Terminator Salvation

Directed by
McG

Starring
Christian Bale & Sam Worthington

Now playing (114 minutes)

The Terminator series is probably the most drawn-out big budget franchise in movie history. The original film came out way back in 1984, which in terms of special effects was the Stone Age, but no special effect can make up for the one called Arnold Schwarzenegger, who infused both that movie and its 1991 sequel with wit and style. They just don't make 'em like that any more, not even the third installment, which was released in 2003. Even Arnie succumbed to that movie's heavy-duty reliance on effects-for-the-sake-of-effect. Director McG has pointedly avoided calling the fourth installment Terminator 4 because he wants people to approach it as a new chapter in the saga, but by this point we may need something of a refresher on the basic plot points since we're now in that future which the series hero, John Connor, is supposed to save. The original Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor even before she was to give birth to the leader of the human rebellion against the malevolent computer network Skynet. Viewers are thus required to keep these elements in the back of their minds while viewing the latest episode, and it becomes a supreme pain in the ass. It's 2018, well after Judgement Day, and the earth is a scorched wasteland. Connor (Christian Bale) is in his 30s and not yet the Messiah. He's just another grunt in the rebellion, and the first 20 minutes or so constitute a pretty gripping war movie, with Connor and his men getting cut off and decimated by a platoon of killer robots. There's a nerve-rattling, first-person-POV helicopter crash that McG may have stolen from Amos Gitai's Kippur, but nonetheless demonstrates his chops as an action master. After that the plot kicks in and the battles get louder and more incomprehensible, and its every brain cell for itself. Connor learns that Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), a teen rebel in a nearby metropolis, has been put on the list of hits by Skynet and against his superior's orders attempts to save him, since Reese will eventually go back in time to chase the original Terminator and impregnate Sarah Connor--meaning he's John's father. At the same time, a former death row inmate named Marcus (Sam Worthington) has been brought back to life as a kind of machine-man hybrid, and while the rebellion wants him dead, Connor believes him when he says he's more of a man than a vacuum cleaner. These two follow different vectors to the HQ of Skynet for what is promised to be Armageddon but, of course, isn't, since Armageddon would preclude Part 5. Maybe by that time Arnie will be out of politics. The end of the world needs him. -PB

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"Terminator Salvation" (c) 2009 Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.

Race to Witch Mountain

Directed by
Andy Fickman

Starring
Dwayne Johnson & Carla Gugino

Opens July 4 (98 minutes)

Disney may be getting desperate for material. This movie is a "reimagining" of a 1975 Disney film called Escape to Witch Mountain, which starred then already old-timers Donald Pleasance, Eddie Albert, and Ray Milland, and was based on a children's sci-fi novel whose story I know nothing about. Still, I'm sure it was quite different from this movie, which is intimately informed by cultural touchstones like The X-Files and other extra-terrestrial conspiracy theory texts that have kicked around since the mid-1980s. After a space vehicle crashes in the desert, a scowling government functionary (Ciaran Hinds) dispatches men in protective suits to scour the area for signs of life, but said life has already taken off and morphed into two blonde kids (AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig), who manage to make it to Vegas, where they offer an out-of-sorts taxi driver named Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) lots of money to take them out of town. Because Jack is a former mob factotum, he's got bad guys on his ass and when the government heavies start tailing him he shakes them off without asking who they are. The alien kids, whose English contains no contractions or single-syllable words, have special powers that Jack doesn't notice at first, but once they get to their destination, a derelict house, he starts to get the picture, since the house sits on what looks like the Amazon rain forest. The movie is essentially a contemporary action movie for kids, though the gravest injury is suffered by Jack's cab, which is not only blasted and pummeled by the government guys but zapped and magnetized by a raging ET robot that is out to capture the alien kids, who, it turns out, are there to save their own planet as well as the earth from being invaded by bad aliens. The combination of the kids' super-powers and Jack's pugnacious fighting skills are not enough to get them to the place where the government guys have hidden the space ship. For that they need the help of certified nerds, and it helps that there's a convention of extra-terrestrial enthusiasts in Vegas. Dr. Alex Fridman (Carla Gugino) provides not only some hokey pseudo-scientific explanation of the aliens' presence but also a romantic foil for Jack, who's something of a damaged soul, having been in prison and all. But matters like the earth's destruction prove to have little more import than a reason to get this whole crew racing to, you guessed it, Witch Mountain, where the spaceship is being inspected by other government guys in protective suits. I'm sure any kid who's seeen an episode of The X-Files won't find anything here to keep his interest all the way through, which is probably why it's so loud.-PB

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"Race to Witch Mountain" (c) Disney Enterprises

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Directed by
Woody Allen

Starring
Scarlett Johansson & Javier Bardem

Now playing (96 minutes)

Reportedly, the city of Barcelona offered Woody Allen funding for a film as long as he set it in their city, and he took it, having already made the psychological leap out of New York City by setting his last three movies in England. In other words, this is as close as the Woodman has come to a for-hire job. The premise of the film, in fact, almost implies that Allen may not have taken the project seriously in the beginning. But maybe Barcelona inspired him, because it ends up in a place you couldn't possibly predict. Redundant narration gives us the particulars: Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are best friends spending the summer in Spain, where the former is completing a thesis on "Catalan identity" and the latter, having recently broken up with yet another lover, just wants to cool her heels. Each woman is American in her own female Allenian way--Vicky committed and grounded, Cristina impetuous and free-spirited. Living the good life under the roof of rich American expatriates (Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn), the two friends make the acquaintance of a painter named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who approaches them in a restaurant and extends an invitation for a romantic weekend on the other side of Spain where he promises to make love to both of them. Vicky is appalled, Cristina intrigued. However, the weekend doesn't turn out to be what either of the two women expected, and upon their return to Barcelona it is the principled, fiancee-bound Vicky who is in love with the artist while clueless Cristina looks for ways into his life that she missed during their sojourn during her recovery from a sudden stomach disorder. But she manages to make up for lost time and even moves in with Juan Antonio only to come up against the force of nature that is Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), Juan Antonio's ex-wife, a ball of fiery jealousy and candor. Maria Elena is an artist herself who claims to have taught Juan Antonio all he knows, and she sets herself up as not only Cristina's rival but also her mentor. This is where Allen's hackneyed view of the artistic life gets trotted out, and if the emotional gymnastics bring to mind the kind of complications Henry James strove for, the theme of the wacky creative spirit seems better suited to an episode of "Friends." Still, the movie's comedy has a stealthy cleverness and the resolution manages to bring everyone out of their cloud of romantic fantasy and back to the dull everyday of just getting by. Cruz, who won an Oscar for her performance, is supposed to be the main attraction here, but the real reason to see the movie is its astringent honesty. -PB

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"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (c) 2008 Gravier Prod., Inc. and Media Produccion SL"

The Visitor

Directed by
Tom McCarthy

Starring
Richard Jenkins & Hiam Abbass

Now playing (104 minutes)

To say veteran character actor Richard Jenkins owns this modest indie movie isn't saying much. Writer-director Tom McCarthy tries for so little that anyone with half a mind could own this movie without even attempting to act, and Jenkins' late middle-aged college professor is so inexpressive as to be borderline catatonic, even when he is asked to explain his inscrutable actions by the piano teacher he dismisses after one uncomfortable lesson or by the student whose "personal issues" excuse for a late paper he refuses to hear. We eventually learn that Waler Vale's wife, a concert pianist, is dead, and perhaps his soul died with her, but unlike the student McCarthy doesn't make any excuses. He allows Vale's off-putting reticence to stand as it is, and thus when he actually starts to feel something--pity, inspiration, anger--we also feel it more acutely than we might otherwise, which is important because the situation Vale ends up in has the potential to overflow with white liberal-guilt treacle. Having been forced by his department head to drive into New York City from his Connecticut college town to present an academic paper against his will (though his name is on it, he readily admits it was written almost exclusively by a younger colleague), Vale stops over at his old downtown apartment, which he hasn't visited in years, and discovers two undocumented foreigners living there. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) is a Syrian man who plays the djembe, an African drum, and his girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira), is a Senegalese who makes and sells jewelry on the street. They agree to abandon the apartment but for some reason Vale tells them they can stay until they find another one, and over the course of a few days the chilly white man thaws out in the beaming comradeship of the Palestinian musician, who notices Vale's interest in music and offers to teach him how to play the djembe. Zainab is less trusting for reasons that aren't difficult to fathom, but in any case this awkward three-way relationship turns distressingly purposeful when Tarek is arrested in the subway and taken to a nameless, privately run facility for visa scofflaws. Vale must come out of his shell to help his new friend, and his meeting with Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), who lives in Michigan, also illegally, it seems, brings an extra emotional layer to his crusade. Though Vale's shock at how cold the system really is seems a bit over-played--the guy, after all, is a professor of international finance--Jenkins manages to put it over by expressing a credible sense of despair and helplessness. It doesn't necessarily make us like Vale any more, but we do understand him better. In that regard, the bittersweet ending seems the only ending possible. -PB

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"The Visitor" (c) 2007 Visitor Holdings LLC

Opens July 4. In Japanese (86 min.)
Cinema 40

Sunshine Cleaning

Directed by
Christine Jeffs

Starring
Adams & Emily Blunt

Opens July 11 (92 minutes)

Beware the honored indie dramedy, of which Sunshine Cleaning is probably the perfect representative--nominated for that most dreaded of awards, the Grand Prix at the Sundance Film Festival. For some reason you can guess before the movie even starts that it takes place in the Sun Belt, where single mother Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) struggles to keep her self-esteem while working a dead end job as a housekeeper, raising her emotionally erratic son Oscar (Jason Spevack), and carrying on an affair with a married man (Steve Zahn). That this married man used to be Rose's steady boyfriend in high school where he was the football star and she the head cheerleader tells you all you need to know about Rose's special species of disappointment, not to mention the limits of screenwriter Megan Holly's imagination. But as woefully put-upon as Rose is, she's a rock of stability compared to her sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), the sort of wayward young woman who sports tattoos, engages in casual sex that she immediately regrets, and stalks people she is fascinated with. Naturally, these two fight a lot and there's a perfectly predictable childhood trauma behind Norah's tetchy neuroses. If this all sounds terribly depressing, Holly includes an eccentric father (Alan Arkin, the go-to guy for swearing senior citizens) whose string of oddball sales schemes give the story some necessary levity, though it doesn't explain how anyone could ever actually make a living from such schemes. By chance, Rose stumbles into a job cleaning a house following a nasty crime, and she tries to make a real business out of it, which requires the obtaining of licenses as well as specialized cleaning goods that puts her in proximity to a one-armed, model-airplane-building janitorial supplies merchant (Clifton Collins Jr.), who may or may not be the man of Rose's dreams. It's one of Holly's rare demonstrations of restraint that she doesn't throw Rose into his arms...er, arm. But it may be the only one. You get the feeling that Holly started with the emotional dimensions of the story and then just made up situations to bring them out, and the result is a plot overstuffed with incidents that, taken together, feel like the opposite of real life. Of course, the cliche about Amerindie is that it traffics in real life, or, at least, life that Hollywood wouldn't recognize. In trying to speak to the little people, movies like Sunshine Cleaning, regardless of the dedication of the performers (Blunt manages to be moving despite the incongruities in Norah's behavior), end up merely condescending to the lives they supposedly describe. This is as much of a fantasy as any outrageous romantic comedy, and a lot less funny. -PB

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Knowing

Directed by
Alex Proyas

Starring
Nicolas Cage & Rose Byrne

Opens July 10 (122 minutes)

People of faith tend to think that when the world ends, no one will be an atheist. In that regard, Knowing hedges its bets. As a doomsday thriller it gets the job done but just how seriously are we meant to take it? Nicolas Cage plays an MIT astrophysicist named John Koestler whose agnosticism has less to do with his vocation than with the fact that his wife recently died in a fire, thus reinforcing his belief that the universe is random and unfeeling. He drinks himself to sleep every night and tries hard to be a good single father to his son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), a moody child who would like to "believe" that his mother is still somewhere, but he's always distracted by these sounds in his head. In a pre-credits prologue we've already seen another child, a girl, with the same affliction, which drives her to scribble dense rows of numbers on a piece of paper that is then locked in a time capsule. The year is 1959, and when the contents are distributed to the students of the same school 50 years later, Caleb gets her envelope, which ends up on his father's desk at a particularly inebriated moment. Being a numbers freak, Koestler can't help but see a pattern and eventually he finds that the numbers describe dates of prominent disasters in the past, as well as a few in the near future. Or so he assumes, and when a plane crashes right in front of his eyes on one of those days he begins to question his "scientific mind." Meanwhile, the voices in Caleb's head continue, and he's visited by blonde, thin men in dark clothing who drive vintage Cadillacs, for some reason. Director Alex Proyas does a fairly good job of drawing us in to the mystery despite the enormous leaps in logic he forces on the viewer, not to mention Cage's usual hyperventilating antics. But once the daughter (Rose Byrne) of the original number girl shows up the movie has no more mystery to plumb. It's not exactly the end of the world as we know it, but with references to Ezekiel and a pointed subplot about Koestler rejecting his pastor father's Christian faith, it can't help but seem to be heading in the direction of The Rapture, though I assume Proyas and his team of accomplices intend it to be more open-ended so as not to turn off people who don't believe in all that. But what he ends up with is wishy-washy new age fantasy, even if the set pieces--which, in addition to the plane crash, include a massive subway accident and the destruction of whole cities--are pretty damn horrifying. -PB

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"Knowing" (c) 2009 Summit Entertainment LLC