C ALE N D AR ( COMMUNITY SPORTS ARTS FILM MUSIC) L I S TINGS

D: Marcus Dunstan; with engaging, cohesive narrative that informs but never screened for critics, but that’s not because of its THE COLLECTOR scolds. It even heartbreaks, with explorations of one mindless action and nonsensical plot. It’s because Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke, Madeline Zima, poverty- and diabetes-ravaged family’s struggle to eat G.I. Joe is the kind of movie that bludgeons the Andrea Roth, Juan Fernández, Daniella Alonso, Robert healthfully and another mother’s congressional battle, viewer into submission with its loud and constant Wisdom, Karley Scott Collins. (R, 88 min.) sparked by her son’s death from tainted meat. Food, barrage of sound and fury. Much like the motto of Inc. maintains a nothing-but-the-facts (you supply the the military unit it portrays – “When all else fails, The Collector is the latest tack in the rapidly bleed- indignation) stance until the end, in an unnecessary we don’t” – G.I. Joe is expert at annihilating all resis- ing-out horror subgenre handily labeled “torture porn.” call-to-arms that nudges the film into agitprop terri- tance. (08/14/2009) – Marjorie Baumgarten Stewart plays Arkin, a seemingly nice handyman/loner tory. Frankly, the filmmakers aren’t giving the audience ★ who has been hired as security at a wealthy family’s Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Alamo Drafthouse enough credit: We get it. We are what we eat. And mansion. As it turns out, Arkin is an ex-con – a profes- Village, Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country what we’ve been eating has been engineered, assem- sional burglar – and his estranged wife is desperate Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, bly-lined, and/or brutalized. How’s that for an appetite to pay off some loan sharks. So Arkin opts to burgle Gateway, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North, Westgate suppressant? (06/26/2009) – Kimberley Jones ›the home and retrieve a fist-sized gemstone he knows ★★★★■ is secreted there. The film kicks into Saw-style over- Dobie drive when Arkin discovers he is not alone, and a far THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL worse home invader, the titular Collector, has arrived. FUNNY PEOPLE D: Judd Apatow; with Adam HARD D: Neal Brennan; with Jeremy Piven, Ving Cue the family’s unexpected return, and you have a Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Rhames, James Brolin, David Koechner, Kathryn Hahn, butcher’s dozen of top-notch gore effects, some occa- w Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, Maude Apatow, Iris Jordana Spiro, Ed Helms, Rob Riggle, Alan Thicke, Charles sionally suspenseful cat-and-mousery, and a whole lot Napier, Jonathan Sadowski, Ken Jeong, Craig Robinson, Summerhood of mangled rich people. It’ll probably get your date to Apatow, RZA, Aziz Ansari. (R, 146 min.) crawl into your lap, but The Collector feels like the final, Apatow has successfully built a miniempire on Wendie Malick. (R, 90 min.) Summerhood (2008) D: Jacob Medjuck; with welcome nail in the bizarrely popular torture-porn coffin. dick jokes, but in Funny People, he brings the serious Despite a rotten title and a bottomless reserve Joe Flaherty, Christopher McDonald, Lucian Maisel, (07/31/2009) – Marc Savlov stuff of mortality and human misery to the forefront. of cynical, scattershot humor, The Goods: Live Hard, Reva Timbers; narrated by John Cusack. (NR, 96 min.) ★★■Metropolitan Rogen is Ira, a stand-up comedian struggling with the Sell Hard is a swift-moving, equal-opportunity offender Austin Film Festival. Summer camp is portrayed rigors of the circuit and his own insecurity. Early on, about a team of used-car liquidators hired to save fondly in the funny coming-of-age story about a Ira’s comic hero, George Simmons (Sandler), hires a Temecula, Calif. dealership from bankruptcy with 10-year-old boy who pulls lots of pranks and falls D: Neill Blomkamp; with Sharlto › DISTRICT 9 him to supply jokes, Diet Cokes, and moral support as a Fourth of July weekend blowout sale. Deriving head over heels for the camp’s local beauty. @Alamo Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Vanessa Haywood, much of its energy from Piven’s tightly wound Don Drafthouse Lake Creek, Thursday (8/27), 7:30pm. w George muddles his way through a leukemia diagnosis Eugene Khumbayiwa. (R, 113 min.) and the spiritual crisis it inspires. Apatow takes on Ready, head of the liquidation crew, the film flings District 9 is a wrenching, riveting, occasionally violent, some complicated dynamics that are happily absent about insults and crass jokes with the abandon of often heartbreaking, and, above all, socially conscious of the male rage that marked his earlier works. He’s a more Middle-American-seeming Ari Gold (Piven’s science-fiction film featuring seamlessly integrated CGI rewriting his own songbook here, in the key of James character on Entourage). First-time director Brennan ALIENS IN THE ATTIC D: John Schultz; effects alongside flat-out perfect performances from its L. Brooks, a master at that tricky mix of humor and manages to keep a tight rein on this galloping sprawl, flesh-and-blood actors, and, best of all, it’s a love story. heartfelt. Apatow isn’t quite in his league yet, but a strategy he may have honed as a writer and pro- with Carter Jenkins, Ashley Tisdale, Robert Hoffman, Funny People – sensitive, shaggy, a little bit draggy – ducer of the brilliant but chaotic Chappelle’s Show. Austin Butler, Ashley Boettcher, Kevin Nealon, Andy Richter, Produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Blomkamp, much of District 9 is shot in a documentary, “you are is as much about the maturation of Ira as a performer The film’s tone, however, never fully congeals. The Doris Roberts, Gillian Vigman, Tim Meadows; with the voices here” style, and where you are is Johannesburg, a and George as a man as it is about Apatow’s matura- script can, at times, be a nasty piece of work, and no of J.K. Simmons, Kari Wahlgren, Thomas Haden Church, Josh metropolis over whose skyline hovers a dead alien tion as an artist. (07/31/2009) – Kimberley Jones amount of laughter will fully obscure the gag reflex Peck. (PG, 86 min.) spacecraft of immense proportions. Its crew and occu- ★★★ Alamo Ritz, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Barton that occasionally forms in the back of your throat. pants – thousands of them – have been packed into Creek Square, Movies 8, Gateway, Metropolitan, Westgate (08/14/2009) – Marjorie Baumgarten It’s a sorry state of affairs when even films that the sprawling refugee camp of the title. I’m hesitant to ★★★■Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Barton Creek aren’t remakes of old television series or sci-fi/ say more about the specifics of District 9 because so Square, CM Round Rock, Gateway, Tinseltown North, horror semiclassics still arrive in theatres look- D: Hoyt Yeatman; with Bill Nighy, Will many of this film’s wonders are best experienced first- G-FORCE Tinseltown South, Westgate ing and feeling like remakes. That’s certainly the hand. Suffice it to say that Blomkamp and his entire Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Kelli Garner, Gabriel Casseus, déjà vibe behind this annoying glob of tweens › cast and crew have created an instant genre classic Jack Conley, Tyler Patrick Jones; with the voices of Nicolas vs. aliens piffle. The ramshackle plot lands the that transcends the term “science fiction” and engages HARRY POTTER AND THE Pearsons, an extended Nickelodeon-nuclear fam- Cage, Steve Buscemi, Tracy Morgan, Sam Rockwell, Penélope not only the mind but the heart as well. It’s magnificent. D: David Yates; ily, in a battle for the fate of the Earth when an Cruz, Jon Favreau. (PG, 89 min.) wHALF-BLOOD PRINCE (08/14/2009) – Marc Savlov alien vanguard of four pint-sized BEMs – bug-eyed with Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena ★★★★ The adolescent ticket-taker at the matinee I attend- monsters – lands in the attic of their Maine vaca- Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Alamo Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Drafthouse South, Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar ed told me I have pretty hair, and I nearly fell over – tion home. Unsurprisingly, the adult characters are how often, really, are people kind without provocation? Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, David Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark utterly oblivious to the chaos above them, while A little ashamed, I decided I was going to be a better Thewlis, Warwick Davis, Tom Felton. (PG, 153 min.) the wily teens, tweens, and pretweens rapidly Meadows, Highland, Gateway, Tinseltown North, person, starting right then and there – starting, in fact, adapt and utilize their skills to combat the alien Tinseltown South, Westgate with G-Force, a movie I had an hour before referred to, Yates returns as director after his superlative menace. The real problem with this Aliens encoun- ›sight unseen, as “that goddamn gerbil spy movie.” My Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The opening frames of The Half-Blood Prince further the ter is that it’s patently a Nick at Night midweek (500) DAYS OF SUMMER D: Marc first mistake: G-Force stars guinea pigs. My second movie that inadvertently got greenlighted for a mistake: I should have started this open-hearts policy series’ urgency and panic, but once the students Webb; with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, return for a new term at Hogwarts, it’s business as big-screen opening, ultimately making something w in another 89 minutes, which is how long it takes to like the 1957 B-movie Invasion of the Saucer Men Geoffrey Arend, Matthew Gray Gubler, Chloe Moretz, Clark weather this technically competent if utterly artless usual. Gone is any escalation, the ever-thickening, a vastly more entertaining shot of aliens vs. teens Gregg. (PG-13, 95 min.) family film from überproducer Jerry Bruckheimer. In ever-sickening sense of dread; The Half-Blood Prince hokum. (08/07/2009) – Marc Savlov would rather flush pink with its lovesick teens than “You should know up front: This is not a love story,” its gadget-lust and obvious Transformers envy, G-Force ★★■CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, Southpark (500) Days of Summer’s omniscient narrator warns is as loud and stupid as anything Michael Bay ever Meadows, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North us. The film then lays out the rabbit-hole, pop-cultural cooked up, and its characters’ sketchings are similarly obsessions and core-rocking events that defined the crude. But the real head-stumper is how so much He and She of this un-love story, Tom (Gordon-Levitt) time, effort, and money could be spent in the service BANDSLAM D: Todd Graff; with Gaelan Connell, of something so colossally dumb, vacant, and point- Alyson Michalka, Vanessa Hudgens, Scott Porter, Ryan and Summer (Deschanel). The two meet cute in the w office elevator as Tom blasts the Smiths’ “There Is a less. (07/31/2009) – Kimberley Jones Donowho, Charlie Saxton, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Jo. (PG, 111 min.) Light That Never Goes Out” on his headphones. When ★■Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Will (Connell) is a shy, music-obsessed loner and, Summer sings along, his head nearly spins on its axis Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, in the eyes of his classmates, a loser – but, after and, soon enough, they are off to the races. What Gateway, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North, Westgate arriving at a new school in a new city, he is quickly follows is a 500-day breakup/makeup hamster-wheel latched onto by two very different girls: a former spin of a coupling, told in a teasing, fractured timeline. cheerleader named Charlotte (Michalka), and Sa5m With beautiful performances from Deschanel and the G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (Hudgens), a dry wit smirking her way through the sweetly sincere Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days is a superior D: Stephen Sommers; with Channing Tatum, Sienna high school horrordrome. (“The five is silent,” Sa5m entry in the emerging canon of romantic comedy and Miller, Marlon Wayans, Dennis Quaid, Christopher Eccleston, deadpans.) Both pack some powerful pipes, which proves a funny, seductive, and surprisingly honest Rachel Nichols, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ray Park, Adewale comes in handy for a citywide battle of the bands dramatization of the ways we snooker ourselves into Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Arnold Vosloo, Saïd Taghmaoui, Byung- called Bandslam, the anticipation of which drives the incompatible love. (07/24/2009) – Kimberley Jones hun Lee, Jonathan Pryce. (PG-13, 118 min.) film (which was shot in Central Texas and features ★★★★■Alamo Drafthouse South, Arbor, Barton Creek local bands). Will becomes a sort of benign Svengali, Square, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Dobie The G.I. Joes have come a long way from their Cook County putting together the band I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On, start as all-American Hasbro action figures. They are Cook County (2008) D: David Pomes; with while also fumbling toward a romantic relationship now multinational (as is so much of the box office Anson Mount, Xander Berkeley, Ryan Donowho, Polly with Sa5m. Hudgens and Michalka may be top-billed, FOOD, INC. D: Robert Kenner. (PG, 94 min.) for this type of loud, relatively plotless, CGI-action- Cole. (NR, 93 min.) UT alum Pomes has crafted a but Bandslam belongs to Connell. With the unruly dominated picture) and coed. They also have high darkly beautiful Southern Gothic about the frailty of w Food, Inc. largely forgoes bombast, but you don’t › ’fro and endearing shamblingness of a young Daniel need graphic depictions of a kill floor to get the drift tech armored suits which allow the wearers to run the human heart as well as its muscular powers of Stern, he ably brings to life that rarest of cinematic here, which is, more or less, that the American food faster and jump higher and, generally, be invulner- redemption. When an absentee father returns to his qualities: decency. (08/14/2009) – Kimberley Jones industry is pretty much fucked. One imagines that this able. That’s good, because the elite squad has to do family, he finds a house full of crystal meth addicts ★★★ Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country eye-opening, stomach-queasing doc could have been battle with nanomites, the secret weapon dispatched and must do something about the situation. Writer- Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, artlessly done and still been effective – the informa- by an evil scientist/entrepreneur (Eccleston) that director Pomes will be present for a Q&A following the film. @Dobie, Thursday (8/27), 7:30pm. Gateway, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North, Westgate tion within is that vital – but Kenner has produced an can destroy everything in its path. G.I. Joe was not 68 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E AUGUST 21, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m