filmland / By Charlie Myers

That Wacky Sandra

Plus: A goldfish’s wishes illuminate the beautiful Ponyo

(Sept. 10, 2009) Previews

Opening Wednesday, Sept. 9, is the animated post-apocalyptic sci-fi film 9. Director Shane Acker has expanded his AA-nominated 2005 short into a feature about creatures that form themselves from bits and pieces of our ruined world and who wonder why they exist at all. Rated PG-13 for violence and scary images. 79m. At Broadway.

Opening Friday, Sept. 11, is Sorority Row, a remake of the 1983 slasher The House on Sorority Row. When one of six sorority friends discovers her boyfriend is cheating, the group hatch up a revenge plot that goes horribly wrong. Subsequently, they become the targets of a murderous stalker. Rated R for strong bloody violence, language, some sexuality/nudity and partying. 101m. At Broadway and Mill Creek.

Based on the 1998 comic, Whiteout stars Kate Beckinsale as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, who is investigating a murder in Antarctica with just three days left before winter sets in and the sun disappears. Rated R for violence, grisly images, brief strong language and some nudity. 96m. At Broadway and Mill Creek.

Reviews

EXTRACT: I know Mike Judge’s Extract is a comedy because it fits at least one criterion of the classical definition: It has a happy ending. I’m not sure it meets another one, that comedy is about people lower in status than the spectator, but I’m sure the film is about people that the viewer believes are lower, particularly in regard to intelligence. Judge has already explored this theme in his 2006 comedy Idiocracy where an average guy awakes 500 years in the future to discover he’s the smartest guy on the planet.

Extract is so low-key that it almost slips below audibility, but in the midst of intermittently amusing scenes there is a nugget of commentary on how we “common folk” live our lives. The main story line is simple yet deceptive. Everyman Joel (an affable Jason Bateman) runs a factory that produces food extracts for flavoring. His workers are a collection of nice but more-or-less incompetent individuals.

At home, his wife Suzie (a fine Kristen Wiig) withholds sex, and his bartender friend Dean (a decent Ben Affleck) keeps pushing drugs at him. But things go really awry when Joel decides to sell his firm, hires a sexy sociopathic young woman named Cindy (Mila Kunis), an accident eliminates a worker’s testicle, and Dean talks Joel into hiring a young dimwitted stud (Dustin Milligan) to seduce Suzie. Of course, Cindy talks the testicularly challenged worker into suing, Suzie gives in easily to the stud and the workers attempt a walkout in protest over the buyout.

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