So how does it hold up, the arch back-and-forth of these kids treading water in dead-end video-store gigs and oddly affecting affairs with underage girls?

Film Reviews

At first glance, Toby Keith drama Broken Bridges is about reconciliations; really, though, the movie is about the cross-marketing potential of contemporary country music full of cliché and contrived music performances.

Brothers of the Head

An astonishing twinning of wild imagination and drop-dead realism, Brothers of the Head is simply the most poignant and exciting mockumentary about (conjoined) sibling rivalry, revelry, and reversal of fortunes ever made.

Calvaire

Belgian horror romp Calvaire is so dead-set on being disturbing that it ends up tripping over its own hobbled feet and evoking fewer gasps than curdled little giggles.

Crank

Jason Statham's Crank – despite the fact that its ever-revving mayhem is ultraviolent, sexist, and frequently offensive enough to warrant a look-see by both the ACLU and the DOJ – is pure action-film bliss.

Crossover

The story of the friendship and contrasting paths to success of two natural ballplayers, both of whom appear to be too old to be playing teens, Crossover tries hard but never makes the leap.

Factotum

Charles Bukowski's Henry Chinaski is back, played by Matt Dillon in a low-key, gorgeously beery performance; it's 100-proof Bukowski, but with a decent barkeep at the helm and Lili Taylor's Jan on his arm. Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious and smart-stupid.

Hollywoodland

Although Hollywoodland stokes the dying embers of uncertainty regarding the 1959 death of George Reeves, TV's Superman, it nevertheless seems that the result should be more provocative and scandalous.

Idiocracy

Mike Judge's underrated comedy Idiocracy is the story of a man who awakes 500 years in the future to find a society so dumbed-down that he instantly becomes the smartest person alive.

The Wicker Man

Notorious director Neil LaBute's well-intentioned but inadvertently silly film starring Nicolas Cage replaces the vague, sinister paganism of the original with a creepy infusion of earth-mother estrogen gone haywire.

arts & culture

Plays Well With Others

Why Michelle Schumann is meant to be running the Austin Chamber Music Center

BY ROBERT FAIRES

'Black and White and Read All Over': They got the shots

'The Austin Chronicle' pays tribute to the often-unsung shutterbugs who have added so much to our pages with the exhibit 'Black and White and Read All Over: 'Austin Chronicle' Photographers Celebrate 25 Years'

BY ROBERT FAIRES

The Russell Collection: A second home Downtown

The West End space, vacated by F8 Fine Art Gallery, is now a new home for the Russell Collection, showing contemporary artwork alongside its paintings by the masters of yore

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Benefits Round-up: See Art, see Art run, see Art run and dance

Support your local nonprofits by buying prisoner art for the Inside Books Project, running a 5K for the Paramount and State theatres, and listening to Latino artists for the Austin Latino Theater Alliance