Movies
SUA Movies
All shows will play at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday at Woodruff Auditorium on Level 5 at the Kansas Union. Tickets can be purchased in the Hawk Shop for $2 or are free with an SUA movie card.
Team America:
World Police
R,98 minutes
The creators of *South Park* assemble a cast of marionettes – strings and all – to send-up Jerry Brickheimer movies, liberal Hollywood and the war on terror. More popular than its box-office receipts suggest, this witty satire features 10 original songs, many of which are instant classics. (Feb. 3-4)
I Heart
Huckabees
(★★★1/2)
R, 106 minutes
David O. Russell's incomparable, love-it-or-hate-it new comedy stars Jason Schwartzman as a Greenpeace activist crushed by the Huckabee Custode. Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Mark Wahlberg, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin deftly perform Russell's existentialist mind tricks. (Feb. 17-18)
National Treasure
(☆☆)
PG,131 minutes
Nicolas Cage stars as Benjamin Franklin Gates, a modern-day treasure hunter who finds a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. This silly adventure plays like Indiana Jones minus exotic locales, conceptual wit and pup appeal. (March 3-4)
all images courtesy movies.yahoo.com
Ocean's Twelve (☆☆)
PG-13, 125 minutes
14 Jayplay 02.03.05
The rare sequel to bring back all of the original cast members, Ocean's Twelve disappoints big time. Director Steven Soderbergh appears to be making a film
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (☆★1/2)
R,118 minutes
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Finding Neverland (☆☆☆)
PG,97 minutes
Oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) wants revenge on the shark that he beloved partner. Wes Anderson's latest brightly colored comedy is just as lovingly detailed as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, but the director's ironic style is beginning to wear thin. (April 14-15)
around the busy schedules of his A-list stars. (March 31-April 1)
Marc Forster's biographical fantasy stars Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie, the eccentric Scottish playwright who created the character of Peter Pan on the stage in London in the early 1900s. The movie's vision of the afterlife will make you weep. (May 5-6)
PG,106 minutes
The poor orphaned Baudelaire children go to live with the evil Count Olaf. More sentimental than the Lemony Snicket books, the movie flows with gallows humor and artificial beauty. It's hard not to like a kid flick where Jim Carrey tells three youngsters, "You are so deceased!" (April 28-29)
Also playing:
The Notebook (Feb. 10-11)
Ray(Feb. 24-25)
Meet the Fockers (April 21-22)
Stephen Shupe
Excellent: National Lampoon's Animal House
Good: Old School
Okay: Revenge of the Nerds
Bad: PCU
No stars: National Lampoon's Dorm Daze
Hide and Seek (1/2)
R, 105 minutes, Southwinds 12.
It's often hard to be enthusiastic about horror films of late, unless they're Japanese or Japanese remakes. However, Hide and Seek is an exception—an intelligent horror that does not rely on special effects or flashy set pieces to get the audience's hearts racing.
David Callaway (Robert DeNiro) not only has to deal with his wife's death but also his daughter Emily's (Dakota Fanning) imaginary friend, Charlie. Try as he might, Charlie will not go away. With strange things happening, it turns out Charlie is perhaps more real that David suspects, and his plans are more sinister.
The film works because it uses classic techniques to instill fear—such as not knowing what lies behind closed doors, and close-ups of the characters so that we are unable to see what is coming up behind them. Like the best horror movies, the filmmaking is quiet and observing rather than being styled and fast-paced. What often makes a horror film scary is not knowing what is going to happen in certain situations, and in this respect the
Alone In The Dark (✩)
R,96 minutes,Southwinds 12
Christian Slater stars as paranormal detective Edward Carnbury who comes face to face with his past, and a number of horrific monsters, when a crazy professor opens a door to the dark side of the world. Aided by museum curator played by Tara Reid, he uses ancient artifacts to uncover the mystery. From the advertising, I thought this was a horror film, but it turned out to be another shallow action movie.
I have yet to see a good film made
film delivers fully. It is the first time I have heard people scream in the cinema. And not just once, two or three times.
The performances add much to the film—I don't know who is better, DeNiro or Fanning. Each played their part brilliantly. Fanning's facial expressions leave you both mesmerized and shocked at the same time. Unpredictable and full of tension, perhaps the only flaw is that the last 10 minutes are needless. They slightly diminish the overall effect of the film, but as a whole it still stands as the year's best horror movie.
—Michael Boyd
from a video game. The characters are uninteresting and annoying, especially Tara Reid's character who is still wandering around like she's in one of the *American Pie* movies. Slater is not much better—what is he doing? He used to make good films. The only semi-decent performance came from Stephen Dorff as commander Burke, but even he couldn't save the film. Even the action sequences seem unoriginal, most looking like bad rip-offs of *Aliens* and *Indiana Jones*. By the last sequence, the film has become tiresome as we focus on characters we don't know or care about.
I felt very much in the dark for most of the film, but not alone—there were five other people in the cinema, although one of them left before the end. Maybe fans of the game will pick up on more than I did.
—Michael Boyd