we recommend
CLEAN
See Film feature. (Edwards University, Irvine)
OVER THE HEDGE
See Film feature. (Countywide)
SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
Insider journalism several times over, this enjoyably breezy portrait of genius architect Frank Gehry is drawn doodle-style by first-time documentarian Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood player with ready access to impartial testimony from patron-saint moguls (Diller, Eisner, Ovitz) and a close friend of the subject for 30 years. Narrating in the first person, Pollack claims identification not only with the architect's artistic anxiety (“avoidance, delay, denial”), but with his challenge to achieve personal expression despite commercial restraints (i.e., the monumental Guggenheim in Bilbao is Gehry's The Way We Were, the Santa Monica Place Mall his Havana, Sabrina, Electric Horseman, Random Hearts, et al.). The friends tread lightly on one another's soft spots, including the source of Gehry's 1950s name-change from Goldberg, and the admiration becomes infectious in the visual exploration of Gehry's perverse body of work, whose curves and crevices Pollack's camera seems to caress like a lover. The sensual mood seems to turn even talking heads into construction sites while both men appear as endearingly malleable structures: Gehry as the Cubist hockey fan, alternately arrogant and shy, bossy and passive; Pollack as equally privileged and ordinary, neurotic and gregarious. (Rob Nelson) (Edwards South Coast Village, Santa Ana)
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
See Film feature. (Countywide)
also showing
THE BOONDOCK SAINTS
When roughneck bartender Troy Duffy signed with Miramax to direct his script for this film, the media proclaimed him the next Tarantino. Then Duffy got on the bad side of Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein and the project was scrapped, later to be made on a shoestring by a micro-studio. The story of two brothers who take on the Boston underworld yielded a deeply flawed film: full of wooden acting and third-rate Tarantinoisms. But it's also an exhilarating, atmospheric B-flick, featuring Willem Dafoe's strangest performance yet (meditate on that), Scottish comedian Billy Connolly as a killing machine, and oodles of bullets. This one-night only screening is held on the eve of the release of The Boondock Saints' unrated DVD cut, which lacks only a sticker reading “Now with more blood!” But the commentaries and deleted scenes are a snooze; for a real special feature, get the documentary Overnight, which chronicles the rise and deserved fall of Duffy's film career. (Jordan Harper) (8 p.m. Mon. at Edwards Aliso Viejo; Edwards “Big One” Megaplex, Spectrum, Irvine; Edwards Long Beach. DVD in stores everywhere on Tues.)
THE DA VINCI CODE
See Film feature. (Countywide)
SEE NO EVIL
The killer in this nasty yet taut slice-and-dice 'em horror flick is a collector of eyeballs, which he removes from his screaming victims with an efficient single swooping motion of his talon-like index finger. If that image makes you grin not cringe, then this movie's for you. It's obviously been designed for Saw fans, the torture happy horror franchise that's transformed arthouse distributor Lions Gate (Crash) into Hollywood's premiere—and enviably profitable—house of gore. (Torture is to Lions Gate what Dracula and the Wolfman were to Universal and what Freddy Krueger was to New Line Cinema.) See No Evil's Jacob does not speak, but he clearly loves his work, which involves pitching a long chain with a meat hook on its end at the six teens and two adults who've foolishly entered the abandoned hotel he calls home. The 7-foot tall, 300 pound wrestling star known as Kane plays Jacob with obvious relish, but the real star is the hotel itself, upon which production designer Michael Rumpf and first time director Gregory Dark have heaped a lovingly detailed heap of dust and decrepitude. It appears too, that they got a discount on cockroaches. (Chuck Wilson) (Countywide)
12 AND HOLDING
See Film feature. (Edwards University, Irvine)
