Film
HONEYDRIPPER Proprietor Pine Top Purvis (Danny Glover) has everything riding on a break-the-bank weekend, the only chance he’s got to save his club. He’s counting on a big-draw appearance by radio star “Guitar Sam,” though it’s the appearance of a young drifter (Gary Clark Jr.) sporting a homemade ’lectric ax that’ll prove unexpectedly serendipitous. It’s a sturdy enough premise, serving as a foundation from which to survey the black life of Harmony, Ala., A.D. 1950, as Pine Top’s story touches on tent revivals, cotton fields and domestic-and-mistress interplay. Writer-director John Sayles takes a relaxed approach, letting characters congeal, and Glover is the keystone in an ensemble of very human performances. But that same leisurely attitude becomes a problem when the plot starts demanding attention again—the twists of the film’s final section will feel excruciatingly inevitable to anyone who’s seen a movie before, and the payoff isn’t there. We’re supposedly seeing the ground zero of plugged-in blues—of rock ’n’ roll. But when it’s time to re-create that flashpoint moment, the performance (by Clark) lacks charisma—though it’s true that “Good Rockin’ Tonight” never sounded like this before. —Nick Pinkerton (Opens Friday at Hollywood 27)
2007 OSCAR SHORTS: ANIMATED Of this year’s impressive batch of animated Academy Award nominees—now touring the country along with a package of live-action nominees (see Movie Listings on p. 41)—four feature truly poetic visuals and the fifth, a rather prosaic riff on Prokofiev’s musical tutorial, “Peter & the Wolf,” is hard to dislike. Josh Raskin’s “I Met the Walrus” is a virtuosic illustration (using morphing, stream-of-consciousness images) of a 1969 interview with John Lennon. Both “Madame Tutli-Putli” (co-directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, of Canada) and “Even Pigeons Go to Heaven” (co-directed by Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse, of France) are quirky, haunting stories with dazzling tableaux and endearing characters that will, with any luck, earn feature projects for their creators. Most notable, though, is four-time Best Animated Short nominee (and 1999 Oscar winner) Alexander Petrov’s “Moya Lyubov (My Love),” a romantic coming-of-age story based on a 1927 Russian book that comes to life as a shimmering impressionist painting. Not just a slide show of pretty pictures, Petrov’s imagery is both dramatic and fluid, propelling a 26-minute short that possesses the emotional impact and depth of a novel or feature film. —James C. Taylor (Runs Feb. 15-18 at the Belcourt)
Jumper
JUMPER Think of Doug Liman’s fantasy—about a globe-hopping whiz kid (Hayden Christensen) with the power to project himself anywhere on earth—as a TV pilot that defers all explanation until an episode sometime later in the season. Since that episode will likely never air, what Liman offers is 88 minutes of mildly diverting locale-skipping nonsense, as Christiansen whisks in and out of bank vaults, woos his high-school crush (Rachel Bilson) with a getaway to Rome, and eludes the stun-gun clutches of frost-headed Samuel L. Jackson, a “paladin” who stalks and kills jumpers. Your rooting interest for this self-centered dweeb (whose conscience is evidently scheduled to bloom in some later installment) depends solely on Christensen’s Bambi eyes and heartsick stammer, and while he has more presence here than usual, both he and the movie could use more prankish zest. The premise, adapted from Steven Gould’s young-adult novels, has so much untapped potential—imagine a cross between the backdrop-switching Buster Keaton classic Sherlock Jr. and Ferris Bueller’s Space-Time Continuum Off—you’re left hoping for a sequel just to see if the filmmakers can nail it next time. —Jim Ridley (Opens Thursday)
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