CINEMA
At The Movies
Opening
National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj
Kal Penn's character arrives at a prestigious British university, not only to become the new resident advisor, but to show the uptight student body how to have a good time. (R)
The Nativity Story
The Biblical story chronicles the two-year period in the lives of Mary and Joseph that culminated in their leaving Nazareth and journeying 100 miles to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus. Keisha Castle-Hughes and Shohreh Aghdashloo head the cast. Review on Page 26. (PG)
Turistas
It's "Hostel" in South America. A bus accident leaves a group of young backpackers marooned in a remote Brazilian jungle that holds an ominous secret. Review on Page 27. (R)
Now Playing
G
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause 1/2
Suiting up again as the title character, Tim Allen seems bored with his own franchise. This new sequel centers mainly on St. Nick's rivalry with Jack Frost (Martin Short), who plans to turn the North Pole into a tacky theme park. The movie panders to every demographic with a fail-safe yuletide mix of puns, slapstick and platitudes.
PG
Deck the Halls 1/2
A well-organized Christmas enthusiast is challenged by a new neighbor who wants to create the biggest holiday display in the world. While the comedic talents of Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito are too considerable for the movie to pass without some legitimately funny scenes, they're just too good for the mediocre material given to them here.
Facing the Giants
A failing high school football coach finds that, in order to succeed, he must convince his team that there's more to sports than fame and glory, in this religious tale of courage on the gridiron and the power of God's word. The low-budget movie is the brainchild of Georgia Baptist ministers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, and the cast is made up of church members. It's an inspiring film made with humor and heart.
Flushed Away 1/2
A pampered British rat (voiced by Hugh Jackman) finds himself in an elaborate sewer-city recreation of a miniature London filled with rats, toads and slugs of varying caste. His attempt to return to the surface world with a self-sufficiend lady rat (Kate Winslet) is blocked by a royalist toad and his hench-rats. This great-looking CGI movie (with the help of the Aardman studio of "Wallace and Gromit" fame) is only hampered by a constant hyperkinetic pace.
Happy Feet 1/2
The best animated film of the year. A young penguin named Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood), searches for his mate. Unfortunately, he's incapable of belting out his own unique song to attract one ... but, boy, can he tap dance! The movie follows Mumble on a journey of discovery, of himself and the world, which can be both harrowing and thrilling. The visuals can be both intimate and breathtakingly grand, and they support a story that has real meaning and can be deeply poignant.
PG-13
Casino Royale 1/2
Daniel Craig takes over the iconic role of James Bond, in a movie about the secret agent's very first mission. While a bit lighter in action scenes compared to its predecessors, what the movie has in those regards is riveting, clever and well-choreographed. The appeal this time lays much heavier on Bond as a person, on his development as one of cinema's deadliest killers and most heartless womanizers. Craig delivers one of the finest performances ever in a 007 flick.
Déjà Vu 1/2
Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott have made a smart and complex movie with powerful emotions and riveting suspense. Washington is superb as a battle-weary federal agent who suspects foul play behind a fatal accident in New Orleans. The case takes on a personal urgency when he starts to feel as though he knows one of its victims, played by Paula Patton.
For Your Consideration
Christopher Guest and his masterful cast of comedic improvisers mock Hollywood's Oscar mania this time around, and while the results are funny as expected, it's surprisingly sad, too. An insecure actress starring in a inane slice of 1940s Jewish melodrama is rumored on the Internet to have given an award-calibre performance. Catherine O'Hara's portrayal of Marilyn Hack is at once touching and bravely unpleasant, transcending its satirical starting point to evolve into a wonderful illustration of vanity's awful downside.
A Good Year
The "Gladiator" team of actor Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott reunite for this gentle pastoral comedy. A soulless London banker travels to Provence following the death of his beloved uncle who raised him there on his sprawling vineyard. The movie often feels desperately strained in its whimsy, and as it morphs from travelogue to slapsticky French farce to shameless chick flick, it grows nauseating in its sickly sweet romantic dialogue -- in two languages, no less.
Gridiron Gang
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson stars as a true-life probation officer who coaches a football team made up of rival gangbangers in a youth detention camp. Director Phil Joanou is relentless in his attempts to inspire the audience. Instead, the result is just overbearing and redundant.
The Grudge 2 1/2
In this sequel to the popular remake of the Japanese horror hit, the curse of the haunted travels worldwide. There are a couple of good scares here and there, but we've seen this all before. Amber Tamblyn takes over as the plucky heroine in distress.
The Guardian
Kevin Costner plays a Coast Guard rescue swimmer who's struggling with life on the water after losing his squad in an accident. He ends up being the mentor of a hotshot swimmer (Ashton Kutcher) training for his elite military unit. Though the movie has its potent action moments, it basically drags on like a slow boat ride.
The Illusionist
While fine technical wizardry went into this period film set in early 20th-century Austria, it lacks the magic of romance, drama, longing and faith you think would be generated in a tale about a love triangle involving a magician (Edward Norton), a noblewoman (Jessica Biel) and the heir to the throne (Rufus Sewell).
Marie Antoinette 1/2
Kirsten Dunst plays the title role of the young queen of 18th-century France who became a symbol for the wanton extravagance of the monarchy that incited a revolution. Director Sofia Coppola has created a mash-up of classical opera and early-'80s New Wave, and knowing self-reference and careless anachronism. The silly, self-pitying film staggers from moment to mood only to finally end on the way to the guillotine.
The Marine 1/2
WWE star John Cena plays a former jarhead back from Iraq who finds himself returning to action stateside when his wife is kidnapped by a murderous gang led by a merciless criminal. In keeping with the orchestrated mayhem of pro wrestling, there is much noise and violence, and little else.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom reprise their roles in this swashbuckling sequel. This time, Capt. Jack Sparrow discovers he owes a bloody debt to the legendary Davy Jones. It's a darker tale than the first, but it's still a rollicking, well-paced yarn.
The Queen 1/2
Helen Mirren gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Queen Elizabeth II during a turning point in recent British history, surrounding the tragic death of Princess Diana. Mirren gives the queen a restrained soulfulness and sense of duty that reinvents her.
School for Scoundrels 1/2
A beleaguered New York City meter maid tries to overcome his feeling of inadequacy by enrolling in an unorthodox and top-secret confidence-building class. Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Heder basically play weaker versions of their "Bad Santa" and "Napoleon Dynamite" characters. The clash of those two opposing forces generate only a few laughs in this overlong movie.
Stranger Than Fiction
Will Ferrell plays a confused man who discovers that an unseen female narrator is chronicling the events of his life in a voice only he can hear. A literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) helps him figure out that he's gotten caught up in the latest work-in-progress of a British novelist (Emma Thompson). This movie is a sweetly engaging concoction, refreshing for its ability to create tension by keeping the audience guessing whether it's going to wind up as tragedy or comedy. And Ferrell gives his best performance on screen yet.
R
Babel 1/2
Alejandro González Iñárritu's latest film, with a cast featuring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal, is a global testament to the curiously incommunicative species that is man, as four separate stories from around the world slowly reveal their interconnectedness. But the film struggles to be as true as it is portentous. The sight of so many different characters bursting into tears brings on your own catharsis or leaves you feeling as if the movie's doing the weeping for you.
Bobby
In telling the story of the tragic assassination of Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel, writer-director Emilio Estevez has created a large group of disparate fictional characters who populate the hotel that fateful evening. It's an innovative approach with lofty ambitions, but that's the film's downfall. So many people come and go that their separate stories become too many, feeling rushed and superficial. While the all-star cast can be distracting, some strong performances do emerge amidst the clutter.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan 1/2
British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen portrays an absurdly clueless Eastern European "journalist" on a real-life, culture-clashing cross-country trip across the United States. The transgressive comedy is an instant classic -- crude, confrontational and stunningly sick -- as Cohen stays in character as he interacts with real people. He has inflammatory fun with hypocrites and zealots on both sides of the political spectrum.
Fast Food Nation
Richard Linklater directs a fictionalized thriller inspired by Eric Schlosser's bestselling nonfiction exposé of fast food corporations. Unlike the book, however, this film is just indigestible. Besides Schlosser's stories of bullied ranchers and overworked slaughterhouse workers, there are details about meth labs, the Patriot Act, sexual harassment, eco-terrorism and corporate surveillance. The result is a mix of muckraking facts and multiple-storyline fiction that can't decide what it wants to be.
The Fountain
Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz star in Darren Aronofsky's densely garish fever dream on the subject of immortality. The visuals are astonishingly dreamlike and textured, because the story is seemingly fractured and skips about in time and space. Or is this thinking person's film all but a dream?
Jackass Number Two 1/2
Johnny Knoxville and his crew of reprobates return for another round of pointlessly dangerous and disgusting stunts. But because of the gleeful attitude of the guys, the puerile humor is shamelessly entertaining.
Little Miss Sunshine
This hit indie film follows an oddball clan as they race across three states to get their 7-year-old daughter to a beauty pageant. It's a sunny, prefabricated charmer of a comedy, looking at the all-American obsession with dark chortles.
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny 1/2
Only the equally tenacious and die-hard fan of the self-proclaimed "greatest band on Earth" could love this. The playful rambles of Jack Black and Kyle Gass' songs occasionally enliven the movie, but their characters are so cartoonishly dumb and boorish, it's hard to relate to them as much more than flat characters in a mediocre bit of sketch comedy.
NR
Samoan Wedding
Originally titled "Sione's Wedding," the movie's about a group of Samoan emigre buddies in Auckland, New Zealand, who are challenged to find proper girlfriends to bring as dates to a wedding. What ensues is remarkably funny, thanks to the first-rate comedy of members of the comic troupe Naked Samoans.
Art House | Revival
THE DORIS DUKE THEATRE, HONOLULU ACADEMY OF ARTS
900 S. Beretania St.; $7 general; $6 seniors, students and military; $5 Academy members (532-8768):
Global Lens Film Festival: Border Café
At 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
Thirst
At 1 and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 and 7.
MOVIE MUSEUM
3566 Harding Ave.; $5, $4 members; reservations recommended due to limited seating (735-8771):
49 Up
At 12:30, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Friday.
Mongolian Ping Pong
At 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m. Saturday.
Hawaii, Oslo
At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Sunday.
The Gods Must Be Crazy
At 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m. Dec. 4.
Supermarket Woman
At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Dec. 7.