Your guide to movies in Aiken 10/29/2008 12:53 PM c_ Changeling NEW!
Angelina Jolie, who won her Oscar by playing mentally ill in "Girl Interrupted," returns to the psyche ward for Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," a movie he might have titled "Motherhood Interrupted." It's a period piece, a true-crime mystery and a slice of history, vintage Eastwood in many ways. If the film is too long and a little unwieldy in its later acts, the consummate craftsman in Eastwood glosses over that with detail and righteous rage. Jolie plays Christina Collins, a telephone switchboard supervisor and single mom in 1928 Los Angeles. She has to leave her 9-year-old son, Walter, home one Saturday when she's called into work. When she gets home, he's missing. Months of frantic calls ensue, trying to rouse the LAPD into action. A crusading preacher (John Malkovich) takes up the cause. A kid turns up in Illinois and is delivered to her and the waiting press corps by a press-savvy police department. "That's not my son," says Jolie's Collins. But it's worth noting that as good as Jolie is in the lead, Eastwood is no Spielberg when it comes to working with kids. The mystery here is deep, with layers of meaning built into it. Eastwood gets at psychiatric bullying and gender issues of those dark ages of yore. "Changeling" is fascinating, high-minded and ambitious story, with twists and turns and implications far beyond the "true crime" origins of the tale. That it isn't the emotional, surprising and engrossing Oscar contender Eastwood set out to make is one of the bigger disappointments of the fall.
Rated R for some violent and disturbing content and language. 2 hours, 20 minutes.
3 stars out of 5 -- Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune
Zack and Miri NEW!
For all the rudeness and crudeness he splatters across the screen, Kevin Smith is at heart a moralist - albeit a moralist with a potty mouth. His latest, "Zack and Miri," is a raunch-heavy comedy about two childhood friends who decide to make a dirty movie together and maybe fall in love along the way. He's more convincing with the raunch than the love, and that's OK. Like all Smith movies, "Zack and Miri" is uneven, but when it's funny (and that's often) it's a scream. The titular characters (Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks) met in kindergarten and have been platonic roomies since graduating from high school a decade ago. They're classic underachievers. This fact is driven home when they attend a class reunion. Everybody else seems to have grown up, while Zack and Miri are still living lives of prolonged adolescence. Things get worse when Zack and Miri find their water and electricity turned off for unpaid bills. Necessity being the mother of invention, Zack comes up with a plan. Why not make a dirty movie and sell it to their friends and fellow alums? Rogen gives yet another variation on the pudgy slacker he's already portrayed so memorably in "Knocked Up" and "The Pineapple Express." But like Bill Murray he's developed a stock character we don't easily tire of. Smith is judicious in his use of nudity (naked women are many things but funny is not usually one of them), but a fairly high squirm factor remains. He's much better at verbal humor than the visual kind. But at heart he's just an old-fashioned romantic.
Rated R for strong crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language. 1 hour, 42 minutes.
2 stars -- Robert W. Butler, McClatchy-Tribune
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Call it a musical with training wheels, call it corny, call it Old-Older-Oldest School - as in Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and "Let's put on a show!" But "High School Musical" makes the journey from The Disney Channel to the big screen with its "Gee whiz" intact. Wholesome, chaste to a fault, with forgettably catchy tunes and crackerjack choreography, the "HSM" virtues and faults are writ large in "High School Musical 3: Senior Year." Parents may appreciate the movie's unspoken put-off-thinking-about-sex and sexuality ethos. If you aren't between the ages of 6 and 14 or don't have kids, you may have trouble getting into that Wildcat spirit. But don't be shocked if "Senior Year" takes you back, just a bit, and makes you wish every high school was a little like East High.
Rated G. 1 hour, 49 minutes.
3 stars out of 5 -- Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune
Pride and Glory
Heading into a screening of "Pride and Glory," a fellow critic remarked the plot sounded suspiciously similar to "We Own the Night," director James Gray's drama from last year about two embattled brothers whose father was a decorated NYPD veteran. "No, in this one, BOTH of the brothers are cops," I replied, only a little facetiously. "So it's completely different." As it turns out, I was right. The plot of "Pride and Glory" does not bear much overt resemblance to "We Own the Night." Instead, it's lifted from pretty much every movie or TV show you've ever seen about police corruption, only not done as well. "Pride and Glory" is appropriately gritty and violent, but director Gavin O'Connor isn't particularly gifted at staging action, and fudges at least one critical scene, forcing the audience to rely on what the characters are saying to figure out what just happened. The actors keep it tolerable, but it's strictly rookie-caliber.
Rated R for vulgar language, violence and gore. 120 minutes.
2 stars out of 4 -- Rene Rodriguez, McClatchy-Tribune
Saw V
The fifth installment of this dependably successful horror franchise continues the story of John Kramer (Tobin Bell), otherwise known as Jigsaw, a cool-headed serial killer who cuts little puzzle-pieces of skin from his victims. Jigsaw prefers to target the guilty (rapists, murderers), though he's more creative. His ritualized killings utilize clever if invariably rusty contraptions made of blades, gears, timers and the like. Wile E. Coyote would be impressed. But Jigsaw also offers his subjects a chance to live if they make a sacrifice - a limb, perhaps - which he calls "rehabilitation." And here is where you, the viewer, get to cash in your free morality voucher. You can rest easy while enjoying the cheap thrill of watching human slaughter because you know these folks are getting what they deserve.
Rated R for extreme gore, violence and profanity. 1 hour, 32 minutes.
11âÑ2 stars out of 4 -- Rafer Guzmðn, McClatchy-Tribune
The Secret Life of Bees
"The Secret Life of Bees" is perfectly calibrated to reduce audiences to blubbering husks. Young Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) is haunted by her past and her part in the death of her mother. The only woman in her life is the housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson). The time is 1964, and the Civil Rights Act has just become law. When Rosaleen's attempt to vote leaves her in a hospital facing criminal charges, Lily decides it's time to hit the road. She springs Rosaleen from the "colored" ward, and the two eventually throw themselves upon the mercy of the Boatwright women. These three sisters live in a garishly painted house and produce honey famed throughout the South. Chief beekeeper is Miss August (Queen Latifah), who has a thing for strays. She gets static for this from Miss June (songstress Alicia Keys), an intellectual beauty with a haughty demeanor. But loving the newcomers is Miss May (Sophie Okonedo), a childlike woman so sensitive she can burst into tears at the death of a butterfly.
Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some violence. 1 hour, 50 minutes.
21âÑ2 stars -- Robert W. Butler, McClatchy-Tribune
Max Payne
"Max Payne" is just a straight-up action picture, and a rather bombastic, familiar one at that. Director John Moore ("Behind Enemy Lines") rips off John Woo with endless, hyperstylized shootouts, all in slow motion with shattered glass showering everything in a million little pieces. That's not all that's coming down, though: It seems to rain or snow constantly in the movie's darkly gothic vision of New York, an attempt at emulating classic noir style that instead feels dreary and smothering.
Rated PG-13 for violence including intense shooting sequences, drug content, some sexuality and brief strong language. 100 minutes.
11âÑ2 stars out of 4 -- Christy Lemire, Associated Press
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Only the meanest of grouches can resist a talking-animal movie. The titular heroine is Chloe (Drew Barrymore), a pooch pampered by her owner Viv (Jamie Lee Curtis). Viv has to travel out of the country on business and entrusts the dog to the care of her niece, Rachel (Piper Perabo). When her friends seduce her into a weekend excursion to Mexico, Rachel takes Chloe along. The sequence is funny, unexpected and imaginative. The rest is merely cute.
Rated PG for some mildly scary moments of dogs in peril. 85 minutes.
2 stars out of 4 -- Rene Rodriguez, McClatchy-Tribune
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