Page 3 of 3
SCOOP Last year's Match Point earned Woody Allen his best reviews in years, but Scoop finds the writer-director sliding back into his more familiar position these days: a once-great filmmaker now churning out minor works that earn a few positive notices but are mostly met with critical indifference. Scoop, which bares some similarity to Allen's more polished Manhattan Murder Mystery from 1993, is a diverting trifle about an American journalism student (Scarlett Johansson) who learns that a handsome British aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) might also be the notorious Tarot Card Killer. While Johansson (so memorable in Match Point) has unfortunately adopted the Woody-stutter-speech for this latest role (thereby illustrating that she's no Diane Keaton), Allen himself scores some points by having his lowbrow character (a vaudeville-style magician) mingle with the upper crust of British society. And continuing the trend begun in Anything Else, he again casts himself in the role of a hesitant, hands-off mentor rather than as a wrinkled lothario scoring with women young enough to be his granddaughters. That's a blessing. **1/2
TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY Like Spam, energy drinks and the music of Yanni, Will Ferrell is one of those acquired tastes that satisfy devotees while perplexing everyone else. Yet even folks who weren't entertained by his 2004 starring vehicle Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy should dig this latest offering -- while it never reaches the giddy highs of last summer's premiere stupid-smart comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, it's consistently pleasurable and offers a surprisingly steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments. Like Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby is also an egotistical, none-too-bright boor. "I piss excellence," he declares, and his standing as NASCAR's best driver certainly signals that he's excellent at something. But his strained relationship with his deadbeat dad (Gary Cole, delivering the film's shrewdest comic performance) and the arrival of a formidable opponent, a French homosexual race car driver (hilarious Sacha Baron Cohen), leads to his fall from grace and his subsequent (and humbled) climb back to the top. The Highlander quips alone are worth the ticket price. ***
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? A social document largely structured like a murder-mystery, this is the latest nonfiction feature to indict today's twin threat of corporate greed and governmental corruption. With the usual mix of talking heads and vintage footage, the film details how during the 1990s, California elected to fight its smog by passing the Zero Emissions Mandate. General Motors led the charge in coming up with a way to work for cleaner air by creating the EV1, a revolutionary car that ran on a battery and therefore required no gasoline. But almost immediately, a fearful GM began sabotaging its own product, aided by the oil companies, the Bush administration, the shady head of the California Air Resources Board and uninformed consumers who opted for gas-guzzling SUVs. Like An Inconvenient Truth, this isn't a partisan project -- even right-wing Mel Gibson is shown extolling the virtues of the EV1, along with the leftie likes of Tom Hanks and Ed Begley Jr. -- but rather a depressing look at how the welfare of this country is repeatedly sabotaged by the avarice of those wielding all the power. ***
OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 18:
ACCEPTED: Justin Long, Blake Lively.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette.
MATERIAL GIRLS: Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff.
SNAKES ON A PLANE: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies.
