The Third Stringer

Some honesty upfront: We were totally appalled by the trailer for Bride Wars. The story line, about lifelong best friends who are both inexplicably obsessed with getting married in June at the Plaza, and who, because of a scheduling snafu, are booked on the same day (which in turn causes them to morph from rational adults into scheming saboteurs), actually made us mad! We’re happy to report that this film was approximately 37 percent less horrifying than we had guessed, and even possessed some surprising depth that was obscured in the preview, which concentrated mainly on the hijinks of spray-tan savaging and hair dye debacles.  read more »

How come it's taken Hollywood this long to match up Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston onscreen? Not only is their chemistry nice and totally believable, these guys actually look like they could have been set up through friends, or met at a bar or whatever: His shaggy hair and busted nose compliments her I'll-always-just-be-the-girl-next-door-no-matter-how-many-times-I-get-naked-in-GQ attitude. It's great!

They play John and Jenny Grogan, aspiring journalists who move to Florida. They get jobs at competing newspapers (look for Alan Arkin to steal every scene he's in as John's editor) and then—in a convoluted bid to stop Jenny's biological clock (sigh)—John adopts a yellow Labrador puppy.  read more »

It’s the end of the year as we know it, which can only mean one thing: top 10 lists! Now, we can’t lie—we haven’t seen absolutely everything. (We’re still waiting on Gran Torino, Seven Pounds, and a few others. Also, we will never watch Wall-E. Never!) But we did see an awful (awful) lot in 2008. And here, in no particular order, are our very favorites.

The Visitor: We’ve had the weirdest crush on character actor Richard Jenkins for ages, and it was pure pleasure seeing him take on a leading role at last. In The Visitor, written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent), Mr.  read more »

O.K., so we watched a movie for this week’s Third Stringer called While She Was Out. It stars Kim Basinger and Lukas Haas, and was executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro. Sounds promising, right? After all, who doesn’t remember how awesome Ms. Basinger was in L.A. Confidential, The Natural and Batman? (Not to mention the way underappreciated Door in the Floor.) And come on … Lukas Haas? Little Amish kid with the big eyes who crawled under the bathroom stall in Witness? Mr. del Toro directed Pan’s Labyrinth! These are all the ingredients for an excellent movie. And yet … and yet. After getting through this sucker (just barely), we have so many questions we hardly know where to start.  read more »

So, let’s pretend you are a filmmaker and you want to make a documentary about a natural phenomenon. There are an awful lot of amazing things out in the world to spend a couple of years investigating, right? What’s the deal with those giant squids? Or, why do we have the Northern Lights, or seaweed that can glow in the dark, or those weird, small, tail-less kitties that live in the snow? Is it possible that the octopus came from outer space? That robots are right now planning to overthrow our government? Do elephants really have the best memory? And so on.  read more »

How does Sean Penn do it? We’ve seen the man disappear into roles before: the twitchy, frizzy-haired lawyer in Carlito’s Way; death row inmate Matthew Poncelet in Dead Man Walking; a vengeful, grieving father with a Massholeriffic accent in Mystic River. But none of these could prepare you for the transformation he has undergone in Milk. Playing San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk, Mr. Penn exudes an easy warmth and light and charm with a never-before-seen megawatt smile.

Harvey Milk’s story in an incredible one, and needs little Hollywood gussying up. Accordingly, director Gus Van Sant (hey, nice Entourage cameo this week!) tells the story straightforwardly and without any of the dreamy languidness that we’ve seen in his recent work like Elephant and Paranoid Park.  read more »

Forty years ago, on a chilly afternoon in November, the Harvard and Yale football teams met at Harvard Stadium to play their final game of the season. For the first time since 1909 both schools were undefeated, and when the game was all over it was an instant classic, a thing of collegiate and sports lore. Sitting up in the stands that day in 1968 was undergraduate Kevin Rafferty, who would grow up to become a filmmaker (Blood in the Face, The Atomic Café) and now has made a documentary about the historic game, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (the title was a Harvard Crimson headline).  read more »

For those of you who are closely following the November and December horse race of potential Oscar films, don’t count out Slumdog Millionaire. It might not have a Leo or a Kate or even a Batman in it, but this latest film from Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later) is just the kind of feel-good, energetic film that will have voters feeling magnanimous come voting times. And rightly so, because Slumdog Millionaire (in spite of having a title that really does nothing for you until you’ve actually seen the movie) is very sharp, smartly executed and has just enough sneaky sentiment that reviewers will surely bust out all their clichés (“you’ll be cheering in your seats!”).  read more »

In The World Unseen, we learn (unsurprisingly) that Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1950s—at the start of apartheid—was anything but good times for blacks or Indians or really anyone who wasn’t lily white. In this film, adapted and directed by Shamim Sarif from her own novel, so many hot issues are at play that it’s a bit dizzying to keep track of who is being oppressed by whom. But here goes: Amina (Sheetal Sheth), an Indian woman who dresses just like the Mary Stuart Masterson character in Fried Green Tomatoes (there are other similarities, too, but more on that in a minute), is living dangerously by running a popular cafe with the “colored” (i.  read more »

When Kevin Smith’s Clerks came out in 1994, who could have known that the first-time filmmaker from Jersey was paving the way for filmmakers like Judd Apatow to take over the world? “Bromance” may not have been in our cultural lexicon 14 years ago, but that’s what Mr. Smith was dealing with—whether it be Jay and Silent Bob, or Ben Affleck and Jason Lee in Chasing Amy, or Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in (the underappreciated!) Dogma. But now, Mr. Smith has turned his attention to a more typical kind of romance, even though at the beginning it’s obscured by, well, porn.  read more »

It’s a story that can still amaze after 35 years: In October 1972, an airplane carrying members of the Old Christians, a young Uruguayan team of rugby players, took off for a match in Chile. The plane lost contact with the control tower, and for 10 days, search-and-rescue teams sent out by Argentina, Chile and Uruguay found no trace of any plane or the 45 passengers. Heavy snow started to fall and hope was lost. Ten weeks later, a shepherd in a valley by the Andes Mountains saw two very skinny, dirty and tired men (who “smelled of the grave”), who turned out to be two of the 16 survivors of the crash.  read more »

There are surprises (some good, some not as good) in The Secret Life of Bees. For me, the biggest shock of all was realizing that the actress portraying the lead 14-year-old protagonist was none other than formerly creepy child star Dakota Fanning. Don’t get me wrong, she’s definitely still a little spooky—there’s a preternatural stillness about the budding beauty, and her eyes convey a wise weariness that makes her seem older than she is. But it’s less startling now than it was, say, when she starred in I Am Sam or Man on Fire. Plus, there’s the fact that in this film it’s a plus for her to be a little haunted-looking, as she’s playing a young girl who (as we learn in the opening of the film) killed her own mother at the age of 4.  read more »

It’s entirely probable that Mike Leigh is having a bit of fun with audiences with his new movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. When we meet Poppy (Sally Hawkins) at the start of the film, she’s a suspiciously bubbly 30-year-old, riding a bicycle, wearing brightly colored clothes and trying to spread good cheer to a foul-tempered bookstore worker. It’s much easier to identify with his mood than hers, and in fact, you might wonder: What’s the deal with this annoyingly cheerful weirdo? Just what the hell is wrong with her? The joke of the film, of course, is that nothing is wrong with Poppy … unless you count being happy and in a good mood even after your bicycle is stolen, you throw your back out or you’re being stalked by your driving instructor.  read more »

Bill Maher is a brave man. He’s also a smart and witty one, which is why sometimes watching his HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher can be very entertaining or occasionally cringe-inducing, as he appears entirely unafraid to go there on topics polite society tends to shy away from. (His comments on Politically Incorrect after 9/11—“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly”—led to ABC firing him.) Because of his outspokenness, people either tend to love Mr.  read more »

Anytime a movie opens with the words “based on actual events,” it is understandable to pause. Add to that a sports movie with metaphors about how to play that brutal game of life, and it’s perfectly O.K. to want to actually press pause, and switch over to ESPN. Don’t get us wrong, cinema has given us plenty of wonderful sports movies—Hoosiers, The Natural, Raging Bull (not to mention Mystery, Alaska!)—but the genre is anything but unpredictable. There’s a troubled hero/team, a coach whose tough exterior hides a soft underbelly of love, an insurmountable challenge (usually a championship game) and then a satisfying win—preferably at home.  read more »

It’s hard enough to get mainstream movies made and distributed (even Jennifer Aniston’s Toronto film Management is still looking for a buyer), let alone get them seen—do we even need to lament again the fact that no one wants to see anything to do with the war? So we admire the fact that a movie like All of Us will even make it into theaters. Because this documentary—about a young doctor in the South Bronx researching why heterosexual black women are being infected with H.I.V. at disproportionately high rates—may be incredibly interesting, but it’s also terribly depressing.

Emily Abt’s first film, Take It From Me, was a feature-length exploration of welfare reform, so she must be conditioned to tackling projects on topics that people would rather ignore.  read more »

Not every filmmaker would choose to open his film with a man offering to shave the bikini line of his girlfriend’s 13-year-old daughter. But so it goes in Towelhead, which hardly pauses when it comes to squirm-squirm-keep-squirming moments. The movie was written and directed by Alan Ball, who penned the once shocking and now much maligned American Beauty (whether you like it is one of those new relationship deal breakers, much like the raining frogs scene in Magnolia). But for us, Mr. Ball will always have a special place in our heart thanks to (at least the first two seasons of) Six Feet Under.  read more »

It seems, to us at least, that a truly great romantic comedy is getting harder and harder to find at the movies these days. We’re unabashed fans of the genre—from the classics like The Philadelphia Story to this year’s (underappreciated) Definitely, Maybe, and tons of stuff in between. Heck, we even kinda liked 27 Dresses! However, if there’s one thing to be learned from seeing lots and lots of these movies, it is that nothing is as insufferable as a romantic comedy that doesn’t work. (Hiya, Made of Honor and P.S. I Love You!) And such is unfortunately the case with this weekend’s Everybody Wants to Be Italian.  read more »

The Olympics came to a close last Sunday night, with China once again showing the world just how freakin’ great it is (and scary, too!) at harnessing the manpower of a kajillion people to put on quite a spectacular synchronized show. But this weekend, a very different kind of Chinese story opens in theaters with Year of the Fish.

Year of the Fish is done in that dreamy fashion where real actors are in the scenes but then sort of watercolor-painted over—technically it’s called rotoscoped animation, but we’ll always just think of it as the Waking Life effect. The film opens with a giant red fish, who eyeballs the camera and opens his fishy mouth to intone, “Chinatown.  read more »

Ben Stiller’s directing career has been kinda quiet since 2001’s Zoolander, that goofy lampoonery of the male modeling world (an apparent favorite of the programmers at TBS and TNT) that tends to incite more than a few stoner chuckles. But the past seven years have been more about his acting, some good (The Royal Tenenbaums) and some fun (Night at the Museum, Madagascar) and some, um, somewhere in the gray maybe-it’s-a-rental zone (Along Came Polly, Meet the Fockers). So it’s been easy to forget that Mr. Stiller began his career writing and performing biting satirical sendups on The Ben Stiller Show. His latest directorial effort, Tropic Thunder, which he co-wrote with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, does more than just bring back the bite—it brings out the claws, too.  read more »

We had high (heh) hopes for Pineapple Express, the latest boy-bonding-bordering-on-romance comedy from the prolific Judd Apatow universe. After all, it had what seemed like a perfect storm of elements going for it: the onscreen reunion between Freaks and Geeks’ Seth Rogen—who co-wrote the script with Superbad partner Evan Goldberg—and James Franco; a quirky, entertaining premise (more on that later); and behind the camera, indie favorite David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls). We went in wanting to fall in love. We left feeling confused and—gasp!—questioning the staying power of Apatow and his gang.

Pineapple Express asks this question: What would an action movie look like if the two would-be heroes were as constantly high as an elephant’s eye? Mr.  read more »

So, let’s just get this out of the way: The Dark Knight is apparently unstoppable—it’s bat-tastic, and it’s got legs (and wings!) and it will be number one for all time and make the most amount of money a movie has ever made ever in the history of moviemaking. O.K.? Moving on to this weekend, we’ve got The Mummy. Brendan Fraser returns as Rick O’Connell in this threequel, directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). If you’re like us, and the majority of your Mummy knowledge consists of snippets caught from the many TNT and TBS reruns of Mummy 1 and 2—don’t worry: There’s not much to catch up on here.  read more »

It was quite a Bat-tacular weekend, wasn’t it? Not surprising us in the least, but apparently still shocking to some, was that everyone went bat#@$% over The Dark Knight, which raked in a massive amount of moulah last weekend (158.3 million), setting all sorts of records—best first night, best three-day non-holiday-weekend, best performance for a movie with the word “Dark” in the title, etc.—and in general charting its course to world domination. Isn’t it nice to see this happen with a really good movie for a change?

THE BATMAN WILL no doubt take No. 1 this weekend (and the next, probably, too), but if it’s nonfantasy cinema you’re looking for, you’re in luck, as everyone seems to be releasing their documentaries right now.  read more »

It was a box office battle between two unlikely superheroes last weekend: the booze-bag Hancock played by Will Smith, trying to hang on to his Fourth of July domination, and Hellboy, a big red hero who loves kittens, Selma Blair and media attention. Surprise! Hellboy II: The Golden Army won it, earning over $13 million on just Friday alone. That’s impressive! But really, can’t we all just admit that we’re just killin’ time till The Dark Knight opens? Enjoy it while it lasts, Ron Perlman!

S0, YES, EVERYONE is in a tizzy over the new Batman movie opening this weekend, but it’s going to be awfully crowded getting into that IMAX theater for a while.  read more »

Just as we feared, audiences went just as nuts for Pixar’s Wall-E as critics did. This animated movie about the future—which seems to be inhabited by cute-talking little machines (thank you very much, Mr. Roboto)—took the top spot with $62.5 million in earnings. But there was even more for Hollywood box office watchers to shout about: Wanted did waaaay better than predicted, taking in over $51 million, thanks in no small part to the irresistibility of Angelina Jolie fondling firearms.

BUT NOW IT'S the big Fourth of July holiday weekend, traditionally a time of barbecues and swimming and, when the heat has everyone red and pooped, decamping for a couple of escapist hours in air-conditioned theaters.  read more »

Is it wrong to admit that we were quite pleased to see that The Love Guru missed the top spot last weekend? That honor went to Get Smart, the Steve Carell-starring remake of the 1960s TV comedy series; it pulled in $39 million while the grating Mike Myers vehicle earned only $14 million, taking a disappointing (for its studio) fourth place. Kung Fu Panda and The Incredible Hulk both hung in there, but we’re guessing they’ll get pushed out of the way this weekend when Angelina Jolie comes blazing through with the action-packed Wanted. And for the kiddies, there will also be Wall-E, the Pixar-iffic movie about a little robot (which we’ll be steering clear of).  read more »

We really do like him when he’s angry! Although general wisdom might have advised against bringing the Hulk—the mild mannered scientist by day, giant green ragey monster by night—to the screen again, after the Ang Lee’s adaptation went splat in 2003, The Incredible Hulk did pretty well last weekend. The Edward Norton-starring flick made $54.5 million, edging out Kung Fu Panda and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. But what’s weird is that while The Happening was soundly trounced by most critics, it still managed to make $30 million and do healthy business overseas. Come on, Europe—you’re supposed to be the classy continent.  read more »

Holy Panda! Kung Fu Panda, the animated film from DreamWorks about a chubby, slacking, would-be Kung Fu fighter voiced by Jack Black, took the top spot last weekend, raking in over $60 million. That’s more than those boozy Sex and the City gals, who got bumped to fourth place. The film set a record for the best opening ever for a non-sequel DreamWorks ’toon, and comes in third place all time after Shrek and Shrek 2. Could the weekend’s back-breaking heat have helped fill up all those seats, we wonder?

THIS WEEKEND, we’ll see a showdown between Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk (like Shrek, big, green and often exceedingly grouchy) and The Happening, the latest from M. Night Shyamalan (brace yourself for the inevitable “I so saw that twist coming”). But for those seeking a little something off the beaten path, there’s the quirky personal flick My Winnipeg from the ever-inventive Guy Maddin, filmmaker of numerous shorts and nine other features including The Saddest Music in the World and Brand Upon the Brain!, which played at last year’s New York Film Festival accompanied by a live orchestra. In the film, Mr. Maddin tackles his Canadian city of birth, examining the idea of trying to break out of your hometown (think Bruce Springsteen) and the ties and personal mythologies that often keep you right where you started. The director describes My Winnipeg as more “docufantasia” than documentary, which is fairly accurate. Shot in stark black and white, with actors portraying both the director and members of his family (his deceased father is represented by a rug), the film mixes archival footage with the director’s home videos. Everything is set sort of dreamily, with a narration that seems more beat-poetry-like than plot-driven. Winnipeg is apparently no different than any other town in its quirks and pride (since 1888, on the first day of winter, there’s been a citywide scavenger hunt with the first prize being a one-way ticket out of Dodge—though no one ever actually takes it, as the point of the exercise is apparently to discover through a day of city scouring that there’s no place like home). Mr. Maddin describes himself as being enchanted and intoxicated by this city where he’s lived for the past 50 years, but also “bitterly disillusioned.” Among the history and minutiae of Winnipeg that Mr. Maddin provides (and there is a lot), there’s also an awful lot of personal ground covered, too; one almost has the tickling sensation we’re watching some sort of B-roll from a looong Freudian therapy session. We’re not convinced that tourism is going to jump in that part of the world thanks to My Winnipeg, but as with his previous films, one must admire the originality of Mr. Maddin’s work.

My Winnipeg opens Friday at the IFC Film Center.

svilkomerson@observer.com

Are we the only ones entirely unsurprised at the floor-wiping by Sex and the City at the box office this past weekend? The label-crazy estrogen-filled girlstravaganza pulled in over $55 million dollars, knocking Indy out of the top spot, and setting all sorts of records for romantic comedies and R-rated films. What we have learned from all this: Robots, wizards and superheroes aren’t the only things to pack ’em in; it doesn’t matter if a script is too long and doesn’t entirely make sense if there are lots of fashion-porn montages and Mr. Big; and don’t ever, ever count the ladies out.

THE ONLY COMPETITION Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda face this weekend comes in the shape of a roly-poly panda in the aptly named Kung Fu Panda. Jack Black—who might be at his very best when animated—voices the movie’s hero, Po, a slacker bear working at his father’s noodle restaurant (and the dad, by the way, is a duck, though we never found out why, even though we wanted to) with dreams of becoming a Kung Fu master. Through various twists and turns of fate, Po is declared “The Dragonslayer,” and is invited to study alongside his idols, the Furious Five (Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey) under their guru, Master Shifu, a small animal of indeterminate origin. And just in the nick of time. As it turns out, Tai Lung—a baby cub adopted and raised by Master Shifu who went bad in adolescence—is back to seek revenge, and Po, as Dragonslayer, is charged with stopping him. The movie has a blinding number of famous names attached: Dustin Hoffman as Shifu, Ian McShane as the baddie (natch), David Cross as Crane, not to mention Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, and Angelina Jolie, as the somewhat pissed-off tiger. (Said Ms. Jolie in the production notes: “I was secretly hoping I got to be Tigress. I love her. She’s cool. She’s secretly who we all want to be. … I have a giant tiger tattoo on my back, and my kids always look at it, so it’s very important that I be the tiger.” Oh, Angelina. How could we possibly resist you?) The theme of the movie is an oldie but goodie—believe in yourself and you can do anything—and unlike other kid films we’ve seen recently (cough, Narnia), things never get so scary (despite Mr. McShane’s best efforts) that you couldn’t bring a real live child to this movie. You might even like it.

Kung Fu Panda opens Friday at Regal Battery Park, AMC Loews Lincoln Square IMAX and UA Court Street, Brooklyn.

svilkomerson@observer.com

Indy rides again! A grizzled Harrison Ford and his hat brought the much-anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to the No. 1 spot Memorial Day weekend, bringing in $151 million domestically. But can you hear the clickity-clack, high-heel thunder of what’s coming next? Sex and the City has the estrogen-filled masses whipped up into a frenzy, so expect this one to rake it in as well, and no doubt spawn numerous articles about women who gathered for cosmos, shimmied into their best tube tops, linked arms, sang songs and had pillow fights or something before going to the multiplex. We can’t wait.

IF YOU'RE JUST not that into Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte, how about something scary? The Strangers is another movie we suspect is part of the grand conspiracy to make city dwellers never want to leave their tiny overpriced apartments for a quiet house in the country. Like the much-maligned Funny Games, The Strangers is all about the utter randomness of violence. Kristin McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) are in the midst of some heavy emotional drama—he proposed, but didn’t exactly get the answer he hoped for—when they crash at his parents’ vacation house. Of course, the house is in the middle of some spooky woods and there are no neighbors in sight, so when three masked strangers arrive and start terrorizing them, there is no way out. The movie is best before the mayhem actually starts: First-time writer-director Bryan Bertino gets right some priceless details as the couple—with nice performances by both leads—try to deal with the evening’s earlier fallout, and elevates his movie above other horror films. When the baddies show up and the frights begin, though, we must confess we had to cover our eyes and resume chants of “it’s only 85 minutes.” But overall? Mission accomplished: We’ll be vacationing in Brooklyn this year.

The Strangers opens Friday at Regal Battery Park Stadium 11.

THIS WEEKEND ALSO brings The Foot Fist Way. This is the first project from Will Farrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez Productions, and tells the story of a self-deluded Tae Kwon Do instructor who falls apart after his wife leaves him. The film was shot in just 19 days—and financed with a credit card—and features mostly newcomers, including writer-director-producer Jody Hill, Danny McBride (our martial-arts hero) and Ben Best as Chuck “The Truck” (not like Mr. Farrell’s Frank “The Tank”). Fans of Napoleon Dynamite should get behind this one—it’s got dozens of lines destined to be repeated ad nauseam by Murray Hill boys in the city and beyond.

The Foot Fist Way opens Friday at Village East Cinema.

No surprise that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian took the No. 1 spot away from the mighty Iron Man last weekend. But the sequel didn’t gross nearly as much as box office forecasters (and Disney) had expected, pulling in just over $56 million. Still, we’re guessing Narnia’s reign will be brief: Our old pal Indy is back this weekend with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As much as we fear this might cement Shia LeBeouf as serious A-lister (a long way from Project Greenlight, baby), hooray for the return of Karen Allen!

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS WEEKEND also brings Uwe Boll’s Postal, described as an “over-the-top and hilariously subversive critique of modern day America.” A few days ago, The New York Times devoted over 1,500 words explaining why the German Mr. Boll—whose best-known movies (Bloodrayne, anyone?) are based on video games—is the most despised director around thanks to his unspeakably tasteless films. And yet, even with the preparation, we were shocked by how crass Postal is. The plot (if you can call it that) revolves around a mild-mannered man (Zack Ward) who becomes involved in a plan with his religious charlatan uncle (played by Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio fame) to steal a valuable shipment of “Krochy” dolls and somehow ends up facing an underground cell of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in a Nazi-themed amusement park. In the first 15 minutes, there is a 9/11 parody that involves two hijackers fighting about the number of afterlife virgins promised to them, and Mr. Foley (Oh, Dave Foley! What are you doing in this movie?) keeps up the current tradition of full-frontal male nudity when he appears naked, taking a noisy dump. Yuck. And that’s nothing compared to what follows—Holocaust jokes (in “Little Germany,” where you can pay using gold teeth), a cat having a gun shoved up its rear end and used as a silencer and … do we need to go on? Mr. Boll seems to delight in being as controversial as possible, so we kind of hate that we are taking the bait. In the Times article, Mr. Foley compared Mr. Boll to Andy Kaufman. We wish we could rise above our admittedly bourgeois sensibilities to recognize something subversive and genius in Postal. But, actually? No, we don’t.

Postal opens Friday at Cobble Hill Cinema in Brooklyn.

Poor Speed Racer! The much-maligned flick from the wacky-pants Wachowski brothers failed to make even a dent in Iron Man at the box office last weekend. Adding insult to injury, Speed Racer’s opening-weekend earnings were just about even with the Cameron Diaz-Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas, which cost a whole lot less to make. Yeouch. Iron Man’s charmed run could come to an end this weekend, though, as the The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian hits theaters. Bring on the Tilda Swinton!

IN QUIETER, NON-SPECIAL-EFFECTS film news this weekend, Fugitive Pieces opens at the Quad Cinema. Based on the prize-winning novel by Anne Michaels, the film opens during World War II, where Jakob, a young Polish boy, witnesses the murder of his parents by Nazis, who then abduct his beloved sister. Jakob hides in a forest, and is rescued by a kindly Greek geologist (Rade Serbedzija), who smuggles him to Greece for the duration of the war, and then emigrates with him to Canada. Unsurprisingly, grown-up Jakob (Stephen Dillane) has loads of issues, frozen in a place where he can’t bear to remember things from his past, and yet unwilling to forget them.

For a film that covers such difficult ground, Fugitive Pieces stays true to the poetic language of its source material, and is a remarkably dreamy and lyrical movie (its director, Jeremy Podeswa, is the son of a Holocaust survivor, and clearly had an emotional connection to the story). Time flashes back and forth between 1940s Poland, ’60s- and ’70s-era Canada, and the whitewashed splendor of past and present-day Zakynthos—an island that seems too beautiful for any sort of atrocity, German or otherwise. Beautiful women appear to be Jakob’s undoing and, perhaps, salvation: As visions of his pretty older sister haunt him, his first marriage to a vivacious chattering blonde (played wonderfully by Rosamund Pike, who portrayed Jane Bennett in Pride & Prejudice) implodes, and he seems doomed to a loner’s life, scribbling his thoughts into a notebook.

We happen to be on a major Stephen Dillane kick at the moment, between his portrayal of Thomas Jefferson in John Adams and as an upper-crusty aristocrat in the upcoming Savage Grace. And remember his sweetly suffering Leonard Woolf in The Hours? He’s the perfect actor for this particular role, as he’s able to convey a symphony’s worth of emotional turmoil without saying a word. Dear Hollywood, more Dillane please!

Fugitive Pieces opens on Friday at the Quad Cinema.

O.K., temperatures may only sporadically hitting the 70s, but summer blockbuster season is officially here. Iron Man opened last weekend with a whopping $104.2 million stateside and another 96.8 million overseas ($201 million all together in its first five days). That beats even what the studio was hoping for (a mere $90 million domestically) and out there in Hollywoodland, executive types are thrilled that all the bemoaning and hand-wringing over the death of the box office was premature. Iron Man came in right behind Spider-Man in the top-ten best openings of all time. For irresistible star Robert Downey Jr., and the newly short-skirted (and likable!) Gwyneth Paltrow, this is a whole new world, as we’re guessing you could add up the grosses of their last four or five movies and not come near Iron Man’s one-weekend haul. Hey, Batman, are you ready for this jelly?

ANOTHER BIGGIE COMES our way this weekend: Speed Racer. This is the first directorial outing for the Wachowski brothers since the Matrix trilogy (though they wrote the screenplay for V for Vendetta) and we’ve been eager to see if Speed Racer could blow our minds the way Neo/Keanu did back in ’99. The answer is … sorta? But not necessarily in the way you might want your mind blown. It’s true that Speed Racer looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before—insane (insane!) colors, a wholly imagined universe of loop-de-loop race tracks, flying machines and Crayola-blue skies. Emile Hirsch stars as Speed Racer, a boy who idolizes older brother Rex Racer and is devastated when the object of his hero worship dies in a car crash. We could go on and lay out what the rest of the plot is about, but in truth, halfway through this movie we were rubbing our eyes and looking around to see if anyone else was as confused as we were. Because we were lost somewhere around the time we were trying to understand the role of the monkey (yes, we know it’s from the cartoon, but whatever), and wondering what it was Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Matthew Fox and Mr. Hirsch—all talented actors—were thinking about as they delivered lines of dialogue that never went quite far enough to be camp, so instead ended up just sounding … flat. And bad, actually. (It’s never good when snickers arise over things that aren’t supposed to be funny.) We’d like to give this movie the benefit of the doubt—we get that it is geared toward preadolescent boys who will be delighted by the colors and the speed and won’t miss anything like characters or plot. But can’t we have both? And if so, can we request one that doesn’t induce a headache and vertigo?

Speed Racer opens Friday at Regal Union Square, Regal E-Walk 42nd Street and AMC Loews Lincoln Square IMAX.

All hail Tina Fey! The lady we are forever indebted to for making smarts, sass and eyeglasses sexy propelled Baby Mama to the No. 1 spot last weekend with over 18 million smackeroos, beating the stoner set who chose Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. What does this mean for you? That between this and last year’s Knocked Up and Juno, expect Hollywood to start spawning (hee!) tons of pregnant-y flicks, which will get less funny with each trimester.

MEANWHILE, FOR PEOPLE who care about such things, this weekend is an anxious one, as the industry waits to see what happens when summer officially kicks off with the first of the season’s Big! Ass! Blockbuster! Iron Man. Comic-book geeks have been all frothed up over this one for ages, and the movie did the smartest thing possible by casting Robert Downey Jr. in the lead as Tony Stark. Mr. Downey is one of those actors who is impossible not to like, both through his sheer talent and the fact that not too long ago he seemed destined to be a True Hollywood Story casualty. The first 30 to 40 minutes of the film are the most enjoyable, as we’re introduced to Tony Stark, the brain behind the most advanced weaponry used by our government, and a Howard Hughesy, cocktail-swigging, womanizing wit. While in Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest shock-and-awe weapon, he’s captured and forced to invent himself a way out of danger. Thanks to some high-tech body armor, he escapes. Once home, the appeal of blowing things up has lessened, and with the origins story firmly in place, the action becomes about his quest to create the Iron Man persona fans know, and fight the objections of his business partner (a delightfully devious Jeff Bridges), and the U.S. Army, which doesn’t appreciate the helping hand. Our only small issue with the picture is that once Mr. Downey is encased within the Iron Man suit, the actor’s impeccably expressive face is lost and we’re left with, well, a robot. In an odd bit of casting, Gwyneth Paltrow plays Stark’s long-suffering assistant, Pepper Pots, and it appears to be a smart move on both the actress’s part and director Jon Favreau (who has gone way beyond his work in Elf ): The quality of the acting elevates this action film into something that’s more interesting than just cool special effects—which the film has plenty of. Oh, and on the next inevitable go-round, we hope that Terrence Howard gets more to do.

HOPING TO PICK up the ladies out there, or those shut out of Iron Man, is the romantic comedy Made of Honor. A few things to get out of the way: We love ourselves a rom-com, and while most of them follow a fairly standard formula, when done right even the predictability of the plot can be pleasurable. Not so in this one (starting with the title!), which is odd since the two leads, Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey (attempting to play a character at least 10 years younger) and Michelle Monaghan, are both sparkly and charming. But the obvious twists and turns and gags deaden their charisma, and the true laughs are few and far between, as one waits for the movie’s inevitable conclusion.

We woke up Monday morning to a pretty big surprise: the funniest-naked-breakup-scene movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall did not take top box office honors last weekend. That spot went to The Forbidden Kingdom (Tag line: “The path is unsafe. The place is unknown. The journey is unbelievable.” Read: boy movie), which features Jet Li and Jackie Chan co-starring for the first time. Kung fu kicked Apatow ass! This weekend brings a couple other yuckfests—Baby Mama, the of-the-moment Tina Fey-Amy Poehler surrogate mom comedy and, for the lava-lamp lovers, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. But how can we laugh when another movie gives us so much to cry about?

Errol Morris’s latest, Standard Operating Procedure, quite frankly freaked us out. The documentary is an in-depth investigation into those infamous 2003 photographs that depicted American soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In past films like The Thin Blue Line (about the 1976 murder of a Dallas policeman, and which resulted in helping get a man off death row) and The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Mr. Morris has shown a great capacity for detailed and surprising research, and a compellingly simple, equitable and unblinking approach to filming his subjects. This time around, the filmmaker was able to coax into telling their sides of the story most of the soldiers featured in the photographs, including the much-loathed Lynndie England—of leash-holding, thumbs-up fame (who, interestingly, was caught up in a romantic triangle within the prison; “I was blinded by being in love with a man,” she bitterly eye-rolls)—as well as investigators and witnesses.

It’s the context of what happened outside the pictures that clearly interests Mr. Morris—and just think, what if the images we saw weren’t the worst of it? As Mr. Morris deftly illustrates (and considering the subject matter, rather beautifully), there’s something even more terrifying than the fact that these young kids—going stir-crazy and scared out of their own minds in a war zone—were left to abuse and torture without supervision: They might have been merely a link in the chain of command of a corrupt and power-hungry post-9/11 U.S. military. By the end of this deeply unsettling film, you’ll realize you have more questions than answers about what really happened at Abu Ghraib. Mr. Morris himself describes Standard Operating Procedure as a “nonfiction horror movie.” We couldn’t agree more.

Standard Operating Procedure opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center.