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:

Clifford’s Really Big Movie (G)
Every child’s favorite big red dog Clifford jumps from television to the big screen in this 73-minute adventure. Clifford and his two best friends T-Bone and Cleo join a traveling carnival and meet a lot of new talking animals.
Prediction: Kids might clamor to see Clifford bigger than ever, but parents will be happier watching Finding Nemo on DVD.

Man on Fire (R)
Denzel Washington returns to troubled tough guy territory as Creasy, an ex-government operative who now hires himself out as a bodyguard to the rich of Mexico City. When his current charge Pinta (Dakota Fanning) gets kidnapped, he takes no prisoners trying to get her back alive. Screenplay by Brian Helgeland (Mystic River) from the novel by A.J. Quinnell.
Prediction: With precise direction by Tony Scott, Man on Fire may hang together on more than intense expressions by Washington. Plus, Christopher Walken and Mickey Rourke seriously increase the bad-ass factor.

Osama (PG-13)
In the first film made since the Taliban’s collapse, Golbahari, a 12-year-old Afghan girl, and her mother lose their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work. Since women’s rights are increasingly frozen, her mother dresses Golbahari in boy’s clothes and sends her to work.
Prediction: Reviews uniformly praise the drama’s emotional intensity and its heartbreaking inevitability.

The Reckoning (R)
Paul Bettany is a 14th-century priest cast out of his congregation for the crime of fornication. On the road he joins a group of traveling actors (led by Willem Dafoe) whose next destination is a town on the verge of hanging a woman for a murder the priest believes she didn’t commit. In lieu of a trial, the troupe acts out the crime in a morality play in the hopes of saving her life and redeeming the priest in the bargain.
Prediction: Critics’ views are mixed for this highly dramatic historical piece. The verdict seems to be that a few talented actors can’t save a film that takes itself way too seriously.

13 Going on 30 (PG-13)
During her disastrous 13th birthday party, Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) makes a wish: she wants to skip all that adolescent crap and be an adult already. Presto! She’s a gorgeous 30-year-old, with a great body, hot boyfriend and fantastic editorship at Poise fashion magazine. While Jenna learns what it’s actually like to be an adult, she reconnects with her childhood friend Matt (Mark Ruffalo) and discovers the glories of grown-up love.
Prediction: If you were a 13-year-old girl circa 1987, this is the quirky, heartfelt nostalgia trip for you (complete with blast-from-the-past hits by Madonna and Whitney Houston). If not, the chances are still high that you’ll be wooed by Garner’s charms.

In the Family

Siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal have been making names for themselves on screen in independent and major studio films with fine acting and the ability to consume a character, giving flaws, quirks and subtleties life.

Secretary (2002, R) follows Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) on her transition from mental patient to functioning member of society. Suffering from a severe personality disorder, Lee finds comfort in acts of self-mutilation, cutting herself in areas obscured by clothing. In an attempt to return to the societal fold, she receives secretarial training and lands a job with local lawyer E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Confined to typical secretarial duties, Lee is constantly criticized by Edward for her appearance, nervous ticks, and typing errors. She attempts to remedy her flaws, until Edward discovers lacerations on her calf, evidence of her disorder.

When Edward finds another mistake on a letter, rather than reprimanding her traditionally, he instead spanks her while she reads the letter aloud. Lee transposes self-mutilation with sexual masochism and finds freedom in the psychological and physiological release. This practice continues regularly, but is arbitrarily halted by Edward without explanation, leaving Lee without an outlet to vent her self-loathing. She struggles to avoid reverting to self-mutilation, and takes an alternate path to express her frustration.

In another depiction of an emotional disorder (with both Gyllenhaals), Donnie Darko (2001, R) chronicles the final days of its eponymous lead character (Jake Gyllenhaal) before the end of the world, or so he intensely believes. Donnie’s paranoid schizophrenia causes fits of sleepwalking and visions of an omniscient rabbit named Frank, who instructs him to commit malicious, destructive acts, while feeding his delusions of the world’s end and emphasizing the importance of time travel. Darko features a stellar cast (Sister Maggie, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle, Mary McDonnell), and a script so bizarre that it almost works.

—Clint Casey

April 22, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 17
© 2003 Metro Pulse