A Prairie Home Companion special event, May 24 @ the Fountain Theatre

You may not know the name, but you probably know the face. Actor/director L.Q. Jones admits that himself.
A veteran of over 150 films and television shows, including the film version of A Prairie Home Companion, Jones will be the guest of the Mesilla Valley Film Society for a special screening of A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, May 24, at 1.30 at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla. During his long career, Jones has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Sam Peckinpah, and actors such as Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins.
In 1975, he wrote [from a short story by Harlan Ellison] and directed A Boy and His Dog, a futuristic dark comedy, which stars Don Johnson and Jason Robards. The film has become a late night staple on college campuses and at theatres such as the Fountain over the years. As a part of this event, we will be showing A Boy and His Dog on Saturday morning at 11:00 am.
This event will also include a drawing for a pair of tickets to the live version of Prairie Home Companion which will take place in Las Cruces on May 31. These tickets, compliments of KRWG-FM, are valued at $500 and include premium seating and entrance to an after-show party with the cast of the show.
Tickets are $8 for Mesilla Valley Film Society members and $10 for non-members, and are available at the Fountain Theatre, The Bean, and Spirit Winds Gift Source. Ticket holders will also receive a discount at a reception to be held at Vintage Wines, across the street from the Fountain, after the movie. [If there is room, single tickets for A Boy and His Dog, showing at 11:00 AM, will be available for $5 after pass-holders are seated.]
For more information, please call 524-8287.
SCHEDULE FOR SATURDAY, MAY 24
11.00. AM- Screening of L.Q. Jones’ movie, A Boy and His Dog, in 35 MM. Jones will be present for Q & A.
1.30 PM- Introduction of special guest, L.Q. Jones before the screening of Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion.
3.45 PM- [approx]-A conversation with Jones, conducted by MVFS Board Member, Patricia Gonzalez
4.45 PM [approx] Reception for Jones at Vintage Wines, across the street from the Fountain. Save your ticket, it will be worth a discount on a glass of wine compliments of Nicki Wolf.

CineMatinee update

CINEMATINEE- JULY 2008
July 5- 10 Canoes [2006, 92 minutes, not rated, in the Ganalbingu Australian Native language]
July 12- Songcatcher [2000, PG-13, 109 minutes]
July 19- Red Sky at Morning [1971, 112 minutes, rated PG, made in New Mexico]
July 26- The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez [1982, 104 minutes, rated PG, made in New Mexico]

Titles booked for the July/August regular calendar include Young at Heart, Flight of the Red Balloon, Children of Huang Shi, and Redbelt. Also probably have Priceless, a French comedy.
All titles subject to change, especially July 5. I think Lucas' folks were extras in Red Sky. I ran it a few years ago at the museum.
You might want to check the NM Film Office Website in a few days for the winners of this weekends NM Filmmakers Showcase which will screen here in August as a CineM. Might even be one from Las Cruces.

weekend flix 05/16/08

This week's CineMatinee, showing at the Fountain Theatre Saturday at 1:30pm only:

***

May 17- Payday [1972, Rated R, 102 minutes]
A musician finds his life and his career jumping off the rails in this moody, intelligent drama. Maury Dann [Rip Torn] is a singer and songwriter struggling to hold onto his footing as one of the top names in country & western music. This being 1972, long before the Nashville sound had gone "mainstream," Dann has a new Cadillac and a small entourage to show for his efforts, but most of his shows are one-nighters at beer-soaked honky tonks in the Deep South. Onstage Dann comes off as a soft-hearted good ol' boy, but off the stand, Dann is a mean-spirited hell raiser with a nearly unquenchable appetite for booze, pills, and women. Over the course of a seemingly typical day and a half, Dann steals a fan's girlfriend; ditches his longtime mistress, Mayleen; picks up a naïve groupie, and gives her a crash course in life on the road; fires his guitar player [and best friend] and hires a starry-eyed teenager as his replacement; tries to bribe a disc jockey with booze and free records; has a harrowing run-in with his speed-addicted mother; discovers he's missed his son's birthday by four months; and, in cahoots with his manager, Clarence, fast-talks his loyal driver, cook, and gofer, Chicago, into taking a possible murder rap.

While Payday earned excellent reviews [particularly for Rip Torn's superb performance as Maury Dann] and a handful of awards [Daryl Duke's direction won him a citation from the National Association of Film Critics, while Don Carpenter's screenplay received a prize from the Writer's Guild of America], the film's downbeat themes made it a tough sell. However, Payday has gained a cult following, and more than one "outlaw" country star of the 1970s has tried to claim that the film was based on him.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:


Caramel / Director: Nadine Labaki Fr./Lebanon ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 35 minutes
Caramel is a sweet affair, hiding any bitter undertones under a sprightly, glistening exterior. Fresh from commercials and musicvids, novice helmer [and star] Nadine Labaki gathers five women around a Beirut beauty salon to address a range of issues facing Lebanese women -- from extramarital affairs to religious dictates. Layale is at the tail end of an affair, her breaking heart supported by salon colleagues Nisrine and Rima. Latter is awakening to lesbian desires, while Nisrine opts for minor surgery before her wedding so it appears she's still a virgin. Client Jamale can't face aging and seamstress Rose wants to accept love but her elderly, half-crazy sister Lili needs constant attention. Helmer lightly addresses problems of hypocrisy in both Christian and Muslim communities, emphasizing a common female bond beyond beauty treatments. Labaki extracts surprisingly fine, natural perfs from non-pros, often bathed in a golden light in keeping with the title. -- JayWeissberg, Variety.com

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas
Iron Man [see post]
Made of Honor
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Leatherheads [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

Also currently screening in El Paso: Redbelt. Let us know what you think of any of these.

arrested adolescence

With another Adam Sandler comedy arriving in theaters early next month, critic A.O. Scott has written an insightful essay about the prevalence of men who are clinging to boyhood: "It would be hypocritical of me to dismiss the appeal of this fantasy and silly to deny that a lot of these movies manage to be both very funny and disarmingly insightful about the male psyche. But I suspect I’m not alone in growing weary of the relentless contemplation of that psyche in its infantile state, and of the endless celebration of arrested development as a social entitlement."

point of view: "It's Alive!"

Monsters are mashing again in this week's DVD column, reprinted below from the Las Cruces Sun-News.

***

The Host [2006, Magnolia, $19.98], produced in South Korea, proved that the lingering fascination of Godzilla is no freak of nature. Something about large monsters attacking our cities speaks to us.

Director Joon-ho Bong created an international sensation with his vivid, sometimes scary creature who emerges from the Han River to wreak havoc on the people of Seoul. Overtones of political commentary are hard to miss, the creature is created by a U.S. scientist insisting on dumping toxic waste down the drain in a lab.

The movie is uneven, and probably would have worked better at 90 minutes than it does at two hours. Some comic relief is intentional, some seems less so, especially in the dubbed version of The Host.

Homegrown monsters are on the rise as well, and not all them are urban. Director Frank Darabont had adapted two Stephen King movies, The Green Mile [1999] and The Shawshank Redemption [1994], so he was the author’s choice to bring King’s 1980 novella The Mist to the big screen [Genius, $29.95].

The Mist is set in a rural town in Maine, although the film was shot in Louisiana. The mysterious title fog rolls into town one morning, and as a group of towsfolk in the local grocery store gradually discover, the mist contains all sorts of malevolent creatures.

Unlike The Host, The Mist forces us to wait to see what the monsters actually look like, usually fundamental to an effective monster movie. The unseen is scarier, no matter how well designed the monsters are. As is often the case with King stories, human conflict brewing inside the supermarket suggests the source of supernatural troubles outside.

The Mist DVD bonus features include a brief documentary about legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan, upon whom narrator David Drayton [Thomas Jane] is based. Struzan’s images are part of our collective subconscious even if we don’t realize it. Darabont collaborated with special effects studio CaféFX, on the recommendation of Guillermo del Toro, who worked with them on Pan’s Labyrinth [2006].

What distinguishes "The Mist" from most studio productions, whether monster movies or not, is the conclusion. The Hollywood temptation to create a happy ending is resolutely avoided, in favor of an epilogue worthy of the darkest films of the golden age of American horror movies in the 1970s.

Still, the pleasures of The Mist are familiar. More influenced by The Blair Witch Project [1999] and the rise of YouTube is Cloverfield [Paramount, $29.99], a first-person video account of New York City attacked by a huge monster of unknown origin.

More than most recent movies, Cloverfield probably breaks down along generational lines. Post-boomers, accustomed to hand-held camerawork and the relatively chaotic media world in which anyone with a camcorder might get their footage on the evening news, don’t seem to feel queasy or disoriented by this visual style or narrative structure.

Between them, screenwriter Drew Goddard, director Matt Reeves, and producer J.J. Abrams have worked on the television series Lost, Alias, Felicity, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Viewers who have never found anything to like about any of these shows will probably not think much of Cloverfield.

The movie has intelligence about it, and its unique pre-release campaign helped it gross nearly $200 million by the time of the home video release last month. Discussions of sequels are reportedly proceeding, including the clever possibility of the same evening filmed by other NYC residents.

Trouble is, for all its visual style, Cloverfield is most reminiscent of home videos shot in New York on 9/11/01. With that infamous day as an undeniable reference point, the filmmakers should have set their sights higher thematically, rather than simply creating a thrill-ride with real-world menace looming off-screen.

Grand Theft Auto 4

Games have become increasingly cinematic, and the long-awaited update of one of the most visually and narratively addictive has arrived. For a knowledgeable review, see The Onion's A.V. Club, which gave the new version an A. For some social science theory about the function of narrative in first-person shooter games, see the scholarly article coauthored by my friend and colleague Sam Bradley.

point of view: Christopher Nolan revives Batman

This week's DVD column from the Las Cruces Sun-News is reprinted below.

***

The summer of 2008 is off to a promising start with director Jon Favreau’s subtle and entertaining Iron Man, and the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer opens this weekend.

The biggest buzz has been generated by The Dark Knight, due in theaters July 18th, largely because it will feature one of the late Heath Ledger’s final roles as Batman’s nemesis The Joker. It’s already clear from photos of Ledger’s makeup that this will not be Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

Director Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the Batman franchise with 2005’s Batman Begins [Warner, $19.98], wisely abandoning the four big-budget movies released between 1989 and 1997. While Tim Burton’s first adaptation brought a moody, gothic visual style to the familiar tale, the franchise rapidly lost steam and went through almost one lead actor per movie [Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, then George Clooney].

Nolan co-wrote the screenplay for Batman Begins with David S. Goyer [Blade], based on the DC Comics character created by Bob Kane in 1939. Nolan’s sensibility also shows the clear influence of Frank Miller [300, Sin City], especially Miller’s dark Batman graphic novels.

As with many first entries in superhero franchises, Batman Begins spends much of its time explicating the backstory, and these sequences are somewhat predictable, if necessary. As Bruce Wayne’s would-be mentor, Henri Ducard [Liam Neeson] tells him early on, "Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you."

One thing distinguishing Batman Begins from the earlier movies a sronger cast, led by Christian Bale, appropriately earnest and buff as our hero. Gary Oldman as not-yet-Commisioner Gordon, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, and Morgan Freeman all do their part, and Cillian Murphy is a thoroughly creepy dealer of bad trips.

Michael Caine as ever-faithful butler, Alfred, is too perfect for words. Twice in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne marvels at Alfred still not having lost faith in him. "Nevah," Caine replies with a knowing, loving smile. Alfred also provides some welcome comic relief to the movie’s tone.

Less effective is Wayne love interest Rachel Dawes, played by Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, but by Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight. The first film’s resolution of the obligatory love story leaves a lot to be desired, even by comic-book-movie standards. Iron Man is both sexier and more romantic.

The gadgets have improved without resorting to the Bat shark-repellant camp of the 1960s tv series, and, unlike Batman and Robin [1997], the new Batsuit thankfully does not include Batnipples. One of Nolan’s characteristics is an aversion to CGI effects, he prefers stunts and real explosions.

Christopher Nolan began making movies as a kid, and released his first feature in 1998 [Following, Sony, $9.95] before he was 30. Memento [2000, Sony, $14.94], Nolan’s second film, remains one of the most unique and important movies of the past decade. Then came Insomnia [2002, Warner, $14.96] and, more recently, The Prestige [2006, Buena Vista/Touchstone, $29.99], artsy studio productions which were better than average, but did not live up to his sophomore effort.

There is no doubt that someone of Nolan’s ability and intelligence can bring sparks of originality to superhero blockbusters, and it’s a good sign that The Dark Knight was co-written by his brother Jonathan [as was Memento]. What remains to be seen is whether this young talent will return to lower-budget, edgier films which play to his strengths between chapters of his Batman franchise.

weekend flix 05/09/08

Almost Midnight series, Friday at 9:45pm only:
Pee Wee's Big Adventure [Tim Burton, 1985].

***

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30 pm only:

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid [1973, 122 minutes-director’s cut, rated R & featuring live music by James Michael before the screening, beginning at approximately 1 PM]

Mr. Garrett was killed 100 years ago this year, and to denote that very historic local event, we offer a special screening of this film, directed by Sam Peckinpah [The Wild Bunch].

A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Peckinpah’s final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid [Kris Kristofferson] ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett [James Coburn] to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident Alias [Bob Dylan] to join him, the governor and cattle baron John Chisum requisition Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can, Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own Faustian pact with progress.

With a script by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Peckinpah uses the historical basis of Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently, as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both Pat and Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar Western players like Jack Elam, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, and Katy Jurado, Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch [1969] invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of Kristofferson and Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present. Also like The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of Garrett's fate, have since been restored to this pristine DVD version. In this director's cut, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of Peckinpah’s most beautiful and complex films, killing the Western myth even as he salutes it.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

The Counterfeiters [Fälscher, Die]
Director: Stefan RuzowitskyAus./Ger. ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 39 minutes
Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky explores the moral corrosion of Nazi complicity with this tightly wound adaptation of Adolf Burger's factbased book The Devil's Workshop. Salomon Sorowitsch [Karl Markovics] may be a talented artist at heart, but his desire for wealth has driven him to use his creativity for more nefarious means. Arrested by the police inspector Herzog [Devid Striesow] at the onset of World War II, Sorowitsch is sent to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp. It's not long before Salomon's thinly veiled opportunism earns him a relatively comfortable position as the camp's resident sketch artist, and five years later he is mysteriously swept away to Sachsenhausen. Upon arriving at the camp, Sorowitsch discovers that Herzog, now a commandant, is attempting to destabilize the economies of the Allies while simultaneously funding the Nazi war machine by assembling a special team of counterfeit artists to create millions in fraudulent pounds and dollars. As the operation gets under way, Sorowitsch finds the efforts of the team continually undermined by unyieldingly idealistic collotype specialist Adolf Burger [August Diehl]. In the months that follow, the team wrestles with their consciences as Axis forces are gradually overwhelmed by Allied might.
--All Movie Guide 2007 Oscar winner.
In German w/English subtitles

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas
Iron Man [see post]
Made of Honor
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Street Kings
Nim's Island
Leatherheads [see post]
21 [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

***

As always, dear readers, feel free to let us know what you think of any of these.

current: Leatherheads [65/100]

Really nice try, but not quite. Director George Clooney [Good Night and Good Luck, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind], directing a first screenplay by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, almost pulls off a recreation of classical Hollywood screwball romantic comedies. Certainly, the story of professional football’s early days is a neglected one worth telling, and Leatherheads is well served by a strong cast including Clooney [unabashedly channeling Cary Grant], Renée Zellweger [channeling Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday], and John Krasinski [The Office], who is bound to wind up a movie star once the dust settles. Clooney and Zellweger have some serious old-fashioned chemistry, and the football action is funny and generally effective. What exactly is missing I’m not sure, a weak epilogue doesn’t help much, but more than anything what seems to haunt Leatherheads is that it is so not of our time. This is intentional, I realize, but somehow this charming, well-told tale just feels too antique to be on a big screen. I hope home video will be kinder to it, it’s a thoroughly likeable movie.

guest columnist Lucas Peerman at the movies

Been to a movie lately? I haven’t. The last movie I saw on the big screen was Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show [which certainly wasn’t worth the $7.50 entrance fee] way back at the beginning of February. It’s not that the movies coming out haven’t piqued my interest, but it seems that I just don’t have the patience to spend two hours in a dark, crowded theater with hundreds of my non-closest friends.

I suppose the high cost of concessions, sticky floors, teenagers making out in front of me and dimwits laughing at the most unfunny of jokes all curb the wonderful experience of being informed, inspired and enlightened by a great movie in a large theater and the sensory overload that comes with it.

Jurassic Park [1993], Matrix [1999] and Beowulf [2007] in 3D in Tinseltown are probably my three most memorable theater-going experiences. All of them pushed the envelope with special effects and transported me into a another realm — away from the annoyances of the theater that interrupt most viewings.

With today's advances in big-screen televisions and state of the art audio systems, why not just take off your shoes, lay down in the sofa, set the thermostat, turn off the cell phone, put a 25-cent bag of popcorn in the microwave, pop open a cold one and watch a good flick at home? Sure, you might be Johnny-come-lately to the office movie discussions, but isn’t that a small price to pay for hours of stress-free movie viewing?

I’ve heard Iron Man is worth putting up with the frustrations of theater. There’s also quite a few summer titles — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-E and Pineapple Express — that might suck me into a moderately uncomfortable chair for two hours. But, for the most part, I think the only Blockbuster I’ll be checking out is the one with the blue and yellow sign.

I’d be interested to know if how my fellow Pulse readers feel about this subject. Chime in at the Pulse movie blog at http://blogspot.flixview.com.

survey says...

Working on this week's column about director Christopher Nolan, and I'm curious what FlixView readers think:

Christopher Nolan began his directing career with Following [1998] and Memento [2000], both intense, low-budget indie gems. Since then, he has directed Insomnia [2002], Batman Begins [2005], and The Prestige [2006], plus this summer's The Dark Knight, due in theaters in July.

Has Nolan sold out to big-budget Hollywood? I have friends on both sides of this debate, and am trying to decide as you read this. Open to comments, emails, opinions -- what do you think?

intended to disturb

The hipster film geeks at The A.V. Club have done it again. Their latest feature, 17 Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs, includes old-timers like Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, and John Waters, plus some younger troublemakers you may not have heard of before.

Jeff Berg: how Fountain films are chosen

So, how come some films make it to Las Cruces, while others do not? Here is a brief primer on how the films that are selected by the Mesilla Valley Film Society (MVFS) for screening at the Fountain Theatre works.

For those who don't already know, the MVFS is run entirely by volunteers, other than the head projectionist and the cleaning person. Both are gods and deserve much more than they are paid, but since the MVFS is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit, pennies are pinched, expenses being monitored by the board member who has also been the treasurer for many years.

The current board of directors number 7, five of whom take an interest in programming films. Prior to the once a month meeting, and with various degrees of interest or dedication, these folks comb through various publications and Websites, cherry-picking films that are put on a list for consideration for booking. Most of the films selected are those that play in similar programming venues such as New York's Film Forum, and of course are booked weeks, if not months later.

That is in part because many distributors are not too interested in a 100 seat venue in Las Cruces, NM. Some distributors, such as Sony Pictures Classics, IFC, Shadow, Rialto, and Monterey Media are all too happy to work with the MVFS head programmer, and offer films as early as possible, along with promotional items, which are often hard to get. That being because many times the films are near the end of their theatrical runs, and are about to go on DVD, hence posters and such may be gone or hard to get. Other distributors such as Weinstein and Paramount Vantage act like big babies about the whole thing.

Some titles are rejected because of cost, but not many. Other titles, if made available, are pretty much 'automatically' scheduled, such as English comedies that are not picked up by Allen Theatres. Increased competition is expected when Allen opens 6 new screens later this year, and in the El Paso market, which is a huge draw for the MVFS & has also changed recently, since Century Cinemas has dedicated a screen to full time showings of Fountain type films, with its CineArts 'arm'. The new Premiere theatres have brought real competition to town, thus the change in strategy.

Who would have thought that Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park would have ever played in El Paso [still there, limited screenings, go see it before it disappears... best film I have seen this year]. Although a film being booked in EP does not disqualify it from a Las Cruces booking by the MVFS, it does play a part, especially if the film plays for several weeks. DVD release dates also play a huge role, especially for 'mainstream' indies, which will have a lot of DVD copies sitting on local video store shelves.

The MVFS does not have the luxury of selecting films week to week, since the theatre is called a 'calendar house', hence MVFS has to book two months at a time. As an example, the newly released and very fun documentary, Young at Heart is just now making it into corpulent corporate theatres across the country, and the MVFS is strongly considering it for its July/August calendar, which is now being scheduled.

Hence, only 7 current films can be booked for each calendar. There has been some strong debate among programming committee members about dropping the 'classic' film that is booked for each calendar, since most times they are a poor draw, and could easily be replaced by a newer film that has more appeal to the local audience.

Another tool is film festivals. Several committee members attend one or more festivals a year [at their own expense for the most part] to see what is coming up and where it is coming from. A common resource is the Telluride Film Festival, which takes place each Labor Day weekend. The Denver and Santa Fe festivals have also become valuable resources.

The Saturday CineMatinee series is a 'one man show' for the most part, except for occasional suggestions [suggestions are always welcomed by the MVFS, but please note that horror, MOST Japanese anime, and of course big budget films are usually not even considered]. There is a suggestion box at the theatre or you can leave a message at 524-8287. Also a good idea to check whether a particular film has a USA distributor, which you can look up at http://www.imdb.com/ -company credits before going to any trouble. CineMatinee concentrates on films with a New Mexico connection or those that fit 'the movies that missed us' category. Rarely are recent films shown as part of CineMatinee. It is an educational program designed to show films that are worth digging around for or titles that are terrific pictures that never got a fair shake.

There of course if much more to this, but this is a general overview. Time and space generosity of Kent may allow for Part II later on.

Trivia question: without looking it up... name two feature films that were shot in Hillsboro, NM, 40 miles or so from Lost Causes.... err Las Cruces.

current: Iron Man [90/100]

Movies start with ideas, which are shaped into screenplays. That the latest comic-book-turned-into-summer-blockbuster has eight credited screenwriters is usually a kiss of death. But four of these [Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby] were the creators of Marvel Comics' Iron Man in the early 1960s, and two of the others collaborated on adapting P.D. James' Children of Men to the screen two years ago, so it seems for once there weren't too many cooks in this kitchen.

Credit largely goes to director Jon Favreau [Swingers, Elf], who has brought his light, witty, hipster touch to the superhero summer blockbuster genre without seemingly missing a beat.

Helping Favreau keep Iron Man from being another dull special effects overdose is a really good cast, none of whom phoned in their performances. Robert Downey Jr. especially demonstrates how well an unpredictable choice for playing a superhero can pay off. Downey's own painfully public struggles may have helped him channel the role of Tony Stark, genius millionaire playboy arms-dealer turned genius millionaire do-gooder. Downey's abilities have never been in doubt [watch 1992's Chaplin again if you're not sure], and now that the actor has cleaned up his act and gotten down to business, it's a win-win scenario for everyone.

Gwyneth Paltrow's heels and curls work, but her wit and depth bring much more to Stark's girl Friday, Pepper Potts, than summer moviegoers might reasonably expect. Early in the film, when Tony's latest one-night stand disses Pepper's role in his life, Paltrow offers the woman a chauffered ride and the observation, "Sometimes, I even take out the trash." Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges also bring a lot to this party, Bridges in particular plays against his stereotypical roles to unsettling effect.

The summer of 2008 is off to a good start. As a friend and colleague said to me, comic books are our mythology. When they are done right, as in Iron Man, it's deeply exhilarating. Down to the last line of dialogue and opening chords of Black Sabbath's classic song, this blockbuster delivers all it promises and more, at a brisk but not headache-inducing pace. The effects serve the story and characters here, for a change, and the prospect of a future franchise is for once, as Nathan Rubin wrote in The Onion's A.V. Club, "a promise instead of a threat."

Post Script: Exceptionally good interview with Robert Downey Jr. about this role and his own life by David Carr for The New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html.

weekend flix 5/2/08

Just saw Iron Man, believe the hype, full post tomorrow. Meantime, here's what's playing:

***

Fountain Theatre evening feature, Fri-Thurs at 7:30pm and Sun at 2:30pm:

In Bruges Director: Martin McDonagh, UK/Bel. ~ 2008 ~ 1 hour 47 minutes

Ray [Colin Farrell] and Ken [Brendon Gleeson] have arrived at a charming little bed and breakfast in Bruges. Ray is all twitches and elbows, supremely uncomfortable in this village that's the definition of ''quaint,'' continually nonplussed by the jaw-dropping architectural beauty on display everywhere he looks. Ken is the more seasoned of the two, a hulking and squash-faced type who is endlessly enthralled by everything he sees, dragging Ray along on tourist outings like they were an old married couple.

There is quite a bit more to In Bruges than these hitmen nattering on about the town and their comic interactions with locals, ranging from charming drug dealers to a dwarf American actor, and it's in Ray's occasional bursts of frightful sadness that it starts to come out. McDonagh starts teasing away the layers to the characters' pasts, the real reasons why they've come to Bruges, and the judgment that awaits when they receive a phone call from their boss, Harry. The whole thing is a masterfully handled act of suspense, and one that the film manages with even more surprise since most viewers are going to be busy enough enjoying the banter between Ray and Ken that they won't even notice the story's pitch-black underpinnings until they've already been enveloped by the entire film. - Chris Barsanti, Reel.com

***

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

Santitos [2000, rated R, 100 minutes, in Spanish w/subtitles] A holy innocent walks through the halls of sin driven by foggy logic and the faith of a saint in Santitos, a hilarious Mexican comedy of Catholicism, religious visions and wrestling stars.

"Thank goodness I forgot the Easy-Off," she declares when St. Jude appears in her oven to inform her that her deceased daughter is actually alive.

Following vague clues about "La Casa Rosa" [the pink house], she embarks on a journey that takes her through a series of brothels [graduating from housekeeper to star attraction], through Tijuana to America, and into a coin-operated sex club in the very jaws of sin in Los Angeles.

Alejandro Springall's cheerfully absurd odyssey, produced by filmmaker John Sayles, stays just this side of lampooning the veneration of saints and heeding the call of questionable visions. Esperanza keeps up a one-sided conversation up with the Lord and phones home juicy confessions to her soap-opera addicted priest, who is skeptical but riveted as her stories become more outrageous than his favorite show.

It's remarkably bright, funny and sweet for a film that wades through so much sleaze, as Esperanza follows her visions.

The innocent energy of Heredia's spirited performance keeps the film from sinking into a morass of sleaze especially after Esperanza soon gets her own guardian angel -- a sweet, seductive masked Mexican wrestler named the Angel of Justice.

Springall's greatest achievement in Santitos is carving out a colorful world where every dark corner is brightened by Esperanza's spiritual cleansings. Like a naive, madcap modern saint blowing a fresh breeze through halls stale with sin, her faith and charity keeps her innocent through her trials.

Screening before Santitos will be the 10 minute short film, The Tehuacan Project, a narrative documentary about Lucia and Jesus, both deaf from childhood disease, who find their way to Tehuacan, Mexico, in hopes of finding a cure at Mexico’s first school for the deaf. Narrated by Adrien Brody. Executive producer is Brad Pitt.

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

Iron Man
Made of Honor
Deception
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
88 Minutes
Street Kings
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21 [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

Also currently showing in El Paso: Diary of the Dead, Snow Angels, and Paranoid Park.

Comments on these or any other movies always welcome, let us know what you think.

Prairie Home Companion Event at the Fountain Theatre

To help celebrate the arrival of Garrison Keillor and the cast and crew of A Prairie Home Companion, the long running NPR radio show, to Las Cruces on May 31, the Mesilla Valley Film Society will present a special screening of the Robert Altman movie about the show at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla, on Saturday, May 24, beginning at 1.30 PM.

Our special guest will be actor/director L.Q. Jones, one of the co-stars of the film, who has also appeared in over 100 other film and television productions, and has worked with everyone from Antonia Banderas to Martin Scorcese.

In addition to Mr. Jones appearance, KRWG radio will be giving away a pair of tickets to the May 31 show, which includes backstage passes and a reception with the cast of the show. Value of these tickets is $500.

A reception will take place at Vintage Wines, who will offer a discount on glasses of wine. The new shop is located directly across the street from the Fountain Theatre, and an additional activity with Mr. Jones will also be announced soon.

Tickets for this event will be $8 for Mesilla Valley Film Society members and $10 for non-members, and will be available at the theatre box office, Spirit Winds Coffee Bar and Gift Source, and at The Bean Coffee House in Mesilla.

Please note that the limited seating capacity of the theatre means that ticket sales will be limited to approximately 100. No reserved seats or tickets, sorry! For more information, please leave a message at 575 524 8287.

point of view: two Hollywood veterans who won't quit

This week's DVD column, revised and reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times:

***

According to current Social Security guidelines, "full retirement age" is now 67. But don’t tell Mike Nichols, now in his mid-70s, or Sidney Lumet, now 83, because these highly respected directors have both just released new movies on DVD.

Nichols won acclaim early in his career for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [1966] and The Graduate [1967], later directed Silkwood [1983] and Primary Colors [1998], and, more recently, adapted the exceptional HBO productions of Wit [2001] and Angels in America [2003].

Working with producer/actor Tom Hanks and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin [The West Wing], Nichols adapted Goerge Crile’s nonfiction book, Charlie Wilson’s War [Universal, $29.98].

Charlie Wilson [Hanks] was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from the second Texas Congressional District near Houston from the early 1970s until 1996. As the DVD bonus documentaries make clear, Wilson is still quick to acknowledge his reputation for womanizing and ethically dubious behavior.

But Wilson became a Congressional champion of the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, partly due to his involvement with conservative Houston socialite Joanne Herring [Julia Roberts] and C.I.A. renegade Gust Avrakotos [Philip Seymour Hoffman].

As scriptwriter Sorkin explains, "They were successful, the Afghans beat the Soviets, the only time the Red Army had ever been defeated. And, in so doing, that was the first domino that fell in the end of the Soviet Union, and the end of Communism, and the end of the Cold War."

Hoffman describes the film’s ironic view of its three main characters: "Their liabilities as people actually become their assets." That is where Nichols’ direction and Sorkin’s script are most effective.

Avrakotos was an outsider in the C.I.A. of the 1980’s, not from the familiar Ivy League network, and Hoffman is an absolute force of nature in this role. In the Congressman’s Capitol Hill office, Wilson tells Avrakotos, "You ain’t James Bond."

"Well, you ain’t Thomas Jefferson, so let’s call it even," Gust replies. This is Nichols and Sorkin and their cast at the top of their game.

What is lacking in Charlie Wilson’s War is an accounting of the power vacuum created in Afghanistan in the 1990s as a direct result of all we see on screen. Author Crile has written, "By the end of 1993, in Afghanistan itself there were no roads, no schools, just a destroyed country – and the United States was washing its hands of any responsibility." Crile and others have argued this was the vacuum filled by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, and this critical epilogue is sadly missing from Nichols’ film.

Sidney Lumet’s career as a film director is even more distinguished than Mike Nichols’: 12 Angry Men [1957], Fail-Safe [1964], Serpico [1973], Dog Day Afternoon [1975], Network [1976], Prince of the City [1991], and The Verdict [1992] are among his dozens of films, and he is reportedly in production on his next, Getting Out.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that, like Nichols, Lumet cast Philip Seymour Hoffman in a leading role in Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead [ThinkFilm, $27.98]. Hoffman plays Andy Hanson, the older, bullying brother of Hank [Ethan Hawke], who convinces his sibling to participate in a scheme to rob their parents’ suburban jewelry store.

If this sounds ethically ugly, it is, a sure sign that Lumet has not lost his edge. If you have ever seen a Sidney Lumet film, you know before watching it that nothing goes according to plan.

What is a surprise is Marisa Tomei’s gutsy, explicit performance as Andy’s wife, Gina. Albert Finney, as Andy and Hank’s father, demonstrates that he’s no closer to done working than director Lumet.

Fair warning, even though the title comes from a beloved Irish blessing ["May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead"], this is a nasty film. Utterly brilliant, a painfully honest portrait of all the loyalties that can be lost in an amoral society, but not easy viewing.

One might think a younger director brought such a cynical view of declining morality to the screen, courtesy of first-time original screenplay author Kelly Masterson. Shooting in high-definition video, Sidney Lumet proves you’re only as old as your latest work.

more summer reading

The A.V. Club's Summer Movie Preview, optimistically entitled "Say Goodbye to the Blockbuster." Iron Man opens Friday - since when is May 2nd time to start the summer season?

David Ansen's Endless Summer

Fine essay by Newsweek's Ansen about the decline of movie endings in recent years: "The hard thing about endings is that there's one way to do it absolutely right, and so many ways to go wrong." Besides some movies that have ended badly [I'm so glad Ansen included Neil Jordan's The Brave One with Jodie Foster on this list], Ansen also mentions some of cinema's best conclusions, such as Some Like It Hot, The Usual Suspects, and Gone With The Wind.

point of view: Love is in the Air

This week's DVD column is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News Pulse below:

***

Many movie lovers will want to own Juno on DVD, the question is whether to spring for the extra $5-$10 for the two-disc Special Edition [20th Century Fox, $34.98]. Some double-disc editions, like Knocked Up [Universal, $30.98] simply don’t offer enough substantial content to be worth the extra bucks. Casual fans of Juno may be content with the single-disc edition [$29.98].

But Juno has some hard-core fans. It was produced for approximately $7.5 million, and by the time of the DVD release, the film had grossed over $140 million domestically. For serious fans, the second DVD offers a wealth of bonus features, including deleted scenes, screen tests, and a "Cast and Crew Jam" sure to delight those who loved this movie and its heroine.

First-time screenwriter Diablo Cody won this year’s Oscar for Original Screenplay, and rightfully so. Juno is smart and funny, although it takes a few scenes to get up to speed with these wise-cracking characters who seem at first too precious. Once the needle finds the groove, Juno is pretty irresistable.

Cody and director Jason Reitman [Thank You For Smoking] are well-served by an exceptionally good cast, most especially Canadian Ellen Page as Juno. Juno’s would-be boyfriend Paulie Bleeker is played with appropriate sweetness and awkwardness by Michael Cera [Superbad], and her parents by two of the best character actors working today, Alison Janney [The West Wing] and J.K. Simmons [Law and Order].

Rounding out the cast are Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as the adoptive parents, and Rainn Wilson in an early cameo which solidifies his cult status. The serious issues of parenthood, abortion, and adoption raised by Juno seem somehow not the point of the movie. Juno’s gradual acceptance of Bleeker as her actual boyfriend is the point, these two smart but geeky kids really love each other and belong together.

While the characters in "Juno" live in a world full of popular culture, and their dialogue frequently refers to it, the characters in Enchanted [Disney, $29.99] are themselves pop culture archetypes. They don’t know that, but we do, and the pleasures of "Enchanted" are based on what we know.

No doubt the beginning of a new trend, the Blu-Ray DVD of Enchanted [$34.99] includes exclusive bonuses such as "D-Files," tracing some of the film’s many references to classic Disney fairy tales. For those of us who don’t have Blu-Ray players, Entertainment Weekly online describes many of these Disney allusions and adds some of their own at: www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20184033,00.html.

Amy Adams is appropriately perky as Giselle, the animated heroine banished to the widescreen world of real people, and Patrick Dempsey handsome yet vulnerable enough to be her unknowing Prince Charming. James Marsden and Susan Sarandon play their archetypal parts well. Three of the original songs written for Enchanted by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz were nominated for Oscars.

For love of a very different kind, director Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl [MGM, $27.98] offers a painfully quiet hero who falls in love with a life-sized, mail-order doll. The love story is really between Lars [Ryan Gosling, in an extraordinary performance reminiscent of Peter Sellers in Being There] and the other residents of his sleepy, Capra-esque northern town, who play along with his delusion that Bianca is, in fact, a real girl.

The delicate genius of Lars and the Real Girl is that we are never sure what Lars really believes, the degree to which his romantic delusion is conscious. The supporting cast includes Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, and Patricia Clarkson, and their willingness to play along with Lars’ delusion is often very funny, and ultimately deeply moving.

weekend flix 04/25/08

The week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

The Harvey Girls
[1946, 101 minutes, not rated, partially shot in New Mexico]

CineMatinee explores a new genre, the musical!! The story line is fictional, to be sure, but it's based on real-life circumstances. Fred Harvey established a chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe Railroad line in the 1870s. The Harvey Girls who ran the places were more than waitresses; they were civilizing influences on the Old West. The movie relates the experiences of a group of these young women, and one in particular, as they open a new rail-stop eatery in Sandrock, Arizona.

Judy Garland plays Susan Bradley, a small-town girl from Ohio, who is not heading to Sandrock to work in a Harvey House at all but to get married as a mail-order bride. When they arrive and Susan sees whom she's to marry, a grizzled old-timer played by grizzled old actor, Chill Wills, she backs off in a hurry. Now, faced with no means to make her way, she joins the Harvey crew.

The plot is so slight it's in danger every moment of wafting away on the desert breeze. But its enthusiastic cast carries it forward, and many of its musical numbers remain entertaining. Susan no sooner becomes a waitress than she finds out the crooked local judge played by Preston Foster, and the honest local saloonkeeper played by John Hodiak, don't want the Harvey House in town. Being partners in the saloon business, these two fear the restaurant will bring respectability with it and diminish their clientele. The film's conflict comes mainly between the judge and the Harvey establishment, because it is only the judge who will stop at nothing to maintain his own interests.

The words and music to the film's tunes were written by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren. The show stopper is "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," but other numbers include "In the Valley," "Wait and See," "The Train Must Be Fed," "Oh, You Kid," "It's a Great Big World," "The Wild, Wild West," and "Swing Your Partner Round and Round."

This film is being shown in conjunction with the Las Cruces Railroad Museum’s weekend-long Railroad Days celebration, which commemorates the arrival of the first train in Las Cruces. Special guests that will appear before the movie include Harvey Girls re-enactors, courtesy of the Railroad and Transportation Museum of El Paso.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, one of last year's best and most unsettling films, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Director: Cristian Mungui / Romania ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 53 minutes / In Romanian with English subtitles.

This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you. Set in 1987 in the final days of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, the film begins in a college dorm where Otilia [Anamaria Marinca] is trying to help her clueless roommate Gabita [the excellent Laura Vasiliu] arrange an abortion, strictly outlawed since 1966 under the communist regime. A prison sentence awaited not just the woman but anyone involved in aiding or abetting her. In short, the risks are enormous for both Otilia and Gabita, who can't face the poverty of single-motherhood. The title refers to the exact time that Gabita has been pregnant, a fact she stupidly hides from the insidious abortionist Bebe [Vlad Ivanov] out of fear that he'll think her too far along. Bebe visits her in a hotel room arranged for the so-called ''probe.''

Ivanov won the prize for best supporting actor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and with good reason. He'll freeze your blood. Bebe is a tyrant, clinical in attitude, even when demanding sex from both women for his services. It's the tension between those two poles, movingly readable on Marinca's face, that deepens the film's meaning and raises it very close to the level of art. --Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

***

Major studio releases currently screening in Las Cruces:

Deception
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
88 Minutes
The Ruins
Street Kings
Expelled
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21 [see post]
Drillbit Taylor
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]


Also currently screening in El Paso: Snow Angels, Diary of the Dead, and Paranoid Park.

Please feel free to leave comments and let us all know what's worth our hard-earned bucks and what isn't.

current: Forgetting Sarah Marshall [90/100]

The Apatow gang has done it again. This time Jason Segel has written and starred, and his script is funny and, as with much of producer Judd Apatow's work, has the ring of truth about much of it. Peter Bretter [Segel] has been dumped by his tv-star girlfriend Sarah Marshall [Kristen Bell], and decides to get away from constant reminders of her. Needless to say, it doesn't work, and they end up in adjoining rooms at a resort in Hawaii. Some of the usual gross-out gags, and more envelope-pushing regarding male nudity, but the real surprise here is the fine work by Russell Brand as Sarah's new squeeze and Mila Kunis [That 70s Show, Family Guy] as Peter's new love interest. Just when you think you have these characters pegged, they show some humanity and capacity for growth. That's a good thing.

summer movies

I've got some thoughts of my own about the coming summer monsoon of movies, stay tuned, but in the mean time, Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris is hard to beat: www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20192973,00.html.

second thoughts

At first glance, writing a review of a film or interviewing the filmmaker should seem like essentially the same article, but they are not. Proof in this case comes from a review of the new Morgan Spurlock movie [see post below] by A.O. Scott in The New York Times: "The facetiousness of this project is charming at first — as is the conceit of depicting the hunt for Mr. bin Laden using video-game animation — but the charm wears off pretty quickly."

the Mary Poppins school of filmmaking

Morgan Spurlock [Super-Size Me, 30 Days] talks with The Onion's A.V. Club about his new film, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Spurlock says, "I think that my movies are entertaining. This is a fun movie. It is the Mary Poppins school of filmmaking: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." That's why Fahrenheit 9/11 did so well, it was entertaining as well as serious. Discuss among yourselves.

Roger Ebert returns, and retires

Really good profile of Roger Ebert by A.O. Scott in The New York Times this week. Ebert is easily the nation's best-known film critic, thanks to his years on television pointing his thumb up or down. He's returning to writing reviews after a bout with cancer, but has retired from the syndicated weekly tv show he helped create with the late Gene Siskel in 1975.

Some have complained that Ebert's critiques have been too generous in recent years -- the man is happy to still be alive and still be watching movies, after all -- but his place in the history of American film criticism is secure. As Scott writes, "His writing may lack the polemical dazzle and theoretical muscle of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, whose names must dutifully be invoked in any consideration of American film criticism. In their heyday those two were warriors, system-builders and intellectual adventurers on a grand scale. But the plain-spoken Midwestern clarity of Mr. Ebert’s prose and his genial, conversational presence on the page may, in the end, make him a more useful and reliable companion for the dedicated moviegoer."

weekend flix 04/18/08

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

Angel-A [2005, 90 minutes, rated R in French w/ subtitles]
Andre is a petty criminal in debt to everyone he knows. With only 24 hours to come up with a serious haul of cash before his troubles worsen, Andre decides he's better off dead and heads to a bridge to commit suicide. Unexpectedly, a statuesque woman named Angela is already there and jumps first. When Andre follows to save her life, she pledges total companionship to the diminutive crook and sets out to clear his debts. As she makes good on all of her promises he starts to believe that he's found an angel sent from above to help him, and it turns out that might not be too far from the truth.

The picture is a clever little drama/comedy that coasts by on a massive reserve tank of charm. Really a battle of fears between Angela and Andre, Angel-A is an episodic tale of a man's self-actualization and unstoppable devotion.

The performances from the two stars are the ties that bind Angel-A together. Sprinting to keep up with director Luc Besson's cart wheeling screenplay, the actors are two striking physical specimens and the camera loves their differences. Andre is a dumpy, physically disabled troublemaker; a loser in life who's starting to believe his own press. Angela is a towering blonde firecracker with a sexuality that melts glass. The duo makes for one hilariously uneven couple, but their acting couldn't be more finely matched and ready to engage.

Besson also has the mesmerizing cinematography of Thierry Arbogast, a long-time collaborator, to rely on. Arbogast and Besson elected to shoot Angel-A in black and white, both to soften the alarm of any magic spilled onscreen and to let the fine Parisian locations breathe. Stripped of color, Angel-A couldn't look better if it tried; the creamy vistas lend the tale a certain distance to better absorb and create a new glimpse of Paris.

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

Youth Without Youth Director: Francis Ford Coppola; USA/Germany/Italy/France/Romania ~ 2007 ~ 2 hrs., 4 min.

Youth Without Youth is a narratively ambitious, visually sumptuous surrealist enterprise in which Francis Ford Coppola has tried to bend time and space together as neatly as the folds in an origami swan. It is a complex assemblage, and by turns bewitching, inspiring, enervating, and confounding.

For Dominic Matei [Tim Roth], the Romanian question mark at the center of the film, time doesn’t begin here and end there, it swirls like wind-scattered leaves. In brief outline, it opens with Dominic, his body stooped and head crowned by a snowy tonsure, being struck by lightning while hurrying across a rainy Bucharest street in 1938. Subsequently hospitalized [Bruno Ganz helps care for him], Dominic loses his teeth, sprouts new ones and miraculously reverts to his physical prime, complete with a thick head of hair.

Mr. Coppola has created some strikingly beautiful images in Youth Without Youth ― his framing remains impeccable, as does his sense of color, proportion and pictorial harmony. In this film Mr. Coppola blurs dreams and everyday life and suggests that through visual and narrative experimentation he has begun the search for new ways of making meaning; new holy places for him and for us.

--Manola Dargis, The New York Times

Current mainstream studio releases showing in Las Cruces:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
88 Minutes
The Ruins
Smart People
Street Kings
Expelled
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21
The Other Boleyn Girl
Superhero Movie
Drillbit Taylor
Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who
10,000 B.C.
Never Back Down

Also currently screening in El Paso: Under the Same Moon and Diary of the Dead.
As always, feel free to post comments on any of these.