Weekend Preview: Tuxedos Everywhere With Happy Feet and Casino Royale

Is there a dress code for the multiplex this weekend? Everyone seems dressed to the nines. There's penguins in their elegant feathers in Happy Feet [my review], which isn't just seriously adorable but also has a surprisingly serious side, too. The photorealistic computer animation is stunning, breathtakingly gorgeous, but even more moving is the environmental message underlying the film's sweet story about oddball penguin Mumble finding his strange purpose in a conformist world. It doesn't overwhelm the charming all-singing, all-dancing spectacle but reinforces it: If you think these critters are cute, the film seems to ask, what are you gonna do to make sure their world doesn't disappear because of overfishing and global warming caused by us critters?

Casino Royale [my review] is James Bond's superhero origin story, so of course there's a scene in which he puts on that iconic tux jacket for the first time ... and discovers he really rather likes how he looks in the mirror. There's more solemnity here, too, than you might expect: this is not the campy Bond we've gotten used to, and bored with, over the last two decades, but a reconsideration of the character from the ground up. How did he turn into such a heartless cad, a lover-and-leaver of women, a stone-cold killer? Here's the scoop. The film is plenty funny in spots, too -- it's not relentlessly grim or dramatic -- and jam-packed with gripping action sequences. Don't miss it.

Shocking news! Let's Go to Prison was not screened for critics, and we all know what that means: This ain't no Shawshank Redemption. But we knew that already anyway, didn't we?

Indie watch: You may never eat a Happy Meal again after Fast Food Nation [my review], which plays like a horror movie but is just barely fictionalized from Eric Schlosser's muckraking book. Bobby isn't quite true either, but Emilio Estevez, taking a quantum leap as a filmmaker, finds truth in his story about the people surrounding Bobby Kennedy on the day of his assassination. Christopher Guest moves away from the mockumentary, sticking just to the mocking, with his latest, For Your Consideration, which pokes loving fun at the foibles of the Hollywood machine that produces movies and stars, and sometimes squashes hopes and dreams. Expect to hear a lot more about all three of these films over the next few weeks: they're among the very best of 2006, and they'll be vying for awards soon.

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MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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