New Movie Shorts

AFTER LIFE

It’s difficult to say whether the third part of Lucas Belvaux’s Trilogy is the best-executed, or if it simply reaps the benefits of being last in line. The "drama" of the three (following the un-thrilling thriller and the unfunny comedy) focuses on short-tempered police detective Pascal (Gilbert Melki) and his wife Agnés (Dominique Blanc), a long-term morphine addict who relies on her husband for her regular fixes. But the movie’s focus keeps wandering away from its central couple, using Pascal’s job as an excuse to fill in the deliberate gaps in the first two movies. By rights, the information that the operation Alain (François Morel) was fretting over in An Amazing Couple was only a minor procedure should have been in that film -- it would, after all, have made his neurosis seem more comic -- but there finally doesn’t seem to be much principle to The Trilogy’s methods. The strategies of exclusion and revelation seem arbitrary, the product of theory insufficiently realized. --Sam Adams.(Ritz East)

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY: NEW YORK

Those who panicked over the thought that The Real World might skip Philadelphia will find little consolation in this slapdash attempt at a feature-length reality show. Six actors and actresses are chosen to compete in the pilot episode of "America’s most uninhibited game show." (That phrase is invoked so often it feel like the T-shirts have already been printed.) The competition mostly involves unfunny stunts with the sole purpose of serving up copious full-frontal nudity (luring strangers to a hotel room to sing naked!, seducing a delivery man naked!), all for the meager prize of $10,000. This much is apparently "real." But once the contestants begin their sobbing confessionals, the fact that each has an Oprah-worthy tragic childhood to divulge makes the twist ending less than shocking. Director/host James Ronald Whitney seems to think he is making a profound observation about the lengths to which people will go for fame, but he hedges his bets: if his film gets turned into an actual series, jackpot; if not, it’s satire. Freely indulging the genre’s exploitative excesses while trying to stand above them, Games People Play reeks of the worst kind of cynicism, mocking both its subjects and its audience. --Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)

GOOD BYE LENIN!

Germany’s capacity for overlooking its own history may be rivaled among Western nations only by the U.S.’s, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Wolfgang Becker’s toothless, cartoonish re-enactment of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a commercial and critical hit at home. Alex (Daniel Brühl) is the son of a faithful East German party member (Katrin Saß) with no particular allegiance of his own. As a sullen 18-year-old, he narrates the end of East Germany: "Some people wanted to take a walk without the Wall getting in their way." The end of communism is too much for dear old mum; she has a heart attack and slips into a coma, and when she awakens, it’s eight months later and she has no idea what’s transpired. Trying to save her weak heart, Alex arranges an elaborate charade, keeping her bedridden, playing tapes of old GDR broadcasts so she’ll think nothing has changed. There’s a joke about communist-enforced amnesia buried not too far below the surface, but Becker botches the execution by reducing the difference between East and West to changing pickle-bottle labels. (Mom wants the good old East Germany stuff, but all Alex can find is gherkins imported from Holland.) There’s no sense of the culture that might have been lost, the opportunity squandered, when the Wall fell, nor of the gains made when it did. There are a few neat twists in Alex’s charade -- when mom spies footage of Germans flooding over the wall, Alex tells her it’s Wessies desperate to escape capitalist exploitation -- but Becker ultimately reduces history to a puppet show. --S.A. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

JERSEY GIRL

The switch to "adult" material doesn’t make Kevin Smith’s latest movie any less juvenile. Though for once it doesn’t look like crap (courtesy of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond), Jersey Girl is even more putrid than Smith’s usual fare. The awkwardness of Smith’s writing is only thrown into relief by his focus on characters who inhabit something like the real world. As a PR flack putting his life back together after the death of his wife (Jennifer Lopez), Ben Affleck is moderately less annoying than he was in Gigli, but George Carlin compensates by turning in the most hamhanded performance of his career as Affleck’s Joe Lunchpail dad. Returned to Jersey after a bereaved temper tantrum (but, like, funny!) costs him his job, Affleck is humbled by the bounce from the Big Apple to his ancestral homeland of North Jersey, and forced to connect with his daughter (uncanny Lo-alike Raquel Castro), who can of course be counted on to say something precious and adorable whenever time permits. About the only person who comes of the mess unscathed is Liv Tyler, whose flirtatious vid-store clerk is the only thing close to a likeable character. Tyler has never been more natural or appealing on screen; it’s a pity her best performance is stuck in such an awful movie. --S.A. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.)

MONSIEUR IBRAHIM

Gazing out his window in mid-’60s Paris, young Moses (Pierre Boulanger) is distracted by the hookers who work la rue Bleue. While Timmy Thomas’ "Why Can’t We Live Together" fills the soundtrack, the boy imagines escape from his depressive father’s dark, airless apartment. Moses finds some respite in the corner store, owned by a Sufi "from the Golden Crescent," Ibrahim (Omar Sharif), who teaches him generosity, joy and trust. Following some misadventures with a local girl and other crises, Moses accompanies Ibrahim on a drive to Turkey, where the mentor imparts more life lessons, including an appreciation of the sensual logic of dancing (demonstrated by a set of whirling dervishes). By the end, the film is written into a corner, resorting to the tritest of resolutions. Given its dependence on stereotypes and cliches -- the golden-hearted hookers, the flinty Jewish father -- the finale is not surprising, but it is disappointing. --Cindy Fuchs (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

SCOOBY-DOO 2: MONSTERS UNLEASHED

Someone’s stealing super-villainish costumes from the Coolsonian Criminology Museum, and transforming them into corny, badly CGI-ed Ghostbusters-style monsters. Egged on by a snotty reporter (Alicia Silverstone), the Mystery Inc-ers swing into action: Velma (Linda Cardellini) dons an awful pleather jumpsuit and heels to seduce her new crush, the nerdy curator (Seth Green); Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) briefly plays Buffy (martial-artsing the monsters); Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) wears blue; Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) worries he’s not pulling his "heroic" weight (though he notes, by way of credentials, "Creepy is my middle name"); and Scooby goes undercover in a pimp suit and Afro wig. Peter Boyle looks shady, mad scientist Tim Blake Nelson looks lost and, oh yes, Ruben Studdard shows up at the closing credits to sing "Shining Star." Like Raja Gosnell’s first film, this lackadaisical sequel is composed of disconnected episodes: gender switches, fart jokes, the gang’s "issues" over who plays what role. In other words, no pleasant surprises. --C.F. (AMC Orleans; Narberth; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)