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'Superman Returns'

By Scott Renshaw

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Director Bryan Singer doesn't waste any time letting you know that he's going retro for his franchise re-boot "Superman Returns." The block-letter opening credits swoop and whoosh just the way they did in Richard Donner's 1978 "Superman"; in the background, John Williams' rousing fanfare plays. Marlon Brando intones the voice of Superman's father Jor-El from his original performance. Even Brandon Routh's squeaky-voiced delivery as Clark Kent provides frightening echoes of Christopher Reeve. Singer wants to return us to that time when, as the tag line famously announced, we could "believe a man can fly" - because at last, special-effects technology have allowed comic book pages to come to life.

Nearly 30 years and an immeasurable number of gigabytes later, it's no longer exactly a problem convincing audiences that a man can fly, or shoot webs, or sprout adamantium claws or burst into flames. But the bar has been raised - by the likes of Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" films, or even last year's "Batman Begins" - for the psychological depth given to super-powered folks in tights.

That's a crucial missing piece in a story that embraces Superman as an icon rather than an individual. It's set five years after the events of "Superman II," with Superman (Routh) just returned from a quest for whatever might remain of his home planet of Krypton. The world has had to figure out how to go on without him, with Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) - now a single mom with a son coincidentally around 5 years old - having taken the departure most personally. Everyone is thrilled to know the Man of Steel is back - with the notable exception of Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), recently freed from prison and armed with a plan to use Superman's own history against the world.

Singer, of course, has plenty of experience by now with big-budget comic book adaptations after his work on the first two "X-Men" movies, so it's not surprising that he has a firm grip on action sequences like the crackerjack jet-in-peril set piece. He also gets great work from Spacey - who won his Oscar for the Singer-directed "The Usual Suspects" - whose take on Luthor brings more pure malevolence than Gene Hackman's interpretation. Great villains are half the battle in comic book adaptations, so "Superman Returns" would seem to be on solid ground.

But the other half of that battle is creating a compelling dramatic dilemma for the protagonist, and it's there that the script by "X2" writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris hits a wall of steel. The big hook is supposed to be the romantic triangle involving Supes, Lois and her new beau Richard ("X-Men"'s James Marsden), and the lingering bitterness represented by Lois' Pulitzer Prize-winning essay "Why We Don't Need Superman." That would, however, require some kind of spark between Bosworth and Routh, whose face seems as impervious to emotion as his curly forelock does to dishevelment.

Perhaps that's because - at least as far as we can tell - Lois is only really in love with the idea of Superman. And that's not terribly surprising, because Singer himself seems mostly to be in love with that idea as well. He's making a movie about our need for hope in a dark time, trying to cobble his Superman/Jesus metaphors to the necessary machinations of a Hollywood blockbuster. The result is something slightly aloof: a hero only briefly allowing us to touch his cape before he's off to the Fortress of Solitude.

It's kind of a shame, because Singer has actually crafted a comic-book movie confident enough not to shout every scene at us. A meteor crashes in one scene not with a spectacular explosion, but with a distant, muffled thud; one climactic moment comes and goes without the expected whoop-it-up kaboom. But these muted moments are matched by a muted personality, nothing remotely close to the simple exhilaration of the first two Reeve "Superman" films.

Late in "Superman Returns," Lois stares at a blinking cursor, frustrated in her attempt to create an essay titled "Why We Need Superman." With his attention to abstraction rather than inner life, Bryan Singer never manages to come up with a decent answer, either. It's not enough to believe a man can fly. We need to believe that the thing that's flying is actually a man. CV

(Scott Renshaw reviews movies for the Salt Lake City Weekly.)

'Down in the Valley'

By Felicia Feaster

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More spectacular than any Western sunset is a film with big stars and serious investors (actor Edward Norton is one of them) sinking just as dramatically into the Pacific.

"Down in the Valley" is a film that begins promisingly as a study of a tragically mismatched couple grappling toward authentic love in an inauthentic time. But eventually this Sundance Institute project becomes, like so many overwritten screenplays, chock-full of big ideas that lead nowhere.

"Down in the Valley" is part of the small fraternity of cowboy delusionism. Such tales of unhappy but passionate cowpokes include the recent "Brokeback Mountain" and John Schlesinger's 1969 masterpiece "Midnight Cowboy." In such tales, the cowboy pose is a kind of hopeless outsider stance, an inability to square an old-fashioned way of looking at the world with a dismal contemporary reality.

Harlan Fairfax Carruthers (Edward Norton) whose name is pure Louis L'Amour Western kitsch, says he's from South Dakota. But his cowboy playacting with guns and John Ford dialogue in his cheap San Fernando Valley apartment suggests he may be more of a Method rancher.

Harlan scrambles down from the hills like a Marlboro billboard come to life, with his lasso and Stetson and West Village mustache, to woo the jaded and underage Valley Girl Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood) with his hat-tipping manners and boyish innocence.

Cowpoke Harlan is undeniably an anachronism, a courtly gent ambling through the land of road rage and roofies. But his filly, Tobe, is in her own way an L.A. woman cut from a different cloth. With her alabaster skin and grossed-out queries ("Who gets fake tits when you're 18?"), Tobe is a beguilingly complex Lolita part innocent, part insider - who leaves Harlan muttering, "Holy smokes!" after she ravishes him.

She invites Harlan to the beach and he rewards her for the courtesy with the kind of gesture teenage girls go mad for. He quits his job to spend the day in her company.
Harlan is a dream lover for Tobe, an empty vessel she can fill with Ecstasy and sex, and he's a daddy figure to her skittish little brother, Lonnie (a highly effective Rory Culkin), whose brutish supercop stepdad, Wade (David Morse), is masculinity-off-the-leash.
Lonnie develops a boy crush on the attentive Harlan, who thoroughly bewitches him like Robert De Niro's various predators in "Cape Fear" and "Taxi Driver." It is a reflection of "Down in the Valley"'s hopeless naivetŽ that instead of finding something creepy and mesmeric in Harlan's cult of personality, the film continually casts him as a tragic romantic. "Down in the Valley" wants you to like Harlan as much as it does, despite the fact that Harlan is, to put it mildly, a psychopath.

Like much of "Down in the Valley," Tobe and Harlan's romance at first promises something meaty. Harlan's gallantry and romantic streak and unfamiliarity with recreational pharmaceuticals marks him as an exotic Other. Harlan is the kind of real man who's been erased in the modern rush, who in times of stress retreats to the remaining green patches of L.A. to ride a white filly and shoot bottles. Like Iron Eyes Cody in those long-ago anti-litter ads, Harlan looks down upon the valley of highways and jets and you can virtually see a tear forming in his eye.

If only "Down in the Valley" hung onto the idea of a man out of time long enough to deliver real results. Instead, director David Jacobson's film is terminally on the move, too antsy to develop his more interesting ideas, like why a man might choose to be a cowboy as a rejection of Hollywood inauthenticity.

Harlan's delusions of cowboydom, after all, are only an extreme expression of the kind of self-delusion and fantasy lifestyles that define the City of Angels. There is every reason to believe masculinity hemmed in by Hollywood vacuity would go cagey and psychotic.

But Jacobson isn't particularly interested in social commentary or in outsiders as a warped mirror through which to examine ourselves. Instead, he sinks any originality with a heap of hokum, from the pretentiously meaningful vision of Harlan riding his horse through an unfinished subdivision, to his tendency to burden Harlan with cowboy philosophizing about tree branches and destiny.

"Down in the Valley" becomes increasingly constrictive and outright ludicrous in its attempts to tap into the Western mythos, as when Harlan escapes with Lonnie on horseback into the Hollywood Hills. Wade pursues on horseback, as if finally forced to enter into not only Harlan's but writer/director Jacobson's delusion. Many viewers will probably opt not to join them on the ever-loopier trail ride.CV

'Click'

By Ben Spierenburg

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Weepy melodrama mixed with sophomoric slapstick, "Click" ultimately makes you wish there really was a universal remote, if only so you could change the movie you're watching to something better. About a man who gets the chance to sort out his hectic life using a magical remote control, the film has a clever premise sure to hook audiences, but fails to exploit it with any jokes worth remembering. The filmmakers refuse to let the humor flow naturally from the premise and produce an uneven picture, which clumsily blends a grim Dickensian storyline with Adam Sandler's tired brand of dog-humping hilarity.

As Michael Newman, Sandler plays an architect more interested in getting ahead at work than in spending time with his lovely wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) and two sprightly children, Ben and Samantha (Joseph Castanon and Tatum McCann). Trying to watch an important video for work one night, Michael becomes irritated by the large number of random remote controls in his house, none of which he can comprehend. Determined to simplify at least one area of his life, he ventures out to buy one of those newfangled universal remotes his loaded neighbors have.

All the usual places for buying such an item are closed, so Michael ends up at a Bed, Bath and Beyond. After taking a quick nap on one of the plush beds, he finds a mysterious door labeled "Beyond," behind which he finds an eccentric but friendly scientist named Morty (Christopher Walken, who seems born for such roles), who has just what Michael is looking for - a universal remote capable of making everything easier.

Morty doesn't tell Michael just how universal his remote is, but he finds out quickly enough. Soon he's happily pausing to punish adversaries with face-slaps and genital-kicks, muting his barking dog, and fast-forwarding through tedious fights (and coital sessions) with his wife, all with the simple push of a button. When confused, he consults Morty, who shows him how he can view any moment of his past complete with voice-over commentary courtesy of James Earl Jones.

Before long Michael's universal remote begins to malfunction, skipping over all the supposedly uninteresting parts of his life as it speeds him to his next career milestone. Stuck on autopilot, his marriage and his health deteriorate as he realizes that he has wasted his life on work. From here on, you won't need to fast-forward to figure out exactly how it all ends. Just imagine the most clichéd ending possible.

Sandler is merely satisfactory as he portrays Michael at various ages and weights. The make-up department helps greatly in this regard, and is superb at showing us what Sandler will look like when he's 60 and saddled with 300 pounds of blubber. And while a demure Kate Beckinsale is respectable as his wife Donna, a broad supporting cast adds little. David Hasselhoff is underwhelming as Michael's egotistical, tactless boss. Sean Astin ("Rudy") is barely used as Ben's speedo-clad swim teacher, and Rachel Dratch ("Saturday Night Live") is unbearably unfunny as Michael's gawky assistant.

Although screenwriters/producers Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe supply a structurally solid script about a workaholic's downfall, you get the distinct feeling that any number of other writers could've done more with the material. And while director Frank Coraci ("The Waterboy") does a decent job of illustrating the controller's features and telling the story, it's not enough to save the picture from itself.

Indeed, like the universal remote in the film, "Click" is defective. It tries to be a juvenile comedy and a weighty drama all at once, and as we all know, a movie divided against itself cannot stand. Every last stale joke from the Adam Sandler arsenal is recycled and awkwardly dropped into the somber story. In their mindlessly misguided attempts to amuse, the filmmakers ruin what might have been a quality film by inserting far too many senseless jokes concerning farts, dogs in heat and kicks to the groin.

'Mountain Patrol: Kekexili'

By Andrew Brink

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"Mountain Patrol: Kekexili," written and directed by Lu Chuan, is co-produced by National Geographic World Films, which seems to guarantee that the audience will be treated to frolicking furries (bunnies, bears and meerkats if we're lucky) and a revealing lesson in the hardships and triumphs of their hairy lives (winter is tough, but those bald baby hedgehogs are so cute!). Five minutes into the film, after poachers murder both a harmless Tibetan antelope and an innocent man, it becomes clear that this is not that kind of National Geographic special. No dancing bunnies here. The film is more like the National Geographic episode where momma doe doesn't make it back home, and we race to turn the channel before a crocodile snaps its saw teeth around her head.

"Mountain Patrol" is based on a true story and expands on the idea that truth is stranger than fiction: It is also more unsettling and inspiring. In the 1990s, a group of volunteers patrolled the Kekexili region of Tibet, now China's largest animal reserve, to combat the poaching of Tibetan antelope. The rare antelope, blessed with the world's finest hair, is highly coveted for its undercoat, known as shahtoosh. One single shahtoosh scarf can cost several thousand dollars, as well as the lives of three to five antelope. The greed of the poachers, who profited handsomely on the prized pelts, resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of animals in two short decades. The volunteers who formed the mountain patrol chose to stand between the barrels of the poachers' guns and the fast dwindling antelope.

Lu Chuan, as storyteller, deftly and beautifully introduces the lives of the patrol and the severe and demanding landscape they call both home and office. Ga Yu (Zhang Lei), a photographer from Beijing, arrives at the patrol's base camp wanting to accompany the men as they guard Kekexili against merciless poachers. His hope is to raise awareness of the patrol's work and the plight of the antelope. Yu is introduced to Ri Tai (Duo Bujie), the patrol's fearless leader who, being used to moving mountains with a handful of men, is clearly weary of adding a new set of hands - particularly ones already occupied with a camera - to their undertaking. But their shared goal of protecting the innocent wins out, and Yu heads out with the patrol through the thin air of the Tibetan plateau to track down the killers.

Yu is our guide as the film, which at times feels like a documentary, quickly becomes a true thriller. When he comes upon a landscape covered in hundreds of skinned and slaughtered antelope our eyes are opened to the extent of the poacher's continued atrocities. When he sits beneath the boundless Tibetan night sky, clean of the day's bloodshed, we come to understand the patrol as a brotherhood, who sing, eat and laugh together and, when the time comes to part ways, embrace so tightly we realize their job requires a willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Which is largely what makes this such a remarkable story. Ri Tai's men are no Aspen mountain patrol. They have no matching uniforms, no functioning communication system and hardly enough fuel to complete the journey home. They have no authority to arrest poachers, only the authority to confiscate pelts. They haven't been paid in a year, which also appears to have been the last time they've eaten a good meal. What they do possess is a clear mission and a pure understanding of it: protect those that can't protect themselves. While this is a fictionalized version of events, we understand by film's end that real lives have been sacrificed while protecting Kekexili.

Cao Yu's striking cinematography stays true to the National Geographic experience, offering up Kekexili's dramatic landscape that needs no human drama to make it appealing. Quicksand, ice, dust, and snow-capped mountains are just some of the land's contradictions to be contemplated amidst the clash between poachers and patrolmen.

Midway through the film, Lu points a finger at the audience. The mountain patrol rounds up a group of skinners who have just removed the pelts of over 500 antelope. While attempting to bring the skinners to justice, the patrol's truck becomes trapped in sand. Ri Tai realizes his men can't recover the truck alone and the prisoners are quickly brought out to get the caravan back on track. Working together, both the skinners and mountain patrol succeed. It's an unambiguous moment as we see that this group of volunteers can't save the world, much less their tuck, alone. Saving lives takes more than a handful of individuals; "Mountain Patrol" suggests it requires the involvement of everyone.

'Nacho Libre'

By Ben Spierenburg

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For a film that may not have looked particularly promising in previews, "Nacho Libre" turns out to be a ridiculously delightful instant comedy classic - just as good (if not better) than his first film, the wildly popular "Napoleon Dynamite." Director Jared Hess proves he's no flash in the pan with a masterfully whimsical tale of a monk-turned-Mexican wrestler. This time around Hess is given a decent budget ($25 million, compared to $400,000 for "Napoleon") and an A-list comedic talent in Jack Black. Worthy of beeing seen more than once, this wonderfully zany PG-rated film looks like the surprise hit of the summer.

Black is positively brilliant in the role of Ignacio (known to friends as Nacho), a sweetly silly and utterly lovable little loser. Orphaned as a child and raised in a Mexican monastery, Ignacio harbors dreams of becoming a famous Lucha Libre wrestler his entire life. These details are deftly revealed in the film's opening moments.

Disrespected by the monks but beloved by the orphans, Ignacio toils diligently as the monastery's cook. As the friary is impoverished, he must do what he can to make meals as delicious as possible with almost no ingredients - an effort that consistently results in rations of unsavory gruel.

When the gorgeously divine Sister Encarnacion (Ana de le Reguera) arrives to join the monastery staff, Ignacio is instantly enchanted by her angelic beauty. He gets in line with the rest of the monks to compete for the pretty nun's attention, but quickly realizes he will never succeed as a lowly cook.

Walking through town one day, a disheartened Ignacio sees his idol Ramses, (played by actual luchador Cesar Gonzalez), the reigning champion of Lucha Libre wrestling, walking through a crowd of worshipful onlookers. Soon after, he spies an advertisement calling for tag-team wrestlers. Determined to provide his companions with a more healthful menu, and looking to impress Sister Encarnacion, Ignacio concludes the time for the realization of his wrestling dreams has come.

Before long he finds his tag-team partner in the feral Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez), an emaciated street tramp who mugs him for his tortilla chips. The pair embark upon a series of hilariously foolish training exercises to prepare for their first match. Although they lose to a duo of bloodthirsty midgets, Ignacio is overjoyed when they are paid a small portion of the profits anyway. He quickly sets about buying only the finest of ingredients for his monastery's meals, providing them with elaborate salads and bean dips. However, despite the welcome influx of cash, Ignacio yearns to become as proficient and as renowned a luchador as the powerful Ramses.

An exceptionally patient narrative, "Nacho Libre" nonetheless keeps the audience in consistent fits of laughter, unsure of where the story will go next. Screenwriters Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess and Mike White mine their preposterously amusing premise for all it's worth. It has the same nonsensical, random, understated humor that made "Napoleon" a hit, yet is faithful to traditional comedic structure. Indeed, in its characters and story arc, the film is pleasingly reminiscent of the Charlie Chaplin classic "City Lights."

Delivering two masterpieces in his first two tries, director Hess is on the fast track toward comic immortality. A devout Mormon whose films are strictly PG, Hess made an odd but wise choice in becoming a comedy writer/director. His characters are reflections of his personality; like Hess, Ignacio is a religious man with a comically incongruous ambition.

Danny Elfman and Beck supply a fantastic soundtrack that perfectly balances the comedy with seriousness. "Nacho Libre" also benefits greatly from being filmed entirely in Mexico. When it's over, you feel that you have spent the last 100 minutes on a side-splitting sojourn south of the border. CV

'Water'

By Kate Conlow

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In the film "Water," Indian-Canadian director and screenwriter Deepa Mehta examines the social position of widows within Indian society. Set in the 1930s in Varanasi, India, Mehta skillfully portrays the poverty and abuse, both physical and sexual, that women in India were, and in many places still are, subjected to upon a husband's death. By highlighting the rich colors of the scenery and using natural lighting to cast harsh shadows in the scenes, Mehta emphasizes the contrast between the bleak and dismal lifestyle of the widows and the vibrant society in which they live.

"Water" tells the story of Chuyia, brilliantly played by Sarala, a recently widowed girl who is forced to live in an ashram, a house where widows are sent upon their husbands' deaths. Seven-year-old Chuyia is confused as to why she must live at the ashram, believing that her stay there is temporary, when actually, she will be confined there for the rest of her life. Chuyia's perplexity leads her to ask many probing questions that seek justification for the horrible treatment of widows. Through these straightforward comments, Mehta uses Chuyia to convey her own objections, bringing into question the mistreatment of these widows. Mehta uses cinematography to further emphasize Chuyia's youthfulness to the viewer. Through shots that convey a child peering through a crack or running through rooms and streets, Mehta grants the viewer a child's perspective, underlining the appalling fact that not only are older women subjected to these deplorable conditions, but that young girls, are as well.

A romantic subplot that Mehta introduces could have been frivolous and distracting from the film's intended message; however, a twist at the end emphasizes how strongly the belief in a widow's debased status is imbedded into the mindset of not only the public at large, but especially the widows themselves, who ardently believe that they deserve to suffer their horrible conditions.

"Water's" vivid picture of widows in India gives an insight into Indian society that leaves the viewer with a feeling that is troubling yet ultimately encouraging. CV

'An Inconvenient Truth'

By Marjorie Baumgarten

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You can call him Al. He introduces himself as the man "who used to be the next president of the United States of America." There's no question about it: This is the Al Gore 2.0 version. The figure presented in this documentary is not the Al Gore whom people found too stiff and impersonal during the 2000 elections. This is the looser, more media-savvy and passionate guy who no one suspected existed.

The film is essentially a document of Gore's traveling slide show about the global-warming crisis, a presentation he's been perfecting in auditoriums across the globe over the last few years. The show is lively and heartfelt - a persuasive call to action.

Still, it's not without some wonkish climate charts and graphs depicting currents and temperatures and such. It's probably best if the veracity and implications of the science put forth here are left to qualified scientists to debate. Certainly, there are niggling issues here and there regarding Gore's interpretation of certain facts and experiences. Did the ecology movement really begin only after the first moon landing, as Gore claims? Or is he conveniently conflating personal experience and public perceptions? Nevertheless, these are petty inaccuracies - like Gore's once-upon-a-time "invention of the Internet."

As a film, "An Inconvenient Truth" is a treasury of information. Attention may occasionally drift, but the film's message of urgency is abundantly clear. Director Davis Guggenheim fills out the slide-show material with some personal background about the former vice president that allows Gore to expand on his cause in more emotional terms. We visit the Tennessee home of his privileged childhood, where he's happy to tell us he learned to hunt. The death of his sister from lung cancer and his decision to divest his tobacco holdings and interests demonstrate his belief in science's ability to change our thinking.

The most potent idea he puts forth is that "in America, political will is a renewable resource." Gore's zeal for his subject is inspiring, and this big-screen tool for getting his message out is a step in the right direction. CV

'The Proposition'

by Marjorie Baumgarten

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Despite perpetual rumors of its demise as a genre, the Western is alive and well in the Australian outback. The Proposition, whose screenplay and score are by cult musician of gloom Nick Cave, follows in the gritty tradition of Sam Peckinpah, John Huston and Robert Aldrich - American filmmakers who made Westerns about strong-willed men and the individualized codes by which they live. This Australian outback comprises its own kind of badlands: harsh, inhospitable terrain that provides cover for desperados so completely beyond the human pale that they seem to have more in common with wild animals. The story is set in the 1880s, when the English still ruled the continent, wresting the land from the indigenous peoples. Yet law and governance remain distant realities, and their application even more remote. Into this unremitting country comes Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone), a lawman/soldier whose single-minded desire becomes the apprehension of the Burns brothers. Wanted for rape and murder, the three Irish Burns boys appear to commit their crimes - against white people, no less - for sheer thrills. Stanley captures two of the brothers in the film's brutal opening shoot-out and presents the elder Charlie (Guy Pearce) with an impossible proposition: Stanley will hold young, dim-witted Mikey Burns (Richard Wilson) in jail until Christmas day while Charlie hunts down and kills his psychotic renegade brother Arthur (Danny Huston), who is holed up in the outback. Striking a dainty blow against the untamed frontier is Stanley's wife, Martha (Emily Watson), who creates an illusion of English propriety in the midst of the primitivism. The performances all strike a perfect note. As Stanley, Winstone's sweat-profusing body seems emblematic of his situation, while Watson's small, feminine frame reflects civilization's uphill battle. Peace remains inscrutable, especially when up against the drunken, Darwin-spouting bounty hunter played by Hurt. As the wild yet poetically inclined brother Arthur, Huston has never delivered a performance this good. He becomes the dark, unknowable heart of the story. Not since the great Once Upon a Time in the West have so many flies appeared in a Western: They seem as inured to swatting as do lawless humans in this godforsaken place. Cave's droning, incantatory music on the soundtrack provides an aural equivalent for these sweat-sucking pests. Like the countryside it portrays, The Proposition is visually brutal and bloody. Delicate sensibilities are pummeled rather than spared. "Civilization" emerges from a gun barrel, and its discontents are everywhere.

'A Prairie Home Companion'

By Andrew Brink

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Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" makes clear that producing a radio show is no tidy affair. In addition to a reserve of musicians and players, miles of chords and no small amount of good fortune, the production also requires a stash of egg- salad sandwiches, a trace of unrequited love and an angel of death.

Altman successfully brings to film what Garrison Keillor has miraculously brought to public radio for more than 30 years. Altman's achievement is in no small part due to the fact that Keillor penned the script. In the film, as on radio, "Companion" is a live radio variety show featuring music, storytelling and commercials for such imaginary organizations as the Ketchup Advisory Board, all of which showcase a clever, Midwestern sensibility - both the broadcast and film are based in St. Paul, Minn. - that easily tunes out dreary reality. The film follows G.K. (Keillor) as he hosts the final broadcast of "Companion," which has outlived its owner's interest but not its devoted cast.

Altman is a master at examining lives confined by circumstance, and Keillor, in his lazy-river voice, has no shortage of stories to tell. Together they bring to life a spiraling cast that would even give Annie Leibovitz pause: Meryl Streep and Lilly Tomlin play singing sisters; Lindsay Lohan plays Streep's morbid poet daughter; and Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly and Kevin Kline bring to life some of Keillor's most beloved inventions (bad-joke telling cowboys Dusty and Lefty and gumshoe Guy Noir). Go for the all-star cast but stay for the music; the film spotlights the Guy's All Star Shoe Band and siren Jearlyn Steele.

Why adapt a perfected radio show for film and expose it to possible imperfection? The movie is less concerned with straight adaptation; rather, it pays homage to all the radio show miracle workers of the past. The film is an ideal introduction, or re-introduction, into Keillor's world where, famously, all the men are good looking, the women are strong, the children above average. And everyone sings beautifully about anything, including Lake Superior sardines.

'The Omen'

by Ben Spierenburg

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A faithful reproduction of the original, "The Omen" is a satanically scary film. Unlike many recent dreadful remakes, it wisely relies on the screenplay and storyboards that made the original a classic. Thankfully avoiding the temptation to go nuts with gratuitous computer effects, director John Moore delivers that rarest of Hollywood products - a satisfying remake. This is so rare in fact, that when you combine it with the film's devilishly clever release date of 6/6/06, you begin to wonder if perhaps the end of the world is at hand after all.

As in the 1976 version, the film begins in Vatican City, where a troubled council of Catholic leaders meet to discuss a string of current events they interpret as portents of the coming apocalypse. Properly updated in this instance, we are shown images of disaster - September 11, floods, armed conflicts, along with a comet heading ominously towards Earth. At a nearby Rome hospital, American diplomat Robert Thorn (Liev Schrieber) and his wife Katherine (Julia Styles) have just given birth to a baby boy. However, Robert is told that the child has died, and is convinced by a mysterious doctor to take an orphan boy born the same night as his own. He hides this tragic information from his wife, and through a picture montage we see the couple happily raise their son Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick).

Everything goes swimmingly until Damien turns six, (an important age for the son of the devil) when he decides it's time to start putting his evil powers of telepathy and telekinesis to work. The first victim is Robert's superior, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., who is seemingly killed in a fluke accident. Soon after, Robert, who is the president's godson, is awarded the prestigious position of Ambassador. This gives Damien a clear connection to the power of the presidency, which he will presumably need if he is to ever bring about worldwide destruction.

Damien follows up this first slaying by offing his nanny at his sixth birthday party. Standing on the roof of a mansion, she tells the crowd of shocked onlookers that "it's all for you Damien!" right before hanging herself off the side of the building. His parents find this event disconcerting, but nonetheless immediately set out to find a new nanny. The film is given a horror retro-boost when Mia Farrow (of "Rosemary's Baby" fame), steps in to become Damien's new caretaker and pawn, Mrs. Blaylock.

Beset by troubling signals from all sides, Robert is soon contacted by Father Brennan (played with verve by Pete Postlethwaite), whom he casually dismisses as mentally deranged. He is also contacted by a news photographer (David Thewlis), who has noticed some intriguing clues within his photos.

Faced with portraying a character who must ritually murder his own son, and working under the long shadow cast by original lead Gregory Peck, Schreiber proves that he's a fine actor in his own right. Possessing the seriousness to carry such a foreboding story, Schreiber's expressions and delivery are reliably subtle yet intense. Julia Styles, on the other hand, is woefully miscast as his wife Katherine. Styles and Schreiber possess little chemistry together, likely because her acting skills seem so pedestrian by comparison. Davey-Fitzpatrick, who was cast after an exhaustive search for a creepy enough looking child to pass as Damien, performs his task well.

To his credit, director John Moore chooses not to satiate his ego by making his version of "The Omen" a vastly different interpretation. He does, however, insert several awkward (albeit very brief) dream sequences. A convention of more modern horror films, these sudden jarring flashes feel out of place and succeed only in producing laughter. Despite a couple of gaffes, the director generally does an admirable job in reproducing an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Composer Marco Beltrami provides a menacing score that further adds to the overall dread.

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