Screen Listings

American Teen

Nanette Burstein’s documentary purports to be a report from the front lines of adolescence in Everytown, U.S.A.—Warsaw, Ind., to be exact—and a real-life parallel to The Breakfast Club, with its subjects pigeonholed into the roles of the brain, the athlete, the basketcase and the princess. (Burstein apparently couldn’t locate a criminal.) The premise is immediately contradictory: a documentary with the characters already established by stereotypes. It’s also self-fulfilling, because Burstein would rather make a small-town equivalent to the TV reality-show soap operas Laguna Beach and The Hills than work in the tradition of documentary filmmaking, which requires perspective, distance and judgment. Burstein’s goal may be to reveal the mindset of teens, but she’s actually abetting the youthful urge for self-dramatization. American Teen is only valuable as a confirmation that you were right to hate high school, because it is filled with horrible people, who mock and torment each other without consequences. But what of the person doing the filming? Nanette Burstein may have won herself Sundance laurels for directing, but the prize she deserves is for creating what I’ll call The Hills-enberg Uncertainty Principle. Which goes like this: If, for the sake of your teen drama, you at best allow and at worst encourage your subjects to commit acts of cruelty, you are guilty of complicity and exploitation. PG-13. AARON MESH. City Center Stadium 12.

Baghead

Four film-industry washouts sequester themselves in a remote cabin to write a scary movie. Between heavy drinking and light relationship drama, however, they never quite get further than an initial concept: a serial killer with a paper grocery bag over his head. (It’s a costume that suggests the psychopath is a fan of a winless football team.) And just as their collaboration is imploding, one of them goes missing…and someone else arrives in familiar headdress. Mumblecore vets Mark and Jay Duplass’ follow-up to The Puffy Chair—which sold more tickets in Portland than in any other city—is likely to prove just as pleasing, since it features the same finely observed narcissists, and adds a clever genre twist. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s mumblehorror! And while it’s burdened with one too many twists, Baghead features four excellent performances (including another charming turn by Greta Gerwig, the fearlessly topless queen of the mumblers) and a mood of desperation that has as much to do with shrinking career prospects as it does with stalking and stabbing. This is what The Blair Witch Project must have been like when the cameras were off—or at least I’d like to think so. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.

Best of the 48 Hour Film Project

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Local teams raced to create seven-minute movies in exactly two days. This program showcases only the most triumphant efforts. It’s like the Olympics of low-budget filmmaking stunts! Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Monday, Aug. 25. Hollywood Theatre.

Bottle Shock

Vintner Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) and his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine) eye each other warily from opposite corners of a makeshift boxing ring. “That chardonnay is gonna be clear!” barks Pullman, underscoring his point with a swift right hook. I detect the fruity, full-bodied wine culture of Sideways, with…wait…is that a hint of Rocky? Yes, it’s the thrilling true story of the little Napa Valley vineyard that could. Will long-haired layabout Bo earn his father’s respect? Will their Chateau Montelena earn the respect of British wine seller Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) and the snooty French judges at his historic 1976 blind tasting? Will Rickman bite hesitantly into a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken? Apparently the movie itself is an underdog, self-distributed by its director since the studios abandoned it at Sundance. For once, I think I sympathize with the corporate suits. Pullman’s bitter divorced dad is a great character, ripe for some Hollywood uplift, but the filmmakers dilute the drama with tasteless filler. Fellow vintner Freddy Rodriguez becomes a half-written immigrant pride subplot, while Rachael Taylor keeps showing up to model tight T-shirts and make out. The actors rinse, swallow, and close their eyes in ecstasy, but it’s all for naught—this thing tastes like it was poured from the squarest of boxes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Fox Tower. Century Eastport 16, Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Brideshead Revisited

Temptation—and the requisite Catholic guilt—are the crux of Julian Jarrold’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel. In the luxurious and stiff 1920s, a prince-and-pauper relationship forms between penurious Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Lord Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), whose wealthy family resides at Brideshead Castle, a behemoth piece of architecture filled with treasures and set on acres of croquet greens, fountains and pools. The two meet at Oxford and, after two summers of intense friendship, furtive (and perhaps romantic) glances and lots of wine, Sebastian is deeply in love with Charles and Charles has become smitten with Sebastian’s sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell). Trysts take place, friendships are bruised, and always present is the intense Catholicism of the Flyte matriarch, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who trumpets her religion and holds it over the heads of everyone around her. Guilt and oppression are handed down at every chance, but Sebastian and Julia relish the sinful and hedonistic path they have chosen outside their faith. For a while, anyway. Then Sebastian gets all jealous and Julia gets all Jesus-lovin’, and sorry, Evelyn, we’re heathens and we don’t care. At least the lush scenery and expansive sets are pretty to look at. PG-13. SARA MOSKOVITZ. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Hollywood Theatre, Moreland Theatre.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

This C.S. Lewis adaptation is filmmaking designed to appeal to the most bloodless, conformist camps of modern evangelicalism. In assembling the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—which was not a very good movie either, but at least contained some handsome pictures of furniture—director Andrew Adamson has compounded his errors from his first effort, and once again we’re handed a series of battles shot from a long distance, so that half the film looks like a Where’s Waldo? cartoon on a magical battlefield. Once again, Aslan the lion gets a good deal less screen time than you might expect, and when he does show up, he’s a drag: He reminded me less of Jesus than of the lordly, smug kid who always gets to play Jesus in youth group skits. The film’s message echoes uncomfortably as well: Should megachurched children really be given heroes who battle incessantly over a holy land until a god-king smites their enemies? But I suspect the chief reason that Prince Caspian is a dull, enervating experience is because it is produced by computer technicians pushing buttons to make a movie that looks as much as possible like other bland fantasy movies—with the same talking animals and clanking soldiers and ambulatory trees all wandering through the same artificial glades. Prince Caspian is a triumph of the synthetic, and one more victory for moviemakers who don’t like movies. PG. Valley Theater.

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan continues deconstructing the Batman franchise from superhero camp to a cry of universal despair, with souped-up cars. As the sequel to Batman Begins marches from cruel bereavement to spirit-crushing martyrdom, it plays like a funeral dirge for the late Heath Ledger, who died—maybe you heard—shortly after completing his role as the Joker. The movie operates in the pall of this demise, and its polished gloom carries the scent of an undergraduate term paper on the futility of human existence. This is the summer action movie that stopped taking its antidepressants. In fact, the only element in Nolan’s film with any life—and the sole reason why it’s worth seeing immediately—is Ledger’s work. He’s caked in grimy clown greasepaint with echoes of John Wayne Gacy, and trying out a sneering singsong that sounds a little like that of a demented Bugs Bunny. To watch him menace Gotham City with an arsenal of knives—and a No. 2 pencil—is to witness a gifted actor dedicate all his energies to gracefully waltzing through trash. Meanwhile the movie positively wriggles in masochistic delight at the prospect of heroic anguish. The Dark Knight lives up to its title, yeah—in the world of comic-book movies, it’s a Suicide Girl at a sorority house, showing off its freaky tattoos. Audiences who stuff its coffers will leave knowing they’ve seen a special performance, but also feeling that they’ve endured something suffocating. PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cine Magic Theatre, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Death Race

Incarcerated Jason Statham drives a killer car, pissing off a warden played by...Joan Allen. We agree this choice of warden is terribly confusing, yet it somehow makes us want to see this movie even less. AP Kryza is taking the bullet; look for his review at wweek.com. R. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Docupalooza

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Highlights from Project Youth Doc, which—as the name suggests—helps teens make documentaries. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, Aug. 22.

Elegy

Every fall season brings with it another movie about an old lion lying down with one final lamb—previous incarnations have included Peter O’Toole in Venus and Frank Langella in Starting Out in the Evening—so it’s no shock that a filmmaker has finally tackled Philip Roth’s novella The Dying Animal, the acme of the old-dudes-boning canon. Unfortunately, that filmmaker is Isabel Coixet, whose take on the material is summed up in the title change. The Dying Animal is a lacerating, snarling, defiant throe of a book—complete with Roth’s septuagenarian alter ego David Kepesh lapping up his young lover’s menstrual blood—while Elegy is a mournful, tasteful picture that gilds Penélope Cruz’s breasts in amber light. Cruz, dialing down the crackling energy she gave to Woody Allen in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is Consuela, the pliant Cuban foil to another aging perv, Ben Kingsley’s Kepesh. Sir Ben’s performance isn’t nearly priapic enough—the actor remains far too dignified to evoke the ridiculous plight of a man who’s maintained his emotional barriers until the next-to-last moment. And Coixet has changed Roth’s ending, too, assuring that it contains exactly enough pablum to please the art-house regulars. Torpor is relieved by feisty supporting work from Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard as Kepesh’s aggrieved son—their filial exchanges bring out the best in Kingsley, and are the only thing in Elegy with the bitter tang of genuine Roth. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Encounters at the End of the World

[ONE WEEK ONLY] Werner Herzog is not a man to be dissuaded from his fixations, which in this documentary about Antarctica once again include the ruination of cute, helpless creatures. “I had left no doubt that I would not come up with another film about penguins,” he begins his narration, and goes on to take several more thinly veiled jabs at the hit 2005 doc March of the Penguins. (Later he asks a biologist, with great hope in his voice, whether penguins ever go insane.) Encounters is principally a collection of Herzog’s Antarctic vacation pictures; the movie feels like an episode of Travels with Rick Steves if the show were hosted by a perpetually gloomy German. But the truth is that I would TiVo such a program faithfully, and Encounters is just as wonderful: Herzog discovers the planet’s southernmost ATM, dives into waters filled with icky, unnerving creatures, and chats with the peripatetic scientists who study seals and volcanoes off the Ross Ice Shelf. Their findings of climate change kindle Herzog’s warmest ruminations, about how “the end of human life on this earth is assured.” The only sensible response to this sort of thing is to admit that it’s probably true but, on the other hand, we’re still alive. So is Werner Herzog—and while it may be hard to listen to him with a straight face, it’s equally difficult to imagine the globe without his morose presence. G. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Aug. 15-21. Cinema 21, Hollywood Theatre.

The Fall

An injured stuntman (Lee Pace), malingering in a 1920s California hospital, improvises a swashbuckling tale to amuse an audience of one 5-year-old Romanian farm laborer, Alexandria (Cantinca Untaru), who can innocently provide him enough morphine to stop his broken heart. The ideas in his story are all a little mad, and sometimes maddening, but you can’t question that they’ve emerged from a marvelously strange place. They certainly didn’t come from a computer. The Fall’s director, Tarsem, is well acquainted with the wonders of technology—in 2000, he helmed The Cell—but he has evidently converted to the desert of the real, and decided to return to filming real deserts. For the past decade, while directing music videos and sneaker commercials, he shipped his long-suffering actors to locations from Namibia to Bali, perching them atop catwalks, at the edge of wastelands, and in the most dizzying catacombs of castles. His style still shows traces of his slick advertisements, but the exotic locations make The Fall look like a coffee-table book photographed in a fever dream. Tarsem finishes his picture with a montage of stunts from Hollywood’s silent comedies—the collapsing houses, the leaps from train cars—and he earns the right to them, because his film is just as dedicated to the beauty of actual bodies in spectacular places. It hearkens back to when the movies sought genuine wonder. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Forever

[THREE NIGHTS ONLY] By turns whimsical or quietly devastating, director Heddy Honigmann’s cinematic walking tour of the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris takes us to the graves of Chopin, Proust, Apollinaire, the Iranian novelist Sadegh Hedayat and other luminaries. The movie draws much of its emotional power from shots of inscriptions: “I shall never forget you, my love,” adorns a heart-shaped black tombstone; a marble slab split diagonally reads, “For the brother that I had.” Sometimes the most casual exchanges in Honigmann’s conversations with mourners and tourists yield startling revelations. An elderly Spanish widow announces that the clergy’s aid to Franco’s regime of terror led to her atheism: “Because if a priest can kill, it proves there’s nothing.” In one of the filmmaker’s most inspired juxtapositions, she sets jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani’s improvisations to footage of Georges Méliès (both men are buried at Père-Lachaise) cloning his disembodied head in the 1898 short Un homme de têtes. N.P. THOMPSON. Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Saturday, Aug. 22-23. 7 pm Sunday, Aug. 24. Whitsell Auditorium.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Looks like everybody who’s been waiting for Judd Apatow’s apology for the “sexism” of Knocked Up now has an open calendar. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the Apatow company movie most desperately confused and hostile toward the women participating in its hijinks. It’s another sex comedy with another director-for-hire (Nicholas Stoller), and it takes the attitude that sex is a wholesome and laudable activity for every person to enjoy—unless that person is your ex, in which case she must be punished. Jason Segel, one of Apatow’s stock players since Freaks and Geeks, wrote the screenplay and plays Peter, who flees to Hawaii after a painful breakup, only to encounter his ex-girlfriend (Kristen Bell) and her new man (Russell Brand) at the same beach resort. For Segel and Stoller, Sarah is a representation of all the women who have ever cheated on a nice guy—she is, in other words, a synecdochebag. So even as she begins to reveal herself as a three-dimensional character, the screenplay busies itself making sure every character is granted a measure of forgiveness, except her. In fact, a movie that is ostensibly about a man dealing with rejection turns out to be a conspiracy to humiliate the woman who rejected him. Forgetting Sarah Marshall tries manfully to live up to its title, but then it remembers her—and decides to fuck her over. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

Frozen River

Eddy Ray is a recently single mom deep in the snowy Wal-Mart country of upstate New York. When her jerky husband steals their nest egg a few weeks before Christmas, she is forced to seek fortune outside the law in order to buy a dream double-wide for her two sons (caring elder son/surrogate dad played by Charlie McDermott is easily the show’s best performance). Opportunity knocks in the form of a nearsighted Mohawk girl named Lila from the neighboring reservation who has a gig smuggling illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants over the Canadian border. The film’s entire subtext is based on consequences of the way these women attempt to fend for their families amid financial ruin, wintry climate, small town mentality and a frozen river on the reservation. Veteran actress Melissa Leo reprises her role as Ray from a shorter 2004 version of the picture, and is generating a great deal of Oscar buzz in the process. While Leo and supporting actress Misty Upham quite ably make this movie work, there are a number of dramatic moments where the characters seem a lot less freaked out than they ought to be. High points include a baby in a duffel bag, people being shot and repeated car trips across the border. I have to admit morbidly hoping for the worst at several points, as so much can go wrong when driving a trunkload of people over a frozen river…. R. NATHAN CARSON. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Get Smart

While late-’60s spy-spoof TV series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were mostly interested in poking fun at the espionage dramas of the day with Marx Brothers-style nonsense and physical comedy, the Steve Carell-starring adaptation aims to take on the real-world intelligence community. We see beefy field agents ignoring the advice of analysts, violent squabbles between competing agencies, and a folksy president, totally subservient to his bellicose VP, reading to schoolchildren while the nation is threatened with nuclear annihilation. Ouch. Indeed, Maxwell Smart isn’t the Agent 86 we know at all. He’s, well, smarter—he starts the film as a translator and analyst—and more sympathetic, infused with the same heartfelt humanity that saved Carell’s The Office from devolving to the savagery of its British predecessor. And Anne Hathaway is an Agent 99 for the modern era, meaner, sexier and less willing to serve as a grudging foil to Smart’s gags. She’s a real ass-kicker, a none-too-subtle statement from the producers that this remake wants none of Brooks’ dated misogyny. PG-13. BEN WATERHOUSE. Tigard Joy Theatre.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

A documentary directed by Alex Gibney (who just won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side), dutifully covers the swath of the mad doctor’s writing, but it is chiefly interested in Hunter S. Thompson the political animal—the man who dogged Nixon through New Hampshire and found his own reflection. It was part of the American genius for polarization that Thompson saw Nixon as his doppelgänger, his mirror. Nixon was his dark shadow. Or maybe it was the other way around. So it makes perfect sense that when Gonzo recounts Thompson’s last serious journalistic assignment—sent to cover the 1974 Ali-Frazier “Rumble in the Jungle” fight, he swallowed a cabinet of pills and wandered off to float in the hotel pool—Gibney re-creates the scene with washed-out footage of azure water and a man in a Nixon mask. The image is inspired on a number of levels, since this was the moment when a genuinely gifted writer decisively sacrificed his talent on the altar of indulgence, and when he slipped on a mask of celebrity that he would never remove. The rest of the movie, while amusing and honest, doesn’t often approach that level of perception. There are plenty of guest appearances by old cronies, few of whom can stir themselves enough to say an unkind word about the man who squandered his last two decades shooting rifles on his ranch until he finally turned a .45 on himself in 2005. R. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst Theatre.

The Grocer's Son

The dad hates the son, the mom hates the dad, and the brothers hate each other. The Grocer’s Son, a French film directed by Eric Guirado, seeps with family dysfunction. Set in a small town nestled amid the rolling hills of France, the film spotlights Antoine Sforza (played by Nicolas Cazalé), the hunky twentysomething son of a man who operates a portable grocery store (like an ice cream truck, with canned peas instead of Scooby-Doo Push-Ups). When the elder Sforza is banished to bed rest after collapsing, Antoine grudgingly uproots from his city life and moves into his parents’ countryside home—which he hasn’t visited in 10 years. Without telling his mother, Antoine totes his love interest, a sexy, rail-thin brunette named Claire, along for the ride. The back-and-forth flirtation between Antoine and Claire, coupled with the constant confrontation boiling between Antoine, his mother, father and successful older brother Francois, makes The Grocer’s Son stressfully sexy...in that pouty, cute, French way. WHITNEY HAWKE. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.

Hancock

Will Smith is John Hancock, a surly Los Angeles superstar with a preternatural vertical leap and open contempt for his teammates, forced to disgustedly mumble his way through image-repairing press conferences after he’s sent to prison. Aside from a strong anal fixation (one jailhouse scene features an inmate’s head literally shoved into another’s rectum, and the film’s chief running gag is that its hero grows extremely peeved whenever he’s called an “asshole”), director Peter Berg’s movie is a disorienting fizz of ideas that never cohere. Its chief conceit—the superhero as a celebrity in dire need of rehab—is established by shots of the crapulous Hancock waking up next to empty whiskey bottles, either on bus-stop benches or in his dreary trailer, with Berg’s distinctive cinematography giving each shot the haze of a hangover. But Berg’s style, an agitated handheld fervor honed in Friday Night Lights, is exactly wrong for this material, which I think is supposed to be a satire. It’s hard to say for certain, since there are no funny jokes. In their place, Berg twirls his camera in paroxysms of emotion. By the time the villains return, still miffed about the head-stuffed-in-bum incident, we’re meant to cry whenever the screen starts to spin. But cry for whom? The gifted Übermensch whose fans just don’t understand him? PG-13. AARON MESH. 99 Indoor Twin, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

Harold and Maude

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Those obsessed by the detailed, melancholic worlds of Wes Anderson would do well to witness what director Hal Ashby accomplishes with a 79-year-old free spirit, a bug-eyed suicidal teen, a flaming Jaguar hearse and an LP full of Cat Stevens tunes. The (grand)mother of all odd-couple stories, this 1971 sleeper hit revolves around the budding romance between rich, disconnected would-be corpse Harold (Bud Cort) and a worldly, whimsical rebel named Maude (Ruth Gordon). The pair's anti-establishment antics (liberating trees from sidewalks, crashing funerals and lifting cars) still often elicit claps and hoots from theatergoers. But perhaps the real reason Harold and Maude has aged so well is that its delightfully oddball theme of intergenerational ugly-bumping is secondary to its sheer generosity of spirit, and belief that you can change yourself by touching others—in all sorts of ways. PG. KELLY CLARKE. Broadway. 7:30 pm Monday, Aug. 25.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Mike Mignola’s comic-book demon/paranormal investigator Hellboy is an unlikely hero—and an unlikely movie star, brought to life with snarky perfection by Ron Perlman in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004’s sleeper hit. Like Mignola’s source material, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is less an action flick than an action-packed detective story filled with monsters and humor. Big Red is less superhero and more Sam Spade in a Tolkienesque underworld of elves and trolls on the brink of war with humanity. It’s a popcorn counterpart to del Toro’s brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth, a visual feast that oozes imagination in every frame. Del Toro (soon to helm The Hobbit) throws all manner and sizes of creepy crawlies at his hero with a sparse use of CGI (until the over-computerized finale), crafting some of the best puppet creatures since Jim Henson’s heyday, and including an underground flea-market sequence that’s the best monster mash since Luke Skywalker hit Mos Isley. Like its predecessor, Hellboy II peters out toward the end. But it’s a visual feast regardless, and a hell of a kick. Del Toro and Perlman make you believe in the things that go bump in the night—the coolest thing is, they also help you relate to them. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Division Street Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema.

Henry Poole is Here

Henry (Luke Wilson) returns to his childhood Los Angeles neighborhood to die—he’s contracted some strain of Deadly Brain Cloud virus with no apparent symptoms—but his vodka-swilling depression is interrupted by a neighbor (Adriana Barraza) who finds a water stain on his house’s stucco that she swears is the spitting image of Jesus Christ. In the best tradition of Catholic-vision hokum, the stain bleeds from the eyes and can heal true believers; among its best miracles are causing a fetching single mom (Radha Mitchell) to live next door, and assuring that Wilson’s despair-fueled beard never grows beyond an manicured stubble. It’s a sign of director Mark Pellington’s rigged game that the holy stain begins as a formless blotch and, over the course of the movie, sharpens to a clear image of Our Lord and Savior. At the same time Jesus materializes—about 30 minutes in—the movie breaches its façade of dry comedy and gushes forth in a geyser of mystical sentiment, complete with gloopy guitar ballads and an elfin child (Morgan Lily) teaching us all to hope again. It’s appalling mush, yet I couldn’t bring myself to hate it with the passion I knew it deserved; maybe it’s Eric Schmidt’s rich cinematography, or maybe I’m just a sucker for Luke Wilson’s I’m-secretly-in-love-with-Margot-Tenenbaum face, which he wears throughout the proceedings. PG. AARON MESH. Fox Tower Stadium 10, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

The House Bunny

Anna Faris is a Playboy bunny-cum-sorority den mother. Not screened by press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

The Incredible Hulk

This summer marks the debut of Marvel’s autonomous movie offshoot with a duo of unlikely movies—the electric, box-office-defying Iron Man and now The Incredible Hulk, which pretends Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk never existed and subs the excellent Edward Norton for Eric Bana as Bruce Banner.  Hulk smash? Indeed. The Incredible Hulk is a barrage of razzle-dazzle. Taking a cue from the comics and the 1970s TV show (Lou Ferrigno even voices the new Hulk, and has a cameo), director Louis Leterrier’s movie follows a familiar formula. Banner’s living off the grid in Brazil, trying to cure himself between mean and green “incidents.” Government officials led by a snarling general (William Hurt, a four-star ham) periodically catch up with him and Bourne-like chases ensue. Banner gets pissed, turns green and breaks some shit. The monster intermittently looks breathtakingly real, like a sculpture carved from Irish Spring. But in the hullabaloo to reclaim Hulk, the film forgets to have fun. There’s some spectacular action—a battle on a college campus is pitch perfect—but there’s little joy, just brooding between explosions. PG-13. AP KRYZA. No showtimes.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, once a rake and a mercenary, is now an advertisement for clean living. He’s quit the filthy whiskey, he’s a decorated war hero, and he is apparently impervious to injury. Where the Indy of old had to dodge a Nazi strongman until a plane propeller finished the fight, the Indy of Crystal Skull takes matters into his own fists, pummeling the Soviets’ largest soldier until he collapses into a hill of deadly ants. Powerful, wise, irreproachable: This man is what John McCain sees every time he closes his eyes. A pity, then, that the third reel is such a washout, with Indiana Jones subjected to the late-Spielberg sanitation treatment—all his rough edges are rubbed away, and he’s left as the upright patriarch of a ragtag family on a South American vacation. The climax brings Indy full-circle, at least geographically: He’s back in the same jungles where he boulder-dodged at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but instead of trading golden idols with Alfred Molina, he’s delivering helpful maxims like, “The treasure was knowledge.” (Indiana Jones says: Stay in school, kids!) He’s as active and robust as any geriatric hero to grace the silver screen, but there are moments—more than moments, really—when it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that this magnificent artifact is a fake. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater.

Iron Man

Loaded to the brim with snazzy special effects and snappy dialogue, director Jon Favreau’s comic-book romp is a far smarter diversion than most of the summer fare that will follow it—smart enough, in fact, to be held accountable for its reckless ideas. To begin with, it stars Robert Downey Jr., who is asked to carry large swaths of an action movie by talking to himself. After Downey’s playboy industrialist Tony Stark returns from an Asian weapons demonstration gone awry, he has a change of heart—literally, as he builds himself a futuristic pacemaker. Then he starts work on an exoskeleton. During this substantial portion of the movie, Downey is required to voice a wry, self-amused internal monologue. Not only does Downey pull this off, he actually manages to make his solo scenes the most captivating segments of the film. Iron Man is better when Downey is alone on the screen than when he’s sharing it. It’s when those inconvenient other people show up that the movie loses its way. Iron Man is going to please the war-wearied crowds with the same illusion that was used to sell the war in the first place: that combat can be quick and tidy, and an American, acting unilaterally, can cure international ills by acting as a precisely guided missile—one that knows who the bad guys are and can eliminate them without creating more bad guys. The movie’s fantasy is one of being alone in the world—as if America could wander as it pleases, locked away in a protective suit, talking to itself. PG-13. AARON MESH. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mission Theater and Pub, Valley Theater.

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Jules Verne with REI carabiners, Walden Media’s glossy kids’ stuff is inoffensive and unassuming, taking its cues from star Brenden Fraser. He plays a geologist who travels to Iceland with his nephew (Josh Hutcherson of Bridge to Terabithia, solidifying his supremacy in the babes-in-toyland field) and a supple mountain guide (Anita Briem); the trio goes mountain climbing and plummets down a nearly bottomless volcanic tube. (They could have stayed stateside and looked for Mel’s Hole—what, is the Pacific Northwest not exotic enough for family adventures?) Down below, they encounter phosphorescent hummingbirds, ferocious flying fish and magnetically levitating boulders. All gleeful nonsense, as derivative as it is framed to leap at the audience (though my eyes grew immune to the 3-D effect after one reel), Journey is best enjoyed with low expectations: It’s actually not much less enjoyable than the latest Indiana Jones, and it contains considerably more science. I was gratified to be reintroduced to muscovite, which I had last encountered in Geology 101—where, come to think of it, many of the students bore the same guileless expression as Fraser. The movie is cinematic Rocks for Jocks. PG. AARON MESH. Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema.

Kabluey

With her husband’s deployment to Iraq extended by six months and her two screaming hellions in need of day care (and probably Ritalin), frantic mom Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) turns to brother-in-law Salman (Scott Prendergast), a mouth-breathing spaz who’s just been laid off from a copy shop after growing a touch too engrossed by the laminating machine. Helpfully, Prendergast is also the writer-director of Kabluey, so he’s able to pull himself and his extended family together, though not before trading a bit heavily in the suburban nervous-breakdown satire popularized by Showtime’s Weeds. The movie is improved enormously, however, by one inspired, droll conceit: Salman finds part-time employment as a mascot for a ruined Internet start-up trying to rent out space in its vast, secluded office park—a job that requires him to don a baby-blue costume with a giant head. The outfit makes Prendergast—who already has a touch of Buster Keaton in him—look like a cross between Charlie Brown and a dejected sperm. It’s a wonderful minimalist joke, and Kabluey’s best scenes are the patches of quiet physical comedy where Salman stands by a rural highway like a melancholy symbol of the flatlining economy, trying to hand out flyers despite not having any hands. PG-13. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.

Kung Fu Panda

On paper, Kung Fu Panda is lazy. A fat panda voiced by Jack Black goes from noodle maker to prophetic Dragon Warrior with the help of a snake, a monkey, a tiger, a mantis and a crane, who each represent their corresponding martial-arts styles. Ancient China…panda…karate…moral about finding yourself and overcoming odds…ka-ching! But the biggest surprise is how well Kung Fu Panda works. Instead of Shrek meets the Shaw Brothers, it’s a martial-arts comedy with respect for the genre—Kung Fu Hustle on Sesame Street. The film has a great time riffing on kung fu conventions—from the cruel tutelage of master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to a climactic battle with a deranged leopard—and strikes a similar balance between kid-friendly jokes and blockbuster action as The Incredibles. Well, incredible it isn’t. But it is Dreamworks Animation’s best since the original Shrek. With solid comedy, stellar action and an A-list vocal cast (including Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan), the film’s destined to be a crowd pleaser. What Kung Fu Panda lacks in nuance, it makes up for with its fists of furry. If Dreamworks invested more in story development, Pixar might start sweating. PG. AP KRYZA. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Grand Lodge Compass Room Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Kiggins Theatre, Laurelhurst Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Mt. Hood Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater.

The Longshots

Ice Cube coaches his daughter to Pop Warner football glory in a kiddie comedy directed by...Fred Durst. We agree that this choice of director is terribly confusing, yet somehow it makes us want to see the movie even less. Fortunately, it wasn't screened for critics. PG. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema.

The Love Guru

If the origins of comedy lie in the Dionysian phallus festivals of ancient Greece, then Mike Myers is nothing if not a classicist. Just when you thought he had donated his body to the science of making Shrek sequels, he returns to his great passion: soaking old Peter Sellers routines with a steady stream of penis jokes. In Austin Powers, he looted Sellers’ James Bond spoof Casino Royale, and now he resurrects Sellers’ brownface ethnic shtick (minus the actual brownface). He plays Guru Pitka, an Indian-trained New Age mystic dispensing nonsense platitudes and—what else?—scatological puns from his lucrative Hollywood compound. An hour and a half of testicular trauma ensues, and for those who appreciate verbal wit, there are characters named “Cherkov,” “Tugginmypudha,” and “Dick Pants.” The only bits I really enjoyed in The Love Guru, besides some B-side riffing by Stephen Colbert, were the gonzo musical numbers, a form that Myers arguably understands better than anyone actually directing musicals today. At one point, Jessica Alba is transformed by dubbing and subtitles into a mewing Bollywood siren, and the result is so vapidly kitsch it’s hysterical. It’s also small compensation for the price of a movie ticket, your dignity, and any Indian friends you might have. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. No showtimes.

Mamma Mia!

So here it is, folks, straight from Broadway: the story of blushing bride Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who invites her three potential papas to her big fat Greek wedding, announcing her intentions through the timeless melody of ABBA. In other words, Mamma Mia! is just like your nuptials, except the disco jockey has started work a full day early. Let me be perfectly clear: This thing is a terrible idea and its theatrical acceptance signals the death of civilization as we know it. But just when I was choking on the bubblegum, Sophie pipes down and makes room for single mom Donna, who’s supposedly outraged at the arrival of her three former flames, though we know better—they’re played by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth! As the repressed hausfrau, Meryl Streep pads in like she owns the place—she does—and belts out a lament about “a rich man’s world,” but it’s Meryl’s world, and we’re just living in it. The actress’s ruddy nose and watery eyes are a great comfort, suggesting a normal allergic reaction to the songs of ABBA, as digitally tacky as the Mediterranean sun glaring in the background. Streep and fellow baby boomers Julie Walters and Christine Baranski vamp their way through the repertoire like the Sex and the City gang gone to flaxseed. It’s trash cinema at its finest, fueled by trash music at its catchiest, plus enough estrogen to put Pierce Brosnan out of breath, though I suspect he’s just having trouble with the long notes. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Fox Tower Stadium 10, Lake Twin Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Man on Wire

On Aug. 7, 1974, Philippe Petit spent 45 minutes crossing back and forth over the chasm separating the World Trade Center towers in New York City. On a tightrope. Without a net. Without permission. When asked why, he said, and I’m paraphrasing: “Why not?” Petit’s stroll in thin air bore hints of guerrilla theater, performance art and suicidal stunt, but it was something more, or less: the actualization of impish personal obsession. James Marsh’s Man on Wire echoes Errol Morris’ slick approach to slippery truth—which has become standard operating procedure in nonfiction cinema—interweaving archival footage, interviews and re-enactments to elucidate the logistics of the seemingly impossible trick. This is the exceptional film that matches not only Morris’ method, but his keen narrative sense as well: The bracing escalation from plan to action is as thrilling as any heist film. The international crew assisting Petit devises and carries out a scheme involving fake names, forged documents and scale models. Sound familiar? But while the attacks that brought down Petit’s beloved buildings 27 years later are never mentioned, the staging, setting and eventual midair strutting of Man on Wire constitute a kind of inverted terrorism whose awesomeness affirms instead of destroys life. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower Stadium 10.

Mirrors

Horror whiz-kid Alexandre Aja haunts Kiefer Sutherland with evil forces that enjoy reflecting glass surfaces. Not screened for critics, but we hope Kiefer asks "Who are you working for?" at least once. R. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Mongol

With the exception of “Bob” Genghis Khan’s sporting-goods rampage in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the Great Conqueror has gotten the silver-screen shaft. (John Wayne in brownface, anyone?) Genghis deserves one great film. Mongol, nominated for the 2007 foreign-language Oscar, gets him halfway there. The film is sympathetic to an oft-vilified legend, and director Sergei Bodrov focuses on his love and compassion rather than his violent rise. We follow Genghis (known as Temudjin in his pre-conquest days) on his childhood quest to avenge his father. Later in life, the future Khan (Tadanobu Asano) makes and breaks bonds with his blood brother, defends his love, plays with kids, and goes through a long imprisonment before rising like a bloodthirsty phoenix. Bodrov’s tale, part of a planned trilogy, is gorgeous and expertly acted. But in detailing the wrath of Khan, it veers toward The Shaw Brothers’ Braveheart, punctuated with beautifully boring stretches. Between landscape shots and bloody battles, I found myself repeating, out of tedium, a tongue-twister from Calvin & Hobbes: “How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?” Hopefully, with the origin story out of the way, future installments will grasp the ferocious greatness Mongol briefly teases. R. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21. No showtimes.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Forget the tree falling in the forest. If two undead armies—both CGI—decimate one another in the middle of the Chinese desert, has anything actually happened? Does anyone care? Those are questions prompted by The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a meaningless romp through an imaginary China. It doesn’t help that the two central story lines are so vastly unrelated that they might as well be separate movies. On one hand, a crowd of familiar Chinese actors fight an age-old battle around the ominous resurrection of the Dragon King (Jet Li). They speak Mandarin and perform stylized martial arts in flowing robes. On the other hand, a crowd of American actors, led by Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello, bluster their way through some hilarious family antics. They speak English and fire automatic weapons while wearing J. Crew. The two groups occasionally meet. Roll credits. The 1999 Mummy owed its charm to a precise balance of adventure and romance, believable special effects and campy humor. But if you can do something well with $80 million, why not botch it for $175 million? After the spectacular success of garbage sequels The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, fans expect nothing less. PG-13. JOHN MINERVINI. 99 West Drive-In, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Forest Theatre, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

My Winnipeg

With My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin attempts a heroic midlife flight from his mythic Manitoban birthplace. He explains the plan in his narration: By revisiting the “dreamy addresses” of his past he will “film his way out of Winnipeg.” This being your standard Maddin confabulation of psychosexual confusion, his freedom hinges on renting his childhood home and hiring actors to play out “archetypal episodes” from his past. This being Canada, it involves hockey. All of Maddin’s films (The Saddest Music In the World, Brand Upon the Brain!) work like dream machines, and in a way, My Winnipeg is Maddin’s meta-dream, an autobiographical skeleton key that unlocks—solves, finally—the complex of symbols composing previous films. Confessions lift to flights of fancy, so it’s difficult to distinguish Guy Maddin from “Guy Maddin,” or Winnipeg from “Winnipeg.” It’s as if a magician were to reveal the mechanism of a trick by performing another one. Still, I want to believe in Maddin’s mother’s beauty salon, or his dad’s hockey team, or his sister’s roadside dalliances. The melancholy and fixated ambivalence (regarding family in particular, and Mother especially) of Maddin’s work until now would make a new, strange, sad kind of sense. Unfortunately, Maddin leaves the family at home when he embarks on his excavation of Winnipeg, and it’s there that the film flounders. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre.

A Night of Vintage Progressive Rock

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Prog! Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, ELO, Genesis…if only you could bring this concert footage to the office, then you’d really annoy your co-workers! Clinton Street Theater. 11:15 Friday, Aug. 22.

Pineapple Express

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, who also co-wrote the script) is a process server in a shabby suit, who witnesses a drug-cartel murder and flees the scene as conspicuously as possible, leaving behind a half-smoked joint (the artisanal weed of the title) that implicates him and his dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco). The duo go on the lam, though they’re not sure where to run; Saul’s suggested destinations are “nowhere and Quiznos.” This plan is a hilarious non sequitur, as is just about every event in Pineapple Express. The jokes are made exponentially funnier by the addled reactions of the heroes—especially Danny McBride as an indestructible lowlife and Franco, who reveals previously unsuggested brilliance as a deadbeat with delusions of profundity. These aspirations—Saul wants to be a civil engineer, and he’s memorized the work of famous architects—are the heart of Pineapple Express, and they hint, finally, at a shift in the Judd Apatow company’s feelings about beauty. Saul’s artistic dreams, however hopeless, aren’t mocked by the movie, but seen as suggestions of something better in him—just as director David Gordon Green hints at his own love of Terrence Malick by pausing from the mayhem to film Dale and Saul playing leapfrog in a sun-dappled forest. The movie is packed with car crashes and gunfire (and a severed ear), but it floats along in a dreamy, innocent haze, like a buddy picture reenacted in suburban backyards: Son of Tango & Cash. R. AARON MESH. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, Cinetopia, City Center Stadium 12, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Priceless

My expectations were low, given that I detested director Pierre Salvadori’s last film, the painfully unfunny Après Vous. What a surprise, then, to discover a near-perfect light comedy. From the animated opening credits, in which paper cocktail umbrellas lend color to black-and-white ocean waves, this movie has an assurance and an internal logic essential to good fluff. Set amid Monte Carlo’s jet-setting “beautiful people,” Priceless features a radiantly tanned Audrey Tautou (never better) as a gold digger, and a sweet, sexy comic turn from Gad Elmaleh as a hotel waiter she inadvertently draws into what might be termed “the hustling lifestyle.” Smashingly entertaining though it is, the movie isn’t without a soupçon of perception. Says one experienced seducer to a novice gigolo: “Don’t you think I know what that look means? I’ve seen it since I was 12 years old.” PG-13. N.P. THOMPSON. Fox Tower. Living Room Theaters.

The Rocker

“John Lennon’s spinning in his grave…from the boner you just gave him,” says Jason Sudeikis upon hearing a young band midway through The Rocker. Lennon would be flaccid, and if The Rocker is any indication, the only spinning corpse is that of the once-great rock movie—and Rainn Wilson’s star. Wilson, brilliant as conniving weirdo Dwight Schrute on The Office, is front and center—proving, sadly, he’s a perfect supporting actor. Wilson plays Fish, a hyperactive drummer kicked out of Whitesnake-ish Vesuvius the night before it becomes the world’s biggest band. Twenty years later, burnt-out Fish joins his teen nephew’s wussy emo band. A strong premise dissolves into neutered teenybopper tripe—the fat kid meets a chick, the songwriter finds himself, the audience is silent. Meanwhile, Fish mugs, meets an alarming number of SNL actors in cameos, teaches life lessons, and exhibits a lot of To Catch a Predator behavior (including naked webcam appearances with teens). Director Peter Cattaneo revisits his sugary Full Monty roots with disastrous results. The Rocker is looking to become a sleeper hit. With any luck, it’ll simply be put to sleep, allowing Wilson to return to his beet farm and poor John Lennon’s penis to rest in peace. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Pioneer Place Stadium 6, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.

Sangre de mi Sangre

Call it El Talented Senor Ripley. Pedro is being smuggled from Mexico to New York to meet his long-lost father, whom he is told is a rich restaurant owner. En route he meets hustler Juan, who robs Pedro of his belongings—including Papi’s address and proof of paternity—and poses as Pedro, striking up a relationship with the father while the real Pedro is left to fend for himself on the streets. Director Christopher Zalla crafts Sangre de mi Sangre into a sad and disturbing portrait of immigrant struggles mixed with troubling psychology and shattering drama, making for a truly unique experience. As Juan forges an oddly sweet relationship with Pedro’s alcoholic father, Pedro comes to terms with the struggles of day laboring and is lured into prostitution and pimping by a drugged-out street siren. Despite the heaviness, Zalla laces his story with moments of stark emotional poignancy. It’s an unpleasant film, but not one without its unexpected redemption. Sangre is grounded in a definite reality, one where casualties like innocence and love are pummeled by life, creating a melancholy narrative that sticks with you long after its unexpected finale. AP KRYZA. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.

The Sensation of Sight

David Strathairn tries to cure his malaise by selling encyclopedias in a small town. Not screened by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. Until then, goodnight, and good luck. R. Hollywood Theatre. No showtimes.

Sex and the City

You've had the last decade to decide whether to pass on the inevitable Sex and the City big-screen edition, so it's pointless to defend or decry the movie's series of origin, beyond saying that the one thing the series consistently did well was to illustrate a support network more authentic than the squealing, imitative groups the show spawned. Three years on, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), her white whale of sorts, and she's planning their doomed wedding while he tugs at his collar in the background; lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is living the drained family life with her bartender baby-daddy in Brooklyn; sexpot PR expert Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is managing her kindly hunk of man meat's career in L.A.; and starry-eyed would-be socialite Charlotte (Kristin Davis) seems to have beaten the group's curse by living a satisfied life in a brownstone. The orgiastic cinematic splash of pink will only win over the demo that had always meant to check out the series but never did—no new converts will be persuaded. But oh, there is raunch. And there is eye candy. And in a sure sign that the series has grown a little, Carrie's plodding "I couldn't help but wonder…" gem is used only once, and only for nostalgia purposes. R. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Academy Theater, Bagdad Theater and Pub, Edgefield Powerstation Theater, Kennedy School Theater, Laurelhurst Theatre, Portlander Cinema, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Valley Theater.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was hitherto unfamiliar with the epic saga of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It appears to follow the familial and romantic foibles of four young women, united in friendship, as they study the magical disciplines of drawing, theater, filmmaking and archaeology at the Hogwash School of Arts, Crafts and Frippery, or, as this movie refers to it, “college.” To keep the sisterhood tangibly alive from their respective institutions, Lena, Carmen, Tibby and Bridget exchange their sacred totem, a pair of jeans, via post. But the bond begins to weaken, as personal struggles take precedence. Portrayed with sensitivity and wit by actresses Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Blake Lively, these characters face some genuine life challenges, so why does the solution invariably involve a market-tested serving of ethnic beefcake? (Or in Bridget’s case, a campy reconciliation with estranged granny Blythe Danner, straight out of Tennessee Williams?) It’s Sex and the City: The Salad Days, and it feels like an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog spread—Castro hats are in! This impression was magnified at my screening, as the film kept riding up in the projector, reducing the cast to headless mannequins. The resultant chest-to-chest dialogue was certainly amusing, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas.

Sixty Six

Bernie Rubens' bar mitzvah is scheduled for July 30, 1966—the same day as the World Cup final. For months, the young, asthmatic Jew from North London has been obsessing over the intricate ice sculptures, celebrities, and catering that would give his bar mitzvah some chutzpah. Because for kids, bar mitzvahs are a dream. For lowly nerds like Bernie (with buck teeth and thick glasses) it’s a wet dream—he’ll be the center of attention, cash will be raining down from the relatives, and he won’t get scolded for taking pulls of Manischewitz. So when England’s soccer team makes an underdog run at the World Cup final, and all of his guests cancel so they can stay home and watch the match, Bernie’s dream goes down the drain. To add insult to injury, Bernie’s parents (played by Helena Bonham Carter and Eddie Marsan) are hit with a financial crisis, requiring Bernie to slash all luxury from his party. Sixty Six, directed by Paul Weiland, is a biting profile of Bernie’s charming cynicism toward the world as he struggles through family tension and his formal induction into manhood. PG-13. WHITNEY HAWKE. Hollywood Theatre.

Space Chimps

If you take the kids to only one space cartoon, make it WALL-E. If that’s sold out, you could do worse than Space Chimps. It’s produced by a few of the folks responsible for Shrek, but unlike that movie, it doesn’t get bogged down in too much sketch-comedy diversion or pop-cultural reference, and there’s nary a booger joke in sight. A primate spoof of The Right Stuff, the story follows a circus chimpanzee drafted into NASA’s last grasp for legitimacy: a monkey-manned test flight to an alien world. Voiced with gentle hipster overconfidence by Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg, the aptly named Ham III has been selected as the mission’s poster child because his grandfather was the original space chimp. The cheap animation and casual tone are not a patch on the sumptuous whimsy of Pixar’s productions, but it’s an amiable adventure, shaded with the snark of a good Far Side comic strip. Ostensibly it’s about the challenges of living up to a familial legacy, though the whole thing could be an elaborate prank on our space agency and the legacy chimp who’s been setting its priorities for the past eight years. G. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kiggins Theatre, Milwaukie Cinema, Mt. Hood Theatre, Valley Theater.

Stand By Me

[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] If you grew up in Oregon, there's a good chance you watched Stand By Me and The Goonies about a dozen times. Goonies is still...you know, fun. But Stand By Me endures on a much deeper level. Filmed in a handful of woodsy Oregon locales, the movie is full of so many memorable scenes of the wacky jukebox-fueled '50s—kids singing "Lollipop," a rousing game of mailbox baseball and Gordie's epic "barf-o-rama" story—that it's easy to forget just how dark an adventure it is. Remember, these four kids (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell: the finest child actor ensemble of the '80s) are stoked about finding a dead body at the end of their cross-terrain hike, each of them peeling away layers of emotional scar tissue along the way. And beneath the antics and quotable lines ("Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck and Pluto's a dog. What the hell is Goofy?"), there's a moody, moving coming-of-age film here that whispers as often as it screams. Which is shocking, considering this was a collaboration between two reasonably heavy-handed storytellers—Stephen King and Rob Reiner, who would reunite four years later to make Misery. But then Stand By Me is a story about the value of empathy. Maybe that spirit was infectious. R. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Friday-Thursday, Aug. 22-28. Clinton Street Theater.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Perhaps seeking a more receptive audience for his odious droid humor, George Lucas has finally made Star Wars a kids’ cartoon. Don’t look so hurt; that ti