The following, rated on a system of 0 to 4 stars, are by Rick Groen and Liam Lacey. Full reviews appeared on the dates indicated.
Bend It Like Beckham
***
An 18-year-old Punjabi girl must sneak behind her parents' backs to pursue her great passion -- playing football like English star David Beckham -- in director Gurinder Chadha's cross-cultural comedy. In the tradition of such post-Thatcherite British "inspirational" crowd-pleasers as The Fully Monty and Saving Grace, the comic setups are contrived and the pathos poured on. Yet, thanks largely to the natural charm of newcomer Parminder Nagra, the familiar emotional button-pushing works and the film is winning. PG (March 12) -- L.L.
Bruce Almighty
**½
In Hollywood, where the movie star is God, playing Him on screen can only be considered a demotion. That's just the first troublesome sign for Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. The second is his devout wish to reunite with director Tom Shadyac, the erstwhile Moses who once led him to the golden land of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
So, does this strategic return recapture that old cash magic? Only occasionally. Carrey's legions of fans will surely come and, just as surely, will go away neither entirely disappointed nor fully satisfied. PG (May 23) -- R.G.
The Good Thief
***
All artists are forgers, and all forgers are exactly what their name so ambiguously implies -- they're makers and fakers. That's what director Neil Jordan is telling us in The Good Thief. More to the point, that's what he's showing us too, since the movie is itself a delightfully wrought forgery, one that operates on two planes at once. With a perfectly cast Nick Nolte in the title role, it's a nifty caper flick that also ponders the aesthetic nature of deception -- a solid work of craft that doubles as a little meditation on art. 14A (April 4) -- R.G.
Holes
**½
Based on Louis Sachar's best-selling adolescent novel, Holes is a story of child abuse and redemption, which all feels rather like Oliver Twist by way of Porky's, in a strange Disney movie about a children's prison where the boys are required to dig holes in the desert. The movie features a big-name cast -- Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette, Jon Voight and Henry Winkler -- playing second bunch of bananas to the cast of children, led by Shia LaBeouf as Stanley Yelnats IV, a kid whose family has been cursed by bad luck for four generations. Generous flashbacks to 19th-century Latvia and the old West fill us in on the history of the curse, and lead us to its undoing. PG (April 18) -- L.L.
Identity
**
A single-setting thriller, Identity opens with its mind nicely intact, suffers a major crisis about 30 minutes in, then bad turns to worse. In that sense, the movie might be said to mirror the career of the poor schnook who made it. Director James Mangold started out promisingly too, with a lovely film called Heavy, and now it's come to this disappering act. All in all, it seems a sad case of Le movie, c'est moi. 18A (April 25) -- R.G.
Man on the Train
***
Patrice Leconte's film is as succinct and deceptively simple as its title. A chance meeting brings together a pair of oldsters from opposing ends of life's experiential spectrum -- Jean Rochefort's retired school teacher and Johnny Hallyday's aging gangster. What follows is a lovely little étude in regret, as, nearing his curtain call, each guy find something to covet in his polar opposite. The result is a contemplative ride through the sad-eyed land of might-have-been. 14A (May 16) -- R.G.
The Man Without a Past
***½
It's indisputably the handiwork of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, he of the melodious name and the quirky sensibilities. This one, which traces the wanderings of an amnesiac through Helsinki's underclass, is a typically engaging fusion of apparently opposite qualities -- at once, melancholy and hopeful, earnest and ironic, static and eventful, formal in composition and teeming with chaotic life. But that description is windy and Kaurismaki is always succinct. Better just to say he's a humanist bearing honest witness to the human parade. PG (April 25) -- R.G.
The Matrix Reloaded
**½
Mainly it fires blanks. Beyond a glittering sequence or two early on, the Wachowski brothers solve the sequel problem in typical and typically unimaginative fashion: Just put out a magnified reprise of the original, blowing up the trademark scenes so much that they lose their once-crisp edge. So, instead of a lethal pas de deux with one baddie, our hero now takes on 100 at a single go -- sorry, but more corps makes for less ballet. 14A (May 15) -- R.G.
A Mighty Wind
***
The latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest ( Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show) spoofs yet another subculture of passionately uncool would-be stars. This time the culprits are a group of sixties' folk musicians, reunited for a memorial concert. Some of it is broadly silly (The colour-co-ordinated New Main Street Singers have evolved into a cult run by a former porn star) but the music feels authentic, especially the reunited This Is Spinal Tap trio of Guest, Michael McKeon and Harry Shearer as one-hit wonders, The Folksmen. And in the couple Mitch and Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara), there's even some real poignancy. PG (April 16) -- L.L.
Spellbound
***
Not many documentaries brighten your day. Spellbound, shortlisted for an Oscar this year and a crowd-pleaser wherever it's played, puts a happy face on the non-fiction flick. The subject matter is smart kids -- at least, smart enough to stand up at the U.S. National Spelling Bee, hear a really obscure word, and sputter out L-O-G-O-R-R-H-E-A.
What makes the picture engaging is the extended preamble, which zeroes in on eight contestants and serves up a mini-profile of each. Several are the diligent offspring of hard-working immigrants -- a stereotype, to be sure, but the film cuts through the cliché to get at its heartening truth. F (May 23) -- R.G.
X-Men United
**½
While thumbing through that growing stack of cinematic comic books, spare a good thought for director Bryan Singer -- he puts out a pretty distinctive issue, and this sequel is no exception. Inevitably, Singer is painting on a much larger canvas than in the original, and has packed the frame with more sops to the action fanatics. But the brushstrokes are still his own. There's a continuing delicacy to his direction that gives the audience room to breathe and reason to linger. This may not be a grownup movie, but it is a movie that grownups can watch minus the requisite bottle of Excedrin. PG (May 2) -- R.G.
Also released today
Opening in a number of small theatres across Canada, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (above), directed by Guy Maddin, is a made-for-TV production which originally aired on CBC last year. Based on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's Dracula, the film is a dance production 'mixed with mordant gothic drama and decorated with bits of deadpan humour. . . . it's brilliant,' wrote The Globe's John Doyle after the original airing. Another new release, Wrong Turn, is a slasher flick about six teens trapped in the woods with "cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding."
Liam Lacey