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
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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
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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
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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 ©
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