_]haj`]n 4 COMMUNITY 4 ARTS 4 FILM 4 MUSIC =hh=^kqpAra GqjcBqDqopha

All About Eve (1950) D: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Kung Fu Hustle (2004) D: Stephen Chow; with with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Chow, Lam Tze-chung, Chan Kwok-kwan, Yuen Qiu, Yuen Holm, Gary Merrill, Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Bates. (R, Wah, Leung Siu-lung. (R, 95 min.) Austin Film Society: 138 min.) Summer Film Classics: Bette’s Centennial. Making the World Laugh – Global Comedy. Chow’s With a stunning 14 Oscar nominations for the cast and chopsocky offering is a manic, hyperentertaining blend of crew, this show-biz classic is as wicked and sophisticat- classic kung-fu tropes, special effects, and outrageous ed as they come. (*) @Paramount, Monday, Wednesday, comedy. (*) @Alamo Drafthouse South, Tuesday, 7pm; $4, 7:15pm. AFS members free.

*SEX AND THE CITY VHS of the film while taking his first-ever steps Tikrit-based Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Phillippe) toward making a friend. He couldn’t have chosen a and the men in his squadron are headed home *THEN SHE FOUND ME D: Michael Patrick King; with Sarah Jessica Parker, worse influence – Lee Carter (Poulter) is a fast-talk- to the Lone Star State (much of the film was D: Helen Hunt; with Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, ing, chipmunk-cheeked pickpocket who’s more or shot in and around Austin, doubling for Brazos), Firth, Matthew Broderick, Ben Shenkman. (R, 100 min.) Jennifer Hudson, Candice Bergen, David Eigenberg, Evan less raising himself. Borrowing a video camera, the following a nasty sniper battle. Stop-lossed Hunt’s debut as a film director makes me Handler, Jason Lewis, Mario Cantone, Willie Garson. two boys, both terribly starved for male affection, almost immediately, King watches his fellow vets glad she found us. This story about a 39-year-old (R, 142 min.) band together to make a homegrown sequel to attempt to drink, drank, and skank their way back woman (played by Hunt) whose biological clock I’m not the first to make the comparison – that First Blood called Son of Rambow. Yes, there’s the to some semblance of what was; King opts out, is ticking loudly and whose life is not turning out the women of Sex and the City make for a special Eighties nostalgia and post-Wes Anderson oddball though, and goes AWOL with Michele (Cornish), as planned is a work of maturity – at least in its kind of superhero in American pop-culture iconog- beats and deadpan timing (fun, if a little indie de the girlfriend of squaddie Shriver (Tatum), hoping humanist perspective, if not always its cinematic raphy. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha rigueur), but the real pleasure of the piece is in its to get to D.C. to plead his case with a potentially scope. The film delivers a nice blend of drama, may be larger than life, their pocketbooks and uncommon, unaffected portrayal of male intimacy. sympathetic senator. The road goes on forever, comedy, and the unknown, in other words, an professional highlights a distant fantasy for most (05/16/2008) – Kimberley Jones but somehow the party never starts. Stop-Loss accurate reflection of life as we live it. Based on a of the fan base, but take away the tights, and ★★★★ Alamo Drafthouse South, Arbor does not deign to do what the audience may novel by Elinor Lipman, Then She Found Me finds they’re muddling through just like the rest of us. expect or want or need; just when it appears just the right tone for detailing its heroine’s prob- Longtime creative force King (who wrote and SPEED RACER cut-and-dried, or locked and, especially, loaded, lems: It’s neither a sob story nor a satire. Hunt’s directed) has crafted a feature that stands on its D: Larry Wachowski, Andy Wachowski; with Emile Hirsch, it turns out Peirce has the goddamn safety on. visual palette often looks as drab as the character own (typically stilettoed) feet, while holding fast to Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, (03/28/2008) – Marc Savlov she plays, but the film’s rhythms are well-tailored the series’ singular mix of the giddily ribald and Matthew Fox, Paulie Litt, Scott Porter, Roger Allam. ★★★ Movies 8 yet pliant. Some may dismiss Then She Found brutally confessional. We pick up several years Me as a mere “women’s film,” but it’s really a (PG, 129 min.) after the series’ finale, and the women, individu- more honest and mature take on sex and the city. Former Matrices Andy and Larry Wachowski THE STRANGERS ally, have undergone seismic change. It goes with- (05/09/2008) – Marjorie Baumgarten populate their shiny, happy, CGI-drenched Hot D: Bryan Bertino; with Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, out saying that any one woman’s triumph or sor- Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis, Glenn ★★★ Arbor row is felt collectively, and keenly. That, of course, Wheels world with living, breathing, identifiably Howerton. (R, 90 min.) has been Sex and the City’s abiding m.o.: that organic actors: Into the Wild’s Hirsch as Speed, a mountainous Goodman as Pops, Oscar-winner First-time writer/director Bertino scares up TYLER PERRY’S MEET THE BROWNS this is a love affair, primarily, between women. D: Tyler Perry; with Tyler Perry, Angela Bassett, David (05/30/2008) – Kimberley Jones Sarandon as Mrs. Racer, a preposterously perky a solid genre success with this debut outing. The Strangers covers familiar horror turf with Mann, Tamela J. Mann, Rick Fox, Lance Gross, Frankie ★★★★ Alamo Ritz, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Ricci as Speed’s best gal Trixie, and so on. But in the supersaturated and breathlessly overdesigned its story about an inexplicable home invasion Faison, Margaret Avery, Jenifer Lewis, Sofía Vergara, Alamo Drafthouse Village, Barton Creek Square, CM unreality of the film, the actors fail to deliver even in the middle of the night, in which masked Irma P. Hall, Chloe Bailey, Mariana Tolbert. Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, a quart of real, nonsynthetic empathy. The outra- human ghoulies torment the baffled young (PG-13, 100 min.) Southpark Meadows, Dobie, Highland, Gateway, geously eye-popping visuals are indeed psyche- lovers, Kristen McKay (Tyler) and James Hoyt You know what you’re signing up for when Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, delic in both flavor and execution (this film owes (Speedman), who reside within. There’s little that attending a “Tyler Perry film”: crass but wholesome Westgate everything to Japanese animé and Timothy Leary distinguishes this movie’s basic plot from scores stories about modern black family life that mesh alike). The Wachowskis’ big, unspoken, vaguely of other fright films over the decades, but The comedy, melodrama, and Christian uplift – and *SON OF RAMBOW transgressive joke is that their Speed Racer Strangers is more effective than most because include his name in the title. Meet the Browns also D: Garth Jennings; with Bill Milner, Will Poulter, Jessica experience is akin to nothing so much as diving of Bertino’s deft manipulation of the storyteller’s highlights another of Perry’s recurrent themes: Hynes, Jules Sitruk, Ed Westwick, Neil Dudgeon. face-first into a rainbow-hued bowl of methamphet- tools. Bertino creates a palpable sense of fear scorn for black men who don’t do right by their (PG-13, 96 min.) amine-laced cinematic Jell-O. It’s a giddy rush for through the shrewd use of sound, imagery, and families and baby mamas. The casting of Bassett A congregant of a strict (and unspecified) reli- a moment or two, but the comedown is long and performance – often using the bare essence or as this film’s lead presents Perry with the best gious sect in early-Eighties England, young Will harsh, and you’ll need one helluva nap afterward. absence of these rudiments to scare up some actor he’s probably ever featured in any of his mov- Proudfoot (Milner) is a runty innocent mourning the (05/09/2008) – Marc Savlov truly visceral viewer responses. Younger viewers ies so far, and although she’s terrific to watch, she sudden death of his father. His only solace lies in ★★■Lakeline, Metropolitan who’ve cut their teeth on the instant horrors of can’t raise Meet the Browns from the doldrums. the outpourings of his imagination. When his pop- modern “torture porn” may find The Strangers The problem with the film is not really the story culture cherry gets popped, he goes straight for the STOP-LOSS slow-going. Yet a film like this may be just the but, rather, the slapdash mechanics of Perry’s sto- deep end, by way of Sylvester Stallone’s jungle war- D: Kimberly Peirce; with Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, bracing corrective the modern horror film needs. rytelling. His visual style aspires to nothing more rior in First Blood. Will stumbles upon a bootlegged Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ciarán Hinds, (05/30/2008) – Marjorie Baumgarten than rudimentary point-and-shoot blocking, and his ★★★ Timothy Olyphant, Victor Rasuk, Rob Brown, Mamie Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill storytelling bounces radically between low comedy Gummer, Josef Sommer, Alex Frost. (R, 112 min.) Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, and high melodrama, while excising any fluidity or Peirce’s second feature (her first was the acco- Highland, Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, plausibility that might bridge the two contrasts. lade-magnet Boys Don’t Cry) opens smack-dab Tinseltown South, Westgate (03/28/2008) – Marjorie Baumgarten in the proverbial fog (or sand, actually) of war. ★★■Movies 8 UNDER THE SAME MOON D: Patricia Riggen; with Kate del Castillo, Eugenio Derbez, Mário Almada, Adrian Alonso, Isaac Bravo, Ernesto D’Alessio, Julie Dove, America Ferrera. (PG-13, 109 min., subtitled) With the right set of eyes, anywhere can be heaven. Take the poor neighborhoods of East Los Angeles, for example: In the mind’s eye of 9-year-old Mexican Carlitos (Alonso), that con- crete jungle of endless strip malls and fast-food restaurants is a wonderland. Four years ago, his mother, Rosario (del Castillo), left him in their small Mexican village to seek work as a domes- “Les Malaventures tic across the border and hasn’t been back since. Carlitos dreams of that Los Angeles barrio de Zut-Alors” the way the Spanish conquistadors dreamed of El Dorado, so he resolves to make the perilous journey across the border and into America to reunite with his mother. As a work of dramatic fiction, Under the Same Moon isn’t anything to ring bells over. Its parallel stories of two lost souls seeking each other across geographical ?nkooejcpdaHejao divides is never more than one small step away from mawkishness and cliché, and oftentimes Crossing the Lines Nueva Onda Movie less. But as a sociological study, it’s fascinating. Night. This month’s program includes episode six (03/21/2008) – Josh Rosenblatt of the MTV show Austin Stories; a short narrative ★★★ Movies 8 by Gabriela Yepes and Ishai Setton called “The Booth”; and two animated shorts, “Sophie’s Story” and “Les Malaventures de Zut-Alors,” by filmmaker Standard Operating Procedure and puppeteer Jeanne Stern, who will be in atten- dance. @Nueva Onda, Wednesday, 8pm.

92 | THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE | JUNE 6, 2008 | austinchronicle.com