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CONFETTI
See Film feature. (Edwards South Coast Village, Santa Ana)
EVERYONE'S HERO
Tactfully credited to Christopher Reeve, this old-fashioned tale of the meek inheriting the earth, or at any rate the outfield, was actually put together after Reeve's death by animators Daniel St. Pierre and Colin Brady, from a story that IDT Entertainment chairman Howard Jonas wrote for his children. But you can see what Reeves, who had more reason than most to grin and bear it, saw in this Depression-era saga of Yankee Irving, a skinny little baseball fan (voiced by Jake T. Austin) riding the rails around America to return Babe Ruth's lost bat and in the process recover his own father's job minding the pitch at Yankee Stadium. The boy's Midwestern adventures, in which he gets help from some cheerful bums and spends quality time with the Negro Leagues, are fairly pro forma, and the message—plug away, be ye ever so humble, and glory will surely follow—is all but exhausted in animated children's movies. Still, what a relief that the banter emanates not from farmyard animals, but from the bickering mouths of a disillusioned foul ball (Rob Reiner) and a Southern Belle bat (Whoopi Goldberg). The movie's antique Rockwellian look is its greatest pleasure. (Ella Taylor) (Countywide)
I TRUST YOU TO KILL ME
See Film feature. (Laemmle's Sunset 5, West Hollywood)
also showing
THE BLACK DAHLIA
See Film feature. (Countywide)
GRIDIRON GANG
See Film feature. (Countywide)
HAVEN
As a director, newcomer Frank E. Flowers shows a flair for visuals and characters, but as a writer, he needs work. The Tarantino-esque nonlinear structure he employs would be risky even in Quentin's hands, and is downright self-sabotaging here. After setting up a mixture of corporate intrigue and family drama, with a money launderer (Bill Paxton) and his alienated daughter (Agnes Bruckner) on the run from the feds in the Cayman Islands, Flowers abruptly stops that story, and doesn't get back to it for almost an hour. Suddenly, we're focused on lovelorn fisherman's son Orlando Bloom and his West Side Story-like romantic troubles. By the time that storyline finally ties back to the original, and even then only tangentially, it's hard to care about the previous characters. Stephen Dillane steals a few scenes as an amusingly corrupt lawyer, but Flowers focuses instead on Bloom and his shape-shifting burn make-up. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Edwards "Big One" Megaplex, Spectrum, Irvine; Mann Rancho Niguel, Laguna Niguel; AMC Marina Pacifica, Long Beach)
THE LAST KISS
See Film feature. (Countywide)
ONE: THE MOVIE
This was not screened for our critics, and they likely won't be complaining about that. Armed with a digital video camera, suburban dad filmmakers "step outside the lines of everyday existence" and into the waiting arms of the world's great spirtual leaders, authors, "masters of our time"—you know, the usual What the Bleep... crowd. Viewing this flick, producers say, may "answer life's ultimate questions" and "transform the way you see the world as 'One.'" But since we can't confirm that, here's how the San Francisco Chronicle's G. Allen Johnson saw it: "One displays an impressive amount of fortitude and perseverance, but very little insight." (Regency Laguna South Coast, Laguna Beach)
SHERRYBABY
Fresh out of the joint with a heroin habit at bay, bottle-blonde Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal) swoops down on the young daughter she left behind, who's being cared for by Sherry's brother and his wife. In her hapless efforts to become a reformed mother, Sherry all but swallows the little girl whole and tries to bend an unbending world her way with a poisonous mix of seduction and brutish hostility, leavened with the requisite hint of Good Person beneath. Capably written and directed by Laurie Collyer, whose documentary background is clearly in evidence, Sherrybaby is enhanced by intelligent acting from Gyllenhaal, who takes to blue collar like a duck to water, Brad William Henke as her sensible brother, and Danny Trejo as a sympathetic fellow former addict. But we know exactly where the transparent action is going from word one, and the movie never shakes free of a 12-step psychology that carries its subject doggedly from good intentions through relapse, more relapse, to the big secret that explains why this confused young woman is as she is, and to the inevitable glimmer of hope. Sherry may represent a generation detached from its moorings, but as an individual she's no more than the sum of her pathologies. (Ella Taylor) (Edwards University, Irvine)
previews
THE GUARDIAN
Sat., 7 or 8 p.m. (Countywide)
JACKASS: NUMBER TWO
Thurs., Sept. 21, midnight. (Edwards Anaheim Hills; Edwards Metro Pointe, Costa Mesa; Edwards Long Beach)
