Hollywood Bites Reviews: Mao's Last Dancer

If Billy Elliot had grown up under an oppressive Communist regime, he might have been Mao's Last Dancer.

In the hands of veteran Australian director Bruce Beresford, who helmed such tender triumphs as "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Crimes of the Heart," and screenwriter Jan Sardi, who also penned "Shine" and adapted Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook, Li Cunxin's autobiography of the same name has moments where it soars like a grand jete despite hitting a few faltering steps along the way.

Li Cunxin (played from youth to adulthood by Huang Wen Bin, Australian Ballet dancer Chengwu Guo and finally, the real stand out, Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Chi Cao) grew up in rural China, the sixth son of peasants in a mountain village, who was selected by Madame Mao's cultural advisers to attend the Beijing Dance Academy, a place where young students endured grueling 16-hour days of training. Years later, he attracts the attention of Ben Stevenson ("Star Trek"'s Bruce Greenwood), the director of the Houston Ballet Company, and in invited to America for a three month cultural exchange program that leads to his triumphant debut with the company.

After falling in love with American dance, freedom, and one lovely woman, Liz ("Center Stage" star Amanda Schull), when the time comes to return to China, he opts for a quickie wedding instead, defecting from his homeland and inciting and international incident that insures he'll never be able to return to China or see his family again.

While the film can occasionally feel clunky, such as the night Li experiences disco for the first time or when Liz and Li have a paint-by-numbers lover's spat, the beauty cinematographer Peter James ("Driving Miss Daisy," "Alive") captures is enchanting as he moves the audience from dusty, cold Chinese ballet studios to the warmth of the klieg lights in Texas. But the film's true rapture exists in the dance scenes, stunningly performed by Cao, and in Greenwood's performance.

As the complex, conflicted puppet master Greenwood offers a smorgasbord of mixed emotions that range from calculated manipulation to tender affection, including one stellar scene where he offers the definition of the word "Chink" to Li.

Unapologetically sentimental and earnestly sincere, "Mao's Last Dancer" isn't without some major structural and narrative issues, but thanks to good acting and absolutely stunning dancing, when you leave the theater, all you want to do is pirouette.

Chris Pine's Bloody Good Show: Lieutenant of Inishmore

Don’t be surprised if a few of your fellow theatergoers march out of The Lieutenant of Inishmore in a huff halfway through the final act. This isn’t a play for the faint of heart and director Wilson Milam goes, quite literally, for the jugular, creating a spectacle that’s haunting, hilarious and deeply disturbing. For those who chose to turn tail and abandon the show as it reaches its climax, count it as their loss because the play is one of the best shows to grace the Mark Taper Forum’s stage in recent memory.

Awkward, brutal, bloody and unrelenting--did I mention it’s a comedy?—playwright Martin McDonagh is known for works that thrive from their ability to take violence, humiliation and torture and turn them into oddly compelling, beautifully cultivated creations, such as his Oscar-nominated screenplay for In Bruges or his Tony-nominated works such as The Pillowman and The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

A shoe polish black comedy that seems like something Quentin Tarantino might have authored had he gone into theater, Inishmore is McDonagh’s thinly veiled farce about Northern Ireland’s longstanding war for independence from England. It begins inside a shabby old shack on the outskirts of a quiet Irish town with Donny (Sean G. Griffin) and Davey (Coby Getzug in an assured and magnetic performance) examining what remains of a dead black cat. But this isn’t any cat, it’s Wee Thomas, the beloved pet of Mad Padraic (Chris Pine), a man so mad, “the IRA wouldn’t let him in,” who’s off on a rampage of torture and chip-shop bombing in Northern Ireland. Called in the middle of deciding which nipple to slick off a drug dealer, Padraic races home to be with the cat he loves more than life itself and bloody, hilarious carnage ensues.

Pine, of Star Trek fame, was most recently onstage at the Geffen in last year’s production of Farragut North. Though at times he seems to be channeling his Enterprise predecessor William Shatner with an Irish lilt, he’s wonderfully capable onstage, confidently strutting across the boards as an impish man-child with a shotgun temper in this stellar production.

Zoe Saldana, a "Loser" Who Saves the Day

Give this girl an RPG over a cookie sheet any day.

After star-solidifying turns in "Avatar" and "Star Trek" last year, Zoe Saldana has proven she can hang with the big boys.

At last weekend's press day for her new film, "The Losers," or, as we like to call it, "The A-Team That Doesn't Suck," the actress, a silver of a woman whose striking beauty is belied by her gregarious convivial personality, says she loves being the only girl in the cast, even if it means pushing well beyond her limits.

As the lone actress on several testosterone-driven sets recently, Saldana says, "I almost feel like you have twice as much work to do because you don't want to be singled out. If you're the one who says 'I can't do this,' everyone's going to say 'She's wimping out because she's a girl.' I really wanted to impress the guys." Plus, she says with a Cheshire Cat grin, "I like being around men. I think I can hold my own."

After her turn as The Losers' resident "bad ass chick," don't expect Saldana to take on the damsel-in-distress role as a follow up.

"I feel that Hollywood has made a living portraying women to be such canker sores," she says, her face crinkling in disgust. "We have to be rescued all the time because we're so incompetent. Art need to reflect what's going on in real life. I'm from Queens in the 80s. Women were the care takers and they were the soldiers. I like holding a gun and participating in the saving of the day. I think it's really sexy. It kind of [reminds me of] my mom."

"The Losers" opens April 23.