12 What the girlfriend Says This movie has charm, wit, and a hint of comedy. I found it to be both refreshing and innova- tive. It is unlike all of the other girly movies that seem to use a fill in the blank template. I will warn all of the men out there now that this is a dramatic - romantic comedy. This means that it spends most ofits time showcasing females crying and discussing their feelings. There are no hard core sex scenes, no car chases and (to Cameron’s dismay) no female nudity. Jack Black plays Miles, a dash- ing young man who falls in love with Iris (played by Kate Winslet). Iris is vacationing in Los Angeles where she has swapped homes with Amanda (Cameron Diaz) for two weeks. Meanwhile, half way Dru Tre Corp WEEKLY (WILFRID Laurier UNIVERSITY) WATERLOO, Ont. (CUP) -- In the darkness of sleep, our unconscious minds will accept lapses in logical cause and effect -- it’s only when our conscious minds get in the way that the logic of dreams leaves something to be desired. That’s why we want mov- ies to make some kind of narrative sense, to take us by the hand on a journey with a clearly distinguish- able departure point and destina- tion. But, in the darkness of the cinema, with our collective guard down, what’s the harm in taking a trip into a dream for two hours of our waking lives? Guillermo del FRIES Toro’s “El Laberinto del Fauno” (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) asks us to take that trip. It opens with a typical fairy tale prologue, but then immediate- ly thrusts us into the grim reality of Spain during the Second World War. We see our child protagonist, Ofelia (12-year-old Ivana Ban- quero), bleeding from the mouth -- but in reverse, as if she’s bleed- ing not to death, but to life. From there, the narrative abandons its relative fluidity in favour of trad- itional cause-and-effect. Ofelia and her pregnant moth- er are en route to live under the father of Ofelia’s brother-to-be, a high-ranking captain in the Span- ish military. On the way, the curi- ous girl wanders away from the car, entranced by a decaying one- eyed statue to which she has dis- covered the missing piece. Like a puzzle, she inserts the sculpture’s eye into place, only to have a strange insect emerge _ from its mouth -- a fairy, she thinks. When they arrive at Cap- tain Vidal’s house, the bug ledds Ofelia into a labyrinth that hofises mystical creatures, whe we come her as a princess. The mood that del Toro cre- ates, which is Grimm and grim in equal parts, makes even these opening scenes -- which sound perfectly banal as I write them. -- exciting, foreboding and magical. When the insect eventually trans- forms into what Ofelia thinks a fairy should look like, it makes for one of the best moments in recent cinematic memory. If only the rest of the creatures would bend to suit the young girl’s preconceptions of how fairy bulture my = across the world at Iris’s home in Surrey, England, Amanda falls in love with Graham (Jude Law). All of the characters in this movie have loved and lost at one time or another and are reluctant to fall in love again. It’s an emo- tional journey as they leave their luggage behind and learn how to welcome new. people into their lives. I give this movie four suitcases out of five. OVER THE EDGE February 28, 2007 one heart wrenching romance we actually get two simultaneous love stories. To add insult to in- jury we have Jack Black as a new age emotional man instead of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll Black we’re used to. The only good part of the film is that instead of one entire movie we only get one half of a movie of Cameron Diaz being an idiot. So we all know what the moy- ie is about from Kristy’s portion - above. I’ll sum it up; yadda yadda What the hoyfriend Says Refreshing, innovative and charming are all words that Kristy used to describe this movie. I, however, found the movie to be shallow and predictable. The most horrid part of the movie is that instead of having tale creatures should look and act. There is a grotesquery of a giant toad, whose demise is Cronen- berg-esque in its sheer gruesome- ness. There is the Pale Man (Doug Jones) with eyes in his hands, who out-creeps the likes of any | creature from Hellraiser (or any | other horror movie I’ve seen, for that matter). There is the faun, a horned creature whose alliances are never quite certain, who keeps the titular labyrinth. From his ap- pearance, one would- guess he hails from somewhere between Narnia and Hell. And then there are the humans, who can be more demonic than the devil himself. While the creatures might look a fright, the humans are the ones who will bash in your nose with a billy club, shoot you in the belly and let you slowly bleed to death, or torture you for pleasure. The little details, like the ubiqui- tous crunching of the captain’s too-tight leather gloves, are more off-putting than any of the horrors in the labyrinth -- and del Toro knows it, which is why he con- centrates the vast majority of the film’s running time on the humans rather than the monsters. But it’s not until the final mo- ments of the film that any of the creatures lose their edge, thanks to an inspired, if fleeting, shift in cinematographic style. The horrors of the labyrinth are sud- denly more Jim Henson than Clive Barker, and we can finally live happily ever after -- if only in dreams. That’s where the darkness comes in handy. yadda, and they all fall in love. The film's highlight came out of a subplot involving Winslet and Eli Wallach, who plays Ar- ‘thur Abbot, a playwright from the golden age of Hollywood. He was sometimes funny, and reminiscent of Woody Allen, even down to the infatuation with-someone half his age (Not that the film featured a cradle robbing old man). Amer L. RICHARDS Srare WRITkeR Being the movie buff I am, I got to see the new movies that are coming out. I even chose to see those cheesy Disney straight-to- DVD-movies. This week, I saw “Cinderella 3 a Twist in Time.” I will honestly say that I have not seen the second Cinderella movie that came out. I just found out about it now, after all the crazy advertising, Disney even put a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sequel out to DVD a few years back. I must say that Dis- ney movies should stop at the first | movie. Don’t make 3 and it’ll be. okay. You are just ruining it for me and others for a great classic movie. On the extreme downside of the movie they decided to cut ran- dom “movie trailer” sequences into Diaz’s plot, relating to her character’s position as a marketer for films. I will say, though, the director did a superb job of ruin- ing the pacing of the film for those moments in the movie. There is not much to say about this movie except that it ‘showed little innovation beyond what people already expect from sappy Christmas romances. The novelty of having two roman- ces in one wears off around 2:13 into the movie. That is actually an arbitrary number, as the novelty actually wears off after the plot synopsis. This. movie gets 2 awkwardly placed ‘movie trailers’ out of 5. Disney already wrecked The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Which, to my knowledge, both have two sequels. You might be thinking, but they only made 2 Little Mermaids. Just wait. The third one comes out in 2008. Back to Cinderella. In Cinder- ella 3 they made a lot of references to the very first one. Turning back into time trying to change every- thing that Cinderella did so that the Prince, who I still don’t think has a name, will fall in love with Anastasia. instead of her. The beginning of straight to DVD movies start with a song. This time, Anastasia wanted to go see what was going on. There was a little picnic for Cinderella and the lovely Prince charming that the birds, Jacque and Gus- Gus put on for them. In the end of the song, the fairy Godmothers wand slips from her sleeve, and guess who gets it? That’s right, Anastasia does She brings it back to her mother, which about sums up the whole of the movie. There weren’t really any mo- ments where it is was cheesy, or times where I can successfully guess the next part. I am so glad that it went straight to DVD be- cause there is no way I would have paid ten dollars plus snacks at the theatre to see this. ~ I give this movie, 2 out of 5 cheesy Disney movies.