Movie Guide
New in Theaters Air Guitar Nation (R)
Director: Alexandra Lipsitz. With Dan Crane, Gordon Hintz, Zac Munro. (81 min.)
Here's yet another documentary about competitions. But this competition is one you may never have heard of: the annual air guitar global championship – in Oulu, Finland, of all places. As reality shows go, this one's pretty amusing. Los Angeles-based David Jung, who performs under the name C-Diddy and sports a Hello Kitty pouch on his costume, goes up against, among others, New York-based Dan Crane, aka Bjorn Turoque. (Born to Rock. Get it?) Director Alexandra Lipsitz doesn't do much more than chronicle the noise, but it's intermittently fun stuff. Grade: B–
– Peter Rainer
Killer of Sheep (Not Rated)
Director: Charles Burnett. With Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy. (83 min.)
Charles Burnett's legendary, rarely seen 1977 movie about a family in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts has been newly restored and is opening in selected theaters around the country. (In New York, it's showing at the IFC Center.) Begun as a thesis film while Burnett was a student at University of California, Los Angeles, film school – the UCLA Film & Television Archive is responsible for the restoration – "Killer of Sheep" is a lyrical, yet intensely rooted, tragic vision. Events are viewed through the eyes of Stan, a slaughterhouse worker ground down by poverty. Henry Gayle Sanders, one of America's finest and most unappreciated actors, has the lead role. "Killer of Sheep" was declared a national treasure in 1990 by the Library of Congress. I agree. Grade: A
– P.R.
Meet the Robinsons (G)
Director: Stephen J. Anderson. With the voices of Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen, Gordon Fry. (102 min.)
In Disney's computer-animated feature, a small boy named Lewis lives in an orphanage and may be unadoptable. No one seems to want a kid who's driven to build weird inventions – no one except a mysterious guy in a bowler hat. This bungling, but dangerous, villain from the future threatens not only Lewis's happiness, but society itself. Lewis teams up with Wilbur, a kid in a time machine hot on the trail of the bad guy, to save Wilbur's family and civilization. This 3-D digital adventure cribs from several other films, but its pace, wittiness, and technical brilliance may help you forget all that. Shown with a vintage Disney 3-D cartoon. Grade: B
– M.K. Terrell
