The Baxter
Ostensibly a love letter to screwball romance, Michael Showalter's smug, artless satire has a smirk where its heart should be. Showalter, his every gesture encased in brackets, plays Elliot Sherman, a hapless CPA who, in the movie's first scene, is left at the altar by his bride-to-be (Elizabeth Banks), a slim blonde magazine editor who'd rather be with her geode-hunting ex-boyfriend (Justin Theroux, giving the movie's only credible performance). You can't blame her: more than a modern-day Ralph Bellamy, Elliot is an irritating klutz whose ineptness borders on psychosis; Showalter pitches the movie to the nerd-boy contingent, but he's as cruel to his protagonist as any swirlie-administering jock. Fans of Showalter's unfunny sketch groups The State and Stella may enjoy the trebly ironized proceedings, but it's like munching on waxed fruit. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

The Conformist
Drunk on Freudian analysis, Bernardo Bertolucci capped the first phase of his career with a history of Italian fascism seen through the lens of one man's sexual dysfunction. Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) says that working as a fascist spy makes him feel "normal," but Vitorio Storaro's oscillating camera puts stability always out of reach. Explicitly working through his own Oedipal issues, Bertolucci divorced himself from the radical polemics of Partner, whose star Pierre Clémenti turns up here as the pedophile soldier whose advances scar Marcello for life, although giving the exiled philosopher Marcello is sent to kill the same Paris address as Jean-Luc Godard didn't quite sever their ties. (The exchange of imperial busts for fascist eagles is a joke right out of Weekend.) A cinematographic fetish object since its release, the film's morbid colors don't quite come through in this mildly battered re-release print, and the subtitles have some awkward spots ("avvocato" as "advocate" rather than "lawyer," for one). But even if it doesn't deserve its place at the pinnacle of the Bertolucci canon (I'd put Spider's Strategem above it), The Conformist is more politically engaged, personally revealing and visually elaborate than its contemporaries, then and now. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)

Cry_wolf
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

You're a real psycho?
'Cause I thought I made you up!
Like, how weird is that?!

Just Like Heaven
If Hollywood had to make a romantic comedy that glommed onto the Terri Schiavo debate, at least they had the decency to do it without Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Actually, Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo are fairly inspired casting choices; they share a certain awkward attractiveness that allows them to play lonely singles without seeming like movie stars desperately trying to dim their glamour long enough to mimic real humans. Mean Girls director Mark Waters earns the rom-com tag the old-fashioned way, striking just the right balance: the laughs, while never hilarious, are never cheap, and the drama, always predictable, is never mawkish. Ruffalo and Witherspoon work so well together, in fact, that it's unfortunate the film relies on so many crutches. First, there's the hectoring, literal-minded soundtrack ("Just My Imagination" as Ruffalo starts seeing Witherspoon's ghost, "I Put a Spell On You" as he drops by the local occult bookstore). And Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder, in the first of what promises to be a long career of wacky neighbors and stoner roommates, sticks out like the hastily added stunt casting that he is. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Narberth; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

Lord Of War
See Cindy Fuchs' review on p. 46. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

The Man
Watched with the sound off, The Man might be a fairly enjoyable 83 minutes. Eugene Levy's pneumatic eyebrows work overtime, while director Les Mayfield shoves his camera right up to Levy's already exaggerated features. Meanwhile Samuel L. Jackson spends the entire film doing not so much a slow burn but an out-of-control wildfire of exasperated rage. Unfortunately, Mayfield pulls away from those close-ups of his stars far too often to indulge in some lackluster car crashes or to show Levy with his pants around his ankles. The story itself is the standard mismatched buddy movie, and if you've seen the trailer you can go home and write the thing yourself. While it's nice to see Levy finally given star billing, his American Pie success dictates that it has to be in this sort of lazy rehash, playing the nebbish white guy with problem flatulence while Jackson recites lines from his dog-eared script for the Shaft remake. But with SCTV finally available again and another improv film with Chris Guest and company on the way, our Eugene Levy is alive and well. Let the 14-year-olds have theirs. --S.B. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

Roman Holiday
Audrey Hepburn is a sheltered princess, on the lam for one short day from the rigors of diplomatic punctilio; newspaper stringer Gregory Peck is the Big Man on Scooter who introduces her to the simple pleasures of street-side gelato and midnight jitterbug on the Tiber while chasing the biggest story of his career. Combining Dalton Trumbo's clever, heartbreaking script and William Wyler's perfectly paced direction with two of the most luminous — and most likeable — stars on the boulevard sidewalk, Roman Holiday is a first-ballot Great Film, but the casting couldn't have been obvious at the time. The Belgian-born Hepburn — porcelain, aristocratic and just a little impish — is a natural sympathetic blueblood in her first major role, but it was a risky part to give a Hollywood unknown. Peck, by contrast, was an established A-lister but a tough sell as an impoverished journalist capable of oversleeping his appointed interview with royalty and of lying to his editor about it. Peck's a terrific actor, but the greatest leap of faith for the audience is buying him as an unpunctual lout — much harder than believing in Rome as the place where princesses go missing and get pixie haircuts and fall in love. --Ryan Godfrey (Roxy)

Tropical Malady
Thai sensation Apichatpong Weerasethakul's bifurcated love story is a feast for the eyes as well as the other senses, its tropical heat and sweat practically pouring off the screen. The movie's unusual structure may throw unprepared viewers; from a straightforward if elliptically told tale of an affair between a soldier and a country boy, the movie takes a sudden turn for the mythic, with the soldier stalking a fabled tiger through the superheated jungle. But even before the tiger's form has been replaced by the country boy's naked body, it's clear the two stories are one and the same; as with 2046, if you go by emotions and not plot, it's a cinch to follow. The Chicago-educated Weerasethakul ("Joe" to his friends) is a formally adventurous innovator whose movies (not to mention video art and installations) tend to turn on matters of wish-fulfillment and coded desire, but in Tropical Malady the code is easy to break. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)

Venom
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Crazy dude likes to
Run around swamps killing teens.
Think I'll watch Cry_Wolf.