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What Happens in
Vegas
***
(Cameron Diaz,
Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah) After a night of glorious debauchery
in Las Vegas, New Yorkers Jack (Kutcher) and Joy (Diaz) wake up
married and regretful. An annulment seems to be in order, but a
virtuous judge (Dennis Miller) forces them to live together for six
months before splitting the $3 million jackpot they won in Sin City.
It’s a decent romantic comedy with Kutcher and Diaz serviceable as
the leads, but it’s the spirited Rob Corddry (Semi-Pro) as
Jack’s friend who’s so funny that he steals the movie. Rated PG-13.
Then She Found Me ***
(Helen Hunt,
Colin Firth, Bette Midler) Desperate for a child and recently dumped
by her husband (Matthew Broderick), 39-year-old schoolteacher April
(Hunt) rebounds with a single father (Firth) who’s not emotionally
ready. Making April’s life more complex is that her birth mother
(Midler) has found her for the first time and wants a relationship.
Hunt co-wrote, produced and directed the film in addition to playing
the lead, and her efforts have paid off: This is a funny movie
that’s also touchingly sweet without getting too melodramatic. Rated
R.
Fugitive Pieces ***
(Stephen Dillane,
Rosamund Pike, Rade Serbedzija) A writer (Dillane) tries to find
happiness in his wife (Pike) and work while haunted by childhood
memories of the Holocaust. This thoughtful drama is a bit
slow-moving and occasionally veers too far into formulaic “tortured
writer” territory, but as a whole it’s a compelling, nicely acted
film about learning to embrace the present without forgetting the
past. Rated R.
Iron Man ***
(Robert Downey
Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges) Billionaire munitions expert
Tony Stark (Downey) creates an armored suit to fight evil after he’s
kidnapped by terrorists who’ve stolen his weapons. By keeping the
focus on the story and characters rather than visual effects,
director Jon Favreau has crafted a thoughtful movie with a great
performance from
Downey and fun
action sequences. Rated PG-13.
Made of Honor **1/2
(Patrick Dempsey,
Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd) It takes 10 years for playboy Tom
(Dempsey) to realize he’s in love with his female best friend,
Hannah (Monaghan), but when he’s finally ready to tell her, it’s too
late: She’s engaged to a Scotsman (McKidd), and wants Tom to be her
maid of honor. It’s a good 15 minutes too long and not consistently
funny, but Dempsey’s charm and Monaghan’s endearing “girl next door”
qualities make it a pleasant experience. Rated PG-13.
Jellyfish ***
(Sarah Adler, Noa
Knoller, Ma-nenita De Latorre) The lives of three women in Tel Aviv
sporadically intersect as Batya (Adler) takes in an abandoned child,
Keren (Knoller) misses out on a
Caribbean honeymoon after breaking her leg and Joy (De Latorre)
deals with the guilt of leaving her son behind in the
Philippines. All
three women have lost something and long to get it back, and the
theme of desperation and abandonment makes for a touching, poignant
story. Winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
Unrated: Child in peril, adult themes.
Baby Mama **
(Tina Fey, Amy
Poehler, Greg Kinnear) Unable to get pregnant herself, a successful
businesswoman (Fey) hires a ditzy high school dropout (Poehler) to
be a surrogate mother. The crass, unsophisticated and unfunny humor
is far below what we expect from the smart and talented Fey and
Poehler. Rated PG-13.
Young@Heart
****
(Bob Cilman,
Eileen Hall, Fred Knittle) This life-affirming documentary follows a
senior citizens’ chorus in
Northampton,
Mass., as it rehearses for seven weeks for its Alive and Well
concert. Here’s the catch: Although the average age of the group is
80, the 24-member troupe is performing pop songs by James Brown,
Sonic Youth and Cold Play, among others. Both humorous and
heartbreaking, this is a wonderfully endearing, touching film
that’ll make you love life and inspire you in delightful ways you
never thought possible. Rated PG.
88 Minutes **
(Al Pacino,
Alicia Witt, Neal McDonough) A forensics psychiatrist (Pacino)
believes a death row inmate named Jon Forster (McDonough) is making
threatening phone calls telling him he has 88 minutes to live. It
may not seem too dumb at first because it keeps you guessing, but it
doesn’t take long before you stop caring about what happens.
Afterward, as you reflect back, you’ll realize how heinously stupid
and implausible it all was. Rated R.
Forgetting Sarah
Marshall
***
(Jason Segel,
Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis) Devastated after getting dumped by his TV
star girlfriend, Sarah (Bell),
Peter (Segel) decides to vacation in
Hawaii
to get away from it all. The problem is, Sarah is there with her new
boyfriend (Russell Brand), and a series of amusing encounters ensue.
The movie was produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), who seems
to be reinventing immature guy humor one awkward penis joke at a
time. And why not? This movie is darn funny, and is likely to make a
star out of Segel, who also wrote the script. Rated R.
Zombie Strippers ***
(Jenna Jameson,
Robert Englund, Roxy Saint) A government chemo-virus is released in
a small
Nebraska town and infects a local strip club, where the talent
(Jameson, Saint) become “super zombie strippers.” There hasn’t been
a good, campy B-movie in a while, but this horror comedy knows it’s
absurd and has you laughing with it (not at it, and there’s a
big difference) the entire way. Englund (a.k.a. Freddy Krueger) is
hilarious as the strip club owner. It’s a wonderful bad movie. Rated
R.
Priceless ***
(Audrey Tautou,
Gad Elmaleh,
Vernon
Dobtcheff) A pretty gold digger (Tautou) in
France
woos a hotel bellhop (Elmaleh) after mistakenly believing he’s rich.
It’s never plausible, but it is likeable and deserves credit for
going in unexpected directions before its inevitable conclusion.
Rated PG-13.
Street Kings **
(Keanu Reeves,
Forest Whitaker, Terry Crews) A burnt out undercover cop (Reeves)
searches for the murderer of his former partner (Crews) while
internal affairs and other cops track his every move. Reeves gives a
better-than-expected performance in this corrupt-cop LAPD thriller,
but the inane, blatantly racist story isn’t suspenseful or
explicable enough to merit attention. Rated R.
Flawless **
(Demi Moore,
Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson) An American woman (Moore) working for
a male-dominated London diamond company in 1960 plans a heist with a
disgruntled nighttime janitor (Caine). Michael Radford’s (Il
Postino) film about stealing from the largest diamond company in
the world is stunningly lifeless and dull, and you can almost see
the quality in Moore and Caine’s performances getting sucked dry by
the languid pacing. Rated PG-13.
Leatherheads **
(George Clooney,
Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski) It’s 1925 and the first
professional football league is about to fold, but veteran Dodge
Connelly (Clooney) has a plan: Sign the best college player (John
Krasinski) in the nation, and hope that the muckraking reporter (Zellweger)
assigned to get his “true” story doesn’t ruin everything. If this
were a full-fledged homage to the screwball comedies of the ’30s and
’40s, it may have worked, but Clooney (who also directed) appears
caught between creating a throwback comedy and making something that
will appeal to contemporary audiences. Disappointingly, he fails in
both respects. Rated PG-13.
Snow Angels ****
(Kate Beckinsale,
Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano) In a small, unspecified American
town, a single mom (Beckinsale) tries to avoid her unstable
ex-husband (Rockwell) while a teenager (Angarano) finds love (Olivia
Thirlby, Juno) during his parents’ (Jeanetta Arnette and
Griffin Dunne) separation. Writer/director David Gordon Green’s (Undertow)
critical look at American dystopia is one of the best of its kind
since American Beauty, and it features Becksinale in the
performance of her career. Rated R.
CJ7 ***
(Stephen Chow,
Jiao Xu, Kitty Zhang Yugi) A poor young boy (Xu) and his father
(Chow) discover a small alien who makes their lives notably better,
at least temporarily. It’s a cute family film from Hong Kong that
parents will find tolerable and kids will enjoy. However, the film
is in Cantonese with English subtitles, and it may be difficult for
the target audience of young kids to read for 90 minutes. Rated PG.
21 ***
(Jim Sturgess,
Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth) MIT students (Sturgess, Bosworth) spend
their weekends card-counting in Las Vegas under the tutelage of a
math professor named Mickey Rosa (Spacey). There’s never a dull
moment in Vegas, and even the MIT scenes are intriguing as we learn
how they beat the system. It gets silly toward the end, but it’s
always entertaining. Rated PG-13.
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