This week's premieres
photo: Tatrafilm
The Day after Tomorrow (Deň po tom)- Disaster film by Roland Emmerich. Controversy has surrounded this film in the weeks leading up to its release. Liberal activists have latched onto its subject matter - a series of devastating natural disasters brought on by global warming - to use it to protest against what they consider the Bush administration's backwards environmental policy. The film's producers, meanwhile, have said that it is merely supposed to be a roller-coaster-like spectacle. Either way, one thing's for sure: It's meant to make money, and lots of it. Directed by the man behind such proudly vacant blockbusters as Independence Day and Godzilla, the movie stars Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Other movies playing
Wrong Turn (Pach krvi) - Horror by Rob Schmidt. Did you miss the recent remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well, you're in luck: Wrong Turn also has a backwoods American setting, screaming teenagers, and disfigured cannibals! And even if you did see
photo: Continental Film
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it doesn't matter. This one's set in West Virginia, not Texas, and its heroine is Eliza Dushku, not Jessica Biel.
21 Grams (21 gramov) - Drama by Alejandro Gonzalez Inárritu. The English-language debut of Mexican director Inárritu, who made the fantastic, if rather unfocused, Amores perros. Much like that film, 21 Grams concerns itself with the way that seemingly disparate people can suddenly be thrust together by a terrible tragedy. Starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro.
The Dreamers (Snílci) - Drama by Bernardo Bertolucci. Though Bertolucci is responsible for
photo: Continental Film
some of film's most enduring works (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris), his latest, The Dreamers, could be seen as evidence that he has simply become a dirty old man. Set during the social upheaval of Paris in 1968, it's actually far more concerned with the (admittedly great) physical beauty of its frequently nude protagonists and with writing a love letter to cinema in general.
Van Helsing - Action/Horror by Stephen Sommers. Though not nearly as good or clever as the classic horror and comedic horror movies it references, Van Helsing is kind of fun in a big and stupid kind of way. Hugh Jackman does little more than kill monsters and clench his
photo: Tatrafilm
perfectly chiseled jaw, and Kate Beckinsale does little more than speak in a bad"Transylvanian" accent and look fetching in a corset. But did you expect anything more?
Prepared by Jonathan Knapp
