BY LEAH ROZEN
SUSPENSE
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Here's to aging gracefully. Rather than trying to prove he's still Die Hard hard-bodied, Bruce Willis, who turns 51 March 19, affects a paunch, a limp and a near permanent hangover as a burned-out Manhattan police detective in 16 Blocks. The result: a character-driven crime drama that's highly watchable. While no one's going to be touting this one at Oscar time next year, Blocks is the kind of movie for which Saturday nights were made.
Willis plays Det. Jack Mosley, who's assigned at the end of his overnight shift to escort petty criminal Eddie Bunker (Def) to court 16 blocks away. When bad guys keep trying to bump off Bunker during the trip, Mosley must decide just how far he'll go to get his man to court.
Credit director Richard Donner (the Lethal Weapon series) with orchestrating an appealing relationship between Mosley and Bunker, providing involving action scenes and giving Willis and Def the latitude to add just enough eccentric touches to their characters to hoist Blocks a few blocks above the ordinary. (PG-13)
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Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, Emma Roberts, Sara Paxton, Jake McDorman
FAMILY
Splash for tweeners, this irresistible kids' comedy is about what happens when a pair of 13-year-old best friends discover an older teen mermaid paddling about in a swimming pool. Hailey (singer Levesque) and Claire (Roberts, whose famous aunt is Julia) are spending the summer at their beach club mooning over a cute older lifeguard (McDorman) when Aquamarine (Paxton), the fish girl, turns up. They befriend her, introduce her to landlubber ways (she grows gams during daylight hours) and coach her along in a budding romance with the lifeguard. Everyone learns a life lesson here (like putting a parent's needs ahead of one's own), fears are conquered, and a good time is had by all—meaning moviegoers of both sexes, big and small. (PG)
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Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto
DRAMA
In postapartheid South Africa, extreme black poverty exists alongside new black wealth. The two come into tragic conflict in Tsotsi, an Oscar nominee for Foreign Language Film, when a hardened 19-year-old street thug named Tsotsi (Chweneyagae) carjacks an affluent woman's sedan, unaware that her infant son is napping in the backseat.
Tsotsi begins to care for the child, diapering it in a newspaper and seeking feeding help from a neighbor (Pheto). Through tending to another, he begins to perceive his own humanity. An updated film adaptation of a 1980 novel by renowned South African writer Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is the kind of movie that's easy to dismiss as predictably sentimental. But the performances from Chweneyagae and his castmates are so straightforward and full of feeling that the movie transcends cliché and becomes a moving testament to every human being's potential for growth. (R)
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Dave Chappelle, Mos Def, Kanye West, Erykah Badu, the Fugees, the Roots
CONCERT
Comic Dave Chappelle is throwing a free block party in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, and everyone's invited. Okay, the party happened Sept. 18, 2004. But those of us who missed it have a chance to see what we missed—a lot, it turns out—by watching this infectiously high-spirited documentary of the bash's highlights. Director Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) follows Chappelle before, during and after the concert, which featured such performers as Def, Badu, the temporarily reunited Fugees and singer Jill Scott, all handpicked by Chappelle. "This is the concert I've always wanted to see," the comic says.
Half the fun here is watching Chappelle put the whole thing together. He travels home to rural Ohio to recruit pals (including a pair of middle-aged ladies who run the local general store) and a college marching band to attend his party. He cruises in a car through Brooklyn, inviting passersby to come by bellowing through a bullhorn. For those seeking hints here as to why, several months later, Chappelle would skip out on his $50 million contract for a sketch series on Comedy Central, pay heed when, immediately postconcert, a contented Chappelle says, "This is the best thing I've done in my career." (R)
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>Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas) Nominated for an Oscar for Foreign Language Film, this big, glossy drama tells of a Christmas Eve during World War I when opposing soldiers called an unofficial truce, leaving their trenches to celebrate the holiday together. It's affecting, but never as much as it strives to be. Stars Diane Kruger and Daniel Brühl. (R) [
Madea's Family Reunion A sequel to Diary of a Mad Black Woman, this kitchen sink of a comedy-drama includes way too many plots and characters and lacks finesse. Stars Tyler Perry, who also wrote and directed. (PG-13) [
Sorry, Haters Robin Wright Penn continues her string of intriguing performances in quirky indie films. In this drama she plays an unstable woman who makes the political personal by hailing a taxi in Manhattan and taking the Arabic-speaking cabbie on a treacherous ride. (Not rated) [
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
