New Movie Shorts

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX

The 1965 original version of The Flight of the Phoenix (definite articles are old school, yo) may have been no masterpiece, but the film's director Robert Aldrich was always a keen observer of men under pressure, and he was backed up by a cast of Hollywood's finest character actors. The remake's script, by Scott Frank and Edward Burns, sticks closely to the original plotwise, but jettisons original screenwriter Lukas Heller's clearly delineated personalities in favor of a multi-culti, one-from-each-column gaggle of races, accents and genders. The focus therefore shifts from characters in conflict to action set pieces, one-liners and, of course, pop-song montages (thanks to iPod, hits like "Hey Ya" are accessible even in the middle of the Mongolian desert). Even the natural elements fail to seem especially threatening once John Moore, director of the latest version, is seduced into endless swirling postcard shots of shifting sand dunes. Dennis Quaid is better suited to the rugged captain role than Jimmy Stewart, perhaps, but he is convinced to help reconstruct his mangled plane by the hoariest "everyone has hopes and dreams" speech possible short of breaking into song. The script later undercuts that speech, but offers no other motivation for his change of heart, thus demonstrating that it's possible to be cynical even about cynicism. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

It's likely that no treatment of Lemony Snicket's, er, Daniel Handler's morbidly fascinating young-adult series about the manifold travails of the Baudelaire orphans—Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny—at the hands of their evil guardian Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) would completely satisfy hardcore fans. But the treatment we're offered by director Brad Silberling (who replaced original director Barry Sonnenfeld) and screenwriter Robert Gordon (who replaced Handler) will disappoint more than just the previously initiated. Attempting to weave together the plotlines of the serial's first three installments—there are now 11, with two more on the way—the film skimps on pacing and, most egregiously, the development of the series linchpins: the Baudelaires. Silberling seems in a rush to give face time to his name stars, including Meryl Streep (Aunt Josephine), Billy Connolly (the criminally under-developed Uncle Monty), Cedric the Entertainer (shoehorned in as "detective"), Jude Law (narrator Snicket) and, yes, even the AFLAC duck. This is to say nothing of slapdash plotline chicanery, ham-handed "suspense" and the revelation of series secrets that those who've read through Book the Eleventh: The Grim Grotto had yet to discover. It's one thing to flub a movie adaptation and quite another to cannibalize the source material. --Brian Howard (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

THE SEA INSIDE

Like Thesis, Open Your Eyes and The Others, Alejandro Amenábar's new film looks inward, probing into deep fears and fragmented experiences. With the real-life case of Ramõn Sampedro (here played by Javier Bardem), the director/composer has found a perversely ideal subject. A quadriplegic for some 28 years (following a swimming accident), Ramõn made Spain's first legal argument to "die with dignity." While he's confined to bed, his memories (youthful vigor) and desires (attraction to his lawyer, Belén Rueda) appear as dreams, where a point-of-view camera turns even mundane activities (walking, swimming, putting his feet on the floor) into rapturous events (this is especially true when he imagines flying over a verdant landscape). While the film succumbs occasionally to melodramatic flourish and broadly symbolic characters—dutiful nephew (Tamar Novas), earthy would-be lover (Lola Dueñas), passionate activist (Clara Segura)—Bardem is again mesmerizing, making Ramõn's messy emotional lurches (between anger and charm, clarity and doubt) complex and difficult rather than soapy and grand. --Cindy Fuchs (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

SPANGLISH

The mix of cross-cultural romance and midlife crisis in James L. Brooks' uneven comedy evokes feelings of love and loathing, and not just for the characters. The instantly cloying narration (in the voice of a Latina Princeton applicant) sets your teeth on edge, but once Paz Vega's Spanish-speaking domestic meets Tea Leoni's wealthy housewife, the sap starts to evaporate. Cultures and child-rearing strategies clash, especially in a finely tuned scene where we realize that each woman's daughter is the other's ideal. Vega's warmth gives the movie a center, Leoni's dismissive dizziness its spin. And then Adam Sandler shows up. As Leoni's husband, a four-star chef who longs for a "three-and-a-half-star life," Sandler wears a hangdog expression like a steel collar. As the unhappy, perpetually wronged father of two, he has a glum streak a mile wide, which would be fine if we weren't supposed to like him. Unable to build him up, Brooks settles for tearing Leoni down. A nimble comedian whose skills are too rarely tapped, she ends up on the wrong end of every joke; in a scene as appalling as anything in American Beauty, Leoni straddles Sandler and thrusts her way to the ugliest orgasm of all time. (Hard to believe Brooks recently got divorced.) There are moments of truth wedged between the back-stabbing, but as the movie progresses, it's farther and farther between them, until it seems like little more than a reproach of women who don't put their husband's lives ahead of their own. --Sam Adams (Bridge; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; Ritz 16)