Fantastic festival buzz for Judd Apatow's follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin may mislead viewers about Knocked Up (which opens wide next Friday, June 1). It's not the laff riot or uproarious sex farce that some might expect. It's not going to make a star of schlubby Seth Rogan, playing the likable slacker who impregnates career gal Katherine Heigl (who's already got a comfortable TV annuity). Carell and Keener they are not. Yet they very ably play out the anxieties of incipient parenthood in a manner remarkably balanced between the sexes. And that is Apatow's real genius—he is a tender, equal-opportunity offender. Which I think the term "chesticles" summarizes very nicely. Men and women are jerks and boors, up for the same abuse, redeemed (just barely) by their grudging capacity for growth. And will you be shocked that in a movie cast with his own wife and daughter, Apatow comes out squarely in favor of family in Knocked Up? And further: Will it be a Virgin-size smash? No, but something more rare: a date movie that doesn't insult guys who unwittingly drag women to see it. (R) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian: 7 p.m. Sat., May 26.
A Life Among Whales
Forget about this film's promise to help you understand the "unique relationship" between humans and whales. Just go for the pictures. Bill Haney's documentary about the life of biologist Dr. Roger Payne plays more like a vanity project, a kitchen-sink rant that covers a lot of ground without much continuity. (Is it about the scientist? Is it about the whales? What's this sudden bit at the end about the fall of the Berlin Wall?) But the intimate moments of the marine mammals in Whales are well worth seeing on the big screen. Haney takes you on a world tour to watch killer whales, humpback whales, narwhals, and others at play, at peace, on the hunt, and (gasp) being hunted and slaughtered. Warning to animal lovers (and parents): The whale-hunting scenes are bloody and brutal, but thankfully spliced between more tranquil montages. These images are more eloquent than any of Payne's preaching. (NR) AIMEE CURL SIFF Cinema: 1 p.m. Sat., May 26. Harvard Exit: 4:30 p.m. Sun., May 27.
Manufactured Landscapes
On a gallery wall, one of the slag heaps or pit mines or ship-breaking beaches captured by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is impressive enough. The acid-green lakes, fire-blackened earth, pyramids of coal, checkerboards of crushed auto bales—these become even more powerful on a movie screen, all the detritus of our material needs traced back to the source, the waste, the contamination, the toxic legacy of our desires. (One little iPod produces all that waste.) The movie screen makes that legacy even larger. But when the documentary film crew pulls back to show how Burtynsky frames these images, you realize no movie screen could ever be as big as these monuments. Or monuments-in-reverse, since they're mostly formed by extraction, gouging, and removal. Burtynsky's ecological comments tend to echo Al Gore, but there's no way you'll be able to forget these terrible vistas. Most of the film follows Burtynsky through fast-developing China, where we visit the Three Gorges dam project and what must surely be the largest factory on earth (rendered in a solemn eight-minute tracking shot). One of the more eloquent and damning images is simply that of a female factory worker's hands rendered in close-up. Her fingers become giant, disembodied tools—just another industrial process to serve our endless consumption. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit: 7 p.m. Sun., May 27. Pacific Place: 4:30 p.m. Tues., May 29.
Monster Camp
What with Robert Putnam and Bowling Alone, I am not about to snicker at any social activity that brings together like-minded individuals in an imaginative pursuit that tears them away from iPod, Xbox, TV, and PC. Even if that means dressing up in funny costumes and face paint and hurling little packets of pixie dust (actually biodegradable birdseed) at one another in the state parks of Oregon and Washington. Several Seattle residents participate in these elaborate role-playing games, and documentary director Cullen Hoback clearly has their trust. The camera never sneers at these subjects—some guys living with their mothers, others stuck in dead-end retail jobs—and their impulses aren't so unfamiliar to other breeds of weekend warriors. "I need to be somebody else," says one participant. Monster Camp lacks context and does little to explain the broader phenomenon of fantasy role-playing. Still, it looks like fun to pound on a cowering green demon with a Wiffle bat. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian: 4:30 p.m. Sat., May 26; 11 a.m. Mon., May 28.
Once
This astounding little film, which John Carney wrote and directed, is a deceptively simple movie—a narrative strung together by pop songs, but without the sheen (or arrogance) of most cinematic musicals. By day, a Dublin busker (Glen Hansard) sings Van Morrison on a street corner for spare change. At night, he switches to his own compositions, most written for the girlfriend who's abandoned the guy (who has no name in the film or credits other than The Guy). A Czech girl (Markéta Irglová, billed only as The Girl) approaches The Guy and asks him about his songs. He brushes her off; she's pretty but too young. She's also persistent. It turns out this Girl selling flowers to strangers for loose coins is also a musician—a pianist and singer, every bit The Guy's equal. And so theirs becomes a friendship and partnership—though not quite a relationship, because of The Guy's ex and The Girl's estranged husband. He teaches her his songs and they marshal their forces to book time in a recording studio, where they cut a few tracks that will lead them...where? We have no idea at all by the end of 88 minutes that come and go far too fast. (R) ROBERT WILONSKY SIFF Cinema: 6:30 p.m. Sun., May 27.
On the Road With Judas
