The Cinecultist's Weekly Movie Picks: Wolverine edition

This week the box office juggernaut that is the new X-Men sequel has scared away all of the competition from the new releases category. All save for one plucky little environmentalist otherwise known as our former Future President of the United States, Al Gore and his scary documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. However, if you're gonna be one of those people that's all "I'm anti-Brett Ratner and his tyrannical reign of self-aggrandizement" and you've already been there, done that on The Da Vinci Code, there's still tons of repertory to take in instead this weekend.

After that recent Saturday Night Live sketch where Al Gore mocked himself and what our government has become without him at the helm, it's nice to see this sometimes self-serious politician back in the limelight. His new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth tells a pretty scary bed time story about how much we've screwed up our environment that it could put you off sleeping for a good while. Though it can't expect to do much in terms of box office returns, at least Gore is getting his message out there and into at least a segment of the cultural dialogue.

An entry in this year's New Directors/New Films series with MoMA and the Film Society, Cavite is a Filipino-American film about a young American returning to visit his family in Manilla. Unfortunately when he discovers they've been kidnapped he becomes embroiled in the Filipino underworld and takes a tour of one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city, Cavite. The film will be screening at Cinema Village and all the reviews we've read suggest it's well worth checking out.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Film Society at Lincoln Center's new Italian films series, "Open Roads," now in its sixth year. Italian cinema is more than just sexy accents, tomato sauce and old Fellini films. This mini fest which runs through June 6 and features full lengths and shorts programs is a great way to become acquainted with this flourishing industry.

In terms of movies that are just good, clean fun, Goonies has to be high up there on the list. You know you love these characters, those quotable lines and the silly buried treasure plot line. It's a perfect flick for a midnight movie and it screens this weekend at the Sunshine Theater on Houston, head down there and hope for a Corey Feldman sighting, he does live in the nabe afterall.

Gothamist Pick:
Has anyone heard a straight answer about whether this is merely the third X-Men movie or the final? Anyhow, X-Men: The Last Stand brings back all of your favorite persecuted mutant super heroes with the lovely Hugh Jackman leading the pack as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, Famke Janssen as (the now evil) Jean Gray, Ian McKellen as Magneto and various sundry others. As the cast has been pointing out while on the promotion circuit, X-Men is the film which set off this comic book movies trend and with good reason. While there's loads of explosions and cool effects, the director of the first two installments, Bryan Singer, always snuck in some intriguing cultural commentary and strong characters too. Will Ratner (of the Rush Hour franchise) be up to this challenge? Only a screening of the thing will tell but a big blockbuster seems like a great way to Gothamist for kicking off the long weekend.