Might a screening of "Celtic Pride" be in order? Might be, if that 1996 comedy wasn't so painfully bad. But hold on to the title for a bit; maybe we can repurpose it on Sunday.
The multiplex offerings this weekend are pretty slim. "The Incredible Hulk" is a perfectly okay superhero movie that turns pale green in comparison to "Iron Man". Yes, Edward Norton is a fine actor, but all he has to do here is mope, and Liv Tyler is such a limp noodle as his biologist girlfriend that I got the giggles. (Thank goodness for the juicy overacting provided by Tim Blake Nelson and William Hurt's eyebrows.) The CGI effects are impressive but I never forgot they were CGI effects: The fight scenes look like the Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots videogame we've all been waiting for.
"The Happening" doesn't. My review pretty much says all I have to say on the subject of M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller, but I should underscore how shocked I am at just how poor the writing and filmmaking is here. The underlying idea -- don't mess with Mother Nature -- is solid, especially if the honeybee die-off is already freaking you out. The script, though, should have gone back to rewrite at least twice. And those people hanging from trees in the trailers? That's the cast, left twisting in the wind by M. Night. The scariest apocalypse-now vision remains Michael Haneke's "Time of the Wolf," or, if you're looking for something closer to the classical model, Hitchcock's "The Birds," an obvious influence on "The Happening" and a movie whose innate craft makes this one look like a bad student video.
The art-houses try to pick up the slack with "Savage Grace" (true crime story of decadent jetsetters, but it's no "Reversal of Fortune"), "When Did You Last See Your Father?" (tepid British male sobfest about dying fathers and emotionally constipated sons), "War, Inc." (a splattery political-satire mess from John Cusack, long on justified outrage, short on coherence or laughs; almost worth seeing for Hilary Duff as a sexed-up Central Asian pop tart, tho -- that's her in the photo above, and you don't want to know what she's about to do with that scorpion).
Wesley does like "Sputnik Mania" at the Coolidge and "The Promotion" at the Kendall, but if those don't do it for you, you're probably better off channeling your inner Charlton Heston at the Brattle this weekend with a fresh 35mm print of the original "Planet of the Apes." The excellent "Up the Yangtze" continues at the MFA (although the 7 pm Sunday screening has just been cancelled), and there's a chance to see the Himalayan epic "Valley of Flowers" on Saturday afternoon.
