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CALENDAR ( COMMUNITY SPORTS ARTS F ILM MUSIC) LIST I N GS the same action from the other’s perspective. Much Machete Premiere of the action is so undramatic as to hardly warrant Machete Premiere (2010) D: Robert a first viewing, let alone a second. Indeed, far more Rodriguez; with Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica interesting than Juli and Bryce’s banal budding love Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, is Reiner and co-scripter Andrew Scheinman’s sensi- Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Shea Whigham, Lindsay tive exploration of how parents shape their children. Lohan, Daryl Sabara. (R, 105 min.) Austin Film (08/06/2010) – Kimberley Jones Society. Rodriguez fleshes out the revenge tale of ★★★■Barton Creek Square, Metropolitan Machete, Trejo’s knife-wielding character from one of the fake trailers in Grindhouse. A host of other top D: Aaron Schneider; with Robert names are along for the ride. See www.austinfilm.org GET LOW w Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Gerald for tickets. @Paramount, Thursday, Sept. 2, 8pm. McRaney, Bill Cobbs. (PG-13, 103 min.) Set in Depression-era backwoods Tennessee, Get Low begins and ends with a crotchety, shotgun-wield- ing misanthrope by the name of Felix Bush. Played ticed by ordinary folk. Then, snotty new-villain-on-the- by Duvall (effortlessly, flawlessly), Bush is the kind of D: Sylvester Stallone; with block Vector (Segel) pulls a stunt that bumps Gru from THE EXPENDABLES mysterious character who makes you wonder: What his No. 1 supervillain ranking. Gru retaliates by plotting Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy next? Next, actually, is the arrangement of his funer- to steal the moon. Part of his plan involves the adop- Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Giselle Itié, Terry Crews, Mickey al. Enter Frank Quinn (Murray), the whiskey-snorting tion of three orphaned sisters (Cosgrove, Gaier, and Rourke. (R, 104 min.) owner of the local funeral parlor. Played with a savvy Fisher), through whose demands for him to accompany Big. Dumb. Fun. That about sums up The sort of gallows humor by Murray, Quinn smells a busi- them to ballet class and read bedtime stories – as well Expendables, which pits Stallone and his team of ness opportunity in Bush’s bizarre request to have West Side Story as some flashbacks that reveal him to be a villain with mercenaries against ex-CIA baddie James Munroe the funeral before he dies, and the two seal the deal. West Side Story (1961) D: Robert Wise, justifiable mommy issues – Gru discovers his sensitive (Roberts) and Generalisimo Garza (Zayas). Ostensibly And then there’s the return to town of the widowed side. Gru’s Minions – yellow, pill-shaped, bespectacled Mattie Darrow (Spacek). Duvall and Spacek give two Jerome Robbins; with Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, hired by Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to take out the George Chakiris, Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn. (NR, beings that gurgle in some sort of fractionally under- general, the Expendables – Lee Christmas (Statham), of their finer performances here, but the film comes standable language – are the movie’s ultimate scene- most to life when the deadpan Murray is onscreen. 151 min.) Summer Film Classics: In Glorious Yin Yang (Li), Gunner Jensen (Lundgren), Toll Road 70mm. It’s Sharks and Jets time when this timeless stealers. (07/09/2010) – Marjorie Baumgarten Get Low is unlike any other film I’ve seen this year. (Couture), Hale Caesar (Crews), and ex-Expendable Leonard Bernstein musical with the Robbins kick- ★★★ This is director Schneider’s debut feature, and it’s a CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Tool (Rourke) – instead find themselves on a mis- steps starts rolling. This Spanish Harlem Romeo Round Rock, Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, sion of love, as Barney Ross (Stallone) has fallen doozy, sweet and strange in equal measure, and just about perfect. (08/13/2010) – Marc Savlov and Juliet tale is one for the ages. @Paramount, Tinseltown South for the general’s daughter. But that’s bullshit: The Thursday (8/26)-Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday, 3pm. Expendables is about explosions, guns, rock & roll, ★★★★■Alamo Drafthouse South, Arbor, Barton Creek motorcycles, and enough splattery testosterone to Square, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS D: Jay Roach; make the Pamplona bulls turn tail and run. Stallone with Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, and Callaham’s script doesn’t set up these charac- Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Punch. (PG-13, 110 min.) ters all that well, but there’s an argument to be made THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH I AM LOVE D: Luca Guadagnino; that it really doesn’t matter who these trigger-happy FIRE D: Daniel Alfredson; with Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, w with Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini, The most memorable, sweet, and absurdly amusing characters in Dinner for Schmucks aren’t even human clowns are, that that isn’t what the film is about. It’s Lena Endre, Sofia Ledarp, Peter Andersson, Georgi Staykov, Yasmine Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono, Diane Fleri, Maria Paiato, Marisa or even, really, characters. They’re dead prop mice: big, it’s loud, it’s dumb, but all things considered, it’s Garbi, Mikael Spreitz. (R, 129 min., subtitled) Berenson, Gabriele Ferzetti. (R, 120 min., subtitled) not completely un-fun. (08/13/2010) – Marc Savlov stuffed, costumed, and posed in tiny, dramatically “Played with fire” may be misleading, playfulness “When I moved to Milan, I stopped being ★★ efficient dioramic re-enactments of famous artworks. Alamo Ritz, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Barton not being one of the leading characteristics of Lisbeth Russian,” explains Emma Recchi, the austere, well- Clueless IRS minion Barry Speck (Carell, rehashing Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Salander, the black-leathered, dragon-tatted, hog-riding heeled wife, mother, and woman at the center of this multiple notes from his comic repertoire), cloaked in a Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, Gateway, hacker – bisexual to boot! Back in her native Sweden, swirling and gorgeous film. “There was too much vintage-ugly windbreaker and a precarious mental state Gold Class, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Salander reconnects with an old flame, Miriam Wu of everything,” she continues, “in the shops, in the that whipsaws from merely disconcerted to overtly Westgate (Garbi), and assiduously avoids her more recent streets. I learned to be Italian.” American ideas of pathological, meets Rudd’s up-and-coming financial paramour, Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist), a journalist at what it means to be “Italian” aside, what Emma wunderkind Tim, who, with his vile boss dangling the Millennium magazine and the series’ co-lead. The learns over the course of I Am Love is how to throw D: Christian Carion; with possibility of major career advancement before him, FAREWELL Girl Who Played With Fire’s chief frustration is in how herself – body, soul, and sanity – upon the unexpect- recruits poor Barry for the titular dinner at which vari- w Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, removed Salander and Blomkvist are from each other: ed breakers of l’amour fou. It is her hope – and ours ous wealthy caricatures meet, dine, and make sport Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Philippe Magnan, Fred Ward, Willem Dafoe, Even as their plots dovetail – Blomkvist’s sex traf- – that this prematurely dour beauty will thus regain of sundry schmucky caricatures. There are inspired David Soul, Niels Arestrup. (NR, 113 min., subtitled) ficking investigation dead-ends in a double homicide, an epicurean measure of the Emma that, presum- gags, to be sure, but they’re few and far between. The This French espionage film, which is loosely and Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon ably, once was and perhaps could still be. It helps preposterously riveting Galifianakis, as one of Barry’s based on little-known historic events, shows us that – the two leads share nary a word. There are no com- tremendously that Emma is played, frighteningly, semi-insane co-workers, is an inspired bit of casting not all spies are the kind of professionals that domi- plaints to be made with the casting; Rapace, espe- fetchingly, by the breathtaking Swinton, who long ago and comedic execution, but really, this repast left me nate our movie images. Some are just regular folk. cially, is dead-on as Salander, who, like some kind of cornered the market on that peculiar mix of ethereal- less than sated. (08/06/2010) – Marc Savlov Set in 1981, Farewell tells a story of the demise hyperjuiced, anti-Energizer bunny, takes a licking and ity and carnal gravitas that no other actor I know of ★★ Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Hill Country of the Cold War between the U.S. and the former keeps on ticking. Too bad this adaptation feels just can touch. (07/02/2010) – Marc Savlov Galleria, Southpark Meadows, Gateway, Gold Class, USSR. Pierre Froment (Canet), a French business- as automatic. (07/16/2010) – Kimberley Jones ★★★★■Arbor Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South man based in Moscow, becomes the unlikely courier ★★★■Arbor of secrets to the West provided to him by Sergei D: Christopher Nolan; with Grigoriev (Kusturica), a disenchanted KGB officer. INCEPTION EAT PRAY LOVE D: Ryan Murphy; with Julia Roberts, w Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom When Carion keeps the focus on the two men, Javier Bardem, Richard Jenkins, James Franco, Billy Crudup, Viola the film retains a human element that is gripping. Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard. Davis, Mike O’Malley, Hadi Subiyanto. (PG-13, 140 min.) Though the characters are indelible and the theme (PG-13, 149 min.) When the script for Eat Pray Love (based on of the lies one tells for the greater good is compel- Inception, Nolan’s first film since the eye-rollingly Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir) landed in ling, this account of history strains when it focuses overpraised The Dark Knight, is a mindbender and Richard Jenkins’ inbox, he must have twinkled at the on the highest corridors of power in Moscow, Paris, surely the most intellectually and viscerally engag- monologue in which his character, Richard from Texas, and Washington, D.C.

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