Now Showing - go here for the local movie schedule

Capsule reviews by Thomas Delapa (T.D.) or Ingrid Vogelfanger (I.V.), as indicated.

Abandon. This throwaway thriller accomodates Katie Holmes’ lead actress debut and Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan’s directing debut. Gaghan’s script shows residual talent for detailed, realistic character sketches, but why direct it into a cheesy sell-out-by-numbers thriller? Holmes clings to "Dawson’s Creek" mannerisms as Catherine, a tormented collegiate, leveling Gaghan’s decent script strains. Catherine is supposed to mentally break down while being stalked by missing boyfriend Embry (Charlie Hunnam). An easy film to spoil, because it relies so heavily on those oh-so-inventive plot twists, I will simply say Embry may only be a figment of Catherine’s troubled mind. These Hamlet-style complications go right over Holmes’ head, and get run over completely by the cliche rollercoaster structure and nauseating, shaky camerawork. Abandon this ride in the broken down Hollywood amusement park/career vehicle lot. Rated Pg-13. At Colony Square, FlatIron Crossing, Twin Peaks and UA Village. –IV

Auto Focus. Please see review. At Denver’s Mayan. –TD

The Banger Sisters. Like daughter, like mother? Kate Hudson played a groupie in Almost Famous. Now it’s mom Goldie Hawn’s turn. She’s Suzette, a semi-wilted flowerchild who refuses to act her age. Suzette quits Los Angeles for Phoenix, where she looks up her old "banger sister" Lavinia (Susan Sarandon), who has reinvented herself as an uptight suburban mom. Only Hawn’s bustling energy playing off Sarandon as the prim Vinnie keeps this baby-boomer nostalgia trip from blowing up. It’s a movie of hot flashes, set in a forced story about the need to stay young at heart. Director Bob Dolman includes a magical scene of Hawn and Sarandon letting loose on the dance floor to a Talking Heads song. But it’s still a little embarrassing to watch Hawn strut her bust as if she were still the go-go Goldie on "Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In." With Geoffrey Rush. Rated R. At FlatIron Crossing and Colony Square. –TD

Below. I’ve heard of haunted houses and haunted spaceships, but haunted submarines? Aboard the USS Tiger Shark in 1943, strange things start happening when the crew rescues a British nurse (Olivia Williams) and her patient after her hospital ship is sunk. Director David Twohy makes the most of the claustrophobic settings, utilizing tight close-ups and snappy editing that turn up the pressure. Twohy also successfully solves the age-old problem of how to get a woman into a World War II sub picture. Williams plays off Bruce Greenwood, as the acting commander who may be harboring a secret beneath his spit-and polish shine. As an exercise in confined suspense, Below is above par. It gets torpedoed in the ending, when the wishy-washy secret finally surfaces. Rated R. At Crossroads Commons. –TD

The Bourne Identity. You wake up floating in the Mediterranean, near dead, and you have no idea how you got there. You can’t even remember your own name. Your assignment, should you accept it, is to figure out who the heck you are. Oh yeah, you also must survive a squad of assassins who want to terminate you with extreme prejudice. That, in a nutshell, is the impossible mission facing Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity, a Robert Ludlum adaptation that puts the snap, crackle and pop back into the spy thriller. On paper, this production of Ludlum’s 1980 espionage novel sounds like it would suffer from an Identity crisis. Director Doug Liman’s Swingers and Go were hip comedies from the indie world. And Liman’s star Matt Damon has been on the hunt for a hit ever since Good Will Hunting. Dig deeper into Bourne’s predicament, and you might uncover some intriguing themes on existence and identity that would warm a French existentialist’s heart. For a post-Cold War thriller based on a 20-year-old book, this is one hot movie. At International Film Series. Rated PG-13. At International Film Series. –TD

Brown Sugar. Love blooms from the long-time friendship between a hip-hopping ladies man (Taye Diggs) and a magazine editor (Sanaa Lathan). Rated PG-13. At FlatIron Crossing.

8 Women. Director Francois Ozon gave himself a near-impossisble task: make a modern musical, sung in French, and cast with all women, no less. Of course, it helps when you start with the powerhouse quartet of Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart and Fanny Ardant. Campy and theatrical, 8 Women sets a murder mystery to music, with each of the characters allowed to shine with a pop song. The victim is Marcel, found dead upstairs at his snowbound country house where his wife (Deneuve), sister-in-law (Huppert), mother (Danielle Darrieux), daughters and maids prowl. The fur flies as the women feud and snarl, exposing their secrets and lies. Audiences will likely either love this movie or hate it. Huppert is at her scene-stealing best as the catty spinster Augustine. As much as Ozon pays homage to classic musicals, he can’t resist relying on voguish themes (like lesbianism) and an excess of odd, downbeat scenes on the agonies of amour. Rated R. At Denver’s Chez Artiste and Crossroads Commons. –TD

The Fast Runner. A film experience like no other, but does it achieve epic status? Three hours long and collectively made by a Canadian Inuit crew in the harsh Baffin region, Fast Runner painstakingly brings to life an ancient Inuit legend. It’s the story of Amaqjuaq (Pakkak Innukshuk) and his brother Atannarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq) and their long, simmering feud with Oki, a fellow tribesman (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq) out for vengeance after he loses his betrothed to Atanarjuat. Director Zacharias Kunuk sets out to capture and preserve the old Inuit way of life for posterity, much as Robert Flaherty did in his landmark 1922 documentary, Nanook of the North. The performances are marvelously naturalistic, almost as if the camera disappears. As admirable as this ethnographic testament is, it doesn’t quite justify its length. And though Kunuk’s digital-video images are crisp, they leave one wishing for the vivid hues of film. Unrated. At International Film Series. –TD

Formula 51. Even without the terrible timing, it would still be a bad trip. Ultra-cool Samuel L. Jackson plays a kilt-wearing chemist who’s concocted a drug that’s 51 times more potent than cocaine. That’s makes him a hot property in England, where he goes to sell his services to a mobster. This toxic piece of street junk includes a sultry female sniper (Emily Mortimer), a foul-mouthed thug (Robert Carlyle) and assorted Pulp Fiction/Snatch low-life drek, all vomited together with a hip-hop techno soundtrack. Directed by Ronny Yu. Rated R. At FlatIron Crossing, Colony Square, Crossroads Commons and Twin Peaks. –TD

Igby Goes Down. Do we really need another Culkin in the movies? The short answer is... no. Fraternal kin to Home Alone’s semi-retired Macaulay, Kieran Culkin is the bratty boy hero of a hip, with-it comedy that I could have done without. In this salty satire all the adults are downright rotten and their kids are all screwed up. Culkin plays Igby, one teen who’s fed up with the phony, corrupt world. Igby’s controlling mother (Susan Sarandon) drove Dad (Bill Pullman) into a mental institution. Igby’s brother (Ryan Phillippe) is a preppie who puts manners over morals. Igby flees home for New York City, where his godfather (Jeff Goldblum) has both a wife in the Hamptons and a trophy mistress (Amanda Peet) on the shelf in SoHo. The tone in writer/director Burr Steers’ debut is so cynical that even H.L. Mencken would flinch. Igby is numb to our ugly world, poor kid, and the blame must go to bad parenting. Igby Goes Down? I prefer Down With Igby. With Claire Danes. Rated R. At Denver’s Mayan and Crossroads Commons. –TD

Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. A stir-fried Bible story of Jonah and the whale, starring a basketful of vegetables from the kiddie video series. Dodging God’s command to go to Nineveh, a turban-wearing asparagus named Jonah hops a pirate ship, spends three days in the belly of a whale and ends up in Nineveh anyway. Instructive Bible stories (this one is about mercy and compassion) are a rare sidedish in kiddie flicks, but this tale is so short in seasoning that I doubt kids will eat it up. Rated G. At Colony Square and Twin Peaks. –TD

Knockaround Guys. Benny Chains. Johnny Marbles. Bobby Boulevard. At the very least, the guys in Knockaround Guys have neat names. This generation-gap gangster movie plumbs the plight of Matty Demeret (Barry Pepper), son of Brooklyn crime boss Benny Chains (Dennis Hopper). Matty wants to be a sports agent, but his infamous name haunts him. Like producer Lawrence Bender’s previous Pulp Fiction, this movie rumbles with genre self-consciousness. Life and verisimilitude take a back seat to pose and attitude. Any uniqueness comes from the settings. Leaving the skyscrapers of New York City, the action gallops to the Big Sky Country of Montana. When Knockaround Guys is good, it’s a canny Coen brothers knockoff. When it’s bad (as in the dead ending), it feels like any number of trite Tarantino rip-offs. Rated R. With Vin Diesel and John Malkovich. Rated R. At FlatIron Crossing and Colony Square. –TD

The Lonely Wife [Charulata] (1964). Satyajit Ray’s minutely observed drama of a Bengali domestic triangle is among his finest, and Ray himself called it his favorite. Madhabi Mukherjee is exquisite as the bored wife of a left-wing Calcutta publisher whose desires are awakened by the visit of her husband’s cousin, an aspiring poet (Soumatra Chatterjee). Acting as his own cinematographer, Ray subtlely expresses the wife’s frustrations while reflecting on the role of the middle-class Indian wife. At Boulder Public Library. –TD

Moonlight Mile. You’d think that a drama about the aftermath of a tragic death of a loved one would have a tragic tone. Not so with Mile, which can’t figure out what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a light tragedy? A dark comedy? If writer/director Brad Silberling can’t decide, how’s the audience supposed to know? Even the title–taken from a Rolling Stones song–is opaque. We do know that a young woman named Diana was a bystander who was shot dead inside a restaurant. Her marriage to Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal) was only weeks away. Instead of readying a wedding for their daughter, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and JoJo (Susan Sarandon) prepare for her funeral. From the outset, Moonlight keeps us in the dark. For reasons obscure to me, Gyllenhaal has blossomed into a big-time juvenile lead. OK, his Joe is supposed to be in a funk, but does he have to walk around like he’s been hit on the head with a mallet? With the exception of Holly Hunter as the family’s lawyer, the lead performances are rigidly mannered. As the flustered father, Hoffman is so calculating he might as well be a computer. You wish one of these people would stand up and scream, but it never happens. Rated PG-13. At Arapahoe Village. –TD

Mostly Martha. If only this half-baked German import was more about Martha (Martina Gedeck), a lonely, perfectionist Hamburg chef whose personal life is as bland as baby food. Martha gets a jolt when her sister suddenly dies, orphaning young Lina (Maxime Foerste), who comes to live with Martha in her tiny apartment. Another crisis is simmering at the restaurant, when the owner hires Mario (Sergio Castellito), an eccentric Italian chef, to act as Martha’s assistant. If appetizing on their own terms, these two stories go together like pasta and French fries. You’ll enjoy the tasty restaurant scenes, where you can almost smell the delicacies that Martha and Mario conjure up like culinary alchemists. But their romance feels like it came from a can, including Mario’s sensual wooing of Martha with food. Rated PG. At Crossroads Commons and Denver’s Chez Artiste. –TD

My Big Fat Greek Wedding. When Mrs. Tom Hanks (a.k.a., actress Rita Wilson) saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding on Broadway and asked hubby to produce a pet film version, Hanks made one great decision and one bad one. Hanks wisely asked Nia Vardalos, the writer and star of the hit Broadway play, to write the screenplay and star in the film version instead of the Mrs. Unfortunately, Hanks chose to indulge his old "Bosom Buddies" director, Joel Zwick, as director. As a result this romantic comedy, about a sheltered Greek woman who breaks strict family tradition to marry a W.A.S.P. man, is a mixed bag. On one hand Vardalos is hilarious, commanding and truly touching as her beleagured Toula Portakalos. Vardalos’ unconventional looks, intelligence and winning chemistry with leading man John Corbett make a refreshing Julia Roberts departure for the screwball-comedy bride. On the other hand, Zwick’s sappy sit-com style slaps Vardalos’ labor of love into one laborious convention and cutesy frame after another. Over all, the film ends up breaking even. Wedding is a funny, sweet, decent little piece of Baklava, light and easily consumed. You just get the feeling a robust, outrageous wedding feast should have taken place here. Rated PG. At Crossroads Commons, FlatIron Crossing and Twin Peaks. – IV

Possession. I never read A.S. Byatt’s 1990 romantic mystery on which this film is based, but I have a suspicion that somewhere between book and screen Byatt’s story was repossessed. From the outset, one can’t help asking, "What’s wrong with this picture?" Perhaps the only thing not wrong is resplendent Gwyneth Paltrow, who possesses a face that could launch a thousand ships, or at least a few hundred even on a bad hair day. Director Neil LaBute pairs Paltrow with Aaron Eckhart, and it’s not a match made in heaven. Eckhart plays a scruffy American grad student doing research in stuffy England. Possession is constructed as a mystery, with Paltrow and Eckhart playing detective in the search for lost love letters between a Victorian poet (Jeremy Northam) and his mistress (Jennifer Ehle). Northam and Ehle are so stiff they might as well be posing as statues in the British Museum. Rated PG-13. At Nederland Backdoor Theater. –TD

Red Dragon. The producers of Dragon lined up a classy cast of Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson and Harvey Keitel. At the very least, this reheated Hannibal Lecter prequel proves that Hollywood eats its young and old alike. Ironically, Thomas Harris’ novel has already been made into a motion picture (1986’s Manhunter). But why would anywone want to remake a film that’s only 15 years old? This ain’t Shakespeare, folks. The new face of evil is a disfigured serial killer nicknamed The Tooth Fairy. His nemesis is FBI profiler Will Graham (Norton), called out of retirement after sending Lector to prison. A slice out of Silence of the Lambs, Graham visits Lector to get advice on how to put the bite on the Tooth Fairy. Directed by Brett Ratner. Rated R. At FlatIron Crossing, Colony Square, Twin Peaks and UA Village. –TD

The Ring. Please see review. At FlatIron Crossing, Arapahoe Village, Colony Square and Twin Peaks.

The Royal Tenenbaums. According to the press notes, director Wes Anderson wrote this film specifically for Gene Hackman. It’s a good thing that Hackman accepted, for without his princely performance, Anderson’s urbane comedy might have been a royal letdown. Narrated in storybook fashion, the film tells of the travails of the Tenenbaum family, who in 20 years and three chapters go from fairy tale to disaster. Anderson has a wry, literate view of the universe, and his living tableaux is set in a nostalgic New York City of the imagination. But this colorful pastiche comes bred with its own dysfunctionalism. Anderson has said that he wanted to pay homage to old New Yorker magazine articles that profiled odd Gotham residents. He could use help from its editors in writing a script that actually progressed from beginning to end. With Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow. Rated R. At Boulder Theater. –TD

The Rules of Attraction. Brett Easton Ellis for Gen Y. (Just think of it as American Pie with cocaine, date rape and suicide–instead of pie.) Film adaptations of Ellis novels are historically touch-and-go, and this teen genre foray is no different. A very familiar ensemble of college co-ed stereotypes with very familiar weaved story lines, Attraction simply translates what has become rote territory into Ellis-talk. Screenwriter/director John Avary finds Ellis’ keen insight into jaded amorality with decent precision in his script, but goes off on gimmicky visual tangents directing. This purple visual prose drowns out much of the film’s essential subtlety. The ensemble of young actors are resourceful under the circumstances, and maintain many legitimate moments. Shannyn Sossamon, as the virgin trying to get laid, and Ian Somerholder, as the gay guy trying to get laid, manage particularily well to stretch their limited roles. Rated PG-13. At FlatIron Crossing. –IV

Secretary. Midway between David Lynch land and soft-core S&M lies this kinky comedy, which handcuffs spry newcomer Maggie Gyllenhaal in a seamy role. Gyllenhaal is Lee Holloway, a young woman who finds liberation and lust behind the closed doors of her equally unbalanced boss, lawyer Edward Gray (James Spader). Spader gives Gyllenhaal a hand, usually in the form of a spanking, which for her is better than a long lunch break. You could think of this warped love story as a metaphor for romantic dependency or for work relationships, but that’s giving director Steven Shainberg too much credit. Running the gamut from perky to sulky, Gyllenhaal is a pleasure to watch, even if the sum total of Secretary is a pain. Rated R. At Denver’s Esquire and Crossroads Commons. –TD

Spirited Away. Can the most successful Japanese film of all time find fame and fortune in America? Not if it’s director Hayao Miyazaki’s anime fairy tale, which is equally astounding, overlong and absurd. Astray in a haunted theme park, young Chihiro loses her parents, who are turned into pigs for their gluttony. To get them back, she must go to work in a bathhouse of the spirits, where she meets the kindly Haku, a boy who’s a dragon in disguise. Miyazaki’s wondrous visuals encompass everything from a giant, hook-nosed witch to a sumo radish and a pack of cute cinder critters who work in the bathhouse boiler room. An hour into this nightmarish fairy tale the story gets spirited away, literally going down the drain during a visit by a grotesque slime monster. Rated PG. At Denver’s Mayan and Crossroads Commons. –TD

Stop Making Sense (1984). Jonathan Demme directed one of rock’s best concert films with this clean, unvarnished record of the Talking Heads’ 1983 concert at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater. Accompanied by Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and other members of the band, rubber-necked lead singer David Bryne opens up with an acoustic set, followed by killer renditions of "Psycho Killer," "Life During Wartime," "Burning Down the House" and other Heads hits. Demme smartly keeps the focus camera front and center, and doesn’t pad the 90-minute film with extraneous interviews or flashy camerawork. This is the new digital re-release. At Boulder Theater. –TD

Sweet Home Alabama. Romantic comedy is one genre where predictable conventions will always be perfectly acceptable. Sweet Home Alabama throws on these critically-excused freebies like a worn-out hand-me-down, lacking the rare brilliant writers and actors needed to refashion the form and make it fresh once again. Reese Witherspoon plays Melanie, the bride-to-be lead who must choose Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), her high-society N.Y.C. fiancee, or Jake (Josh Lucas), the secret-Alabama-hometown hubby she left in the past. Revealing a big chink in Witherspoon’s gold-plated persona, the singular, self-advancing front she puts on so well in films like Election is perhaps no front, but a real Achilles heel. This pervasive quality makes Melanie’s transformation into a warm Southern gal feel forged next to the overly convincing icy climber she is at first. The film unravels around her hollow center, but shabby writing, subplot holes and ready-made male leads (unequal to even Witherspoon’s range) leave the film in frayed pieces. It’s the grand romantic comedy once again paraded around as a cheap old rag. Rated PG. At FlatIron Crossing, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. –IV

The Transporter. A professional getaway driver in France puts the pedal to the metal when the daughter of a Chinese crime lord gets kidnapped by a American-trained mercenary. Now say it in French. Rated PG-13. At FlatIron Crossing, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. –TD

Tuck Everlasting. How do you make an everlasting fairy tale? Just watch director Jay Russell, who takes a would-be family flick about a fountain of youth and turns it into The Brothers Karamozov. Fitted with curls and corset, TV’s Alexis Bledel stars as a prim 1910 youth who yearns for adventure in her family’s backyard forest. She finds it when she happens upon a family of four who are cursed with immortality, courtesy of an enchanted spring gurgling out of an old tree. As father Tuck, William Hurt acts like he’s still suffering from his Altered States hangover. The villain of the tale is Ben Kingsley, who desperately wants immortality so he can live long enough to star in Gandhi. With Jonathan Jackson. At Colony Square and UA Village. –TD

The Tuxedo. Don’t try this on for size: Lined with electronic sensors, a military "smart suit" transforms its wearer into a whirling dervish who can both kick like Jackie Chan and dance like James Brown. And who would inherit the suit but Jackie Chan, playing a New York cabbie who stumbles into a foul plot by a madman to poison the world’s water supply. While Chan is still the king of comic kung fu, the bumbling, semi-romantic role fits him like a cheap suit. Chan at least looks dapper, which is more than can be said for underdressed co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt, playing a chemist who becomes Chan’s sidekick. Hewitt’s skimpy acting ability will make you giggle, even when all she has to do is jiggle. Rated PG-13. At FlatIron Crossing, Colony Square and Twin Peaks. –TD

White Oleander. Whatever you do, don’t pick on Oleander by calling it a chick flick. This sad, pungent drama contains some of the best female performances of the year. Based on the novel by Janet Fitch, Oleander bowled me over with its story of the poisonous ties that can bind mothers and daughters. Newcomer Alison Lohman is exceptional as Astrid, a 15-year-old Californian whose mother is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her boyfriend. Turning a new leaf as a mature actress, Michelle Pfeiffer registers the best acting of her career as Ingrid, an artist who seductively controls her daughter from afar. Over the span of five years, Astrid is shuffled from one foster home to another, enduring a journey that would harden any youngster’s heart. So few movies today show the deep, sometimes pernicious influence that mothers have on their children. Director Peter Kosminsky gives us a liberating, post-feminist view of American motherhood. With Renee Zellweger and Robin Wright Penn. At FlatIron Crossing, Basemar Twin and Twin Peaks. –TD

Woman of the Dunes (1964). A Japanese entymologist (Eiji Okada) descends into a seaside sand pit where a widow (Kyoko Kshida) shovels away sand day after day. The next day, the man discovers that he too is a prisoner. From a script by famed novelist Kobo Abe, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s extraordinary, award-winning modern parable digs deep into the ties that hold man and woman together. At International Film Series. –TD

WEEKLY VIDEO PICK