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Knowing / **** (PG-13)
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"Knowing" (PG-13, 122 minutes). Among the best science fiction films I've seen--frightening, suspenseful, intelligent, and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. Nicholas Cage plays an MIT astrophysicist whose son brings home a sheet of paper after a 50-year-old time capsule is opened at his grade school. The sheet is covered with numbers, which the scientist, despite all his training, becomes convinced mean something. Pluck this movie, and it vibrates. Rating: Four stars.
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I Love You, Man / ***1/2 (R)
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"I Love You, Man" (R, 104 minutes). Paul Rudd plays a clueless realtor engaged to Rashida Jones. He gets along fine with women, but lacks a male friend to be his best man. He stumbles upon Jason Segel, who plays a best friend a lot of guys would like to have -- thoroughly comfortable within his own skin, an unapologetic hedonist uses his intelligence as a comic weapon. A very funny movie. Rating: Three and a half stars.
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Duplicity / *** (PG-13)
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"Duplicity" (PG-13, 125 minutes). Julie Roberts and Clive Owen star as CISA and M16 spies who go private, working for enemy soap companies. Their secret is, they're in love. Or do they each only think they're in love? Or that the other is? Romance and intrigue in a plot so complex they could end up double-crossing themselves. Written and directed by Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton). Rating: Three stars.
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Silent Light / **** (No MPAA rating)
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"Silent Light" (Unrated, 136 minutes). A profound meditation on the pain that true love can bring, set among a Mennonite community in Mexico with deep values. Awesome photography, rock-solid performances, a deep emotional impact. Slow paced, but not emotionally slow. Jury Prize, Cannes 2007. Gold Hugo, Chicago 2007. Directed by Carlos Reygadas. Rating: Four stars.
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The Great Buck Howard / ***1/2 (PG)
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"The Great Buck Howard" (PG, 90 minutes). John Malkovich plays a magician and psychic who guested on Johnny Carson 61 times, but is now reduced to playing small theaters in smaller cities. Colin Hanks is the new kid who signs on as his road manager, and gets an education in showbiz and the Greatness of Buck Howard. Funny, observant, a little sad, and with a Malkovich performance of fascinating inscrutability. Rating: Three and a half stars.
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Serbis / **1/2 (R)
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"Serbis" (R, 91 minutes). A day in the lives of an extended family that runs a shabby Filipino porn theater. As the camera follows them up and down the stairs of the labyrinthine structure, they deal with family dramas in the midst of hardly-noticed hustlers and johns, while nobody pays much attention to what's on the screen. A portrait of lives marking time. Rating; Two and a half stars.
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Sunshine Cleaning / ** (R)
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"Sunshine Cleaning" (R, 102 minutes). Amy Adams and Emily Blunt star as sisters, desperate for income, who start a business mopping up after messy murder scenes. Steve Zahn is a faithless lover, Clifton Collins Jr. is a warm-hearted hardware store owner, and Alan Arkin is the girls' dad, hatching get-poor-quick schemes. A lot of promising material, never quite assembled into film that holds together. Rating: Two stars.
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Shuttle / * (R)
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"Shuttle" (R, 107 minutes). On a rainy night at an almost empty airport, two young women get a ride in a van, and end up at the mercy of the menacing driver. Made with competence, with a good lead performance by Peyton List, but a despairing story of utter hopelessness and evil. Rating: One star.
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Race to Witch Mountain / **1/2 (PG)
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"Race to Witch Mountain" (PG, 98 minutes). Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson and Carla (Silk Spectre) Gugino co-star with AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig, who play aliens masquerading as teenagers. They're pursued by hostile federal agents in a desperate chase to get to their flying saucer hidden inside Witch Mountain. Innocuous family entertainment, harmless and fun. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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The Last House on the Left / **1/2 (R)
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“The Last House on the Left” (R, 100 minutes). An expert horror film with an appalling rape scene. With Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn, Garret Dillahunt. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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Everlasting Moments / **** (No MPAA rating)
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"Everlasting Moments" (Unrated, 131 minutes). The story, beginning in 1911, of a Swedish women who raised seven children in poverty, who has a husband who is kind when sober but frightening when drunk, and whose idea of herself is transformed when she begins to take photographs. A beautifully told story of striving, and of the varieties of love. By the great director Jan Troell. Rating: Four stars.
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Crossing Over / **1/2 (R)
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"Crossing Over" (R, 114 minutes). Harrison Ford stars as an U.S. immigration officer who is the connecting strand between stories of immigrants new and established, legal and illegal. The movie borrows its structure from "Crash," but has too many subplots, too many characters, too much implausibility. Still, if you can accept those, it's very watchable. With Ray Liotta, Cliff Curtis, Ashley Judd, Summer Bishil. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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Brothers at War / *** (R)
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"Brothers at War" (R, 110 minutes). Director Jake Rademacher felt two of his brothers growing away from him after their deployment in Iraq. So he took a camera crew and went to walk in their footsteps. Joining a U.S. Army unit commanded by his brothers Isaac and including his brother Joe, he followed them on door-to-door missions and border patrol, and often came under fire. What results is an honest, on the ground documentary about the daily tasks of his brothers. It provides a fresh. nonpolitical view of the war. Rating: Three stars
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The Cake Eaters / *** (No MPAA rating)
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“The Cake Eaters” (Unrated, 95 minutes). Kristen Stewart (“Twilight”) in a glowing performance as a teenager with a progressive muscular disease. She chooses a shy, nice boy (Aaron Stanford) to deliberately have sex with, because “I may not have much time.” A tender, good-hearted story directed by Mary Stuart Masterson, and co-starring Bruce Dern, Elizabeth Ashley, Melissa Leo and Aaron Stanford. Rating: Three stars.
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Tokyo! / **1/2 (No MPAA rating)
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"Tokyo!" (Unrated, 112 minutes). French directors Michel Gondry and Leos Carax and Korea's Bong Joon-ho contribute short films to a trilogy about the metropolis. The best is by Carax, who shows a madman emerging from a manhole and terrorizing the Ginza; dressed in green he may be a Godzilla substitute, or maybe not. All intriguing, none compelling. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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Waiting for Dublin / ** (No MPAA rating)
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"Waiting for Dublin" (Unrated, suitable for all. 83 minutes). An American pilot low on fuel lands in Ireland, falls in love, and has days to get his fifth kill before losing a deadly bet with a Chicago mobster. Perfectly sweet and harmless. The actors are pleasant, the locations (County Galway) are beautiful, but the movie is a wheeze. Rating: Two stars.
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Great Movie: Exotica (1994)
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by Roger Ebert
Sex for money sometimes conceals great sadness. It can be sought to treat wounds it cannot heal. I believe that may happen less in actual prostitution than in the parody of prostitution offered in "gentleman's clubs." Whatever is going on is less about sex than psychological need, sometimes on both sides. Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" is a deep, painful film about those closed worlds of stage-managed lust.
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Movie Answer Man: Dr. Manhattan's you-know-what:
an exercise in quantum mechanics
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Q. The Vulture blog at New York mag surveys the "Watchmen" critics who mention the size of Dr. Manhattan's you know what. You called it "discreet." Are you trying to send a message?
Ronny Barzell, Los Angeles
A. Not the one you got. I was referring to the way it blends perfectly with his blue color scheme. I don't know what Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was smoking when he wrote of Manhattan "flashing a few yards of giant blue wiener." Zack Snyder, director of the film, likens it to a "bell clacker." My own opinion? Manhattan has ceased to exist as flesh and blood, and has reconstituted himself as quantum energy. He controls every detail of his appearance, and manifests himself as a blue giant. How many men could resist the opportunity to do a little tweaking?
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