Spring Guide 2007: The Inside Scoop

Take a peek at the spring cinema lineup.

Soon the snow will recede, leaving behind moist, rich soil, and delicate flowers will reach out toward the sky as it waxes an ever-fiercer blue. Yes, spring is upon us and, after being imprisoned inside by months of foul weather, what could be better than

choosing

to sequester oneself indoors in the temperature-controlled fantasy world that is your local cinema? No, the answer is not sun-drenched strolls, romantic picnics or breezy bike rides-the answer is

nothing

, you reality-loving hippie.

Alas, in the movie biz, spring, positioned as it is between the Oscar contenders and the summer blockbusters, is traditionally a time when the industry drops stinking piles-o-poop. It's as if they seek to provide Mother Nature with an extra bit of fertilizer for her blossoming

***image13***

botanic beauties. This year is certainly no different. But fret not, there are golden kernels hidden away within the excrement-and I am here, snorkel mask firmly fastened, to help you wade toward them.

March

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

16  

Chris Rock is a comedy idiot savant: brilliant at stand-up; really, really bad at everything else. Hopefully (though doubtfully) that will change with

I Think I Love My Wife

, which Rock co-wrote, directed and stars in. In this remake of French new wave director Eric Rohmer's

Chloe in the Afternoon

, Rock plays a married man who struggles against temptation when a hot flame from his past comes back into his life. I believe this one may be responsible for new French legislation that seeks to outlaw

***image7***

bringing copies of French movies across the Atlantic or ever showing them to Americans.

It was just a matter of time before a movie came out about championship poker in order to capture that valuable 18- to 34-year-old male market.

Lucky You

is directed by Curtis Hansen (

LA Confidential

,

Wonderboys

,

8 Mile

) and stars Eric Bana (a wild card since he was awesome in

Chopper

but was also in the worst movie in recorded history,

Troy

) as a reckless high-stakes poker player who's as good at cards as he is bad with the ladies. Drew Barrymore is the love interest and Robert Duvall is Bana's poker legend pa. Male resistance to seeing it would be futile had they tied in a visit to an Ultimate Fighting Championship match.

***image12***

Winner of last year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival,

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

is finally arriving stateside. British director Ken Loach's film tells the tale of two brothers who join a brigade of IRA activists during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and subsequent Irish Civil War (1922-1923). Made by an international coalition of the (actually) willing including Irish, British, Spanish, Italian, German and French film forces,

Wind

has stirred much controversy for its take on Irish history and British violence.

***image10***

23

Last year, Wes Craven's 1977

The Hills Have Eyes

was remade to box office success. Now comes

The Hills Have Eyes 2

, in which a squad of National Guard trainees is stalked by inbred desert cannibals. Promises to be as good as it sounds.

***image4***

Color Me Kubrick

is based on the

true story of con man Alan Conway (John Malkovich), who successfully passed as Stanley Kubrick while Kubrick was making his final film,

Eyes Wide Shut

(1999). Marvel as Conway gets cash and sex for being Kubrick despite looking nothing like him and knowing almost nothing about his work.

***image3***

30

Blades of Glory

is going to be totally different than

Talladega Nights

, because this time Will Ferrell is an ice skater instead of a race car driver. Double your fun by bringing your highbrow professor uncle to see it and watching his face as he loses faith in the future.

April

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

***image2***

6

In the early '90s, director Paul Verhoeven was making thoroughly entertaining features like

Total Recall

and

Basic Instinct

. He has since devolved into movies such as

Starship Troopers

and

Hollow Man

. But I sense a comeback with

Black Book

, a thriller about a Jewish spy in a Nazi stronghold.

13

***image6***

Lonely Hearts

and

Perfect Stranger

have a strange number of things in common.

Lonely Hearts

stars Salma Hayek and

Perfect Stranger

stars Halle Berry, probably the two women most responsible for R&B singers crooning, "Girl, you fi-hi-hine." Both are thrillers that involve killers who use personals ads to find their victims. Both promise to be fairly entertaining when you rent them on DVD.

***image9***

20

It's hard to know what to make of this one. Gregg Araki, director of 2004's gut-wrenching

Mysterious Skin

, which was about a young gay hustler and was full of horrible rape scenes, has now made

Smiley Face

, a movie about a girl who eats her roommate's pot brownies and goes on a super-stoned quest to replace them. The problem is you eat one, then you get the munchies so you eat a bunch more, then you write a script.

27

***image11***

In

The Invisible

, Justin Chatwin plays a young man who is brutalized and left for dead. Trapped between the world of the living and the afterlife-therefore invisible, of course-he must track down his attacker before he dies all the way. In other words, it's a solipsistic version of

Ghost

; but will he make love to himself while manning the pottery wheel?

May ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Zoo

is a true-life re-enactment about a man who perished while attempting to have sex with a horse. Apparently, the death brought to light a secret spa in the Pacific Northwest for men who enjoyed adventures of that scale. I tried learning more about this film by Googling the words "zoo," "horse" and "sex." Needless to say, things took a turn for the interesting that evening.

4

It's been a while since we came upon a diamond in the dung.

Paris, Je T'aime

features 20 directors, including the Coen brothers, Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven and

***image5***

Alfonso Cuaron, who created interlocking five-minute movies about the most romantic city in the world: Paris.

11

Delta Farce

is about three flabby, middle-age suburban losers who are mistaken for soldiers by an army sergeant while shooting their guns in the woods for kicks. The sergeant attempts to ship them off to Iraq, but the plane is somehow diverted to Mexico. Believing they are in Fallujah, they help fight a local bandit. Where, oh where, do they come up with this…stuff?

18

In

Captivity

, a model and her chauffeur are kidnapped, dragged into a cellar and tortured. In between being mutilated, the two strike up a romance. It's got something for romantics, sadists and chauffeurs.


25

Paprika

not only adds spice to potato salad for your springtime barbecues, it is also an

***image8***

anime movie about a futuristic group of psychotherapists who have invented a device that allows them to enter their patients' dreams. But when a prototype of the gadget goes missing, one therapist must enter her patient's subconscious in order to find the thief.

Speaking of the subconscious: Johnny Depp appears willing to take a pay cut if he is allowed to paint himself

in copious eyeliner (

Edward Scissorhands

,

Don Juan DeMarco

,

Chocolat

). Which is why Depp is so excited about doing sequel after sequel of the

Pirates of the Caribbean

series: He gets eyeliner and a fat paycheck! This one is subtitled

At World's End

and features Chow Yun-Fat as Capt. Jack Sparrow's new nemesis.

***image1***

And in what may be the most enticing movie of the season, Christian Bale (

American Psycho

,

Batman Returns

) stars in

Rescue Dawn

, director Werner Herzog's (

Fitzcarraldo

,

Grizzly Man

) harrowing true-life account of Dieter Dengler, a Vietnam war pilot who was shot down and made a POW. Dengler devises an ingenious plan to escape his tormentors, who just didn't seem to get that all we were trying to do was stop the dominoes of Communism from falling across Asia.

June ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

1

Reminiscent of the incredible

Capturing the Friedmans

,

The Trials of Darryl Hunt

is a documentary about Darryl Hunt, a black man wrongly convicted of raping and killing a white woman in the South. Though based on 10 years of research and filming,

Trials

still only covers the latter half of the time Hunt spent in prison, which spans the years from 1984 to 2004.

Trials

, set against a cultural context of racism and classism, reminds us that Hunt easily could have been sentenced to death, his story silenced forever.

Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to PO Box 4910 Santa Fe, NM 87502 or email them to editor[at]sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

We also welcome you to follow SFR on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and comment there. You can also email specific staff members from our contact page.