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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 HART q.-wi- -fumic»Mdy.co>A- &'s iS* yute Since Ife Mrtufr lJiityL-tw+te oOvz -fcr&ifety &or Glledfte scioosrws^ fctM' Carfoon We.ll * fourott WqA. Since X Wife. lASt 0ne vdzA. tfa ft*) V\\ Son op uSVfcfe, oJe TV+vrHtS on OtyjobS«»d £<iil postal Kuiajj. Uicwy ^ /A 6*kscewi<'«3 ySW<Ws sm> tafolVe Lite 1Ue r ~ Here ao Vcmi*//* |ce. ca^eo... *© ■f'VU tnclcTT TV\S was all pl«v«4 oA yt*rs *3©— H* ev/cfience ? TUeyVe fve* ■f %t\r cUssU* #W rfi So*** A+ leas! ctjfa/frj of -fisc of ©U f't~ kill U©e(r.. X * (Sai>5 -kfliltv; T+igOreA 1Vs oSVsrtfe almighty fs S+fcfjKf oo+ 4 0 £ 1fe (K\roC\e>s)5 Tv). tWj?oo*.‘ & te WvHiSol fo a+ # bot Wi fccs. ft, ffe avy)1Ktvg 1hcf frys 6'/"3jT to «* it&j Tfcte 1 * cfevelvffienf. faj w/ t Ay J i * - lo«hef A)Ut J if s Acf'S+hy q ftftn Aciio/i (HoWf .../fs fitdi \Vt dtajcjl/f «4<l CMCfpf 4fe 4II ferr lift. taw. A ~f°s’ fte l<Us / l«4'Hc -for -Hie dorUi j/ij HACltAT f ✓//m% sto v /[je/'-^n«ls tUf 4tfy n/l $eASe.„ coxfffip 1 A \ \ n{U 0V,r'. \ ., “*«•«'«, o >ftr 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