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July 23 - July 29, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
 Away We Go
Glib and charming in roughly equal measure, the road-tripping Away We Go is worth seeing for Maya Rudolph (best known for being underutilized on Saturday Night Live), who plays a mother-to-be living in Colorado with an insurance salesman (John Krasinski of The Office). From the beginning, with American Beauty, director Sam Mendes has never been one to defuse the smugness in a smug script. Much of the dialogue in Away We Go is enjoyable, but in their pursuit of happiness, the two lead characters remain attractive outlines. Rated R (language and some sexual content). At Century and Esquire. — Michael Phillips
Bruno
Extraordinarily raunchy, occasionally funny, Bruno takes everything Borat did so well three years ago and pushes it further, swapping one primary target (American anti-Semitism) for another (American homophobia). But comic nerve has little to do with sheer excess. The fashionista at the center of Bruno is a pretty tedious fellow, and there’s a calculated stridency to the material in Sacha Baron Cohen’s new guerrilla lark. Rated R (pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language). At Flatiron, Century and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Cheri
Michelle Pfeiffer appears in her first substantial dramatic role since White Oleander, and we are reminded of how much the world of film has lost by her recent absence. Pfeiffer plays an aging prostitute nudged into a relationship with the 19-year-old wastrel son of a fellow courtesan (Kathy Bates). The film makes the most of its French settings, and Pfeiffer is in typically fine form. Rated R (some sexual content and brief drug use). At Century. — Kenneth Turan
500 Days of Summer
See full screen review. Rated PG-13. At Mayan.
Food, Inc.
This eye-popping documentary from filmmaker Robert Kenner should win a few hearts and minds regarding what we put in our stomachs. But the film got virtually no cooperation from representatives of the dominant players in industrial food production, and as a result, Food, Inc. is a rangy, well-articulated essay rather than a compelling point-counterpoint. Rated PG (some thematic material and disturbing images). At Chez Artiste. — Michael Phillips
The Hangover
The Hangover takes care of its target audience — males who, after seeing director Todd Phillips’ earlier and funnier Old School, dreamed of joining the Old School fraternity. This film belongs to the what-happened-last-night? genre typified by Dude, Where’s My Car? Groom-to-be Doug (Justin Bartha) is whisked to Vegas from L.A. by his pals (Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms), with Doug’s eerie future brother-in-law (Zach Galifianakis) in tow. Chaos ensues; laughs do not (although Helms is an exception). Rated R (pervasive language, sexual content including nudity, and some drug material). At Flatiron, Century and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
See full screen review. Rated PG. At Century, Twin Peaks, Flatiron and Colony Square.
Herb & Dorothy 
This documentary tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to minimalist and conceptual art, Herb and Dorothy quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb’s salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy’s paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they collected over 4,000 pieces and proved themselves curatorial visionaries; most of those they supported and befriended went on to become world-renowned artists. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Homecoming
Mischa Barton’s manipulative character from The O.C. pales in comparison to Shelby, her creepy, crazy ex-girlfriend role in Homecoming. When Mike (Matt Long) returns from Northwestern University to his small-town home, he gets a less-than-welcoming reaction from his ex-girlfriend, Shelby (Barton). She isn’t happy to see him with his new love, Elizabeth (Jessica Stroup), and is willing to go to murderous lengths to get him back in her arms. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
The Hurt Locker
Vivid, assured and extremely suspenseful, director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest (and strongest) film takes moviegoers by the collar and throws them headlong into one horrifying life-and-death situation after another. Jeremy Renner plays a soldier in Iraq running toward the explosives while everyone else is ducking and covering. He’s a bomb tech whose job entails disarming one Improvised Explosive Device (IED) after another, day after day. Time will tell if this politically neutral war movie is a classic, but it’s certainly a formidable experience. Rated R (war violence and language). At Mayan. — Michael Phillips
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Not bad, not good, Ice Age 3 may be OK enough to do what it was engineered to do, i.e., baby-sit your kid for a while and rake in the dough. Lack of comic distinction and forgettable computer animation have always held back the Ice Age projects. Dawn of the Dinosaurs lays out one life-and-death scenario after another, dutifully. No wonder the comparatively simple frustrations endured by the squirrel-rat hybrid Scrat offer some relief. Rated PG (some mild rude humor and peril). At Flatiron, Century, Twin Peaks and Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
Steven Spielberg’s third action-packed entry in the Indiana Jones trilogy evokes the cliffhanger Saturday matinee serials of yesteryear. It’s 1938 and Indy (Harrison Ford) receives word that his archaeologist dad, Professor Henry Jones (Sean Connery), has disappeared while on a quest for the Holy Grail. Indy embarks on a search for both his dad and the much-coveted artifact. The Last Crusade has a unique twist to the series’ traditional opening-sequence cliffhanger. Actor River Phoenix plays an adolescent Indy who, while on a field trip with his Boy Scout troop, finds adventure on a circus train. Spielberg wanted to make the film about a father-and-son relationship, and Connery was his first choice to play Indy’s dad. The selection was perfect, considering Spielberg and producer George Lucas first came up with the idea of the series as a rival to the James Bond movies in which Connery had starred. Rated PG-13. At Red Rocks. — Denver Film Society
Mile High Sci Fi: Swamp Thing
Wes Craven’s 1982 cinematic mess, Swamp Thing is the story of Dr. Holland, a brilliant scientist who less-than-brilliantly decides that a bug-infested deep-south swamp would be the perfect place to build a lab and set up shop. It is also the perfect place to catch malaria, get eaten by an alligator or, in this case, get attacked by an army of thugs led by Dr. Arcane, a rival scientist (dare we say Dueling Scientists?) who, lacking a Swamp Lab of his own, resorts to swiping the inventions of other scientists. Oh no! But a freak accident turns Dr. Holland into an actor in a giant rubber suit...uh...that is, Swamp Thing, who spends the rest of the film hunting down Dr. Arcane’s army of thugs and gently tossing them into the water; not hurting them per se, but getting them very wet. That’ll show ’em. The film climaxes with a showdown so ridiculous that it would make Ed Wood wince. Swamp Thing one hell of a reunion weekend. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Society
Moon
This film could alternatively be titled 2009: A Space Odyssey, as it’s virtually impossible not to be reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece between Kevin Spacey’s soothing ministrations as a computer named Gerty and Sam Rockwell’s efforts to cope as the lone occupant of a lunar outpost. Rockwell plays Sam, a technician working on a strip-mining operation on the moon. There’s an accident, a rescue and suddenly another man in this vacuum-sealed life who looks like a younger version of Sam. Director Duncan Jones, son of musician David Bowie, struggles to find entertainment within the esoteric. Rated R (language). At Century and Mayan. — Betsy Sharkey
My Sister’s Keeper
The harder this cinematic assault weapon went at my tear ducts, the more duct tape I wrapped around them as a defensive measure. Anna (Abigail Breslin), a girl who was a test-tube baby conceived to provide bone marrow to her older sister (Sofia Vassilieva), who has leukemia, sues her parents (Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric) for “medical emancipation,” and while you’d think inter-family legal action would stop all the lovey-dovey montages of everybody cherishing every minute together, think again. Rated PG-13 (mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language, and brief teen smoking). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
The Proposal
In this disposable romantic comedy, Ryan Reynolds plays the beleaguered Man Friday to a fearsomely mean book editor played by Sandra Bullock. The editor, a Canadian living in New York, has visa troubles and is threatened with deportation. She strong-arms the assistant into marrying her — quickie divorce to follow — under the suspicious eye of Immigration Services. It’s not terrible, but there’s not much fun to be had watching the Wicked Witch of the Upper East Side get her comeuppance and thaw out and fall in love. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, nudity and language). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Public Enemies
Johnny Depp stars as charismatic Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger, and Christian Bale plays G-man Melvin Purvis. The film is a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture (Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger’s lover), and it’s more vivid around the edges than at its center. Yet a genuine filmmaking intelligence guides every scene. Director Michael Mann focuses on 1933-34, the final year and a half in Dillinger’s life. Rated R (gangster violence and some language). At Flatiron, Century, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
An estranged family of former child prodigies reunites when one of their members announces he has a terminal illness. Directed by Wes Anderson. Rated R. At the Boulder Theater. — BT
Star Trek
The new Star Trek seeks to extend a lucrative brand with a young demographic. But it’s a real movie — breathlessly paced bordering on manic, but propulsively entertaining. The script ping-pongs early on between Iowa and Vulcan, as the destinies of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) entwine. The plot issues — of moderate interest at best — deal with the space-time continuum and alternate reality. The film may not be memorable science fiction, but it's an engaging pop diversion. Rated PG-13 (sci-fi action and violence and brief sexual content). Rated PG-13. At Colony Square. — Michael Phillips
Surveillance
Two FBI agents (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) follow a trail of grisly killings across the country to a rural police station where three witnesses to yet another horrible crime are being held: a wounded officer, a traumatized little girl, and a young female drug addict. As the agents interrogate them in separate rooms, flashbacks reveal that their statements don’t quite capture the vivid truth of what they survived on that lonely stretch of highway. During these sequences, we begin to meet characters whose absence at the station only adds to our increasing sense of dread about the untold enormity of the events that unfolded on that brisk, sunny day. What has become of the officer’s partner, the young girl’s entire family, and the addict’s boyfriend? What knowledge do the FBI agents already have about the case that they aren’t sharing? Jennifer Chambers Lynch pulls all the strings together tightly, relying on her inherited ability to survey the landscape of the American dream — the optimism represented by its open roads and the freedom of the families, friends, and lovers that traverse it — only to expose the nightmare that rots just below the surface. When Lynch finally reveals the truth at the heart of this screw-turning thriller, it’s like a deadly highway pileup: Much as you want to turn away, you can’t stop gaping right at it. Rated R. At Chez Artiste. — Denver Film Society
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The first Transformers was a headache, but I sort of enjoyed it. It was a Slurpee brain-freeze of a blockbuster. This sequel is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2.5 hours. Nobody’s looking for anything other than relentless, brainless action, but director Michael Bay offers nothing but visual and aural chaos. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox run for their lives while the U.S. military and their metallic allies deal with evil robots. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material). At Flatiron, Century and Twin Peaks. — Michael Phillips
Tulpan
Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, acclaimed Kazakh documentarian Sergey Dvortsevoy’s first narrative feature is a gorgeous mélange of tender comedy, ethnographic drama and wildlife extravaganza. Following his Russian naval service, young dreamer Asa returns to his sister’s nomadic brood on the desolate Hunger Steppe to begin a hardscrabble career as a shepherd. But before he can tend a flock of his own, Asa must win the hand of the only eligible bachelorette for miles — his alluringly mysterious neighbor Tulpan. Accompanied by his girlie mag-reading sidekick Boni (and a menagerie of adorable lambs, stampeding camels, mewling kittens and mischievous children), Asa will stop at nothing to prove he is a worthy husband and herder. In the tradition of such crowd-pleasing travelogues as The Story of the Weeping Camel, Tulpan’s gentle humor and stunning photography transport audiences to this singular, harshly beautiful region and its rapidly vanishing way of life. Not Rated. At Starz. — Denver Film Soceity
Up
Balloon salesman Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) shared a dream with his wife to visit South America. After his wife dies, Carl’s yearning for adventure dies as well. Yet it rises again, and Up becomes a chronicle of an unlikely friendship between Carl and an 8-year-old (Jordan Nagai). This Disney-Pixar film feels nervy and adventurous and a little messy, the result of formidable creators working on an enormous budget, enormously well-spent. Yet the expansive emotional landscape of Up is something new. More power to these people. They are making the best films coming out of Hollywood. Rated PG (some peril and action). At Flatiron. — Michael Phillips
Whatever Works
On the heels of last year’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the freshest Woody Allen film in more than a decade, Whatever Works (Allen’s 40th feature as director) plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present. Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) plays a New York City misanthrope whose worldview is tempered by a relationship with a much younger Southern runaway (Evan Rachel Wood). The detail work in this film is virtually nonexistent. Whatever Works is more like “Oh, Whatever.” Rated PG-13 (sexual situations including dialogue, brief nude images and thematic material). At Esquire. — Michael Phillips
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