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Is Anybody There?
Opens Friday at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for language including sexual references, and some disturbing images; 95 minutes.
Young Bill Milner, who played the sheltered kid who becomes obsessed with Sylvester Stallone in "Son of Rambow," follows up with a similarly messed-up childhood tale. He plays Edward, a 10-year-old growing up in mid-'80s Britain in the nursing home run by his stressed-out parents (Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey), who befriends a new resident -- Clarence (Michael Caine), a grumpy ex-magician in the early stages of dementia. Director John Crowley (who made the riveting "Boy A") squeezes a good deal of emotion from Peter Harness' thin script and benefits from a talented group of veteran actors (including the great Rosemary Harris) as the nursing home's regulars. Mostly, though, the movie further burnishes Caine's résumé as a great actor. Without Caine, this movie wouldn't have a reason to exist.
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Love 'N Dancing
Opens Friday at area theaters; rated PG-13 for some sexual references; 94 minutes.
In this paint-by-numbers romance, Jake (played by Tom Malloy, who wrote the screenplay), a former U.S. Open swing-dance champ who's also legally deaf, meets Jessica (Amy Smart, from the "Crank" films), an English teacher who's engaged to business-obsessed Kent (Billy Zane). Jake gives Jessica pre-wedding dance lessons, but soon they decide to enter a competition (where Jake's ex, played by pro dancer Nicola Royston, is a judge). Malloy and director Robert Iscove (whose résumé includes the infamous "From Justin to Kelly") pad the lackluster romantic plot with lame humor, wacky side characters and long blocks of dance footage (choreographed by Robert Royston, Nicola's husband and also a pro dancer). The dancing is energetic, but the storytelling trips all over itself.
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Paris 36
Opens Friday at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated PG-13 for some sexuality and nudity, violence and brief language; in French with subtitles; 121 minutes.
There's a pleasantly old-fashioned air to this French drama, set in a struggling Paris music hall during the height of the Great Depression. The theater's longtime stagehand Pigoil (Gérard Jugnot) bands together with a Marxist electrician, Milou (Clovis Cornillac), and a would-be impressionist, Jacky (Kad Merad), to get the music hall running again -- and discovers a lovely young singer, Douce (Nora Arnezeder), who could be their ticket to riches. Director/writer Christophe Barratier ("The Chorus") occasionally nods to the swirling political winds of pre-World War II Europe (like Jacky performing a comic act for a fascist group), but his story mostly remains within the cozy confines of hard-luck entertainers basking in the golden glow of limelight.
