Ty's picks for Friday, September 22

Lot of interesting films opening in the Boston area today, but for my money the only one that feels like a movie -- the bubbles over with flaky cinematic life -- is Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep." As others have noted, it's like a Charlie Kaufman movie without Charlie Kaufman. (The cracked-genius screenwriter and Gondry have collaborated twice before, on "Human Nature" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"; Gondry does his own script this time out.) Gael Garcia Bernal is downright adorable as a Parisian man-child who has trouble distinguishing between dreams and wakey-wakey, and Gondry brings the character's playful visions to incredible, literal fruition. It's like spending a few hours rifling through an artist's messy closet -- you never know what you're going to pull out of the debris next. True, "Science" sorta falls apart at the end -- dreams have a way of doing that -- but you don't mind terribly, so sweet and so funny is the journey up to then.

"All the King's Men"? A big disappointment -- flat, overacted, purposeless. I don't need to beat on Sean Penn any more than I did in my review (and everyone else is doing in theirs), so how about a word for James Horner's dreadful score, a strident, over-obvious piece of hackwork that telegraphs every emotion so you don't get a chance to feel it for yourself? Please, someone stop Horner before he scores again.

If you like war movies and you don't mind a whole lot of cliches, "Flyboys" might be worth your time. It's the first WWI dogfight movie in a few decades, and while there may be an honest reason for that, it's nice to see the loop-de-loops and double Immelmans back on the big screen. Points lost, though, for Jennifer Decker as the least believably French Frenchwoman in recent movies.

There's a new Jet Li movie in town, his last in the martial arts genre (he says). For elegant bone-crushing ballet, it's the goods. And Wesley loves "Jackass: Number Two," which frees up you and me from having to. You do know it'll be the big moneymaker of the weekend, don't you? Oh, stop with the "decline of American civilization" bellyaching -- some people just like to see men doing grievous harm to their body parts, and if they want to pay good money for it, that's their business.

Also, two of the best and most unrelenting art-house movies of the summer pop up at the Brattle on Sunday: "The Proposition" and "Lady Vengeance." Both well worth seeing on a big screen, but don't eat a big meal beforehand.