Short Takes

JIMMY CARTER: MAN FROM PLAINS Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood. Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” is certainly the most well-meaning ex-President in recent American history. And so Demme’s documentary portrait has no shortage of good intentions—running over two hours, they’re nearly suffocating. Basically a vérité-style infomercial that follows Carter during a late 2006 book tour to promote his critique of Israel’s West Bank occupation, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains provides perfunctory background on its subject’s piety and Georgia roots, then plunges along with him into the media maelstrom. Carter fences with Charlie Rose, educates Larry King, and signs a vast quantity of books. He’s scarcely the first to characterize the separation that exists in Israel’s occupied territories as apartheid—the Israeli left has called it that for years. Waving the term like a red cape before the American public, though, Carter has been notably disingenuous in exploiting it. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid actually gives the implied analogy between Israel and white supremacist South Africa short shrift, as does the film. The conditions of the occupation go largely unexplored. —J. Hoberman (Opens Friday at the Belcourt)

FIRST SUNDAY LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan) is the screwup-schemey one; Durell (Ice Cube), the should-know-better buddy. The latest very awful idea: breaking into a neighborhood church to rob the fundraising pot so that Durell can keep his kid (it’s complicated/convoluted). As it happens, the board is meeting that night, the choir’s come in for practice, the money turns up missing, and a standoff-cum-whodunit is now underway. Prolific playwright and author David E. Talbert’s first feature starts off as straight ghetto capering, then evolves into an inner-city morality play as a night up-close with church folk offers a lesson in Christian virtue and responsibility. At first the movie is anxious—trying too hard to squeeze out laughs, pump up the soundtrack and ingratiate the audience—and the straining is abrasive. But once Talbert gets distracted with keeping the plot clunking along, the comedy eases into relaxed sideline banter. Trailers sell Katt Williams’s supporting bit as a fey choir director hard, but Morgan butchers me every time with that overemphatic delivery thing that makes incidental lines multiplex-leveling funny. His couple of earnest dramatic scenes are, I should add, more honestly felt than anything in The Great Debaters. —Nick Pinkerton (Opens Friday)

THE BUCKET LIST Rob Reiner’s latest film is, among other things, a reflection of our persistent cultural belief that you haven’t really lived until you’ve ticked off a list of Earth’s Greatest Hits. Jack Nicholson plays Edward, a quadruple-divorced billionaire who has just been hospitalized with inoperable brain cancer. In a nice twist, he owns the hospital. Edward’s roommate is Carter, a retired mechanic with an intellectual streak—played by Morgan Freeman, natch. (Writing the big boss into a shared room took a lot of maneuvering.) Carter is married to his high-school sweetheart. Edward...well, let’s just say everybody hates him (see: Something’s Gotta Give, As Good As It Gets). Condemned to die within the year, the odd couple dashes off a list of things to do before that happens and set out on a trip around the world. Like Kerouac and Cassady, this duo takes to the road mostly to escape female expectations into a masculine sphere of their own creation. Despite the creaky writing, the Jack and Morgan Show gives the movie a beating heart: both actors are skilled at squeezing emotion from a cheeseball script (as is Reiner), and the last half-hour is genuinely moving. Turns out The Bucket List is a meta-film, mostly about how these two legendary actors interact and what it means to be an actor in your own life. —Julia Wallace (Opens Friday)

JIMMY CARTER: MAN FROM PLAINS Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood. Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” is certainly the most well-meaning ex-President in recent American history. And so Demme’s documentary portrait has no shortage of good intentions—running over two hours, they’re nearly suffocating. Basically a vérité-style infomercial that follows Carter during a late 2006 book tour to promote his critique of Israel’s West Bank occupation, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains provides perfunctory background on its subject’s piety and Georgia roots, then plunges along with him into the media maelstrom. Carter fences with Charlie Rose, educates Larry King, and signs a vast quantity of books. He’s scarcely the first to characterize the separation that exists in Israel’s occupied territories as apartheid—the Israeli left has called it that for years. Waving the term like a red cape before the American public, though, Carter has been notably disingenuous in exploiting it. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid actually gives the implied analogy between Israel and white supremacist South Africa short shrift, as does the film. The conditions of the occupation go largely unexplored. —J. Hoberman (Opens Friday at the Belcourt)