The Libertine **|There is a willful muck and murk to “The Libertine,” starring Johnny Deep as John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester. But the visual language director Laurence Dunmore uses doesn’t merely evoke the grime of Restoration-period England, it provides an apt metaphor for the movie. Written by Stephen Jeffreys, based on his play, “The Libertine” is a shadowy affair that throws weak light on a little-known historical figure. Rochester may have been a cultural visionary, but the film reduces this notion to a parable of bad-boy celebrity hitched to an uninteresting love story (featuring Samantha Morton as famed actress Elizabeth Barry). Still, in the midst of much mud are two alluring pearls: Depp and John Malkovich as the loose-cannon earl and his on-again, put-off-again patron Charles II.|R|110 minutes|Released today|Lisa Kennedy
Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School **|For the purest pleasure in dance, check out “Madhot Ballroom.” For the rumba remedy to male midlife crises, rent “Shall We Dance” – the Japanese original. As elaborate as writer-director Randall Miller’s “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School” is, it has few new moves. Robert Carlyle plays Frank Keane, a baker and widower who goes on a mission to find a woman named Lisa. He must tell her that her long-ago made date with Steve (John Goodman) won’t be happening. Steve wrecked his car on the way to the rendezvous. It’s his flashbacks that transport the movie to the early 1960s. Frank doesn’t find Lisa, but he does find Marisa Tomei’s Meredith. The film’s a kindhearted affair full of characters in need of repair. But it’s also one dance movie you can sit out.|R|103 minutes|Released today|Lisa Kennedy
Basic Instinct 2 *|Fourteen years ago, Sharon Stone became a star when her character was (or wasn’t) the killer in “Basic Instinct.” Now in a move that speaks to moviedom’s basest instinct, Catherine Tramell is back with a sequel. Ta-ta, San Francisco. Hello, London. Gone is detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) as her lover-nemesis. In his place – but hardly as galling or interesting – is criminal psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey). Tramell still writes crime novels, still partakes in adventurous sex, still has too close a proximity to murdered guys. But the writers forgot to update her story’s sexual politics. Tramell may be a neurotic risk-seeker, but for us, the thrill is long gone.|R|113 minutes|Released July 11|Lisa Kennedy
TV ON DVD
“Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America” |Possibly the most ambitious limited series to be aired by any network this year was the History Channel’s 10-part series focusing on significant but often little known events in the nation’s history. The documentary films range from “Massacre at Mystic,” when tension erupted between English Puritans and the native Pequot in the Connecticut Valley, to the assassination of President McKinley. Others touch on the battle of Antietam, Albert Einstein’s letter urging President Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb and the early Civil Rights Movement. | $39.95 each | Released June 27 | Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press
Why We Fight ** 1/2|Eugene Jarecki has made a slick documentary opposing the current occupation of Iraq, but it doesn’t quite live up to his bold title. Why we as a nation continue to fight wars is a broad question whose answers lie outside attacks on Bush administration policies; too often Jarecki falls back on to standard liberal arguments and images to make scattered points.|PG-13|98 minutes|Released June 27|Michael Booth
