The Hip Hop Project

dir. Matt Ruskin

There is a scene, somewhere in the middle of The Hip Hop Project, in which a group of teenage rappers go to a fundraising party at a fancy-pants Manhattan apartment, perform for some rich white people, try to explain why hiphop is important, and ask for money. The white people wear blazers and frozen smiles, and stand very still while a girl named Princess raps about her abortion. Outside, the kids snicker and affect British accents and call themselves "Robespierre and Maurice." The chasm between them—the bewildered but well-meaning rich folk and their euphemistically "urban" guests—is vast, and watching it is almost unbearably awkward.

Vaulting mightily across that gap, with almost too-earnest-to-be-true charisma (he actually says things like, "I just want to be an exemplary person!"), is Chris "Kazi" Rolle, a Bahamian immigrant and homeless teen turned mildly successful rapper. Kazi is head of the Hip Hop Project, a music program for at-risk youth (aided, weirdly, by the bald machismo of Bruce Willis, who executive produced the film and, along with Russell Simmons, helped finance HHP's recording studio). Working as a team under Kazi's mentorship, a small group of teenage rappers write, perform, record, and produce an album, and, in doing so, generally try to keep their lives from turning to shit.

As movies go, The Hip Hop Project isn't great. But as yet another fundraising effort, it's genius (the profits from the film all go, supposedly, back into the program). Though the tagline is "If you had the whole world listening, what would you have to say?" the film focuses less on creative content than on the emotional and clerical struggles of keeping HHP afloat. The teens' personal hardships, affecting but thinly explored, unfold in sepia-toned fast motion and claustrophobic close-ups. Getting to class, the challenge of staying relevant, the aforementioned fundraising: these take a front seat to the actual product. Which is fine. The process is the point. LINDY WEST

Waitress

dir. Adrienne Shelly

This is a movie about pie: eating pie, serving pie, baking pie, talking about pie, and finding deep meaning in pie that pie doesn't really possess. Because, you know, it's just pie. Jenna (Keri Russell), a knocked-up waitress in an unspecified Southern land, has just invented a new pie. It's called "I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie," or "Bad Baby Pie" for short. Jenna lives in fear of her violent, pathetic husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto, whom I will never stop loving), and works in a diner owned by a senile Andy Griffith (wow, still alive!).

Luckily, kinda, she falls in love with her sweet, sweet ob-gyn, who is a little too into pie for my taste. ("What you do with food is unearthly. It's sensual.") Jenna never knew that a man could also be a best friend: someone who will listen to her talk about pie, and say insipid shit to her ("You're so beautiful and so sexy, and I could find the whole meaning of life in those sad eyes"), and never rape her or punch her in the face, and also sometimes pull babies out of her vagina. Every little girl's dream. Unfortch, the doc is saddled with a redheaded wife who loves him, and Jenna is saddled with Earl's stupid baby. Bummer.

Writer, director, and costar Adrienne Shelly (who, by the way, was freakishly murdered last year by a 19-year-old construction worker) shines in the film's quirky comedic angles, and fails dismally in the sentimental ones. Cheryl Hines is perfection as Jenna's chirpy coworker ("Hello, Earl! We all just agreed that your hair is seeewper attractive! Hooray for yeeew!"), and Shelly herself breaks hearts as awkward ugly duckling Dawn. But the film's massive, saccharine slices of earnest goo, mostly about how babies are miracle cures for lonely women, are unbearable.

If you want something poignant, chew on this instead: Shelly's real-life 2-year-old daughter plays the part of Jenna's 2-year-old daughter, in a movie made by her murdered mother about the bond between mothers and daughters. My Dead Mother Will Never Get to Teach Me to Make Pie Pie. LINDY WEST

28 Weeks Later

dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

There is a scene in George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead where a shambling zombie, out for a stroll, receives a nasty haircut from a helicopter blade. Three decades on, 28 Weeks Later pays homage to that scene, amping the gore to an insane degree. It's the type of moment that leaves you cackling shamefully at what you've just witnessed. It's also one of 28 Weeks Later's few surprises.

Picking up where Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later left off, the sequel finds the "rage" virus all but contained, and the U.S. Army slowly allowing London to repopulate. Don (Robert Carlyle), an unlikely survivor of the outbreak, is reunited with his two children, keeping from them the truth about their mother's death. Meanwhile, an army doctor (Rose Byrne) worries that a new outbreak could be imminent—a concern her commanding officer shrugs off with two rather ominous words: "Code Red."

When 28 Weeks Later works best is when director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) takes his cues from his predecessor. Boyle's vision, all speeding "zombies" and jittery camerawork, remains effective, even in rehash mode. Fresnadillo gets some fine performances (from Carlyle especially—but then he's always been a mere twitch away from a blood-spitting psycho), and one sequence involving night vision and two truly terrified kids easily makes your hair stand on end. But by the time the film wraps up (with the inevitable hint at a third installment) there hasn't been nearly enough originality on display. BRADLEY STEINBACHER