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 | A Rollicking R&B Fantasy Set in Harmony, Alabama, on the eve of the civil rights movement that would transform the politics of the rural South if not its economic landscape, Honeydripper is a good-natured comedy with a rhythm-and blues-soundtrack that boasts more energy, at times, than its easygoing script. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.More |  | An Uneasy Tale of Two Siblings Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson couldn’t look less alike as Anne and Mary Boleyn, the upwardly mobile sisters at the center of [b]The Other Boleyn Girl[/b], but there’s a reason for that. Despite their family ties, strained to the breaking point by their tempestuous dalliances with King Henry (Eric Bana), they are dramatically differentiated foils.More |  | Fables of the Reconstructions [b]Be Kind Rewind[/b] is a playful conceit, smart and sweetly nostalgic in its simplicity yet inescapably slight. It does have a certain one-note charm: Jack Black and Mos Def play amiable types who film crude reconstructions of Hollywood blockbusters to save their friend’s video store, hastily reinventing the works of Brett Ratner and Paul Verhoeven with the sensibilities of junkyard auteurs. The trailer-length, YouTube-style shorts that follow display a guerrilla approach to filmmaking liberated from big budgets and massive star egos. They reflect the naïve joy of neophytes whose inexperience is both comic and endearing.More |  | A Forgettable Freak Show [b]Jumper[/b] is a mess of hasty exposition and arbitrary plot twists, slapped together in a superhero movie that lacks any sense of wonder. It was inspired -- if that is the word -- by Steven Gould’s popular science-fiction novel about a teenager who escapes his abusive father by teleporting around the globe, engaging in petty mischief and robbing his way into a Manhattan penthouse. It is an ability that Doug Liman’s film never really explains, though it must have made for an exotic shoot.More |  | Muck of the Irish There is nothing new under the sunless sky in [b]Shrooms[/b], which opens with five American teenagers embarking on a trip into an Irish forest overrun with hallucinogenic fungi and inbred yokels. Once there, the movie settles into a slow, sadistic groove. Screenwriter Pearse Elliott establishes his cast of pretty young things with broad, unsophisticated strokes -- they indulge in perfunctory conversation, cavalier drug use and passionless sex until the blood begins to flow.More |  | Bizarre Love Triangle [b]Over Her Dead Body[/b] is less about characters than one-note stereotypes, thrust into a plot whose mechanics settle into a slow, predictable grind soon after the opening credits. The movie is flawed on a fundamental level, forgetting that romantic comedies require some degree of emotional investment. If the people on screen can’t commit to the story, how can we?More |  | Rumble in the Jungle It’s easy to forget that the story of John Rambo began 36 years ago with a novel by Canadian author David Morrell, whose distaste for the Vietnam War fueled his vision of a shell-shocked veteran on a murderous rampage in the Kentucky backwoods. Morrell painted Rambo as a merciless killer whose harrowing tours of duty had left him despairing and emotionally comatose. He was a menace, a savage unleashed on a hostile society, and in the end he took his own life.More |  | Monster Mash [b]Cloverfield[/b], which takes its name from the Santa Monica boulevard where producer J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company is based, is a sleek, silly product of green filmmaking: It recycles old ideas and molds them into a lean, briskly paced thriller that owes much to both classic monster movies like [b]Godzilla[/b] and ambitious, gimmick-driven misfires like [b]The Blair Witch Project[/b].More |  | A Breathless Journey Through Revisionist History Would you believe that Mount Rushmore was constructed as the result of a government conspiracy to conceal the whereabouts of a mythical City of Gold? No? Then perhaps you might be interested to learn that the back of the Declaration of Independence doubles as a treasure map, written in invisible ink, leading to gold foisted from ancient Egypt during the Crusades.More |  | In the Aftermath of Paralysis, a Spiritual Awakening In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of a prominent French fashion magazine, suffered a massive stroke at the age of 43. Twenty days later, he awoke from a coma in a hospital near Calais, completely immobilized save for his ability to blink his left eyelid. A victim of “locked-in” syndrome, Bauby retained full mental capacity, but found himself trapped in a body that refused to respond to all but one simple command.More |
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