Capsule reviews of other films opening today ...

	With a kiss, Lindsay Lohan unknowingly trades her good luck for Chris Pine's bad in "Just My Luck." Click photo for larger image. Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of 'Just My Luck'

'Just My Luck'

In "Just My Luck," Lindsay Lohan may play the luckiest woman in the world, but she sure isn't the smartest or the most observant.

When Ashley Albright (Lohan) loses her luck after kissing a stranger at a masquerade party, she embarks on a search to find him and kisses a lot of frogs who look nothing like her man -- disguised in a Lone Ranger-style mask and a hat -- before unwittingly finding her prince (Chris Pine).

The stylish Ashley doesn't just lose her golden touch with sample sales, taxis and lottery tickets; she is jailed, fired and homeless. But life becomes sweet for Jake Hardin (Pine), who gets a new swanky pad and a contract for the British boy band he manages.

"Just My Luck" tracks her trajectory down -- cleaning the men's room at a bowling alley -- and his up, with a second meet-cute between the pair. Directed by Donald Petrie, "Just My Luck" seems like a tween soundtrack in search of a movie, a lackluster effort to bridge Lohan's career from her G-rated "Herbie: Fully Loaded" to more adult material.

That would be a good idea if the screenplay were smartly written, briskly paced and filmed in New York, instead of New Orleans, which cheats for the Big Apple for much of the comedy. It attempts to milk laughs, for instance, from a music mogul using a $5 bill to pick up his dog's waste and then having someone spot the fiver in the trash. You get the idea.

Rated PG-13 for some brief sexual references.

-- By Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor

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'Art School Confidential'

Joel David Moore as Bardo and Max Minghella as Jerome in "Art School Confidential." Click photo for larger image.

John Malkovich knows a good screenplay when he reads one. That's why he invested in co-producer status and co-stars in oddball director Terry Zwigoff's wry spanking of art school culture.

Zwigoff knows something of artists. In 1994, he became the darling of the film festival circuit with "Crumb," his award-winning if slightly creepy documentary of the life and dysfunctional times of underground comic artist Robert Crumb. Five years ago he turned "Ghost World," the underground strip of another comic artist, Daniel Clowes, into a feature film.

Clowes' screenplay of "Art School Confidential" begins with cynical send-ups of art school stereotypes: the class kiss-up, the hippie spiritualist, the can't-choose-a-major know-it-all, the angry lesbian, the obsessed wannabe filmmaker, the nurturing empty-nest mom, the arrogant pseudo-intellectual art snob; and assorted others.

Max Minghella ("Syriana," "Bee Season") plays another stereotype: the virginal visual-arts freshman with dreams of artistic grandeur. His elegant classical portraits are mocked by students and teachers, and his slow assimilation into the cutthroat world of a New York City art school parallels his naive obsession with a beautiful nude model from the school's promotional brochure.

Malkovich plays it appropriately understated as a resentful failed artist who teaches art. Sophia Myles ("Underworld," "From Hell") and Anjelica Huston do less with their supporting roles, but Steve Buscemi is fun in an uncredited role as the self-serving keeper of a local coffeehouse that showcases student works.

Clowes' subplot, a criminal mystery about a serial strangler creating a masterpiece of death on the sidewalks just outside the school, gradually intersects with his student love story. A clever twist ending seems to sum up Clowes' and perhaps Zwigoff's attitudes about art school, the art industry and all those who think it's terribly important.

Rated R for language including sexual references, nudity and a scene of violence.

-- John Hayes, Post-Gazette staff writer

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'Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream'

	Tim Curry played "sweet transvestite" Frank N. Furter in midnight staple "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Click photo for larger image.

In 1970, American audiences had little interest in Mexican films, particularly an abstract art piece showing human disembowelment, naked monks whipped with cacti and a priest riding off into the sunset with a midget and her baby.

One enterprising New York theater owner, however, thought that Alejandro Jodorowsky's low-budget "El Topo" might help him to bring in the late-night sidewalk riff-raff if it were screened long after the mainstream audiences had gone home.

Overnight, the midnight movie was born, and with it the cult culture that some of the films created.

In documentary filmmaker Stuart Samuels' view, a half dozen low-budget films released between 1970 and 1977 changed the way the world watches movies. "Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream" is an insider's look at the way a desperate, outside-the-box marketing ploy caught the imagination of a small and previously underserved portion of the film audience, and how their cinematic preferences have influenced the mainstream.

Samuels speaks with filmmakers, bookers, critics, stars and fans. He cites statistics, analyzes the artistic value of the midnight hits and describes the subtle ways that their impact on the next generation of filmmakers ultimately impacted mainstream movie fans.

After "El Topo" came George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," which had been filmed two years earlier but eventually found its following at midnight screenings. Next were Perry Henzell's reggae-flavored "The Harder They Come"; John Waters' soon-to-be-classic "Pink Flamingos"; Jim Sharman's film adaptation of a stage horror-spoof, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"; and David Lynch's paean to post-apocalyptic industrialization, "Eraserhead."

Interesting interviews with Pittsburghers Romero and Russ Streiner shed light on their dark "Living Dead" classic, and it's no surprise that Waters is a terrific source on everything related to low-budget innovation, the rise of the movie underground and cult culture.

Not rated but contains brief scenes documenting extreme violence, language and adult situations.

Opening today at the Oaks Theater only. Russ Streiner, producer of "Night of the Living Dead," will host an audience discussion following the 7:30 p.m. Monday screening.

-- John Hayes