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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 19, 2006)
MAY 19, 2006 film The Da Vinci Code Director Ron Howard delivers a faithful hut uninspired adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling potboiler about a Harvard symbologist’s quest for the Holy Grail. There’s plenty of intrigue early on, including a self-flagellating albino monk and a dead body exhibit at the Louvre. Just when ypur pulse starts to race, convoluted dialogue and hokey histor ical re-enactments spoil the fun. It doesn’t help that Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou (Amélie) are less charismatic than cardboard in the leading roles. At least Sir Ian McKellen makes the most of his turn as a bitchy scholar. C + —Stephen Blair Down in the Valley Set in that arid wasteland known as the San Fernando Valley, David Jacobson’s strange, ambitious and ultimately unsatisfying film is equal parts Romeo and Juliet, Taxi Driver and Unforgiven. A menacing Edward Norton plays a smooth talking cowboy who wins the heart of a wild teenage girl (Thirteen’s Evan Rachel Wood), then goes on a shooting spree that Billy the Kid would find excessive. The supporting cast is terrific, particularly David Morse and Rory Culkin as the girl’s father and brother. But the romance, western and psychological thriller elements never come together convincingly. B - —SB Goal! Just another sports movie about an underdog who fights the odds to follows his dream. The protagonist here is Santiago (Kuno Becker), a gift ed soccer player who gets the chance of a lifetime when a former talent scout lets him try out for Newcastle United. Santiago needs to leave the bar rio of Los Angeles to go to England and see if dreams can come true. It will be interesting to see if a movie about soccer can make it in a country where football is much more popular. B —Yvonne P. Behrens Just My Luck How you feel about this movie is surely all in the eye of the beholder. While I think Lindsay Lohan has potential as an actress, this romantic comedy from director Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) was not a good choice. Lohan jUStlOUt 49 On a first name basis with you and your car. plays Ashley, the luckiest person in New York. But her luck changes when she meets Jake (Chris Pine), the unluckiest person in New York. The incidents that follow could and should be funny, but they turn out to be really dumb and disgusting. Whatever happened to good, tasteful slapstick? D —YPB Mission: Impossible III Tom Cruise returns as agent Ethan Hunt in the third installment of this spy movie series. Directed and co-written by J .J. Abrams (Lost, Alias), the film has exactly what you would expect: new gadgets, lots of explosions, a juicy villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a great supporting cast (Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Laurence Fishbume). M :i:lII leaves the audience hardly any time to breathe between the action-packed scenes, which help mask the fact that the movie is lacking a great story. B + —YPB Moonlight This is the fourth feature film from Dutch director Paula van der Oest (2003 Academy Award nominee for Zus & Zo). A young boy from Afghanistan is used as human packaging material to smuggle cocaine, then something goes wrong and he is found wounded by a teenage girl who decides to hide and take care of him. While the film starts off promising, the second half contains a series of weird incidents as the kids flee from drug dealers who find out the boy is still alive. Opens May 19 at Hollywood Theatre. C + —YPB Mountain Patrol This visually stunning and unsettling film, dramatizes real events that transpired in the 1990s. In a remote region of China, Tibetan patrolmen risk their lives to chase down the poachers responsible for driving the Tibetan antelope toward extinction. Apart from the greedy and trigger- happy poachers, they face dehydration, quicksand and snowstorms. Given the recent success of nature films like Winged Migration and March of the Penguins, this National Geographic release stands a good chance of being an arthouse hit this summer. Opens May 19 at Cinema 21. A- —SB Poseidon The plot of this remake of the 1972 disaster classic has more holes than the ill-fated cruise liner, which, in this version, is capsized by a “rogue wave,” whatever that is. Yet, despite cringe inducing dialogue and fake-looking computer generated special effects, Poseidon still manages to thrill. Richard Dreyfuss plays gay, and the crying kid is terrific, but no one in the lackluster cast comes close to Shelley Winters. C + —Floyd Sldaver germanjbrmula. inc. REPAIR FACILITY 8, COLLISION CENTER Sketches of Frank Gehry This film offers wonderful insight into the life of an extraordinary architect, Frank O. Gehry, whose buildings include the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and who even has been portrayed on The Simpsons. In his first feature length documentary, Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa) follows his friend Gehry for a period of five years. He concentrates merely on the creation of Gehry’s sketches and his initial designs, then explores the process of turning these drawings into three-dimensional models and into finished build ings of titanium and glass, concrete and steel, wood and stone. Opens May 26 at Cinema 21. A —YPB BMW, MERCEDES & PORSCHE EXCL USIVELY 503.238.1707 100 NE 11 th Aw CI nkxii ac < i / vokii *» anpmi ai imyni < r.-cMiit .s 1 OK POCO ANP < ATS. Irci V! KYrt T.-iPKi^AMC OMI TRÍK United 93 British director Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday) wrote and directed this intelligent and gut-wrenching account of 9/11, focusing on events aboard the one hijacked plane that did not reach its target. From the mounting chaos in the air traf fic control room to the heroic retaliatory efforts of the passengers, Greengrass builds an almost unbearable amount of tension without sensation alizing the material. Mark Bingham—a gay rugby player who was on the flight—helps lead the charge against the terrorists. A- —SB Wah-Wah Based on true events from actor/director Richard E. Grant’s childhood, this coming-of-age drama takes place at the end of the ’60s when Swaziland is about to receive independence from Great Britain. Young Ralph (Zach Fox and Nicholas Hoult) witnesses the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and deals with his father’s alcoholism and hasty remarriage. The movie has the right combination of gritty family conflict mixed in with stunning African scenery and a portrait of latter-day British imperial pretensions. Opens May 26. B + —YPB Water Set in the 1930s during India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, this movie from director Deepa Mehta (Bollywood/Hollyivood) has visually stunning cinematography with vivid colors and a great soundtrack that suits every emotion of the story. It follows the lives of two women: Chuyia, who is deposited in a house of Hindu widows after her husband dies, and Kalyani, who falls in love with a Mahatma Gandhi follower from a lower caste. Water gives both an insight into the beauty of the country and the viciousness of some cultural norms. A —YPB © “This career will self-destruct in five seconds.... Sports Medicine 4 Physical Rehabilitation Center • Post-injury • Post-surgery • Weight Management •Assessment of the Canine Athlete Carol J. Helfer, D.V.M. 4945 SW 77th • Portland, OR 503-291-7400 www.caninepeakperformance.com
