The New York Times-20080125-Movies- -Schedule-
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Movies; [Schedule]
Full Text (2146 words)MOVIES
Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies.
'ACROSS THE UNIVERSE' (PG-13, 2:11) Julie Taymor's gorgeous musical fantasia uses 33 Beatles songs, along with a fantastic array of masks, puppets and special effects to evoke the 1960s. Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess are archetypal lovers, swept up by the counterculture, who ride the rough seas of radical politics and psychedelia. (Stephen Holden)
'AMERICAN GANGSTER' (R, 2:38) The divide between the director Ridley Scott's seriousness of purpose and the false glamour that wafts around American gangsters, and invariably trivializes their brutality, become s too wide to breach in this story about the rise and fall of a 1970s New York drug lord. Denzel Washington wears the black hat, Russell Crowe wears the white.
(Manohla Dargis)
'ATONEMENT' (R, 2:03) Gorgeous and inert, this adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel suggests that some books are best left alone. (A. O. Scott)
'BEAUFORT' (No rating, 2:05, in Hebrew) Joseph Cedar's tense drama takes place at a fortress in Lebanon captured by Israel in the 1980s. The last group of Israeli soldiers is preparing to withdraw, under attack from Hezbollah and with decided ambivalence. The movie's earnest sobriety helps it through passages of tedium and occasional bouts of combat-picture cliche. (Scott)
'BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD' (R, 1:56) Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play two desperate brothers whose scheme to rob their parents' jewelry store goes terribly wrong. The movie, directed with feverish authority by Sidney Lumet from a solid script by Kelly Masterson, gets just about everything right. (Scott)
'THE BUCKET LIST' (PG-13, 1:38) In this preposterous feel-good comedy about two men with terminal cancer, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman slip into their stock personas without adding a note we haven't seen before. (Holden)
'THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN' (No rating, 1:27) This documentary is a ground-level examination of home childbirth, and a passionate argument for its benefits, anchored in a scene in which its executive producer, the actress and former talk-show host Ricki Lake, gives birth to her second child in a bathtub.
(Holden)
CASSANDRA'S DREAM' (PG-13, 1:45) A well-matched Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play brothers in blood and deed in Woody Allen's London-based, dark-hearted, effective tragedy. (Dargis)
'CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR' (PG-13, 1:36) Tom Hanks plays the hard-drinking, skirt-chasing Texas congressman who helped finance the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman are terrific as his co-conspirators in this remarkably jaunty excursion into cold war covert operations. (Scott)
'CHUCK CLOSE' (No rating, 1:56) This documentary by the filmmaker Marion Cajori about Mr. Close, the painter, photographer and printmaker, is an expansion of her acclaimed 1998 short Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress. But where it truly excels is in its depiction of the physical process of making art, capturing Mr. Close at work via a combination of probing close-ups of paint-daubed canvas and wide shots that situate him within his work space.
(Matt Zoller Seitz)
'CLOVERFIELD' (PG-13, 1:24) OMG! It's, like, totally the end of the world!! (Dargis)
'THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY' (PG-13, 1:52, in French) Julian Schnabel's film, about Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor paralyzed by a stroke, is a marvel of empathy and imagination. It is also a celebration of French sensualism and an examination of the nature of consciousness. (Scott) 'EASTERN PROMISES' (R, 1:40) The humanism of Steve Knight's script clashes in interesting ways with the ruthless formal rigor of the director, David Cronenberg, in this clammy, unsettling underworld tale. Viggo Mortensen is magnetic and enigmatic as a Russian mobster who shows some signs of conscience. (Scott)
'FIRST SUNDAY' (PG-13, 1:36) Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan rob a church and find redemption. Meanwhile Katt Williams, as the flamboyant choir director, steals the movie. (Scott)
'HONEYDRIPPER' (PG-13, 2:03) This movie is agreeable, well-intentioned and very, very slow. Sadly, it illustrates the difference between an archetype and a stereotype. When an archetype falls flat, it turns into a stereotype and becomes a cliche. (Holden)
'I'M NOT THERE' (R, 2:15) Hurling a Molotov cocktail into the biopic factory, Todd Haynes uses six different actors and an astonishing range of looks and styles to meditate on the life, work and cultural impact of Bob Dylan. (Scott)
'INTO THE WILD' (R, 2:20) In his adaptation of Jon Krakauer's best seller, Sean Penn explores the life and death of Christopher McCandless, a young wanderer who perished in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992. The story is sad, but there is something almost exuberant in Mr. Penn's embrace of it -- and in Emile Hirsch's brilliant performance as McCandless. Rarely has the radical, romantic American attachment to the wilderness been explored with such sympathy and passion. (Scott)
'JUNO' (PG-13, 1:31) A sharply written and acted coming-of-age comedy, starring the remarkable Ellen Page as Juno MacGuff, a teenager who deals with her unanticipated pregnancy in unexpected ways. (Scott)
'THE KITE RUNNER' (PG-13, 2:08, in Dari) This adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini best seller tells a simple yet shrewd story about that favorite American pastime: self-improvement. The locations are exotic; the direction by Marc Forster is soporific. (Dargis)
'MAD MONEY' (PG-13, 1:44) In this breezy, amoral heist comedy, Fun With Dick and Jane meets 9 to 5 on the way to recession. This uncomfortably timely movie may lack the political bite of Fun and the cozy star chemistry of 9 to 5, but it twinkles to fitful life in the crooked grin of Diane Keaton as a lady with a lust for larceny. (Holden)
'MICHAEL CLAYTON' (R, 1:59) A slow-to-boil requiem for American decency from the writer and director Tony Gilroy in which George Clooney, the ultimate in luxury brands and playboy of the Western world, raises the sword in the name of truth and justice and good. Well, someone's got to do it. (Dargis)
'NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS' (PG, 2:04) This hyperactive sequel sends its archaeologist hero, Ben Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage, flexing his deadpan), on a quest to clear the name of an ancestor wrongly accused of collaborating to assassinate Lincoln. The characters' facility with factoids is amusing, but the visuals are blah. One bright spot is Helen Mirren as Ben's mother, who manages to be sly and sexy even when translating pre-Columbian glyphs. (Seitz)
'NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN' (R, 2:02) Mean, violent and impeccable, Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of a pulpy, compact novel by Cormac McCarthy lives and breathes in the central performances of Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, who chase one another, $2 million and metaphysical truth through the Texas back country. (Scott)
'PERSEPOLIS' (PG-13, 1:35, in French) Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her graphic novel-memoir is a free-spirited coming-of-age story, beautifully drawn and voiced by a formidable trio of French movie stars. (Scott)
'THE SAVAGES' (R, 1:53) Tamara Jenkins's beautifully nuanced tragicomedy involves two floundering souls -- a middle-aged brother and sister played with force and feeling by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney -- who are suddenly left to care for their infirm father (Philip Bosco). There isn't a single moment of emotional guff or sentimentality in The Savages, a film that periodically caused me to wince, but also left me with a sense of acute pleasure, even joy. (Dargis)
'SOUTHLAND TALES' (R, 2:24) Richard Kelly's funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired future-shock look at America and its discontents opens with the very biggest of bangs: a nuclear attack on Texas. World War III ensues, but happily Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Geller, Justin Timberlake, Seann William Scott and a crew of professional wisenheimers are here to help.
(Dargis)
'STILL LIFE' (No rating, 1:48, in Mandarin) A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today. In his documentary-inflected fictions he weighs the human cost of China's shift from state-controlled communism to state-sanctioned capitalism, a price paid in the blood and sweat of people who have, paradoxically, inspired him to create works of sublime, soulful art -- works of art like Still Life. (Dargis)
'SUMMER PALACE' (No rating, 2:20, in Mandarin and German) Lou Ye's sweeping, spirited portrait of Chinese college students before and after Tiananmen Square has the scope of an epic and the rhythms of a pop song. Lei Hao gives a fierce, uninhibited performance as the film's passionate, impulsive heroine, a girl from the provinces who arrives at Beijing University in 1988. (Scott)
'SWEENEY TODD' (R, 1:50) Tim Burton's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical, with Johnny Depp in the title role, is bleak, bloody and brilliant. The songs will stay in your head even as the story and the images trouble your sleep. (Scott)
'TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE' (R, 1:46) This documentary by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) traces a path from Bagram prison in Afghanistan to Abu Graib and Guantanamo, and serves up a powerful indictment of some of the American military's tactics in the war on terror. (Scott)
'TEETH' (R, 1:27) Clever and crude, this teenage horror movie spoof follows the misadventures of a mutant teen angel unknowingly afflicted with the mythical condition known as vagina dentata (a toothed vagina). (Holden)
'THERE WILL BE BLOOD' (R, 2:38) Paul Thomas Anderson's epic American nightmare tells a story of greed and envy of biblical proportions set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late-19th- and early-20th centuries. There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert, and his messenger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleum speculator played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis. (Dargis)
'27 DRESSES' (PG-13, 1:47) Katherine Heigl, trading the unexpected maternity of Knocked Up for the expectation of matrimony, stars in this bland and forgettable romantic comedy. Ms. Heigl, Malin Akerman (as her sister and romantic rival) and Judy Greer (as the inevitably flaky/slutty friend) are all adept comic performers, but the filmmakers give them nothing fresh or interesting to work with. (Scott)
'THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP' (PG, 1:51) In this enthralling adaptation of a novel by Dick King-Smith, a boy in Scotland stumbles across a mysterious egg that hatches an adorable, mischievous creature (a remarkably lifelike piece of digital animation) that grows into the Loch Ness Monster. (Laura Kern)
Film Series
'QUADRILLE' (Friday) The dazzlingly adult comedies of the French actor, writer and director Sacha Guitry aren't well known on these shores, largely because Guitry's torrential verbal wit wasn't considered suitable for export. But Gaumont, the distributor of some of Guitry's finest films of the 1930s, has begun systematically restoring and subtitling their holdings, and a result is this new print of Guitry's 1938 film about the pleasures and pains of adultery. The owlish Guitry stars as the editor of a Parisian newspaper whose longtime mistress (Gaby Morlay) suddenly decides to take up with a visiting American movie star (Georges Grey), a devastating development that leads to a nonstop flow of glittering epigrams and sharply authentic emotions. If you don't know Guitry, Friday's screening is a fine place to start. Museum of Modern Art Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, (212) 708-9400, moma.org; $10. (Dave Kehr)
ENVISIONING RUSSIA: A CENTURY OF FILMMAKING (Friday through Thursday) The Russian Ministry of Culture has somewhat arbitrarily proclaimed 2008 to be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Russian filmmaking; this series presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center focuses on Mosfilm, the largest studio during the Soviet era, and includes more than two dozen titles ranging from Stalin's favorite musical, Jolly Fellows (1934, screening on Friday and Tuesday) to Aleksandr Sokurov's most recent feature film, Alexandra (2007, screening on Saturday night). Among the other titles in the overwhelming lineup: Andrei Tarkovsky's dense memory film The Mirror (Friday); Aleksandr Medvedkin's long-banned 1934 peasant comedy, Happiness (Tuesday and Wednesday); Mikhail Romm's 1936 Siberian adventure, The Thirteen, newly restored and apparently screening for the first time in New York (Wednesday and Thursday); and, inevitably and appropriately, the film that put Soviet cinema on the world map, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 Battleship Potemkin (Saturday and Wednesday). Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5600, filmlinc.org; $11. (Kehr)
JOHN FORD AT FOX (Saturday and Sunday) This continuing survey of Ford's work for the studio he most consistently called home goes forward this weekend with his three disarming Will Rogers vehicles, each a masterpiece of Americana: Doctor Bull (1933), with Rogers as a wise doctor in a New England village (Saturday); Judge Priest (1934), with Rogers as a judge who upsets the social hierarchy of a small Southern town (Sunday); and the rousing Steamboat 'Round the Bend (1935), a Twainish tale set on the Mississippi in which Rogers plays a patent-medicine salesman who acquires a broken-down paddleboat (Sunday). Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077, movingimage.us; $10. (Kehr)
