We Are the Mods, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE Named for the last good outing by Walt Disney's rodent mascot, this Bruckheimer-produced Apprentice pays homage to Mickey's dancing mops, but draws more from modern road-tested blockbuster elements: Spidey's nerd-turned-superhero wish-fulfillment and Harry Potter's boy wizardry. Nicolas Cage plays Balthazar Blake, a 1,300-year-old understudy of Merlin who finds his long-sought Chosen One in the unlikely form of a skinny NYU physics student, Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel), who'll have to cram magick lessons so as to help Balthazar stop a cabal of apocalyptic sorcerers, all while courting a vanilla-indie college-radio DJ (Teresa Palmer). In Apprentice's prologue, a preteen Dave draws King Kong in marker on his school-bus window, so that it lines up to superimpose on the passing Empire State Building. This encapsulates the movie's "Presto!" playfulness with effects ("It's been a while since I've seen the Hungarian mirror trick ...") and the free way it has with New York City: Dave's massive Tesla coils fill his dungeon-lab, an abandoned subway turnabout; a Chinatown New Year's dragon, the Wall Street bull and the stainless-steel eagles from the Chrysler Building all come to life. Cage will likely not earn a second Oscar here, but he and director Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure) make leftovers into fine PG malarkey with their hokey naïveté and prankish hocus-pocus. (Nick Pinkerton) (Citywide)

GO  WE ARE THE MODS Writer-director E.E. Cassidy's We Are the Mods delicately fuses standard tropes of the coming-of-age tale (first kiss; new and imploding friendships; raucous house party when the folks are away) with the art-house/foreign-film sensibilities of her precocious L.A.-based teen characters. (The film directly references Antonioni's Blow-Up, which Cassidy cites as an influence.) She's created a rare American film to tackle female teen sexuality, its joys and disasters, with frankness sans condescension or heavy-handed tragedy. Sadie (Melia Renee) is a sheltered, slightly femme tomboy and budding photographer with a crush on her best girlfriend — who shoves Sadie aside to be part of their high school in-crowd. Enter sultry transfer student Nico (Mary Elise Hayden), all heavy eyeliner, swinging mod clothes, a too-cool older boyfriend and a medical disability she works like an accessory. Soon Nico comes to be Sadie's muse, introducing her to foreign films, underground clubs, cigarettes and cocaine, all while stoking the sapphic energy that crackles between them. Cassidy gets fantastic performances from her cast, cloaking them in visuals that pay homage to her cinematic heroes. She's also smart about the intricacies of friendships between teen girls — the idol worship, competition and, in this case, the queer underpinnings at work. An impressive feature debut. (Ernest Hardy) (Downtown Independent)