Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Cradle 2 the Grave (R)
A notorious international criminal (Mark Dacascos) kidnaps a professional urban thief's (DMX) daughter, holding her in exchange for some diamonds. DMX then teams up with a Taiwanese Intelligence officer (Jet Li) to rescue her. Soon they learn that the plot is more complicated than it first appeared.
Prediction: Director Andrzej Bartkowiak has perpetrated this sort of kinetic actiony thing before, working with DMX and Steven Seagal on Exit Wounds and DMX and Jet Li on Romeo Must Die. At least Seagal isn't in this one.

The Vast Culkin Conspiracy

Ever since little Macaulay Culkin made the face that launched a thousand sequels (or two, anyway) in Home Alone, the Culkin clan has been a Hollywood mainstay. For a time, it seemed there was some union rule that every movie featuring actors under the age of 15 had to include either Mac or one of his siblings.

But time moves on, even for Culkins, and the inevitable child-actor dilemma arises: Who will hire you once your voice breaks? Mac is still working, according to various websites—he's in some forthcoming movie with Mandy Moore. But for the moment, the most promising career in the family unquestionably belongs to his little brother, Kieran. Kieran made his debut in Home Alone, in a small part as Mac's younger cousin, and he's built a respectable and steady resume. Now 21, he got good notices for the misfit drama The Mighty, leading to roles in last year's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and Igby Goes Down (R, 2002).

In writer-director Burr Steers' enjoyable first feature, a self-conscious updating of The Catcher in the Rye, Kieran plays Igby Slocum, the troubled younger son of a wealthy and supremely dysfunctional East Coast family. After bouncing out of prep school after prep school, hounded by a pill-popping mother (Susan Sarandon) and haunted by an institutionalized trainwreck of a father (Bill Pullman), Igby runs away to New York City. His misadventures are relatively low-key (barring rescuing pretty girls from a heroin overdose or two), and mostly involve coming to terms with the opposite sex and with his own fractured, damaged family. Culkin seems right at home as Igby, conveying both his smart-ass worldliness and emotional vulnerability without appearing to work too hard at either. His scenes with Ryan Phillippe, who plays Igby's older, more cynical brother, are full of convincing sibling subtexts. And Claire Danes makes an appearance, as a wandering Bennington drop-out who beds both brothers.

Also in the cast is yet another Culkin brother, Rory, who appears in flashbacks as a younger Igby. He also recently appeared in the small-town indie drama You Can Count on Me (R, 2001), about the difficult relationship between an adult brother and sister (Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney, with Rory as Linney's fatherless son). His effortless screen presence suggests we'll have Culkins to watch for some time to come.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

February 27, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 9
© 2000 Metro Pulse