Here are selected minireviews of films in theaters, listed alphabetically. Ratings range from zero to four stars.
“The Break-Up”
UN-ROMANTIC COMEDY|** 1/2|PG-13|
No one will accuse wisecracking Vince Vaughn of being afraid of Virginia Woolf. While “The Break-Up” star, who cowrote the story, hasn’t made a movie as dark as Mike Nichols’ classic, its bickering couple is as loud, and nearly as unpleasant to hang out with, as Taylor and Burton’s boozy battlers. Only Jennifer Aniston’s Brooke and Vaughn’s Gary don’t have any 86-proof excuses for their combustible relationship. Who knew the most anticipated romantic comedy of the summer would turn out to feel like a quasi-documentary? (Albeit with a few tart lines and so gruff fun from Jon Favreau.) The movie doesn’t come with a warning. Perhaps it it should: The filmmakers are not liable for any misunderstandings, parking-lot arguments or ruined dates. (Lisa Kennedy)|105 minutes
“Cars”
ANIMATION|***|G|Pixar is like the most gifted student in a classroom full of talent. Even their weakest effort has a gleam. “Cars” idles at times. And more than any other of the animation studio’s treats, this toon could easily exist in a live-action, albeit lesser, version. Yet the G-rated ride about Lightning McQueen, a cocky race-car who takes a wrong turn into a dusty burg on Route 66 and gets an attitude tune-up, revs in its final laps. And the carbureted citizens of Radiator Springs are a carlot of fun, especially a battered tow truck with an aw-shucks demeanor named Mater (the voice of Larry the Cable Guy). Whatever you do, stay through the closing credits. (Kennedy)|116 minutes
“The Da Vinci Code”
THRILLER|** 1/2|PG-13|Not so dark – or gripping – the con of man, it turns out. Ron Howard’s big-screen version of Dan Brown’s mega-selling thriller isn’t nearly as volatile a cocktail of the sacred and the profane. Brown mixed history with conjecture about the life of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and the founding of the Catholic Church. As Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, Tom Hanks takes too long to deliver the type of performance that makes him such a classic American actor. Audrey Tautou plays French police cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, whose grandfather’s murder sets off the intrigue. Ian McKellen enjoys himself as Sir Leigh Teabing, Holy Grail expert and exquisitely enunciating expositor of way too much backstory. (Kennedy)|148 minutes
“The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift”
ACTION SEQUEL|***|PG-13 |”Tokyo Drift,” directed with revving, swerving awareness by Justin Lin, stars the twangy, appealing Lucas Black as Sean. A wild race in a uninhabited cookie-cutter subdivision gets this rebel without a clean driving record sent to Dad in Japan. There he meets Neela, Twinkie, and Han (played with magnetic calm by Sung Kang). He also makes a nemisis of D.K., reigning king of the drift, the high-speed hard turn made by the timely manipulation of the clutch and the emergency brake. Sounds technical? Nah. What it is really is silly summer fluff with some winking cultural critique topping off its tank. (Kennedy)|105 minutes
“Garfield: A Tail
of Two Kitties”
ANIMATION|* 1/2|PG|”Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties” is the best of movies, it is the worst of movies. More of the worst, though. The title implies a take on Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” but “Kitties” is more akin to Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper,” with the American Garfield journeying to England, where he’s mistaken for a British prince.(By Chris Hewitt, Knight Ridder Newspapers)|75 minutes
“An Inconvenient Truth”
DOCUMENTARY|*** 1/2|PG|Al Gore gives great speech these days, and Davis Guggenheim’s documentary is largely a filming of Gore’s PowerPoint presentation warning of the dangers of global warming. It’s a terrifically effective stand-up routine, but there’s no perspective offered on Saint Al. Has he made any progress convincing people of peril? Does anyone dispute his numbers, or his political approach? The issue cries out for multiple points of view, even if the science is largely undisputed. (Michael Booth)|95 minutes
“Just My Luck”
ROMANTIC COMEDY|** 1/2|PG-13|
Teenage girls will love it, though the parents who have to give them a ride to the mall will be less than enthusiastic about this middling romantic stunt comedy. Lindsay Lohan plays the perfect Manhattan career girl who loses her luck in one kiss to lovable loser Chris Pine. Madcap hijinx ensue, along with a lot of movie clichés. The presence of the real British boy band McFly helps enliven the proceedings. (Booth)|102 minutes
“Keeping Up With the Steins”
COMEDY|***|PG-13|An ethnic comedy about the competitive bar mitzvah circuit in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, this light film cracks a few good jokes and actually makes us care about the neurotic Fiedler family. After the aforementioned Steins set the bar with a “Titanic”-themed bar mitzvah, the Fiedlers have to keep up. Meanwhile dad Fiedler (Jeremy Piven) is struggling to reconcile with a father who abandoned him decades ago (Garry Marshall). Young Ben (Daryl Sabara) tries to negotiate their shouting and run the rite of Jewish manhood his own way. By the end, we’ve learned to like the characters enough to root for them. (Booth)|81 minutes
“The Lake House”
ROMANTIC DRAMA|**|PG-13|Reteaming Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock for the first time since “Speed,” this romantic fable begins when two people living exactly two years apart start communicating by letter. It doesn’t take long for Dr. Kate Forester and Alex Wyler, an architect-developer, to accept that by writing each other they are rewriting the laws of physics. What director Alejandro Agresti doesn’t help his personable leads do is achieve much chemistry. The closer Kate and Alex come to meeting in the same time zone, the more convoluted the movie becomes. Christopher Plummer plays Alex’s formidable father and Shohreh Aghdashloo brings a husky warmth as Kate’s boss. (Kennedy)|93 minutes
“The Lost City”
PERIOD DRAMA|**|R|Andy Garcia stars and takes his first shot at directing, in a labor of love harking to his childhood memories of leaving Cuba in exile. “The Lost City” is an arty, beautiful but politically stilted love poem to old Havana, before Fidel ruined everything. Garcia plays a nightclub owner in conscious imitation of “Casablanca,” trying to stay neutral as revolution approaches. The music and dancing are impeccable, as are the lush tropical shots by cinematographer Manu Kadosh. But the portrayal of the revolutionaries and the reactionary Batista thugs feels retrograde, even for an angry expatriate. (Booth)|143 minutes
“Mission: Impossible III”
ACTION|*** 1/2|PG-13|Maybe they can’t quite humanize Tom Cruise, but they’ve made a good effort to humanize his signature character, Ethan Hunt, for the best of the three “MI” movies. Hunt has a new marriage and a desire to settle down a bit, thwarted by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s attempts to unleash a doomsday machine. Three terrific action sequences and a welcome sense of humor help propel “MI:III” to the top of the spring/summer action heap. (Booth)|125 minutes
“Nacho Libre”
COMEDY|** 1/2|PG|Nacho best effort, Jack Black or director Jared Hess. There seemed to be a great breeding line for this wacky farce, with “Napoleon Dynamite” writer and director Hess teaming with his partner/wife Jerusha, “School of Rock” writer Mike White and the unstoppable Black. But the Hess technique doesn’t translate so well from Idaho to Mexico, and the long, slow pauses between jokes tie this wrestling movie into knots. Black plays a Mexican priest who dons a mask and wrestles anonymously to raise money for his orphanage. (Booth)|91 minutes
“The Omen”
HORROR REMAKE|** 1/2|R|There wasn’t really much excuse to remake the spooky classic from 1976, and they didn’t even bother hiring a new screenwriter. Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles don’t pack the same emotional wallop as Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, but this do-over has its moments. Still, you want to shout at the screen, “Don’t name him Damien! Didn’t you see the first movie?!!” (Booth)|105 minutes
“Over the Hedge”
ANIMATED|*** 1/2|PG|Just when you thought you’ve had enough of cute talking animals, a good story and great comic timing revive the genre. Forest animals are newly hemmed in by a monstrous suburban development and must find new ways to forage for food. Meanwhile, a duplicitous raccoon is duping them into stealing junk food. The set piece with an over-caffeinated squirrel is worth the price of entry. (Booth)|77 minutes
“A Prairie Home Companion”
DRAMEDY|***|PG-13|Welcome to the fictional final night of the decades-old radio broadcast “A Prairie Home Companion.” A Texas conglomerate plans to pave Garrison Keillor’s homespun paradise and put up a parking lot. Joining “PHC” regulars in this sweet, not overly long, goodbye are Johnson sisters Yolanda and Rhonda (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), and cowpoke troubadors Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly). In a wink to the geneaology of Robert Altman flicks, there’s moonlighting detective Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) and a femme fatale in a white trenchcoat played by Virginia Madsen. Altman directs. Keillor, playing a version of himself, wrote this bittersweet trip that mixes mortal melancholy with Midwestern homilies to beguiling effect. (Kennedy)|109 minutes
“RV”
FAMILY COMEDY|** 1/2|PG|Proof that a movie about a family driving an RV across country can feel almost as stifling as actually driving an RV across the country. Robin Williams tries to liven up this family comedy, and it has a few laughs, but the loser-dad jokes get old quickly. And we saw enough RV sewage in “Meet the Fockers,” didn’t we? (Booth)|90 minutes
“Water”
DRAMA|***|PG-13|”Water” reveals the traditional plight of widows in India. Set in British colonial India in 1938, it is as beautiful as it is harrowing, its idyllic setting beside the sacred Ganges River contrasting with the widows’ oppressive existence as outcasts. It begins with a little girl sitting in the prow of a boat ferrying a sick middle-aged man to a doctor in a small Indian city. Once ashore, the man dies, leaving the girl, Chuyia, as his 8-year-old widow. Her parents, with much pain, swiftly deposit her in an ashram for widows, never to see her again. The distraught child’s head is shaved, and she is clad in the white cotton sari that is to be her lifelong uniform. (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times) |117 minutes
“X-Men: The Last Stand”
SUPERHEROES|* 1/2|PG-13|The weakest of the three “X” episodes goes too talky and too silly at the same time. The government offers a “cure” for mutant human genes, and both sides of the “X” battle must choose a future. Promising plot, but tired writing makes it seem like a junior varsity version of the first two. Halle Berry gets a bigger role for Storm, but still can’t carry the action. Ian Mc-
Kellen spends far too much time in his goofy Magneto roller-derby helmet. (Booth)|100 minutes
GIANT SCREEN
“Greece: Secrets of the Past”
IMAX: The story of a 21st-century Greek archaeologist who is uncovering the secret history of his ancient ancestors|$8, $6 ages 3-12 and 65-plus|Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd., 303-322-7009, dmns.org
“The Human Body”
IMAX: A look at the everyday functions that keep us alive|$8, $6 ages 3-12 and 65-plus|Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd., 303-322-7009, dmns.org
“Wired to Win: Surviving
the Tour de France”
IMAX: The true story of two elite cyclists, Australian Baden Cooke and French teammate Jimmy Casper, as they compete in the legendary race|$8, $6 ages 3-12 and 65-plus|Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd., 303-322-7009, dmns.org
Wildlife Experience
IWERKS: The museum presents “Lost Worlds” and “Dolphins” on its 45-by-
60-foot screen|$4.95-$7.95; free 2 and under|10035 S. Peoria St., 720-488-
3300, wildlifeexperience.org|PARKER
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Film on the Rocks 2006
TU|The Denver Film Society presents the annual outdoor film festival continuing with “Animal House.” Live music with two bands and live comedy from ComedyWorks is offered before each film. Gates open at 6 p.m., music begins at 6:30 p.m., movies begin at dusk, approximately 8:45 p.m. $10, $8 in advance, $44 Film Fun Pack|866-464-
2626, redrocksonline.com, denverfilm.org|
MORRISON
Flicks on the ‘Fax Film Series
SA|The movie series offers family films Saturday nights through Aug. 12. The free series continues with “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Films begin at sunset. Blankets and lawn chairs welcome. Refreshments available. No alcohol or dogs. |Fletcher Plaza, 9898 E. Colfax Ave., 303-326-8804, auroragov.org| AURORA
