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 Agronomist (PG-13)
A documentary by director Jonathan Demme about Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist Jean Dominique, who was assassinated April 3, 2000. Reviews thus far peg the film as riveting and heartbreaking.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Around the World in 80 Days (PG)
Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) makes a wager with his London gentlemen’s club friends that he can traverse the world in 80 days. So he recruits Passepartoute (Jackie Chan), a Chinese thief who protects the eccentric Fogg with his dazzling martial arts skills as they encounter different adventures and cultures of the 19th century per Jules Verne’s 1872 novel.
Now Showing: Halls Cinema 7, Carmike 10, Foothills 12, Tinseltown USA, West Town Mall

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (PG-13)
When the corporate fitness center Globo Gym comes to town, Peter LaFleur (Vince Vaughn) can’t make a mortgage payment on his local Average Joe Gym. Rather than go under, Peter enters a group of misfits into a high-risk Las Vegas competition of the ageless elementary gym class favorite: dodgeball. The object of their aggression is the cocky corporate-minded Globo Gym Purple Cobras and their captain White Goodman (Ben Stiller).
Now Showing: Tinseltown USA, Halls Cinema 7, West Town Mall, Farragut Towne Square

Love Me If You Dare (R)
A French film by Yann Samuell about two friends who have challenged each other to dares since childhood. As they grow up, their dares become more intense, and sometimes mean-spirited with the underlying current of passionate love. Reviewers report that it’s quirky like Amelie but with a much darker edge.
Now Showing: Downtown West

The Terminal (NR)
While en route to New York City, Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) finds his Eastern European homeland has fallen to a coup, and he is left stranded in JFK Airport. With a passport from a country that no longer exists and not allowed to actually enter the United States, Navorski lives in the confines of the airport terminal. In the meantime, Navorski finds love with flight attendant Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) but also finds that he has overstayed his welcome with airport official Frank Dixon (Stanely Tucci).
Now Showing: Tinseltown USA, Halls Cinema 7, Farragut Towne Square, West Town Mall

Violence and Reason

What drives a teenager to kill? What causes a seemingly normal student to enter his high school and open fire, mowing down everyone in sight?

After the infamous Columbine shootings five years ago, the media couldn’t stop asking these kinds of questions. And anyone with a microphone, book deal, or video camera was quick to provide an answer. Theories ranged from the influence of Marilyn Manson and the lack of Ten Commandments postings in schools to the easy availability of firearms, to children with parents that quick-fix them Ritalin and Prozac.

Reality, however, is far more complicated. Answers to such questions don’t often come in sound bytes or from talking heads. Often the answers don’t come at all. That’s the case with Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting)’s Elephant (R, 2003).

Elephant follows the lives of a group of students in a Portland, Ore., high school as they trudge through their monotonous existence. We are introduced to a multitude of characters, from a socially awkward library assistant mocked in gym class for her choice of undergarments to a clique of pretty, popular, bulimic girls. We follow each character, eavesdropping on snippets of conversation, shifting back and forth through time as the characters’ lives crisscross. And ultimately, we’re there when the bullets start flying.

Van Sant doesn’t romanticize his characters or explain their behavior. We have little insight into the home life of the pair of murderers, making the violence seem all the more senseless, chilling and compelling.

For a more standardized vision of violence and rebellion, pick up The Last Samurai (R, 2003). The film stars Tom Cruise as a Civil War veteran pressured into training Japanese soldiers to quash a rebellion of Samurai traditionalists. But when the captain is kidnapped by the insurrection, he sides with it against the Western influence and attempts to save the honor of the samurai code from threats of modernity. The film is epic in its scope, and though Cruise ultimately triumphs against the future’s bleak crossroads, he can’t free the story from the trappings of Hollywood.

—Lloyd Babbit

June 17, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 25
© 2003 Metro Pulse