opening wide
Terminator Salvation: “Hello, my name is John Connor. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: Know what my favorite bit of inexcusably implausible nonsense here is? I adore how the floorplan for the high-security “federal archives” that supposedly exist (they don’t) under the Smithsonian on the Mall in Washington is readily accessed by a child on the Internet. That’s homeland security we can believe in.
Dance Flick: Remember In Living Color, that awesomely entertaining and hugely clever variety show the Wayans Brothers gave us in the early 1990s? Can it really be a coincidence that these guys are releasing a new movie on the very same day that Ben Stiller — who also used to create and star in a smart sketch comedy show in the early 90s — is also dumbing himself down in order to garner mass approval? [trailer]
opening limited
Easy Virtue: Jessica Biel does Noel Coward in a 1920s take on Meet the Parents. Whoops — that makes it sound awful. And it’s really quite charming. [trailer]
The Girlfriend Experience: Porn star Sasha Grey stars as a high-class hooker in Steven Soderbergh’s latest experiment in low-budget filmmaking. You know, polite society used to believe that all actresses were no better than prostitutes… and yet how it is that the Wayans Brothers and Ben Stiller (see above) will never be called whores? (Also available to watch at home on some video on demand systems.) [official site]
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story: Documentary about Bob and Dick Sherman, the writers of classis Disney songs such as “Chim-Chim-Cheree” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” IMDB Buzz says: “Ben Stiller is in producer mode here, and we understand he’s pushing Disney to make a Sherman Bros. feature with him starring as brother Robert. To that we say: Anything to keep you out of museums, B.S.” Seconded. [official site]
Burma VJ: Danish filmmaker Anders Østergaard assembled this documentary about the 2007 protests in Burma from smuggled footage shot by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a collective of underground video journalists, on handycams and cell phones. I have nothing snarky to say about that. [official site]
