[ThisWeek] Hoot and X-Men: The Last Stand at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

Summer Matinee series:
Hoot (PG)
Sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank
Wednesday, July 12
1:00 PM
$4/adult or teen, $1/child under 13

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13)
Thursday & Friday, July 13 & 14
7:00 PM
Saturday, July 15
7:00 PM & 9:30 PM
Sunday, July 16
4:30 & 7:00 PM 
$5/adult, $3/child under 13
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
(See movie reviews below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Nanny McPhee (PG)
Wednesday, July 19
1:00 PM

DaVinci Code (PG-13)
Friday & Saturday, July 21 & 22
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 23
3:45 & 7:00 PM
* * *

Also showing in July:

Sponsored by US Bank
Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG)
Wednesday, July 26
1:00 PM
Also showing-
Thursday - Saturday, July 27 ­ 29
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 30
4:45 & 7:00 PM

Coming in August: Goal!; Water; An Inconvenient Truth; A Prairie Home
Companion

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $3/child 12 or younger
Wednesday matinee prices: $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger
KFS series pass prices:  $30/10 films, $75/30 films.  KFS pass good only for
Sunday movies.

For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a
schedule, visit our website at www.kenworthy.org
* * *
This week¹s movie reviews-

Hoot

Directed by Wil Shriner; written by Mr. Shriner, based on the book by Carl
Hiaasen
Rated PG for what the press notes call "mild bullying and brief language."
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
 

As reviewed by Dana Stevens writing for the New York Times

Roy Eberhardt (Logan Lerman, who played Bobby on the WB series "Jack and
Bobby") is the only child in a family that's constantly relocating for his
father's work. At 14 he's once again the new kid, this time in the tiny
Florida beach town of Coconut Cove. While ducking the school bully (Eric
Phillips), Roy spots a mysterious barefoot boy (Cody Linley) who appears to
be living on his own in the woods. With the reluctant help of the school's
soccer star, Beatrice (Brie Larson), Roy makes the acquaintance of this wild

Boy.

When the three of them discover that a construction site is threatening the
habitat of an endangered species of owls, they set out to sabotage the
building project, incurring the wrath of a national restaurant chain and
baffling a clueless local cop named Officer Delinko (Luke Wilson).

This sweet-natured adaptation of a young-adult novel by Carl Hiaasen could
have used a little less broad satire of corporate greed and a few more,
well, owls. The critters peep from their burrows for only a few brief
moments, whetting the young audience's appetite for a nature film that never
emerges.

What "Hoot" does get right is locale. The director Wil Shriner, a Florida
native, captures the laid-back mood of a Gulf Coast beach town, the kind of
place where a middle-school science teacher (the musician Jimmy Buffett, who
also produced the film) wears shorts so he can go surfing after school, and
dismisses class with the word "mañana."


As reviewed by Ruthe Stein writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

Imagine if the precocious secret agents in "Spy Kids'' had been deployed on
a mission to terminate zealous developers, and you get the general drift of
"Hoot.'' Fun to watch although falling short of a real hoot, this latest in
a barrage of family movies largely succeeds at keeping the kiddies
entertained and their parents from nodding off.

To its credit, the film does nothing to dilute the
save-the-Earth-and-every-creature-on-it message of Carl Hiaasen's
ingeniously plotted award-winning children's book.

Three young environmentalists instigate various shenanigans to prevent a
pancake franchise from bulldozing over burrows housing the most adorable
little owls outside of Harry Potter's birdcage. The do-gooders act not only
because they're outraged, but also because they feel alienated from locals
already salivating at the thought of a short stack.

Eighth-grader Roy (Logan Lerman) has just been uprooted for the 10th time,
leaving Montana, where he was happy, for a flat hamlet in coastal Florida.
His worst fears are realized when his new classmates immediately dub him
"cowgirl.'' Beatrice (Brie Larson), the one student to befriend him, is a
giantess and a jock -- a lethal combination for attracting boys. Her half
brother (Cody Linley) has run away from military school and is hiding in the
remaining wilderness of their tiny corner of the Gulf Coast.

By accentuating the trio's estrangement, screenwriter-director Wil Shriner
(Herb's son, for those of you old enough for that to mean anything) proves
himself wise as an owl. Most of the movie's target audience also feel like
aliens and will readily identify with Roy and his gang. By featuring rebels
with a cause, "Hoot'' suggests constructive ways to channel adolescent
anxiety.

Directing his first feature film after years of helming TV sitcoms, Shriner
mostly keeps "Hoot'' clipping along, although scenes of Roy being consoled
by his unbelievably understanding parents do drag on. The movie benefits
from shooting on location in Florida, including the affluent Gulf Coast town
of Boca Grande captured at its most picturesque. The problem is that most of
the state no longer looks like this since developers had their way with it.
"Hoot'' makes some noise to wake us up to other alternatives.


As reviewed by Sean Axmaker writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Young Roy (Logan Lerman) is a cowboy swept from the plains of Montana to
Coconut Cove, a small Florida coast town, by Dad's latest transfer. It's his
sixth school in eight years. Fitting in is hard enough without the nickname
"Cowgirl" and being stalked by a towering porcine bully with the brains of a
mollusk.

"Mullet Fingers" (Cody Linley), a modern day Huck Finn turned barefoot
eco-warrior, and tough-girl soccer jock Beatrice "the Bear" (Brie Larson),
are an odd couple on a mission to save an endangered species from the
bulldozers. They bring out the Tom Sawyer in Roy when he joins their
mission.

Based on the Newbery-winning young-adult book by Carl Hiaasen, the Miami
crime reporter turned novelist better known for his black-humored crime
fiction, the adaptation is rudimentary but generally effective.

The adults are one-dimensional at best and ineffectual by definition; Roy's
dad could have been played by a cardboard cutout with a pullstring. The
rapacious corporate villain (Clark Gregg) actually cackles as he blasts
underground owl nests with a fire extinguisher.

Luke Wilson mellows things out as Coconut Cove's answer to Barney Fife, a
laid-back cruiser cop whose brain is idling but whose heart is in the right
place.

The kids have good chemistry, there's some fun oddball humor stuck in around
the slapstick, and the gorgeous photography of the Gulf Coast beaches,
waterways and wildlife brings their mission to life.

* * *
X-Men: The Last Stand

Directed by Brett Ratner
Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Several central characters die; a
few are pulverized. Advisory: Explosions and sexual situations culminating
in physical death.
Running time: 1hour, 44 minutes.


As reviewed by Peter Bradshaw writing for The Guardian

Against the odds, this third X-Men movie turns out to be a lively and
likeable picture - a fun summer blockbuster, which is capable of being scary
and even rather affecting. The second X-Men was a chaotic, cranked-up mess
that failed to ask or answer the pertinent question about the X-Men: if,
collectively, they can do almost anything, then how can you have a story?
How can it work without, as it were, dramatic gravity, especially if they
are pitted against each other?

But here, it somehow works. The battle lines are the same. There are two
separate "wings" of the mutant movement. The peaceful, centrist wing is
represented by Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who believes in dialogue
with the authorities, while the radical wing led by the dissident outlaw
Magneto (Ian McKellen) is in revolt against the straight, non-mutant world.
As ever, the mutants are all good-looking enough to be models, except they
are supposed to be picturesquely older. (Whenever these people referred to
themselves as "mutants", I kept thinking of the unfortunate character in
Daniel Clowes's comic book Ghost World, who has a mole that has grown into a
crackly brown carapace, covering her entire face. There would be no point in
her applying to Professor Xavier's X-Men academy, even if she could fly or
lift buses.)

There is a new twist. A billionaire businessman, appalled by his own son
becoming a mutant, has invented a "cure" for this condition, and proposes to
market it throughout the United States. It instantly becomes an explosive
point of controversy for the mutant and non-mutant worlds alike. Is the cure
a good thing? Or is it an insidious agent of control - is taking the cure a
form of collaboration and self-hate for the mutant community? Mutant-ism has
entered the mainstream of political debate in the form of a new "minister
for mutant affairs", Dr Hank McCoy, played by a blue-skinned, mutton-chopped
Kelsey Grammer. But the radical mutants' worst fears appear to be realised
when it becomes known that the "cure" is being used as a weapon: phials of
the contentious liquid are being fired like darts at the most dangerous
mutants.

This plot is the loose frame for a sprawling story that encompasses the
destinies of many different X-Men, including that of Jean Grey, the only
X-Person who does not have a campy, Gladiator-ish handle. She is the most
powerful of the mutants and it is her fierce identity that director Brett
Ratner and screenwriter Simon Kinberg put at the heart of the film, setting
it up with a droll flashback showing the younger Magneto and Xavier paying a
visit to the pre-teen Jean and her bewildered parents. Digital trickery is
deployed to create McKellen and Stewart as their younger selves: it works
better with McKellen, who plausibly appears as if in the era of his RSC
Macbeth. Stewart's face just looks weirdly waxy and unlined, as if he had
been injected with enough botox to rejuvenate a bull elephant.

It is a modest but distinct triumph for the film that it tours its vast
gallery of X-Men and gives us a little sketch of each, without quite losing
contact with the central, driving force of the plot. There is in particular
a poignant little moment for Anna Paquin as Rogue - whose X-power means she
can't touch anyone - seeing a boy she likes hanging out with someone else,
and sadly deciding to take the cure.

Among the others, Halle Berry returns as Storm, her hair a distinguished
steely grey, and Vinnie Jones lumbers on as Juggernaut, a mutant whose
muscular mass is such that "once he begins movement in any direction, no
power on earth can stop him" - which indicates Vinnie is refreshingly
unencumbered with any neurotic worries over typecasting. A galaxy of exotic
fun and drama is to be had with these X-Men. The series ends with a mutant
bang, not a GM whimper.


As reviewed by Manohla Dargis writing for the New York Times

Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen, all of whom star in the
generically serviceable "X-Men: The Last Stand," are three reasons that the
film's director, Brett Ratner, has now walked the same red carpet as
Federico Fellini and Clint Eastwood. Does this mean that we must now speak
of "le cinéma de Brett Ratner"? Nah.

Manufactured from almost the finest materials available (more on that
later), "The Last Stand" is the third and presumably last film about the
powerful Marvel Comics mutants who walk and often fight among us, some on
our behalf, some not. The first films in the series ‹ "X-Men" and "X2" ‹
were directed by Bryan Singer, who abstained from a third go-round to direct
one of the season's other big releases, "Superman Returns." Mr. Ratner,
whose previous films include "Rush Hour" and its sequel, isn't as competent
behind the camera as Mr. Singer, but such niceties can be irrelevant when it
comes to industrial products like these.

Once again Ms. Berry plays Storm, a weather woman who conjures
meteorological mischief by raising her arms, while Mr. Jackman returns as
Wolverine, a guy with an enviable immune system and a trigger temper. These
good mutants, along with Xavier (Patrick Stewart), the headmaster at a
mutant school whose graduates include Rogue (Anna Paquin) and Cyclops (James
Marsden), battle against the bad mutants led by Magneto (Sir Ian).

Magneto's minions include Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), dipped in deep blue and
very mean, along with a human flamethrower named Pyro (Aaron Stanford). New
to the cast are Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Henry McCoy, a beastly gentleman
covered in blue fuzz, and Ben Foster as Warren Worthington III, born with a
silver spoon in his mouth and wings on his back.

As might be expected, "The Last Stand" pretty much looks and plays like the
first films, though perhaps with more noise and babe action and a little
less glum. The story this time partly turns on a new cure for the mutant
gene, which pushes the series' gay metaphor without developing it in any
interesting way.

After the cure is announced, there are mutant protests, government missteps
and mutant self-affirmations. Magneto pulls one way, Xavier another, as news
of the discovery stirs up fear and panic among the, er, mutant community. By
the time Warren Worthington III soars over the Golden Gate Bridge, his white
wings extended and evoking seraphic visions of "Angels in America," the
metaphor of the persecuted minority has all but left the realm of the
figurative.

The special effects look expensive, certainly, though if you've seen Storm
gather dark clouds once, you've seen her do it a thousand times, no matter
Ms. Berry's attempts to make it seem like a third film was a smart idea.
Mostly, as so often with these types of empty entertainments, you are left
to wonder why companies that hire so many fine actors to run around under
latex and foam and have the best technological wizardry money can buy seem
to spend so little attention to the screenplay. The credited writers here
are Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn, who, like the director, are simply not
mutant enough to fly.


As reviewed by Mick LaSalle writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

The new X-Men movie is called "The Last Stand," and let's hope they mean it.
This is the third film in the series, which means that on three occasions
now we've been presented with the same story, featuring the same conflict,
leading to the same false resolution, a smiley-happy joining of hands at the
edge of an abyss. At what point do the people in the movie -- not to mention
the filmmakers -- catch on that mutants and Homo sapiens not only can't get
along but shouldn't get along, not if Homo sapiens hope to be around past
next Tuesday?

"The Last Stand" follows the pattern of the other "X-Men" films. There are a
few terse conversations, followed by explosions, followed by Halle Berry
causing a storm, followed by Hugh Jackman sprouting blades from his
knuckles, followed by Famke Janssen killing people by thinking about it,
etc. In between, we see Patrick Stewart looking worried. Why? Is it because
he has to play scenes opposite Ian McKellen, and McKellen would upstage his
own grandmother? No, it's because Stewart plays Charles Xavier, a visionary
mutant who dreams of world peace and harmony, even though every day mutants
are being born who can blow you up by looking at you. Charles, the supposed
saint of the series, is one naive fellow.

"The Last Stand" is a cut above the previous two "X-Men" movies in that it
comes up with an arresting premise: A scientist has developed a formula to
turn mutants into normal human beings. The cure is irreversible. What's
more, the U.S. government has done something considered despicable in the
movie, but is actually rather brilliant. They've weaponized the cure. The
military's guns no longer shoot bullets but darts containing the cure.

The existence of the cure upends an already shaky societal balance. Some
mutants want the cure, mutant activists protest the cure, and the militant
mutant, Magneto (McKellen) wants to start a war over it, seeing this as the
beginning of his people's destruction. Xavier, the saintly founder of the
X-Men, thinks all this intolerance is unnecessary, but if you actually stand
back and examine the situation (which the movie never does), it's clear that
Magneto and the anti-mutant extremists are right. After all, if Xavier's
moderate course is right, why, after three movies, are there less than 10
X-Men? Obviously, his dream is not where the future is heading.

McKellen is fun, as always -- this time, in order to top himself, he almost
sings his lines. There's a striking sequence involving the Golden Gate
Bridge, which jazzes up the evening commute, and the new gimmick of the
"cure" gun provides for some interesting moments of transformation. But, for
the most part, this is just noisy and busy, and when it's not, it's grim and
self-important. Jackman, as Wolverine, gets the worst of it: His searing,
emotional scenes with the telekinetic Jean (Janssen) provide the movie's
only laughs.


Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Take a seat!  We mean that literally.  The Kenworthy is offering you the
opportunity to purchase one of a limited number of theater chairs in the
main auditorium.  Your gift will entitle you to an engraved, brass name
plate mounted on the back of the seat of your choice (based upon
availability).  One individual or business name per seat, please.

This naming opportunity, back by popular demand, is available for a donation
of $500 per chair.  You may purchase a chair in two installments of $250
over two years, or in three installments of $200 over three years.

Your gift will assist with the ongoing operation and renovation of the
Kenworthy Theater and fulfillment of our mission to be Moscow's premiere,
historic, downtown, community performing arts venue and cinematic art house.

For information about the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, call Julie
Ketchum, Executive Director, at 208-882-4127.
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
208-882-4127
Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by
logging onto our website
http://www.kenworthy.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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