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Capsule reviews of this week's new films

Updated: 2007-02-02 08:35
(AP)

Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

"Because I Said So" - Everything about this movie screams out generic chick flick - and we mean scream, literally - from the forgettable title to the excruciatingly corny ending. In between, director Michael Lehmann runs through a veritable checklist of cliches. (Is it possible this man made the deliciously vicious "Heathers" nearly 20 years ago?) There are the unbelievable characters who say and do contrived, sitcommy things. The montages of shopping and furniture rearranging. The caffeinated score to punctuate all those wacky moments ( Diane Keaton discovering online porn). The gaggle of women graphically discussing their sexual hijinks. And of course, the repeated cutaways to a cute dog reacting to all this shrill nonsense. Keaton plays the overly meddlesome, highly emotional mother of three daughters who worries that her youngest ( Mandy Moore) will stay single the rest of her life. Naturally she crafts an Internet ad and secretly arranges the girl's dates. Gabriel Macht and Tom Everett Scott play the would-be suitors who are so vastly opposite, it's obvious whom we're meant to root for from the start. PG-13 for sexual content including dialogue, some mature thematic material and partial nudity. 111 min. One star out of four.

 Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic

"Factory Girl" - Sienna Miller remains an actress in search of a movie worthy of her talent. She appears in nearly every scene as Edie Sedgwick, the old-money socialite who became Andy Warhol's doomed muse. She can be dazzling, vulnerable, childlike, narcissistic, but always riveting to watch. (And, as you'd imagine, the leggy fashionista wears Sedgwick's signature mod style fabulously.) But while she gives a raw, vibrant performance, the one we've long suspected was in her, she's consistently hampered by the film's clunky script. Director George Hickenlooper falls into the same unfortunate trap so many do in trying to tell the story of a famous person's life: He hits the best-known moments, recreating them with all the convincing detail of a giant game of dress-up, but provides little insight. "Factory Girl" also feels frustratingly truncated: It's the rare film that glosses through a ton of material but isn't long enough or substantive enough. Guy Pearce is sufficiently creepy as Warhol but we don't come away understanding him much better; Hayden Christensen does a bad, breathy Bob Dylan impression. R for pervasive drug use, strong sexual content, nudity and language. 91 min. Two stars out of four.

 Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic

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