A Prairie Home Companion Considered purely as a musical, I'm quite prepared to accept Robert Altman's mishmash treatment of Garrison Keillor's venerable radio program. No Altman fan will even raise an eyebrow if half the backstage scenes don't work. Even then, they—like the songs performed by Altman's typically teeming, talented cast—put a smile on your face. With Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline, and others. You can tell—as in every Altman movie—that they're all having a marvelous time. (PG-13)BRIAN MILLER Crest
Renaissance In Paris in 2054, a cop named Karas (voiced by Daniel Craig) is investigating the disappearance of a woman named Ilona, a scientist involved in genetic research at a pharmaceutical company. You have never seen anything like Christian Volckman's film; his set-in-the-future sci-fi police procedural is entirely monochromatic, a film noir that's too noir for its own good. (R)ROBERT WILONSKY Varsity
School for Scoundrels This remake from Old School director Todd Phillips concerns a man of little confidence who enrolls in a class he believes will teach him self-reliance; in short, it's Bad Santa meets Napoleon Dynamite, quite literally. Jon Heder plays an N.Y.C. parking-enforcement officer like a kindly simpleton. A friend suggests he enroll in a class taught by Billy Bob Thornton to help other neutered man-children learn to score with the ladies. Heder and Thornton spend the film's final half fucking with each other until the inevitable scream of "Uncle!" (PG-13)ROBERT WILONSKY Alderwood 16, Pacific Place 11, Bellevue Galleria 11
The Science of Sleep True to the duality of its title, Michel Gondry's fantastically imagined film is poised at the dreamy intersection between the rigidly ruling physical laws of our waking lives and that nighttime realm where emotion has its revenge on logic. Gael García Bernal's artist character, Stephane, returns to the Paris of his childhood, sleeping among the toys of his youth. Across the hall lives Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), much more of an adult. His infatuation with her takes the form of handcrafted gifts and programs enacted in the TV studio inside his head. (The latter is a kind of Pee-Wee's Playhouse with blue screens and cardboard cameras seemingly assembled by a 7-year-old out of the family recycling bin.) Reality and unreality are painstakingly stitched together in Gondry's wondrously handmade universe (virtually a children's pop-up book on the big screen), even if the cruel truth—that love can go unrequited—threatens to slice them apart again. (R)BRIAN MILLER Alderwood 16, Bellevue Galleria, Egyptian
Superman Returns Okay, it's not as good as the Christopher Reeve original, nor does newcomer Brandon Routh quite fill the original cape, but this new Superman is a pleasant, welcome summer surprise. Like its hero, Bryan Singer's treatment of the DC Comics myth has an agreeable sincerity to it. Superman has to sort out his relationship with Lois (Kate Bosworth, adequate) and battle Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey, relatively unhammy), but the film is mainly about his being an emissary of virtue, an example for us ordinary mortals. (PG-13)BRIAN MILLER Admiral Twin, Crest
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby There are two kinds of scenes in TNTBORB: The short ones that advance the storyline (superficially to do with NASCAR racing); and the prolonged sequences in which Will Ferrell and/or John C. Reilly (as Ricky's best friend) and/or Sacha Baron Cohen (as Ricky's French fancyboy rival) make shit up and crack one another up and stop cameras and start all over again. (PG-13)ROBERT WILONSKY Bellevue Galleria, Big Picture
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Now we flip back through the Leatherface family album all the way to 1939, when the badly disfigured future chain saw–wielder crawls out of his mother's womb on (where else?) a slaughterhouse floor. Then it's on to the Summer of Love, when Leatherface turns his attention from bovine to human pursuits. Few surprises await connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike the 2003 remake, this Massacre owes less to producer Michael Bay's own attention-deficient aesthetics than to the more measured, Georgia O'Keeffe-on-acid sensibility that guided the 1974 original. (R)SCOTT FOUNDAS Cinerama, Factoria, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12, Pacific Place, Metro, Lincoln Square, Alderwood 7, Crossroads, Issaquah, Mountlake
The U.S. vs. John Lennon This generic VH-1 rock-doc is snazzy, mawkish, and practically Pavlovian in recycling all requisite late '60s images. Yet it's not only poignant, but even topical. In 1971, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were recruited to appear at a political rally; then they planned to attend the 1972 Republican Convention. A memo from Sen. Strom Thurmond to Attorney General John Mitchell suggested Lennon be deported; a month later, the INS refused to renew his visa. The film establishes its protagonist as the most quick-witted of public figures. You needn't be half as sharp to grasp the parallels made to Bush's America. (PG-13)J. HOBERMAN Uptown, Metro
