Movie Shorts

Are We There Yet?
It's hard to dismiss outright any movie in which Ice Cube rides a horse. Are We There Yet? is paint-by-numbers tripe, to be sure (the small army of credited screenwriters is a dead giveaway), but there's something faintly moving about seeing the sometime gangsta rapper as a washed-up playa learning to love his would-be lady's kids. Stuck in a car whose make and model are repeated with totemic frequency, Cube is assigned to squire said brats to meet their party-planning mom on New Year's Eve, braving psycho truckers, pugilistic deer and a host of other softball menaces all the way from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada. (Want to bet the characters were written as white?) The movie's mild tenderness is overwhelmed by its superhuman crassness — the Ice Cube I knew would have busted a cap rather than take one more belt to the crotch — but it's something to cling to so your lunch stays down. --Sam Adams (Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St; UA Riverview.)

Assault On Precinct 13
John Carpenter's stripped-down action classic (itself a loose adaptation of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo) certainly didn't need to be remade, or even "updated." No matter. Jean-François Richet's film goes through the motions, omitting the startling little-girl murder and changing up the basic race ingredients. Carpenter's black cop and white death-row convict become gnarly, disillusioned cop Ethan Hawke and ultra-smooth dealer Laurence Fishburne (who outclasses this film in every way). In keeping with 21st-century expectations, the gang that mounts the titular assault on the closed-down precinct (now in Detroit, not L.A.) is comprised of bad cops (led by Gabriel Byrne). Also along for the all-night New Year's Eve siege are sassy secretary Drea de Matteo, Hawke's OCD-afflicted shrink, Maria Bello, and jittery prisoners Ja Rule, John Leguizamo and Aisha Hinds (who recently made the most of her two-minute guest appearance on Medium, and who also stands out here). Adding emotional layers — Hawke's guilt, Byrne's greed, de Matteo's sexual interests — only muddles the original's infamous efficiency. Carpenter's movie told its story with images, not snappy dialogue, which made it fresh even within its indelible generic B-ness. It's hardly helpful that this year's effort fancies up the explosions and grants Hawke a few too many scenes full of agonizing over whether to pop pills or be a man. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)