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 | Guest Returns With the Slightest of Satires Since 1996, Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy have churned out a string of faux- documentaries skewering all manners of theatrical productions. Their first, [b]Waiting For Guffman[/b], tossed gentle barbs at small-town theater, often with hilarious results; [b]Best In Show[/b] followed with a gleefully biting satire of the Westminster Kennel Club show and the overzealous dog owners who gussy up their pets for prizes. Guest and Levy went to the well once again with [b]A Mighty Wind[/b], poking good-natured fun at a televised folk-music concert, but by then the formula had grown noticeably stale.More |  | Relationships, Honesty and Sexual Deviance Some secrets are best kept secret. That is the lesson of [b]Sleeping Dogs Lie[/b], a dark, confrontational comedy that deals with characters whose closets are overstuffed with skeletons, though not necessarily of the human variety. For example, thirty seconds into the movie you learn about how Amy (Melinda Page Hamilton) was a collegiate teen when she impulsively performed fellatio on Rufus, her four-legged best friend. She can’t explain why and, as she declares early on, has no lingering interest in bestiality. But it happened.More |  | Gilliam’s Ghastly Miscalculation Director Terry Gilliam has never been a model of consistency, but his missteps are at least understandable. This is a man, after all, whose simplest visions are grandiose, whose imagination is seemingly boundless. He gleefully embraces projects that are aggressively unconventional and, some might argue, unworkable. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that his résumé contains more than its share of brilliant fantasies ([b]12 Monkeys[/b]), noble failures ([b]Brazil[/b]) and ambitious messes ([b]Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas[/b]).More |  | Sins of Our Fathers The Roman Catholic Church has traditionally responded to accusations of wrongdoing with stony institutional silence, but never moreso than now, as thousands of parishioners have come forward with damning allegations of clerical abuse and child rape. There have been settlements and payoffs, yes, but few admissions of guilt or declarations of remorse from the Vatican. It was inevitable that this latest scandal would inspire a series of filmed explorations into the heart of the church’s darkness. Director Amy Berg’s [b]Deliver Us From Evil[/b] is the first to feature a confessed child molester who once served as a Catholic priest.More |  | The Heyday of Punk, In All Its Tattered Glory After the first bruising wave of British punk swept through America, introducing a generation of disgruntled teenagers to the Sex Pistols and the Clash, came the domestic response: the raw, anarchic fury of hardcore, less inspired by political sensibilities than sheer anger.More |  | A Comedy in Need of a Presidential Pardon It’s an intriguing idea. What if someone like Jon Stewart, the clown prince of Comedy Central’s mock-news division, actually ran for office? (Better yet, make it Stephen Colbert.) Laugh if you must, but the timing couldn’t be better. Voters are tired of partisan posturing and slick, career politicians, and if opinion polls are any indication, there’s already a joker inhabiting the executive office. So what if a real comedian ran -- and won?More |  | Brutality, Without Elegance or Purpose To this day, the original [b]Texas Chain Saw Massacre[/b] remains one of the starkest, most terrifying films ever made. More than any of the lackluster imitations that have followed in the 32 years since director Tobe Hooper unleashed his demented vision of the nuclear family re-imagined as ravenous cannibals, that first movie captures the surreal spirit of a nightmare and translates it into brutally simple cinema. Unlike the well-financed sequels it has inspired, it features a bare minimum of special effects and on-screen gore.More |  | Sony Goes Where Other Studios Have Gone Before There’s nothing terribly wrong with [b]Open Season[/b], Sony’s first full-length foray into the world of digital animation. Directors Roger Allers ([b]The Lion King[/b]) and Jill Culton ([b]Monsters, Inc.[/b]) are savvy veterans of the genre, and here they have produced a slick, high-energy comedy that will undoubtedly appeal to the younger set. And the artwork is truly impressive, with its vibrant autumnal hues and crisp, imaginatively rendered characters. Yet the story is a bit too familiar.More |  | You Say You Want a Revolution By now, it’s hardly breaking news that the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover and at the behest of the Nixon administration, kept a running file on John Lennon, the legendary Beatle who aroused the ire of the government by suggesting that peace might be preferable to a senseless war in Vietnam. (The nerve of those meddlesome Brits!) [b]The U.S. Vs. John Lennon[/b] documents the trials and tribulations suffered by Lennon and Yoko Ono -- the tapped phones, the near-constant surveillance and, ultimately, the threat of deportation.More |  | Legendary Li Makes Graceful Exit If [b]Fearless[/b] is indeed Jet Li’s final martial-arts movie, as he has recently claimed, then it is a fitting swan song to a storied career. Sure, its approach is familiar: a young, immature hothead dreams of becoming a fighting champion, ignoring his father’s constant reminders that violence is best avoided. He becomes a champion, surrounds himself with sycophantic cronies and parades about the city, always looking for his next fight. Soon enough, he gets his comeuppance, loses everything and retreats to the countryside in disgrace -- only to experience a spiritual rebirth and learn, too late, his father’s lesson.More |
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