Short takes

Special screenings

Charlie Chan in Paris

Warner Oland, Keye Luke, Thomas Beck. Directed by Lewis Seiler. 72 minutes. Not rated.

The second film in this series about an Asian-American detective finds Chan (Oland) chasing around the French capital trying to root out three counterfeiters who operate within the sewer system. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 9/11, 1 pm, free.

Chicago

Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Directed by Rob Marshall. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Nightclub sensation Velma (Zeta-Jones) murders her philandering husband, and Chicago’s slickest lawyer, Billy Flynn (Gere), is set to defend her. But when Roxie (Zellweger) also winds up in prison, Billy takes on her case as well—turning her into a media circus. The District at Green Valley Ranch, 2300 Paseo Verde Parkway, Henderson, 564-8595. 9/8, 7:30 pm, free.

Deep Sea 3D, Fighter Pilot, Mystery of the Nile, Dinosaurs Alive, Lions 3D: Roar of the Kalahari

Call for showtimes. $11.99 each show.

Luxor, 3900 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 262-4629.

Nights of Cabiria

François Perier, Giulietta Masina, Franca Marsi. Directed by Federico Fellini. 117 minutes. Not rated. In Italian with English subtitles.

A waifish prostitute wanders the streets of Rome looking for true love but finding only heartbreak. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 9/11, 7 pm, free.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom. Directed by Gore Verbinski. 150 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Captain Jack Sparrow races to recover the heart of Davy Jones to avoid enslaving his soul to Jones’ service, as other friends and foes seek the heart for their own agenda as well. Rainbow Library, 3150 N. Buffalo Drive, 507-3711. 9/7, 7 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.

The Shaggy Dog

Tim Allen, Kristin Davis, Spencer Breslin. Directed by Brian Robbins. 98 minutes. Rated PG.

A man tries to live a normal life despite the fact that he sometimes turns into a dog. The District at Green Valley Ranch, 2300 Paseo Verde Parkway, Henderson, 564-8595. 9/7, 7:30 pm, free.

Strawberry Shortcake: Let’s Dance

60 minutes. Rated G.

Strawberry and her friends love to dance—and the Peculiar Purple Pie Man of Porcupine Peak is taking advantage of that. He has Sour Grapes open a phony dance studio, posing as a famous teacher ... so she can keep the kids busy while he plunders the berry crops. Galaxy Theatres Cannery, 2121 E. Craig Road, 639-9779. Through 9/30, noon, $3.

Thomas & Friends

60 minutes. Rated G.

Three never-before-seen episodes of the popular children’s series about a talking tank engine. Screening inludes complimentary activity book and $5 Wal-Mart gift card. Regal Cinemas Red Rock, 11011 W. Charleston Blvd., 221-2283. 9/8, 10 am, $7. Info: www.fathomevents.com.

Wild Hogs

John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy. Directed by Walt Becker. 100 minutes. Rated PG-13.

A group of suburban biker wannabes looking for adventure hit the open road, but get more than they bargained for when they encounter a New Mexico gang called the Del Fuegos. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3400. 9/8, 2 pm, free.

New this week

2 Days in Paris *** 1/2

Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg. Directed by Julie Delpy. 96 minutes. Rated R.

See review.

3:10 to Yuma *** 1/2

Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Logan Lerman. Directed by James Mangold. 117 minutes. Rated R.

See review.

The Brothers Solomon (Not reviewed)

Will Arnett, Will Forte, Kristen Wiig. Directed by Bob Odenkirk. 91 minutes. Rated R.

John and Dean Solomon (Arnett, Forte) are kind but lovelorn siblings whose social ineptness stems from childhood years spent in a frozen wasteland. Upon learning that their father’s dying wish is to have a grandchild, the brothers set out to find wives and start families.

Hatchet ***

Joel David Moore, Deon Richmond, Mercedes McNab. Directed by Adam Green. 83 minutes. Rated R.

See review.

Moliere ***

Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante. Directed by Laurent Tirard. 120 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles.

See review.

Shoot ’Em Up * 1/2

Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci. Directed by Michael Davis. 80 minutes. Rated R.

See review.

Them ** 1/2

Olivia Bonamy, Michael Cohen. Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. 77 minutes. Rated R. In French with English subtitles.

See review.

Now playing

Balls of Fury ** 1/2

Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken, George Lopez. Directed by Robert Ben Garant. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The film focuses on a mysterious ping-pong tournament, led by nefarious underworld figure Master Feng (Walken, in full-on self-parody mode). Years ago, Feng killed the father of former ping-pong champion Randy Daytona (Fogler), and now Randy has teamed up with FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez (Lopez) to infiltrate the tournament and bring down Feng’s criminal empire. By the end, Garant loses even the pretense of coherence, and what could have been a surreal and, yes, ballsy satire turns out to be just another dumb, lowbrow comedy. –JB

Becoming Jane ** 1/2

Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters. Directed by Julian Jarrold. 120 minutes. Rated PG.

Jane Austen fans, be warned: Becoming Jane is highly unlikely to teach you anything new about your favorite English novelist of manners; in fact, it may drive you a little bit nuts, since the filmmakers take a rather freewheeling approach to the groundbreaking female author, extrapolating an entire life-altering romance from a few lines in some of Austen’s letters that survived after her death. By reducing Austen’s talent to a somewhat crude cause-and-effect relationship between her writing and her brief courtship with roguish lawyer Tom Lefroy (McAvoy), they do a disservice to Austen’s legacy, as well as to the legions of writers and admirers who look up to her. Mostly, though, they just tell a second-rate Jane Austen story. –JB

The Bourne Ultimatum *** 1/2

Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles. Directed by Paul Greengrass. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Everything that Jason Bourne (Damon) does is in pursuit of his single goal: to discover who he was and how he became the ruthless government super-agent he no longer wishes to be. In the last movie, Bourne’s girlfriend was killed, and he was framed for the murder of two U.S. agents; after extracting a confession for those crimes from a high-ranking CIA official at the end of The Bourne Supremacy, Bourne is still on the run from the U.S. government, determined to track down the people responsible for his training. Ultimatum is a smart, exciting and stylish mix of 1970s conspiracy thrillers, modern over-the-top action movies and new-world-order espionage like TV’s 24. –JB

Bratz (Not reviewed)

Nathalia Ramos, Janel Parrish, Logan Browning, Skyler Shaye. Directed by Sean McNamara. 95 minutes. Rated PG.

During their first year of high school, four best girlfriends face off against the domineering student-body president who wants to split them up into different social cliques.

Daddy Day Camp (Not reviewed)

Cuba Gooding Jr., Paul Rae, Lochlyn Munro, Tamala Jones. Directed by Fred Savage. 93 minutes. Rated PG.

This sequel to Daddy Day Care finds dads Charlie Hinton (Gooding) and Phil Ryerson (Rae) in another kid-harried adventure as they take over running a summer day camp.

Death at a Funeral * 1/2

Matthew MacFadyen, Rupert Graves, Daisy Donovan, Peter Dinklage. Directed by Frank Oz. 90 minutes. Rated R.

A family gathers to mourn their patriarch, including his sons, estranged brothers Daniel (MacFadyen) and Robert (Graves), along with various aunts, uncles, cousins and hangers-on, all of whom end up dealing with contrived high jinks in one way or another. Death at a Funeral is full of tired, sitcom-level gags, material that would seem outdated on a mildly risqué network TV show, let alone in an allegedly bawdy R-rated movie. And despite its pretensions toward darkness and the uncomfortable humor of family dysfunction, the movie ends by wrapping up every plotline with a nice little bow; nothing bad actually happens, and everyone lives happily ever after. –JB

Death Sentence (Not reviewed)

Kevin Bacon, Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Preston. Directed by James Wan. 110 minutes. Rated R.

A father (Bacon) goes out for revenge after his family is attacked in a senseless and heinous gang-initiation crime.

Goya’s Ghosts ** 1/2

Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard. Directed by Milos Forman. 114 minutes. Rated R.

At first glance, one would expect Ghosts to be another of Forman’s off-kilter biopics, featuring as it does the legendary Spanish painter Francisco Goya (Skarsgard) as one of its main characters. But Goya is only about a third of the film’s focus, and the story isn’t really about his life or his extraordinary artwork. Instead, it’s as much about the surrounding fictionalized story of young Ines (Portman), who models for Goya and is arrested during the Spanish Inquisition on suspicion of being a Jew. Shot and structured like a sumptuous, Oscar-baiting costume epic, Ghosts is more of a disjointed oddity, with perplexing casting and soap opera-style plot devices. –JB

Hairspray *** 1/2

Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron. Directed by Adam Shankman. 117 minutes. Rated PG.

It’s been nearly 20 years since cult filmmaker John Waters cleaned up his act long enough to make Hairspray, the tale of pleasantly plump ’60s teen Tracy Turnblad, who fights to get on a local TV dance show and subsequently fights to desegregate the program. Since then, the beloved cult classic has inspired a hit Broadway musical, which has now inspired another silver-screen treatment, which has inspired John Travolta to dress in heavy latex drag. The songs are quick, catchy and frequent. But while they initially push the narrative forward at a satisfying speed, they eventually slow things down to give everyone some time in the spotlight. –MSH

Halloween ** 1/2

Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell. Directed by Rob Zombie. 109 minutes. Rated R.

The primary difference, plot-wise, between Zombie’s new remake of the horror classic Halloween and John Carpenter’s 1978 original is that while Carpenter’s film was a story about suburban babysitter Laurie Strode, Zombie’s film is a story about serial killer Michael Myers. Unfortunately, what makes Michael tick doesn’t turn out to be all that interesting, even though Zombie devotes fully half of his film to teasing it out (Laurie doesn’t show up until almost an hour into the movie). By the time we cut to 15 years later and get introduced to high-schooler Laurie (Taylor-Compton), Michael’s forthcoming actions have been explained so thoroughly that they almost seem beside the point. –JB

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ***

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint. Directed by David Yates. 138 minutes. Rated PG-13.

There are at least a few significant things going on in Phoenix, which once again finds Harry (Radcliffe) at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, facing the imminent threat of Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). When you have a film series that’s seven installments long, eventually you are going to get to the placeholder chapter, and that’s where the Harry Potter series has ended up with its fifth big-screen outing. Longtime Potter fans will probably be eager to forgive Phoenix’s flaws, and even casual viewers will still find plenty to like, but the feeling of marking time, of nothing especially momentous going on in the latest incremental step toward Harry’s final showdown with evil wizard Voldemort, is fairly hard to shake. –JB

Hot Rod *

Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Bill Hader. Directed by Akiva Schaffer. 88 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The script is a barebones take on the sports movie formula with the sport being daredevil stunts. Saturday Night Live star Samberg plays Rod, whose motivation to win stems from a desire to earn enough money for his emotionally abusive stepfather’s heart transplant. Rod wants his stepfather well again so he can kick the guy’s ass, proving his manhood, and he figures he can earn the money by jumping 15 school buses with his moped. Every joke crashes, face-plants and slides across the asphalt until its teeth explode out the back of its head. –MSH

I Know Who Killed Me (Not reviewed)

Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough. Directed by Chris Siverston. 105 minutes. Rated R.

An idyllic small town is rocked when Aubrey Fleming (Lohan), a bright and promising young college student, is abducted and tortured by a serial killer. When she manages to escape, the traumatized young woman who regains consciousness in the hospital insists that she is not who they think she is—and that the real Aubrey is still in mortal danger.

Illegal Tender (Not reviewed)

Rick Gonzalez, Wanda De Jesus, Dania Ramirez. Directed by Franc. Reyes. 108 minutes. Rated R.

When the thugs who killed his father come looking for him, a young Latino man and his mother flee from their home.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry **

Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel. Directed by Dennis Dugan. 115 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Never is the possibility addressed that straight firefighters Chuck (Sandler) and Larry (James) could convince the world of the veracity of their sham domestic partnership by doing anything other than embodying loud gay stereotypes. The pair enter into the deception thanks to a plot contrivance that prevents widower Larry from assigning his insurance benefits to his two children. Told the only way around this problem is to get married, Larry enlists best bud Chuck to join him in a partnership that’s meant to exist only on paper. Chuck & Larry ends up patronizing both the frat-boy Sandler audience—presuming they need lectures on tolerance—and the potential gay audience, excusing stereotypes by asserting that the characters have learned it’s wrong to use the word “faggot.” –JB

The Invasion * 1/2

Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jackson Bond. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. 93 minutes. Rated R.

Kidman stars as Carol Bennell, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist with an ex-husband who works in government, a charming son, Oliver (Bond), and a doctor boyfriend (Craig). Everything’s fine until her ex, acting a bit peculiar, suddenly turns up and wishes to take Oliver for the weekend. Kidman spends many long sequences pretending to be a pod person, her face blank, walking through crowds of people with equally blank faces. In the process, she loses the story’s tension. The Invasion misses every chance to seek any new avenues or even reinvent the old ones. –JMA

Ladron Que Roba a Ladron *** 1/2

Fernando Colunga, Miguel Varoni, Julie Gonzalo. Directed by Joe Menendez. 98 minutes. Rated PG-13. In Spanish with English subtitles.

The heist plot revolves around Alejandro (Colunga) and Emilio (Varoni), two honest thieves who decide to rob another thief—infomercial guru Moctesuma Valdez (Saul Lisazo), who has violated some sort of honest thieves’ ethic by selling snakewater to poor, desperate Latino immigrants. The problem is that Alejandro and Emilio are having trouble finding qualified cons to crew their operation. So rather than finding criminals to portray Latino laborers in their scam, they decide to recruit actual Latino laborers to become criminals. The plot structure, style and even music of the film are uncannily similar to Ocean’s Eleven, but as in that movie, it’s a lot of fun watching the various cons and scams play off of and enhance each other until you gradually realize what the grand design is. –MSH

The Last Legion (Not reviewed)

Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Aishwarya Rai. Directed by Doug Lefler. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.

As the Roman empire crumbles, young Romulus Augustus embarks on a perilous voyage to Britain to track down a legion of supporters.

La Vie en Rose ***

Marion Cotillard, Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Martins. Directed by Olivier Dahan. 140 minutes. Rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.

La Vie en Rose is a film for lovers. Despite focusing on French singer Edith Piaf’s tortured life, the biopic has a romantic heart. We see Edith evolve from a street singer who is discovered by a club owner to her debut in a music hall. Until the scene in the music hall, La Vie en Rose doesn’t have much to recommend it. The first portion of the film is conventional melodrama. But with Piaf’s debut at the music hall, director Dahan starts to gain command and use his imagination. The rest of the film engages. –TM

Live Free or Die Hard ***

Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Directed by Len Wiseman. 128 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth installment in the increasingly ludicrous action series about everyman New York City cop McClane (Willis) single-handedly stopping massive terrorist attacks. Criminal mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Olyphant, coolly menacing) is a former U.S. intelligence expert now bent on taking down the system he was once hired to protect. McClane’s (and the country’s) only hope against Gabriel’s crippling of the U.S. transportation, financial and utilities infrastructure is hacker/slacker Matt Farrell (Long). Wiseman seems far more interested in concocting ever-more-gigantic action sequences than in examining McClane’s personal life. But, oh, those action sequences: Using a minimum of CGI, Wiseman stages some mind-boggling stunts. –JB

Mr. Bean’s Holiday (Not reviewed)

Rowan Atkinson, Emma de Caunes, Max Baldry. Directed by Steve Bendelack. 90 minutes. Rated PG.

The bumbling Mr. Bean wins a trip to Cannes where he unwittingly separates a young boy from his father and must help the two come back together.

My Best Friend ** 1/2

Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet. Directed by Patrice Leconte. 94 minutes. Rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.

Surly antiques dealer François (Auteuil) leads a monastically ordered life entirely devoid of joy or spontaneity, though he does impulsively buy a ridiculously expensive Grecian urn at an auction after hearing it described as a testament to undying friendship. When his business partner (Gayet), aghast at his financial recklessness, observes that he has no friends, only clients and acquaintances, François understandably bridles. And so, in the grand tradition of dumbass comedies the world over, a wager is proposed: François has 10 days to produce, in the flesh, his very best friend, or he forfeits his beloved urn. Leconte, who also co-wrote the screenplay, paints everything in cartoonishly broad strokes, making François so blithely repellent that the wonder isn’t that he has no friends but that he has no assassins. –MD

The Nanny Diaries ** 1/2

Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Nicholas Art, Alicia Keys. Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. 106 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Annie Braddock (Johansson) is a confused college grad with an interest (and a minor) in anthropology. She imagines her subjects as frozen mannequins in a museum, and Berman and Pulcini indulge her fantasies with nifty bits of CGI. By accident, Annie meets her main test subject, Mrs. X (Linney), in Central Park and agrees to be nanny to her son, Grayer (Art). Annie documents the entire experience like a study, although, all too obviously, she becomes too emotionally involved to retain her sense of credibility. Annie’s museum installations and cutting narration eventually dwindle as she learns about everyone’s good, soft center. –JMA

No Reservations ** 1/2

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin. Directed by Scott Hicks. 104 minutes. Rated PG.

No Reservations stars Zeta-Jones as New York City chef Kate Armstrong, a no-nonsense taskmaster at work whose personal life is (surprise!) not nearly as focused or together. Off-screen tragedy dumps a little bundle of lesson-learning in her lap, in the form of niece Zoe (Breslin), whose single mother dies in a car accident. Kate also has to contend with her new sous-chef, Nick (Eckhart), a free spirit who likes to play opera CDs while cooking and to whom Zoe takes an instant liking. Will Kate, too, fall for Nick? Only every single person watching the movie knows for sure. Rather than attacking a familiar formula with gusto, No Reservations moves sluggishly from plot point to plot point. –JB

Ratatouille ***

Voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo. Directed by Brad Bird. 110 minutes. Rated G.

It’s a cute and well-animated movie about a Parisian rat named Remy (Oswalt) who has a taste for gourmet food and idolizes a rotund celebrity restaurateur named Gusteau (Garrett). Gusteau’s gone to the great kitchen in the sky, and his eponymous eatery has been taken over by his money-grubbing sous-chef. When Remy finds himself by chance in the restaurant’s kitchen, he inadvertently helps busboy Alfredo Linguini (Romano) create a marvelous dish and becomes a sort of culinary Cyrano de Bergerac to the nervous young man. The plot moves along familiar beats, setting up its conflicts simply and resolving them the same way. –JB

Resurrecting the Champ **

Josh Hartnett, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathryn Morris. Directed by Rod Lurie. 111 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Resurrecting the Champ begins with a voice-over from a sports reporter named Erik (Hartnett), who kicks things off by using boxing as an analogy for writing. So when this writer eventually stumbles upon a homeless man who claims to be a former boxing champion, it’s clear that the stories of Erik and Champ (Jackson) will have a number of parallels. And since Erik is a man who lies to friends, family and co-workers to make them think he’s more important and talented than he is, it should come as no surprise that Champ is doing the same thing. Hartnett is too bland to make us feel one way or the other about Erik. Jackson gives us a decent performance as the stray dog who’s been kicked about one too many times, leaving him in a state where he wags his tail and cowers simultaneously. Ultimately, like the film, the performance will probably be forgotten. –MSH

Rush Hour 3 *

Chris Tucker, Jackie Chan, Yvan Attal. Directed by Brett Ratner. 91 minutes. Rated PG-13.

At the start of this inept, brain-dead new sequel, Tucker’s detective James Carter has been understandably demoted to directing traffic, while Chief Inspector Lee (Chan) has been assigned to protect a Chinese ambassador, who in turn is assigned to bring down the Triads. Of course, the ambassador is murdered, and Carter and Lee find themselves flying to Paris to find a secret list that contains the names of the top 13 Triad leaders. If you can’t make the connection between an assassinated Chinese ambassador and Paris, neither can writer Jeff Nathanson, who leaves plot holes big enough for the Eiffel Tower to pass through. Nathanson and director Ratner’s biggest crime, however, is their inability to combine comedy and action, to say nothing of their ineptitude at each element by itself. –JMA

Self-Medicated *** 1/2

Monty Lapica, Diane Venora, Michael Bowen. Directed by Monty Lapica. 107 minutes. Rated R.

Based on his own experiences as a Las Vegas teen, Lapica plays Andrew, a smart and talented high-schooler whose life has come undone after the death of his father. Smoking pot, drinking and pulling juvenile pranks (shooting paintballs at tourists on the Strip being the most amusing), Andrew is indifferently throwing his life away. His pill-popping mother, played by Venora, sends him packing to a juvenile lockdown facility, her last hope for helping her son. A powerful debut from writer-actor-director Lapica. He handles himself well wearing all three hats, and his cast gives him solid support. –TRW

September Dawn (Not reviewed)

Jon Voight, Trent Ford, Tamara Hope. Directed by Christopher Cain. 110 minutes. Rated R.

A love story set during a tense encounter between a wagon train of settlers and a renegade Mormon group.

The Simpsons Movie ***

Voices of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith. Directed by David Silverman. 87 minutes. Rated PG-13.

There are plenty of laughs in the beginning of the film, which in typical Simpsons fashion takes a circuitous route to the actual plot, and the movie showcases many of the show’s best features, including clever voice cameos (Green Day, Tom Hanks), incisive political satire and hilariously oddball references to obscure bits of culture. Things slow a little as soon as the story kicks into gear, with Simpson patriarch Homer inadvertently sparking an environmental disaster that causes the government to lower a giant dome over Springfield. This feature-length version of the TV show has some snazzier animation but otherwise amounts to a decent oversized episode. –JB

Stardust ** 1/2

Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. 128 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The English village Wall is aptly named as it borders a wall beyond which is the mystical realm Stormhold. Residents are forbidden to cross this wall, but an enterprising young man does so anyway, and while on the other side he has a dalliance with a young woman who claims to be an imprisoned princess. Cut to 18 years later, and the product of their union is now the awkward young man Tristan (Cox), your standard peasant boy who is secretly of royal blood. Promising the haughty object of his affection that he will catch her a fallen star, he too jumps the wall and tracks down said star, which in this realm takes the convenient form of a beautiful woman named Yvaine (Danes). There are just too many ill-advised digressions for Stardust to completely work. –JB

Superbad ***

Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Directed by Greg Mottola. 114 minutes. Rated R.

It’s a major coup when high-school losers Seth (Hill) and Evan (Cera), scant days before graduation, score an invitation to a honest-to-goodness party—the kind with cute girls. Except that Seth, desperate to impress, has volunteered to supply the booze, and neither he nor Evan has ever bothered to secure a fake ID. Enter Fogell (Mintz-Plasse), the school überdork, who’s just secured a driver’s license that proclaims him to be of drinking age. While there are a few deliberately outrageous set pieces, Superbad has a shambling, discursive sensibility that closely approximates the semistructured world of the fumbling adolescent. And the comedy isn’t cheap, even when it’s crass. –MD

Talk to Me ***

Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Taraji P. Henson, Martin Sheen. Directed by Kasi Lemmons. 118 minutes. Rated R.

Talk to Me is the story of Washington, D.C., radio DJ Petey Greene, a controversial firebrand who served as a voice for the disenfranchised black community from the late 1960s until his death in the early 1980s. Greene was an ex-con, a heavy drinker and a recovering drug addict, so he’s the perfect subject for a standard-issue biopic. Lemmons and the screenwriters don’t really deviate from the expected formula, right down to the montages set to period music and the judicious deployment of historical stock footage. Up until the final third, which follows Greene beyond the radio station, the movie is engaging and enjoyable to watch. –JB

Transformers **

Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel. Directed by Michael Bay. 140 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Giant robots that beat each other up are inherently exciting, so it’s frustrating to see the filmmakers behind this behemoth actually turn such a premise into something tedious and boring, stretched out to nearly two-and-a-half hours and saddled with a tone too somber for camp and too silly to be taken seriously. Basically, there’s this thing that’s really important, and both the good guys and the bad guys are after it. Given the relative simplicity of the story and fans’ desire to see as much hot robot-on-robot action as possible, it’s baffling that Bay and his writers pace the movie so slowly, with numerous diversions and dull sidetracks delaying the inevitable Autobot/Decepticon showdown. –JB

Underdog (Not reviewed)

Peter Dinklage, Patrick Warburton, voices of Jason Lee, Amy Adams. Directed by Frederik Du Chau. 84 minutes. Rated PG.

A lab accident gives a hound named Shoeshine super powers—a secret that the dog eventually shares with the young boy who becomes his owner and friend.

Vitus ****

Fabrizio Borsani, Teo Gheorghiu, Julika Jenkins, Urs Jucker. Directed by Fredi M. Murer. 123 minutes. Rated PG. In Swiss German with English subtitles.

Vitus is a precocious piano player, but he has many other talents as well. There are a lot of films about musical prodigies, and while some feature excellent performances, most of them rest on the laurels of their protagonists. Here is a movie about an exceptional talent that complements that genius with inspired filmmaking. It’s the story of a boy who has all the mathematical and scientific answers for adult life but lacks the emotional maturity to deal with it. Through its relationships and performances, sound and language, Vitus is one of the most endearing and uplifting family films in recent memory. –BS

War (Not reviewed)

Jet Li, Jason Statham, John Lone. Directed by Philip G. Atwell. 103 minutes. Rated R.

An FBI Agent seeks vengeance on a mysterious assassin known as “Rogue” who murdered his partner.

JMA Jeffrey M. Anderson; JB Josh Bell; MD Mike D’Angelo; MH Mark Holcomb; MSH Matthew Scott Hunter; TM Tony Macklin BS Benjamin Spacek; TRW T.R. Witcher