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succeeds against all odds, holds tight
to the genre formula. First, a young
idealist, college graduate Jim Ellis
(Terrence Howard, who might be the
best actor working in Hollywood at
present), takes a job at a soon-to-be
demolished recreation center. Next, he
teaches the attitudinal neighborhoods
kids to swim. Of course, they must fail
miserably against their privileged white
competition—coached by a douchier-
than-usual Tom Arnold—before learn
ing a lesson needed to overcome the
great challenge/ complication/ tragedy
en route to victory at the Big Meet.
Knock formulas all you want, but Coke,
409 and Grecian are all classic formu
las that work pretty darn well. The same
goes for Pride, mainly because Howard
can imbue even the most insipid calen
dar clich6 with such power As the rec
center's loyal maintenance man, Berme
Mac provides just the right combina
tion of laughter and tears; he really
has the makings of an award-winning
supporting player. Drown the romantic
subplot with a city councilwoman
(Kimberly Elise), and Howard's Pride
might just goeth oefore every one of
his recent inspirational coaching peers.
(Carmike)
PRINCESS MONONOKE (PG-13)
1997. Prior to Spirited Away, Hayao
Miyazaki was best known for this mag
nificent animated adventure A young
prince cursed with an incurable disease
seeks a cure but winds up in the midst
of a war between beast and man. The
animals of the forest, led by Princess
Mononoke, seek to defeat the men of a
local industrial town whose exploita
tion of the woods is slowly killing
them. The sickly prince must endeavor
to end this conflict as well as continue
to seek his own salvation. The English
adaptation of this film was written by
acclaimed comic book author Neil
Gaiman (Sandman). Part of Oconee
County Library’s Teen Scene. Shows
Friday. 3/30 (Oconee County Library)
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
(PG-13) Devoted father and salesman
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) finds him
self homeless due to bad investments
and stupid decisions. But with pluck,
moxie and a little luck, he lands on his
feet after the greedy rich men of Dean
Witter graciously offer Chris a job after
he makes them oodles of money during
an unpaid internship. The problem with
the well-made Happyness is, if you're
not careful, you’ll swallow the shit it's
shoveling. (Georgia Square 5)
REIGN OVER ME (R) See Movie
Pick. (Beechwood)
RENO 9111: MIAMI (R) I am pleased
to announce Reno 91U: Miami is
Police Academy for a new millennium,
and every thousand years, we need a
new Police Academy Plus. Paul Rudd’s
hideous Scarlace impersonation is
almost as good as Michael Winslow's
mouth effects. Sketch comedy is always
hit-or-miss, but these cops are sharp
shooters. Ends Thursday (Highway 17
Theatres)
SHOOTER (R) See Movie Pick.
(Beechwood. Carmike)
SCREAMING QUEENS: THE RIOTS
AT COMPTON’S CAFETERIA (NR)
2005. Screaming Queens documents
the 1966 struggle of gay street hus-
flers and transgender women against
police harassment in San Francisco's
Tenderloin district At Compton’s, a
cup of coffee tossed at a police officer
sparked the modern militant movement
for transgender rights. Sponsored by
the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender
(LGBT) Resource Center. Shows
Wednesday, 3/28 (UGA SLC 150)
SISTER HELEN (NR) 2002. Sister
Helen is a tough talking, recovering al
coholic nun who lost her husband and
sons to the substance abuse she now
fights in a South Bronx halfway house
for addicts. One ol the most acclaimed
documentaries of recent years, Sister
Helen won a Sundance Film Festival
award for documentary directing, a
Westchester Film Festival award for
Best Documentary, and a Gold Hugo
from the Chicago International Film
Festival. Pari of the ACC Library's
iFilms series Shows Thursday. 3/29
(ACC Library)
TMNT (PG) After a 14-year absence
from the big screen, the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles have returned
Everything I know about ninjas pretty
much comes from reading Turtles com
ics and watching Turtles cartoons, so
you can imagine my excitement upon
first seeing the adult-looking trailer
for TMNT Having now seen the entire
computer-animated flick. I lament its
more cartoonish, less comic bookish
antics. As perfectly as writer-direc
tor Kevin Munroe captures the four
distinct personalities of responsible
leader Leonardo, intelligent Donatello,
angry Raphael (my fave), and doltish
Michelangelo (even as a kid. I found
his buffoonery irritating), why does
he prove such a bad judge of villainy?
You don't make a Turtles movie without
The Shredder. Did Bryan Singer get
rid of Magneto or return Superman to
a world without Lex Luthor? Of course
he didn't. Fighting some immortal,
thousand-year-old Kurgan wannabe (v
Patrick Stewart) rather than Shredder
is a half-shelled idea that makes the
Turtles' latest adventure instantly for
gettable. (Beechwood. Carmike)
WILD HOGS (PG-13) Wild Hogs
is more premise than movie. Four
middle-aged suburban eunuchs—John
Travolta. Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence
and William H Macy—try to regain
their masculinity by hitting the open
road on their bikes. Warning: Most of
the jokes are less funny than they may
appear. After the movie, you'll be pick
ing sexual innuendoes out of your teeth
like so many bugs. This flick's just
coasting on the fumes of its stars' lad
ing charms. (Beechwood, Carmike)
Drew Wheeler
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MOVIES FOR GROWNUPS
REIGN OVER ME (R) & SHOOTER (R) Adults, hear
my plea. If you're tired of emotionally immature
comedies and computer-generated kiddie mov
ies, you must venture out amongst the unwashed
masses of moviegoers. Like the responsible,
mature grownups you are, brave the hordes still
chuckling at Norbit and Wild Hogs (I'm sure more
than a few of you were suckered into that aged
yukless-fest) in order to make box office hits of.
Reign Over Me and Shooter, two imperfect but un-
apologetically adult (you know what I mean; get
your mind out of the gutter) life rafts in a sea of
raging childishness. If you don't support cinema
fashioned for someone whose biggest problems
are dependents and empty nests—not prom
dates and barhopping—we'll just be watching
Son of Norbit and TMNT II next March.
Reign Over Me, written and directed by Mike
Binder (The Upside of Anger), is paced like Heinz
ketchup—thick and slow, but worth the wait.
Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) is a successful den
get away with it in inferior films) rarely transform
into matinee idols (of which Denzel might be to
day's best), but Reign proves Cheadle capable and
ready to make the jump. Cheadle's simple, quiet
reactions (the hardest part of acting) to his co-
star's misguidedly laughable readings of painfully
serious dialogue is doubly as powerful as the
showy Sandler, whose idea of stretching means
playing a serious angry man-child as opposed to
an idiotic angry man-child (his Charlie is solidly
built but not award-worthy as many will claim).
Reign Over Me may be slow going and the resolu
tion too simplistic, but the reign of Don Cheadle,
acting his heart out in a film that will be forgot
ten by next January's Oscar nominations, will not
be ending anytime soon. (Note: If anyone recalls
Charlie's last words to Doreen, as recounted to
Alan at the Chinese restaurant, please leave a
web comment. At the screening I attended, the
sound humorously dropped out for that crucial
phrase and that crucial phrase alone.)
Mark Wahlberg
tist with a beautiful, micro-managing wife (a
superb Jada Pinkett Smith) and two little girls.
Like Chris Rock's Richard Cooper in I Think I Love
My Wife, Alan is bored with his life. Unlike Rock's
Cooper, Alan was blessed with the mature mind
of a married man. Rather than seeking solace in
the arms of another woman—an option the film
makes clearly available to Alan—the mild-man
nered D.D.S. runs into his old college roommate,
Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler). Charlie has been
unreachable—figuratively and literally—since
the deaths of his wife and three daughters on
9/11. (For those potential audience members
turned off by the devastating 9/11 connection,
know that it's tough but not a deal-breaker.)
Fortunately for Alan, Charlie opens the door to
his closely guarded apartment and his life. W.ch
his foot firmly in the door, Alan forces his way in
and Charlie out to receive help from a beautiful,
young psychiatrist (Liv Tyler).
Binder piles on the clumsy drama of real
life—lawsuits and loss—and he still retains too
much of the dirty male mind that sank his admi
rable if not likable HBO series, "The Mind of the
Married Man." However, he's provided Cheadle
with exactly the breakout comedic-dramatic per
formance this undersold star needs. With African-
American actors such as Denzel Washington,
Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker receiving ac
colades on a yearly basis, it is high time Cheadle
got more than the customary acknowledgment
of his unfailing ability to enrich every single
film he is in, be it a Ruff piece (Ocean's 11) or a
not-heavy-enough docudrama (Hotel Rwanda). I
realize superb, understated character actors who
don't gobble scenery like Washington (seriously,
we knock Pacino for it all the time, but let Denzel
If Reign Over Me was the overemotional drama
kid from high school, Shooter, the latest bullet-
riddled, explosion festival from Training Day di
rector Antoine Fuqua, is the burnout with whom
the drama kid will connect at the 10-year reunion
after both have settled down to raise a family.
Neither film is old enough to want to hang out
with Wild Hogs, but 300 is still too much of a
partier for these two family men. With so many
comic book heroes beefing up the silver screen,
it's high time a good old-fashioned literary hero
like Stephen Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger got his
shot. (Okay, Hunter's no Dickens and Swagger's
not even Jason Bourne, but with today's illiterate
calling the box office shots. Swagger's more than
we can hope for now that the ticket sales of Tom
Clancy's Jack Ryan have become more busto than
boffo.) Fuqua keeps the two-hour Shooter mov
ing at a quick clip as Swagger (Mark Wahlberg,
incomprehensibly mumbling a good one-third of
his lines), falsely implicated in an attempt on
the president's life, uses bullets and bombs to
clear his name. On the run from freelance, neo-
con meres (led by Danny Glover in a rare instance
of overacting), Swagger gets an assist from a
green FBI agent (Crash's Michael Pena) and his
dead spotter's hottie (We Are Marshalls Kate
Mara). I've never been one to question an action
film's serendipitous plotting, but Shooter spreads
my disbelief thin as a contestant on "America's
Next Top Model." Nonetheless, I'll take the flick's
'80s experienced, no frills action—and Reign Over
Me's domesticated troubles—over faded come
dians in fat suits and over-the-hill B-listers on
bikes, any day.
Drew Wheeler
NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS MARCH 28, 2007 • FLAGPOLE.COM 19