Ultimate Fighting Championships. But all it disguises is a theology so ethically superficial as to embarrass a fortune cookie. Neither Adam's Apples nor its suffering cleric recognizes that while God may be in his heaven, that doesn't guarantee anything right with the world. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
After the Wedding
Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, After the Wedding is a family melodrama so jam-packed with explosive secrets and lies that it's simply exhausting to endure. It's like a year's worth of soap-opera material crammed into two hours: Old flames unexpectedly reconnect, a child meets a long-lost biological father, then someone dies of a terminal illness. Because the protagonist Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) oversees an orphanage in Bombay, Danish director Susanne Bier first injects powerful imagery of Third World poverty and then attempts to upstage it with petty familial issues among the First World wealthy and privileged. Instead of eliciting liberal guilt, this juxtaposition unwittingly trivializes much of the plot development. Really, shouldn't we be caring about the starving children in India rather than whether estranged lovers will rekindle their relationship? R. MARTIN TSAI. Living Room Theaters.
Away from Her
I have loved Julie Christie ever since I was taken to see Heaven Can Wait as a wee bairn, and I'd hoped to love her in this, too, but Sarah Polley, making an inauspicious directorial debut, renders that impossible. Polley deprives Christie (and us) of her British accent, and without that impeccable lilt, Christie's vocal rhythms are way off. It's often hard to hear her—the movie's soundtrack is a little muddy, as if the boom mike were fulfilling the movie's title. Such miscues wreck Polley's adaptation of Alice Munro's short story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," a tale of Alzheimer's and regret. The revelation here comes from Michael Murphy in a nonverbal role as a fellow Alzheimer's patient. The frowning, silent way he passively wrests whatever power remains for him, and the burbling cries he emits when someone frightens him, are devastating reminders of what superb acting is all about. PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower.
*NEW* Brian Libby Travelogues
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Portland-based architecture and visual-arts critic Brian Libby writes his way around the world, and his Travelogues, presented by the NW Film Center, consist of 18 short films comprising recent footage from Amsterdam, London, New York, Tokyo and Portland. While Route 23 is a sped-up journey along a famous double-decker bus route in Central London and Golden Bends meanders the canals of Amsterdam, Libby does his best work charting the mundane, such as the quiet industrial landscape of Portland's Central Eastside or the flight patterns of a resident bird flock at the Darigold Creamery. The soundtrack is jarring at times, but the montage of images makes for an engaging exploration of physical space, infrastructure and the transportation systems that dissect them. MIKE THELIN. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. 7 pm Thursday, June 7. $4-$7.
Bug
The only problem with labeling Bug the new horror film from William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist, is that Bug is not really a horror movie. It may put the gory back in allegory, but horror it ain't. Ashley Judd stars as Agnes, a down-on-her-luck loadie whose abusive ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr.) has recently reappeared in her life, fresh from prison and with the pomade to prove it. Enter Peter (Michael Shannon), a creepy drifter and Gulf War vet who sees bugs everywhere and has a very acute case of the black helicopter heebie-jeebies. As we've all done at one time or another, Agnes invites the scary stranger to sleep on her couch, eventually sharing her bed with his entomological delusions. Friedkin trades in the pea soup for a pair of pliers, and the result is a stripped-down indictment of irrational logic and the power of misguided belief in spite of evidence. The first act suffers from some strange panning shots, odd editing decisions and loose dialogue, but the intensity Judd and Shannon sink into their performances holds the film together—if just barely. R. RYAN HUME. Eastport, Cornelius, Sandy; Wednesday-Thursday only.
Fatherland
[REVIVAL] An East German protest singer jumps the wall (and finds more walls) in Ken Loach's 1986 drama. Just the thing to slake your Loach thirst after seeing The Wind That Shakes the Barley twice last week. Which you did, right? Living Room Theaters.
Fracture
What fun: a suspense procedural in which the characters develop, instead of merely contorting in a third-act twist. Well, at least one of them does. Anthony Hopkins' wife-murdering businessman just provides the actor with another tour of the Lecter circuit, this time adding a Scottish brogue to the cold-eyed menace. But Ryan Gosling does some dramatic heavy lifting as Willy Beachum, a cocky prosecutor who misjudges the Hopkins trial as one last mindless chore to perform before moving to a fancier office. As a Southern golden boy confronted by an astonishing series of failures, Gosling shows that he can put those Half Nelson chops to studio use. For once, there's order in the court. R. AARON MESH. City Center.
*NEW* Free Monday Movies: Civil Rights
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Sit in on a trio of documents from the 1960s. Mississippi Station, 3943 N Mississippi Ave. Screenings start at sundown. Free, naturally.
*NEW* From One Rose
[SHORT RUN] Appropriately named local filmmaker Ira Flowers presents a cinematic history of the Rose Festival. Premieres Thursday, June 7, at Hollywood Theatre. Sold out. Also screening at: Laurelhurst. 1 pm Saturday-Sunday, June 9-10. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Monday-Thursday, June 11-14. $6.
Glastonbury
"Legalize it," sings Peter Tosh over the end credits of this documentary about the Glastonbury music festival. "Don't criticize it." I certainly wouldn't outlaw aging hippies from seeing this cultural chronicle of England's answer to Woodstock, but I might advise them to toke up first. It can be a draining experience to watch over two hours of other people having a good time. Assembling footage from throughout the festival's 35-year history, filmmaker Julien Temple eschews chronology and narration, instead giving us scattershot glimpses of rocking out through the ages. The point is to blur the decades, but the fast, confusing editing works against the viewer's immersion; rushed through all time, one experiences no time specifically (which is not as groovy as it sounds). And as a concert film, Glastonbury makes the mistake of cutting off most of the performances halfway through. In the end, one gets the rather obvious impression that festivalgoers have cleaned up and calmed down, without losing their appreciation for silly outfits. I was more amused by how people reacted to the camera: peace signs in the '70s and middle fingers in the '80s, while this generation mugs narcissistically into its own camcorders. R. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Living Room Theaters.
Gracie
The story behind this grim teenage sports movie is a good bit more complicated than the finished product, and far more interesting. It turns out that actors Elisabeth and Andrew Shue had another sibling, William, who was a high-school soccer star before dying in a fall from a tree. Elisabeth Shue also played soccer, partly in honor of her brother, and now has handed the fictionalization of her childhood memories to husband Davis Guggenheim, a television journeyman who scored a big-screen hit by producing Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. All of which resulted in Gracie, a dour parable about a girl whose brother dies in a car crash and whose family proceeds, excruciatingly slowly, to rally around the idea of her taking his place on the team. But not before Gracie (Carly Schroeder) experiments with boys and beer, gets into heated fights with her emotionally frozen father (Dermot Mulroney, looking utterly lost in New Jersey) and scraps with the boys on the varsity team, who don't want her around and do their best to wound the bereaved kid emotionally and physically. (By the time Gracie makes her way into the climatic Big Game, we're left in the impossible position of wanting her to win and her bullying teammates to lose.) So bring the kids: It's a bad time for the whole family! PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Division, Cornelius, Tigard Cinemas, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
*NEW* Hostel: Part II
This time, Eli Roth tortures the women. How novel. Not screened for critics. R. Broadway, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
Hot Fuzz
Director Edgar Wright made his debut with flesh-craving zombies in Shaun of the Dead, but for his new feature, Hot Fuzz, the director has moved on to something truly heinous: community-improvement leagues. The Neighborhood Watch Association of Sandford, a hamlet in downcountry England, proves particularly niggling and vindictive, but at first it seems a poor match for Sgt. Nicolas Angel (Simon Pegg), the newest addition to the village's police force. Wright has a keen eye for absurdities, and it's not long before Angel and his squad pal, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), are indulging that taste with a drunken marathon of the most risible cop flicks. In its last 30 minutes, Hot Fuzz—which drags a bit during its rural criminal-conspiracy narrative—explodes into a skylarking farce, sending up every street-battle cliché ever perpetrated by Michael Bay in Bad Boys II. To his credit, Edgar Wright has no respect for his elders. R. AARON MESH. Cinemagic, Fox Tower.
Janus Classics
[SHORT RUN, REVIVAL] The last time I saw Jean Cocteau's spellbinding Beauty and the Beast (1946) was a 2001 PICA event with Phillip Glass' ensemble performing Glass' alternate, operatic soundtrack to the film; viewing it again with its lush original score—not to mention the Beast's indelibly scratchy voice—is glorious. It remains one of the most imaginative films ever, featuring the simplest but most inspired "special effects"—truly special; entirely effective. Antiwar heart beating beneath Soviet-propaganda shell, Grigori Chukhriai's 1959 Ballad of a Soldier initially seems belabored and schizophrenic, conveying each viewpoint as subtly as a recruitment poster or a sing-along of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." But its economical script, perfectly pitched performances and arresting images breathe emotional authenticity into its sentiments. Luis Buñuel's Viridiana finds the surrealist master three decades on from his groundbreaking earliest films. Having fled Fascist Spain, he was invited to film there again in 1960 by a propaganda-minded Franco. Bunuel shot this scabrous tale of a fallen nun pursued by her lecherous uncle and his bastard son—featuring a coterie of drunken paupers carousing to the Hallelujah Chorus and lampooning the Last Supper. The film was burned and banned by Franco, condemned by the Vatican, and awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes. JEFF ROSENBERG. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. Beauty and the Beast screens at 7 pm Friday, June 8, and 8:45 pm Saturday, June 9. Ballad of a Soldier screens at 8:45 pm Friday, June 8, and 7 pm Saturday, June 9. Viridiana screens at 7 pm Sunday, June 10. $4-$7.
Knocked Up
In Judd Apatow's magnificent new comedy, the bewilderment of an entire generation finds a face in Seth Rogen. He's that teddy bear who's been hulking in the corner of Apatow's frames since television's Freaks and Geeks, and here he takes top billing as Ben Stone, a 23-year-old layabout who isn't too sure he's cut out to be a leading man. He bumps into Allison (Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl) at a club, takes her name at the bar. They both take a few too many shots, she takes him home, he doesn't take proper care with the condom. When Ben learns, eight weeks later, that his boys have swum, he is prepared to do the honorable thing, but he isn't prepared in any other way—and he isn't aided by a glimpse into the hostile marriage of Allison's sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd). Apatow's The 40 Year-Old Virgin first gained attention for its raunch, and Knocked Up is likely to achieve the same notoriety. But Knocked Up is a sex comedy in the same way that most people's lives are sex comedies: Nobody's getting any. And Apatow's movies aren't about "family values"—the hollow pettifogging that accompanies every election cycle—but the values required for growing up and starting a family. He makes responsibility and commitment funny; no mean feat. R. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
L'Iceberg
What exactly annoys me so much about the poker-faced mincing in the cinematic introduction of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy? It bears the marks of Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismäki—but then, I like those directors, so that's no problem. And the story, in which co-director Gordon plays a fast-food employee who gets stuck in a walk-in freezer and develops a passion for ice, is twee but inoffensive. Maybe what's most frustrating is that silent comedy, when extended to its furthest point and combined with bright music, begins to resemble mime. And I really hate mimes. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
The Lives of Others
Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) works for the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It's 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall crumbles, but despite the corruption around him, Wiesler remains committed to the cause—until he sees a production by one of East Germany's few loyal playwrights, rising star Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and instantly becomes entranced by Dreyman's leading lady (Martina Gedeck). When Wiesler is ordered to spy on the couple, the once-robotic Stasi operative is tested beyond imagining. The film, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is most memorable as a study of a lonely untermensch, exploited and broken by the system he's devoted his life to preserving. R. BECKY OHLSEN. Fox Tower, Hollywood Theatre, Tigard-Joy.
*NEW* Maxed Out
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] James Scurlock's examination of credit-card debt makes a case for taking the scissors to your Visa. Look for the review on WWire at wweek.com. Hollywood Theatre. Saturday-Sunday, June 9-10.
Mr. Brooks
Kevin Costner, why you got to hate on PDX? In Mr. Brooks, Costner plays the title character, a successful, bowtied Portland businessman who's a magnate in the ever-so-exciting cardboard box-manufacturing industry—and just so happens to enjoy killing Portlanders on the side. Juggling his personal family life with his insatiable appetite for blood, he roams the streets at night, from Wentworth Chevytown to the Cup & Saucer Cafe, in search of his next victims. So what's the big gimmick? Brooks has got a bad dose o' the split personalities, and he's followed around by his alter ego, Marshall (played by William Hurt, in full monotoned and balding glory), always by his side to egg on the dastardly deeds. Mr. Brooks might be a shitty movie—no, it is a shitty movie—but at least there are a few guilty pleasures buried within. For one: Moviegoers get to watch Kevin Costner slice Dane Cook's throat with a shovel. That might be worth the price of admission in and of itself. Either way, it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than seeing Costner drink his own piss. R. LANCE KRAMER. Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
The Namesake
Mira Nair's adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel spans the life of Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and his arranged marriage to Ashima (Tabu), a young girl in India. After immigrating to New York City, they have a son and, to his and everyone else's chagrin, name him Gogol. The grown-up version of the oddly dubbed child is played by a surprisingly mature Kal Penn, who gradually sheds his token stoner-dude persona (à la Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) and finds a deeper, softer character as a young Bengali American battling with his family name and traditions. PG-13. ELIANNA BAR-EL. Hollywood Theatre.
The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz
Evoking memories of the strange celluloid worlds of Eraserhead-era David Lynch, Monty Python and just about any other filmmaker that has left audiences perplexed, Ben Hopkins' film is sure to spark heated debate. The plot revolves around a mysterious stranger (Tom Fisher) who wanders the streets of London, taking over the bodies of people he encounters along the way while the end of the world looms in the immediate future—or something like that. DAVID WALKER. Living Room Theaters.
*NEW* Ocean's Thirteen
Al Pacino joins the Steven Soderberg crapshoot—apparently no one told him Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones are sitting out this round. Look for the review on WWire at wweek.com. PG-13. Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Lake Twin, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
Once
Irish director John Carney has found a loophole to the logical problem that haunts every musical: Why are these people breaking into song at the slightest provocation? Carney's solution is to make Once, a winsome movie about a street musician trying to finish a demo tape. Yes, he croons in the street, but that's his job. So it's perfectly reasonable that the unnamed busker (Glen Hansard) should conduct a hesitant romance with a Czech flower seller (Markéta Irglová) via rhyming couplets and guitar strumming. Shot on digital video and set to Hansard's own music, Once has the same ratio of irritation and appeal as a first album by any lachrymose singer-songwriter: You can condemn it for being histrionic and self-pitying, but you'll have to do so with a lump in your throat. The performances by Hansard and Irglová are both affecting, but the most touching moments in a hopelessly tender film come from Bill Hodnett as the hero's dad—a man who provides warmth and care without a hint of commotion. It goes without saying that he doesn't sing. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. Look for an exclusive interview with Carney, Hansard and Irglová this week on WWire at wweek.com.
*NEW* Ping Pong
[SHORT RUN] No other Hollywood genre sticks to its formula as strictly as the sports movie—and whenever a really good sports film arrives, you're sure to get a shitload of knockoffs. Most recently, the Hoosiers formula (inspirational coaches overcome big odds) was traded for the Remember the Titans formula of inspirational coaches overcoming racism. Hollywood should take a cue from the Japanese table tennis flick Ping Pong. Based on a manga comic, Ping Pong deals with a lot of familiar themes, but it does so in a way seldom seen in sports movies. Despite some flashy cinematography and some truly cool effects—a sequence in which a character sinks in a sea of balls, flashbacks to childhood dreams of heroism—Ping Pong is a kinetic human story. Focusing on cocky, would-be World Champion Peco (Yôsuke Kubozuka) and his best friend, the gifted but apathetic Smile (Arata), director Fumihiko Sori nails home universal issues of teen angst, resulting in a frequently funny, often somber story. It drags a little toward the end—it is a table tennis tournament—but Ping Pong has something its American sports movie counterparts have lost—a mind of its own, and an original story to tell. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
The title is meant literally: At the 30-minute mark of the latest Pirates installment, the ship carrying all the surviving characters drops off the face of the earth. The world—much like this movie—turns out to be flat, and down tumble Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly and Geoffrey Rush over a great waterfall that flows to inky oblivion. Unfortunately, after they die the movie still has two hours and 15 minutes to go. By the midway point of the movie, no protagonist remains who has not been killed at least once, and the same goes for most of the villains. This means most of them are immortal but some of them are not, in the same arbitrary way that they all can defy the laws of gravity whenever the CGI calls for it. There are no physical stunts in this movie because there are no physical laws—or metaphysical ones, for that matter. The vacuum is taking its toll on Johnny Depp, who betrays exhaustion, as if even being above it all were turning out to be too much effort. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Pioneer Place, Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Roseway, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
*NEW* Portland Underground Film Festival
PUFF—not to be confused with PIFF or SIFF—is a less avant garde affair than its title suggests: its four-night program is packed with more calculated eccentricity than artistic indulgence. Take Random Lunacy: Videos from the Road Less Traveled (7 pm Thursday, June 7), a documentary that follows a resourceful drifter who dubs himself Poppa Neutrino and, between interviewing for magazine profiles, manages to drag his family across Mexico, found a circus and drift across the Atlantic on a raft made from used parts. The filmmaking, like the life, is simple by necessity, and richer for it. Slightly less successful is Don't Eat the Baby: Adventures at Post-Katrina Mardi Gras (9 pm Sunday, June 10), which puts a slightly too sanguine spin of the aftermath of burst levees and FEMA bungling in New Orleans. (Still, the doc has its own revelatory moments, including the factoid that the Big Easy ranks near the economic bottom of American cities but still manages to rank first in tuxedo rentals.) Among the short films (7 pm Saturday, June 9), Ian Sundahl's Bump and Grind is a transfixing 14 minutes of 16 mm girl-on-snake action. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. Thursday-Sunday, June 7-10. $6 per show, $25 for entire program. For more screenings, visit portlandundergroundfilmfestival.com.
*NEW* Room 314
Do you find too many of your conversations proceeding with ease and candor? Do you long for the rhetorical dead-ends that are the hallmarks of hidden profundity and New Yorker short stories? Michael Knowles has your palliative: Room 314, a quintet of relational chats set in the same nondescript hotel room. The vignettes aren't badly acted (even the director makes a convincing appearance as an inexperienced adulterer), but they're all predictably miserable and stultifying. (Representative dialogue: "What?" "Nothing.") Somewhere between the suicidal alcoholic and the enraged prostitute, I began amusing myself by keeping a close eye on the motel's complimentary plastic cups, trying to determine which franchise the lonely losers were patronizing. Turns out it's a Fairfield Inn by Marriott. This discovery has the same significance as any other epiphany in this movie. What? Nothing. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Severance
Paper pushers for a British weapons manufacturer get stranded among deranged Hungarian war criminals. It's the BBC's Office taking a retreat to Eli Roth's Hostel—but Christopher Smith's torture farce could use a more distinctive sense of humor. Even with some effective gags (including homages to Dr. Strangelove and Aguirre, The Wrath of God) it's hard to tell which targets Smith is taking his flamethrower to. Is this a satire of corporate hegemony, a jab at horror conventions, or just another opportunity to tie people up and gut them like pigs? But the movie improves as it shifts from the ironic to the iconic. Limbs severed in bear traps, topless women wielding machine guns: Some things even globalization can't destroy. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
Shrek the Third
The latest marketer's wet dream finds Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots (Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas, reprising their voice roles) searching for a distant heir to the throne of Far Far Away. That heir is teenage nerdlinger Artie (Justin Timberlake), who attends a medieval high school complete with valley girls and "Just Say Nay" banners. Meanwhile, Shrek's wife, Fiona (Cameron Diaz), is knocked up and holding a baby shower that is interrupted by Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), the villain of the second film, who charges the kingdom with a legion of disgruntled fairy-tale villains. There are laughs aplenty in Shrek the Third. Every voice is a famous one, and the animation is top notch. And yes, kids and adults will certainly enjoy it. But the main thing the franchise had going for it all along was its wit and originality. Sadly, the third time around that's what's missing. PG. AP KRYZA. Broadway, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, 99 West Drive-in, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
Spider-Man 3
On page and screen, Peter Parker has always been the nerd made good. Offered the chance to dim that halo—thanks to an inflated ego, a somewhat foreseeable betrayal, and an oily goop from outer space—he begins to comb his bangs over his forehead, don black dress shirts, and crush his competitors. This is, you will agree, a comparatively mild corruption. When Anakin Skywalker goes bad, he turns into Darth Vader. When Spider-Man goes bad, he turns into Bill Gates. All of Spider-Man 3's most delightful moments belong to James Franco as Harry Osborn; while Tobey Maguire is gloating and strutting, his counterpart is stealing the movie (and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane) with a lopsided grin and some Chubby Checker moves. Spider-Man 3 is a worthy addition, but it is packed with too many elements, and not enough of the ones we want to see. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Cedar Hills, Forest, Hilltop, 99 West Drive-in, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
*NEW* Surf's Up
A warning to soccer moms: This CG cartoon about a surfing penguin aims to teach your children that "winning isn't everything," seducing them with the lazy hedonism of the common beach bum. The voice actors even include the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges. It's also presented in a "reality TV" style, complete with handheld camerawork that will probably just confuse the tots unless you've raised them on Jackass, in which case you have a bigger problem (you are a jackass). But who am I kidding? Children just want pretty colors and talking animals, and this film delivers. As for your sanity, it has lush, handsome animation and a laid-back, inoffensive attitude nicely balanced between the treacly sentiment of Disney and the jerkish irony of Shrek. In short, after sitting through Surf's Up, I don't feel like having kids, but I also don't feel like killing myself. Radical! PG. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Division, Oak Grove, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Hilltop, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard Cinemas, Wilsonville, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Vancouver Plaza.
*NEW* Two Portland Shorts
Two small treats from the crazy kids at Laika. Nick Childs' Trionyx (Soft-Shelled Turtle) is a bit of lo-fi absurdism about a mad scientist hitting the streets of Portland, mixing live action with surreal computer graphics. Jeff Riley's Operation: Fish is a goofy sci-fi caper rendered in gorgeous stop-motion animation, complete with a groovy spy-jazz soundtrack. To say any more would spoil the surprises these witty bonbons hold in store, so check them out for yourself. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Bagdad Theater. 12:30 pm Saturday, June 9. Free.
Vengeance Trilogy
[REVIVAL] The first and third film in Korean director Chan-wook Park's "Vengeance trilogy"—Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance—both have moments of cinematic brilliance. But it is the second film in these unrelated tales of revenge and retribution, Oldboy, which stands out as a masterpiece. Not to take anything away from Mr. Vengeance or Lady Vengeance, because both are stylish and beautifully crafted films (and Yeong-ae Lee's performance as a woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder out to avenge herself is exquisite). But nothing can compare to Min-sik Choi's layered performance in Oldboy as Dae-su, a man held in a mysterious prison for 15 years for reasons he does not know, suddenly released to find those who did him wrong. As Dae-su makes his way through the underbelly of the city, hammer in hand, what little humanity he had left after years of psychological torture slips away as he brings down his vengeance on anyone who gets in his way. Evoking such classic films as Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and John Boorman's Point Blank, Park has proven himself to be one of the most exciting directors in contemporary cinema, deftly mixing violent brutality with poetic grace. DAVID WALKER. Living Room Theaters.
Waitress
The knowledge of director Adrienne Shelly's death seeps into her movie about a pie-baking cafe server (Keri Russell) with dreams of escape, making the movie somehow sadder and more valuable. Waitress' portrayal of rural life occasionally slips into condescension (small-town folk don't rely so heavily on no double negatives), but that's the only sour note in a sweet confection. Russell's heroine channels the misery of a loveless, abusive marriage into her cooking—giving the results names like "I Hate My Husband Pie"—but finds a new outlet in her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion, delivering his usual terrific performance), who delivers a special brand of patient care. The affair develops in unexpected directions, and the lovers are nicely supported by Andy Griffith and Shelly herself. For 107 minutes, death shall have no dominion. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Moreland, Lake Twin, City Center.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
The first unassailably great film of 2007, this account of small-town Irish lads circa 1920 who teach themselves the basics of guerrilla warfare—in order to rid their nation of rifle-toting Brits—has striking parallels to America's ongoing jingoist adventures in Iraq. But director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty, who took home last year's Palme d'Or at Cannes, never force or emphasize political points in The Wind That Shakes the Barley. They concentrate at first on the brutality of British soldiers attacking unarmed Irish country folk; the inevitable backlash against the occupying army; and then the passionate disagreements over the uses of freedom, which in turn lead to still more bloodshed. As the earnest young men ensnared in this cycle, Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney achieve a level of realism rarely attained in movies. The conflict between these two Catholic supporters of Irish sovereignty feels reminiscent of Martin Scorsese territory; it's a Scorsese film made by someone who can actually direct. It may be overreaching to claim that The Wind That Shakes the Barley resonates with the same heady intensity you get from reading Yeats, but I'll claim it; for a movie to be anywhere near that signifies a miracle of some sort. N.P. THOMPSON. Hollywood Theatre.
