by KEVIN LAFOREST and MARK SLUTSKY

The Island

Michael Bay is back in the summer game (and out of the produced-by-Jerry-Bruckheimer game) with this Frankensteinian sci-fi picture, mostly cobbled together by ripping off other hi-concept flicks. For what it's worth, The Island has its entertaining moments (there's nothing particularly wrong with a good rip-off), and it's definitely a whole lot more palatable than Bay's last, the grisly, smirky, death-loving Bad Boys 2.

It's 2019, and our heroes, Lincoln (Ewan McGregor) and Jordon (Scarlett Johansson), live in a dystopic society vaguely reminiscent of THX 1138 and Brave New World, with a little bit o' 1984 thrown in for good measure. Their needs and desires are carefully monitored, and it's understood that the world outside has been polluted by some unspecified disaster. Once in a while, some lucky citizens win a chance to go live in the last unspoiled place - an island enticingly called "The Island."

But after some very mild snooping on Lincoln's part (security in the complex is all bark and no bite), he discovers that he and his buddies are all just clones of rich people, bred to provide organs when their "sponsors" need 'em. Time to (surprisingly easily) escape! And thus we're thrust into a movie that's a little bit Matrix, a little bit Minority Report and a whole lot of shaky, poorly-directed action scenes that I wish were much better. Still, The Island succeeds at being an amusingly dumb summertime diversion. (MS)

Childstar

Taylor Brandon Burns is a 12-year-old sitcom actor who's about to star in The First Son, an idiotic Hollywood flick that could be described as a cross between Home Alone and Air Force One. While they're shooting in Canada, Taylor (Mark Rendall) is driven around by Rick Schiller (Don McKellar) - who only plans on working part-time as a limo driver until his own filmmaking career takes off, but is conned by the boy's mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) into becoming Talyor's full-time handler.

This premise could go many different ways: You could play on how this wholesome kid on TV is a spoiled brat off screen, or make him into a tragic figure who's being exploited and cheated out of a childhood, or you could focus on the failed Canadian director confronted by the excesses of big Hollywood productions.

Unfortunately, instead of picking one plot and developing it properly, the movie takes all these stories and throws them together into a free-for-all of half-baked ideas and unearned tone shifts. The characters are all underwritten, their motivations constantly changing at the whim of the plot(s). There are a few good laughs, but they're few and far between. Writer-director McKellar does have a point to make about children being used by the film industry, but it takes him forever to get to it, and by then we're past caring. (KL)

Watermarks

I walked into this reluctantly, expecting a dull documentary about old Jewish women swimmers. How wrong I was! What I didn't know is that these ladies were champion breaststrokers and divers in their youth, dominating national competitions in their native Austria. Making their story even more dramatic is the era in which it took place, the 1930s. The film's subjects were all part of Hakoah ("The Strength" in Hebrew), the famous Vienna sports club that opened its doors in response to an Aryan clause, which barred Jews from joining Austrian teams.

While it allows the women to recall their glory days, much of the storytelling in Watermarks is done visually, through striking old black-and-white photographs and archival footage. We hear about - and see - the Hakoah swimmers achieving great success and eventually being asked to represent Austria at the 1936 Olympics... in Nazi Berlin. They refused, and Hakoah was subsequently banned from the Austrian Sports Federation and shut down by the Nazis. Before things got worse, though, the club's president helped his athletes to escape to other countries. Then, some 65 years later, director Yaron Zilberman organized a Vienna reunion for the six surviving swimmers. An unexpected happy ending to a tragic tale, capping off a film full of emotion and humanity. (KL)

The Island, Childstar and Watermarks open Friday, July 22

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