Movies : June 2006

30 June 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

A sobering look at an issue subject to contention, not least because of the messenger in this case. Rather depressing, really.

100 minutes.

17 June 2006

Stick It

The writer of Bring It On tries to repeat her success in dramatizing a sport featuring young women in motion by leaving out the story and hoping that directorial style would carry the day. Missy Peregrym does well enough in a Hilary Swank kind of way as Haley, the rebellious daughter sentenced to a gymnastics academy, but her motivation for falling in with the program, training for competition, and confronting the demons which caused her to fail the last time is underwritten. Jeff Bridges as the director of the academy can’t help that the drama is not about him.

102 minutes.

15 June 2006

Cars

A talking fish or a superhero is no less a fantasy than a sentient automobile, but there is something distinctly creepy about a world of nothing but sentient cars that must have, in the absence of any human presence, chosen of their own free will to indulge in racing, which in their world is like a track meet which could break out in bare-knuckle boxing at any moment. If urban planners cringe at the space which automobiles take up now, consider the size of the racetrack stands that must accommodate a crowd of spectators cheering on the potential demise of the sport’s participants (which never happens). Lightning McQueen is voiced by Owen Wilson, so the character’s free-wheeling, self-centered nature is a given. Circumstances contrive to strand McQueen in Radiator Springs, a town along US-66 which has seen hard times since the interstate I-40 passed it by, where his character is due for a makeover by the town’s remaining citizens. Intended as a salute to small-town life and decrying its abandonment by the construction of high-speed interstates, the film neglects that the very purpose of such small towns ebbed as vehicles became more reliable and the destination became more important than the journey as vacation time shrank. Most characters are an exquisitely rendered representation of an actual prototype—except, presumably, for the Apple stock car in the lineup at the race—and the story is engaging if superficial. A movie’s not over until the rating.

115 minutes.

10 June 2006

A Prairie Home Companion

An amalgam of the presentation of the long-running radio show of the same name with a story involving elements improbable enough to jar those who’ve grown comfortable with the show, which itself is often topical so it’s less of a surprise that, for example, The Lives of the Cowboys is missing, or that the famous monologue regarding life in Lake Woebegon (reduced to a mention of my hometown by the character known as Garrison Keillor, who is played by Garrison Keillor but not identified as playing himself) isn’t included. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are so well-known that I found it difficult to accept them as singing sisters with a history. Lindsay Lohan, under blonde hair and behind glasses, doesn’t inspire speculation regarding any facelift and fares well enough given that her character’s attitude is pleasant and chipper despite her subjects for poetry. Funny in spots, just plain weird in others, which certainly reflects what I remember of Keillor’s fiction.

106 minutes.

Entries subject to editing at any time. Last edited on: 04-Jul-2006