Movies
★ Excellent: Movies this great are rare, so don't miss it.
★ Good: At least worth the price of admission.
★ Okay: See it if you have nothing better to do.
★ Bad: If you absolutely have to see it, wait for the DVD.
No stars: Frickin' terrible; give us our two hours back,
you director from hell.
Saved!
PG-13,93 minutes
Movie: (♡♡♡); DVD (♡♡♡)
Now I know what you're going to say,
Mandy Moore? But I promise, this is not your average Mandy Moore movie. No
chasing or dealing or even walking for Mandy. Thank heaven. Saved! is unique.
Mary (Jena Malone) is the perfect Christian. A member of the elite Christian Jewels led by uber-Christian Hilary Faye (Moore), has the perfect boyfriend and her senior year ahead of her. Until he reveals he is gay. Dumbfounded, Mary seeks a way to help him
and to gives up her virginity save him from his gayness. When she ends up pregnant, plenty of Christian hijinks ensue.
A film about a Christian high school has to walk a fine line between entertaining enough and sacrilegious. Saved! teeters the line but usually stays in a pure state of fun. The young actors Malone, Moore, Macaulay Culkin and Patrick Fugit seem to
be having a lot of fun, which is evident in the film but confirmed in the extras. Commentary by Moore and Malone provides humorous insight on the film. Other extras include the standard bloopers, featurette, deleted scenes, trailer and a Saved! Revelations feature that sheds some light on certain scenes.
Saved! is definitely not your
average high school comedy. In fact it comes as a welcome release from the usual fare. You could say it was sent from (insert heavenly pun here).
— Lindsey Ramsey
Shall We Dance? ( )
1 hour 35 minutes
Shall We Dance? is an aw shucks movie.
The characters go through the movie with goofy grins and puppy dog eyes, and when they get into trouble we go "aw shucks, that's too bad." The real purpose is to get us to smile as much as possible, and the movie succeeds—most of the time.
Just like in his last movie, Chicago, Richard Gere plays a dancing lawyer. He plays John Clark, a 40-something lawyer
going through a mid-life crises of some sort. On his L-train rides home every night he notices a sign for a dancing hall and a beautiful yet solemn-faced woman staring out the window at him. John's curiosity gets the better of him and he ventures into the hall and discovers that, yes, it offers dancing lessons and, yes, the solemn-faced woman works there. With two other guys, John signs up for beginner's ballroom dancing lessons, and he soon discovers that he has a real passion for the
dance. The solemn-faced woman he saw in the window is Pauline (Jennifer Lopez), one of the instructors at the dancing
school, who fears that John is just taking lessons because he has a crush on her.
The movie seems to tease us with conflict. John's wife, Beverly (Susan Sarandon), first suspects John of cheating on her when he starts coming home late with the smell of perfume on him and excuses about where he was. But once Beverly hires a couple of private eyes, she quickly learns that, no, John is
not cheating on her. He is just taking dance lessons and too ashamed to tell he about it.
Shall We Dance? is filled with some genuinely sweet moments, and all of the characters are likable, so it is hard to hate it. There is no villain, save for bad tempo and tripping feet. Gere and Sarandon are perfectly cast, and Lopez taps her In Living Color Fly Girl days and, along with Gere, is an impressive and natural-looking dancer. This movie is fluff, but likable fluff.
—Jon Ralston