filmland / By North Coast Journal Staff

Happy Days, Here Again

The Humboldt County Library has help for hard times: Free movies

(Jan. 8, 2009) PREVIEWS

In Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood plays a cranky old codger in Detroit who finds a purpose — staring down street gangs, Dirty Harry-style. This after working through some personal issues and befriending the Hmong families who have moved into his neighborhood. Rated R for language and some violence. 116 m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek, Minor and Fortuna.

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“A dour fantasy, an immersive head trip, and the year’s most fascinating bummer,” says The New Republic‘s Christopher Orr of Synecdoche, New York, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaption, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Plot may be somewhat beside the point, but briefly: Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a depressed playwright who lands a big grant, with which he decides to stage a production of his entire life. A long-overdue arrival to Humboldt County screens. Rated R for language and some sexual content. 124 m. At the Minor.

Girlfriend, it is on! Liz and Emma, best friends forever, accidentally schedule their weddings on the same day, and at the same place. Thusly commence the Bride Wars. Starring Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson. Rated PG for language, “suggestive content” and “rude behavior.” 94 m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek and Fortuna.

It’s alive! No it’s not. Well, sort of. In The Unborn, a Nazi curse gives rise to a creepy ghost that haunts and possesses various members of a particular family. Advance materials describe the ghost as “an unborn creature,” whatever that may be. Featuring Gary Oldman in slum mode. Rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and terror,” among other things. 87 m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek and Fortuna.

— Hank Sims

REVIEWS

THE READER. As a subject for films, the European holocaust of World War II is fraught with danger. It’s been exploited, sentimentalized and unfortunately all too often serves merely as a readymade backdrop of moral seriousness for melodrama. The Reader escapes this fate by concentrating on the psychological aftermath of actions taken during the war in the death camps, and it has a moral complexity most such films don’t. That said, the film has several flaws that keep it from being the film it could have been.

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