Movie Reviews: Max Payne, Sex Drive, What Just Happened?

 
SAVING MARRIAGE Come November 4, Californians will punch their ballot for or against an amendment to the state constitution titled “Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act” (a.k.a. Prop. 8). That’s a harsh name for a measure whose origins can be traced to a 2003 Massachusetts Judicial Court order stating that full marriage rights must be made available to all. Political bedlam ensued, prompting an assembly bill, which, if passed, would have been the first step toward writing a gay-marriage ban into the Massachusetts Constitution. In this energetic and unapologetically biased documentary, directors Mike Roth and John Henning are there for the first, failed statehouse vote and the two-year battle that follows, during which queer activists and their hetero sympathizers organize against a second legislative vote on the potential amendment and, later still, a civil action seeking the same initiative. Amid the turmoil, the directors capture the sweet angst of several couples planning their nuptials, but what propels Saving Marriage is footage of the campaign to replace an old-school state representative with a gay 25-year-old health care worker — a political novice whose attempt to change the system from within makes one think that there’s hope yet for this democracy thing. (Regent Showcase) (Chuck Wilson)

 
GO  SECRECY Few Americans would argue with Winston Churchill’s dictum: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” But the culture of secrecy that has developed within the Bush/Cheney White House has taken that admonition to dangerous extremes. The inherent tension that exists between the public’s right to know and the government’s need for confidentiality in the service of national security is the subject of Secrecy, a powerful documentary by Harvard professors Peter Galison and Robb Moss. In addition to historical footage, the film employs a series of pulsating animated drawings, with the white ink against the black background injecting an appropriately unsettling, even sinister tone. Arguments on both sides of the debate are presented, although the filmmakers have a clear point of view: that the current level of secrecy is harmful. Most chilling is the former CIA station chief who defends secrecy on the grounds that it “allows us the latitude of action to use methods that are not necessarily consistent with our values as a nation.” (Music Hall) (Jean Oppenheimer)

 
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES From its attention-grabbing B-movie beginning, The Secret Life of Bees, a family drama based on the best-selling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, chugs pleasantly into a television special tailored for the crossover female market, while dropping tantalizing hints that it has more on its mind than a benign tale of substitute mothering across the color line. The ever-capable Dakota Fanning plays Lily, a motherless teenager who flees her bullying father (Paul Bettany, channeling Brad Dourif) to find safe haven with three black beekeeping sisters more solidly equipped for life than she. Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) bathes them in a honeyed glow and tempers the soundtrack’s jaunty Motown music with a soft guitar when Southern racism pokes in its unwelcome head. Stately black actresses approaching middle age always run the risk of getting locked in as the face of Black Equanimity, and as August, the oldest sister whose job it is to teach Lily how to live a good life, Queen Latifah has no choice but to succumb. Only near the end does this likable but saccharine movie fleetingly complicate the Gone With the Wind–fed delusion that the love of poor black nannies for their white charges was undiluted by bitterness. Is that Hattie McDaniel I hear, whooping for joy from beyond the grave? For a longer version of this review, go to laweekly.com/movies.(Citywide) (Ella Taylor)

 
GO  SEX DRIVE Between his unsympathetic family and his demeaning doughnut-shop job, the likable but luckless Ian (Josh Zuckerman) is a prototypical teen-movie protagonist with a prototypical teen-movie conflict: He’s still a virgin. Naturally, a prototypical solution must follow. With his two best friends (played by Amanda Crew and Clark Duke), Ian steals his brother’s 1969 Pontiac GTO and embarks on a road trip to hook up with his Internet crush. Heralded by Porky’s and perfected by John Hughes, the post-pubescent sex comedy is a genre as identifiable as the film noir or the Western, and Sex Drive doesn’t miss any of the motifs. Sweet muscle car? Check. Terroristic older sibling? Check. (In frosted tips and cut-off sweatshirt, James Marsden relishes the role.) Ample amounts of T&A? Check. Yet, rather than wink at adults with a knowing rehash of early ’80s iconography, director and co-writer Sean Anders aims for the only audience that counts: the youth of today. Like Superbad, Sex Drive maintains its belief that the average modern teenager is funnier and more compelling than the stereotyped hipsters of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist or the fantastic figurines of High School Musical. Even as Ian’s journey detours into National Lampoon–like farce, the movie remains faithful to a portrait of teens as they see themselves. (Citywide) (Sam Sweet)