New Movie Shorts

Don't Move
Mounted with such care you almost forgive its preposterousness, Sergio Castellito's adaptation of the novel by Margaret Mazzantini begins with an arrogant doctor (Castellito) awaiting his 15-year-old daughter's emergence from emergency brain surgery, then flashes back to an equally painful memory: his rape of, and subsequent affair with, a penniless small-town woman (Penélope Cruz). That Cruz convincingly creates a woman needy and fucked-up to accept "love" from the man who forced himself on her is entirely to her credit; that the movie ultimately sacrifices her character for the security of the doctor's family is entirely to its shame. If there's commentary intended by the fact that Cruz's character is Albanian, or that she's named Italia (clunk), it doesn't come through, and the fact that Don't Move never varies from the doctor's perspective eliminates any possibility of contrary readings. That Castellito and Mazzantini are husband and wife only adds to the sense of bourgeois coziness. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

The Interpreter
Sydney Pollack's thriller touches on all sorts of topical subjects, from African genocide to U.S. intelligence agency confusion to traumatic memories. Hailing from the fictional southern African nation of Matobo, U.N. translator Nicole Kidman overhears an assassination threat. But her report to authorities sounds suspect, bringing in Secret Service agents Sean Penn and Catherine Keener (he's grieving a dead wife and she's an amiably dry sidekick). Kidman's story is increasingly complicated, including dead bodies, rebel activities, stateside terrorism and an "inconclusive" polygraph test, but the men arrayed against her — including the threatened dictator (Earl Cameron), who's coming to the U.N. to speechify and make deals with the West, and the head of his security detail (Jesper Christensen) — suggest that she's not only a victim, but perhaps a player in this mystery. While the dialogue sometimes sounds downright poetic (only slightly pretentious), the plot leans heavily on coincidence and Kidman's personal trauma tends to displace the genocide in black Africa (the film opens with a grisly double murder, one victim black, the other white, obliquely setting up her lingering connections to her homeland). Though her climax is predictable, you almost come to hope it won't be, because Kidman's taut performance seems more layered than this end allows. --Cindy Fuchs (Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

In The Realms Of The Unreal

To the world at large, Henry Darger was a retired janitor when he died in 1973, at age 81. But his belongings revealed another world, created in hundreds of paintings and a novel that ran to more than 15,000 pages: the realms of the unreal. Jessica Yu's documentary makes only slight reference to the fact that Darger has posthumously become the best-known of outsider artists; the movie begins with the moment of discovery, and moves backwards. Using inventive animation and radio-play voiceovers, Yu and Kara Vallow bring Darger's drawings alive, taking us into "the realms" so successfully that it stings when the movie lapses back into pedestrian talking-head mode. Since Darger had no friends and few acquaintances, Yu relies on speculation from people like the altar boy who attended Darger at his frequent trips to mass; good thing we're already dealing with the unreal, or else his youthful memories of the look in Darger's eyes might seem a bit far-fetched. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)

King's Ransom
(Not reviewed). A haiku:

So it's come to this?
Self-kidnapping? Serves you right,
Kangaroo Jack guy.

(AMC Orleans; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

A Lot Like Love
Amanda Peet is a survivor. While she has not yet made a straight-up good movie, she's always good. She buoys those middling films she's fond of taking (Something's Gotta Give), and is memorably feisty even in dreck like Changing Lanes and Whipped. (Granted, there's not one good thing to say about The Whole Ten Yards.) In her latest rom-com, with boy-of-the-moment Ashton Kutcher, she's yet again charming, just-edgy-enough, and appropriately seductive. And the movie is silly. Though its initial anti-cliche rhythms bode well (the couple meet on a plane, part for years, reconnect and re-evaluate more than once, their banter cryptic rather than annoying), eventually the standard issue truth emerges: As independent and quirky as she's seemed all this time, she's like every other romantic-generic girl waiting to be swept off her feet by an unemployed pretty boy who appreciates her arty, time-slowing photography. Double drat: Not only must Peet survive her co-star's irrepressible Ashton-ness, but unnecessary (as opposed to obvious from the start) plot collapses as well. --C.F. (Bala; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Music From The Inside Out

Less of a tourist-office circle jerk than Rittenhouse Square, Daniel Anker's doc does the Philadelphia Orchestra's members the service of treating them like international figures rather than local curiosities. Given that many admit they turned to music due to a difficulty with words, Anker's pursuit of unanswerable questions like "What is music?" would seem to be a blind alley, but he gets thoughtful, if hardly life-altering, responses. If you've gotten a musician drunk, you've heard it before, but it's put together with style and intelligence. --S.A. (Ritz Five)