Ty's picks for Friday, June 9, 2006

Got kids? Take 'em to see "Cars." It's not Pixar's almighty best, and it definitely has its eye on the youngest children in the audience -- for once, the calculation shows. But so does John Lasseter's love of Looney Tunes humor and the random magic moment. Most ingratiatingly (and despite the message the Disney marketing department is jamming down our throats), this is an anti-racing movie that says get off the highway and slow the hell down.

Wesley's not here to stick up for his choices (he's in Peru at a wedding, don't ask), so allow me to say that "A Prairie Home Companion" should be considered essential viewing for fans of Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor, not to mention Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and, yes, even Lindsay Lohan, who acquits herself without embarrassment as Meryl's brooding backstage daughter. Less so Kevin Kline and Virginia Madsen, but I'm not sure anyone could have made sense out of their roles. This is minor Altman and oddball Keillor, but cheering and eccentrically homey in all the right ways. Sticks to your ribs like biscuits and gravy.

Also, if Korean arthouse horror is your thing, you doubtess already know that Park Chan-wook's "Lady Vengeance" opens today, the third in this grisly poet's "revenge trilogy" after "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Old Boy." I liked it a lot more than Wesley did -- for once Park's clinical obsessions and ghoulish humor hook up with actual emotions -- at the same time that I can't help but lose respect for the filmmaker for the scenes involving kids. The guy can make movies like nobody's business, but videotaping a four-year-old screaming in terror is on at least one level depraved. Or do we just not like where this movie takes us? Discuss.

Best performance of the weekend? Easy: Nick Nolte in "Clean," Olivier Assayas' tale of a messed-up rock-and-roll widow (Maggie Cheung) trying to stay off the junk and reconnect with her young son. Nolte plays her father-in-law, and the actor has never seemed more gently immediate. Cheung won best actress at Cannes, but Nolte turns in the richer performance.