Jarhead
dir. Sam Mendes

Director Sam Mendes is perhaps the most talented filmmaker who has yet to make a fully satisfying movie. From his Oscar-winning, barn-broad debut, American Beauty, to the gravitas-soaked comic book Road to Perdition, his films are, without fail, beautiful to behold and impeccably acted, yet puzzlingly hollow at the center. Jarhead, Mendes's adaptation of Anthony Swofford's autobiographical Gulf War account, continues this trend. Although its portrayal of war as tedious hell scores points for novelty, the lack of a discernable point of view considerably limits the film's impact.

Beginning with a rather blatant Full Metal Jacket swipe, William Broyles Jr.'s script follows third-generation marine Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) on his downward slide toward would-be killing machine, from boot camp humiliations (via tough-ass lifer Jamie Foxx) and the further depersonalization of sniper training to eagerly awaiting his chance to go kick Saddam's ass. Once he arrives in the desert, however, boredom quickly sets in, as he and his fellow roughnecks find themselves fruitlessly wandering around looking for something to shoot at.

While this period of downtime is Jarhead's strongest segment (especially when focusing on the overly gung-ho antics of Peter Sarsgaard's lizardy sniper), it also accentuates the film's basic problem with character. Despite the occasional voiceover, Gyllenhaal's character largely remains a cipher, with a near-to-total lack of backstory. (Tellingly, the most involving moments take place when the characters watch other war movies.) Without an easy in, audience members may find themselves sharing the platoon's overpowering ennui. During an interview with Swofford on a recent Seattle stop, the author politely refused to classify his book as antiwar, preferring to characterize it simply as one person's experience. His first-person recounting undeniably stings on the page, yet something vital is lost in translation. ANDREW WRIGHT

WEB SPECIAL: Andrew Wright interviews Anthony Swofford.

Paradise Now
dir. Hany Abu-Assad

Social consciousness, no matter how well-intentioned, has scuttled any number of films unwilling or unable to let their message coexist with the medium. (Think Ghosts of Mississippi, The Hurricane, or Pay It Forward. Or don't.) Thankfully, the new film Paradise Now functions as an absorbing melodrama first, and screed second. Utilizing a structure Hitchcock might well have envied, director Hany Abu-Assad depicts what may very well be the final 24 hours of a suicide bomber.

Filmed in the volatile West Bank, Abu-Assad and Bero Beyer's script follows Palestinian mechanic Said (superb newcomer Kaid Nashef) and his amiably goofy friend as they are chosen to carry out a terrorist act in Tel Aviv. As zero hour approaches, Said makes his peace with his unknowing family, resists the distractions of a beautiful pacifist, and prepares to meet his destiny. At the last minute, however, things go wrong with the plan, and free will creeps back into the equation.

Abu-Assad's take on the various factors that lead to acts of terrorism has drawn criticism in certain circles—some of an alarmingly violent nature. (During his recent stop in Seattle, the director mentioned, with a disconcerting matter-of-factness, how several members of his crew were kidnapped during the production.) With meticulous detail and moments of black humor, the film makes the actions of its protagonists seem, if not sympathetic, at least disturbingly plausible. As we watch Said shave his beard and cast off all ties in preparation, it becomes frighteningly easy to grasp the nature of his rage and to see how people can be pushed by their environment until they literally become bombs. As this terrific film makes clear, the fuse was lit long before any device was fashioned. ANDREW WRIGHT

WEB SPECIAL: Andrew Wright talks to Hany Abu-Assad.

Elevator to the Gallows
dir. Louis Malle

Elevator to the Gallows opens with the icy queen of the French New Wave, Jeanne Moreau, speaking on the telephone to her lover. Moreau is playing Florence Carala, a rich, married woman who is having an affair with a younger man named Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet). A hero of France's colonial wars, Julien now works for Florence's husband Simon (Jean Wall), a heartless and powerful arms dealer. Moreau is inside a telephone booth in the middle of bustling Paris. Her lips are close to the mouthpiece, her eyes are sad, and the longing in her voice is infinite. She wants her lover to end the source of her suffering—that is, her husband's life. If they are to reach true happiness, then Julien must kill the man who stands in their way.

The setting of the murder is a modern high-rise. Julien shoots Simon dead, cleans up the evidence, leaves the building, enters his American convertible, and just as he is about to drive to his lover, who is waiting for him at a nearby cafe, he notices the only error in his otherwise perfect crime. Anyone who enjoys this movie (Louis Malle's first) for its crime plot (which twists and twists) has the brain of a bird and the heart of a horse. Elevator to the Gallows is remarkable for one reason alone: the scene that finds Moreau walking around Paris at night looking everywhere for her man, who is stuck in an elevator. As she walks and whispers her lover's name, jazz master Miles Davis blows a trumpet solo that translates precisely the sorrows of Moreau's soul. CHARLES MUDEDE

The Squid and the Whale
dir. Noah Baumbach

Kicking and Screaming, 1995's post-collegiate passion play, marked writer/director Noah Baumbach as a natural-born filmmaker, mixing comedy and drama in winningly erratic proportions. More's the pity, then, that after avoiding the sophomore slump (mostly) with 1997's Mr. Jealousy, the director disappeared from the scene, before reemerging last year as cowriter on pal Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. The pairing was inspired, even if the film wasn't: Baumbach's hyperliterate dialogue style is similar to Anderson's, but he lacks the latter's increasingly twee, just-so affectations. In Baumbach's universe, the more high-minded the character, the more spectacularly messy his eventual implosion.

The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach's semi-autobiographical tale of a disintegrating Park Slope family unit in the '80s, is one of those rare films in which everything feels right, from period detail, to sympathetic yet unsentimental characterizations, to the way that family conversations can shift from funny to sad to terrifying. He's fully backed by his cast, including Laura Linney's free-spirited mom, Jesse Eisenberg's endearingly tight-assed poseur of an eldest son, and, especially, Jeff Daniels's defanged literary lion, one of the most complex—and pitiably self-aware—monsters in memory.

Throughout, Baumbach's unfussy, free-floating style echoes the personality-driven films of the '70s, yet with a uniquely personal bite. Although not without moments of wise-ass comedy (the youngest son's confused, increasingly pervy antics are underscored, hilariously, by snippets of Tangerine Dream's ultra-smooth Risky Business theme) there's an underlying witty melancholy that suggests a filmmaker fully locked into his groove. Whatever the rationale for his vanishing act, he's returned with something that feels suspiciously close to a masterpiece. ANDREW WRIGHT

Chicken Little
dir. Mark Dindal

Chicken Little is the cutest cartoon character EVER, with a ginormous head and little green glasses held up by nonexistent chicken ears. When a piece of the "sky" falls on Chicken Little's head, he rings an emergency bell and causes everyone in the town to go crazy. Nothing ends up happening, and everyone calls Chicken Little names.

A year later, Chicken Little and his dork friends are still getting bullied at school because of the sky mishap. Even his teachers pick on him. Since it's a Disney movie, Chicken Little doesn't go Columbine on their asses; instead he fights to prove he's not the geeky loser everyone has tagged him to be. But then a piece of the "sky" falls again! Dude's totally too scared to say anything, though, because he doesn't want everyone thinking he's crazy all over again. But then what happens?! ALIENS INVADE!

Everyone freaks about the deadly lasers and killing machines, but no one takes action to save the world. So now Chicken Little has to work out problems with his father and fight off bullies at school and try to get the girl—all while trying to save planet Earth! Phew. But really this movie is about the cutest chicken ever and an effing hilarious goldfish who doesn't even talk but does some of the funniest shit ever. MEGAN SELING