Production Still Courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Doing her best to ward off the omnipresent urges of her burgeoning sexuality, Dawn, played by the surprisingly good Jess Weixler, is the voice of her local promise ring posse, continually encouraging herself and others to keep the gift of their virginity wrapped in its shiny, um, box, until the day they walk down the aisle. This holy mission is played on for every gag it can get, from the real life slogans on the t-shirts like "I'm worth waiting for", to the creepy, cult-like call and answer chanting at their group meetings, to Dawn repeating the word "purity" to herself when things start to get too hot and heavy.

Unfortunately, remaining "pure" is sometimes a choice that we don't get to make for ourselves, and Dawn's flower is plucked from her by someone who purports to be of her own kind. In the midst of this most extreme betrayal, Dawn plucks a little something herself: the interloper's penis. Like a butterfly flapping its wings in the southern hemisphere, this act sets off a series of events which lead to a carnage carnival like nothing you have ever seen in a movie theater. Severed members are flung about like so many hot dogs at a county fair, blood spews forth from hands and crotches with fire hydrant force, and Dawn comes to the realization that what has grown inside her is a gift more powerful and more terrifying than any superhero could ever imagine.

Teeth is being billed as "the most alarming cautionary tale for men with wandering libidos since Fatal Attraction." However, that assertion would suppose that Dawn is a psychotic bunny boiler with a severe codependent streak, which is not the case at all. Instead, she is a naive, dewey-eyed lamb, trying her best to retain some semblance of purity in a world filled with one-track-mind men, with all trains heading towards penetrationtown. She doesn't want to bite, and if afraid of the mauling mouth inside, but for the good of womankind and other helpless vaginas, she must.

We can't say that the film is great, because it's not, but it is entertaining and we can certainly understand why it got picked up after its premier at Sundance. It contains wacky laugh-out-loud moments, zany one-liners, and a juicy gimmick which has been expertly crystallized by their marketing campaign. Where Teeth fails is in the nuts and bolts of execution. There is definitely a B movie feel to it, especially with the schlocky acting by some of the players, the ridiculous musical score, unbelievable special effects and some forced plot lines (brother with the back-door preference, here's looking at you). But in the end it gets the point across, however clumsily. Ladies and gentlemen, sex is not like storming a castle; you need to ask for permission before you enter. --Steph Beasley [Trailer] [Website]

Image courtesy of Paramount Vantage

Director Ian Iqbal Rashid (Touch of Pink) had to film the entire movie and its fourteen dance numbers in just twenty-five days with almost no budget, and it still blows away most other teen dance dramas (sorry, Julia Stiles and Nick Cannon.) Shot largely with handheld cameras and unknown actors, it's an indie film tackling one of Hollywood's favorite tropes. Indie or not, it just wouldn't be a proper dance drama without high-stakes, important Life Shit hanging in the balance. In this case, teenaged Raya (Rutina Wesley), daughter of Jamaican immigrants from a rough Caribbean neighborhood in Toronto, hopes to use her step-dancing prowess to win money to go back to private school. Her upwardly mobile family made it out of the ghetto for a while but just went broke caring for her drug-addicted sister, who died of an overdose. Raya finds herself back at her old school, surrounded by a bunch of former classmates who aren't impressed by her erstwhile flight to the middle class. When her childhood friend/rival Michelle (Tre Armstrong) throws a bunch of stank attitude her way, Raya bucks up and dusts off her long-dormant dance moves for a good old-fashioned dancefight. It's the first of Move's many totally nuts dance sequences (set quite brilliantly to Busta Rhymes' "Touch It"!) The dancefight turns ugly at the end, but Raya's moves earn the admiration of local step squad leader Bishop (Dwain Murphy) and she fights for a place on his team hoping they can take the $50,000 prize at the StepMonster championships in Detroit.

In lesser hands, the film would still be pretty awesome based on its choreography alone--the dance sequences are the true star of the show. We're treated to hypnotic all-girl step teams in shiny outfits, classic black-fraternity-style stepping (with canes!), and B-Boy City-esque hyperathletic routines. The music rules, too--it's Missy Elliot anthems mixed with a whole bunch of Jamaican dancehall. But the ensemble cast truly almost steals the show from the dancing. As the sweet but guarded Raya, Rutina Wesley projects the perfect mixture of vulnerability and ambition. She knows she's her parents' last hope after the death of her sister, and her big, downcast eyes reflect the frustration of trying to keep it together amidst crappy circumstances. Her tough real-girl appeal recalls Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight. Tre Armstrong is equally strong as party-girl Michelle, resigned to an existence of smoking blunts and playing video games (and pretty heated about the fact that Raya's reaching for something more.) Dialoguewise, it's a pretty nice change of pace to hear Move's Caribbean-Canadian characters slipping in and out of Jamaican patois instead of whatever watered-down catchphrases Hollywood usually dreams up for young black actors to speak. The gritty handheld cinematography also works in the movie's favor, effectively conjuring the grim concrete winter in Toronto and, in turn, the eye-popping contrast of the step spectacle. If you're a dance-movie fan at all, see How She Move post-haste, and if you're not, see it anyway--what better cure for the late January doldrums than some big-screen dancefights? --Molly McCommons [Trailer] [Website]

Rambo Poster

We should make two things perfectly clear right now: first, we love the Rambo franchise, and second, we love seeing shit blow up. L-O-V-E. Rambo was, in some ways, the ultimate over-the-top action series, and we were ecstatic to hear that Stallone was brining it back after nearly twenty years.

So how is it, then, that the fourth coming of Rambo—America’s ultimate action hero—left us feeling so deeply unsatisfied? Oh sure, it’s got all the basic ingredients: brooding good guys, foreign bad guys, huge explosions and flying dismembered limbs. But where First Blood II and Rambo III had a highly developed (albeit cartoonish) sense of good vs. evil, Rambo (the first in the series to be entirely written and directed by Stallone) feels more like violence for violence sake—nastiness for the sheer, shameful thrill.

Obviously, earlier Rambo films could be just as easily criticized for their exploitative nature. Hell, Rambo III was, for a time, considered the “most violent film ever made” by the Guinness Book of World Records (who counted 221 acts of violence and 108 casualties). But despite the trigger-happy similarities, the newest Rambo just feels meaner than its predecessors. Every single death is lingered on a bit too long, CGI-enhanced a bit too much and contextualized far too little, with both the heroes and the villains so thinly drawn that you end up not really caring who dies—only that someone dies, and that it be sufficiently gory.

Before you start to think we’re overanalyzing a mindless action flick, consider this: in the first (and by far the best) installment in the Rambo series, a grand total of one person is killed. With a rock. By accident. And while First Blood had its share of action, the film was, at its heart, a fully realized drama with a convincingly human bad guy (played brilliantly by Brian Dennehy). Conversely, we couldn’t even tell you what the bad guy’s name is in Rambo—we don’t know him enough to hate him, and in the end his death carries the same emotional weight as the hundreds of other useless deaths.

Stallone tries to excuse Rambo’s apparent lack of purpose by tacking on a jumbled montage of raw, real-life footage from the civil war in Myanmar. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that he’s serious about shining a spotlight on the country’s plight, because he isn’t. In fact, after that initial sixty seconds of explanation, the story could just as well take place in any other war torn country with almost zero dialog changes. --Matt Smith [Trailer] [Website]

Also Opening in Austin This Week
Meet the Spartans
U2 3D
Untraceable

[Showtimes]