filmland / By Charlie Myers

‘Ratatouille’ charms, ‘Transformers’ disappoints

(July 12, 2007) Previews

Opening Wednesday, July 11, is one of the major films of the summer: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix . The fifth in the Boy Wizard series features the usual all-star cast of British actors and new director David Yates who will also helm the sixth Harry Potter ( Half-Blood Prince ). See the preview by Heidi Walters in the July 5 issue of the Journal . Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images. 148 m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek, Minor and the Fortuna, with midnight screenings on Tuesday at the Broadway and Fortuna.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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Opening Friday, July 13, is the psychological thriller (torture-porn?) Captivity , with the unfortunately typecast Elisha Cuthbert as a woman who is kidnapped after drinking an apple martini at a bar and wakes up in a dungeon where some sadist has nasty things planned. Sharing her new quarters is a guy played by Daniel Gillies ( Bride & Prejudice ; Spider-Man 2 ). Maybe this is really a different strokes romance set in an unusual place, or a cautionary tale for those of you who drink stuff like apple martinis. Roland Joffé, who used to do somewhat better fare such as The Mission , directs this U.S./Russian co-production. Rated R for strong violence, torture, pervasive terror, grisly images, language and some sexual material. 95 m. At The Movies and Mill Creek.

Continuing the Eureka Library July series of Barbara Stanwyck films is Howard Hawks’ 1941 film Ball of Fire . The film also stars Gary Cooper as Professor Bertram Potts, an academic who meets the too-hot-to-handle Sugarpuss O’Shea (Stanwyck) while researching slang. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, Potts falls for nightclub singer O’Shea, but there might be a problem with her gangster boyfriend Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews). Guess we’ll all learn the meaning of “yum-yum.” Wendy Butler will introduce the film. The program starts promptly at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 17, at the Main Library located at 1313 3rd St.

Reviews

TRANSFORMERS: So I go away for a week to Portland for some chamber music and a little R&R. Well, as so often happens on vacations, the rest part didn’t happen, and now I’m trying to achieve relaxation back in Humboldt County and write a column wherein I’m supposed to be a film reviewer/previewer. In my post-trip haze, what do I discover? Journal staffer Heidi Walters has already covered next week’s one major opening ( Harry Potter ) in a feature length preview and guest reviewer Jay Herzog has taken all the interesting films that opened in my absence. Desperately scanning the movie ads, I discover that my choices devolve into a boys and toys film, a Robin Williams vehicle that would require copious amounts of antacid to stomach and a cartoon about a rat in a kitchen. I decided to turn off what’s left of my brain and give Transformers a try.

Born in 1984, that once-ominous year, the Transformer toys begat collectibles, TV shows, comic books, a previous animated feature in 1986, an apparent large group of rabid followers who may have been transformed themselves — can it be a coincidence that another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is in the offing? — and now a mixed animation/live action movie directed by Michael Bay ( Armageddon ; Pearl Harbor ) with a lot of noise. For the second time in a few weeks, our beleaguered Earth is threatened with extinction and, as in Live Free or Die Hard , our elaborate computer infrastructure is useless.

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