Felon

Former stuntman Rick Waugh turns writer/director to make a compelling and gritty drama that is as much a commentary on America's failed justice/prison system as it is about the devastation suffered by an honest family man imprisoned for killing a burglar at his New Mexico home. Stephen Dorf plays Wade Porter, the owner of contracting business whose looming wedding plans to his pregnant fiancée are shattered when he chases an intruder into his front yard before killing him with a single blow from a baseball bat. Unfamiliar with conflicting prison and inmate codes of behavior, Wade becomes a doomed scapegoat in a culture of violence exacerbated by corrupt prison guards. Although the film strains on its forcibly optimistic third act resolution, it makes a convincing case against a prison system that flatly doesn’t work on any level for a civilized society. Val Kilmer gives a strong performance as Wade’s stoic cellmate John Smith, and Sam Shepherd adds charisma in a supporting role as John’s longtime friend.

Rated R, 104 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Death Defying Acts

Guy Pierce is miscast as Harry Houdini in this ill-conceived melodrama that takes too much dramatic license in concocting a ritualistic romance that Houdini develops with Mary (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a vaudeville psychic interested in winning a $10,000 prize Houdini offers for his deceased mother’s last words. Mary and her scrappy daughter Benji (Saoirse Ronan) share little chemistry as Houdini wines and dines Mary, who physically resembles his mother. Historic facts of Houdini’s life are sprinkled throughout the story to pad the fictional speculation about the entertainer’s inner demons. Guy Pierce’s performance is perhaps the worst researched role of the year, and Catherine Zeta-Jones never connects to her character’s lower class milieu. Even the usually believable Timothy Spall ("Secrets and Lies") chokes as Houdini’s rudderless manager.

Not Rated, 97 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

The Last Mistress

Paris, 1835--On the eve of his marriage to frigid French aristocrat Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), Ryno do Marigny (Fu-ad Ait Aatou) tells his fiancé’s grandmother, Marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute), the sordid details of his ten-year relationship with his fiery Spanish mistress Vellini (Asia Argento), a woman of unquenchable desire. Fraught with leaden exposition, melodramatic outbursts of billowy emotion, and dispassionate sex scenes, the movie ultimately fails because of its lack empathetic characters, and because their situation remains stagnate regardless of the objectively tumultuous episodes they endure. Lush cinematic compositions, locations, and costumes compensate for some of the story's lacking impact, but not enough to recommend it as anything more than a guilty pleasure.

Not Rated, 115 mins. (C-)

Boy A

Based on Jonathan Trigell's novel, this dramatically charged sophomore film from British director John Crowley ("Intermission") follows the erratic trajectory of "Boy A," (well played by Andrew Garfield) after his release from a juvenile incarceration facility for the murder of a child. Under the protection of his parole officer (Peter Mullan), Boy A is given a new identity as Jack Burridge and moved to Manchester where he's placed into a job and strikes up a romance with the company's receptionist Michelle (Katie Lyons). In spite of all attempts to keep his troubled past secret from co-workers, Jack is unable to keep history at bay. Well-acted, atmospheric, and gripping, "Boy-A" nevertheless negates much of its dramatic force with an ending that woefully attempts to shoehorn novelistic precedent into cinematic form.

Not Rated, 100 mins. (B-)

Elegy

Based on Philip Roth’s novella "The Dying Animal," "Elegy" an impassioned cinematic adaptation from director Isabel Coixet ("The Secret Life of Worlds") that poignantly captures the hypocrisy, lust, and self-imposed torment of David Kepesh, an aging college literature professor (exquisitely played by Ben Kingsley) enslaved to youthful beauty. Mortality plays an increasingly powerful role after David seduces his former student Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) and struggles to maintain their relationship in spite of his jealousy and selfishness that undermines the worshiping affection he lavishes on her. Surprising jabs of humor penetrate the drama as the time-folded narrative flips between David’s candid discussions with his like-minded womanizing poet friend George (Dennis Hopper) and his romanticized affair with Consuela that occurs beyond David's sexual relationship of 20-years with Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson). Bracing, inventive, and embellished with refreshing emotional realism, this is a modern adult movie that moves its audience closer to elemental truths about life, love, and death. It also contains some of the finest acting work of their careers from Kingsley, Cruz, and Hopper.

Rated R, 111 mins. (A)

Three Monkeys ("Uc Maymun")

On first sight a strong contender for the Palme d’Or, Turkish director/co-writer Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ("Les Climats") film is about a father, mother, and son caught in a web of corruption, betrayal, and murder makes thoughtful use of its see no, hear no, speak no evil, metaphor. Troubles begin when Servet (Ercan Kesal) an ambitious politician kills a pedestrian at night with his car and bribes his regular driver Eyup (played by popular Turkish folk singer Yavuz Bingol) to take responsibility and serve the nine-month jail sentence that comes with it. Eyup’s lazy teenage son Ismael (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) talks his mother Hacer (Hatice Aslan) into requesting an advance on the bribe from Servet, and the family spirals down a self-perpetrating path of depravity. This sparsely-told story speaks volumes with a cinematic poetry that you would expect to find in Cannes.

Not Rated, 109 mins. (A)

Adoration

Atom Egoyan’s latest film follows a 16-year-old boy’s (Devon Bostick) search for truth about his parents’ death from a head-on collision that occurred after a tense family gathering with his volatile grandfather. At his high school teacher’s (Arsinee Khanjian) provocation, Simon writes a fictional essay about how his middle-eastern father secretly planted a bomb into his pregnant girlfriend’s (Rachel Blanchard) luggage on her way to Israel, only to have it discovered and defused by airport security. Simon posts the story on his facebook page, and sets off an online discussion beyond his control. As with all of Egoyan’s films, “Adoration” is a forward-thinking exploratory work of cinema meant to invigorate audiences into social discussions past its narrative structure. Simon’s search for resolution comes with a symbolic personal gesture that seeks to sort out the present from the future with the dubious aid of modern-day technology’s social interaction. It’s all about the effort.

(B-)

Waltz With Bashir

Writer/director Ari Folman adopted a graphic novel animated approach to addressing his haunting but vague recollections of the 1982 Israeli Army invasion of Beirut that he took part in, and witnessed the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Christian Phalangist militia. Informed by confessional discussions with friends, the film gradually connects his abstract visions and short-circuited memory clips toward fleshing out the traumatic blocked events. Visually inventive and viscerally sincere, "Waltz With Bashir" is a cathartic and unforgettable film.

(A-)

Lorna’s Silence

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne craft an evocative story about Lorna, a young Albanian woman (played flawlessly in the festival’s most impressive break-out performance by Kosovo-born Arta Dobroshi) in cahoots with Fabio, a Belgian mobster, to make money so she can open a snack bar with her boyfriend. Lorna suffers through a fraud marriage to Claudy (well played by Jeremie Renier), a junkie that Fabio plans to kill in order to put Lorna in another sham marriage, this time to a rich Russian. If the plot sounds convoluted it doesn’t impede an inevitable flood of surprising physical and emotional responses from the poker-faced Lorna. “Lorna’s Silence” was one of the strongest films in competition.

(A-)

Blindness

Director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of Jose Saramago’s allegorical novel about a society that goes blind loses all credibility in Don McKellar’s particularly naïve screenplay. Julianne Moore strives valiantly to single-handedly hold up the film as its only seeing character, but doesn’t stand a chance against implausible sequences of a group of quarantined blindness victims who can’t agree on where to evacuate their bladders and bowels. “Blindness” opened the festival as an embarrassment.

(C-)

Two Lovers

After stinking up the competition at last year’s festival with “We Own the Night,” co-writer/director James Gray grinds gears switching from his typical predilection for crime genre stories to make an imitation love story. There isn’t an empathetic character to be had. Manic depressive thirty-something Brooklynite Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) still lives at home with his parents and works at his father’s dry cleaners. Leonard falls for Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow in her first film role in two years), a romantically bemused girl dating a married man (Elias Koteas). It doesn’t help that Leonard’s parents have set him up with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of Leonard’s dad’s business partner. Sandra is to Leonard as he is to Michelle. Yawn.

(C-)

The Changeling (AKA "The Exchange")

Based on a true story from Los Angeles, circa 1928, Christine (Angelina Jolie) is a hard-working single mother whose nine-year-old son Walter is kidnapped. Months pass before a corruption-embattled LAPD delivers to Christine an imposter child three inches shorter than Walter, and circumcised. Christine’s vocal protestations about the boy’s identity are met with impunity by a hostile police captain (Jeffrey Donovan) who has Christine institutionalized in a psych ward, while local radio talk show Presbyterian minister Rev. Gustav Briegleb (played by a miscast John Malkovich) jumps to her defense. Apart from a flashing neon light coda, Eastwood’s drama made for a respectable competition entry at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

(B)

Quid Pro Quo

From an actor’s standpoint, "Quid Pro Quo" is a doozy of a showcase. Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga play opposite sides of the same transmogrified coin in an intriguing puzzle of a movie designed to keep audience discussions going long after the projector stops. Issac Knott (Stahl) is a New York public radio journalist confined to a wheelchair since age 8, when he was paralyzed in a car accident that killed his parents. Fiona (Farmiga) is a museum art restoration specialist obsessed with proving her inner paralysis by living like Issac, within the confines of a wheelchair. The two become lovers just as Issac discovers a pair of vintage shoes called "spectators" that enable him to walk. Writer/director Carlos Brooks makes an auspicious debut with a psychological drama that uses brush strokes from films like David Cronenberg’s "Crash" and David Fincher’s "Fight Club" to gradually develop a psychological revelation that is at once surprising and virtuous. Although not a perfect film, "Quid Pro Quo" is a highly crafted cinematic achievement that taps into its characters’ subconscious with surgical precision and elegant assurance.

Rated R, 82 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Redbelt

David Mamet may be the hardest working screenwriter/director alive, or at least he makes it seem that way. Yet somehow every overwrought action and line of forced dialogue eventually bends to his iron will thanks to actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer who manage to connect the stiffly written characters they play to the breathing human beings we see on the screen. Ejiofor plays humble Jiu-Jitsu instructor Mike Terry, whose self-run Los Angeles dojo is in danger of closing due to a mountain of debt he has accumulated. Mike comports himself with the same dignified samurai’s code that he runs his studio. He might seem a cold fish to his fiery fabric designer wife Sondra (Alice Braga), but Mike’s high-mindedness has kept him away from the lucrative yet morally corrupt arena of martial arts competition.

On a rainy night, as Mike’s police officer student Joe (Max Martini) is about to leave the dojo, when attorney Laura (Mortimer) accidentally shoots out a dojo window with Joe’s service revolver. No charges are filed, but Mike is forced to take a loan from Sondra’s underworld brother to make repairs. It isn’t long before Mike is cornered into competing in a martial arts competition with a $50,000 grand prize. "Redbelt" is far from a perfect movie. There are far too many subplots for the story to render a satisfying resolution. But there are plenty of unexpected dramatic moments, and surprising performances—not the least of which comes from Tim Allen as a Hollywood star that Mike rescues in a bar fight. It may be just another Mamet experiment in the limits of dramaturgy, but "Redbelt" keeps the audience guessing.

Rated R, 98 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Savage Grace

"Savage Grace" is an irritating melodrama of familial dysfunction based on the true story of an incestuous relationship that developed between Bakelite plastics heir Barbara Daly (Julianne Moore) and her pampered gay son Tony (Eddie Redmayne). Dark humor, along the lines of "The Honeymoon Killers," gives way to fractured set pieces that gesture toward the film’s gratuitous climax, one that’s destined to bestow upon it a cult status. Stephen Dillane makes the most of his underwritten role as Barbara’s wealthy and adulterous husband Brooks Baekeland, but it’s Julianne Moore who gets chewed up and spit out of screenwriter Howard A. Rodman’s dissonant adaptation of the book by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson. Intrusive voice-over narration by Tony about his "adventuress mother" pushes against a narrative filled with antagonists. There’s never enough oxygen for the film, or its audience, to breathe.

Not Rated, 97 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Irina Palm

Marianne Faithful is in a class with great female singers like Debbie Harry or Patti Smith. Her "Broken English" album (1979) is as timeless today as it was then. She brings her understated carriage and world-weary demeanor as a working class hero in modern day London. Maggie (Faithful) is an aging widow who has spent all of her money to help pay for medical care of her 10-year-old grandson who suffers from a rare and potentially terminal disease. In order to finance a specialized treatment opportunity in Australia, Maggie takes the only job a woman of her age and experience can find, jerking off men through a hole in a wall at a SoHo porn shop. Maggie’s gifted caress earns her a quick reputation and the stage name of Irina Palm. Things get dicey when Maggie’s son Tom (Kevin Bishop) learns of the source of the cash that she gives to his wife Sarah (Siobhan Hewlett), who is more appreciative of Maggie’s sincere efforts.

Far from the exploitation movie that you’d expect from its subject matter, "Irina Palm" is a significant piece of cinematic satire that comes straight from the heart. It may not be a perfect film; some plot points are rushed, or ring hollow. Nonetheless, Marianne Faithful creates a character who knows how to keep her emotions in check while providing for her family in a way Britain’s economic system will allow.

Not Rated, 103 mins. (B)

Street Kings

Director David Ayer makes a gritty follow-up to his first film "Harsh Times" with an equally cynical impression of armed authority figures. Based on James Ellroy’s novel, "Street Kings" is set in LA’s blood-soaked streets, traversed by widowed LAPD veteran Detective Tom Ludlow (played by Keanu Reeves) whose carte blanche methods of obliterating suspects with his service revolver are threatened when his former partner Terrence Washington turns Internal Affairs informant. Accustomed to having his violent "missions" smoothed over with the help of Captain Wander (played by Forest Whitaker), Tom thumbs his nose at the encircling IA officers, in order to find the gunmen responsible for shooting Washington down during a convenience store heist. A combination of implausible plot-points, and the miscasting of television’s Hugh Laurie as Internal Affairs chief Captain Biggs, hampers a convoluted crime thriller that is nonetheless entertaining for its grotesque action sequences.

Rated R, 107 mins. (B-)

21

Based on Ben Mezrich's book "Bringing Down the House," about a coordinated group of MIT students that used card-counting techniques to win a fortune at Las Vegas blackjack tables, "21" relies too heavily on music video montages to connect its cardboard characters. British actor Jim Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, an MIT student trying to save up enough money to attend Harvard Medical School. Ben’s knack for numbers catches the attention of his cheeky math professor Mickey (played by Kevin Spacey) who entices Ben to join a secret study group of Blackjack sharks. It doesn’t hurt Mickey’s cause that Ben has a crush on the group’s eye-pleasing member Jill (played by Kate Bosworth). The story works best when it gives a peak into the counting system at work, but the screenwriters don’t share enough details to bring the audience inside the action.

Rated PG-13, 96 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Chop Shop

Director/co-writer Ramin Bahrani ("Man Push Cart") gives a candid window into America's impoverished underbelly via a Queens junkyard neighborhood called the "Iron Triangle," where 12-year-old Latino orphan Ale (Alejandro Polanco) plans for his future from a plywood room in the back a the auto repair garage where he works. Uneducated but street-smart, Ale saves the money he makes to buy a food van for he and his newly arrived 16-year-old sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales) to operate. Shea Stadium lurks over Ale's incessant ambition, and serves as a constant reminder of everything he doesn't have. Isamar suffers equally from desperation, and builds her own nest egg with prostitution. The "Chop Shop" of the film’s title insinuates the cobbled-together existence that Ale and Isamar share in the heart of a place where stolen cars are dismantled and sold for parts. It’s a vision that looks more like a third world country than anything that television presents as the pinnacle of Western Civilization.

Not Rated, 84 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

It’s a Free World…

Hero director of the working class, Ken Loach works with long time screenwriter collaborator Paul Laverty to create a rigorous polemic about illegal immigrants in London. Single mom Angie (powerfully played by Kierston Wareing) starts a job-recruitment agency with her roommate Rose (Juliet Ellis) to place illegally outsource unskilled, non-English speaking immigrants in "flexable" jobs. The chaos of a deregulated economy has Angie ruthlessly focused on her own survival/success to the exclusion of the underpaid workers that she exploits to greater depths. Realistically filmed, but limited by narrative cuts that hopscotch through time, "It’s a Free World" is a flawed film that overflows with ideas. Anti-heroine Angie is a product of the "Thatcher counter-revolution" that views free-trade as a means to an end, even if it enables racism to rule the day in a system that is worse than slavery. You should never pass up a Ken Loach movie, and this is no exception to the rule.

Not Rated, 93 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Cassandra’s Dream

Woody Allen’s third London-set film is a minor tale of a murder perpetrated by a pair of Cockney working-class brothers (erratically played by Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor). Farrell plays a car mechanic with a gambling problem to McGregor, who’s busy pawning himself off as a rich entrepreneur to capture the high-maintenance affection of a local model-turned-actress. The financially needy lads succumb to a murderous assignment from their rich uncle (played by Tom Wilkinson), but one brother is better suited to the task and the black comedy sinks into melodrama in a fairly unsatisfying third act. Nearing the end of his career, Woody Allen has become a hit-or-miss director with considerably more misses.

Rated PG-13, 108 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Walker

"I'm not naive; I'm superficial" is how Woody Harrelson’s Washington D.C. son of privilege Carter Page III describes himself to deflect the gravity of a murder investigation in writer/director Paul Schrader’s disappointing finale to his lost man trilogy that includes "American Gigolo" and "Light Sleeper." The gay bon vivant son of a respected and deceased liberal Virginia senator, "Car" pretends to sell real estate but spends his time stirring gossip with the wives of D.C. powerbrokers, with whom he plays canasta and chaperones to social functions as a foil against scandal. But scandal finds Car when his favorite wife Lynn Lockner (Kristen Scott Thomas) discovers the murdered corpse of her weekly lover, and Car willingly takes responsibility for the discovery. The movie lags as Car and his attorney battle a nasty district attorney intent on pinning the murder on an innocent man. Harrelson’s overly pronounced southern accent doesn’t come close to its alleged Virginian origin in a slight murder mystery where we care nothing for the victim, the suspect, or the identity of the killer.

Rated R. 107 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson has grown immensely as a writer/director since his last feature film ("Punch Drunk Love"), so much so that in a single film he has become America’s most visionary and accomplished auteur. Anderson based "There Will Be Blood" on the first 150 pages of Upton Sinclair’s lesser known novel "Oil!," about a turn-of-the-century silver miner named Daniel Plainview (exquisitely played by Daniel Day-Lewis) who turns oilman after being approached by a young preacher about purchasing his family’s oil-rich land. Paul Dano ("Little Miss Sunshine") plays evangelist Eli Sunday, a man with Plainview’s greedy heart but not his iron stomach for exacting the pounds of flesh that comes with such desire. Embedded in Anderson’s profound adaptation are timeless themes of greed and social oppression that reflect injustices facing America today. Composer Jonny Greenwood (of the band Radiohead) creates the film’s fiercely original musical score that expands the scope of the story with unusual sounds that tweak with emotion and experience. Cinematographer Robert Elswit ("Michael Clayton") captures the vast scope of raw nature reduced in scale by men. Moments of homage to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" are evident in this miraculous picture that is simultaneously an art film and a mainstream masterpiece.

Rated R. 158 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Atonement

Director Joe Wright ("Pride & Prejudice") re-teams with Keira Knightly to do powerful justice to Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel about lovers from opposite sides of class lines drawn through a family’s lush estate in 1935 England. Precocious 13-year-old Briony (Saoirse Ronan) fancies herself a playwright, and her pampered desire for drama runs astray when she misinterprets her older sister’s (Keira Knightly) amorous involvement with Robbie (James McAvoy), the scholarly son of the family’s servant (Brenda Blethyn). What starts out with the sunny promise of unbridled romance takes a 180 degree turn at the hand of young Briony whose own infatuation with Robbie causes her to act with unthinkable cruelty when a bizarre set of circumstances allow. Outstanding performances from its pitch-perfect cast are set in stone with the aid of Knightly and McAvoy who each display a depth of emotion and restraint that is hypnotic. "Atonement" is an example of an elegant and raw period melodrama that harmonizes every dissonant tone of bad intention that separates two ideal lovers, while sustaining its damning theme of offhand injustice.

Rated R. 123 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

With the help of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, director Julian Schnabel goes so far toward cinematically capturing the claustrophobic condition of his paralyzed and mute protagonist Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) that the artifice of his point-of-view technique consumes where it should liberate. The film is based on the memoir of Bauby who, at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that rendered his brain stem inactive and derailed his life as the dashing editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Only able to move his left eye, Bauby painstakingly learns, with the aid of his speech therapist Marie-Josee Croze (Henriette Roi), to communicate and later dictate his memoir to a volunteer (Anne Consigny) at a naval hospital in northern France. The film gets some much-needed zest from Max Von Sydow as Bauby’s caring father unable to hear his son’s voice on the telephone. Audiences familiar with "The Sea Inside" will recognize that film’s more active story about a paralyzed man reaching out to make his last days count albeit with far different motivations.

Rated PG-13, 114 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Youth Without Youth

Francis Coppola’s gasping adaptation of Mircea Eliade’s out-of-print novella should provide the tipping point at which audiences start recognize the exasperated genre of magical realism that has crept into modern film vernacular with a vengeance. Never before has so much plot (the synopsis took five pages in the press notes) rendered so little narrative movement. Suicidal 70-year-old Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) is interrupted from his 1938 Easter Sunday plans in Romania by a lightening bolt that strikes him as he crosses a street. The event has the unlikely result of making Matei younger by 30 years, and it isn’t long before the Nazis are trying to kidnap the most valuable man in the world. Dominic discovers an evil twin to whom he frequently seeks advice in the midst of finishing his life’s work, a study of the origin of languages. Enter Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) who suffers a lightening strike that causes her to identify herself as "Rupini," a 7^th-century disciple of Chandrakirti who speaks in ancient tongues that Matei records before realizing that she is aging at a faster rate due to his presence. For a movie that Coppola envisioned as salvation for his waning career, "Youth Without Youth" is akin to watching a cat chase its tail. It’s cute for the first minute, then it’s time for something else.

Rated R, 121 mins. (D) (One Star)

Grace is Gone

John Cusack turns in an understated performance as Stanley Phillips a pro-war Republican family man stalling for time with his daughters to tell them that their career soldier mother Grace was killed in Iraq. Stanley takes his 12-year-old daughter Heidi (Shelan O'Keefe) and 8-year-old Dawn (Grace Bednarczyk) on a road trip to their favorite Florida theme park to bond with the girls before breaking the news. Stanley gradually comes out of his denial and accepts the responsibility of being a single father. Screenwriter James C. Strouse makes an able if flat directorial debut with a simple wartime drama that needed more dimension. This is what a movie without subplots looks like.

Rated PG-13, 85 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

This Christmas

An unusual blend of well-balanced comedy and drama, writer/director Preston A. Whitmore II’s Christmastime movie effortlessly weaves multiple storylines of family members reuniting for the first time in four years. A solid cast that includes Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Mekhi Phifer, and Regina King embody full-blooded characters keeping personal secrets at bay until perfect plot points allow their disclosure. Dramatically impressive musical performances from Idris Elba ("American Gangster") and Chris Brown ("Stomp the Yard") accompany a distinct musical score of holiday songs to underscore the overflowing story. Ma'Dere Whitfield (Loretta Devine) and her recent husband Joe (Delroy Lindo) host a whirlwind of family activity and airing of personal issues that culminate in a satisfying if bittersweet finale that captures the mood of our times. "This Christmas" is this year’s best holiday movie.

Rated PG-13, 117 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Lions for Lambs

Overtly pedantic and overstrained, Tom Cruise’s first undertaking as co-head of United Artists is a politically top-heavy triptych of simultaneous political conversations made all the more cumbersome due to its extravagant cast that includes Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford, who also handles directorial duties. A pungent vapor of earnestness permeates Redford’s unimaginative handling of newbie screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan’s three-note script that toggles between an Afghan battlefield crisis, a senator’s one-on-one press meeting with a TV journalist, and a professor/student conference. For a film attempting to grapple with the seething anger of an American populace left hung out to dry by the Bush administration, "Lions for Lambs" is far to muted and meek to achieve its perceived goals of inciting social activism.

Rated R, 92 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Martian Child

Another installment in a current spate of magical realist films, "Martian Child" focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars. John Cusack plays David Gordon, a widowed science fiction writer who sees himself in Dennis, and adopts the troubled boy. With help from his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and would-be girlfriend Harlee (Amanda Peet), David breaks through Dennis's defense mechanisms and teaches him to see life on terms he can relate to-like baseball. John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing.

Rated PG. 108 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Rails & Ties

Alison Eastwood makes a tentative directorial debut with a made-for-TV-quality script by tin-eared Mickey Levy. Kevin Bacon plays a train engineer troubled by his wife’s (Marcia Gay Harden) battle with breast cancer. Bacon’s character gets a fresh plate of crisis when his train hits the car of a depressed mother parked on the tracks with her 10-year-old son in the passenger seat. The boy escapes and goes searching for the train driver that killed his mother. Harden and Bacon are dependably strong as a middle-aged couple facing death, yet the picture has a surprisingly shallow dramatic arc that falls into place all too predictably. Alison Eastwood has a good eye for composition but misses out completely on bringing some much-needed rhythmic variety and humor to the maudlin source material.

Rated PG-13, 96 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Redacted

Brian De Palma ("The Black Dahlia") simultaneously tries too hard but not enough with this didactic antiwar polemic loosely based on a March 2006 incident when U.S. troops raped and killed a teenage girl south of Baghdad. The story is presented as a faux docudrama culled from a video diary by hopeful filmmaker and U.S. soldier Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz). With a cast that looks like they were rescued from an off-off-off Broadway production of a Sam Shepherd play, De Palma's cinema verite approach-complete with voice-over narration-reeks of an unskilled flavor that belies the director's impressive resume. Stereotypical characters, lame attempts at shock, and amateur actors doom "Redacted" to throwaway status-- a sadly unpolished movie about an important subject.
Rated R, 91 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

American Gangster

 Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe deliver inspired performances as rivals from opposite sides of the law in director Ridley Scott's true-crime epic about '70s era Harlem drug king Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington) and the honest cop (played by Russell Crowe) who brings him down. Before smuggling 100 kilos of heroin from Southeast Asia with help from the U.S. military during the Viet Nam war, Frank Lucas usurps his respected crime boss mentor Bumpy Johnson when he drops dead from a heart attack. Upstanding Harlem community figure Frank undercuts his competition's drug prices and builds a cartel that enables him to marry Miss Puerto Rico, and move his family to New York from North Carolina. Although entertaining "American Gangster" fails to rise to the level of movies like "Scarface" or "The Godfather" due, in part, to a lack of vision by cinematographer Harris Savides and Marc Streitenfeld's underachieving musical score.

Rated R, 157 mins. (B+) (Three Stars)

Gone Baby Gone

For his directing debut Ben Affleck, and co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapt a Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square. Casey Affleck does leading man honors as Boston native Patrick Kenzie, a youngish private detective sharing his home-office business with love interest Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Relatives of a missing four-year-old neighborhood girl induce Patrick and Angie to take up the case in hopes of recovering her. The girl's mom is a negligent drug addict. Assigned to work with career cops (played by Ed Harris and John Ashton), our private-eye duo find their personal relationship threatened as they descend into a world of brutal drug dealers and lying cops. Strong performances from its ensemble cast can't compensate for undeveloped character-reversals, splashes of exploitation, and a broken storyline that feels like two different narratives pasted together.

Rated R, 115 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Paranoid Park

Variety’s Todd McCarthy writes of Gus Van Sant as adding "another panel to his series of pictures about disaffected, disconnected youth." The word "panel" is an appropriately inert designation for Van Sant’s lazy man’s approach to making movies by aiming his camera at inarticulate young male characters. Behind the torturously "atmospheric" (read lame) "Gerry," "Elephant," and "Last Days"--Van Sant's latest film almost seems to have some narrative structure. Based on Blake Nelson’s novel, "Paranoid Park" is set in Portland, Oregon where skateboarding teens live an underground existence that gravitates around an illegal skatepark responsible for the film’s title. The movie slips into gear when 16-year-old Alex (Gabe Nevins) accidentally knocks a train security guard to his death while "riding the rails" with a newfound friend from the skatepark. A local detective grills Alex and his sloppily dressed skateboard friends, and Alex’s estranged family life rattles against his inability to connect with the girl whose virginity he takes as if he were washing the dishes. "Paranoid Park" may be the best of the director’s last four films, but that isn’t saying much.

Rated R, 84 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Reservation Road

Based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz, director Terry George adapts the devastating story of a hit-and-run accident that takes the life of a young boy. Connecticut locals Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix) and his wife Grace (Jennifer Connelly) slip into a deep depression after their 10-year-old son is accidentally killed by Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) on his way from a baseball game with his own young son (Eddie Alderson). A cavalcade of coincidences and a plodding pace surround the aftermath, during which time Dwight, an attorney, garages his Ford Explorer and contemplates turning himself in. Ethan, in the meantime, hires Dwight’s law firm to follow up on the case that local police have all but dropped. A long overdue showdown between the distraught father and his son’s killer set the climax, leaving the movie an overlong and threadbare exercise in stagnate motivations of should, would and can’t.

Rated R, 102 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Rendition

After overblown stories of mass walkouts by critics during its Toronto debut, "Rendition" proves to have enough substance, momentum and surprise to validate its entertainment value as a politically charged thriller. Reese Witherspoon plays Isabella, the pregnant Chicago wife of Egyptian American Anwar El-Ibrahimi who is legally abducted upon his return to America from a conference in South Africa by U.S. Special Forces on suspicion of terrorism. El-Ibrahimi is shipped off to a secret third world country where he is tortured under the tacit assistance of newly appointed CIA cat’s paw Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal). Isabella smells a rat and visits her former college friend Alan Smith in Washington D.C. where he works as personal aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin). Running parallel to Isabella’s quest to locate her missing husband, and the barbarous treatment he receives, is the real story behind the terrorist attack that initiated the abduction. Director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") does a serviceable job with upstart screenwriter Kelley Sane’s writing-on-the-wall script. "Rendition" is no "Syriana," but it isn’t a bad movie.

Rated R, 122 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Caught up in an adulterous affair with his brother Andy’s wife (Marisa Tomei), Hank (Ethan Hawke) digs himself into a deep hole when he agrees to rob a mom-&-pop jewelry store at Andy’s insistence. Hank’s pressing financial problems are nothing compared to the spiraling trouble he gets in when the robbery goes bad, since the jewelry store in question belongs to Hank’s and Andy’s parents. Director Sidney Lumet ("Dog Day Afternoon") twists suspense around terrific ensemble performances in screenwriter Kelly Masterson’s character-driven crime thriller that is at turns sexy, hilarious and devastating. Philip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding as the cunning Andy, and Albert Finney priceless as the father whose sons betray him. The title comes from an Irish saying, "May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead."

Rated R, 123 Mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Great World of Sound

Great writing and solid ensemble performances from unfamiliar actors make this gem of a drama stick in the memory. Director/co-writer Craig Zobel uses a cinema verite style with a theatrically formal plot to create a thought-provoking and nuanced character study. There is an anti-capitalist ethic smuggled into the story of two men—Martin (Pat Healy) and Clarence (Kene Holliday) who get jobs working as talent scouts for a record production company know as "Great World of Sound." Timid Martin leaves his artsy girlfriend (Rebecca Mader) at home while he travels with Clarence to places like Biloxi and Birmingham auditioning local musicians for the privilege of putting up money to help the company pay for demo recording and distribution costs. The scam wears on Martin as he and Clarence become the company’s best sales team. There’s a trace of David Mamet’s "Glengarry Glen Ross" in the tone that gives bite to the sour charm of two different but decent men turned hucksters. A broad range of original music, performed to perfection on several occasions, gives the movie an innate spontaneity. "Great World of Sound" is a sleeper independent film destined to become an underground classic.

Rated R, 106 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

The Feast of Love

Charles Baxter’s acclaimed "Midsummer Night's Dream"-inspired romantic novel receives a clumsy screen adaptation from director Robert Benton ("Kramer vs. Kramer"). Screenwriter Allison Burnett moves the novel’s original Ann Arbor setting to Portland, Oregon where a collection of artificially drawn lovers connect and bail out before uniting with new sweethearts. Morgan Freeman lends his all-too-familiar voice-over narration, speaking the author’s generic theme lines, to guide the audience through the brief maze of doomed pairings. "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" is one of Shakespeare’s lesser comedies, but "The Feast of Love" is a hodgepodge of sentimentality that’s neither funny nor tragic. It’s just bland.

Rated R, 102 mins. (D+) (One Star)

December Boys

Based on Michael Noonan’s novel, four orphan teenage boys, raised in a Catholic convent in Australia’s rugged outback, realize that they may never be adopted. Hopes rise when the convent sends the boys to live with an elderly couple for a summer in a small seaside community. The group’s leader Maps (Daniel Radcliffe) gets his first taste of romance in the guise of a local tart named Lucy (Teresa Palmer), while the promise of adoption by a young local couple tempts the boys into an uncomfortable rivalry. Radcliffe fits into the film’s nostalgic setting like a boy out of time. "December Boys" is a minor melodrama that succeeds for the heartfelt efforts of its ensemble.

Rated PG-13, 105 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Into The Wild

Sean Penn directs this thoroughly satisfying account of Christopher McCandless’s wilderness journeys that Jon Krakauer eloquently brought to light in his best-selling 1996 book "Into the Wild." Emile Hirsch ("Alpha Dog") brilliantly personifies the fiercely idealistic young man who severed ties with his upper middle-class family in search of personal truths on a literary-fuelled odyssey that ended near Alaska’s Denali National Park. Intermittent voice-over narration from McCandless’s sister Carine (Jena Malone) combines with samples of her brother’s writing and bits of text from the authors he constantly read (Henry Thoreau, Nikolai Gogol, Jack London and Leo Tolstoy) to add layers of essential background underneath innovative cinematic textures. Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook, Brian Dierker and Kristen Stewart contribute memorable supporting performances as people won over by McCandless’s ineffable charms.

Rated R, 140 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Resurrecting the Champ

Rod Lurie ("The Contender") puts another feather in his directing hat with an absorbing character study about a daily newspaper writer who takes a shortcut to success only to discover that, like the subject of his career-saving article, he is not the man he thought himself to be. Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett) is a recently separated sports reporter for the Denver Times whose prose lacks personality. But rather than take advantage of his demanding editor’s (Alan Alda) best efforts to develop his writing style, Erik furtively leverages his way into a Sunday magazine features position with an article about former boxing-great-turned-homeless-bum (Samuel L. Jackson). Hartnett and Jackson deliver finely tuned performances that bristle with the sting of life lessons learned the hard way.

Rated PG-13. 114 Min. (B) (Three Stars)

Interview

Director/actor Steve Buscemi plays Pierre Peders, a narcissistic journalist on a downward spiral assigned to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a notoriously vapid and slutty celebrity starlet. Pierre hasn’t done any research on his subject, who shows up predictably late for their meeting at a chic SoHo restaurant. He’s insulting and she’s lame, but the two opposites attract enough for them to go back to her nearby loft for some mutual flagellation. Talky, stagy and burdened with a video tape plot device that will make you cringe, "Interview" is an actor’s showcase movie that could, and should, have been made by a couple of talented student actors trying to break out of their off-off Broadway gigs.

Rated R, 83 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Alfie

Michael Caine’s 1966 breakout performance as a swinging London stud is emulated, but not matched, by Jude Law in a predictably misjudged remake that withers where the original film blossomed. This time around, our notable British seducer is transplanted to Manhattan where his job as a limo driver miraculously finances the Prada pinstriped suits he wears as he tools around town on an endless search for female conquests. Director/co-writer Charles Shyer ("The Affair Of The Neckless") pads the movie with airy scenes of Alfie’s direct-to-audience monologues during increasingly dull scenes of Alfie’s self-satisfied skirt lifting. Where the original film gradually shifted from romantic comedy to drama before delivering a socially charged emotional TKO in the third act, Shyer’s movie confuses dialogue for plot and depends solely on Jude Law’s ever-watchable charm to do the heavy lifting. Even Michael Caine’s career would have gone nowhere if he had made this version of "Alfie."

Rated R 100 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Black Snake Moan

The title "Black Snake Moan" comes from Texas bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson’s song about going blind, and the swampy imagery serves as a beacon of primal anguish for writer/director Craig Brewer ("Hustle & Flow"). On the outskirts of Memphis, Rae (Christina Ricci) suffers from an anxiety disorder that causes desperate fits of nymphomania that her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) sates. But as soon as Iraq-destined Ronnie leaves for boot camp, Rae immediately returns to seeking out promiscuous sex with every guy in her path. Her indiscretion leads to a brutal beating that puts her left-for-dead on a dirt road near the house of Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) a former Blues singer turned farmer. Lazarus’ chivalrous decision to risk his own life to save Rae leads him to chain her to his farmhouse radiator for an unpredictable sort of moral, mental and physical salvation. Brewer’s hard-bitten drama isn’t merely defiant; it spits fire at America’s phony media-fed version of itself. It displays human struggle on an intimate scale that prompts its audience to reflect on their own misconceptions.

Rated R, 116 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

The Black Dahlia

After years of being passed around Hollywood as unfilmable, Josh Friedman’s ("War of the Worlds") notoriously faithful screenplay adaptation of James Ellroy’s popular novel "The Black Dahlia" has made it to the big screen with less than stellar results. In spite of several momentarily propulsive eye-popping set pieces, suspense master Brian De Palma is unable to pry a cohesive movie from Friedman’s abstruse script. Excessive exposition, subplots, and secondary characters distract from the title story about the barbaric 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, a striving 22-year-old actress at odds with the treacherous streets of Los Angeles. Hillary Swank also degrades the film with a wandering accent that slips from New Orleans to Scotland in her role as Madeleine Linscott, an Elizabeth Short look-alike with a penchant for prostitution even though she is a daughter of privilege.

Rated R, 121 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

The Assassination Of Richard Nixon

Debut writer/director Neils Mueller (co-writer on "Tadpole") stitches together an ambiguous meditation on the pervasive affects of government corruption during the Nixon Administration that led a Baltimore man to attempt to kill the President by hijacking a plane that he hoped to crash into the White House. Although loosely based on real events, through which the director shows a pre 9/11 intentionality of flying planes into government buildings, the film never expands beyond a closed circle of theatrical dramatic limitations that are all nuance and little substance. 

Rated R, 105 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Fay Grim

Woe is he, or she, that goes in search of Hal Hartley, the mojo-handy director of “Henry Fool” (1997). Conceived as an overdue sequel to “Henry Fool,” “Fay Grim” (played by Parker Posey) is quirky mother to quirky Ned (Liam Aiken), the pubescent son of literary hero and garbage man Henry Fool who went into hiding after accidentally committing murder. While trying to keep her son from being kicked out of school, Fay is asked by CIA officer Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) to travel to Paris to help recover Henry’s “Confessions” manuscript now that Henry is reportedly dead. Hartley loses control of the loosey-goosey story line that dabbles aimlessly as an Irma Vep-styled action thriller. “Fay Grim” is the most inarticulate and grueling of all Hal Hartley’s films, and a complete waste of time.

Rated R, 118 mins. (D) (One Star)

Away From Her

Strong performances from the inimitable Julie Christie and the lesser known Gordon Pinset can’t compensate for the overly-sentimental reasoning behind a husband’s inability to make peace with his wife’s Alzheimer’s disease. Fiona (Christie) and Grant (Pinset), Fiona’s husband of 25 years, reach an impasse in their weathered relationship when her memory loss reaches such an acute proportion that Grant places her in a less-than-ideal rest home. Fiona seems to forget Grant and latches onto a fellow male patient (Michael Murphy) with a visible romantic attachment that openly insults to Grant’s dedication to her. Detestable use of Neil Young songs and an irrelevant performance from the overrated Olympia Dukakis further weaken Sarah Polley’s overstrained directorial debut. The film is based on Alice Munro’s short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain."

Rated PG-13, 110 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Lucky You

"Lucky You" is a romance drama that accomplishes a difficult narrative demand – that of telling characters’ intentions, emotions and shared history via the way they play their poker hands. Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) is a cool Las Vegas poker table fixture who learned everything he knows from his card master father L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall). Huck carries around his deceased mother’s wedding ring as a constant reminder of the way L.C. duped her and abandoned their family. His anger toward L.C. is Huck’s "tell" that Las Vegas newcomer Billie (Drew Barrymore) sees as a window into the soul of a dead-end compulsive gambler with a heart of gold. A World Series of Poker championship provides an unexpectedly fertile opportunity for reconciliation and recovery for the emotionally torn father and son. Robert Duvall, Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore all give persuasive performances that add up to a royal flush.

Rated PG-13, 123 mins. (B)

Stephanie Daley

A glorified after school special, "Stephanie Daley" is a short-winded run at pointing a finger of guilt at 16-year-old Stephanie Daley (well-played by Amber Tamblyn) for murdering her newborn baby in the relative privacy of a public bathroom stall. Upstate New York is the suburban setting where Stephanie undergoes a series of interrogations by forensic psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton) while awaiting trial for murder. Writer-director Hilary Brougher falls foul in her attempts to create a corollary experience for Lydie who recently suffered a stillbirth but is once again pregnant by her dutiful husband Paul (Timothy Hutton) who she projects is cheating. Brougher’s contemptible miscasting of the ever-strange Swinton is pushed even further with Lydie’s uncouth romantic dalliances with her husband’s business partner. Flashbacks provide the bulk of the story wherein the religiously conflicted Stephanie gets knocked up at a high school party by a stereotypical here-today-gone-tomorrow local stud. If ever there were a shamelessly preachy attempt to scare teen girls out of having unprotected sex, this is it.
Rated R, 91 mins. (C-)

G.I. Jesus

Amateurish production values and unpolished writing hinder this occasionally touching portrait of Jesus (Joe Arquette), a Hispanic Iraq war vet returning to his wife and daughter. Writer/director Carl Colpaert mixes in touches of satire under the wet expositional blanket of the ghost of an Iraqi man Jesus killed in Iraq. Jesus’ private conversations with the ghost sit against another reverie that involves a corrupt military officer offering big money for Jesus to work as a black operative. Patricia Morta brings a lived-in feeling to her role of Jesus’ wife Claudia, and is responsible for anchoring the realism of the picture.

Rated R, 90 mins. (C-)

The Hoax

Richard Gere’s instincts for creating character are spot-on in director Lasse Hallstrom’s off-kilter screen version of writer Clifford Irving’s literary deceit of selling a bogus Howard Hughes autobiography to McGraw Hill in 1971. An undercurrent of black humor pervades as Irving (Gere) and his nervous confidant/co-writer Richard Suskin (brilliantly played by Alfred Molina) pull the con job of the century beneath the Nixon administration’s political cloud. The film’s tone leans toward George Clooney’s "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" as Irving’s paranoia coils around him in nightmare episodes that may or may not be real. William Wheeler’s screenplay proves an ideal source for Hallstrom ("The Shipping News") to break the mold of recent clinkers, and create a thoroughly enjoyable movie that is equal parts biography, cautionary tale, farce and satire.

Rated R. 115 mins. (B+)

American Cannibal

Remember the last time you saw an independent movie that really blew you away? It's probably been a while. Directors Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro gradually layer on coats of narrative paint over Dave and Gill, a duo of hotshot television writers pitching ideas for reality shows as with their idea for "Virgin Territories," with the motto, "When you win it, your lose it." The premise is that 10 certified virgins room together in a house loaded with pornography and frequently visited upon by sexy women acting, uh well, sexy. The guy who remains chaste the longest-no masturbation allowed-wins the loss of his virginity to a porn star. But the ideally matched writing partners get picked up by a pornography producer for their offhand concept about a group of starving people left on a craggy island with no food. Dave and Gill see their dreams distorted and broken as the show goes into a doomed production. "American Cannibal" is a fast-paced satire about the state of reality television that builds its humor on its depiction of the limits our current reality TV craze.
Not Rated, 91 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

The Namesake

"The Namesake" is a hurried tapestry of cross-cultural experience that periodically derails due to episodic hopscotching in Sooni Taraporevala’s script adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel. Director Mira Nair ("Vanity Fair") cuts too many narrative corners around a three decade story about Ashoke Ganfulis (Irrfan Khan), a young Calcutta native who brings his arranged marriage wife Ashima (Tabu) to Brooklyn where they raise their son and daughter. Named after his father’s favorite writer, Gogol’s (Kal Penn) ongoing identity crisis—he switches to Nick—reaches resolve when tragedy and tradition conspire to draw him to India and his cultural heritage. For all of its hammy sentimentality, "The Namesake" is contagiously watchable thanks to Kal Penn in his first serious leading man role.

Rated PG-13, 122 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Believe In Me

With the recent deluge of such formula movies, now is not the time for yet another feel good sports movie about a small town coach who battles against local public perception to take his team of misfits to the championships. '60s era Oklahoma serves as an anywhere Midwest location where high school boy's basketball coach Clay Driscoll (Jeffrey Donovan) is hired to temporarily coach a girl's team. Clay's hotly contested position becomes more permanent as he discovers how to focus and lead the team. Bruce Dern has ice water for blood as town bigwig Ellis Brawley, intent on publicly humiliating the school's new coach. Writer/director Robert Collector based the movie on Harold Keith's novel "Brief Garland."

Rated PG, 86 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Beyond The Gates

Rwanda’s raging 1994 genocide, where Hutus used machetes to kill many thousands of Tutsis, is the epicenter of a story about Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), a young teacher at a Catholic school run by Father Christopher (John Hurt). Similarities to the superior "Hotel Rwanda" (2004) plague "Beyond The Gates" where, once again, the impotency of U.N. troops stationed in Rwanda to keep the peace, is put into high relief. In spite of heartfelt performances from John Hurt and Hugh Dancy, director Michael Caton-Jones ("Scandal") keeps an arm’s distance from his volatile subject and fails to expand on an epic tragedy that is being replicated in places like Darfur.

Rated R. 115 mins. (C+) (Three Stars)

The Astronaut Farmer

A former NASA astronaut trainee who abandoned his career to attend to his family after the death of his father spends his life building a rocket with the dream of orbiting the earth a single time. It’s this capricious premise that writer/director twins Michael and Mark Polish ("Northfork") fail to spin into a cogent narrative. Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) is a quirky Texas rancher with a giant rocket in his barn that his wife (Virginia Madsen) and three kids dream will take him into space if they don’t end up in the poor house first. The Government moves in to shut Farmer down after he tries to purchase thousands of gallons of rocket fuel. Even Bruce Willis shows up at Farmer’s house as a former astronaut colleague there to talk sense to the demented man-with-a-dream. Stuck between an idealized ‘60s era idea of liberty and our post-9/11 clampdown under Big Brother, "The Astronaut Farmer" is a high concept movie that never bothers to bridge its essential gap of sanity and reason.

Rated PG, 105 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Daddy’s Little Girls

Cottage-industry independent filmmaker Tyler Perry ("Madea’s family Reunion") fumbles with this family drama about Monty (Idris Elba), a salt-of-the-earth car mechanic and father of three girls trying to win a custody battle with his lowlife ex-wife Jennifer (Tasha Smith). Monty’s troubles seem to ease when he develops a romantic connection with Julia (Gabrielle Union), a smug hot shot attorney ready to adjust her egotistic ways for love. However, Monty has a skeleton in the closet that he’s none to proud to mention, and his inability to articulate the facts behind a case that sent him to prison brings into question his trustworthiness. This is Perry’s first film in which he doesn’t appear as an actor and, although he has grown as a director, he still has much work to do as a screenwriter.

Rated PG-13, 99 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Breach

Set in a fantasy vision of the FBI’s corridors of power, writer/director Billy Ray ("Shattered Glass") generates a hollow spy drama based on the true story of the capture of the department’s most detrimental traitor. Ryan Phillippe plays Eric O’Neill, an aspiring CIA agent assigned to assist and spy on FBI career agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) for acts of sexual deviancy. Laura Linney gives a comically false performance as O’Neill’s condescending superior Kate Burroughs. Linney’s character protracts revealing the actual reason for O’Neill’s mission until after he falls under Hanssen’s thinly veiled spell of repressed homosexuality. Awkward digs at the Catholic Church, and only one suspenseful scene add up to an unsatisfying spy thriller about a FBI insurgent who sold state secrets to the Russians for 22 years.

Rated PG-13, 110 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Breaking and Entering

Writer/director Anthony Minghella ("Cold Mountain") overemphasizes the power of metaphor in this definitively overwrought drama about an adulterous corporate landscape architect (Jude Law) whose dalliance with a seamstress from Sarajevo brings his troubled marriage to a head. Robin Wright Penn plays Will's (Law) despondent Scandinavian wife Liv who suffers their privileged London existence due to their daughter Bea's hyperactive behavior that she channels through excessive gymnastics. Will becomes his own private detective after his posh new offices in London's dicey King's Cross district are repeatedly robbed, but he's more fascinated with the refugee widowed mother (Juliette Binoche) of the teenage burglar that he follows home. The moral of the movie could be, "expect the slums if you go slumming," yet Minghella seems oblivious to the underlying sexist and racist subtext of his material. There isn't a likable character to be found.
Rated R, 116 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Seraphim Falls

In writer/director David Von Ancken's deconstructionist post Civil War western Liam Neeson plays Carver, a former Confederate Army colonel obsessed with hunting down the Union Army Captain named Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) accountable for a terrible act of cruelty in Seraphim Falls, Georgia during the now-ended war. It's a chase movie set against a brutally cold wilderness where Carver hunts and wounds Gideon like a wild animal. The film was shot in Taos, New Mexico during the winter when temperatures plummeted well below minus seventeen Celsius thereby providing a "no acting required" level of performance from its two tough Irish actors.
Rated R, 115 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Alpha Dog

Here’s a different take on the docudrama format. Writer/director Nick Cassavetes dives headfirst into the true story of a group of Southern California rich kids that goofed their way into kidnapping and sudden violence in August of 2000. With a dream cast of the youngest and brightest actors of the day, Cassavetes creates a movie that feels like you’re watching an apathetic group of kids riding down a progressively steeper incline in an unmanned vehicle. The alpha dog of the film’s title is bully drug dealer Johnny Truelove (based on Jesse James Hollywood) whose ego gets taken down a peg by Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster) a local junkie who aggressively refuses to pony up the $1000 he owes. Johnny haphazardly kidnaps Jake’s younger brother Zack (Anton Yelchin) with the help of his friends, and has Zack spirited away from the San Fernando Valley to Palm Springs. As days pass, everyone but Johnny and his indebted lackey Elvis (Shawn Hatosy) underestimate the depth of the imminent trouble ahead. Sharon Stone adds a touch of virtuosity to the already strong ensemble performances in this precisely drawn lineage of a crime.

Rated R, 117 mins. (B)

Freedom Writers

Poised as a diatribe on the abysmal state of the American education system and gang violence in Long Beach, California, "Freedom Writers" is based on the true story of neophyte high school teacher Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) who broke with convention to inspire her troubled students during the mid-‘90s. Writer/director Richard LaGravenese milks audience empathy with so much voice-over narration that he may as well have recorded the story as a books-on-tape product. Swank’s starry-eyed character assigns her students to keep diaries about their lives, and teaches lessons about the Holocaust via "The Diary of Anne Frank" to give them a sense of place and decency. Compared to a film like "Boyz From The Hood," this is cinema activism lite. Imelda Staunton ("Vera Drake") gives an outstanding performance as the school’s status quo-keeping principal whose privately racist agenda is eaten away at by Gruwell’s profound efforts with her class. In 1999 Erin Gruwell published the students’ work as "The Freedom Writers Diary."

Rated PG-13, 123 mins. (C)

Notes On a Scandal

Two of cinema's finest actresses, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, play distinctly unlikable characters in screenwriter Patrick Marber's ("Closer") adaptation of Zoe Haller's 2003 novel, directed by Richard Eyre ("Stage Beauty"). Blanchett plays Sheba Hart, a British high school art teacher at St George's Academy, who engages in an illicit affair with one of her male teenage students. Sheba's new friend at the school, long time teacher Barbara Covett (Dench), witnesses the obscene act and leverages her knowledge over Sheba to prevent the indiscretion from occurring again and to lay the groundwork for a hoped-for lesbian affair. Barbara, a lonely spinster with a history of stalking at least one co-worker, sets her sights on Sheba's family, which consists of Sheb's more mature husband (Bill Nighy), a teenaged son with Down Syndrome and a romantically obsessed teen daughter. Without a clear protagonist, "Notes On a Scandal" collapses under the weight of its significant subject matter. Nevertheless, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench rise above the ill- prepared source material with their bold and passionate performances.   
Rated PG-13, 95 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

We Are Marshall

Marshal University's tragic loss of its football team, coaches and 25 fans, in 1970 during a plane crash in the Appalachian Mountains, forms the basis for a rebirth of the town of Huntington, West Virginia in this emotionally charged drama. Dark horse actor Matthew McConaughey turns in a remarkable performance as outsider football coach Jack Lengyel who moves his family to Huntington to coach the school's football program and inadvertently help heal the town's sense of loss and grief. Director McG ("Charlie's Angels") sidesteps sentimental cliches with the aid of carefully modulated performances from David Strathairn (as university president Donald Dedmon), Matthew Fox (as assistant coach Red Dawson) and Ian McShane (as one of the town's grieving parents).
Rated PG, 114 mins. (B)

Rocky Balboa

The only surprise about seeing a 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone step into the well-worn character that made him a screen legend is how well the working class incarnation holds up as a repository for entertainment. A computer-generated match-up reveals that, in his prime, Rocky would win against the reigning boxing champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon. The televised publicity inspires Rocky to take a hiatus from telling the same old stories to patrons of the Italian restaurant he owns, and go to work preparing for an exhibition match against Mason for charity. Composer Bill Conti returns to the franchise to lay the musical foundation for Rocky to realize his dream of proving himself in the ring one last time. Stallone wrote and directed this cinematic ride down memory lane that puts a final grace note on his indelible creation, Rocky Balboa. 
Rated PG, 102 mins. (C+)

Home of the Brave

The war in Iraq gets a lathery soft soap treatment in producer-cum-director Irwin Winkler's distortion of emotions and realities associated with a group of returning soldiers. A nasty conflict explodes in the streets of Southwestern Iraq just after a National Guard unit gets word that they are returning home. Traumatized field medic Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson) returns to his family in Spokane, Washington where fellow soldiers Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel), Tommy Yates, and Jamal Aiken (Curtis "50" Cent" Jackson) sort out the challenges of day-to-day life in their hometown with the burden of their physical and mental wounds. The four subplots fail to congeal as the film succumbs to feeble flashback sequences, preachy justifications and a closing voice over narration that sounds like it was read off of a Pentagon press release.
Rated R, 105 mins. (D-)

The Painted Veil

W. Somerset Maugham's novel serves as the basis for this labor of love from Ed Norton (producer on the film) and Naomi Watts about an ill-suited '20s era couple who discover love late in their spoiled marriage. General physician and bacteriologist Walter Fane (Ed Norton) makes a critical mistake of skipping courtship in favor of proposing marriage to privileged English society debutante Kitty (Naomi Watts). Once married, Kitty wastes no time entering into an adulterous affair with British Vice Council member Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Walter confronts Kitty with a choice of either accepting a divorce or accompanying him to Shanghai, China where he goes to assist with a Cholera epidemic devastating a small village there. Director John Curran ("We Don't Live Here Anymore") captures the profound beauty of China's lush countryside where his characters discover the true nature of their relationship. Diana Rigg and Toby Jones give strong supporting performances in this philosophical narrative about compatibility and personal discovery.

Rated PG-13, 125 mins. (B)

Pan's Labyrinth

Modern gothic maestro Guillermo del Toro ("The Devil's Backbone") weaves a fertile narrative tapestry about Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a whimsical little girl uprooted with her ailing pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) during Franco's postwar Spain to go live with Carmen's cruel new husband Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). When mother and daughter arrive at the rural abandoned mill Vidal has converted into a military headquarters for his troops, Ofelia escapes the oppressive atmosphere by exploring an old garden labyrinth where she meets a strange faun (Doug Jones) who assigns her tasks to prove her royalty as a princess. Ofelia's dark fantasies are matched by the barbaric reality around her. Inspired by C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," "Pan's Labyrinth" is a deeply personal treatise on the defense mechanisms that children use to deal with war and death.

Rated R. 120 mins. (B+)

The Good German

Steven Soderbergh adapts Joseph Kanon's novel in black-and-white with g