AMERICAN HARDCORE 3 stars. Paul Rachman's gritty, uncompromising documentary is about punk rock, not porn. With interviews with luminaries like Henry Rollins and Mike Watt, it chronicles the exploits of 1980s bands like Black Flag, Bad Brains and Minor Threat, who played it loud fast and raw in opposition to Ronald Reagan's America.
1 hr. 40 R (profanity) Dan DeLuca
APOCALYPTO 3 .5 stars.
Mel Gibson directs this epic chase flick, a kind of "Mad Max" in the Yucatan, about a strapping Maya warrior whose life is upended by vicious marauders. Like Max Rockatansky, the 1979 role that launched Gibson to stardom, our fleet-footed hero spends the movie fighting capture, exacting revenge and moving really fast. 2 hrs.
17 R (violence, gore, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
BABEL 2 .5 stars. An array of characters in Morocco, Tunisia, Japan, Mexico and suburban America find themselves in a series of desperate situations in this drama that flows between different storylines.
Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal star. 2 hrs. 22 R (violence, nudity, sexual candor, profanity) Carrie Rickey
THE BLACK DAHLIA 2 .
5 stars. Brian De Palma's adaptation of James Ellroy's noir novel about the real-life 1947 murder of an aspiring starlet has an incendiary mood and style to burn. Too bad the performances are all wet.
With Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhardt as the cops on the case, Scarlett Johansson as the blonde both love and Hilary Swank as the brazenly kinky brunette who may have known the murder victim. 2 hrs. 01 R (violence, surgical candor, sexual candor and brief nudity) Carrie Rickey
BLOOD DIAMOND 2 .
5 stars. Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou an Jennifer Connelly chase around civil war-torn Sierra Leone in this bloody mix of action, intrigue and earnest pronouncements about western exploitation of the third world. 2 hrs.
23 R (violence, gore, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
BOBBY 2 stars. Emilio Estevez writes and directs this slight, Altmanesque ensemble piece in which 22 fictitious characters weave in and out of frame on the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles in June 1968.
The only reason to see it: real footage of Kennedy, on the campaign trail. The guilty-pleasure reason: Sharon Stone (as a hotel beautician) giving Demi Moore (a drunk diva) a haircut. 1 hr.
59 R (violence, sex, nudity, profanity, drugs, adult themes) Steven Rea
BORAT 3 .5 stars. Sacha Baron Cohen stars in the title role of this mock-doc in which the buffoonish Kazakhstan tele-journalist travels to America, offends everyone, and tries to meet, and marry, "Baywatch" babe Pamela Anderson.
R (nudity, profanity, crude humor, adult themes) Steven Rea
BOYNTON BEACH CLUB 1 star. Brenda Vaccaro, Len Cariou, Dyan Cannon and Joseph Bologna play seniors looking for love and romance in this pointless, almost pathetic comedy. 1 hr.
45 No MPAA rating (brief nudity, sexuality) David Hiltbrand
THE BRIDESMAID 3 stars. Claude Chabrol adapts a Ruth Rendell thriller about a young man who meets a strange woman at his sister's wedding, and then tumbles for her with murderous results. It's a merrily macabre things-we-do-for-love yarn.
1 hr. 50 No MPAA rating (sex, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
CANDY 2 .5 stars.
Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish play a boho couple descending into heroin addiction and despair in this nicely made but ultimately not terribly illuminating Australian drama. Geoffrey Rush plays their druggie guru enabler pal, but he's got his problems, too. 1 hr.
48 R (sex, nudity, drugs, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
CASINO ROYALE 3 stars. Daniel Craig`s possesses a distinctive mix of macho, menace and magnetism in this kickiest of James Bond reboots based on the Ian Fleming novel that started it all. With Judi Dench, Eva Green and Mads Mikkelsen.
2 hrs. 20 PG-13 (discreet nudity, implicit sadism, violence, profanity) Carrie Rickey
CATCH A FIRE 3 stars. Based on a real life story, this inspiring Phillip Noyce-directed drama is about the arrest, torture and subsequent radicalization of a "good" black South African in the waning decade of Apartheid rule.
Derek Luke gives a remarkable performance, and Tim Robbins, as an Afrikaner police colonel, goes beyond cartoon evil to show how a white minority clung fiercely to its racist traditions. 1 hr. 41 PG-13 (violence, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
CLIMATES 3 stars.
A hushed, intense, old school art pic from Turkish writer/director/actor Nuri Bilge Ceylon, about a crumbling relationship and the existential gloom that comes with it. Despite lush backdrops, the prevailing mood is bleak. 1 hr.
41 No MPAA rating (sex, adult themes) Steven Rea.
COPYING BEETHOVEN 3 stars. Ed Harris stars as the great composer and Diane Kruger as a young music student who is given the opportunity of a lifetime taking note dictation for Beethoven's ninth symphony.
1 hr. 44 PG-13 (crude humor) David Patrick Stearns
CROSSOVER 1 star. Anthony Mackie and Wesley Jonathan are backcourt buddies in this terribly flat basketball movie.
A flagrant foul. 1 hr. 35 PG-13 (sexual content, profanity) David Hiltbrand
DEATH OF A PRESIDENT 2 .
5 stars. Speculative fiction about the assassination of President Bush in 2007. An exercise in digital manipulation deft as "Forrest Gump.
" An urgent whodunit that raises pertinent political questions and also those of appropriateness. 1 hr. 30 R (violence, forensic language) Carrie Rickey
DECK THE HALLS 1 star.
This empty stocking of a film, a mirthless comedy with Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick as warring neighbors, can be described as whatever is the opposite of a Christmas classic. 1 hr. 35 PG (some crude and suggestive humor, language) David Hiltbrand
DEJA VU 2 .
5 stars. Denzel Washington plays an ATF agent in this fitful thriller set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Due to a quirk in chronology, he finds himself trying to save the woman he loves, but has never met.
2 hrs. 08 PG-13 (graphic violence) David Hiltbrand
THE DEPARTED 3 .5 stars.
Freed from iconic figures and weighty themes, Martin Scorsese gets to riff and rock in this huge, bloody, profane gangland entertainment. Set in Boston, and tracking the trajectories of two cops one crooked, one undercover the pic stars Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. They all rock.
2 hrs. 31 R (violence, sex, nudity, profanity, drugs, adult themes) Steven Rea
EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH 1 .5 stars.
Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson star in this romantic comedy set at a bulk discount warehouse outlet. Big store, small laughs. 1 hr.
43 PG-13 (sexual references, profanity) David Hiltbrand
FACTOTUM 3 stars. Matt Dillon stars as a Los Angeles drifter who works a series of jobs to get by while trying not to let his personal escapades distract from his main focus, writing. 1 hr.
34 R (sexual themes, profanity) Tirdad Derakhshani
FAST FOOD NATION 3 stars. Richard Linklater's rambling, potent adaptation of the 2001 nonfiction bestseller should send meat-eaters to the veggie aisles in droves. This busy ensemble piece (Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kris Kristofferson, Avril Livigne) takes the book's central theme (fast food: bad for your health, bad for society) and lays it down in a multi-story fictional format.
1 hr. 54 R (graphic slaughter-house scenes, sex, drugs, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS 3 stars. Clint Eastwood directs this visceral, if not altogether seamless, reenactment of the Battle of Iwo Jima the Pacific Theater bloodbath that produced the iconic image of six U.
S. soldiers raising a flag. Neither pro-war, nor anti-war, the film is as much about the U.
S. exploitation of that image and the men in it to raise millions in war bonds. 2 hrs.
12 R (graphic violence, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
FLUSHED AWAY 3 stars. Toilet humor has long been a staple of movie comedies from gross farce to, well, gross farce. But the jolly, computer-animated roller-coaster ride "Flushed Away" takes potty-ness to a new level: subterranean, as in the sewers that run beneath the city streets.
1 hr. 26 PG (crude humor and some language) Steven Rea
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 2 .5 stars.
Christopher Guest`s satire about talent-challenged thespians stung by Oscar buzz. No belly laughs, only the occasional rueful chortle. With Catherine O`Hara, Fred Willard and Jane Lynch.
1 hr. 26 PG-13 (profanity) Carrie Rickey
THE FOUNTAIN 1 star. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz star in a trippy, sappy, centuries-spanning meditation on eternal life and eternal love.
Spanish conquistadors, wormholes in space, monkey brains Darren Aronofsky's years-in-the-making odyssey is a can-this-be-for-real disaster. 1 hr. 36 PG-13 (violence, sex, adult themes) Steven Rea
FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS 2 .
5 stars. A riddling curiosity billed by its makers as "an imaginary portrait" of photo portraitist Diane Arbus (1923 1971). Starring the tall, pale Nicole Kidman as the petite, dusky photographer, this fantasia suggests that the furrier`s daughter longed to get underneath another`s skin, in this case an excessively hairy man played by Robert Downey, Jr.
2 hrs. 02 R (nudity, sexuality, profanity) Carrie Rickey
A GOOD YEAR 2 stars. Russell Crowe as a wet London bond trader who resists the lure of a sun-kissed Provence chateau that he inherits.
How do the pleasurable factors of Crowe, romantic comedy and Provence add up to something less than a feature-length ad for the French Tourist Board? 1 hr. 58 PG-13 (sexual candor, profanity) Carrie Rickey
GRIDIRON GANG 2 .
5 stars. Up-from-under tale starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the LA probation officer who turns around the lives of juvenile delinquents by building teamwork and self-esteem skills on the football field. 2 hrs.
08 PG-13 (domestic violence, gang violence, profanity) Carrie Rickey
HALF NELSON 3 stars. Ryan Gosling does a star turn as an inspirational teacher in a tough Brooklyn school who also happens to be a crackhead. His downward, self-destructive spire isn't pretty to watch, but it's a performance quiet, nuanced to behold.
1 hr. 46 R (sex, drugs, violence, profanity, adult themes) Steven Rea
HAPPY FEET 3 stars. A trippy mash-up of "March of the Penguins" and a hyperactive jukebox musical, the computer-animated "Happy Feet" from "Babe" director George Miller offers the tale of an outcast Antarctic hatchling who can't carry a tune, but, boy, can he dance.
Set on wild, widescreen polarscapes where the ice shimmers and the penguins shimmy, "Happy Feet" offers dazzling cinematic family fun. 1 hr. 48 PG (some mild peril and rude humor) Steven Rea
HARSH TIMES 3 stars.
A neck-snapping directing bow from the writer of "Training Day," David Ayer's drug-and-drink-fueled, guns-to-the-head trip into the wacked-out world of an ex-Army Ranger stars Christian Bale, super-intense and edgy. His character, tooling around L.A.
, tries to assimilate into civilian life. Fat chance. Freddy Rodriguez and Eva Longoria co-star.
2 hrs. R (violence, profanity, sex, adult themes) Steven Rea
HEAD TRAUMA 3 stars. Filmmaker Lance Weiler's simple, effective psychothriller creates a mood of dread and sustains it, as the story tracks a messed-up drifter's return home, and the weird stuff happening in the house that belonged to his dead grandmom.
1 hr. 24 No MPAA rating (violence, scares, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE HISTORY BOYS 3 .5 stars.
Nicholas Hytner`s adaptation of the Alan Bennett play about Oxbridge-bound students vibrates with exuberance and erudition. With Richard Griffith, Stephen Campbell Moore and Frances de la Tour. 1 hr.
44 R (profanity, sexually explicit language) Carrie Rickey
THE HOLIDAY 2 .5 stars. A fizzy champagne cocktail starring Los Angelena Cameron Diaz and Londoner Kate Winslet who swap houses and find love.
It provides a pleasant buzz, many smiles and Jude Law with the role of his career. 2 hrs. 15 PG-13 (sexual candor, profanity) Carrie Rickey
THE HOUSE OF SAND 3 .
5 stars. Set in an otherwordly corner of northern Brazil, where dunes and tides randomly reconfigure the landscape, this multi-generational tale of love and loss, roots and restlessness centers on a mother and daughter and then that daughter and her grown child. Like the place they live, the relationships, too, shift and change.
A tour de force. 1 hr. 55 R (sex, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE ILLUSIONIST 3 .
5 stars. Edward Norton stars as a master magician in late-19th-century Vienna whose sublime trickery gets him in trouble with a dastardly royal. A wonderful anachronism of a movie, with its clip-clopping horses, gas-lit lanterns, and Hollywood stars (Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel) elocuting in quasi-Euro accents.
1 hr. 49 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) Steven Rea
INFAMOUS The "other" Truman Capote biopic stars uncanny impersonator Toby Jones as the "In Cold Blood" scribe and the superb Sandra Bullock as Capote's childhood friend, assistant and conscience "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee. 1 hr.
58 R (profanity, sexual candor, sex) Carrie Rickey
INVINCIBLE 3 stars. Suggested by the stranger-than-fiction career of a substitute schoolteacher become part-time bartender become NFL local hero, "Invincible" is an uplift-the-neighborhood, stand-up-and-cheer inspirational story about the little energizer that could. 1 hr.
44 PG (sports and some mild language) Carrie Rickey
KEEPING MUM 3 stars. A whimsical tale of serial murder in the English countryside, with Kristin Scott Thomas as the unhappy wife of the village vicar, and Maggie Smith as a mystery marm who shows up to keep things tidy even if it means disposing of a body or two, or three. 1 hr 30 R (violence, sex, adult themes) Steven Rea
LA MOUSTACHE 3 .
5 stars. This smart, intriguing study of identity, marriage and, perhaps, madness begins in a blithe, jokey way: A man shaves his moustache off, anticipating the surprise of his wife, friends and coworkers. But no one says a thing, nor seems to notice.
Did he ever have one? Does he even exist? 1 hr.
26 No MPAA rating (nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND 3 stars. A Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) on a mission in Uganda is chosen as Idi Amin's (Forest Whitaker) personal physician. Forest Whitaker is brilliant as the dictator whose brutality stuns his new doctor.
2 hrs. 01 R (intense violence, gruseome images, nudity, sex, profanity) Carrie Rickey
LET'S GO TO PRISON 1 .5 stars.
Career criminal Dax Shepard shows preppy Will Arnett the ropes in jail. As a comedy, it's cruel and unusual punishment. 1 hr.
24 R (profanity, sexual ontent, drug use) David Hiltbrand
LITTLE CHILDREN 3 stars. Shattering satire about the playground politics among parents in a leafy New England hamlet boasts terrific performances by Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley as a pedophile who might be the town's most solid citizen. 2 hrs.
10 R (profanity, nudity, sex) Carrie Rickey
MAN OF THE YEAR 2 stars. Robin Williams as a late-night comic who runs for the presidency and Laura Linney as a software troubleshooter who knows the new voting machines are defective. Barry Levinson`s intermittently amusing satire lurches from political humor to political paranoia without a satisfactory resolution.
1 hr. 48 PG-13 (profanity, thriller elements) Carrie Rickey
MARIE ANTOINETTE 3 .5 stars.
A gorgeous confection, packed with billowing gowns and near-pornographic displays of pastrystuffs, Sofia Coppola's ode to 18th century France's teen queen is also a sharp, smart look at the isolation, ennui and supercilious affairs of the rich, famous and famously pampered. Not Paris Hilton, exactly but maybe someone called Versailles Hilton. 2 hrs.
03 PG-13 (sex, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE NATIVITY STORY 3 stars. Yes, there is something about Mary. Something inspiring.
Something hopeful. Told with faith, heart and simplicity, "The Nativity Story" follows the physical and spiritual journey of this Judean 13-year-old and Joseph, her betrothed, from their engagement through the first Christmas. 1 hr.
40 PG (some violent content) Carrie Rickey.
OLD JOY 3 stars. A meditative little movie about two not really estranged hippie friends played by the singer Will Oldham and Daniel London who go off for a camping weekend in the woods.
Beautifully shot, amid beautiful surroundings, it's a stoner odyssey, tinged with melancholy and loss. 1 hr. 16 No MPAA rating (pot smoking, beer drinking, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE PRESTIGE 2 stars.
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine and the sexpotted Scarlett Johansson star in this convoluted and unconvincing tale of dueling magicians in Victorian-era London. From the once formidable director Christopher Nolan, of "Memento" fame. 2 hrs.
10 PG-13 (violence, sex, adult themes) Steven Rea
THE QUEEN 4 stars. Compassionate as it is critical, satirical as it is serious, "The Queen" is less a docudrama about British Prime Minister Tony Blair and HRH Elizabeth II in the aftermath of Princess Diana`s death than it is a political romantic comedy. Its concern is how the Labor leader and the wary wife of Windsor change each other, as people and as leaders.
1 hr. 43 PG-13 (profanity) Carrie Rickey
RENAISSANCE 3 stars. This dazzling dystopian futuro-noir is like a graphic novel come to life: a gorgeous, black-and-white animated thriller, set in 2054 Paris a shadowy, piled-high metropolis where a beautiful scientist has gone missing and a tough cop has to find her.
Down these mean streets a man must go. 1 hr. 45 R (violence, sex, profanity, adult themes) Stephen Rea
RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES 3 .
5 stars. A small movie with a huge soul, Zhang Yimou's contemporary fable is about family and finding one's emotional core. An older Japanese man (the great Ken Takatura) travels across China to try to mend the long estrangement between he and his dying son.
Funny, sad and beautiful. 1 hr. 47 PG (adult themes) Steven Rea
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS 2 stars.
Augusten Burroughs' bestselling 2002 memoir, about a boy sent to live in the household of a madman psychiatrist, gets nipped and tucked by TV director Ryan Murphy, turning what was by all accounts a funny and disturbing book into a not-funny and disturbing movie. With Brian Cox, Annete Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Cross as the young Burroughs. 2 hrs.
R (sex, nudity, profanity, drugs, adult themes) Steven Rea
SAW III 2 .5 stars. Far superior to its predecessor, the latest entry in the "Saw" saga has the dying anti-hero Jigsaw set up his final message to the world.
With more gore, violence and a tighter pace, the film is a disturbing thrill ride. 1 hr. 47 R (strong grisly violence and gore, torture scenes, profanity) Tirdad Derakhshani
THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE 2 stars.
Tim Allen returns as Father Christmas in this slick and silly family sequel. The Mrs. is pregnant; the in-laws are barking and Jack Frost (Martin Short) is nipping at his .
.. ahem.
1 hr. 38 G David Hiltbrand
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP 3 stars. Michel Gondry doesn`t direct films, he conjures them.
As with his "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," this whimsical saga of soulmates trying to connect is the buoyant reverie of a daydream believer who converts his audience. With Gael Garcia Bernal as a boysih artist/inventor and Charlotte Gainsbourg as the object of his mental affection. 1 hr.
45 R (language, sexual candor, nudity) Carrie Rickey
SHORTBUS 2 .5 stars. The sex and love lives of seven New Yorkers is the focus of this dramedy directed by John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch").
1 hr. 41 No MPAA rating (explicit sex, nudity, profanity, drugs, adult themes) Steven Rea
SHUT UP SING 3 .5 stars.
Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck`s Dixie Chicks documentary tracks the culture war fallout from Natalie Maines` infamous dis of George Bush in March 2003 to the release of their 2006 album, "Taking the Long Way." The music flick follows Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison as they survive verbal abuse from Toby Keith and death threats, and succeeds in serving up an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of an arena-size pop band that is far more revealing that your average self-serving music documentary. 1 hr.
33 R (profanity) Dan DeLuca
STRANGER THAN FICTION 3 .5 stars. As "The Truman Show" is to Jim Carrey, this trippy tale about an IRS drone who suddenly hears someone narrating his life will be for Will Ferrell.
Take a brainy premise, a smart director and a top-flight cast, then throw an ex-TV sketch comedy knucklehead into the mix voila, a thinking person's dramedy that grapples with issues of fate and free will. 1 hr. 53 PG-13 (profanity, sex, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY 2 .
5 stars. Jack Black and Kyle Gass star in this stoner sketch comedy rock opera that explains the origins of the Greatest Band on Earth or that's what these two losers would like to believe. With cameos from Ben Stiller and Tim Robbins, and lots of potty humor both the bathroom kind and the weed kind.
1 hr. 33 R (profanity, potty humor, sex jokes, drugs, comic mayhem) Steven Rea
13 TZAMETI 3 .5 stars.
A beautifully spare and brutal French noir about a young stranger caught in a sick and deadly game of mass Russian roulette. 1 hr. 30 No MPAA rating (violence, adult themes) Steven Rea
THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED 3 stars.
Kirby Dick`s hugely entertaining critique of the Motion Picture Association of an America ratings system that thinks sexual violence is suitable for teenagers and consensual sex less so. 1 hr. 37 NC-17 (sexual candor, nudity and violence) Carrie Rickey
TURISTAS 2 .
5 stars. A band of buff, beautiful young backbackers watch their sybaritic Brazillian vacation turn bad before their eyes and before the surgical tools of a psycho who likes to separate foreigners from their livers and kidneys. Wildly photogenic and wildly xenophobic, too.
1 hr. 29 R (violence, sex, nudity, adult themes) Steven Rea
UNACCOMPANIED MINORS 2 stars. A noisy, not particularly charming collection of skits and skirmishes with baggage conveyor belts doing double duty as roller-coasters this film pits a quintet of smart-aleck kidniks against a barking airport official, played with foghorn subtlety by the comedian and "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" commentator Lewis Black.
1 hr. 29 PG (mild rude humor and language) Steven Rea
THE U.S.
VS. JOHN LENNON 3 stars. David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's documentary chronicles John Lennon's career as an anti-Vietnam War political activist and the Nixon adminstration efforts to deport him.
A fascinating history lesson marred by too many talking heads, but in-turn saved by a Beatle's charisma. 1 hr. 39 PG-13 (profanity, violent imagery, drug references) Dan DeLuca
VAN WILDER 2: THE RISE OF TAJ 1 star.
Kal Penn, who was the second banana in the original campus comedy, stars in this simpy and smutty sequel set in England. 1 hr. 35 R (crude humor, profanity, nudity and excessive drinking) David Hiltbrand
(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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