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 Alamo (PG-13)
The latest cinematic epic to tackle the 1836 battle between several dozen American patriots holed up in an old Franciscan mission and a few thousand Mexican soldiers. Billy Bob Thornton is Davy Crockett, Dennis Quaid is Sam Houston, Patrick Wilson is Lt. Col. William Travis, and Jason Patric is James Bowie.
Prediction: After several script rewrites and post-production complications that postponed the film’s release from December 2003, The Alamo’s structural problems may have toppled it before the first echo of “Remember the Alamo!” is heard.

Ella Enchanted (PG)
Cursed with perfect obedience by a fairy godmother, Ella (Anne Hathaway of The Princess Diaries) gets fed up with always having to do what people tell her. She sets off across the kingdom to find this godmother, encountering along the way elves, ogres, and a handsome prince. Based on the popular novel by Gail Carson Levine.
Prediction: Anyone who liked A Knight’s Tale will enjoy Ella’s anachronistic fairy tale.

The Girl Next Door (R)
Straight from the sexual fantasies of a 17-year-old comes The Girl Next Door, a teen sex comedy in which the straight-laced Matthew (Emile Hirsch) meets Danielle (24’s Elisha Cuthbert), his impossibly gorgeous new neighbor. For some reason she’s charmed by all the gaping and stammering he does in her proximity. More impossible still, she’s a porn star, trying to return to an innocent, normal life. Matthew attempts to “save her” from a life of inequity (and the super-hot bad boy Timothy Olyphant).
Prediction: Wow, looks like reality really isn’t stranger than fiction...unfortunately.

Japanese Story (R)
In the hopes of selling him her geology software, geologist Sandy Edwards (Toni Collette) hosts a visit from Japanese businessman Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) at her home Down Under. Although their personalities initially clash, the wild forces of the Western Australia desert challenge them to abandon their expectations and let nature take its course.
Prediction: The limited critical buzz about this film festival favorite is mixed, but everyone agrees that Collette is doing the best work of her career.

The Whole Ten Yards (PG-13)
Retired hitman Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski (Bruce Willis) is living a peaceful life on the beach in Mexico, miles away from his murderous former life, thanks to Nicholas “Oz” Oseransky (Matthew Perry), who provided him with falsified dental records. Oz tracks down Jimmy when his wife is kidnapped by the Hungarian mob.
Prediction: Aren’t sequels typically reserved for good, or, at very least, successful original films? On the bright side, it couldn’t be any more painful than The Whole Nine Yards.

Johnson Family Vacation (PG-13)
Nate (Cedric the Entertainer) loads his dysfunctional family into an SUV for a family reunion in Mississippi. In the attempt to bring his family closer together, Nate instead falls victim to countrywide mishaps a la National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Prediction: The very thought of a Griswold family knock-off is cringeworthy, but the trailer reveals a potential for hilarity.

Capitalizing on Terror

With the current polarized political climate in the United States, it’s surprising how little Hollywood has done to capitalize on terrorism. Movie studios and television networks usually travel in packs, whether it be reality and dating shows, the disaster flick craze from a few years back, or the inevitable glut of Bible films sure to follow the success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

But despite the popularity of Fox’s high octane 24, the entertainment industry has done little to load up the bandwagon with panic-stricken tales of the world’s newest cold war.

Those looking for a cinematic exploration of these themes should start with John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday (R, 1977). Adapted from an early Thomas Harris novel, Sunday’s plot reads like Freddy Krueger’s playbook for a Tom Ridge nightmare. When Palestinian terrorist organization Black September plans to kill thousands at the Super Bowl in Miami, an Israeli anti-terrorist agent (Robert Shaw) races to prevent the catastrophe. The characters are realistic, and the audience is forced to consider several points of view—from the disgruntled Vietnam War POW orchestrating the plot, to the President, who won’t cancel the Super Bowl because “that would be like canceling Christmas.”

What follows is a tense, realistic, cat-and-mouse-game. This is an action film with a realistic protagonist, not a monosyllabic badass or a mismatched buddy cop duo. Given the movie industry’s color-coded preoccupation with terrorism in the U.S., Sunday may be as authentic a film on the subject as you’re likely to see.

Another older film made relevant by today’s political climate is The Atomic Cafe (NR, 1982). This black comedy focuses on the creation of the atomic bomb, the spread of Communism, and America’s paranoid response to the threat. Using archival film footage—much of it government-produced propaganda—you can retrospectively watch the country lulled to sleep by the threat of a shadowy international menace. If that’s not timely in the climate of today’s world, then I don’t know what is. Stay tuned for the sequel in 10 to 20 years...if free speech isn’t an oxymoron by then.

—Lloyd Babbit

April 8, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 15
© 2003 Metro Pulse