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:

The Dreamers (NC-17)
Bernardo Bertolucci’s story of a solitary young American (Michael Pitt) in 1968 Paris who falls in with a brother and sister whose relationship involves a lot of nudity. The trio’s complex bond reflects the volatile atmosphere of political rebellion and sexual exploration.
Prediction: Critics’ reviews are mixed; some revel in the film’s beauty, others roll their eyes over the film’s self-indulgence. We doubt it holds a candle to Last Tango in Paris or The Last Emperor. Your experience of the film greatly depends on your devotion to Bertolucci and your tolerance for ‘60s nostalgia and beautiful, vapid youth.

Hidalgo (PG-13)
In 1890, Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) enters the Ocean of Fire, a 3,000-mile survival race across the Arabian Desert, with his horse Hidalgo in an effort to reconnect with his past. Based on a true story.
Prediction: Before Lord of the Rings, Mortensen played his share of bad dudes, but now, with that scraggly beard shaved and his hair dyed blond, he’s playing another hero among men. Hopefully he won’t be upstaged by the horse, who gets top billing.

Starsky & Hutch (PG-13)
Bad cop Dave Starsky (Ben Stiller) and worse cop Ken Hutchison (Owen Wilson) team up to uncover a cocaine operation run by a drug dealer named Reese (Vince Vaughn) in this send-up of the 1970s television series. With Snoop Dogg as street informant Huggy Bear.
Prediction: Intended to be intentionally funnier than the series, this parody gives Wilson and Stiller the potential to let their comic genius shizzle.

The Statement (R)
A World War II Nazi (Michael Caine) remains in hiding for 40 years with the help of elders in the French government and the Catholic Church. However, when his crimes against humanity are uncovered during an investigation by a Nazi hunter (Tilda Swinton), the police begin an aggressive search. Directed by Norman Jewison (Moonstruck) and based on a true story and Brian Moore’s novel.
Prediction: Caine as a Nazi war criminal turned good guy is an interesting proposition. However, the Brit has an infallible tendency either to strike a nerve or miss every beat.

Touching the Void (NR)
Using interviews and reenactments, documentary filmmaker Kevin Macdonald (Academy Award-winning director of One Day in September) recounts the harrowing true story of two British climbers who barely survived their attempt in 1985 to scale the Siula Grande in the Andes.
Prediction: Reviewers are calling it gripping, spellbinding and chilling. You’ll be glad you’re sitting in a warm theater with a lap full of popcorn.

Splendor on the Wind

As grotesque and groundbreaking as the American Splendor comic books have been, their excellent movie “adaptation” surely equals them. Part biography, part documentary, part animated graphic novel, American Splendor (2003, R) recounts the teaming of hospital clerk Harvey Pekar with legendary underground comic artist R. Crumb to chronicle Pekar’s life in comic-book form. If you think a clerk’s existence must be humdrum and couldn’t possibly serve as fodder for an award-winning comic book, see this movie.

Actor Paul Giamatti nails Pekar’s shambling figure and raging reflections on the misery of life. Hope Davis does a similarly astounding job with Joyce Brabner, a singularly self-willed fan from Delaware who comes to Cleveland to visit Pekar for a week and winds up marrying him. When Pekar’s growing fanbase catches David Letterman’s attention and garners Pekar several appearances on Late Night, Pekar’s coworker and self-described super-nerd Toby Radloff (eerily embodied by Judah Friedlander) gains notoriety of his own from Pekar’s depiction of him in American Splendor.

But in Harvey Pekar’s reality, things can never go happily. True to form, when Pekar discovers a cancerous growth on his testicle, he and Joyce choose to depict his ordeal in the graphic novel Our Cancer Year. Throughout the movie, the real Pekar, Brabner, and Radloff periodically pop up to comment on the action. Touching and touchy, funny but not a comedy, American Splendor is unlike probably anything else you’ll see this year.

Like Splendor, A Mighty Wind (2003, PG-13) is not a “straight” movie; rather, it’s a mockumentary. Wind depicts events leading to a concert reuniting several faux ’60s folk acts, with performances by an ensemble including Eugene Levy (who co-wrote the script), Catherine O’Hara, Ed Begley Jr., Harry Shearer and Michael McKean. While funny enough, Wind seems too fond of its characters to draw real blood. Perhaps Wind writer, director, and actor Christopher Guest, having honed his mockumentary chops with the likes of Spinal Tap and Best in Show, is taking his craft too seriously.

—Scott McNutt