OPENING TODAY
Run, Fat Boy, Run (PG-13, 110 min.) See review on Page 12.
Peabody Place 22, Ridgeway Four, Collierville Towne 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema.
Stop-Loss (R, 113 min.) Director Kimberly Peirce's first film since "Boys Don't Cry" (1999) is the story of a Texas hometown hero of a soldier (Ryan Phillippe) who rebels when ordered back on yet another tour of duty in Iraq.
Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, CinePlanet 16.
Superhero Movie (PG-13, 85 min.) A spoof, in the tradition of "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," "Scary Movie," etc.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
21 (PG-13, 123 min.) See review on Page 13.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
SPECIAL MOVIES
Deep Sea: This IMAX underwater adventure runs through June 28. Narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, the movie leads viewers around the globe beneath the ocean's surface. Tickets: $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for times.
Crew Training International IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations.
Helvetica (Not rated, 80 min.) To quote the angry Internet Movie Database post of a student who was forced to watch this movie in journalism class: "I thought my teacher was kidding when he said we were watching a movie about font. But no … it features a bunch of font-crazy nutjobs talking about their favorite subject: Helvetica!" Indeed, this acclaimed 2007 documentary, inspired by the 50th anniversary of the common sans-serif typeface, explores the psychological impact as well as the physical appeal of typographic design; according to the film's press notes, the movie "invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day." Presented in association with the Memphis chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the professional association for design.
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Tickets: $7, or $5 for museum members. Visit brooksmuseum.org or call 544-6208.
On Location: Memphis International Film Fest: See stories beginning on Page 4.
Studio on the Square, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Visit onlocationmemphis.org.
Roving Mars: The in-depth IMAX adventure follows the "careers" of Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's robotic Exploration Rovers, from their development to their manufacture to their six-month, 10,000-mile-per-hour flight through cold space to their landing and deployment on the surface of Mars, where they gathered information to help pave the way for future visits by man. Runs through Nov. 14. Tickets: $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times.
Crew Training International IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations.
NOW SHOWING
Alvin and the Chipmunks (PG, 92 min.) This updated revamp of the late Ross Bagdasarian's concept (introduced in a series of novelty hits and a TV cartoon series) about a human being who plays father/manager to a trio of squeaky-voiced singing chipmunks is a sort of anti-Hannah Montana parable in which young performers discover they prefer the comfort and security of home to the high-pressure glitz of rock-and-roll stardom. Jason Lee portrays Bagdasarian's David Seville character; the chipmunks — Alvin, Simon and Theodore — are computer-animated. The movie is likable and cute; plus, it reminds us that "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)," which was a No. 1 hit in 1958, really
is
a pretty great pop recording.
Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10.
The Band's Visit (PG-13, 87 min.) A struggling but dignified Egyptian police force band is stranded for a night in small-town Israel in this charming, deadpan comedy about the necessity and difficulty of human (and thus Middle Eastern, and thus global) connection. Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin uses the frame like a proscenium arch, usually keeping his camera still so that characters can exit or enter his elegant compositions in amusing ways; the formality and the deliberate pace suggest the influence of Laurel and Hardy and Jacques Tati. The characters sometimes speak Arabic and Hebrew, but mostly they communicate with each other in polite, fractured English, complemented by the even more common language of gestures, glances and sighs.
Ridgeway Four.
The Bank Job (R, 110 min.) A "foolproof" heist goes awry.
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Bee Movie (PG, 91 min.) Bees with weirdly human faces (hasn't DreamWorks Animation learned anything from Pixar's approach to animals?) are the stars of this digital cartoon co-written and co-produced by Jerry Seinfeld, who gives voice to lead bee Barry B. Benson, an unconventional young insect who fights for the emancipation of commercially employed honey farm bees while also nursing a crush on a human florist (Renée Zellwegger). The Fisher-Price-inspired "set" design offers colorful candy for the eye, but the standup-comic dialogue, the incessant adult-oriented pop culture references (Sting — get it? — and Ray Liotta make cameo appearances as cartoon versions of themselves) and a story that has absolutely no internal logic (even given its intentional silliness) are a real buzzkill. Events veer from the apocalyptic (the near-extinction of America's flowers) to the inexplicable (the finale is a parody of an "Airport" movie), all presented with a glib yada-yada sense of inconsequentiality.
Winchester Court 8.
Caramel (PG, 95 min.) A French-Lebanese production shot in cosmopolitan Beirut, this is a sincere but formulaic sisters-are-doing-it-for- themselves (and doing each other's hair) ensemble drama in the manner of such commercial American films as "Beauty Shop," elevated by the novelty of its Lebanese locations and Arabic cast (headed by director Nadine Labaki, as an almond-eyed "bad girl" who sleeps with a married man). What makes the movie interesting (for American audiences, at least) is its gritty but often beautiful location photography and its cultural specificity of detail, especially in regards to social and sexual mores. For example, one woman undergoes an apparently commonplace surgical procedure to "restore" her virginity, so her husband-to-be won't discover on their wedding night that he wasn't her first lover.
Ridgeway Four.
Cloverfield (PG-13, 85min.) A giant monster attack on Manhattan is depicted entirely through the video camerawork of a goofy young "dude"-turned-impromptu documentarian (T.J. Miller) in this combination of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Godzilla," which earns its hype: The movie is intense and technically convincing, even if the central conceit (the guy keeps shooting, no matter how close he is to being eaten) is ridiculous and the "O.C."-style young heroes are little more than attractive ciphers. Directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J.J. Abrams ("Lost"), the movie suggests the influence of YouTube and (inevitably) 9/11, but it actually belongs to the old-fashioned exploitation tradition of 3-D and post-Hiroshima sci-fi as it uses state-of-the-art effects and ballyhoo to ingeniously update B-movie subject matter for a new audience.
Bartlett 10.
College Road Trip (G, 83 min.) A protective cop father (Martin Lawrence) accompanies his overachieving high school daughter (Raven-Symoné) on a tour of college campuses.
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema.
Definitely, Maybe (PG-13, 122 min.) A romantic comedy in flashback.
Stage Cinema 12.
Doomsday (R, 109 min.) If Uwe Boll had talent, he might produce something like this well-mounted, ultraviolent, outrageously ridiculous British throwback to the "Escape from New York"/"Road Warrior" rip-offs of the 1980s, with Rhona Mitra in the Milla Jovovich butt-kicking babe role. Set in a near-future postplague UK populated by punk-rock goons and neo-feudal knights, the movie delivers the exploitation goods and then some, but it's so utterly derivative it represents a depressing step backward for writer-director Neil Marshall, whose "The Descent" was one of the more compelling horror movies of the past decade.
Peabody Place 22, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
Drillbit Taylor (PG-13, 102 min.) This is the first movie off the Judd Apatow Productions assembly line that seems like the product of an assembly line. In other words: "Drillbit Taylor" is to Judd Apatow as "Harry and the Hendersons" and "*batteries not included" were to Steven Spielberg. Directed by Adam Sandler collaborator Steven Brill and co-scripted by "Knocked Up" star Seth Rogen, the film casts Owen Wilson as an implausibly lovable homeless Army deserter hired as a bully-blocking bodyguard by three nerdy high-school freshmen (a skinny smart guy, a fat loudmouth and an uber-geek, just like in "Superbad"). The bully's attacks are surprisingly brutal, which primes the audience to cheer when he's out-muscled by an adult rather than outwitted by the kids.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
Enchanted (PG, 107 min.) A naive Disney princess named Giselle (Amy Adams) is ejected from her fairy-tale cartoon world into the flesh-and-blood chaos of Manhattan in this charming, clever and upbeat family film, directed by Kevin Lima and scripted by Bill Kelly. Never insulting as it moves toward its inevitable happily-ever-after ending, the movie maintains a delicate balance between wish-fulfillment fantasy and a recognition that the real world inhabited by its audience is filled with disappointment as well as with joy. With Patrick Dempsey as the divorce lawyer who becomes Giselle's New York Prince Charming; Susan Sarandon as a wicked witch; and Rachel Covey as a 6-year-old stand-in for the young girls in the audience: She sees Giselle as a dream big sister come to life.
Bartlett 10.
The Eye (PG-13, 97 min.) Jessica Alba sees dead people.
Majestic, Raleigh Springs Cinema.
First Sunday (PG-13, 98 min.) Petty crooks Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan gain more than money when they rob their neighborhood church.
Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10.
Fool's Gold (PG-13, 112 min.) It's hard not to notice that Matthew McConaughey's chest measurement's dwarf those of co-star Kate Hudson in this soggy screwball comedy-adventure for parrotheads, which places so much emphasis on its shirtless leading man it may have been filmed in a new process: Pectoralscope. McConaughey is a devil-may-care Caribbean treasure hunter; Hudson is his disapproving ex-wife; together, they battle a literal gangster rapper named "Bigg Bunny" (Kevin Hart) and a rival booty-hunter (Ray Winstone) on their way to inevitable fortune and reunion.
Peabody Place 22, Stage Cinema 12, DeSoto Cinema 16, CinePlanet 16.
Funny Games (R, 108 min.) German writer-director Michael Haneke's almost shot-for-shot remake of his 1997 Austrian film seems more a calculated attempt to home-invade the English-language marketplace than a necessary revisiting of the provocative original, which provided disturbing (if artfully and economically dramatized) mental and physical torture sequences for arthouse shock fans while also critiquing the "complicity" of an audience that would pay to "enjoy" watching a pair of white-gloved Yuppie psychos terrorize a bourgeois husband, wife and young son. (The married couple is played here by Tim Roth and executive producer Naomi Watts; in a possible concession to American tastes, this casting flips the original concept, in which the husband was attractive while the wife was big-nosed and eccentric-looking.) This remake has generated almost hysterical negative overreaction from critics, which probably pleases Haneke greatly; its primary sin isn't its pretentiousness (Haneke suggests the family's comfortable affluence may justify its fate) but its redundancy: Not only is it a carbon copy, but such recent genre movies as "Hostel" have examined the attraction of screen violence with greater immediacy and subversiveness.
Studio on the Square.
The Golden Compass (PG-13, 113 min.) As unlikely to fill theater seats as it is to empty pews, this $180 million "anti-Narnia" fantasy adventure arrives burdened with the condemnation of the Catholic League and the antipathy of parents who have been told the film is not simple escapism but an atheism indoctrination tool. This scared reaction seems to confirm the message of author Philip Pullman's original trilogy of novels, in which the would-be dictatorship of the Magisterium — a symbol of dogmatic, organized religion — fears "any truth but their own." If many fantasy stories are spiritual in nature, Pullman's are rational: He celebrates "nothing less than free will," as a witch says in the film. However, director Chris Weitz has diluted much of Pullman's message to emphasize special effects and the action aspects of a story about a brave young girl (Dakota Blue Richards) on a magical parallel Earth where every citizen is accompanied by an animal "daemon" and where icy Nicole Kidman is a sinister secret agent. The narrative is a mess, with escapades following one another like chapters in a cliffhanger and unlikely characters — witches, ice bears, Tartars, "gyptians," a cowboy "aeronaut" (Sam Elliott) — appearing almost at random, until we lose our faith in the storytelling. Our skepticism is confirmed by the "To Be Continued" finish: The movie never really ends but simply stops, leaving many mysteries to be resolved in a sequel that may never appear.
Bartlett 10.
Horton Hears a Who! (G, 87 min.) This beautifully animated Blue Sky Studios ("Ice Age") CGI makeover of a 1954 children's book by Dr. Seuss respects, to some extent, the economy of line — in both rhyme and drawing — that was Theodor Geisel's trademark; it can't resist the fourth-wall-breaking pop-culture references that are typical of non-Pixar cartoons (the animal cast gathers for a climactic singalong to REO Speedwagon, egads), but it avoids the bloat and chaos that transformed such recent live-action Seussafilms as "The Grinch" into utter abominations. Jim Carrey provides the voice of the title elephant, who rocks the dogma of the jungle when he discovers that a speck of dust contains an entire civilized world; Carol Burnett is the self-righteous kangaroo (she "pouch-schools" her child) whose reactionary assertions (Horton is a "menace" because he causes people to "question authority") detract from the story's original, kid-friendly message that "a person's a person, no matter how small."
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
I Am Legend (PG-13, 101 min.) Using digital technology, the makers of this Will Smith box-office blockbuster have created compelling images of ruined post-plague Manhattan in the year 2012. But the movie's content lacks the sophistication of its special effects: This third official film adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 science-fiction novel about a lone human in a world of ghouls is even less faithful to the spirit of the original story than its often reviled predecessors, the low-budget "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) with Vincent Price and "The Omega Man" (1971) with Charlton Heston. In place of Matheson's dark irony, director Francis Lawrence ("Constantine") delivers attacking hordes of hyperactive flesh-eating former humans and — at the last minute — a supposedly reassuring religious parable. In the infantile prioritizing that often occurs when Hollywood wants to be "inspirational," the Smith character's Everyman crisis of faith is supposed to be as important to audiences as his struggle to save humanity from extinction.
Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10.
In Bruges (R, 107 min.) Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are London hit men holed up in historic Belgium in this self-conscious tragicomedy from acclaimed Irish playwright and debuting feature film writer-director Martin McDonagh. The lead actors make a great Mutt-and-Jeff team, but McDonagh lets them down: Playwright that he is, he repeatedly uses dialogue to underline and overstate the Farrell character's guilt about a particular killing when all the audience needs to understand the hit man's torment is to see the sad slope of the actor's expressive caterpillar eyebrows. As the "ironic" contrast between Medieval Flemish beauty and modern vulgarity and violence increases, the movie becomes overdetermined in its twist-of-fate plotting and over-reliant on thuggish and "crazy" humor (including tired midget jokes).
Studio on the Square.
Jumper (PG-13, 89 min.) It's easy to see why audiences have embraced this critically lambasted film: Its premise — a young man (Hayden Christensen) has the power to teleport himself anywhere, instantly — is irresistible. Need cash? "Jump" into a bank vault. Need no-obligation sex? Jump to a hottie-heavy pub in London, then jump back to America from the lady's bedroom the next morning. Plot details are inconsistent, but Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity") directs with energy, and it's nice to see Samuel L. Jackson as a straight-up villain.
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
Meet the Browns (PG-13, 100 min.) Tyler Perry's latest stage-play adaptation introduces moviegoers to a character who could rival Madea for popularity: crass but lovable Leroy Brown (David Mann).
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (PG-13, 92 min.) If a film adaptation of Winnifred Watson's novel had been produced when the book was published in 1938, it might have been a screwball classic. It's easy to imagine hatchet-faced Edna May Oliver as the humorously priggish vicar's daughter-turned-"social secretary," Miss Pettigrew, and Carole Lombard as her sexually generous nightclub-singer employer. Unfortunately, this is 2008, not 1938, so instead of a nimble and contemporary antic farce for the mass audience, we get a lavishly appointed flat-footed period piece aimed at the "art house" crowd. This means director Bharat Nalluri must reward his audience for its supposed discernment by demonstrating his movie's seriousness; to do this, he stops the action dead in its tracks, to address the wastefulness of war, etc. The expert cast deserves better, including Frances McDormand, who clearly relishes portraying the title character's Ugly Duckling transformation from "Oliver Twist's mom" to darling of the smart set, and Amy Adams, charmingly breathless as a ditsy glamour girl.
Ridgeway Four.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (PG, 130 min.) Nicolas Cage is back to abuse American history the way he abused alcohol in "Leaving Las Vegas." This time, he's looking for missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's diary.
Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10.
Never Back Down (PG-13, 114 min.) "Fight Club" meets "The Karate Kid" when rebellious teen Sean Faris is trained to be a champ by martial arts master Djimon Hounsou.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
No Country for Old Men (R, 122 min.) The wide open Texas spaces in which this often-violent movie takes place seem to have sprung filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen from their hermetic box of tricks: The brothers rein in the rococo flourishes, obsessive in-jokes and obscure leitmotifs that characterized many of their past cult favorites ("The Big Lebowski," "Barton Fink") to deliver a remarkably faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 readymade screenplay of a novel, which is not so much a lament for the decay of civilization as an old man's acknowledgment that new times require new blood (often literally, in this case). Brilliantly constructed, the movie intentionally doesn't sustain the pit bull momentum of its stunning opening sequences; instead, the story becomes increasingly diffuse as it winds down to a thoughtful anticlimax rather than to the good-vs.-evil showdown most viewers will expect. Wearing a Question Mark & the Mysterians pageboy haircut and toting a pneumatic slaughterhouse gun, homicidal "ultimate bad-ass" Javier Bardem steals every scene; Josh Brolin is just as good as Bardem's quarry, a hunter with $2 million in drug money that he snatched from a desert crime scene. Tommy Lee Jones is an aging sheriff, the "old man" of the title; he's not onscreen much, but this is really his story.
Studio on the Square.
One Missed Call (PG-13, 87 min.) French director Eric Vallete makes his English-language debut with this occasionally spooky but forgettable remake of a 2003 Japanese horror film, which doesn't benefit from the dull presence of Ed Burns as a police detective who takes pretty student Shannyn Sossamon seriously when she warns him about something even scarier than telemarketers: phone calls from your future self that reveal the time of your death. The intentional comic highlight occurs when an exorcist proclaims: "Begone from this cell phone!" As Lead Belly might sing, to the tune of "One Meat Ball": "You get no thrills/ From 'One Missed Call'…"
Raleigh Springs Cinema.
The Other Boleyn Girl (PG-13, 116 min.) Natalie Portman is Anne Boleyn, Scarlett Johansson is Mary Boleyn and Eric Bana is King Henry VIII in this Tudor tale based on Philippa Gregory's novel.
Studio on the Square, Paradiso.
Penelope (PG, 89 min.) Christina Ricci is a girl with a pig's nose in this fairy tale-like romantic comedy co-starring James McAvoy.
Collierville Towne 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Rambo (R, 93 min.) The fourth in the series, the first in 20 years and the first to be directed by star/writer Sylvester Stallone (in comparison, Stallone directed four of the six "Rocky" movies), this ultraviolent valedictory finds the melancholy sixty-something Vietnam vet living in self-imposed exile as a cobra corraler for a reptile farm in the Asian jungle until he agrees to help exterminate some deadlier snakes in the grass: genocidal Burmese soldiers, who have kidnapped a group of American missionaries. The minimalist plot is an excuse for an orgy of decapitation, dismemberment and disembowelment, but unlike many of today's action films, "Rambo" isn't "hip" — it doesn't play the carnage for laughs. "You didn't kill for your country, you killed for yourself," Rambo tells himself, and the film's attitude toward the violence it sponsors is similarly conflicted. Like America, it's both excited by and ashamed of its bloodlust. In this context, it's sadly appropriate that the Asian characters are ciphers — either vile villains or faceless victims.
Winchester Court 8, Bartlett 10.
Semi-Pro (R, 91 min.) By now, the "Will Ferrell movie" is its own genre, with "Anchorman," "Talladega Nights," "Blades of Glory" and now "Semi-Pro" as bound by an established set of internal rules as the typical horror movie or Western. The movies spoof NASCAR, figure-skating and so on, but they also reveal a sincere fascination for the cultures and skills they mimic. These are wish-fulfillment movies, with Ferrell the overgrown adult child with the power to transform himself into whatever he wants. The formula may be losing its potency, however; "Semi-Pro" is only semi-funny, and its opening weekend box-office performance was disappointing. Directed by Kent Alterman, the 1970s-set film casts Ferrell as one-hit wonder Jackie Moon, owner/player/coach of the fictional Flint (Mich.) Tropics in the old American Basketball Association. The supporting cast (André Benjamin, Will Arnett, Andrew Daly) scores most of the laughs.
Peabody Place 22, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Shutter (PG-13, 86 min.) Yet another Japanese horror director (this time, Masayuki Ochiai, of "Parasite Eve") makes the trans-Pacific leap to Hollywood (this time, for a story about ghostly images that appear in photographs of tragic accidents).
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema.
The Spiderwick Chronicles (PG, 96 min.) The discovery of a vanished naturalist's field guide to fairies, goblins and trolls unleashes an attack of magical creatures in this sometimes surprisingly intense film in which young twin brothers (Freddie Highmore), a sword-wielding teen sister (Sarah Lawrence) and a struggling mom (Mary-Louise Parker) cope with more than the typical allotment of first-day-in-a-new-house worries. The monsters seem to be psychological projections as well as special-effects creations, with the scary lead ogre emerging to fill the void left by the absence of the resentful children's neglectful father. Directed by Mark Waters ("Mean Girls"), from a script (co-credited to John Sayles) adapted from the children's book series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black.
Stage Cinema 12, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Step Up 2 the Streets (PG-13, 98 min.) A tough inner-city street dancer (Channing Tatum), whose friends include "Mac" and "Skinny," meets a feisty ballerina (Jenna Dewan) in this in-name-only followup to 2006's "Step Up."
Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
10,000 BC (PG-13, 109 min.) Director Roland Emmerich typically produces the most elephantine of sci-fi blockbusters ("Independence Day," the "Godzilla" remake), so it's appropriate the filmmaker has turned his Teutonic ponderousness to literal pachyderms: "10,000 BC" has more woolly mammoths than my attic has squirrels, and they display more personality than most of the actors. The film is entertaining when it focuses on the spectacle of mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers, "terror birds" and CGI B. DeMille prehistoric pyramids, but the human-oriented plotline — something about a legend involving "the child with blue eyes" (Camilla Belle) and "the one who speaks to the spear-tooth" (Steven Strait) — would insult the intelligence of Barney Rubble.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collerville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
27 Dresses (PG-13, 111 min.) "Knocked Up" co-star Katherine Heigl achieves leading-lady status.
Bartlett 10.
Vantage Point (PG-13, 91 min.) Movies used to boast of being "torn from the headlines"; now, they're torn from an electronics catalog. Who needs James Bond's Q when you've got Best Buy? In this film about a terrorist assassination plot, Palm Pilots, laptops and mini camcorders are fetishized the way weapons were in "Magnum Force." Even the movie's key storytelling/esthetic gimmick is born of recording technology: The film repeatedly "rewinds" (footage runs backward, in fast motion) to a particular point in time so the action can be followed again from the perspective of a different character. A wild climactic car chase breaks this cycle, hurtling the characters and us forward in time so the film finally can end. The cast includes Forest Whitaker as a tourist, William Hurt as the U.S. president and Dennis Quaid as a redemption-craving super-Secret Service agent; the director is Pete Travis.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (PG, 105 min.) Director Jay Russell, a University of Memphis film school graduate, follows "My Dog Skip" (2000) with another family movie about a boy and his pet, except this time the pet is a cute hatchling that grows into a huge Loch Ness monster. Adapted from a novel by Dick King-Smith (who also wrote the book that was the basis for the classic pig movie, "Babe"), the movie — beautifully lensed on locations in Scotland and New Zealand — doesn't condescend to kids; its themes and narrative structure (which includes much use of flashback) are fairly sophisticated. Set mainly in a Scottish village during World War II, the movie delivers an anti-violence message along with the idea that even sea monsters were "Born Free." The Nessie was created by the special-effects wizards at Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop, so it's as convincing as anything in "King Kong" or "The Lord of the Rings."
Bartlett 10.
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (PG-13, 114 min.) Martin Lawrence heads an all-star cast in this tale of a Los Angeles talk-show host who attends a family reunion in the Deep South.
Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Witless Protection (PG-13, 97 min.) Which comes first, the title or the script? Larry the Cable Guy stars.
Hollywood 20 Cinema.
It
This
The