Metro Pulse Online: Movies, Past &Amp; Future

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:

Elf (PG)
As a baby, Buddy (Will Farrell) was mistakenly taken to the North Pole and raised by elves in Santa's Workshop. All grown up and clearly not an elf, he returns to New York City to find his natural father (James Caan), a workaholic who thinks Buddy is a freak. With his charming naiveté, Buddy tries to convince mean-spirited New Yorkers, including his 10-year-old half-brother, about the spirit of Christmas. Directed by Jon Favreau (Swingers, Made).
Prediction: You either like Farrell or you don't. From there you will decide whether to waste your hard-earned money and 95 minutes on this piece of....well, Ed Asner as Santa is kinda funny.

The Gospel of John (PG-13)
John Goldsmith's screenplay tells the story of Jesus of Nazareth through the eyes and Biblical text of disciple John. The dialogue is taken straight from the Good News Bible, and the film is narrated by Christopher Plummer. Henry Ian Cusick plays a charismatic and intense Jesus. Directed by Philip Saville.
Prediction: While Mel Gibson's astronomically expensive epic The Passion is getting gobs of attention, this less hyped film may provide a complimentary vision of one of history's most fascinating figures.

Love, Actually (R)
Richard Curtis, the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones' Diary takes his stab at directing the ensemble cast romantic comedy. The stories of several pairs intertwine: Hugh Grant as the new British Prime Minister who falls for his young secretary; Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman as a married couple threatened by a younger woman; Colin Firth as a writer who escapes a loveless relationship to find new love with a Portuguese woman in the South of France. And Billy Bob Thornton plays the U.S. President!
Prediction: This week, the Guru believes that romance is a wonderful, entirely possible thing that should be celebrated via heartfelt and funny movies like Love, Actually.

Matrix Revolutions (R)
The third and final installment of The Matrix series whose greatest contribution to pop culture is black trenchcoats, cool sunglasses and slo-motion bullets. Revolutions finds Neo (Keanu Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) in a final battle against those big, metal squids that threaten to destroy Zion. The producers promise great surprises and a 14-minute, $40 million battle sequence.
Prediction: A better name for this film might be Matrix: Convolutions. Like the final season of The X-Files, Rev will make even diehard fans glad it's all over so they can devote more energy to jonesing for the final Lord of the Rings (Dec. 17!)

My Life Without Me (R)
Sarah Polley plays a 23-year-old married mother of two daughters who finds out she has cancer and only a short time to live. She decides to tell no one about her diagnosis and live the hypothetical ideal: like every day could be her last. With Scott Speedman, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer and Mark Ruffalo. Written and directed by Isabel Coixet; presented by Pedro and Augustin Almodovar.
Prediction: Some say "poignant," while others cry "sappy." Guess you'll just have to see which side of the fence you fall on.

Setting the Pace

The Core (2003, PG-13) has aspirations of being a big-budget '60s B-movie. (Think 1965's Crack in the World, or 1966's Fantastic Voyage.) It doesn't quite succeed, but it's appealing enough.

College prof Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) and his old colleague Sergei (Tcheky Karyo) ascribe a series of odd and lethal incidents to problems with the Earth's electromagnetic field. Josh takes his analysis to another egghead, egomaniacal Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci), who confirms Josh's horrific prognosis: The Earth's molten core has stopped spinning, causing the EM field to fail. Without it, solar radiation will crispy-fry the planet within a year.

To counter the problem, the military has Josh, Sergei, and Zimsky team with Dr. Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo), Zimsky's long-estranged partner, to develop a sort-of super-vibrator craft in which to drill to the Earth's core and restart it. Two no-nonsense space-shuttle pilots (Hilary Swank, Bruce Greenwood) and a ground crew (DJ Qualls, Alfre Woodard) give the team the requisite combination of clashing personalities. Naturally, there's more to the problem than meets the eye, and time and again a team member must make the ultimate sacrifice to keep the mission going.

Fun things: the special effects, like a shuttle crash-landing in the same floodways where a chase scene from Terminator II was shot; cheesy sci-fi techno-babble dialogue, if you don't listen too closely; and the intentionally cornball characters. Not so fun thing: pacing. The first half of the movie, setting up the journey to the core, should have been half as long.

Speaking of poor pacing, the long-unavailable 1980 TV-movie version of Ursula K. LeGuin's highly respected fantasy novel, The Lathe of Heaven (NR), suffers from it, among other things. In the video, the dreams of psychiatric patient George Orr (Bruce Davison) can alter reality. His counselor, Dr. William Haber (Kevin Conway), attempts to orchestrate Orr's dreams with good intentions. At first. But absolute power corrupts...

While the story's intentions are admirable (exploring the problems of overpopulation, racial conflict, etc.), the cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for is a familiar one, and because of that, dated special effects, and the aforementioned slow pacing, lacks impact here.

—Scott McNutt