Capsule descriptions and starred minireviews by The Commercial Appeal movie writer John Beifuss. Greece: Secrets of the Past: The latest IMAX feature offers a travelog of the Greek Isles and an "archaeological mystery" enhanced by digital re-creations of such ancient spectacles as the creation of the Parthenon and the volcanic destruction of Santorini. Narrated by Nia Vardalos ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding").

Runs through June 22, 2007. Tickets $8; $6.25 children (ages 3-12); group rates available.

Crew Training International IMAX Theater at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations. Accepted (PG-13, 90 min.

) Director Steve Pink's "teen movie" about posthigh school slackers, misfits and smart alecks run amuck on the improvised campus of their own fake college operates at a higher level of wit and energy than most of the so-called adult comedies now onscreen. Justin Long stars as the sharp-tongued underachiever who invents a phony school that takes on a life of its own, becoming a sort of campus-sized Delta House that offers such student-designed courses as "Taking a Walk and Thinking About Stuff." Unfortunately, the script's embrace of the school's supposedly uplifting alternative approach to education gets a little thick, when what's really called for is the anarchy of "Rock 'n' Roll High School.

" Babel (R, 143 min.) "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." That's the title of a famous 1741 sermon; it also could be the workplace slogan for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose three films to date -- "Amores Perros," the made-in-Memphis "21 Grams" and now "Babel" -- seem intended to illuminate the mystery of human interconnectedness but instead reveal the humorless machinations of Inarritu himself.

He's the auteur as puppet master: a Dr. Mabuse of the art house who toys with lives as if observing his puny characters from the on-high vantage point of the final shot of a Japanese cityscape at night that ends his new film. Even so, the technical brilliance of this ambitious, chronologically fragmented project -- scripted, like the director's previous films, by Guillermo Arriaga -- is undeniable, as Inarritu introduces viewers to a international cast of vulnerable characters that includes an unhappy vacationing couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) in Morocco, a trigger-happy young Muslim goatherder (Boubker Eit Al Caid), a troubled deaf teenager (Rinko Kikuchi) in Japan and a Mexican housekeeper (Adriana Barraza) with a reckless nephew (Gael Garcia Bernal).

Barnyard (PG, 90 min.) The latest computer-animated funny-animal movie could cause more gender confusion than "Transamerica": The heroes are "cows," but they're male and they have udders, which makes you wonder if writer-director Steve Oedekerk has ever wandered beyond his Los Angeles ZIP code. The misbegotten story mixes "Lion King" menace and trauma with the wacky wisecracking antics that typify most second-rate CGI releases (the cows look like they've been molded from rubber erasers).

The North Mississippi Allstars contribute five songs and appear in cartoon form as the farm's house band, "the Barnyard Boys" (according to the credits, that is -- you can't tell by looking because the animals don't resemble the Allstars). Memphis' Bo-Keys also contribute a number to the soundtrack, but a fat rat who raps out Shaggy's "Boombastic" steals the show. Bobby (R, 111 min.

) Emilio Estevez directs a film about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (R, 84 min.

) In a fearless, hilarious tightrope act, British comic actor Sacha Baron Cohen utterly inhabits the character of Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist who travels across the "U, S and A" for a documentary for former Soviet bloc television. (Appropriately, the movie is as grainy and ugly as a home video). With his Freddie Mercury mustache, syntactically mangled English and an endless barrage of offensive opinions, Borat initially is a laughable caricature of American ideas about Eastern European "wild and crazy guy" uncool.

But as this reckless innocent abroad visits a gun store, a rodeo, a Pentecostal church service and so on, Borat becomes less shocking than the real-life folks he encounters, who apparently don't realize they are part of a comedian's prank. This might be merely a ruder "Candid Camera," a more clever "Punk'd" or a "Jackass" of the mind if not for the sustained comic outlandishness of Baron Cohen's performance and the almost sleight-of-hand artfulness of the direction of "Seinfeld" veteran Larry Charles, who also helmed the similarly tricky but unloved Bob Dylan movie, "Masked and Anonymous." To paraphrase a great possum: We have met the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, crazy Kazakh, and he is us.

Peabody Place 22, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16. Casino Royale (PG-13, 144 min.) The 21st "official" James Bond film is a "Batman Begins" back-to-basics reboot: Although set in the world of post-9/11 counterintelligence ("I miss the Cold War," muses Judi Dench's M), new Bond Daniel Craig is Bond as a newborn, an agent only recently granted 007 status (we get to see his first two kills).

Craig is a memorable and convincing Bond whose "blunt instrument" physique suits the new film's tougher, relatively realistic action and espionage; but, although I approve of this approach in theory, I found myself curiously unmoved by the film (directed by Martin Campbell from a script that is fairly faithful to Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, published in 1953). Peabody Place 22, Ridgeway Four, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In. Crossover (PG-13, 95 min.

) A premed student with a basketball scholarship to UCLA becomes involved in an extreme form of underground basketball. The bad guy is named "Jewelz"; the love interest is "Eboni"; the template is "tired." Deck the Halls (PG, 95 min.

) See review on Page 13. Deja Vu (PG-13, 126 min.) See review on Page 12.

Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In. The Departed (R, 150 min.) An exciting showcase for a showboat cast and for director Martin Scorsese and his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, this remake of the 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller "Infernal Affairs" in some ways feels like an unofficial followup to Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," moved from 19th century polyglot New York to present-day Irish South Boston.

Once again, Leonardo DiCaprio is a young thug with a secret apprenticed to a devilish crime boss/mentor, played here by Jack Nicholson instead of Daniel Day-Lewis; DiCaprio's Jungian shadow counterpart is a state police officer (Matt Damon) working as an informant for the mob. From its vulgar, male-dominated ethnic underground to its sudden violence to its use of "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack, the movie unreels like a sort of greatest hits compilation of practiced Scorsese riffs; even so, it's so assured and propulsive it arrives as an instant must-see. However, just as a problem child may reveal more about his parents than a golden boy, serious Scorsese fans may find more to chew on in the flawed "Gangs" and "The Aviator" than in this seamless work.

Facing the Giants (PG, 111 min.) Jesus rather than Burt Reynolds or The Rock gets the credit for leading an underdog football team to victory in this earnest but dull drama, apparently made with the best of Christian evangelical intentions by Georgia-based writer-director-producer Alex Kendrick, who also stars as a high school coach who learns to appreciate the message found in Matthew 19:26: "With God, all things are possible." Fast Food Nation (R, 106 min.

) Inspired by Richard Schlosser's nonfiction expose of "The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" (to quote the book's subtitle), director Richard Linklater's ensemble drama tries to stimulate the brain and the conscience more than the gag reflex, even if it does climax with a gruesome tour of an actual commercial abattoir. Like "Traffic," the movie explores the social and cultural consequences of a national addiction through an all-star cast of characters that crosses borders, genders and age differences, including Greg Kinnear as a marketing whiz kid working for a McDonald's-like franchise, Bruce Willis as a threatening meat man and Catalina Sandino Moreno as a pretty illegal immigrant who winds up working on "the killing floor." If the movie isn't entirely successful as either a muckraking call to arms or a metaphor for the U.

S. appetite for destruction, it's also never less than engrossing (as well as occasionally just plain gross). Still, one wonders: If "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Prime Cut" and a score of other horror and gangster features that graphically literalized the concept that Meat Is Murder didn't transform moviegoers into vegetarians, what impact will an artful polemic like this have on the national stomach?

Flags of Our Fathers (R, 132 min.) A dramatic deconstruction of the origin and impact of Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1945 photograph of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood's movie is simultaneously a salute to the unselfish sacrifice of America's soldiers and a rebuke to the "Mission Accomplished" photo ops and propagandistic spin that continue to urge young men to their dooms. Possibly the most logistically complicated and ambitious of Eastwood's 25 features as director to date, "Flags" offers convincing evidence that the 76-year-old filmmaker plans to die with his boots on; unfortunately, the theme here is stated so early that the movie quickly becomes redundant and even ponderous.

Johnny Cash told much of this story with greater force in his four-minute 1964 folk song, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes." Flicka (PG, 100 min.) Alison Lohman stars in the latest adaptation of "My Friend Flicka," the classic novel about the bond between horse and child.

With Maria Bello and Tim McGraw as the girl's parents. Flushed Away (PG, 86 min.) The artists at Aardman Animations (creators of "Wallace Gromit") abandon stop-motion for CGI but retain the company's signature character design in this tale of an uptown rat flushed from his penthouse home to the London sewers.

For Your Consideration (PG-13, 86 min.) See review on Page 6. Studio on the Square.

The Fountain (PG-13, 96 min.) Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, director Darren Aronofsky and a love that crosses centuries. A Good Year (PG-13, 118 min.

) Six years after "Gladiator," star Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott re-team for a genteel contemporary life lesson. Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema. Gridiron Gang (PG-13, 127 min.

) "The Longest Yard" meets "Hoosiers" as The Rock creates a winning football team at a juvenile detention center. The Grudge 2 (PG-13, 103 min.) "Where's the Scooby gang when you need 'em?

" thinks Sarah Michelle Gellar, again encountering creepy ghost children in this American sequel to the American remake of the Japanese horror hit. Bartlett 10, Majestic, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema. The Guardian (PG-13, 139 min.

) A tough military veteran (Kevin Costner) takes a troublemaking recruit (Ashton Kutcher) under his wing. We haven't seen this plot since "Annapolis" left town in the spring. Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Happy Feet (PG, 108 min.) "March of the Penguins," "Moulin Rouge," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "An Inconvenient Truth," the holiday TV special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and Australian director George Miller's earlier kiddie movie for adults, "Babe: A Pig in the City," are a few of the works brought to mind by this unusual, occasionally ultra-cute and surprisingly moving computer-animated film about an odd young penguin named Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) who becomes an Arctic savior after being rejected by his flightless tribe for preferring dancing to finding his (ugh) "heartsong." The movie is suffused with music -- the penguins perform numbers by Prince, Queen, the Beach Boys and many other acts (Mumble's father is a penguin named Elvis, voiced by Hugh Jackman) -- but it also functions as a weirdly scary "first contact" science-fiction story with an earned eco-message, linking it to Miller's breakthrough movies, "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior.

" Harsh Times (R, 116 min.) Christian Bale is an unstable ex-Army Ranger. Peabody Place 22, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Idlewild (R, 120 min.) This musical gangster fantasia set in 1935 Georgia was intended to showcase the big-screen talents of the respected Atlanta hip-hop duo OutKast and to demonstrate that a black-cast movie with a rap pedigree need not pander to cheap "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" gangsta romanticism. Sadly, the result is an ambitious, confused mess that squanders its intriguing Deep South "Cotton Club" imagery and a dream cast that includes Terrence Howard, Paula Jai Parker, Ving Rhames and Ben Vereen in addition to OutKast members Andre Benjam and Antwan A.

Patton, who star as lifelong friends working at a juke joint that is more Cirque de Soleil than Wild Bill's. The movie is conceptually audacious and blissfully anachronistic, with Patton rapping over period-influenced arrangements, but music video veteran Bryan Barber directs with two left feet, sabotaging the excitement of the dance numbers with cuts and camera tricks. True, it's a little late in their careers for the members of OutKast to make their "Purple Rain" move, but who would have expected them to leap straight to "Graffiti Bridge"?

The Illusionist (PG-13, 109 min.) Edward Norton is convincingly intense as a master magician with possibly supernatural powers in this sumptuously produced puzzler set in an elegant fin de siecle Vienna of top-hatted police inspectors, ectoplasmic apparitions and sinister princes who carry jewel-encrusted swords. Writer-director Neil Burger has several tricks up his sleeve; he makes us aware that our response to the action onscreen is a testimony to the conjurations of the filmmakers (the costumes, the characterizations, the special effects), just as the reactions of the people in the movie affirm the magician's talents.

In a sense, the film is as much about the audiences that experience its sleight of hand as it is a love story about a magician who longs for a duchess (Jessica Biel) betrothed to a crown prince (Rufus Sewell). With Paul Giamatti as a sympathetic police inspector. Jackass: Number Two (R, 95 min.

) Another showcase for the violent comedy masochism of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and their MTV co-conspirators. Jet Li's Fearless (PG-13, 103 min.) Shot in and around Shanghai, this is a beautifully produced and satisfying throwback to such historical Hong Kong martial arts epics of the 1990s as "Once Upon a Time in China.

" Now 43, Li claims this will be his last traditional martial arts film; that may explain why he seems to be the project's true auteur, rather than veteran director Ronny Yu or legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping. Almost a dramatic infomercial for the benefits of Chinese martial arts, the movie is filled with dialogue that defines the tenets of wushu while offering a welcome alternative to ideas about vengeance and power that motivate too many movie heroes and too many real-world personal and political transactions. Sample inspiration: "Fear and respect are not the same.

" Let's Go to Prison (R, 89 min.) Dax Shephard stars in a wacky tale of crime and "pun"-ishment. Peabody Place 22, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema.

The Marine (PG-13, 92 min.) Pro wrestler John Cena get mad. Beat up bad guys.

Rescue wife. Win Oscar? Majestic, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Monster House (PG, 91 min.) Erected by debuting feature director Gil Kenan and producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, the computer-generated "Monster House" is creepy in more ways than one: The "performance capture" technology introduced in "The Polar Express" -- in which actors wearing sensors are photographed to provide a framework for digital artists -- still results in animated human characters who look more disturbing than natural. Even so, this story of three plucky young friends (think Harry, Hermione and Ron, without magic powers) who investigate the neighborhood haunted house is often scary and exciting, and the house itself -- with its carpet tongue, broken-plank teeth and scowling window eyes ("performance-captured" from the expressions of Kathleen Turner) -- is way cool.

Too bad the enterprise is undermined by such termites as a bug-eyed black cop who could have been "performance captured" from Willie Best. One Night with the King (PG, 122 min.) Tiffany Dupont stars as the Bible's Esther in this feature from the company responsible for such Christian-targeted films as "The Omega Code.

" With Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif and, um, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister. Open Season (PG, 87 min.) A sort of Looney Tunes redux of "Born Free," this promising debut feature from a new CGI company, Sony Pictures Animation, is enhanced by stylized character design that is witty and pleasing: These deer, skunks, beavers and other critters not only look but move funny.

Martin Lawrence provides the voice of Boog, a pet grizzly bear who learns to adjust to life in the wild with the comic help of a goofy mule deer (Ashton Kutcher). Paul Westerberg provides the songs; I don't begrudge him the paycheck, but there's something offputting about watching a cartoon bear emote while the former voice of the Replacements gruffly croons, in the key of melancholy: "A good day / Is any day that you're alive ..

." Hollywood 20 Cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (PG-13, 151 min.

) Cannibals, a tentacled "kraken" and a crew of undead barnacly monster-pirates are among the threats (and treats) in director Gore Verbinski's amusing but exhausting sequel to his 2003 mega-hit. The plotting is simple-minded yet confusing, as Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) embark on a series of repetitive quests that are cut short only by the cliffhanger non-ending. The Prestige (PG-13, 130 min.

) Christopher Nolan ("Memento," "Batman Begins") directs the season's second magician movie (after "The Illusionist"), this time starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival conjurers in turn-of-the- century London. Adapted from a novel by Christopher Priest, the film's twisted plot -- part "Sleuth," part "Itchy Scratchy," part science fiction (David Bowie appears as maverick inventor Nikola Tesla) -- is likely to reward repeat viewings. The Queen (PG-13, 97 min.

) Helen Mirren -- is she the world's greatest living actress? -- stars as Queen Elizabeth II in this impeccably produced examination of the royal family's reaction to the 1997 death of Princess Diana, which -- according to the film -- created a "constitutional crisis" and a low-key but high-stakes and extremely formal political chess match between the 71-year-old Elizabeth and England's young, newly elected Labor prime minister, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). Directed by adaptable veteran Stephen Frears ("The Grifters," "High Fidelity") from a script by Peter Morgan, the movie is sympathetic to the queen (she's presented as an old-fashioned but witty and self-aware stoic who wears sturdy shoes and knows her way around an automobile engine) and to the monarchy (which Frears equates with the proud, endangered stag that roams the grounds of Balmoral Castle).

Whether the institution is worthy of such affection is a debate for another movie; this one works wonderfully on its own terms. Studio on the Square, Hollywood 20 Cinema. The Return (PG-13, 85 min.

) Sarah Michelle Gellar must be a supernatural multitasker. See her battle ghosts in "The Grudge 2"; then trot down the multiplex hall to a different auditorium and watch her learn yet again that "some spirits never die." The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (G, 92 min.

) Tim Allen as Santa vs. Martin Short as Jack Frost. The loser: Once again, the dignity of the Santa Claus character itself.

Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In. Saw III (R, 107 min.) Worse than simply grisly, grimy and unpleasant, the "Saw" films also are pretentious, as the psychotic Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) -- a sort of splatter Mitch Albom -- tries to teach life lessons to various ingrates by torturing and murdering them.

Bell brings surprising dignity to the role (this time, the dying Jigsaw at least gets more screen time than his freaky bike-riding puppet alter ego); unfortunately, the visually spastic direction of Darren Lynn Grossman ("Saw II") does no service to the performance or to an over-clever script by franchise creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Peabody Place 22, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema. School for Scoundrels (PG-13, 100 min.

) Bad Santa clashes with Napoleon Dynamite in this clever and sometimes very funny story of a lifelong loser (Jon Heder) whose love life is sabotaged by his own empowerment coach (Billy Bob Thornton). Unfortunately, director Todd Phillips ("Old School") eventually allows implausible plot mechanics to replace winning character comedy. Snakes on a Plane (R, 106 min.

) The one thing that could kill the phenomenon that is "Snakes on a Plane" has arrived: "Snakes on a Plane." As has been widely reported, the Internet-generated buzz inspired by the project's tell-it-like-it-is title became so intense that the giddy producers upped the level of gore, sex and Samuel L. Jackson profanity to meet fan expectations; based on the film's modest box office performance, those fans remained the only people who really wanted to see the movie, despite the hype.

The publicity created unrealistic expectations: I like seeing a fanged reptile leap from a barf bag onto an airline passenger's face as much as the next person, but I was disappointed that this readymade camp classic is more an "Airport" sequel with snakes than a horror movie in the air. Directed by David R. Ellis, who proved himself an efficient pulp storyteller with "Final Destination 2" and "Cellular.

" Stranger Than Fiction (PG-13, 113 min.) Will Ferrell discovers his life seems to be controlled by a novelistic narrator whose voice only he can hear. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (PG-13, 110 min.

) This comedy of willful (Will-ful?) dumbness reunites the star, director, story structure, goofball caricature and title punctuation of 2004's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" but adds some potentially provocative satire: The archnemesis of dimwitted NASCAR champion Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) is not only French but gay -- a Formula One driver (scene-stealing Sacha Baron Cohen) who loves jazz, Camus and his "husband" (Andy Richter), and who disdains America for giving the world "George Bush, Cheerios and the Thighmaster." The film contains many funny moments, but it treats moviegoers as suckers as it eagerly embraces the product-placement dollars of the chain restaurants and junk food it pretends to mock.

No wonder the Formula One driver tells Ricky Bobby after a literal French kiss: "You taste of America." Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny' (R, 97 min.) Jack Black and Kyle Gass discover "the ways of rock.

" The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (R, 91 min.) Technically accomplished repulsiveness is the hallmark of director Jonathan Liebesman's origin-of-Leatherface prequel to the 2003 remake, which attempts to justify its ugly sadism through some very black comedy (courtesy of deranged pseudo-sheriff R. Lee Ermey) and a revival of the Vietnam-era cultural politics of Tobe Hooper's original film.

Here as in 1974, the cannibal family represents an adult establishment that turns young people into not just cannon fodder but literal fodder. "Freedom isn't free," says the hippie-and-Commie-hating Ermey, as he brutalizes his victims -- one of whom happens to be a draft dodger.