Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Kimberly Chun, David Fear, Dina Gachman, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Laurie Koh, Patrick Macias, and Chuck Stephens. The film intern is Melissa McCartney. See Rep Clock and Movie Clock for theater information.

Opening

Big Fish See "Roasting on an Open Fire." (2:00)

Cheaper by the Dozen No one ever said it would be easy raising 12 kids and sustaining careers, but that's what a college football coach (Steve Martin) and his book-penning wife (Bonnie Hunt) try to do with a pinch of parental love and a whole lotta wacky high jinks. No one said it wasn't difficult crafting holiday films you could drag the whole brood to see, either, but the fact that this remake of the 1950 comedy is diluted for even the tamest of temperaments is typical of Tinseltown's template for "family entertainment" that hardly qualifies as entertaining. There are almost enough pinpricks of well-choreographed slapstick and the tag-team of Martin's Parenthood-redux buffoonery with Hunt's dry sass to prevent perpetual spin cycles for Clifton Webb's corpse, but its reliance on formula – a stock family-first message, cute kids mouthing clever lines – means another helping of warmed-up Disney Channel leftovers barely able to serve two. (1:38) (Fear)

*Cold Mountain See "Roasting on an Open Fire." (2:35)

Girl with a Pearl Earring See "Roasting on an Open Fire." (1:39)

House of Sand and Fog See "Roasting on an Open Fire." (2:06)

*Monster As de-glamming makeovers go, Charlize Theron's dumpification in this dramatization of the late Aileen Wuornos's 1989-90 serial killing spree sure kicks the bejesus out of Nicole Kidman's Oscar-winning nose cap last year. You can believe it when characters here identify her as indigent and/or crazy by just a glance. Without going into much tortured-childhood backgrounding (a few discreet, disturbing flashbacks under the opening credits suffice), this first feature by writer-director Patty Jenkins effectively conveys the accumulated psychological and physical damage that perhaps inevitably turned Wuornos into a menace. The film charts a span when her life got both better and a whole lot worse: A committed if awkward relationship with a younger woman (Christina Ricci, just so-so) gets her off the streets, determined to improve her circumstances. Without means, education, or any (legal) work experience, however, that goal proves near impossible. And once she crosses a line – killing a brutal roadside-pickup prostitution client in self-defense – financial desperation, suppressed rage, and a faint grip on reality push her to cross it again and again. While the murders are handled bluntly enough, Monster is more depressing than scary or lurid. Its principal aim is as a cautionary character study: used or abandoned by family, institutional help and society in general, Wuornos embodied how extreme human need can warp into "monstrous" toxicity. A worthy movie, driven by a very strong lead performance. (Dennis Harvey) (1:51)

Paycheck The top-shelf John Woo films, The Killer and A Better Tomorrow, for instance, attained greatness thorough burning passions and insane body counts. But Paycheck is a bum trip into chilly Philip K. Dick paranoia that shows little of what the former king of Hong Kong action films does best. Ben Affleck plays an electronics genius who is thrown into a high-stakes conspiracy of corporate espionage when three years of his memory are erased. A tragically underutilized Aaron Eckhart wants Affleck dead, Uma Thurman wants him to live, and aside from a few fun gags (including the bonkers transformation of Affleck into invincible kung fu pole fighter for the climax), the results are resoundingly lackluster and generic. Face/Off showed that the director's talents can still flourish in Hollywood, so long as he's got the right material to work with, but there's no escape from an underwritten script and screwy sci-fi illogic. I won't be the only reviewer to make the joke, but it's true: this is one Paycheck that Woo should have turned down. (2:00) (Macias)

Peter Pan P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding) directs a cast that includes Olivia Williams, Jason Isaacs, and Lynn Redgrave in this live-action version of the fantasy classic. (1:45)

*The Triplets of Belleville See "Roasting on an Open Fire." (1:20)

The Young Black Stallion North Africa is the real star of this new Disney Imax film directed by Simon Wincer (Free Willy), who fills the screen with amber images of rolling sand dunes, craggy mountains, and Arabian horses. The story (a prequel to the 1979 film) follows the adventures of Neera (Biana G. Tamimi) and a young, wild stallion as they struggle through the desert and form an unshakable bond. To save her family, she comes up with a plan to enter the horse in the village race. The plot feels hokey, even for a children's movie, yet the beauty of the landscape makes up for it. Despite a few glaring oddities (such as the fact that the two lead children, supposedly raised in North Africa, are the only characters with American accents), the scenery is breathtaking, and the film's short length ensures the pace doesn't drag. (1:00) Metreon Imax. (Cindy Emch)

Ongoing

*American Splendor Shari Springer Berman and Roger Pulcini's film grafts the documentary portraiture of Terry Zwigoff's Crumb on the fictional narrative of Zwigoff's Daniel Clowes adaptation, Ghost World, and comes up with something less than either of those great films – but still the best U.S. fictive filmmaking in this summer of bummers. American Splendor travels from vignette to vignette, losing and gaining momentum, rarely mimicking the long interior monologues or abrupt endings of Harvey Pekar's comics. It livens up and finds a purpose with the arrival of Hope Davis's Joyce Brabner – the film's chief strong point is its characterization of her marriage to Pekar (Paul Giamatti). Splendor casually addresses the fact that Pekar's comic is drawn by a variety of artists, allowing characters' appearances to shift from one sequence to another (one minute, Drew Freidman's smudgy daytime nightmares; the next, Joe Zabel's crisp nervous energy). An all-animated version might have imaginatively extended this trait, which simultaneously defines Pekar's portraiture and makes it playfully elusive – even free spirited. (1:41) Smith Rafael. (Huston)

*Bad Santa At this point, can any attack on Kris Kringle's public image generate shock? That's one of the chief dilemmas faced by Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, which casts Billy Bob Thornton as Willie T. Stokes, a self-described "eating, drinking, shitting, fucking Santa Claus." He's also a crook, robbing stores on Christmas Eve with his elfin partner in crime, Marcus (Tony Cox). Emptying the safes of U.S. consumerist palaces, Stokes is certainly a criminal, but this is a Terry Zwigoff movie: such thievery doesn't make him a villain. Whether documentary or fictive, Zwigoff's films usually sympathize with a malcontented male outcast, and it isn't a stretch to suggest that an ornery shopping-mart Santa makes an apt mouthpiece for the director while he's positioned in the heart of Hollywood. Still, Bad Santa is also a crossover bid; a hilarious shot heralding Stokes and Marcus's annual return to work also signals that Zwigoff wants to raise hell in Arizona, much like his executive producers Ethan and Joel Coen once did. It all ends with a Bing (Crosby's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas") and a bang as Santa sentimentalists bite the bullet and the whole audience gets the finger. (1:30) (Huston)

The Barbarian Invasions Remy (Remy Girard) is terminally ill; an irascible personality, divorce, and endless flings suggest he's the sort who might die alone. However, his ex-wife Louise (Dorothee Berryman) dutifully guilt-trips their son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) into returning to Montreal from London for the sake of a father he's scarcely on speaking terms with. Dad views son as a crass capitalist; son views unrepentant "sensual socialist" dad as, well, an asshole – which he is, among other things. Their gradual reconciliation is foregrounded in the cluttered canvas of Denys Arcand's new film, a belated sequel to 1987's Decline of the American Empire that replaces that film's sexual politics seriocomedy with a thematically sprawling meditation on post-9/11 life. A collapsing Canadian health care system, aging baby boomers queasily entering late middle age, callous and/or lost younger generations, threats to the social order both external (e.g., terrorism) and internal (drug addiction) – these are just a few of the myriad issues Arcand touches on here. He balances them all cleverly, even building up to a close many viewers will find genuinely tear-jerking. This film is winning prizes all over. I found it just as glib, misanthropic, and sentimentally manipulative at times as it is undeniably skillful overall. (2:03) (Harvey)

Brother Bear Word is Disney's planning to phase out hand-drawn animated films, so their latest, Brother Bear, may also be one of their last. Too bad it's not more memorable. Due to a string of circumstances that involve a family member's death, the killing of a bear, and some magical interference from the spirit world, Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix), a Native American boy on the cusp of manhood, is transformed into a grizzly. In order to return to human form, he must undergo a journey – the length of which, obviously, coincides with the time it takes for him to Grow Up, to the tune of several Phil Collins numbers. Along the way he befriends a rascally, chatty (read: grating) cub and a pair of moose (cleverly voiced by the Strange Brew brothers, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas). Though the billboards paint it as an all-out comedy, Brother Bear boasts precious few belly laughs; one could, however, play a pretty good game of "spot the ripped-off plot point," as Bear unapologetically recycles material from multiple Disney films past. (1:25) (Eddy)

Calendar Girls In a small English town, weekly meetings of the Women's Institute give the local ladies a chance to meet and socialize. Mostly they celebrate the virtues of pressing flowers and making jam – and it all seems fairly staid and harmless. However, when John (John Alderton) passes away from leukemia, his widow, Annie (Julie Walters), and her close friend Chris (Helen Mirren) decide to try and raise money for a memorial at the local hospital. Chris gets the idea that they should do a very tasteful nude calendar – so, inspired by John's idea that women (like flowers) in the final stages of their lives are the most glorious, Chris and Annie convince a number of other W.I. members to join them. As it turns out, the calendar of beautiful mature women baring it all for charity becomes an international sensation. Enjoyable, feisty, and incredibly funny, Calendar Girls – based on a true tale – is a film about women, friendship, and how easy it can be to defy expectations. (1:48) (Emch)

*City of God City of God is a Rio de Janeiro housing project, but rather than simply present it as a setting, director Fernando Meirelles views it as a character – perhaps the dominant one – in the film. In one vivid segment a single fixed point of view witnesses the deterioration of an apartment as it's passed down from one drug dealer to another. The stronger and younger the kingpin, the trashier his kingdom. But static points of view aren't Meirelles's specialty. Working with codirector Kátia Lund, he's stylistically giddy in the face of much adolescent and preadolescent violence, running circles around the surface linearity of the plot's chapter structure and uncorking an array of techniques: God's-eye aerial shots that suggest the almighty has a finger on the fast-forward button, freeze-frame character intros that revive blaxploitation swank, and camera movements that follow the paths of ricocheting bullets or circle around the violence with the speed of a meth-addled figure skater. (2:10) (Huston)

The Cooler William H. Macy is a sadder-sack Bogart, and Maria Bello an updated Gloria Grahame, in this slick indie gloss on retro-Hollywood "B" conventions. He's a former gambler so pathetically ill-starred that he's employed as a "cooler" at a fading-out Vegas casino – a man whose luck is so bad he can be counted on to end winning streaks simply by passing the tables. She's a much younger cocktail waitress with (what else?) a "past." When they fall in love, love redeems them – and their luck, which unfortunately earns the wrath of a casino boss (Alec Baldwin) who can't endure such status quo shifts in the face of his own imminent corporate-management phaseout. The acting is very good, of course – how could Macy disappoint in yet another "lovable loser" role? – and director and coscenarist (with Frank Hannah) Wayne Kramer's story is crafty and flavorful enough in an MGM-circa-1955 way. But even then the story wasn't very fresh or especially interesting, save as a showcase for actors who deserved better. Which they still do. The final reel springs some decent surprises, yet the scent of reheated genre formula is still the strongest smell to emerge from The Cooler. (1:41) (Harvey)

*Die Mommie Die! Charles Busch plays Angela Arden, a onetime Hit Parade song thrush long since retired to the no less up-and-down charts of late-1960s Beverly Hills domesticity. Her marriage to socially conscious but privately loutish film producer Sol Sussman (Philip Baker Hall) having long since soured, Angela channels bank-flooding eddies of theatrical emotion toward her children, her drop-dead wardrobe, her immaculate rose garden, and on occasion her libido – the latest fertilizer being no less than erstwhile Beverly Hills, 90210 hottie Jason Priestley as massively equipped tennis instructor-failed actor-all purpose gigolo Tony Parker. Sol's premature demise sets off a chain reaction of intrigue and backstabbing in which the one stable element is versatile Tony, whose talents really do get around. Adapted from Busch's stage play, director Mark Rucker's first feature does for the cheesier Ross Hunter-style big-screen soaps of the early to mid '60s what Far from Heaven did for the plush Douglas Sirk melodramas made a decade earlier – albeit with tongue planted much farther in cheek – with a star turn just as immaculately realized. (1:30) (Harvey)

*Dirty Pretty Things Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity) has returned over and over to smaller British projects between Hollywood assignments, notably two Roddy Doyle adaptations (The Snapper, The Van). Dirty Pretty Things is by a newish writer, Steve Knight, and in its tonally very different way it's almost as fresh a take on polyglot London as My Beautiful Laundrette. Things revolves around Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian doctor-exile living a hand-to-mouth life in the U.K. He's illegally working as a cab driver and a night clerk at a boutique hotel run by pragmatically slimy Juan (Sergi Lopez). Likewise employed at the hotel as housekeeping staff is Muslim Turkish Senay (Audrey Tautou), a registered refugee awaiting governmental approval of her immigrant status. Before long, Okwe discovers that the hotel profits from on-site organ harvesting that preys on desperate illegal immigrants. Knight's script doesn't always smooth together its various mystery, suspense, caper, and slice-of-life elements. The dialogue is sometimes too pontificating, and the incipient romance between Okwe and Senay is perhaps the least effective aspect here. But Frears handles it all so beautifully that the end result is still near extraordinary. (1:49) (Harvey)

Dopamine This first, San Francisco-set feature by locals Mark Decena and Timothy Breitbach was nurtured all the way from script development to theatrical distribution by the good folks who bring you the Sundance Film Festival. More than with most films, you can tell the road to release has been long – Dopamine is the latest indie flick that feels like it forgot to update itself from the high dot-com era it was probably conceived in. Rand (John Livingston) is a computer animator-software designer working with friends on an interactive "virtual pet," a cuddly butterfly that coos at you from the screen – just what we all need to fill our empty lives. Testing that product involves invading the elementary-school classroom of Sarah (Sabrina Lloyd). Sarah likes Rand, Rand likes Sarah, but they're both kinda skittish – she's been bruised before, while he thinks love is maybe just a biologically determined chemical reaction (hence the title). These two mopey little ships almost pass each other in the night, and maybe they ought to for habitually misreading each other so badly. It's a kind of emo-rock lonely hearts romantic comedy without much comedy, or sexiness; there's an integrity at work here that just doesn't pay off as much as you'd like it to. (1:24) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat When Dr. Seuss first envisioned his oversized cat in the whimsical striped hat, I'm quite positive profanity and blatant sexual innuendos were not part of the package. Mike Myers approaches the title character, and the film, as a showcase for Saturday Night Live-style sketches revamped to fit a feline player. Thankfully, the wealth of inappropriate jokes will probably fly right over the heads of younger viewers, who'll be enthralled by all of the zany antics. Sadly, though, the bright colors and gross-out humor do little to mask the film's surprising lack of magic and energy – so essential to the book's race-against-time plot. The children (Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin) are wooden, and director Bo Welch never really achieves the fevered pace that should keep the plot rolling. Instead, he has created a Seussian world that is a sexualized, MTV version of what the good Dr. had intended. (1:22) (McCartney)

*Elephant A football jock enters the frame. The mist coming out of his mouth is a visual record of his breath as he crosses the chalk line of the athletic field where he rules and heads toward the blue door of the school where he'll soon die. When the jock greets his girlfriend with a kiss, their names appear on a black intertitle. Nathan and Carrie are 2 of 10 kids named in Gus Van Sant's Elephant – characters who mostly share the same first names of the actors playing them. A Wiseman named Frederick once made High School, a stagy documentary about an institution for teenagers. In comparison, Van Sant's execution is flawless, but his aim isn't so true; he's made a high school film about Columbine. The key word in that last sentence is about: Elephant turns cause-and-effect responses to the high school shooting phenomenon into a mug's game. Many of the rumored, spurious motives and influences behind Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's actions are present here, but not as evidence or proof – they're as disconnected as everything and everybody else in Elephant. If the film were simply an improv-based portrait of an institutional system, it wouldn't be so loaded; the nuances of Van Sant's fascination with teenagers wouldn't be semi-obscured by a mammoth issue. (1:21) (Huston)

*Elf Anyone who has appreciated Will Ferrell's manic male cheerleader has long known he resides in the land of lost toys, which may be why this film was literally built around him. With custom-made minisets that call up the magical sarcasm of Being John Malkovich's floor seven and a half, Ferrell, as six-foot-plus Buddy the Elf, stumbles and trips his way into the knowledge that he doesn't belong in the North Pole. He travels to New York City to find his human father (James Caan) and help make naughty into nice. The film shoehorns in the expected plays on Christmas specials past, with the sashaying snowman, the ice-block boat, and a Rudolph climax, but director Jon Favreau freshens the Chex Party Mix with better-than-usual comic touches. (1:37) (Gerhard)

*Gloomy Sunday Though steeped in melodrama, Nick Barkow's novel of overlapping love affairs amid war-torn 1930s Budapest translates stunningly to the big screen. Director Rolf Schübel recaptures all the magic of an old-school drama as his charismatic actors bring the romantic script to life. Very much in love, Laszlo (Joachim Krol) and Ilona (Erika Maroszán) run a restaurant and hire Andras (Stefano Dionisi) to play piano. Andras is quickly pulled in by Ilona's charms, and the three develop an understanding relationship, rather than suffering one man to live without her affection. The film takes its name from the stirring yet depressing song Andras writes for Ilona (in real life, the so-called suicide song, made popular by Billie Holliday, was written in 1935 by Hungarians Rezsö Seress and Laszlo Javor). A return to real movie making, where all the elements blend in a harmony seldom seen in Hollywood these days, Gloomy Sunday cleverly deals with threats to perfect love: the "other man," manipulation, war, and even death. (1:54) Smith Rafael. (McCartney)

Gothika That sucking sound you hear might be coming from Gothika's plot holes – or it might just be the movie itself. For all its dark-and-stormy-night atmospherics, this tale of a psychiatrist (Halle Berry) who's locked up with her former patients after apparently killing her hubby (Charles S. Dutton) is most chilling when you consider how unoriginal it is. The biggest mystery at hand is which plot element is more clichéd: the creepy girl-ghost seeking vengeance or the creepy serial killer seeking victims. The better-than-B cast (which also includes Robert Downey Jr. and Penélope Cruz) and director Mathieu Kassovitz (as an actor, you know him as the crush-worthy Nino in Amélie) goes through the right rock 'em, shock 'em paces, but Gothika's lasting impact will probably be as fodder for Scary Movie 4, and little else. (1:35) (Eddy)

The Haunted Mansion The ominous tones of the theme song to Disney's Haunted Mansion set the mood, which hints at spooky nostalgia for adult fans and pint-size thrills for kids. Unfortunately for everyone, the promise is left unfulfilled. Based on the legendary Disney theme park ride, this incarnation of the Haunted Mansion, directed by Rob Minkoff (Stuart Little), follows the Evers family, whose short detour turns into a night of horror when they get stuck in the house due to an unusual storm. Dad Jim (Eddie Murphy) sets about to expose the secret that has held the house cursed for so long, while mom Sara (Marsha Thomason) is believed by the mansion's master's ghost to be the reincarnation of his long-dead love, and his soul cannot rest until she is his again. While Murphy is amusing in a cheesy real estate guy kind of way, the whole story feels disconnected. A heady cameo by Jennifer Tilly nearly steals the show, but even she can't make this one worth the price of admission. (1:38) (Emch)

Honey Perky Bronx gal Honey (Jessica Alba, who's easy on the eyes but miscast as a streetwise homegirl) makes ends meet by working at a record store, bartending, and teaching hip-hop dancing at the local community center. After she's discovered by a sleazy music video director, she finds success as a choreographer – which, naturally, jeopardizes her relationships with her best friend (Joy Bryant), budding boyfriend (Mekhi Phifer), the neighborhood kid (Lil' Romeo) she's trying to save from a life of crime, etc. Will Honey maintain her integrity in the world of showbiz? Will she be able to turn that abandoned storefront into the dance studio of her dreams? Duh. Director Bille Woodruff, a video vet, ladles on the celeb cameos (Tweet, Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, Jadakiss) and uses plenty of flashy camera tricks. Unfortunately, the feature-length Honey has no more depth than a three-minute MTV clip; an average episode of Making the Video boasts more unpredictability and emotional range, with considerably less cheesy dialogue. (1:34) (Eddy)

In America It's tough to put a magical sheen on living in a drug-addled tenement, but writer and director Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father) gives it a shot with In America, a modern Irish immigration story based on his own experience. Attempting to escape the memory of their lost son, Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah (Samantha Morton) move to New York City with their two young girls. Dirt poor but determined, wannabe actor Johnny struggles almost inhumanely to make his family's life bearable, but he can't connect to them given his refusal to grieve. Sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger give amazingly natural performances as the daughters who take the ghetto in stride, expressing genuine delight at the flock of pigeons hogging their new digs. Still, Sheridan's gritty New York is too tangible for the ethereal touch to work beyond the eyes of the sisters, and the film's reliance on cosmic intervention at key moments actually injects predictability into an otherwise engaging story. (1:43) (Koh)

In the Cut Wearing the sweat of a New York summer as if it were a chic perfume, Jane Campion's adaptation of Susanna Moore's novel is a strange throwback: a white feminist answer to Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Cell phone accoutrements aside, it's not an update: Campion's sexual politics seem '70s-era, and her racist condescension is as grating as it was in The Piano. Surgery or something brings viewers a Meg Ryan who scarcely resembles the romantic-comedy doll of years yore; her sullen performance as an imperiled Pauline counterbalances Mark Ruffalo, who uses the role of potential boyfriend-slash-murder to impersonate young Brando and Cosmopolitan-centerfold era Burt Reynolds. In the Cut aims to upend the misogyny of the suspense genre's serial killer category, but Campion's approach is joyless. Though the compressed story line wants to create a sense of claustrophobia, Ryan's character just comes across as woefully self-involved. Weighed down by charm-bracelet symbolism, this experiment is a failure. (1:58) (Huston)

*Kill Bill: Volume 1 Violent? Sure. Derivative? Oh yeah. But Quentin Tarantino's latest effort is pure fun for movie maniacs who enjoy watching a beautifully choreographed fight scene (props to Yuen Wo-ping), the return of a beloved cult star (yo, Sonny Chiba!), and the charms of Uma Thurman, here as deadpan as she is deadly. To be sure, this ain't no Pulp Fiction – that patented, quotable "royale with cheese" chitchat is sorely missed, as is any semblance of a plot beyond revenge, revenge, revenge. Here's hoping Volume Two, due early next year, fills in some of Volume One's more gaping story holes; in the meantime, Tarantino fans can play spot-the-homage and cackle at naysayers who dub this gleeful, deliberate B movie too gory for words. (1:33) (Eddy)

The Last Samurai After James Clavell's Shogun and Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, noble savage clichés just aren't what they used to be. Yet here's Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, a Civil War veteran who travels to Meiji-era Japan to become a player in the samurai rebellion, a conflict that pits the ancient ways against a rapidly modernizing world. Falling under the influence of his captor, outlaw Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), Algren discovers an "intriguing people" whose devotion to "honor" and "loyalty" inspires him to strap on armor that makes him look about as dramatic as an ice hockey player. To be fair, there's some decent action scenes, but they're not enough to compensate for the film's deadly dramatic failings. The big problem with The Last Samurai is director and co-screenwriter Edward Zwick (Glory) and producer Cruise have constructed a warped Akira Kurosawa fantasy without a single plot twist or surprise that isn't glaringly obvious from frame one. (2:24) (Macias)

*The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King The quest to deliver "The Greatest Fantasy Trilogy Ever Made" has been completed. The hype is right. The Return of the King is the best of the three, but only in part. And it all depends on which part you're talking about. In the first act, we're still mucking about with various monarchs, noble families, and peasants as the film unfolds. Our main characters, hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), are still on their dangerous trek to the volcanic Mount Doom. Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and plucky halfling Pippin (Billy Boyd) have arrived at the kingdom of Gondor – ground zero for the long-awaited War of the Ring – where the tone of Return becomes quiet and hushed. Heroically, director Peter Jackson decides to slow down and take a breath himself. From here on out, Jackson assumes a total mastery of the material, and even the deviations from Tolkien's text start to look like improvements. The long, arduous journey to the credits may not have been perfect, and perilously few of those character subplots ever pay out, but for a hearty share of its 3-hour-and-18-minute running time, there can be no doubt that King rules. (3:21) (Macias)

*Lost Boys of Sudan War in Sudan has so far left an estimated two million dead and four million displaced. Dinka tribes of the south have been particularly hard hit. This documentary's protagonists are among some 20,000 cattle-tending "lost boys" who escaped village massacres in which their fathers were killed and their mothers and sisters taken as slaves. Those who survived the trek (including frequent lion attacks) ended up in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps. Filmmakers Megan Mylan and John Shenk follow seven of these teens who are finally cleared for U.S. emigration, sponsored by various church and social service organizations. Their rough landing encompasses everything from the sheer initial joy of having plentiful food to dismay at limited educational opportunities and dead-end factory jobs. "Now it's clear, there is no heaven on earth," one refugee sighs after several months. The outsider's perspective on our "land of opportunity" is quite fascinating, with community-minded Sudanese exhibiting practical values considerably loftier than those around them. The all-American notion that anyone can "get ahead" here by dint of "hard work" proves wobbly: as industrious and eager to learn as the boys are, they nonetheless soon discover cold cash ultimately determines most life paths hereabouts. High on narrative human interest, sobering yet ultimately inspirational, this is a great nonfiction film that you'll end up loving, no matter how tediously worthy it might sound. (1:30) (Harvey)

Lost in Translation Halfway through Lost in Translation, it's clear director Sofia Coppola misplaced something other than language somewhere in the air between LAX and Narita. She obviously lost the plot (what glassine, paper-thin bits of it existed, by all accounts) and decided instead to just leave the camera running on her assembled beautiful or amusing characters-slash-objets – a preppily lush Scarlett Johansson, the sleek playground of Tokyo's Park Hyatt, and a resigned Bill Murray – hoping they'd provide the in-flight impromptu entertainment. Maybe in a perfectly art-directed world, they would suffice to fill the pretty vacant spaces of this barely outlined tale. But that's assuming we're as easily amused by Lost in Translation's 105 minutes of good-looking images and vacuous chitchat as we are by sound bites about celebrity cribs. That's assuming we've never glimpsed the sci-fi Tokyo skyline, tried our hand at karaoke, or followed Murray as he navigated a real, meaty part. Instead, Coppola succumbs to the same mistake made by pop stars who get lazy, believe their own hype, and decide everyone can relate to songs about their distorted experiences. (1:45) (Chun)

Love Actually Screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary) is the man who practically invented the modern-day "Britsy-cutesy" template: attractive losers display near toxic amounts of dry wit, tell themselves to shut up whenever they've said something idiotic, and generally court humiliation in quixotic quests for true love (think Hugh Grant's entire career). Curtis's directorial debut tells not one but nine stories involving various degrees of smitten-ness, swollen with an all-star cast (Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, etc.) and a patented brand of English rose-thorn humor – even the title seeps self-deprecating whimsy. Love Actually purports to be paying tribute to the idea of Cupidian bliss, but its real objet d'amour is the notion of movie love, where strings swell and goo-goo eyes meet – so much so that it's stacked its deck with nothing but those cinematic moments and is minus the dramatic build that gives those scenes emotional heft. (2:12) (Fear)

Love Don't Cost a Thing Proof that the '80s are back comes via this remake of Can't Buy Me Love. Updated with urban flair for postmillennial teens, the film combines the talents of emerging hip-hop singer Christina Milian, Drumline star Nick Cannon, and the hilarious Steve Harvey (as the smooth-operator father of the school geek) for an enjoyable story about finding love in unexpected places. Car whiz and brainiac Alvin (Cannon) is in his last semester of his senior year and has never had a date, a kiss, or much else in the way of romance, aside from a from-afar crush on Paris (Milian), the most popular girl in school. When Paris crashes the car while her mom is out of town, Al steps in to try and help. He hatches a plan for her to pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks, giving him access to popularity in exchange for him fixing her car. Predictably the two fall for each other during the two weeks and have to recover from some miscommunications to eventually make it work. The film is played with charm and affability and works well for a rainy day treat. (1:45) (Emch)

*Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Peter Weir's first film since The Truman Show bears little resemblance to any other action behemoth in recent memory. For the most part, that is a very good thing. Welding together chunks from the lengthy historical fiction series by Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World isn't so much episodic in the usual brief-pauses-between-escalating-climaxes sense as it is picaresque in, well, a 19th-century sense. Like O'Brian, Weir is more interested in the workings and the character of HMS Surprise and its crew (led by Russell Crowe's authoritatively low-key Captain Jack Aubrey) than in battles per se. Which is not to say the face-offs against "old Boney's" (Napoleon Bonaparte's) frigates aren't highly visceral, nor are the surgeries performed by resident doctor-naturalist Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) lacking in gruesome impact. But the movie bears Weir's trademark spectral qualities: the images are spectacular yet fallible, obscured by darkness and the elements; an offhand, lyric humanism makes this probably the least macho film of its type ever made. (2:08) (Harvey)

Mona Lisa Smile Art history instructor Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) arrives at all-women's college Wellesley in 1953 and immediately assumes the unconventional-stranger-comes-to-town role. Since we're also deep inside the genre of teachers-who-inspire-us, a few slides of Soutine and Picasso are enough to slap the smirks off the faces of her students, including cool, studious Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal's potentially tragic sexual adventurer. Mona Lisa Smile is clearly trying hard to get its message out, and there's nothing wrong with the movie's main directives: for girls to close their textbooks, consider all options, use birth control, defy their parents as necessary, and generally start thinking for themselves. But the latter might sound more convincing if Smile didn't tread so firmly in the tracks of other movies – in particular, 1989's Dead Poets Society – that you can see most of the steps in advance. (1:59) (Lynn Rapoport)

*My Life Without Me Sarah Polley has been, and will be, cast in more challenging roles than My Life Without Me's wife, mother, and graveyard-shift janitor Ann, but the fact that it's an easy kinda "difficult" part – noble-sacrifice making, medically doomed, 100 percent sympathetic – doesn't make her pulling it off any less enjoyable. The daily, half-asleep getting along of Ann's life acquires a sudden, wide-awake urgency when she learns has she ovarian cancer – and only a couple of months left to live. Choosing to tell no one, she compiles a list of things to do before exiting and methodically goes through them while keeping up a normal front. Writer-director Isabel Coixet's "quirky" supporting characters feel undercooked, her stylistic flourishes sometimes ditto. But for the most part, the film – and Polley – strikes just the right no-nonsense tenor needed to make an old-fashioned weepie work just as it's supposed to, without pandering or making the viewer feel guilty. (1:46) (Harvey)

Mystic River After a poorly executed prologue – and before the plot goes to hell in the last reel – this adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel plays ideally to Clint Eastwood's strengths as a levelheaded, respectful director of both talented actors and meat-and-potatoes drama. A childhood incident in which 11-year-old Dave was kidnapped by pedophiles before the eyes of playmates Jimmy and Sean still hangs over their adult lives. All remained in their original rough, Boston neighborhood, though the three have maintained an awkward distance from each other ever since. That ends when the daughter of corner store owner Jimmy (Sean Penn) is murdered after a night of barhopping – a night when Dave (Tim Robbins) comes home at 3 a.m. to wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) bloodied by what he claims at first is an altercation with a mugger. Guess who's the homicide detective assigned to the case? Sean (Kevin Bacon), of course, alongside his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). Underplaying the material's potentially clichéd tough-guy milieu and pulp-thriller aspects, Eastwood and scenarist Brian Helgeland orchestrate an engrossing drama. Just the kind of starry, serious, conventional project sure to be remembered at awards time, Mystic River is nonetheless seriously compromised – in my book at least – by a last act that throws away the credible resolution we've been led toward, instead springing a left-field one wildly dependent on coincidence and contrivance. (2:20) (Harvey)

Pieces of April The fact that Pieces of April was a buzz film at the Sundance fest this year attests to the sorry state of American indie cinema, which has essentially become a minor-league Hollywood. A secondhand "original" soundtrack of corrosive Stephin Merritt lullabies sets the tone of Peter Hedges's digital-video comic drama. The screenplay's tired Guess Who's Coming to Dinner-meets-Daytrippers scenario traps viewers in a car with a miserable cauca-zombie family as they journey toward a Thanksgiving feast that's been thoroughly botched by black sheep April (Katie Holmes, in art-damaged attire that's very early '90s) and her (gasp!) black boyfriend, Derek Luke. Hedges's presentation of working-class urban life is even more stereotypical than a Wayans comedy, but at least the Wayans clan bring parody to the table. Pieces of April's moth-eaten liberal idea of just desserts requires that the sarcasm eventually gives way to a multicult sweetness – though not before Patricia Clarkson, as April's mother, provides a few potent glimpses of a dying woman's solitude. (1:20) (Huston)

*The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain's documentary, touted as a look at "the world's first media coup," might as well double as a California recall-hangover cure. In April 2002 the people of Venezuela foiled a TV revolt by taking to the streets of Caracas and storming the presidential palace to return briefly ousted president Hugo Chavez to power. Bartley and O'Briain, who initially conceived Revolution as an analytical profile of Chavez, largely bypass a cogent analysis of the differences between Chavez's populist promises and his actual accomplishments. The film's strength and originality stem from its eye-of-the-storm proximity to April 2002's political unrest and the perspective it has regarding televised distortions: as the attempted coup unfolds, international news reports claim Chavez supporters have resorted to sniper-style attacks on protesters; Bartley and O'Briain land footage that exposes those claims as lies. (1:14) (Huston)

*School of Rock Jack Black finally gets his big break in Richard Linklater's School of Rock as Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock god stuck in perpetual adolescence who refuses the request of his long-suffering roommates (Sarah Silverman and screenwriter Mike White) to give in to the rat race: "I serve society," he exclaims, "by rocking!" After our hero's band gives him the boot, however, his plan to win the local Battle of the Bands showdown falls apart. Masquerading as a substitute teacher to get some quick dough, he fills in at a prep school for the gifted. It turns out that some of his fourth-graders are musical prodigies, which inspires Dewey to start an opportunistic class project titled "Rock Band" – with the final to be held at the contest. If there's a Mighty Ducks-flavored bad taste in your mouth after reading that synopsis, you're not alone. But what Black and his partners in crime do with the material makes a world of difference. Any hint of sentimentality is bowled over by hitching the reworked warhorse narrative onto the comedian's meta-rock star/wild-man persona, and his territorial pissings all over the underdog material turn this into a series of sublimely ridiculous Black-out sketches. (1:40) (Fear)

*Shattered Glass A drama starring Hayden Christensen might sound like a movie inherently doomed by a stiff, clonelike lead performance, but Christensen redeems himself playing disgraced New Republic journalist-fabulist Stephen Glass – while not the best actor here, he brings ample phony charms to the part. Screenwriter turned director Billy Ray fashions an intelligent, crisp narrative; Glass's rise and fall gradually turn into the story of Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), the man who uncovered the full scope of Glass's falsehoods. When Ray contrasts bad-boy Glass's sexual ambivalence with Lane's family man "normality," the conservative morality of the dichotomy is annoying, but Shattered Glass's screenplay nails the covert power plays lurking beneath newsroom banter, and Sarsgaard is excellent. Keep an eye out for Heavenly Creatures alum Melanie Lynskey in a bit part. (1:34) (Huston)

Shelter Dogs Director Cynthia Wade goes behind the scenes at Rondout Valley Kennels in upstate New York, following the staff and owner Sue Sternberg. The resulting doc makes a very compelling argument in favor of euthanasia. While the consensus these days seems to be adamantly in favor of "no-kill" shelters, Sternberg's philosophy is that death is sometimes the most humane option for unadoptable animals – and that the pups' quality of life should be the focus of the animal-welfare debate. As the film points out, worldwide there are millions of unwanted dogs, many of whom are aggressive and unfit to ever be re-homed. In no-kill shelters, these dogs may end up tortured by a life of confinement, languishing in concrete and chain-link cells (Sternberg and the filmmakers visit such a shelter, offering grim proof of the dogs' sustained misery). Shelter Dogs focuses on both the Rondout Valley Kennels' high success rate in placing dogs as well as staffers' dedication to doomed canines, proving that even an organization that supports euthanasia can be a pet's best friend. (1:13) (McCartney)

Something's Gotta Give An aging Casanova (Jack Nicholson) locks horns with the uptight playwright mother (Diane Keaton) of his younger girlfriend when the two are forced to share the scribe's Hampton household. Neither can stand the other, but guess who surprisingly falls for each other, go their separate ways, were meant to be together, etc.? The notion that two treasures of American acting get to make sexagenarians sexy and trade barbed ripostes seems like a dream come true. Unless, of course, the duo's dialogue seems cribbed from The View, the film is shot like a Pottery Barn catalogue, and the indiscreet smarm of the bourgeoisie is somehow supposed to pass for knowledgeable carnality ... then, well, any potential dissipates posthaste. Writer-director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want) seems convinced that cutesy charm and reel-life charisma can substitute for real wit or Mars-versus-Venus insight; the only thing that ends up "giving" is one's tolerance for saccharine (cocooned in smug self-love) trying to masquerade as romantic comedy. (2:03) (Fear)

The Station Agent Along with Pieces of April, this was part of Patricia Clarkson's one-two punch at the Sundance Film Festival; actually, Clarkson was in four films there, but the other two weren't award winners. In The Station Agent she plays a divorcée grieving her son's death, and the movie's strongest scenes involve her cold-shoulder response when people misguidedly reach out to offer comfort. Tom McCarthy's film is choreographed so that a triad of misfits – two loners (Clarkson and Peter Dinklage) and one extrovert (Bobby Cannavale) – meet up on the train tracks of small-town life, only to break apart again. Dinklage's dwarf protagonist alternately faces and escapes a patronizing world, but it's his rejection by Clarkson's character that truly stings. If all this sounds depressing, rest assured The Station Agent doesn't forget to add moments of hope and whimsy; they just aren't as interesting as its dark side. (1:28) (Huston)

Stuck on You A pair of conjoined siblings ("We're not Siamese twins," one of them exclaims. "We're American!" – and that's the smart one) run a burger stand near the Massachusetts coastline. One of them (Greg Kinnear) harbors thespian dreams, so he decides to hightail it to Hollywood. His brother (Matt Damon), unsurprisingly, decides he'll go along for the ride. The latest Farrelly brothers (There's Something about Mary) opus never pretends to be anything other than a one-joke wonder, preferring to let the details – the gosh-all cluelessness of Damon, Kinnear's smarmapalooza timing, Eva Mendes's enthusiastically dizty routine, Cher-on-Cher mockery – carry the story and the humor on its dual backs. The filmmakers' usual sweet-sour combo of asinine gags and affectionate ribbing seems near absent here, however, with toothless goofs and a pacemaker's pulse substituting for their patented bite and cuddle. The result plays like an impostor's average version of Farrelly lite, leaving an aftertaste that feels less like comedy squared than like doubled trouble. (2:00) (Fear)

Sylvia You are alone with Sylvia Plath in a movie theater: What would you like to know? Sylvia, the movie, probably won't tell you, which is perhaps its most frustrating feature. Director Christine Jeffs is too responsible to the source material for my taste in this gorgeously brooding duo-biopic of the infamously passionate relationship between Plath and Ted Hughes. The film does veer off that path at moments, providing a coy peephole view of the relationship itself at times, and playing it too lose with actual words these poets spoke, as if every moment were written in tense, heavy verse. But too much of the biography is already known, too little of the mystery better understood here. While the jury's still out on how well Plath's life does as a play, an opera, or in the many pieces of biography and few stray novelizations, it doesn't play so well as a movie. I'd like to suggest a return to the poetry itself. (2:02) (Gerhard)

*Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion Many people unfortunately think of the Free Tibet movement as little more than a cause perfect for good celebrity P.R., but if this documentary proves nothing else, it's that Tibet is in serious need of progressive international aid. Following the history of the country as an occupied territory, filmmaker Tom Peosay's look at the atrocities and injustices perpetrated on the Tibetan people – even owning a picture of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, will get you arrested – has a tendency to flip between a picturesque travelogue (Martin Sheen's narration seems lifted from a Discovery Channel special at times) and a catalogue of horrors. But neither the tonal inconsistencies nor the A-list movie star readings of victim testimonies make the occupier's sins any less painful, and with talking-head footage ranging from an in-denial Chinese diplomat to the Dalai Lama himself, it's an invaluable first step toward understanding Tibet's tragedy. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Fear)

*21 Grams 21 Grams is a good movie hobbled most by its certainty of greatness; its entire construction, nonstop emotional urgency, and near complete lack of humor signal as much throughout. It's better than most "prestige" efforts – certainly the concurrent Sean Penn vehicle Mystic River, which similarly orchestrates several personal tragedies into contrived sentimental-existential narrative symphonies – due to the makers having one foot in art-house cred and another in starry Hollywood uplift. Amores perros director Alejandro González Iñárritu and scenarist Guillermo Arriaga should be congratulated for making a film that was first conceived for Mexico City seem not at all awkward in the English-language U.S. milieu; what's more, there's a grittiness of tenor and texture that's brave for a commercial film. 21 Grams is so frequently so good on a scene-by-scene basis that one wishes only it hadn't gotten some very big ideas. It's bleak, inventive, and heartfelt to degrees that feel right until they don't. (2:18) (Harvey)

What Alice Found So crappy-looking it appears as if transferred to 35mm from Pixelvision, this first feature by A. Dean Bell is cheap in other ways as well. It's a sort of Skeezer Madness, a crude morality fable coached in low-fi cinematic "naturalism." Not that Judith Ivey as Sandra is remotely akin to real life – her Fannie Flagg-esque caricature of a Southern "trash" vamp only needs musical fanfare to become more overtly farcical. Sandra and creepy-vague partner Bill (Bill Raymond) are R.V. sojourners who pick up Maine teenage runaway Alice (Emily Grace) when the latter is rendered carless and helpless – but did they help make her so? As she rides with them toward Florida, Sandra "makes over" Alice in teenage-tart terms, then finally draws her into the trade of truckstop prostitution. Ivey is too theatrical a performer for the film's ersatz Ken Loach docudrama ugliness. "Introduced" here, Grace is just too amateurish (especially in her quasi-Nawth Eastawn accent) to make the illusion of sympathetic brute reality seem any less phony. The ending provides a small degree of moral ambiguity that What Alice Found does not merit in the least. It's strictly in the sex-scare, road-to-criminal ruin tradition of 1930s exploitation flicks until then. (1:35) (Harvey)

*Yossi and Jagger "Based on a true story" (yeah, whatever), Yossi and Jagger, originally made for Israeli TV, takes place during the Lebanon War in 1982. Its characters are Israeli army personnel on a remote border base, housed in an underground bunker during snowy wintertime. Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is the small unit's shaven-headed commander, "Jagger" (Yehuda Levi) his deputy – the nickname bestowed because he "looks like a rock star." Early on the two go off to "check coordinates" in the "drill zone." This is a ruse; in fact they've left camp to have some alone time, a hillside fuck, and a post-boff snowball fight. In their absence, however, Yossi's superior (Sharon Regniano) arrives and announces the unit will stage an ambush. Following this bad news, the titular figures have a private fight, mandatory-service soldier Jagger demanding some public (if nonmilitary) acknowledgment of their love while probable army careerist Yossi refuses. This tiff lends poignancy later when the ordered stakeout takes a very bad turn. At barely more than an hour, Yossi and Jagger ends memorably yet too soon – you'll wish director Eytan Fox, scenarist Avner Bernheimer, and their collaborators had anticipated the feature's international success, enabling them to deepen the exceptional but terse story by a half hour or more. (1:11) (Harvey)

Rep picks

*Modern Times See Movie Clock. (1:29) Castro.