OCTOBER 3 MOVIE RELEASES
BLINDNESS
Expectations are high considering director Meirelles has City of God and The Constant Gardener under his belt and now brings Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago’s novel to the screen. Unfortunately, this silly attempt at deep cinema merely amounts to a pretentious zombie flick.An epidemic of sudden blindness strikes denizens of a multicultural city. The only person immune to the contagion is the doting wife (Julianne Moore) of an ophthalmologist (Mark Ruffalo), who behaves like Florence Nightingale when the government quarantines victims in an abandoned asylum. Is her humanity sufficient to combat an outbreak of beastly behavior? Audience members will wish for a two-hour bout of sightlessness. (R)
FLASH OF GENIUS
A slightly peculiar David takes on a corporate Goliath in a bittersweet tale about sacrifice and perseverance that resists being sugarcoated or gussied-up. The drab, fact-based movie has the integrity of its borderline crackpot hero Robert Kearns (an ideally cast Greg Kinnear), the Detroit professor of electrical engineering who invented the first workable intermittent windshield wiper in the early 1960s, only to have his design appropriated by the automobile industry. The filmmakers don’t find an exciting or original way to convey his Sisyphean struggle, but they stay true to their man and resist selling out - qualities you’ll find more admirable in retrospect than while you’re watching. (PG-13)
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE
How does a filmmaker lose respect and alienate moviegoers? If you’re Robert B. Weide adapting Toby Young’s best-selling book, you hire Simon Pegg to play piggish Brit Sidney Young, an incompetent entertainment reporter who receives a job offer to cover Hollywood’s elite for a Gotham rag. Then you cast Kirsten Dunst as his unlikely love interest. Finally, you somehow lure respectable actors like Jeff Bridges, Miriam Margolyes, Danny Huston and Bill Paterson for supporting roles. Asking thespians such as these to rescue tasteless, imbecilic dreck such as this is the equivalent of expecting four nails to hold together a house. (R)
AT OAHU MOVIE THEATERS THIS WEEK
Eagle Eye
Shia LaBeouf plays a goateed slacker framed for a terrorist plot and on the run from a federal agent (Billy Bob Thornton). The four screenwriters cook up credible reasons for the manic hoop-jumping revolving around uber-intelligent government computers overriding their human components in the name of national security. (PG-13)
Nights In Rodanthe
Richard Gere plays a wealthy surgeon who spends a weekend at a picturesque beachfront hotel on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He’s there to meet with a litigious widower whose wife died on his operating table. To the handsome doc’s pleasant surprise, the hotel is staffed for the hurricane-threatened weekend by a recently separated beauty played by Diane Lane. (PG-13)
Fireproof
Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains portrays a firefighter whose seven-year union with a hospital publicist (Erin Bethea) is on the verge of collapse until his born-again father suggests he try a 40-day program titled “The Love Dare.” Though it takes quite a while, all prayers are answered. (PG)
Burn After Reading
Potentially sensitive data belonging to a disgraced CIA analyst (John Malkovich) falls into the hands of two dopey health club employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). An adulterous federal marshal (George Clooney) is implicated in the pair’s lame-brained extortion scheme. (R)
Igor
The Kingdom of Malaria is populated by evil scientists and their hunchbacked sidekicks. One of these abused assistants yearns to be recognized as an inventor and gets his shot during the annual science fair. Features voices of John Cusack, Molly Shannon and Steve Buscemi. (PG)
My Best Friend’s Girl
Viewers will want to bathe in industrial-strength disinfectant after enduring this raunchy romantic comedy. Vile and sexist, it wears down your defenses so that by the time Dane Cook upchucks and drops his drawers during a wedding reception you’ll laugh simply out of exhausted desperation. He plays a vulgar dude other guys hire to date their girlfriends so they’ll look good by comparison. (R)
Righteous Kill
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are veteran NYPD detectives investigating a killing spree. As close as brothers, they play a dangerous game when one decides to take justice into his own hands; everybody in their orbit loses, including the audience. (R)
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