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to save boyfriend Manni (Moritz
8!eibtreu) from robbing a grocery
store. Fate has never looked cooler
than this live-action Choose Your
Own Adventure. I've been in love with
Potente ever since her magenta shock
of hair first streaked across the screen
One of 1998's most acclaimed films.
Run Lola Run received 25 worIdwioe
film awards and another 13 nomina
tions. Shows Thursday. 11/16 (Tate)
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS (R)
Writer-director Ryan Murphy, who has
chopped, diced, sliced and shredded
Augusten Burroughs' shocking, enter
taining life into a tedious, disastrously
unfunny film. After Augusten's unstable
mother (Annette Bening) and alco
holic father (Alec Baldwin) divorce, the
young gay man (an outstanding Joseph
Cross) moves in with her mother's
therapist. Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), and
his bizarre family. No bigger travesty
of literary cinema will be released this
year. Ends Thursday (Carmike)
THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE
ESCAPE CLAUSE (G) Christmas
movies, like holiday music and decora
tions. are a taste acquired seasonally.
As garish as that neighborhood house
clad in icicle light glory glows, you
make an annual pilgrimage nonethe
less. jingling all the way to whichever
radio station* all-Christmas, all the
time. The same goes for the crassly
commercial Santa Clause 3. II you're
looking to get your holly jollies early,
your cinematic sleigh has arrived. SC3
may use every elfin pun imaginable as
Jack Frost (Martin Short) challenges
the reign of Santa/ Scott Calvin (Tim
Allen), but nothing about the high-con-
cept. low-imagination flick is terrible.
S£?is iust an cld-fashioned family
holiday film. (Beechwood, Carmike)
SAW III (R) After watching the Jigsaw
Killer teach gory life lessons to the
flawed and self-absorbed for the
bone-crunching, stomach-churning
third (but not final) time. I really think
the Saw franchise—cheap, bloody,
inventive—is brilliant. Saw III recap
tures the first Hick* flinch-inducing.
claustrophobic sense of abandonment
and the grisly upped ante of the first
sequel. The third outing may lack its
predecessors’ ingenuity, but Jigsaws
newest contest is his bloodiest. You’fe
quite glad for the flash edits; you see
less of the nasty stuff thai way. On the
brink ol death. Jigsaw/John Kramer
(Tobin Bell) stages his final game, hav
ing apprentice/ former victim Amanda
(Shawnee Smith) nab a depressed doc
tor (Bahar Soomekh) ami a rancorous
father (Angus Macfadyen, Bravehead).
Despite the series' misanthropic sa
dism, Saws has some brains not scat
tered all over the wall or the floor or the
ceiling. So long as the films generate
a profit, the S?w will keep on whirring.
And they'll keep making money hand
over mangled fist as long as there are
efficiently conceptualized, increas
ingly gruesome twists. Wilt Jigsaw's
game ever end? (Beechwood. Carmike.
Highway 17 Theatres)
STRANGER THAN FICTION (PG-13)
Stranger Than Fiction is a lilm you
wouldnl mind engaging in cocktail
party convo. Touching on philosophy
with a hint of meta. it's quick and witty
without being pretentious. As Harold
Crick, an IRS agent who hears of his
impending death from the English
woman narrating his life. Will Ferrell
does a less showy job of being
dramatic than Jim Carrey dio in The
Truman Show Amazingly. Ferrell, with
the most reliable delivery in the busi
ness. is as funny as the straight Crick
as he was the demented Ricky Bobby
If only he were a stronger romantic
lead The romance between Crick
and pretty baker Ana Pascal (Maggie
Gyllenhaal) feels false Was Karen Eiffel
(Emma Thompson), the novelist dictat
ing Crick's life, to write characters so
insincerely motivated, she'd never sell
another book Marc Forster (Finding
Never land was great; Monster's Ball
and Stay, not so much) over-directs
Fiction with intense inconsistency. One
minute, we re watching an OCD Fight
Club, the next scene is stagy and theat
rical. Fortunately. Zach Helm's screen
play shows the softer side of Being
Charlie Kaufman. You can actually see
the end of his just-intricate-enough
maze. No matter its imperfections.
Fiction is no stranger, and a lot better,
than your typical congenial diversion.
(Beechwood. Carmike)
TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE
BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (PG-
13) Using the basic three-act race
movie structure popularized by Days of
Thunder, Ricky (Will Ferrell) goes from
pit crew to victory lane in less than 200
frames. Talladega Nights is poised fo
take this year's Comedy Cup. (Georgia
Square 5)
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING (R)
I thought I’d be easier on the sequel
to the remake of The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. After all. the first Texas
Chainsaw Massacre 2 was no bone
chip off the original block. The remak
ers. Michael Bay's production company
Platinum Dunes, learned nothing from
their initial encounter with hulkish icon
Leatherface. (Highway 17 Theatres)
WAGE SLAVES: NOT GETTING BY
IN AMERICA (NR) 2002 Wage Slaves
chronicles the lives of the the working
poor. The film follows five families
as they stave off homelessness while
working jobs that pay $6 or $7 an hour.
The Honorable Steve Jones, chair ol
Partners lopa Prosperous Athens, will
open the event being cosponsored by
the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson
Institute of Government and the School
of Social Work. Donations cf canned
goods and other nonperishables are
welcome. Shows Thursday. 11/16
(UGASLC)
Drew Wheeler
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FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
BABEL (R) In Alejandro Gonzalez Ifarritu's lat
est miserable rumination on the vicissitudes of
existence, the Mexican-born director of Amores
perros and 21 Grams looks at the butterfly effect
of a random shot truly heard around the world.
In Morocco, two brothers— one of whom steals
glances at his willingly naked sister—fire a bullet
to prove how far their rifle will shoot. Meanwhile,
a couple, Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Cate
Blanchett), venture through the same desolate
country to reseal a marriage breached by tragedy.
Back in the States, Richard and Susan's two chil
dren, Debbie and Mike (Dakota Fanning's sister,
Elle, and Nathan Gamble), have been left in the
care of Mexican housekeeper Amelia (Adriana
Barraza), who will soon be leaving for her son's
wedding with nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia
Bernal). Concurrently, a Japanese businessman,
Yasuhiro (Koji Yakusho), and his rebellious deaf-
mute daughter, Chieko (Rink Kikuchi), are reeling
from the aftershocks of his wife and her mother's
death. Soon (approximately one and a half hours
later), these lives, separated by continents, will
converge on one reckless act committed by two
Arriaga home and wash it. knowing it'll never
come clean, hoping you'll never have to use it
again. It's exhausting—emotionally and mental
ly—to watch one of their films. The filmmakers
unapologptically and unabashedly shatter their
stories, forcing the audience to piece narratives
together from razor-sharp shards.
Ambitiously well-intentioned is not syn
onymous with well-conceived. What we have
with Babel, despite its best intentions, is what
Strother Martin famously called a "failure to com
municate." In trying to dramatize cultural mis-
communicat : on, the film does very little commu
nicating. It is far too impersonal, too cold. These
accidents of life are too well-plotted, too fateful,
and ultimately, ill-connected (the Japanese
story intrigues but never quite fits). Unlike the
character-driven 21 Grams. Babel is a sitdram.
Don't expect a repeat of 21 Groms1 double acting
nominations for Pitt or Blanchett. Acting, like
character, is of secondary concern in Babel. Pitt,
about as big a star as you can get without sacri
ficing talent, gives one of his whiplash-inducing
reserved, angry performances /typified by Se7en),
Cate Blanchett
boys too young to realize the consequences.
Those boys will shatter more than just the bus
window against which Susan is resting. They will
fragment the entire microcosmos.
IhSrritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga
(Amores perros, 21 Groms and Tommy Lee Jones'
award-winning The Three Burials of Melquicdes
Estrada) are mystified by the human condition.
Each of their bloody, painful collaborations has
cracked the ribcage, slicing through muscle and
tissue, to the heart. IhArritu and Arriaga—the
two are, for all intents and purposes, an in
separable creative dynamo—hold onto what
is becoming an outdated, endangered concep
tion of cinema as art. They don't make movies;
they make films. (Just like Philip Roth doesn't
write books; he writes novels. You know the
kind that you'd oest "get" or else you risk the
world discovering what an unenlightened cave
man you truly are.) But unlike arch-auteurs like
Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, IhArritu
and Arriaga don't make entertainment. They
seek not to enrich executive bank accounts or
please Hollywood's bean counters, either. Neither
man appears to be hunting for the Academy's
Holy Grail. IhSrritu and Arriaga mean to change
tf e world through film, and not in the liberal
1960s, Norman Jewison sense of the saccharine
sentiment. You don't dispose of a hand-stitched
IAArritu and Arriaga handkerchief just because
it's snotty and tear-stained from use. Their films
are unlike the typical Kleenex distributed weekly
at the local multiplex. You take an IhArritu and
and you cannot blame him. After Susan is shot,
the grief-stricken Richard isn't asked to do much
more than scream and cry. I kept waiting for him
to rend his clothing. Blanchett is as inert before
being shot as she is after. Only two characters,
Amelia, who makes a dramatically stupid decision
regarding the children in her charge, and Chieko,
whose feelings of abandonment boil over into
some serious sexualized acting out, fully have
their stories told. Each of BabeTs tales could oc
cupy its own two hour film. Together, they are
a didactic slap in the face, hitting us with just
enough power to keep focus on the sermon. StilL
the further we get from the stories' centers, the
less gravity Babel retains. It may all piece back
together, but is the slight payoff worth the ardu
ous two and a half hours that precede it?
Irterritu and Arriaga believe films can mean
something again. They have faith in the power
of cinema to change and h?al the world. Thank
goodness that even in a Hollywood of diminish
ing box office returns, filmmakers like Iftirritu
and Arriaga can make a $25-million art film
with conviction*. Their towering Babel practi
cally screams, Tm IMPORTANT! Listen to me!"
Problematically, the film requires viewers learn
how to speak cinematic Pig Latin to decode
the mystery of the human condition. Maybe if
Ih&rritu and Arriaga could speak a little clearer,
more people might understand the important
message they are trying to communicate.
Drew Wheeler
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