New Movie Shorts

The Adventures Of Shark Boy & Lava Girl In 3-D
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

He's half-shark, half boy.
Can he stop the school bullies?
Yes, by biting them.

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

Another Road Home
Danae Elon has a lot of questions. At least, that's as close as she gets to explaining what motivated her, an Israeli living in New York after 9/11, to seek out Musa, the Palestinian man who served as her family's caretaker. The purportedly enlightened child of liberal parents (her father is author Amos Elon), Danae is determined but naive; she seems shocked to discover that Musa has a family of his own — many of whom live in Paterson, N.J. — and that his real name is Mahmoud. (His children explain that he didn't like the way Israelis pronounced it, although it's more likely he wanted to keep some separation between his two lives.) When he and Danae finally meet, after a long journey that opens her eyes to the daily difficulties of Palestinian life, Musa is revealed as a sweet, frail old man who loves his former ward like his own daughter. It's a touching reunion, made bittersweet by the fact that she has access his own children do not. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse)

High Tension
Over-the-top gore with a breathlessly homophobic final twist, Alexandre Aja's fest-circuit fave has nothing to recommend it except a nonstop parade of stabbing, slicing and head-crushing. Those to whom that's a recommendation, knock yourselves out. --S.A. (UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

The Honeymooners
Cedric is awfully cuddly these days. And while he's long been entertaining, now, as Ralph Kramden, he's probably too sweet. It's nice enough to see him sing and dance along with oldies in his courtship of Alice (Gabrielle Union), but he lacks the latent tragedy and threat embodied by Jackie Gleason. And so, John Schultz's movie version of the venerable TV series feels flimsy, careening between glib and slapdash. Scenes don't hang together, Alice is distracted and Norton (Mike Epps) is mostly ridiculous, though also the film's most consistently comic element. All are tossed into a plot revolving around Ralph's scheme to buy wifey a house and prove he's not a loser after all. Most tediously, the shenanigans don't do much to update or reframe the old storylines. Ralph buys an ancient train car, pays an especially unfunny John Leguizamo to train a greyhound for the racetrack, and blames his troubles on Norton. While you might wonder for a minute whom this movie targets (Cedric and company's audience won't get the TV series references, so who cares anyway?), you likely have better ways to spend your time. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

Ma Mére
First The Story of the Eye, now this: Do you think this is the kind of desecration Georges Battaille had in mind? Adapted from Bataille's unfinished novel, Christophe Honoré's dour drama traffics in the sexual extremity that's become so common in French cinema it can hardly be called transgressive. Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) plays a young man who celebrates the death of his unloved father with a sexual spree that culminates in an almost literal return to the womb. Hey, if your mom looked like Isabelle Huppert, who knows? --S.A. (Roxy)

The Other Side Of The Street
Marcos Bernstein seems to be the only person unable to recognize the subtle talents of Fernanda Montenegro. Unfortunately, the Central Station scribe moves up to the director's chair with this tale of late-life romance in Rear Window clothing. Montenegro is a lonely divorcée (pointed out in countless shots of her isolated in an empty apartment), involved in a police program that uses seniors as informants. Witnessing what she assumes to be a murder, she strikes up a relationship with the suspect (Raul Cortez) in order to conduct her own investigation. In silent moments, the two leads make a charming couple, even at their most mutually cantankerous, and generate considerable chemistry in love scenes at an age when they wouldn't be allowed within fifty feet of a Hollywood bedroom set. But Bernstein continually undercuts their best efforts with clumsy, pedantic dialogue that insists on stating explicitly what is already obvious. After Montenegro raises the alarm upon observing a "suspicious" young man in a bank full of older people, the self-doubt and isolation play across her eyes. But Bernstein insists on having her call home and relate the incident to her dog, which pretty well sums up the director's attitude toward his audience. --Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)