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:

Assassination Tango (R)
Written and directed by and starring Robert Duvall as an assassin sent to Argentina to kill a general. When delays force him to hang around a while, he hooks up with a beautiful dance instructor (Luciana Pedraza), slowly becoming immersed in her sensual world of le tango.
Prediction: Tepidly received when released in 2002, Tango is probably a victim of its solitary origination: Duvall knows what he intends the film to be, but without other voices to help refine his ideas, the movie remains obscure to audiences.

Divine Intervention (NR)
Set in the occupied Palestinian territories, Intervention is a bleak farce about an Israeli who pursues an unrequited love affair with a Palestinian woman. One of the many absurdist elements of their world: Because of their cultures' antagonisms, they must tryst in a sort of no-man's-land parking lot next to a check point on the edge of the occupied lands.
Prediction: Man's inhumanity to man is always ripe for satire, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cries out for such treatment. The movie, however, is reported to be uneven and not up to the par of last year's similarly themed No Man's Land.

Finding Nemo (G)
Young clownfish Little Nemo (voice of Alexander Gould), gets kidnapped from his home in the Great Barrier Reef by fishermen and winds up in a fish tank in a dentist's office. So his father (Albert Brooks) with the help of scattered-brained fish Dory (Ellen Degeneres) sets out on a dangerous quest to rescue Nemo. Meanwhile, Nemo and some new friends are hatching escape plans of their own.
Prediction: The preview reel is an eye-popper, and of course Pixar has had great success with similar animated fare, such as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Can they maintain the quality? Early returns say, "yes" on the animation, but "not quite" on the overall story. Still, bound to be entertaining for the whole family.

The Italian Job (PG-13)
See our review.

The Shape of Things (R)
An art student's (Rachel Weisz) latest project is to make over her boyfriend (Paul Rudd) into a hip attractive dude. His friends (Gretchen Mol, Fred Weller) are alarmed at the changes.
Prediction: Another of Neil LaBute's studies in intergender interaction (LaBute also did In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors). At first blush, this one appears less misanthropic than those projects, but don't expect LaBute to let any of his characters off easy.

Wrong Turn (R)
A bunch of teenagers take a "wrong turn" in West Virginia, only to find themselves stalked by "cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding" who have monikers like Saw-Tooth and One-Eye. Eliza Dushku from the just-ended Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series stars.
Prediction: Hey, who can resist the cinematic allure of inbred cannibals? You can, if you want to keep your lunch down.

Hi-Yo Hayao!

My favorite moment at this year's Academy Awards was not Adrian Brody kissing Halle Berry, or Michael Moore doing his angry-liberal shtick (why was anyone surprised by that? It's his franchise). It was when the award for Best Animated Film was given to Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master whose Ghibli Studio has produced wonderful work for the past few decades.

The only bad thing about the award for Spirited Away (PG, 2002) is that it should have been for Best Picture. None of the movies nominated in that category came close to the scope of Miyazaki's spectacular fairy tale. I've been a fan ever since his films started getting American releases, and I've yet to see one I didn't admire. But even compared to lovely Miyazaki fables like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away stands out. Inspired by sources including Pinocchio, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Japanese folklore, it's a rare reminder of the possibilities available to a filmmaker whose only limit is his imagination. (It's also the top-grossing movie of all time in Japan.)

At the beginning of the film, a little girl named Chihiro wanders with her parents into what looks like an abandoned theme park. Within minutes, her parents have been turned into pigs, and Chihiro is fleeing from all manner of bizarre spirit-beings. The girl then embarks on strange and increasingly mind-boggling adventures in a quest to rescue her parents. The form of the story is familiar, but the specifics are wholly new and unexpected. Just when you think Miyazaki can't make your eyes open any wider, he introduces some new creature in some new, astonishingly detailed setting. The story is as dense with characters and subplots as a great children's novel, and all its layers are resolved satisfactorily by the end. Along the way, no opportunity for wonder is wasted—Miyazaki and his animators are clearly having as much fun as the viewers. Any five-minute stretch of Spirited Away has more dazzle and invention than the entirety of The Matrix Reloaded.

If you want to see Miyazaki in more gonzo mode, Princess Mononoke (PG-13, 1999) is a dizzying environmentalist tale replete with warrior wolves, woodland spirits and a surprising amount of blood and guts (not for tots, in other words). The storyline sometimes verges on incoherence, at least to Western eyes, but the stunning animation and relentless action scenes don't need any translation.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

May 29, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 22
© 2000 Metro Pulse