Max Records, Catherine Keener, with voices by James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O'Hara | PG |
ADVENTURE
Most movies based on popular books chop out characters and plot to stay within a reasonable running time. But what to do when a book is just 10 sentences long, as is Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak's classic 1963 kids' tale about Max, a boy who sails off to a land populated by wild beasts who "roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws"? Director Spike Jonze (Adaptation), who cowrote Wild's screenplay with author Dave Eggers, pads wildly to stretch Sendak's story into a 98-minute live-action film. While there's still only a thin tissue of plot, the beasts now all have names and personalities, and Max (Records) is the junior Frank Lloyd Wright of fort building.
This is an art-house movie about childhood, an imagistic tone poem recapturing a time when getting what you wanted when you wanted it was all that mattered. It's wonderfully imaginative, but also a little odd. When the massive, hirsute monsters clomp about and speak of their despair, it's like watching H.R. Pufnstuf as written by Samuel Beckett. Note: Kids under 7 will find it all way too scary.
>How Maurice Sendak's monsters went from page to screen
Creating live-action versions of the creatures in the beloved book was no easy task, and wearing the costumes wasn't any easier. "They were extremely hot," says Sonny Gerasimowicz, who designed the wild things' look. Australian actors climbed into the 100-lb.-plus costumes, made of animal hair and synthetics and fitted with fans inside to keep cool. (Computer animation added the facial movements.) The heft, says Gerasimowicz, who played one creature, "was like strapping a TV to your head."
>• The Gossip Girl star, 22, goes for chills in the new thriller The Stepfather and shares his milestone movies. (Leprechaun makes the cut!)
FIRST R-RATED MOVIE
My friend brought over Leprechaun, starring Jennifer Aniston. I remember it blowing my mind because it had a lot of blood and violence. It was good times!
MOVIE THAT MOTIVATED ME TO BE AN ACTOR
As a kid I would always watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and it made me want to perform. I loved the intro, and I would dance and act out to it.
FIRST DATE MOVIE
Big Daddy. I was 13 and wanted a movie I could potentially ignore to focus on the girl. Although I ended up liking the movie, and the date was a success.
MOVIE THAT MAKES ME CRY
Simon Birch. It was tragic! I could have totally wept.
>BLACK DYNAMITE
Michael Jai White (at left, center) gives a deft comic performance as an avenging hero in a righteous spoof of 1970s black exploitation films. The movie gets the hip dialogue, exaggerated clothes and big Afros exactly right but wears thin at 90 minutes. (R)
NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU
This collection of 10 short films about New Yorkers flirting with romance (including Christina Ricci and Orlando Bloom, right) is a mixed bag. Missing in action: black women, Latinos and gay people. That's not the New York I love. (R)
>• The British newcomer is earning major Oscar buzz for her turn as a precocious teen who falls for an older man in 1960s London. (Offscreen she's dating Shia LaBeouf.)
For most of her 24 years, looking much younger than her actual age has been a pain for the actress. "When all my friends were getting into clubs at 17, I was the girl who always got turned away at the door," says Mulligan, who made her film debut in 2005's Pride & Prejudice. "I still get ID'd now, but it doesn't bother me so much." Her days of going unrecognized are coming to a end. As An Education's Jenny—a star student who embarks on a romance with a real estate developer (Peter Sarsgaard)—Mulligan has garnered comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, not to mention more plum roles. She's now shooting the sequel to Wall Street alongside LaBeouf. What does she make of all the attention? "Mostly I ignore it," she says. "Fortunately I have plenty of work to keep my brain occupied."
>• The hot Scot is out for revenge in the new thriller Law Abiding Citizen, his third movie in four months. So what makes the manly man's movies box-office hits? Going topless helps—sometimes.
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He spent most of this sword-swinging epic sweaty and shirtless, save for the occasional piece of Greek armor. A high-testosterone monster hit.
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He's again in pectacular form in a drama about a man seeking vengeance for his wife's and daughter's murders. Will audiences check him out?
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VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
Heartbreak & Hope
After Jaycee Dugard's rescue, a look at the cases of six young people who went missing in 2009
