The MovieGoer

It's a huge movie weekend in Little Rock.  "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," Shekhar Kapur's follow-up to "Elizabeth" starring Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen, Geoffery Rush and Abbie Cornish.  Manohla Dargis of The New York Times writes in her hilarious review of the film, "it’s reductive, distorted and deliriously far-fetched, but the gowns are fabulous, the wigs are a sight and Clive Owen makes a dandy Errol Flynn, even if he’s really meant to be Walter Raleigh, the queen’s favorite smoldering slab of man meat."

"Michael Clayton," starring George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson also opens.  Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly gushes, "It's better than good; it's such a crackling and mature and accomplished movie that it just about restores your faith. This is a tale of greed, lies, and under-the-table violence — an exposé of what corporations do, and the way corporate law firms help them get away with it — yet if that all sounds familiar from a hundred other muckraking dramas, Michael Clayton makes you feel as if you've never seen any of it before."

James Gray's "We Own the Night," starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg and Robert Duvall is here.  The film made the rounds to mixed reviews at Cannes.  Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post writes, ""We Own the Night" (whose title is taken from the motto of a real New York police precinct) never catches fire, even literally in an improbable but visually stunning climax set in a burning field. As always, Phoenix is an arresting presence on screen, but don't expect any "Departed"-esque fast talk from Wahlberg, who is oddly inert in a role that should crackle with brotherly ambivalence."

Julie Taymor's new film "Across the Universe" is one that I've been anxious to see since I saw the preview many months ago.  Since then, the film has received seriously mixed reviews.  "Somewhere around its midpoint, “Across the Universe” captured my heart, and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled," notes Stephen Holden of The New York Times. 

Market Street Cinema adds two intriguing films to its always impressive line-up.  "The Hunting Party" starring Richard Gere and Terence Howard about war reporters in Bosnia, and "In the Shadow of the Moon," a critically acclaimed documentary about NASA's moon missions between 1968 and 1972.  It's rocking a 100% Cream of the Crop rating at Rotten Tomatoes.