by Inlander Staff & r &
BECAUSE I SAID SO
After playing some really great roles (Kay Corleone in The Godfather series, Annie Hall) Diane Keaton has settled into a comfortable post-middle-age career playing characters who a) wear tons of pearls and b) nag incessantly. She reprises that role here, playing a mother who's on her daughter's ass to find a dude so she doesn't have to come to terms with not having anyone herself. Lines like "God couldn't be everywhere, that is why he created mothers" seriously waste her talent. (LB) Rated PG-13
THE MESSENGERS
The Ring has almost single-handedly ruined the cinematic ghost story. Nearly every film produced in its wake contains the same things: pale ghost children with big eyes who walk like jerky spiders. The only thing that changes, usually, is where the creepy house the kids inhabit is located. That's true here too, though this time the ashen-faced ghost kids come to ... wait for it ... a sunflower ranch in South Dakota. Producer Sam Raimi (Spiderman trilogy, the Evil-frickin'-Dead series) seriously knows better than this. (LB) Rated PG-13
PAN'S LABYRINTH
As fairy tales for adults go, this one's a keeper. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Hellboy) takes us to post-Civil War Spain and shows us that world through the eyes of an imaginative young girl. But she's having a rough time with real life and desperately wants to believe in fairies. The film is stocked with figurative as well as real monsters (the girl's brutal stepfather, creatures in the woods) and has a fascinating take on life, death, and rebirth. Not at all for young kids. (ES) Rated R