Friday the 13th.

What's being said about a few of the other films opening today, films that probably won't see their own entry...

"The overripe morsel who gets batted around in the Japanese absurdithon The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai looks like she was conjured up by a teenage boy in dangerous hormonal overdrive." For Manohla Dargis (New York Times), the film's a "clutter of soft-core political parody, hard-core narrative nonsense, breezy sexism, junky visuals and penny-ante surrealism." More from Aaron Hillis (Voice) and Rob Humanick (Slant).

"With Voice of a Murderer, the unpredictable Korean director Park Jin-pyo returns to the docudrama form he employed so provocatively in Too Young to Die, his 2002 examination of septuagenarian sex." In the end, Jeannette Catsoulis (NYT) finds the new one "an uninvolving melodrama more suited to the small screen than to the large."

Nick Schager in Slant on Dreaming Lhasa: "With their plodding episodic narrative beset by an energy shortage, and their cast as stilted and unnatural as the script's painfully simplistic dialogue, the filmmakers prove unable to effectively paint a portrait of contemporary Tibetan émigrés, whose plight—being caught between love and loyalty for their birthplace, and the allure of foreign/American cultures and opportunities—is cogently established but listlessly handled." More from Ed Gonzalez (Voice) and Kristi Mitsuda (indieWIRE).

Stephen Holden (NYT): "There is enough of a grain of truth in this noirish thriller, directed by James Foley from a screenplay by Todd Komarnicki, that even after it lurches from the far-fetched into the preposterous, Perfect Stranger leaves a clammy residue of unease." More from Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard), Stephanie Zacharek (Salon) and Ryan Stewart (Cinematical).

"[T]he queasy mixture of sympathy and curiosity that Red Road evokes is evidence of a talented, risk-taking filmmaker discovering her power," writes AO Scott (NYT). More from Steve Erickson (Gay City News) and Annie Frisbie (Zoom In Online). Michael Joshua Rowin interviews Andrea Arnold for Reverse Shot. For indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman looks into the state of Zentropa's Advance Party project - not going too smoothly, evidently. Earlier: "Interview. Andrea Arnold."

Stephen Holden (NYT): "Lonely Hearts, a beautifully photographed remake of Leonard Kastle's 1970 cult B-movie The Honeymoon Killers - which was based on the actual crimes of the couple known as the Lonely Hearts Killers - succeeds better than many [crime dramas] in balancing the philosophical with the visceral, although its villains' dirty deeds still trump its deeper strain of melancholy." More from Annie Frisbie (Zoom In Online). IndieWIRE and ST VanAirsdale interview director Todd Robinson. But "the picture belongs to Salma Hayek," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. Speaking of whom, as Lorenza Muñoz reports in the Los Angeles Times, "Seeking to tap into the growing Latino market in the United States, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc has partnered with actress Salma Hayek to make two to four Latin-themed movies a year."

Matt Zoller Seitz (NYT) on Modern Man: "If you go to movies expecting certain familiar elements - plot, dialogue, relationships and so forth - you'll want to throw popcorn at the screen. But if you tune into this film's rhythms, you'll leave the theater seeing the world with fresh eyes." More from Aaron Hillis (Voice).

Manohla Dargis (NYT): "All grunting, all goring, the witless action flick Pathfinder has little to recommend it, though Terrence Malick completists may be interested to know that it rips off a few setups from that master's magnum opus The New World."

The Boston Globe's Ty Burr lays out his "picks for Friday the 13th."

Posted by dwhudson at April 13, 2007 1:56 PM