St. Louis Wing Week Returns April 8-15, 2024

Film Openings

Jun 30, 2004 at 4:00 am

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America's Heart & Soul Louis Schwartzberg. (PG) Louis Schwartzberg's film, made up of a series of vignettes spotlighting hardworking and idiosyncratic people across the land, aspires to being a glorification of the American dream. With a small crew, Schwartzberg traveled the country to interview people; some 24 of them are spotlighted, with many others appearing in brief shots. For an 86-minute movie, that's not a lot of time to focus on each one, especially when you subtract all the helicopter shots from the running time. As a result, each person is more or less boiled down to one characteristic, and their scenes are shot to look like commercials. Prior to making the film, the director was best known for having amassed the largest library of stock footage in the country; little surprise, then, that this film could just as easily be called Stock Footage: The Movie. Helicopter shots, time-lapse images of clouds moving and grass growing, aerial views of cityscapes...all these things not only kick off the movie, they also transition between damn near every scene. Opens Friday, July 2, at the Plaza Frontenac. (Luke Y. Thompson)

Control Room Jehane Noujaim. (unrated) Opens Friday, July 2, at the Tivoli. Reviewed this issue.

Spider-Man 2 Sam Raimi. (PG-13) Opens Wednesday, June 30, at multiple locations. Reviewed this issue.