by Robert Alstead

The big fixture this month is, of course, the May 19 release of the eagerly anticipated, much talked about The Da Vinci Code.
For those who may have been locked in a vault for the last year or so, the film is based on Dan Brown’s hugely successful novel about a secretive, Christian conspiracy wrapped up in a puzzle, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s work.
Tom Hanks stars as a Harvard professor, who teams up with a French cryptologist (Amelie star Audrey Tatou) to follow a trail of puzzles across Paris, London and beyond, leading to what is probably now the worst-kept secret about the real relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
A whirlwind of controversy has surrounded Brown’s book. The movie, which opens the prestigious Cannes Film Festival (May 17), was still under wraps at Common Ground’s press deadline, so I can only speculate that if The Da Vinci Code is as provocative as the book, it will be a talking point for months to come.
Following in the wake of the excellent German drama Downfall, which reconstructed Hitler’s last days in his bunker, comes another film from Germany about the difficult subject of wartime under the Nazis. Sophie Scholl (opens May 19), which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film, recounts the true story of a 21-year-old, anti-war protestor in Munich in 1943.
A procedural drama, it focuses on the courage of a young woman, who had the boldness to follow her conscience under great duress throughout days of interrogation.
If you are looking for something lighter, Akeelah and the Bee (out now) should fit the bill. In the footsteps of acclaimed documentary Spellbound, Akeelah tells the story of a cute, but deprived, 11-year-old girl (Keke Palmer), who has a gift for spelling.
She is discovered by a gruff prof (Laurence Fishburne), who helps her compete in a national spelling bee. It’s a roller-coasting, heart-warming crowd-pleaser.
On a Clear Day is in the same bracket (out on May 12), starring the ever-reliable Peter Mullan as an unemployed, Glasgow shipbuilder, who seeks to repair his ebbing sense of self-worth and rocky relationships, by swimming the body of water between England and France known as the Channel.
Moving closer to home, in Souvenir of Canada, Gen X author Douglas Coupland offers entertaining musings on what makes us Canadian (opens May 12).
Actually, when you see Coupland’s magpie-like collection of Canadiana, acquired for his grand-sounding Canada House project – a Vancouver bungalow that he converted into an art installation before it was demolished – it’s inevitably a subjective and ephemeral view, but intelligent and funny.
While films about making movies often run the danger of getting bogged down in cliché, David Mamet’s sharp-witted satire State and Main pulls it off.
In Don’t Come Knocking (out now), director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepherd try a more abstract approach. Shepherd plays a washed-up film set fugitive, who attempts to aright 30 years of wild gallivanting by reconnecting with family, including a son he never knew he had.
Meanwhile, the movie’s insurance investigator (Tim Roth) is hot on his heels. Knocking is similar in tone to Shepherd and Wenders’ memorable, earlier partnership production Paris, Texas, with a surreal, regretful quality, and some luscious cinematography, although the unevenness of its tone makes it a little unsatisfying.
The Doxa Film Festival returns this year to the Vancouver International Film Centre and Empire Granville 7, with six days of new documentaries running from May 23 to 28.
The festival opens with Shameless, which marks Bonnie Sherr Klein’s return to directing nearly 20 years after she suffered two strokes at the age of 46. Shameless casts a critical eye toward the representation of disability in the arts, and the work of disabled artists themselves, “seeking to dispel the myth of disability as tragedy, and replace it with something much more complex and interesting, including laughter.”
Doxa closes with Escape to Canada, a film by Andrew Nerenberg (Stupidity), which looks at whether or not Canada can be cool.
Other festival highlights include Homemade Hillbilly Jam, a modern-day, musical romp through the Ozarks, Leila Khaled Hijacker, in which the filmmaker catches up with an infamous, female terrorist, and Zero Degrees of Separation, a film exploring the complications of being in love with someone of the same sex, who hails from the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
More at www.doxafestival.ca

Robert Alstead, who also writes for www.iofilm.ca, is currently making a documentary about cycling called You Never Bike Alone, www.youneverbikealone.com