Movie Reviews: Beaufort, Horton Hears a Who!, The Unforeseen

 PARANOID PARK Click here for the full-length review by J. Hoberman. (Citywide)

 SLEEPWALKING Joleen Reedy (Charlize Theron) is the kind of broad who has second thoughts right before nailing her date on the kitchen table while her brother James (Nick Stahl) pretend-sleeps on the couch — instead, she removes her daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) from the only bedroom and continues the festivities there. Sleepwalking, the directorial debut of William Maher, is the kind of film that expects you to respond to this scenario with a sort of grim, Pavlovian determination, knuckling down for 90 minutes more of the same in the hope of some reward. Nearly relentless in its bleakness, Sleepwalking follows Tara and James as they strike out of their dead-end town when deadbeat Joleen buggers off. They wind up at their American Gothic homestead, subject to the relentless assholery of the family patriarch (Dennis Hopper), which is what drove James and Joleen away (and possibly crazy) in the first place. Stahl seems as adrift as we are within James’ utter blankness, and Robb — a naturally mesmerizing presence — hints at a better movie when feeling her oats in sunglasses and roller skates while two starstruck young boys look on. Theron and Woody Harrelson (as James’ party pal Randall) provide vitality against the film’s heavy load, but they aren’t around long enough to keep it from collapsing under its own portentous weight. (Selected theaters) (Michelle Orange)

Blue Sky Studios

Horton Hears a Who!

The Cinema Guild

The Unforeseen

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 GO  SNOW ANGELS An unusually blunt melodrama by David Gordon Green, melodious poet of such sentimental delicacies as George Washington and All the Real Girls, Snow Angels introduces a pair of gunshots and then follows with a flashback narrative to account for them, crosscutting between the emotional bludgeoning of two unhappy couples. Louise (Jeannetta Arnette) is splitting with Don (Griffin Dunne), a self-absorbed philanderer and science teacher at their son’s school. Across town and miles further down the path of estrangement, Annie (Kate Beckinsale) has a restraining order against her alcoholic, suicidal, Jesus-freak ex-husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell). Caught in the middle are the two couples’ children, including Louise’s son Arthur (Michael Angarano), who falls for quirky art chick Lila (Olivia Thirlby). As always, Green’s sympathies lie with his melancholy youngsters, and, happily, his own heart is full of subtle instruments. What saves this heavy material from sinking into the familiar turf of the Small-Town Midwinter Tragedy is his ear for verbal idiosyncrasy and off-kilter conversation rhythms. The film feels transitional for Green — one foot in the interiorized indi e-verse of his previous work, the other taking a big step toward more conventional projects. In shaking off his influences and affections, will Green shed imagination and intuition as well? Snow Angels answers No — even as it poses questions about life and love that are hardly worth asking. (ArcLight Hollywood; The Landmark) (Nathan Lee)

 10,000 B.C. No doubt, your history teacher failed to tell you of the long-lost Yagahl tribe, which apparently thrived on snowy mountainsides 6,000 years before Mike Huckabee believes the Earth even existed, and consisted of one Jamaican (Mona Hammond), one Maori (Cliff Curtis), and a whole lot of white people sporting dreadlocked wigs and dirt on their faces. The aspiring hero of this tribe was D’Leh (Steven Strait) — pronounced “delay,” which is pretty funny considering how needlessly slow the story sometimes feels — who risked everything for the love of the only woman in the world with blue eyes (Camilla Belle). Her name was Evolet, and we’re told that means “the promise of life” in whatever made-up language these people are supposed to be speaking. When Evolet gets kidnapped by evil “four-legged demons” (i.e., guys on horses), it’s up to white boy D’Leh to rally together various tribes of black and brown people to save his girlfriend and, as an entirely secondary matter, free a whole mess of slaves. Director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, Independence Day) knows his money shots: Anytime he throws some mastodons or giant dodos on the screen for a little beast-battlin’ action, he has our attention. But his lack of skill with actors really shows during the long moments of downtime in between. Strait desperately needs direction, and doesn’t seem to be getting any. (Citywide) (Luke Y. Thompson)

 GO  THE UNFORESEEN A haunting meditation on hubris and the folly of claiming rights over something as elemental — and temperamental — as the environment, Laura Dunn’s billowing, imagistic nonfiction feature (executive-produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford) can be seen as part of a small but growing canon of ecological-alarm docs. But the qualities that make The Unforeseen ineffective as a shrieking call to arms — among them a tone that’s less hectoring than contemplative, a glacial pace that encourages reflection, and an unusual sympathy for the opposition — make it vastly more absorbing as a movie. Dunn traces the buildup and aftermath of a controversial 1990s development deal that threatened Austin’s beloved Barton Springs swimming hole, focusing on the deluded wheeler-dealer, Gary Bradley, who devised the 4,000-acre subdivision. Using archival footage and modern-day interviews, sometimes contrasted to poignant effect, Dunn lays out what neither Bradley nor his environmentalist foes could foresee — the collapse of the Texas S&L industry, the shifting winds of politics, and the impact of the developmental havoc on the springs’ once-sparkling waters. Through cinematographer Lee Daniel’s transfixing glimpses of the natural world and an agrarian lifestyle at risk, The Unforeseen ponders nothing less than what happens when we turn our backs on the divine. (Nuart) (Jim Ridley)