by SARAH ROWLAND

Imaginary Heroes

Beginning with a suicide and ending with a cancer scare, Dan Harris's debut feature spends a year in the life of a family plagued by an onslaught of tragedies and one big-ass secret that isn't revealed until the final act.

Ben (Jeff Daniels) and Sandy Travis (Sigourney Weaver) are upper-class suburbanites who have been married a good decade too long. Neither one is particularly likeable nor believable.

Here, Daniels channels Mary Tyler Moore's second most memorable role by playing the parent who turns to stone after his favourite child dies. He treats his surviving son Tim (Emile Hirsch) like a second-class citizen and, not surprisingly, he's a pretty shitty husband too. Just days after their oldest son blows his brains out, he suggests to his wife that she might consider doing something about her crows' feet.

Where Ben's cruelty is overstated, Sandy's grief is equally understated. She floats along like she's an unfulfilled housewife in the throes of a mid-life crisis, as opposed to a woman mourning the death of her first-born. She experiments with reefer, makes eyes at the check-out boy and starts talking frankly about sexuality to son Tim, who is justifiably disgusted.

The best part of this quiet drama that desperately wants to be Ordinary People meets Ice Storm is the underplayed relationship between the introverted Tim and his juvenile delinquent best friend (Ryan Donowho). When they're not serving community hours together, they're dropping E and experimenting sexually with each other. Playing the perfect adolescent fuck-up, newcomer Donowho is a stand-out, and though his screen time is limited, he outclasses both of the film's big names. Near the end I found myself more curious about the hot young actor's upcoming projects than Imaginary Heroes' climactic family secret. Not a good sign.

Exils

Full of breathtaking cinematography, internationally flavoured rhythms and dripping with pretentiousness, at times Exils feels more like an extended world beat music video than a feature film.

In the first scene, we have naked Parisian slacker Zano (Romain Duris) blasting techno beats as he stares pensively out a window. It's in that moment he decides he's not going to play his beloved violin until he reacquaints himself with his Algerian roots. He then convinces his girlfriend Naïma (Lubna Azabal), who has also spent her life denying her Arab heritage, to join him on his soul-searching safari. And just like that, the two pack up their few belongings and proceed to screw, mooch and hitchhike their way through most of France and Spain until they reach their Motherland.

While both leads are beautiful to look at, Azabal's character can be quite grating at times, especially the shrieking cackle she lets out during foreplay to let us all know how playful she is in bed. Speaking of which, French Algerian filmmaker Tony Gatlif, who won best director for Exils at the 2004 Cannes, goes a little overboard in making the point that Naïma is a nympho. It's one thing to whisper into your boyfriend's ear "I want your dick;" it's quite another to dirty dance with mosquitoes, blow fruit and fuck random strangers the second your partner turns his back.

Understandably, it's the latter habit that really pisses Zano off. But he always takes her back because, as Naïma so thoughtfully point out, he's no prize either. After all, he's a deadbeat musician without any job prospects (he's got the funky vagabond hat to prove it.)

Depending on your tastes, Exils could be an aesthetically satisfying and musically gratifying experience. But if you have an overly sensitive radar for cinematic pomp, stay clear.

Travellers & Magicians

With a clearly defined moral message and some wholesome storytelling, this is almost a kidpic - that is if you can find a kid willing to sit through a subtitled, Buddhist film.

Based partially on Bhutan folklore, writer/director Khyentse Norbu intertwines two different yet similar stories. Dondup is a respected but restless government officer living in a beautiful but boring Himalayan village. He gets it in his head that picking fruit in the States is far more glamorous than his present lot in life. So he hits the dirt highway with his thumb out, where he meets fellow hitchhiker (Sonam Kinga). This mischievous little monk warns Dondup about the reality of moving to a dreamland. "You might not like what you see when you finally wake up," he says before reciting a long mystical tale. The drawn-out fable follows a young rural magician Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji), who yearns for a change in scenery. This leads him into trouble with a married temptress Deki, (Deki Yangzom), who is (and I don't say these word often), one hot Buddha babe.

Since this is the first film ever to be shot in Bhuton, none of the actors are professional, which makes this picturesque viewing so much more the sweeter, not to mention karmatically beneficial. It's just too bad that it moves along at a snail's pace.

XXX: State of the Union

Replacing Vin Diesel is the equally talented thespian Ice Cube in this action-packed sequel that sharply divided the audience at the advanced screening. One half of the crowd laughed with Cube, like when his character gets the president of the United States to inadvertently quote Tupac. The remaining viewers, however, laughed at Cube. These same people also got a kick out of watching Willem Dafoe and Samuel L. Jackson whore themselves in Lee Tamahori's thinly veiled excuse to showcase as many souped up ghettomobiles as possible.

In between all the "hacking and jacking" there is a makeshift plot about a hardened inmate (Cube) commissioned by a top-secret agent (Jackson) to help intercept a sinister terrorist group led by a high-ranking government official (Dafoe).

In one particularly entertaining scene, Dafoe and Cube go a few rounds on a speeding train, and we're supposed to believe that Cube's tree-trunk biceps and the wiry 50-year-old actor are an even match. Dead funny for some.

For others, however, these fight-to-the-death sequences proved powerfully emotive. After the screening, a minor skirmish broke out between a disgruntled gangstah wannabe and the theatre usher. As I scurried past the commotion, a series of questions raced through my head like, will I get danger pay for this assignment, will Pimp My Ride get a cut for this film and is Jackson back on the pipe?

Imaginary Heroes, Exils, Travellers and Magicians and XXX: State of the Union open Friday, April 29

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