Capsules

New Releases

All new New Releases open Fri., May 3 unless otherwise noted.

BORSTAL BOY. Shawn Hatosy (you know, Dildo Dunphy from Outside Providence) stars in the film adaptation of Irish-radical-turned-poet-and-author Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel of the same name. When Behan is convicted as a minor for fighting with the IRA just prior to Britain's entrance into World War II, he's sent to Borstal, the famed reform school for boys. There his whole ideology is called into question as he meets fellow lads whom he not only doesn't want to kill, but in one case, he actually wants to kiss! But Hatosy is just too much of a dunderhead to carry the role. Whatever shards of wit and courage Behan may have had in real life get blurred here by Hatosy's dull-thud delivery and a completely goofy hetero love-interest plot line that seems nothing more than an afterthought to make the movie somehow less gay. Beautifully shot but horribly acted--including a turn by Michael York as, you guessed it, the headmaster--Borstal Boy might best be preserved for an afternoon viewing on Bravo any time in the next 10 years, or whenever you get around to it. C- (Joey Sweeney)

DEUCES WILD. Avenging the OD death of their brother, Deuces Leon and Bobby engage the rival Vipers in a '50s gang war to get drugs off their Brooklyn block. An ensemble cast includes Matt Dillon, Jackass heartthrob Johnny Knoxville, Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz, Blondie Deborah Harry, Stephen Dorff and other Hollywood oddities. (Not reviewed.)

NINE QUEENS. Not since the initially thrilling, eventually retarded Training Day has a movie squandered such promising beginnings with such heartbreaking abruptness. The Argentinean import Nine Queens proves an even more agonizing case study, as for a full 110 of its 115 minutes it positions itself as one of the best films of the year--a thrilling sleight-of-hand caper in which two hustlers try unloading some forged stamps, stumbling into territory even more slippery and duplicitous at every turn. Writer-director Fabián Bielinsky revs up the atmosphere with hotshot slow-burn tracking shots and a hearty, giggling cynicism while his upper echelons of society ooze corruptions exponentially more perverse than our small time crooks can handle. As the smoother, elder grifter, Ricardo Darin (perhaps not coincidentally bearing an uncanny resemblance to David Mamet's house charlatan Joe Mantegna) turns in a performance radiating tragic desperation behind a mask of ice-cold competence. The film seems to end on a note of bitter, rueful perfection--and then Bielinsky keeps on truckin' for a fatally misguided, achingly shallow coda. As is depressingly true of thrillers in our post-Usual Suspects/Shyamalan era, there's always that one final, film-negating twist--and suddenly everything you've been invested in for two hours turns out to be a cheat and a lie--and yet another fine picture has cheapened itself into a gimmicky parlor trick, sacrificed upon the altar of hip "cleverness." B- (S.B.)

PAULINE AND PAULETTE. Mentally retarded 66-year-old Pauline is left without a caretaker when her sister Martha dies. Martha's will stipulates that neither of the two remaining sisters--Paulette and Cecile--will inherit her fortune unless one agrees to look after Pauline. (Not reviewed.)

SPIDER-MAN. How great is Spider-Man? Speaking as a die-hard childhood comic-book junkie who has just recently fallen off the wagon in a spectacularly expensive manner (damn you, Frank Miller and your brilliant Dark Knight Strikes Again!) I'd like nothing more than to be able to tell you how much this new and improved Spider-Man rocks the house. Unfortunately, Columbia Pictures--displaying remarkable confidence in the quality of their product--won't let me see the fool thing until a scant few hours before Friday's over-hyped release date. Amusingly enough, some kid at my other job downloaded the entire flick off the Internet and offered me a VCD copy weeks ago. But out of misguided notions of journalistic integrity plus what I consider to be rather heroic willpower, I decided it wouldn't be fair to director Sam Raimi were I to judge his giant-screen opus through the cruddy resolution of my Windows Media Player. So after offering a hearty middle finger to those obviously terrified bastards at Columbia, I guess I'll just duck their tardy screening and wait in line on Friday afternoon along with everybody else--hoping for a few good Willem (he'll-always-be-Jesus-to-me) Dafoe moments and praying that Spider-Man doesn't turn out to be as rotten as the last couple of Batman debacles. Tune in next week, True Believers. N/A. (S.B.)

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE. Set during the 18th century's Age of Reason, Triumph follows Italian princess (the literal kind) Mira Sorvino in a complicated quest for love that involves everything from disguises and drag to, according to the press materials, "desire, seduction, deceit and madness." Though she gets engaged to three different people in the space of the film's 112 minutes, she's holding out for the heir to her stolen kingdom, a young stick-in-the-mud brainwashed for pure emotionless rationality. Sounds like a fun date. (Not reviewed.)

Ongoing

NEWLY REVIEWED

JASON X. As proven by Leprechaun, Hellraiser, Moonraker and countless others upon the B-Movie scrap heap--all bad franchises eventually wind up in space. Of course Jason X is nonsense, but the surprise is that it has a snarky sense of humor about its own reeking dreadfulness. You really can't get much worse than Friday the 13th pictures, and the tenth installment of any series should raise some eyebrows when taking into account the law of diminishing returns. But director James Isaac happens to be a protege of David Cronenberg (who pops up for a fairly funny cameo) and thus indulges in some classically Canadian bodily mutilation fetishes, plus a few hockey jokes, eh. It's also nice to see that a mere 453 years in the future all medical students turn out to be super-stacked young sluts who wear only midriff-bearing tank tops. Still, I'll take this brand of gratuitous-nudity-happy garbage over Miramax's curiously sexless Scream sequels any day of the week, as the puritanical you-fuck-you-die mentality coursing through these '80s-styled schlockfests is at least sociologically interesting. There's no real reason to actually go and see Jason X unless a) you're wicked drunk and surrounded by a lot of fellow video store babies b) it's your job or c) all of the above (cough--ahem--I'm innocent.) Regardless, it's a surprisingly painless experience that never summons quite enough wit to be any more than pleasantly crappy. C- (S.B.) Cinemagic 3 at Penn; UA Riverview, 69th St., Cheltenham Square and Grant Plaza; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED

AMÉLIE. The spellbinding Audrey Tautou stars as the eponymous pixie, a freelance do-gooder trying to brighten the lives of her miserable neighbors without realizing until it's too late that she could use a bit of a lift herself. A- (S.B.) Ritz at the Bourse

AMERICAN CHAI. South Jersey's Anurag Mehta's story is one we've heard before--of old world meeting new, of changing traditions, yar, yar, yar. But the film's cast keeps American Chai from being the same old sitar song and Manipuri dance. The director's slightly snaggletoothed brother, Aalok Mehta, is charming as Sureel, a first-generation Indian-American college student who speaks pompously of freedom and the global melting pot yet can't bring himself to tell his traditional parents they've paid for three years of college so he can study music, not medicine. And when they find out--boy are they pissed. B (Jessica Pressler) Roxy Theater; Ritz Sixteen

A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Russell Crowe, horribly miscast and mannered beyond any reasonable endurance level, stars as the tormented genius. As his loyal long-suffering wife, Jennifer Connelly appears to have calcified into Demi Moore's plastic doppelganger. Nash's breakdown is the stuff of horror, and the electrifying Ed Harris nearly rides to the film's rescue as a menacing CIA commie-hunter. C- (S.B.) Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Woodhaven Mall 10

BEHIND THE SUN. Set in 1910 and based partially on Ismaïl Kadaré's novel Broken April, Behind the Sun follows two Brazilian families that are systematically dwindling in numbers due to the eye-for-an-eye killing of each other's sons over a generations-old land feud. Barbaric in their stubbornness, the families' elders cling to their perceived honor with an unconvincing fatalism. When the hunky Tonho (Rodrigo Santoro) reluctantly avenges his older brother's murder, he is thus marked for death by the next moon. A blind old man scares him with the comment "Have you known love? You never will." But of course love comes to town the very next day, with the circus. C (Doug Wallen) Ritz East

BLADE 2: BLOODHUNT. Wesley Snipes returns, looser and funnier than in the original, as Marvel Comics' fearless vampire killer--an undead half-breed with all of the bloodsuckers' strengths and none of their weaknesses. Enlisted by "the Vampire Nation" to exterminate a nasty strain of mutants possessing icky fanged vaginas where their mouths used to be, Blade and his grizzled human sidekick Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) find themselves caught in an always-exploding web of shifting allegiances, double-crosses and non-stop, mind-blowing viscera. A (S.B.) UA Riverview, 69th St. and Cheltenham Square; Loews Cherry Hill

CHANGING LANES. Ben Affleck's Gavin Banek is a guy so lost in happy clouds of denial he seems unable to even reply to a dissenting opinion, offering in response only sputters of disbelief. His comeuppance arrives in the form of Samuel L. Jackson's Doyle Gipson, a single father in the midst of a bitter custody battle. A harried fender-bender on FDR Drive kicks off their battle of wills, as the slick shyster, already late for court, abruptly abandons this poor pop in the rain. But it seems that stumblebum Gavin dropped a legal document of grave importance--one that's not only the key to millions in revenue, but may also be the only way to cover his ass against a fraud charge that's in the works. The rain-drenched file naturally lands in Doyle's hands, and thus a vicious game of cruel and unusual one-upsmanship is afoot. B+ (S.B.) UA Riverview, 69th St., Cheltenham Square, Grant Plaza and Main St. 6; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

CLOCKSTOPPERS. Remember the great '80s television show Out of this World, where a girl could freeze the world by touching her two fingers together while talking to her father, Burt Reynolds the alien, through a glowing crystal cube? Clockstoppers hijacks the same idea (minus Burt Reynolds and the cube) while adding a scientific spin and Matrixed-up special effects. Going into "hypertime" speeds up the molecules of anyone wearing a specially designed and highly coveted watch, while time almost stands still for the other characters and, unfortunately, the entire audience. B (Jeffrey Barg) UA Riverview, King of Prussia Stadium 16 and 69th St.; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

CRUSH. Three bitter old hags form a "Sad Fuckers Club" for the purposes of routinely gathering to guzzle gin, scarf chocolate and bitch about men. When one of the three finally finds romance, her shifting loyalties test the group's womanly bonds. (Not reviewed.) Ritz at the Bourse

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL. There will always be something inexorably special about E.T. It's not just the brilliant casting chemistry of the central family or the time-capsule charm of Asteroids and Elvis Costello, or even the much ballyhooed, still-breathtaking special effects. Rather, it's an expert fusion of brains, heart, humor and style, all within a messiah story that still gets me misty every time. Granted, you may not notice the advertised alterations, which include remastered sound, enhanced effects and the changing of guns to walkie-talkies in the hands of government agents. What you will notice, in our era of youth marketing and computer-generated imaging, is a movie in which the storytelling is strong enough to outshine all the flash and pomp. A (D.W.) Loews Cherry Hill

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. The ring of the title is so powerful that once it finds its way into the pocket of young Frodo Baggins (the blank Elijah Wood)--a hairy-footed hobbit who is for reasons unknown immune to its evil spell--a bipartisan council of elves, dwarves and other assorted short people elect representatives to make sure this very special accessory never falls into the hands of Christopher Lee's monstrous sorcerer Saruman. B- (S.B) Loews Cherry Hill; UA King of Prussia Stadium 16

FRAILTY. Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) finks on his brother Adam, who he's convinced is a serial killer acting on early inspiration from a father (director Bill Paxton) who thought he was on a God-given mission to stamp out evil in the people around him.(Not reviewed.) UA Riverview and King of Prussia Stadium 16; Loews Cherry Hill; Bryn Mawr Movie Theatre; AMC Woodhaven Mall 10

HIGH CRIMES. Ashley Judd returns for another in her series of hugely profitable imperiled-woman-fights-back-against-evil-men programmers, based on one of those books you skip at airport newsstands and crafted without a single distinguishing characteristic. This time she's taking on a corrupt military justice system that may or may not have framed her too-good-to-be-true husband (Jim Caviezel, boring). Good thing the charmingly disheveled Morgan Freeman drops by once in a while to liven up this dog-tired affair. Cloddishly cut together for maximum predictability, High Crimes is such a careless piece of hackwork that nobody even bothered to light the damn thing properly. D (S.B.) UA Riverview, 69th St., Cheltenham Square and Grant Plaza; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8; Bryn Mawr Movie Theatre

ICE AGE. In what basically amounts to Disney's Dinosaur without the eye-popping wonder, Ray Romano's woolly mammoth, John Leguizamo's sloth and Denis Leary's saber-toothed tiger attempt to drag a cute little Cro-Magnon baby over a few glaciers, with occasionally amusing results. The digital vistas are solid, though never truly impressive, sorely lacking that whole "vision thing." C (S.B.) UA Riverview, 69th St., Grant Plaza and Cheltenham Square; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

KISSING JESSICA STEIN. The sometimes fashionable, sometimes schlumpy Jessica, a brainy neurotic who hasn't dated in a year, is low on the editorial food chain at a New York newspaper. When she answers a personal ad under "women seeking women" placed by the sexually experimental Helen (she's not gay either) we're surprised because Jessica seems both straight and narrow. But that's the film's only real inconsistency. Though it plays with the dating idiom and gets in an occasional barb at how gosh-darn dunderheaded men can be, Kissing is clever enough to keep on the Jane Austen side of Bridget Jones. B (Katie Haegele) Ritz Five and Sixteen; Clearview Bala

LAST ORDERS. As adapted by Fred Schepisi from Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel, Last Orders is ingeniously structured, slip-sliding back and forth from past to present via an aggressive, almost stream-of-consciousness progression of flashbacks and flash-forwards covering everything from World War II to last weekend. Random telling moments bubble up with the force of unwanted memories, sketching out tempestuous relationships in quick, bold strokes sometimes lasting barely a minute or two. C (S.B.) Ritz Five; County Theatre

THE LAST WALTZ. Martin Scorsese's giddiest, most euphoric film, this rollicking chronicle of the Band's star-studded 1976 Thanksgiving Day farewell shindig is universally regarded as The Greatest Concert Movie Ever Made. A rip-roaring carnival celebrating every form of popular music in all its incongruous shapes and sizes, The Last Waltz gets down and boogies in wide-eyed admiration as such disparate traditions intermingle, finally flowering in that grand, motley melting pot of rock 'n' roll. A (S.B.) Ritz at the Bourse

LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT. When a shockingly dowdy Angelina Jolie, as a Seattle television reporter, learns from a street prophet that her existence is meaningless--oh, and that she'll die in a week--she decides to get her shit together. Perfect timing, wouldn't you say, for a whirlwind romance with cameraman Edward Burns? (Not reviewed.) UA Main St. 6, Sameric and Grant Plaza; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8; Ritz Sixteen

LUCKY BREAK. Billed as "a comedy about a prison escape with a musical twist," the latest from Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo tells the tale of fumbling felon Jimmy Hands, who risks his plans for liberation when a lovely lass crosses his path. (Not reviewed.) Ritz Five

MONSOON WEDDING. There is much laughter to be culled from the chaos surrounding the impending arranged wedding of a daughter whose uncertainty reignites lingering feelings for a former lover. As a sort of cultural shorthand, the quirky ensemble is loaded with familiar archetypes that highlight the universality of social phenomena. This technique is occasionally overdone, but helpful in remembering the many faces involved. Working from Sabrina Dhawan's crafty script, the hand of Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!) flits about with the contagious exuberance of conjoined families and cultures alike. B+ (D.W.) Ritz Five; County Theatre; Clearview Bala

MONSTER'S BALL. Puff Daddy's fantastic in Monster's Ball, skillfully portraying a death row inmate so beat down by procedure his last words ask them all just to flip the damn switch already. Billy Bob Thornton is the prison guard on watch, a redneck racist who's hardly there. After a series of rather melodramatic coincidences, Thornton hooks up with P. Diddy's widow, played by Halle Berry in a performance that isn't entirely convincing, but not for lack of trying. Screenwriters Milo Addica and Will Rokos lay on some evocative slice-of-life details to distract from the story's far-flung trajectory. C+ (S.B.) Ritz Five; Bryn Mawr Movie Theatre

MURDER BY NUMBERS. Sandra Bullock tries expanding her range to little avail in this rote, flagrantly overlong would-be thriller. As a hard-boiled cop-on-the-edge, our heroine seeks to undo a couple of high school Leopold and Loeb clones, written as caricatures and played without sympathy by rising stars Michael Pitt and Ryan Gosling. Director Barbet Schroeder once threatened to cut off his finger with a power tool in order to prevent studio interference on his great Barfly, so you've gotta wonder whatever happened to the poor guy, as Murder by Numbers is a stunningly indistinguishable piece of hackwork. D (S.B.) UA Riverview, Grant Plaza and Main St. 6; Loews Cherry Hill; Narberth Theatre; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8; Ritz Sixteen

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. Nia Vardalos, the film's writer, stars as a 30-year-old Greek-American frump who one day, out of the clear blue sky, decides to defrump, take some college classes on "computers" and quit working at her dad's--you guessed it!--Greek restaurant, all so she can land that cool guy from Sex in the City and Northern Exposure (John Corbett). Well, those magic overnight de-frumping pills she took musta worked, 'cause lookie here! Frumpo the Clown and Evolved Modern Crunchy Guy are snug as two bugs in a rug. But wait! Trouble lurks on the horizon, because this guy isn't Greek or something. Who the hell knows. But the rules of the modern romantic comedy state plainly that Frumpo will get the boy, drag her "ethnic" parents kicking and screaming into the future and maybe even learn what an orgasm is. D- (J.S.) UA Riverview; Clearview Bala; Ritz Sixteen; AMC Woodhaven Mall 10

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER. As the slacker dullard of the title, Ryan Reynolds uncannily apes Jason Lee's every mannerism and tic. (He gets most of them down pat--except for that whole "funny" thing.) Tara Reid trips blankly through her role as the goody-two-shoes love interest. As would be expected from the creators of a short film called Saving Ryan's Privates, there are a few token gross-out gags, all of them so over-elaborately constructed and laboriously milked that any potential comedy dissipates under the strain of the filmmakers' heavy lifting. The only shock is the picture's blandly conventional morality. Van Wilder is so "inspirational" in its hit-the-books message it should come with an endorsement from your high school guidance counselor. D- (S.B.) UA King of Prussia Stadium 16; Loews Cherry Hill

PANIC ROOM. Jodie Foster stars as Meg Altman, a newly divorced single mom who drags her surly goth daughter to live with her in a Manhattan apartment that's been outfitted with a Sharper Image catalog version of a medieval castle keep. On their very first night in their new home, the two come face to face with a trio of thugs hell-bent on finding a treasure that's rumored to be stashed somewhere on the property. As played by the note-perfect Forest Whitaker, an overly hammy Jared Leto and the terrifying Dwight Yoakam, these dim-bulb home invaders mean serious business--proving that the paranoid millionaire who was the previous tenant was perhaps wise to install such a laboriously augmented safe house. B (S.B.) Cinemagic 3 at Penn; UA Riverview, 69th St., Sameric, Grant Plaza, Cheltenham Square and Main St. 6; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

RESIDENT EVIL. Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez star as hot chicks with big guns, trapped in an underground bioweapons lab and squaring off against a homicidal supercomputer; genetically mutated, slime-infested Dobermans; and thousands of flesh-eating zombies. C+ (S.B.) UA Riverview

THE ROOKIE. Dennis Quaid is Jim Morris, a real-life middle-aged baseball rookie who was sidelined from the minors a dozen years earlier after a shoulder injury. Now teaching chemistry and coaching the high school baseball team, Morris makes a deal with the kids that if they win the district championship, he'll try out for the majors. They do; he does, and the rest is Disney history. (Not reviewed.) Loews Cherry Hill; UA Grant Plaza and King of Prussia Stadium 16; AMC Granite Run 8

THE SCORPION KING. Set 5,000 years ago in an anachronism-happy Gomorrah, The Scorpion King finds The Rock playing a noble Akkadian assassin pledged by honor to smite a ruthless emperor and liberate the oppressed and ... Well, to tell the truth I had already forgotten just about everything that happens before I was out of the parking lot. There's lots of stunt work and swashbuckling, with plenty of scantily clad knockouts and even more bad special effects. Early sequences muster a sort of tongue-in-cheek Saturday-matinee goofiness, but a little of this kind of thing goes a long way, and director Chuck Russell eventually grinds down the proceedings with too much bombast and noise. C- (S.B.) Cinemagic 3 at Penn; UA Riverview, Grant Plaza, 69th St., Cheltenham Square and Main St. 6; Loews Cherry Hill; AMC Andorra 8 and Orleans 8

SEX WITH STRANGERS. Directed by the creators of HBO's Taxicab Confessions, this documentary follows three couples who "swing," eschewing monogamy to seek sexual adventure. As expected, swingers pontificate about "the lifestyle" with only occasional condescension toward non-swinging squares. Although some dialogue feels scripted, the film is strongest when capturing conflict among the swinging couples. By comparison, the orgy scenes are unexciting. Sex with Strangers may re-tread ground covered in 1999's similar doc The Lifestyle, but there are enough ludicrous one-liners and dysfunctional exchanges to keep viewers entertained, if not always agreeably so. C+ (D.W.) Ritz at the Bourse

STRUT! Combining archival footage from the early 1900s with a present-day narrative, Strut! loosely follows different Mumming groups, returning to such characters as a beloved whistle-wearing captain and a guy who sees the parade as a political act. The funniest scenes are those when the men, wearing only jeans and T-shirts, stand on bare pedestals and try to execute swim-like moves. The best character that emerges is a handsome 40-ish man whose struggle to accept his latest costume--as a Madame Butterfly-styled Japanese woman with flowers in his hair and small red lips--is strangely poignant. (His primary objection to the costume is that he has to take tiny steps rather than do the Mummers strut.) There are also some revelations: the role that African-Americans play in the parade, how the men support each other and how fierce the competition gets. Most of all, Strut! shows that despite becoming a citywide tradition, the Mummers Parade is still all about the neighborhood. A- (Liz Spikol) Roxy Theater

THE SWEETEST THING. Cameron Diaz finally gives her first genuinely horrible performance in Roger Kumble's embarrassing rattle-trap fiasco. In this half-assed Sex and the City knockoff chock full o' physically impossible sub-Farrelly gross-outs courtesy of South Park writer Nancy Pimental, Diaz mugs and gooses the material in a flailing, look-at-me-I'm-being-funny nightmare turn. Selma Blair is on hand to be sexually humiliated (after Cruel Intentions and Storytelling it seems that's her job in movies) and the threadbare plot is one of those phony conceits wherein someone talks to somebody for 10 minutes in a bar and not only is it automatically "true love," but it's also that awful kind of "true love" that requires an endless movie-spanning road trip. D (S.B.) Cinemagic 3 at Penn; UA Riverview, Grant Plaza, Cheltenham Square and 69th St.; Loews Cherry Hill; Ritz Sixteen

TIME OUT. The acclaimed stage actor Aurélien Recoing (looking unnervingly like comedian Larry Miller) stars as a recently fired white-collar wage slave. Too ashamed to break the news to his family, he puts on a suit every morning and spins a ludicrous web of lies and deceit, eventually wheedling his friends out of their savings in a stupefyingly vague "investment" racket. Writer-director Laurent Cantet has a lot of cogent points to make about cutthroat corporate politics, but unfortunately, he makes every one of them at least five or six times while dragging on humorlessly for well over two hours. C- (S.B.) Ritz East

WORLD TRAVELER. Billy Crudup stars as Cal, the character immortalized by Springsteen--who's got a wife and kid in NYC, Jack. He went out for a ride and he never went back. Like a river that don't know where it's flowin', he took a wrong turn and just kept on goin'. It's hard to puzzle out what exactly Cal might be looking for on these cliched American highways, if only because he's one of the blankest ciphers in recent movie history. Ambling from town to town, getting drunk and screwing a variety of haggard women, Cal exhibits no personality trait other than a peculiarly inflated sense of his own importance--one that's irritatingly bolstered by every character onscreen constantly informing him of how special he truly is, though we see no evidence to corroborate such claims. F (S.B.) Ritz at the Bourse and Sixteen

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN. Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal) are a pair of perpetually pot-addled horndogs, joyously frittering away their senior summer in a haze of wine, women and song. The two make asses of themselves fawning over a strange exotic creature named Luisa. As played by the ravishing Maribel Verdú, she's a decade older than the two, transplanted to Mexico from her native Ibiza and is for some unfathomable reason married to Tenoch's pseudo-intellectual blowhard cousin. In the grand tradition of randy male fantasies, Luisa winds up accompanying Julio and Tenoch on an impromptu road trip to a mythical seaside paradise. A (S.B.) Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz Five and Sixteen