Fourth Row Center

Horton Hears a Who I saw this film with my seven-year-old daughter last night at the old Des Moines Theater. We received a tour of the projection booth prior to the start of the film, which managed to clear up a few things about film projection for my daughter, who was raised in the celluloid-less era of video and DVD. I wouldn ’t say that this film is a perfect adaptation of the Dr. Seuss children’s classic, but it does the job and then some. While Jim Carrey and Steve Carell amount to good casting, and perform well ( Carrey as the speck-protecting elephant Horton while Carell plays the mayor of Whoville ), the inspired casting is Carol Burnett as the vindictive Kangaroo and CBS Sunday Morning ’s Charles Osgood as the narrator. Horton is one of those films that will delight the little ones while at the same time providing some enjoyment for the grown-ups as well. ***½ out of 5

Die Falscher ( The Counterfeiters ), the recent Oscar winner for best foreign film, asks many questions in its hour and forty minute running time, and inspires discussion upon viewing. In what Steve Ritter calls "a good movie," a group of artistic Jews led by Sally Sorowitsch are removed from their respective concentration camps and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work in a shop dedicated to the forgery of foreign currency. As the war winds down and Germany lacks funds, they are on a race to copy the American dollar so that Germany can help finance its war effort against the Allies. While others in the camp die around them, the counterfeiters are given regular meals, soft beds, music and treated relatively well. Is their participation in aiding Germany in the war justifiable in order to save themselves from torture and death by gunshot or gassing? One of the counterfeiters doesn't think so, and puts his colleagues at risk when he elects to sabotage the c...

Director Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job is one of the best caper films to come along in a long time. A cunning woman recruits a group of two-bit hustlers to tunnel into a London bank vault, where they hope to score big by emptying the safe deposit boxes. It seems a simple set-up, but The Bank Job is a complex story with a twisting, interconnected plot in which numerous dirty little secrets are tucked away in this same vault and suddenly the robbers have not only the police after them, but the government suits, white collar officials, a crafty madame, crooked cops, a Malcolm X wanna-be and a seedy crime boss. As the plot weaves itself into a tight, well-plotted mesh, the audience finds itself pulling for the bank robbers all the way. Even more astonishing is that the film is based on an actual caper, the details of which were sealed by the British government because of the officials involved with the vaults numerous dirty little secrets. ***1/2 out of 5.