BECAUSE I SAID SO See film feature. (Showtimes)
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE There’s no official rule that says werewolf movies have to be boring, but it doesn’t seem like anyone has tried particularly hard in a long, long time. Blood and Chocolate does nothing to buck the trend. Looking as bored as the viewer is likely to feel, Agnes Bruckner goes through the motions as Vivian, a Hungarian-American werewolf in Bucharest who inexplicably falls for a dumb-ass comic book artist named Aiden (Hugh Dancy, who looks more like a boy-band refugee than your typical geek). The head werewolf (Olivier Martinez) lives in an absinthe factory. The beastly transformations are accomplished via circa-1980 camera dissolves. And there are multiple pathetic attempts at faking martial-art-du-jour parkour. At one point, Aiden says to Vivian, “If you cared a goddamn thing about me, you’d have left me before we ever met!” By the same logic, dear reader, if you care a goddamn thing about your evening’s entertainment, you’ll walk out of this howler before you ever buy a ticket. (Citywide) (Luke Y. Thompson)
CAN MR. SMITH GET TO WASHINGTON ANYMORE? The contested 2000 presidential outcome still casts a long shadow across our political landscape, causing many Americans (especially moviegoing liberals) to view one of the key components of our country’s democracy — its ability to carry out free elections — with increasing suspicion. Can Mr. Smith, like the equally engaging Street Fight before it, taps into that national anxiety, focusing on the 2004 Missouri Democratic primary, when Jeff Smith, an unknown 29-year-old college instructor, battled Russ Carnahan, the lackluster son of the state’s most powerful political family, for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. If you’re familiar with Street Fight or The War Room, then the structure of director/editor/cinematographer Frank Popper’s film may cause cinematic déjà vu: Again we watch a bright young candidate and his campaign team develop from green outsiders into dogged warriors, squaring off against a heavily favored rival in a battle that culminates in a dramatic Election Day finale. But while the scenario is familiar, the film really finds its footing when showing Smith’s maturation on the stump. For all its rah-rah David-vs.-Goliath populism, Can Mr. Smith understands that even an uncorrupted outsider like Smith must master the art of campaign gamesmanship to be successful, and marvels at how an acutely likable, principled everyman with a slight lisp and short stature grows into a worthy contender in front of our eyes. Both the documentary and the candidate lose their naiveté along the way without abandoning the idealism that inspired the endeavor in the first place. (Grande 4-Plex) (Tim Grierson)
CONSTELLATION Depictions of upper-middle-class African-American life are such a rare screen commodity that one wants to give a movie like Constellation every possible benefit of the doubt. Written and directed by Jordan Walker-Pearlman (whose promising 2000 debut feature, The Visit, starred several of the same actors), the film leapfrogs between present-day Huntsville, Alabama, and a time 50 years earlier, when segregation laws tore a beautiful young black woman (Gabrielle Union) from the white soldier she loved. Now that woman is dead, about to be buried, and as her extended family — an emotionally withdrawn artist brother (Billy Dee Williams), his ex-wife (Lesley Ann Warren) and their two daughters (Melissa De Sousa and Zoe Saldana) — gather for the funeral, it’s as if she is guiding them from beyond the grave to find peace, love and understanding in their own troubled relationships. Constellation (which was filmed in 2004 and played festivals in 2005) positions itself as a sweeping, multigenerational tearjerker in the style of The Notebook, complete with endless shots of two characters staring meaningfully at one another while gloppy music wells on the soundtrack. Only Williams, however, makes any real emotional connection: I’m not sure I’d call his performance good, but there’s something fascinating about seeing the man once heralded as “the black Clark Gable” three decades removed from heartthrob status, heavy and sullen-looking, weighed down by the burdens of time and age. (Magic Johnson 15; South Bay Galleria 16) (Scott Foundas)
EPIC MOVIE The speeds of sound and light remain constants, but the speed of crap accelerates like a rocket luge on Crisco Mountain. Seriously, the daddy of the (blank)-movie genre, 1980’s Airplane!, stocked its pop-culture arsenal with references to 1957’s Zero Hour, 1970’s Airport and 1975’s Jaws. By contrast, this ostensible parody of big-budget adventures (specifically, The Chronicles of Narnia) reaches all the way back to last May’s The Da Vinci Code, July’s Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and October’s Borat. (Borat?!) Just like the filmmakers’ previous Date Movie, this feeble fast-buck shitbomb is an amateur-hour game of Spot That Reference, intended for people who crack up simply at the mention of anything topical — sudoku, “Lazy Sunday,” Cribs. Which means that by the time this dud drops on Netflix, it’ll be as obsolete as a Chia Pet joke book. The only bright spot: Darrell Hammond’s spot-on demolition of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, uncanny right down to his swashbuckling dying gesture. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)
