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Fast & Furious / *1/2 (PG-13)
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"Fast and Furious" (PG-13, 107 minutes). Exactly and precisely what you'd expect. Nothing more, unfortunately. You get your cars that are fast and your characters that are furious. The fourth in the series, with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and the other major cast members from the original 2001 movie now back again. Who cares? Rating: One and a half stars.
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Sin Nombre / **** (R)
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"Sin Nombre" (R, 96 minutes) The interlocking stories of a young woman from Honduras and a young man from southern Mexico, who meet while riding on the root of a freight car on their long journey to the U.S. border. The trip is forged in hell, but the film also finds room for beauty and romance. Winner of the awards for best direction (Cary Fukunaga) and cinematography at Sundance 2009. Rating: Four stars.
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Shall We Kiss? / **1/2 (No MPAA rating)
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"Shall We Kiss?" (Unrated, 102 minutes). A story within a story about two lifelong best friends who agree to have sex for purely therapeutic reasons, and end up inconveniently in love. Their problems generate complications worthy of a Woody Allen movie, but on such a refined level they always seem oddly artificial. Moderate charm, immoderate naiveté. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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Alien Trespass / ** (PG)
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"Alien Trespass" (PG, 90 minutes). Has the plot, feel and look of a cheesy 1950s B movie about aliens on a flying saucer that threaten the earth. Well done to be a convincingly bad movie--on purpose. But isn't teh market for bad 1950s sci-fi already well-supplied? Rating Two stars.
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Theater of War / **1/2 (No MPAA rating)
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"Theater of War" (Unrated, 96 minutes). Meryl Streep is at the center of this documentary about the 2006 Central Park production of Bertold Brecht's "Mother Courage." She discusses "process" in rehearsals, but the film does sink in and show her molding a scene with her colleagues. Instead, it includes too much extraneous material of anti-war protests and college lectures on Marxism. Streep is interesting, of course, and there's a comprehensive review of Brecht's his theatrical career, life in exile, and adventures with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Rating: Two and a half stars
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Adventureland / *** (R)
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by Roger Ebert
It is a truth of twentysomethings that if you have a crappy summer job with other twentysomethings, the way to take your mind off work is daydreaming of sex with your workmates. You are trapped there together eight or 10 hours a day for three months, right, so what else is there to make you dance to unheard melodies?
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Monsters vs. Aliens / **1/2 (PG)
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"Monsters vs. Aliens" (PG, 95 minutes). Monsters from the 1950s are released from a secret federal prison to join the 49' 11" Ginormica (voice by Reese Witherspoon) in saving Earth from hostile aliens. Probably fun for younger kids, but lacks the humor and personality of earlier DreamWorks films like "Shrek." The 3-D, not as bright as 2-D, is more a distraction than enhancement. Rating: Two and a half stars.
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Goodbye Solo / **** (No MPAA rating)
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"Goodbye Solo" (Unrated, 91 minutes). In Winston-Salem, NC, a white man around 70 gets into the taxi of an African immigrant. He offers $1,000, paid immediately, he wants him to drive him in 10 days to the top of a mountain so windy that the snow falls up. The driver is not happy about this fare. Magnificent performances by Red West and Souleymane Sy Savané. A great, stirring, heartbreaking film by Ramin Bahrani. One of the year's best. Rating: Four stars.
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The Haunting in Connecticut / ** (PG-13)
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"The Haunting in Connecticut" (PG-13, 92 minutes). Ghost story. Family moves into a big old mansion that hasn't been inhabited since the 1920s, for what turn out to be excellent reasons. Good acting and technical credits, but so many scares they threaten to become monotonous. With Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan and Elias Koteas. Rating: Two stars.
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12 / ***1/2 (PG-13)
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"12" (PG-13, 1563 minutes). A Russian version of the story in the great American film "12 Angry Men," with the same structure and outcome, yet entirely original and with a power of its own. Each of the actors is given a key scene growing out of his own life, and the effect is new and powerful. Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov Rating: Three and a half stars.
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Valentino: The Last Emperor / *** (No MPAA rating)
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"Valentino: The Last Emperor"(Unrated, 96 minutes) A fly-on-the wall documentary about Valentino, nearly last of the legendary designers, as he presents his final Paris show, presides over an imperial Roman celebration of his 45th year in fashion, rules unchallenged, and yet seems strangely dissatisfied. If you care nothing about haute couture, the movie is nonetheless a fascinating study of a complex man. Rating: Three stars.
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Great Movie: Withnail & I (1987)
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by Roger Ebert
In my drinking days, some of us would gather around noon on Saturdays at Oxford's Pub for what we called Drunch. We would commence with shots of creme de menthe and pint glasses of real Coke, in the hope that a combination of alcohol, sugar and caffeine would restore us. Then we would laugh until the tears ran down our faces about the hilarity of the dreadful things that had happened the night before. In doing this, I would often quote "We laugh, that we may not cry," although just now I have discovered that no one originally said that. I always thought it was Shakespeare. It was me.
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Movie Answer Man: Let the right one in, but
with the wrong subtitles
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Q. There's been a lot of negative buzz among bloggers about the poorly translated subtitles on the DVD and Blu-ray release of the acclaimed Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In." The distributor, Magnet Home Entertainment, released the discs with subtitles that were "dumbed down," compared to the more informative, accurate translation provided by the film's theatrical-release subtitles.
Magnet has fixed the problem, and subsequent pressings will include the theatrical subtitles, with "theatrical subtitles" indicated on the packaging. Kudos to them for correcting the problem, but still, it seems like a mistake to even consider the misguided "benefit" of dumbed-down subtitles that eliminate subtleties of character and dialogue.
Jeff Shannon, Seattle
A. Mike Cucinotta of iconsoffright.com seems to have broken the story and uses lots of screen grabs to document the tone-deaf dumbing-down. For example: Oskar, a 12-year-old boy, sees Eli, a girl about his age standing outside on a winter night without a warm coat. She's balanced on a jungle gym.
Oskar: Do you live here?
Eli: Yeah. I live right here, in the jungle gym.
Oskar: Seriously, where do you live?
Eli: Next door to you.
Oskar: How do you know where I live?
In the dumbed-down version, these are the subtitles for the same conversation:
Oskar: Where do you live?
Eli: I live here. Next to you.
Cucinotta says Magnet is restoring the original subtitles in discs now being released. Look for those crucial words, "theatrical subtitles." The whole story is here:
http://tinyurl.com/dd7c3m
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