Dreamgirls
Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy. Directed by Bill Condon. 131 minutes. Rated PG-13.
In this adaptation of the popular Broadway musical, a trio of black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 6/9, 2 pm, free.
Happy Feet
Voices of Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Robin Williams. Directed by George Miller. 109 minutes. Rated PG.
Into the world of the emperor penguins, who find their soulmates through song, a penguin is born who cannot sing. But he can tap dance! Rainbow Library, 3150 N. Buffalo Drive, 507-3711. 6/11, 8 pm, free.
IMAX Theatre
Deep Sea 3D, Fighter Pilot, Mystery of the Nile, Lions 3D: Roar of the Kalahari
Call for showtimes. $11.99 each show.
Luxor, 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 262-4629.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds. Directed by Jan de Bont. 117 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Adventurer Lara Croft is on a quest to save Pandora’s Box in the second film based on the popular video game series. Whitney Library, 5175 E. Tropicana Ave., 507-4010. 6/10, 11:30 am, free.
Red Dust
Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond. Directed by Victor Fleming. 83 minutes. Not rated.
The owner of a rubber plantation becomes involved with the new wife of one of his employees. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 6/12, 1 pm, free.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Tim Curry. Directed by Jim Sharman. 100 minutes. Rated R.
The perennial 1975 cult classic is a mix of horror, comedy and musical, featuring sex, transvestites and the Time Warp. Augmented by a live cast and audience participation. Onyx Theater inside The Rack in Commercial Center, 953 E. Sahara Ave., #101. First & third Sat of month, 11:30 pm, $7. Info: 953-0682 or www.divinedecadence.org.
Saturday Morning Matinee
Check out videos for kids in the Young People’s Library. Enterprise Library, 25 E. Shelbourne Ave., 507-3760. 6/9, 6/23, 11 am, free.
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas, Loles Leon. Directed by Pedro Almodovar. 111 minutes. Rated NC-17.
A tender love story about a mental patient who stalks and kidnaps an ex-porn star. In Spanish with English subtitles. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 6/12, 7 pm, free.
New this week
After the Wedding 2.5 stars
Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgard, Sidse Babett Knudsen. Directed by Susanne Bier. 120 minutes. Rated R.
See review Page 39.
Hostel: Part II (Not reviewed)
Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips. Directed by Eli Roth. 93 minutes. Rated R.
Three American college students studying abroad are lured to a Slovakian hostel, and discover the grim reality behind it.
Journey From the Fall 3 stars
Kieu Chinh, Long Nguyen, Diem Lien. Directed by Ham Tran. 135 minutes. Rated R.
See review Page 39.
Ocean’s 13 2.5 stars
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Al Pacino. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.
See review Page 38.
Surf’s Up 2.5 stars
Voices of Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel. Directed by Ash Brannon and Chris Buck. 85 minutes. Rated PG.
See review Page 38.
Now playing
28 Weeks Later 3.5 stars
Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. 99 minutes. Rated R.
Opening during the outbreak depicted in the original film, Weeks wastes no time in first creating and then compromising our loyalty. No sooner have we been introduced to married survivors Don (Carlyle) and Alice than we’re watching our ostensible hero callously abandon his wife to the infected hordes. Seven months pass. The epidemic, successfully contained, is now over. (Ha.) Civilians slowly return to what remains of London, now under military jurisdiction; among the first wave of resettlers is our cowardly buddy Don, who’s been reunited with his two young children. Credit Fresnadillo for continually finding new and innovative ways of creeping us out, from a lengthy sequence shot through a night-vision rifle scope to the unexpected lyricism of one character’s post-transformation onslaught. –MD
300 2 stars
Gerard Butler, David Wenham, Lena Headey, Vincent Regan. Directed by Zack Snyder. 117 minutes. Rated R.
The film is about the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Thanks to the whiny indecision of corrupt religious leaders and spineless bureaucrats, Spartan King Leonidas (Butler) is unable to take his full army to meet the massive Persian forces, and must make do with only 300 of his best soldiers, acting as his personal retinue. It’s brutal, it’s painful, it’s mind-numbing and, most disturbingly, it’s a rallying cry for the testosterone-heavy that posits “no mercy” as the most noble sentiment in the world. –JB
Avenue Montaigne 3 stars
Cecile de France, Valérie Lemercier, Albert Dupontel. Directed by Daniele Thompson. 100 minutes. Rated PG-13.
On the hoity-toity side of Paris sits Avenue Montaigne, which is host to an upscale theater, an auction house, a grand concert hall ... and a quaint little café, where a young woman named Jessica (De France) talks her way into a waitressing job. The movie is pure fluff: The likeable, quirky characters, breathtaking Parisian vistas and dashes of wry wit amount to little more than the superficial luxuries that Jessica admires throughout the film. In French with English subtitles. –MSH
Away From Her 3 stars
Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Michael Murphy, Olympia Dukakis. Directed by Sarah Polley. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Grant and Fiona have been married for more than 40 years when the film begins. We get the sense that for the last several years they’ve had a happy life. That is, until Fiona begins forgetting things, and the onset of Alzheimer’s threatens their close bond. There’s much to like in this assured and insightful debut. As in most films directed by actors, the performances are strong all around. Polley makes effective use of a fractured narrative and some luminous visuals. –BS
Black Book 3.5 stars
Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. 145 minutes. Rated R.
The film starts with the bombing of the farmhouse in which Dutch Jew Rachel Stein (van Houten) has been hiding from the Nazis, and that sets her on an odyssey through the underground resistance, where she dyes her hair blond and takes on the name Ellis de Vries. Not content simply to lay low until the war ends, Rachel/Ellis teams up with anti-Nazi fighters to take on the German occupants of Holland. The staid World War II epic has become Hollywood’s most boring awards-baiting genre, and Black Book sidesteps all that by being unabashedly lurid and melodramatic, with tons of suspense and plenty of silly plot twists. In Dutch and German with English subtitles. –JB
Blades of Glory 2 stars
Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler. Directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck. 93 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Ferrell’s macho, womanizing and buffoonish blowhard, perfected in Anchorman and Talladega Nights, shows up again as Chazz Michael Michaels, a renegade figure skater with a sex addiction and a fondness for leather. He’s acting opposite Heder, a one-note actor if ever there was one, as Jimmy MacElroy, Chazz’s fey rival-turned-partner thanks to a skating-bylaws loophole that allows them to compete as a pair even after they’ve been banned from singles competition after a nasty fistfight. So it’s Ricky Bobby and Napoleon Dynamite on skates, with exactly one joke for the whole movie: Figure skating sure is gay, isn’t it? –JB
Bug 4 stars
Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr. Directed by William Friedkin. 102 minutes. Rated R.
Cocktail waitress Agnes (Judd) lives a sad, lonely existence, hiding from a sadistic ex (Connick) and mourning the loss of a young son. Her best friend introduces her to Peter (Shannon), and they hit it off. Before long, Peter begins to feel bug bites and announces that bugs are crawling around under his skin. Agnes begins to believe him, and she, too, suffers bites. This is a crazy, intense creepster of a movie, masterfully directed in great sinking movements. It’s The Exorcist for a darker time. –JMA
Delta Farce (Not reviewed)
Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, DJ Qualls. Directed by C.B. Harding. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Three bumbling Army reservists bound for Iraq are accidentally dropped at a Mexican village besieged by hostile forces.
Disturbia 3 stars
Shia LaBeouf, Sarah Roemer, Carrie-Anne Moss. Directed by D.J. Caruso. 104 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Kale Brecht (LaBeouf) is confined to his house. His only visitors are his friend Ronnie and love interest Ashley (Roemer). His life is quickly reduced to a vicarious existence as he spends his time looking out the window at his neighbors. Paranoia sets in and he begins to suspect one of them could be a killer. Our protagonist is on house arrest, complete with alarm on his ankle. This is both a strength and a weakness. As remakes of Hitchcock masterpieces (Rear Window) go, this one is actually pretty good, at least until the climax devolves into a slasher flick. –BS
Fracture 2.5
Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, Rosamund Pike. Directed by Gregory Hoblit. 112 minutes. Rated R.
Ted Crawford (Hopkins), villain extraordinaire of the psychological thriller Fracture, methodically manipulates both the legal system and arrogant young prosecutor Willy Beachum (Gosling) after being arrested for the attempted murder of his wife. The film hums along at a steady clip, navigating narrative twists and turns that may be complex but seem wholly predetermined and inorganic. –JB
Georgia Rule 1.5 stars
Lindsay Lohan, Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman. Directed by Garry Marshall. 113 minutes. Rated R.
This rather feeble fish-out-of-water comedy stars Lohan as a rebellious teen named Rachel, who’s been sent to live with her sassy grandma (Fonda) in a movie-stereotype small town in Idaho to learn some old-fashioned values. Then this happens, at about half an hour into the movie: Rachel casually divulges the fact that her stepfather started sexually abusing her when she was 12 years old. This unexpected revelation changes the whole tenor of the film—or at least it should. But Marshall blithely soldiers on with the city-girl-in-a-small-town hijinks, and Rachel’s past as a serial liar throws the whole sexual-abuse scenario into doubt in an uncomfortable and dramatically unsatisfying manner. –JB
Ghost Rider 2.5 stars
Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Peter Fonda. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson. 114 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze (Cage) sells his soul to the devil and turns into a fiery spirit of vengeance. Cage cannot help but bring his twitchy Nicolas Cage-ness, which is probably entirely inappropriate for the character but nevertheless adds a weird layer of existential dread. But the plot really fails in the villain department. Bentley looks like a cast-off from Good Charlotte, and is more whiny than menacing, and defeated way too easily. The effects when Cage changes into Ghost Rider look silly, and it doesn’t help that he then speaks in a voice that sounds like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. –JB
Gracie 1 star
Carly Schroeder, Dermot Mulroney, Elisabeth Shue. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. 95 minutes. Rated PG-13.
In 1978 New Jersey, Gracie (Schroeder) has an oddly close, tender relationship with her brother. They never fight, and she tells him she loves him just before he gets into a car with his buddies. Not surprisingly, he dies. Gracie decides to try out for his place on the soccer team, but everyone else agrees that it’s crazy for girls to play soccer. Gracie tumbles headfirst into the tired, bloated “inspirational sports drama” formula, following each required turn so blindly and blandly that it ends in yawns rather than cheers. –JMA
Hot Fuzz 4 stars
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent. Directed by Edgar Wright. 121 minutes. Rated R.
The hyper-perfect London cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is transferred to the tiny village of Sandford because his extraordinary arrest record makes other cops look bad. There he becomes concerned with a rash of “accidental” deaths, though everyone else shrugs him off. He befriends local cop Danny Butterman (Frost), the son of the chief inspector (Broadbent), and together they uncover a sinister conspiracy. Every facet of this film finds its proper place. Rather than buckling under all those old cop movies, Hot Fuzz is more like the result of them. –JMA
The Invisible (Not reviewed)
Justin Chatwin, Margarita Levieva, Marcia Gay Harden. Directed by David S. Goyer. 97 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Nick (Chatwin) is brutally attacked and left for dead. He finds himself suspended between the worlds of the living and the dead, and his only chance to live again is to find out what happened to him and why, before his time runs out.
Knocked Up 3 stars
Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann. Directed by Judd Apatow. 129 minutes. Rated R.
The wholesome values in Knocked Up are effectively intermixed with the movie’s real selling point, its outrageous humor, but it’s clear which side wins out. That makes the film either an act of subversive genius—getting stoners and slackers to appreciate the importance of parenthood—or a strangely conservative scolding in the guise of a dumb comedy. As tempting as it is to give Apatow credit for subversion, it might be safer to say that he’s really just telling his audience to grow up and accept some responsibility. That’s exactly what happens to Ben Stone (Rogen), a prototypical representative of the Apatow demographic, when his one-night stand with driven E! news producer Alison Scott (Heigl) results in an unplanned pregnancy. –JB
Lucky You 1 star
Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall. Directed by Curtis Hanson. 135 minutes. Rated PG-13.
In Lucky You, poker player Huck (Bana) speaks almost exclusively in poker metaphors, forcing other characters to inevitably throw them back in the most predictable ways. For example, when speaking to his love interest, Billie (Barrymore), Huck might describe something as “a good fold.” So when Billie breaks up with him, guess what she’ll say to describe the break-up? That’s not clever. That’s the screenwriting equivalent of “stacking the deck.” I just used a poker metaphor. See how they suck? Normally, the combination of Hanson, Bana, Barrymore and co-writer Eric Roth would be a pretty strong hand, and that makes Lucky You a really bad beat. –MSH
Mr. Brooks 3.5 stars
Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook. Directed by Bruce A. Evans. 120 minutes. Rated R.
Mr. Brooks (Costner) has a slight addiction to bloodshed. He’s been going to AA meetings to help suppress these urges, but that little devil on his shoulder keeps egging him on. Temptation is beautifully personified by Marshall (Hurt), who’s not so much Brooks’ alter-ego as he is a bad-influence type of imaginary friend. Marshall periodically pops up to offer Brooks fathering advice, remind him of little details he might forget and, of course, persuade him to massacre copulating couples for kicks. In spite of the convoluted finale, Mr. Brooks still ends up being good, twisted fun. –MSH
The Namesake 3 stars
Kal Penn, Irfan Khan, Tabu. Directed by Mira Nair. 122 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Nair follows the Ganguli family from Calcutta to Queens in the late 1970s with surprising thoroughness and attention to detail. Ashoke (Khan), a quiet, young engineering student who survives a horrific accident, and beautiful aspiring singer Ashima (Tabu) embark on an arranged marriage and subsequent move to New York City. The middle third of The Namesake shifts focus to the Gangulis’ oldest child (Penn). Wholly Yankified and borderline surly, adolescent Gogol grapples with his own demons. Generally well-observed and more contemplative than Nair’s previous works, The Namesake nevertheless has its deficits. –MH
Next 2 stars
Nicolas Cage, Jessica Biel, Julianne Moore. Directed by Lee Tamahori. 91 minutes. Rated PG-13.
This is a curiously pointless movie, with a plot that puts all of its emphasis on what would seem like the least important goal. That is, the FBI expends nearly all of its efforts to track down Cage’s magician who can see two minutes into the future, rather than, say, stopping the terrorists who are about to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. And after all of Cage’s running from them, the whole terrorist thing is a big anticlimax, followed by the stupidest twist ending ever. The movie practically taunts you about how it’s wasting your time. Plus, Cage and Biel have to be the ickiest and least believable screen couple of all time. –JB
Offside 3.5 stars
Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi. Directed by Jafar Panahi. 88 minutes. Rated PG.
Soccer is so popular in Iran that young women in Tehran, who are banned from attending soccer games, will dress as men and try to sneak into the stadium for a chance to see their country’s team play for a shot at the World Cup. The film follows a group of such young women who are caught and imprisoned in a makeshift jail at the stadium, watched over by equally young and soccer-obsessed soldiers. This is a movie that engages directly with the problems of Iranian society, but it does so in a sweet, exuberant way that portrays the human connections that can thrive even in the most rigid, authoritarian environments. –JB
Perfect Stranger 1.5 star
Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi. Directed by James Foley. 109 minutes. Rated R.
Berry is journalist Rowena Price. An old friend of hers turns up dead, and Rowena suspects a slick ad executive (Willis), so she goes undercover as a temp to seduce him and gather evidence—rather than, say, alerting the police. This is exactly the kind of movie that Ashley Judd would have starred in five years ago, only Judd usually managed to retain some shred of dignity in her woman-in-peril thrillers. Not so Berry, who flails and wails and ultimately fails as Rowena. The requisite twist ending is completely nonsensical, but by the time you get there, things have gotten so absurd that the only proper response is to laugh it off. –JB
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 1 star
Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush. Directed by Gore Verbinski. 168 minutes. Rated PG-13.
At World’s End picks up, as these things tend to do, roughly where its slightly less inflated predecessor ended, with Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) allied with Captain Barbossa (Rush) and the surviving swabbies of the Black Pearl to rescue Jack Sparrow (Depp) from the very euphemistically named Davy Jones’ locker. Even if you loved The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, this dour, tedious, aggressively unfunny, egregiously padded helping of celluloid fluff will only waste your time and money. –MH
Shrek the Third 2 stars
Voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas. Directed by Chris Miller. 92 minutes. Rated PG.
The loveable titular ogre (voiced by Myers), already saddled with talking-animal sidekicks Donkey (Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Banderas) and married to princess-turned-ogre Fiona (Diaz), acquires a horde of new friends and foes in this latest installment. Chief among them is the supremely uninteresting Artie, cousin to Fiona, and Shrek’s choice to succeed Fiona’s late father as the king of Far, Far Away, because the ogre himself would rather not rule. What started out as a genial stab at Disneyfied fairy tales has morphed into a catch-all parody with no focus and even less bite. It’s hard to buy into the movie making fun of anything when it’s become such an easy target for mockery itself. –JB
Spider-Man 3 3 stars
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Sam Raimi. 140 minutes. Rated PG-13.
You want villains? Our boy Spidey must contend not just with the Sandman (Church), an ex-con brawler capable of departiculating his entire body at will; not just with Harry Osborn (Franco), who’s discovered his late father’s secret laboratory and refashioned himself as a junior version of the Green Goblin; but also with a malevolent hunk of symbiotic black goo from outer space, which first attaches itself to one of Spider-Man’s costumes and later transforms snotty rival Daily Bugle photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) into a fanged mutant Spider-Clone known as Venom. You want romance? Mary Jane (Dunst) is still around, but she’s now simmering with jealousy at the vapid blond advances made by Peter’s science lab partner. The overall game plan involves tossing so much sheer stuff at us that we’ll be too dizzy and distracted to notice that no single element is actually working. –MD
Vacancy (Not reviewed)
Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale, Frank Whaley. Directed by Nimrod Antal. 80 minutes. Rated R.
A young married couple becomes stranded at an isolated motel and finds hidden video cameras in their room. They realize that unless they escape, they’ll be the next victims of a snuff film.
The Valet (Not reviewed)
Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas, Gad Elmaleh. Directed by Francis Veber. 85 minutes. Rated PG-13.
A porter and a supermodel have to pretend to be a couple in order to salvage a CEO’s marriage.
Waitress 3.5 stars
Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto. Directed by Adrienne Shelly. 107 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Jenna (Russell) is an unhappily married—and very unhappily pregnant—waitress at a small-town diner who’s constantly dreaming up exotic pies and naming them after whatever crisis she’s currently undergoing. Abortion, it seems, is out of the question—the possibility is never so much as raised—but Jenna’s red-state family values don’t stop her from embarking upon a guilty, start-stop affair with her hunky but equally married new obstetrician (Fillion). This all goes more or less where you’d expect it to, but it’s hard to begrudge familiarity when it’s accompanied by such dizzy warmth and offbeat charm. –MD
Wild Hogs 3 stars
John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen, William H. Macy. Directed by Walt Becker. 99 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Wild Hogs is about four guys who set off on a motorcycle trip across America. The road trip is inspired by the midlife crises of the four friends. The plot works methodically to solve these problems as soon as they’re introduced, without the slightest touch of subtlety. So the film’s intro, with its predictable dialogue drowning in the overly sentimental score, doesn’t bode well. But something wondrous happens. As soon as their hogs hit the highway, the movie becomes consistently funny. –MSH
JMA Jeffrey M. Anderson; JB Josh Bell; MD Mike D’Angelo; MH Mark Holcomb; MSH Matthew Scott Hunter; BS Benjamin Spacek