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With this film, director/writer David Gordon Green has produced four wonderful independent dramas. I eagerly await his first mainstream comedy, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, coming later this year. I hope that stoner comedy is a big hit so that he’ll have more clout to do bigger productions in the vein of this film. What distinguishes all his films is his attention for personality, especially when it comes to the way people talk and the way they fall in love. There’s a sweet romance woven into this tragic drama that reminds us that turbulent relationships probably started beautifully at the beginning.

Based on Stewart O’Nan’s novel, the drama takes place in an average-sized Pennsylvania town, centering around three workers at a Chinese restaurant. Annie (Kate Beckinsale, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING) is a waitress, who struggles to take care of her four-year-old daughter Tara (Gracie Hudson), because she is separated from her troubled husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell, MATCHSTICK MEN), who has turned to religion to deal with his depression and alcoholism. At the motel, Annie has a routine of meeting with a married man named Nate (Nicky Katt, SECONDHAND LIONS), who is more of a diversion than a solution to her problems. Working with Annie is high schooler Arthur (Michael Angarano, LORDS OF DOGTOWN) and sassy Barb (Amy Sedaris, STRANGERS WITH CANDY). Arthur is dealing with his professor father Don (Griffin Dunne, AFTER HOURS) walking out on his mom Louise (Jeanetta Arnette, BOYS DON’T CRY), while he’s developing a sweet romance with the quirky new girl Lila (Olivia Thirlby, JUNO).

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While not an bad film, Disney’s THE ARISTOCATS is tragically forgettable. Too often the film feels like its 79-minute running time is being padded with plot elements from 101 DALMATIANS and LADY AND THE TRAMP. The look and feel is appeasing, but it lacks the spark of the best Disney animated features. Many of the pieces are beautifully done, but they don’t fit together to form a complete picture.

Duchess (Eva Gabor, TV’s GREEN ACRES) is a privileged feline living in a mansion in Paris in 1910. Her owner, Madame Bonfamille (Hermione Baddeley, THE SECRET OF NIMH), has willed her fortune to her cats. This upsets her butler Edgar (Roddy Maude-Roxby, SHADOWLANDS), who captures Duchess and her three kittens, dumping them in the country. Desperate to get back to Paree, they gain aid from scruffy alley cat Thomas O’Malley (Phil Harris, THE JUNGLE BOOK).

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Buy It Now!

This film is featured as bonus material on the special-edition of THE ARISTOCATS.

PINOCCHIO’s Figaro the cat gets his moment in the spotlight in this 1946 Walt Disney short cartoon. It’s bath day and Figaro doesn’t want to take one. Making matters worse, his owner primps him out with a big red bow. Adding insult to injury, when he heads outside afterward, he is picked on as a sissy by the mangy alley cats.

The premise is simple. One of the funniest touches was making Minnie Mouse Figaro’s owner. There’s something strange about a giant rodent trying to bathe a kitten. While director Charles A. Nichols and writer Eric Gurney fit in some nice gags, this 7-minute short lacks the energy that was signature to Looney Tunes shorts from the same era. The timing even feels slow at times. While the gags aren’t the best, the premise contains enough overall irony that is doesn’t lack all charms. Even though Figaro gets treated like a wimp that’s not the impression he leaves in the end.

Definitely not one of the best shorts from the classic era of short cartoons, it’s still worth a watch for fans of animation or for the little ones. Others interested in seeing a great Disney short from the same year should check out CASEY AT THE BAT instead.

Having missed a chance to highlight the release of I AM LEGEND last week when it debuted on DVD, I’m taking the chance this week to build a lineup around one the best genre flicks of 2007. Tied together with the theme of world destroying diseases, the five films for this week deal with a real plague and fictional ones. Infected people die in some tales while in others they turn into vampires and zombies in others. Horror and sci-fi fans will love This Weekend’s Film Festival. If you’re not fan, then prepare to watch these five great films from behind the slits of your fingers.

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Terry Gilliam’s apocalyptic time-travel picture, 12 MONKEYS, is less overtly fantastic than many of his other films, but his oft-kilter underground future and his hyper-decaying present are strange in equal measure. Based on Chris Marker’s famed short film LA JETEE, the film takes the premise of the original, along with its irony and uncertainty, to create a paranoid tale that upon first viewing keeps the audience wondering is James Cole really from the future or just crazy.

It seems at first that Cole (Bruce Willis, DIE HARD) is a prisoner in a future where a deadly virus has forced humans to live, like worms, underground. The rulers choose “volunteers” from the prison population to collect specimens on the surface, which has now been reclaimed by the animals. Cole does such a good job at this that the leaders, who dress like twisted doctors, send Cole onto a special mission into the past where he is to collect information about the Army of the 12 Monkeys, the culprits behind the obliteration of the human species. However, Cole is sent too far into the past, where he is arrested and institutionalized. The kind doctor Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe, BAD GIRLS) takes Cole under her wing, because she has an interest in apocalyptic delusions, but isn’t convinced by his doomsday tales. In the asylum, Cole meets crazed patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt, BABEL), who spouts off conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. As Cole gets closer to the 12 Monkeys, the more he begins to doubt his own sanity.

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With the feature-length Dr. Seuss track record quite poor, I wasn’t expecting much from Blue Sky’s CG HORTON HEARS A WHO! I mean even animation legend Chuck Jones and Ted “Dr. Seuss” Geisel had a hard time stretching this same story into a half hour TV special. The trailers seemed to show only filler material — recycled gags that have been done many, many times before. But when it was all said and done, and the credits began to roll, I was hooked. This is a sweet tale that had heart and humor for everyone in the crowd, balancing nicely between the hip and the Seussian.

As the story goes, Horton the elephant (Jim Carrey, HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS) hears tiny voices coming from a speck of dust floating in the air. Determined to protect the tiny person or persons on the speck, Horton catches the piece of dust on a clover. Turns out, there is a whole town on this speck called Whoville, and Horton makes contact with its Mayor (Steve Carell, TV’s THE OFFICE). In both Horton’s and the Mayor’s world, the inhabitants do not believe in the tales of tiny people and huge elephants in the sky, respectively. Mrs. Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) feels that Horton’s belief in Whoville will spark imagination in the children, creating rebellion, so she sends out Vlad the vulture (not Vlad the bunny with the cookies) to destroy the clover. Meanwhile, the movement of the speck is creating havoc in Whoville and the Mayor must convince his people of the truth before their town in destroyed. Dedicated to keeping Whoville safe, Horton heads out to place the speck on a flower at the top of a mountain.

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Joel and Ethan Coen’s BARTON FINK won a remarkable three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, an event that typically likes to spread the prizes around. This kind of praise should mean this is one of the landmark films in history. It is not. It’s not even one of the Coen Bros.’ best films. Yet, this shouldn’t deter you from seeing it. I’m just mentioning this from the start to put things in perspective (and maybe to point out that prizes often mean nothing). Nonetheless, the film does seem to be the most directly personal of their films, chronicling the move of a rising playwright to Hollywood where he is commissioned to pen a wrestling picture.

Set on the brink of WWII, Barton Fink, played by John Turturro (DO THE RIGHT THING) who won Best Actor at Cannes, has just written a Broadway sensation. Now Jack Lipnick (Oscar-nominated Michael Lerner, EIGHT MEN OUT), head of Capitol Pictures, wants Fink to be on his writing staff. He wants to bring the Barton Fink-touch to his studio. Fink, obsessed with the idea of writing stories that highlight the plight of the common man, moves into a rundown hotel in Los Angeles to be closer to real people. Staying next door is rotund and friendly insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman, THE BIG LEBOWSKI). Fink can’t find any inspiration for this B-movie and looks to novelist-turned-screenwriter-turned-drunk W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney, TV’s FRAISER). And then when that is no use, he turns to Mayhew’s long-suffering secretary/inspiration Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis, HUSBANDS AND WIVES). Along the way, Fink will get a big dose of reality.

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In my review of SAW II, I stated that I was happy to report that the SAW films were getting better. I’ll say when it comes to story this is still true, but I’m no longer happy about it. Increasing levels of gore have begun to overshadow the dark morality tales at the core of the franchise. While SAW III has a tighter and more intriguing story than the other installments, I get the sick feeling that like so many other horror films that want to shock their audience than claim some loftier goals are really just juvenile frauds trying to out gross their friends.

Leaving off from where the last film did, we get the gory details about what happened to the surviving characters. Then we meet Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh, CRASH), a depressed doctor who is cheating on her husband. She is taken prisoner by Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, IN THE LINE OF FIRE), the killer who loves to play twisted games with his victims, and his assistant Amanda (Shawnee Smith, TV’s THE STAND). Lynn is strapped with an explosive collar, which will blow her head off if either she tries to run or the dying Jigsaw flatlines while another captive named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen, BRAVEHEART) tries to complete three morality tests.

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F.W. Murnau is best known for his German silent classic NOSFERATU. He came to the U.S. specifically to make SUNRISE, a visually innovative romantic drama. At the very first Oscars, the film garnered awards for actress Janet Gaynor, cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, and Best Unique and Artistic Production (an award only given at the first Academy Awards). Many critics’ lists rank this film among the best films of all time. The American Film Institute ranked in 63rd on its 100 Passions List, and last year the film made the 10th anniversary redo of AFI’s famed 100 best American films list. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1989, while the film ranks within the top 250 films voted by fans on the Internet Movie Database. I list these accolades for nothing more than to show how a simple, well-told story can last the test of time. Film styles and techniques have evolved over time, but a powerful story never fails to resonate.

As the opening title cards state, this is a story that could take place at any time or any place. The characters are simply named The Man and The Wife. The Man (George O’Brien, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON) is cheating on his wife (Gaynor, SEVENTH HEAVEN) with a vacationing Woman From The City (Margaret Livingston, THE CANARY MURDER CASE). The scheming vamp finally convinces the man to drown his wife then sell the farm and move with her back to the city. After a great deal of struggle, the man finally takes his beautiful blonde bride out on the lake to commit the evil deed, but she catches wind of his devious plot.

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Regret is a big issue dealt within the Oscar-nominated ATONEMENT, which arrived on DVD this week. Thus, the latest edition of This Weekend’s Film Festival collects five films that deal with the issue of remorse. Like ATONEMENT, several of this week’s films address the issue of regret held over from actions in a character’s youth. How much responsibility does the “adult you” have for mistakes the “child you” committed? Again like ATONEMENT, others deal with the regret that comes in lost loves. Life and death choices also lead to lifelong regret in several of the films as well. Thrillers and dramas fill this week’s lineup, which I’m sure you won’t regret watching.

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