Culture

Tribal fisherman have suffered along with the salmon on the columbia river. Who says all fish-talk is boring? River Ways proves the opposite in a documentary about four controversial Snake Rivers dams. Set against the backdrop of the collapse of a once unrivaled salmon fishery on the Columbia River and a campaign to have four dams that have contributed to that decline removed, River Ways finds there are no easy solutions, or easy villains in this story.
River follows three essential characters-Frank Sutterlict, a Yakama tribal fisherman, Ben Branston, a wheat farmer, and Mark Ihander, a commercial fisherman. It keeps most interviews short and to the point, highlighting viewpoints from both sides of the river debate. The other perspectives include conservationists, protesters, board members, biologists and river advocates. The big river draws in a huge spectrum of interests, both economic and environmental, and there is plenty of acrimony between the extremes. One scene shows gun-toting, racist fishermen making a stand at what they consider "their river" when a Native American tries to fish the same stream.

refuses to clean up her room. The Strangers will piss off a lot of people, but probably not for the same reasons as me. It has its moments as it's an odd twist of a film. It's all about a victimizing, murderous act and any substance beyond that is all but lost. Relying only on scare tactics, the film has virtually no plot. This can be a good thing, but in this case it leads to an unredeemable finale with a supremely uncalled for ending.
 
The beginning has that good ol' horror movie promise with narration and "inspired by true events" facts straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Strangers keeps the suspense up and will undeniably creep you out. (The sound of a knock on a door might never be the same for you again.)
Kristin (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are back from a party early because Kristen has re-buffed James' marriage proposal and they're in a sad quandary as to what to do next. Staying at his folks' remotely situated house, they receive a knock at the door from a seemingly lost girl. They send her on her way and the trouble begins. Knocks turn into pounds, windows break, and masked figures begin to appear. (Props go to the creepiest masks ever: doll-face and pillow-head.)

some flowers are just funnier than others. The Visitor is tough to categorize. On one hand it's a straightforward story of a lonely guy who finds meaning in life, and on the other it's so deadpan and simple that it makes you remember why they make movies: Because real life depicted as real life can be boring.
 
The movie stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) as Walter Vale, a withdrawn, forlorn professor gliding through life in isolated emotional pain. Jenkins (an underrated actor) proves to be absolutely proficient in this role, broadening his range to new heights or in this case, lows. Gone are his usual comedic wise-cracks and/or witty flamboyance.
When Walter is sent from Connecticut to New York City to give a lecture and visits an apartment building he owns, he finds a couple of illegal immigrants, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) living there. He reluctantly befriends them and his life begins to change. Tarek plays an African conga-drum and entices the prof into giving it a whirl. Next thing we know, Walter's beating the darn thing while wearing his underpants. Soon they are playing in a drum-circle in Washington Square Park. Trouble ensues in a subway when cops apprehend and arrest Tarek for supposedly jumping a turnstile. The rest of the movie is the slow-burn-saga of Walter trying to come to grips with saving someone else's life, therefore saintly redeeming his own. The film's tricky title will provoke discussion as to who's the visitor: Walter charting new territory or Tarek whose immigration status is challenged.

Hey, aren’t you han solo?The unabashedly campy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull takes us on yet another retro, whirlwind adventure, this time led by an older, slightly mellowed, but still dashing "Indy." The latest installment of the four Indiana Jones films taps into '50s nostalgia-beginning in a malt shop in Cambridge, Mass. - and winds up in the Amazonian Jungle of Peru. Once again, we get to tag along with our favorite rogue archeologist, while in this episode he fends off several near-fatal attacks by Russian KGB operatives turned treasure hunters, and an onslaught of computer generated ants.
The plots of the Indiana Jones movies are always somewhat ridiculous; but who cares when in a span of under three hours the audience gets to trek to Nepal and Cairo, Shanghai and India, Venice, or the Amazon Jungle, all in the name of discovering treasure (which always bears some supernatural power), while preventing evil-doers from getting there first? The Crystal Skull, possibly the most schmaltzy of the bunch, is no exception.