*The Beat That My Heart Skipped From French director Jacques Audiard (A Self-Made Hero, Read My Lips) comes this remake of the 1978 James Toback neo-noir Fingers, though The Beat That My Heart Skipped works on its own terms – it's even better if you haven't seen, or barely remember, the original. Romain Duris is Tom, the surly, mercurial son of a shady real estate magnate (Niels Arestrup) who uses his lone offspring as both presentable boardroom "suit" and as violent enforcer. Like his late concert-pianist mother, any refined side Tom might have appears to be long dead. Yet an unexpected meeting with mom's former manager stirs a dormant fever. Tom recommences his own long-abandoned ivory tickling, taking on a Chinese-émigré instructor (Linh-Dan Pham) in preparation for a major audition. Already high-strung enough, this additional pressure makes Tom even more anxious and distracted, angering his father and business partners. The handsome Duris looks a bit like Liam Gallagher, which is perfect since this protagonist seems more like an tantrum-prone, wiseguy-impersonating brat than the ticking bomb of operatic psychosis Harvey Keitel was in Fingers. Likewise, this smoother, less erratic (but also less memorable) version lacks the reckless pulp dementia of Toback's film, as well as its more jarring bursts of violence and hostile sex. Still, in some ways less is more: A fairly outrageous story is easier to swallow here, its elements better integrated without sacrificing melodramatic juice. (1:47) (Harvey)

Dark Water Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) directs Jennifer Connelly in this latest trip down the Japanese-horror-remake highway. (1:42)

Fantastic Four Doctor Doom takes on Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing in this comic book adaptation starring Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis. (1:50)

*The Joy of Life See Critic's Choice. (1:05) Castro.

*Mana: Beyond Belief See Movie Clock. (1:32) Roxie.

*The Two of Us A newly struck 35mm print heralds the revival of Claude Berri's enjoyable 1967 debut feature. In German-occupied France, mischievous youngster Claude (frequent Berri alter ego Alain Cohen) repeatedly exasperates his loving parents: "I was born to give them a hard time," he explains in adult-narrator guise. Fearing the boy's antics will endanger their precarious position – they're Jews masquerading as "Alsatians" – they decide to send Claude to the country, where he'll be looked after by a friend's elderly folks (who believe the boy is Catholic). Claude forges a special bond with "Grampa" (Michel Simon), a garrulous eccentric whose quirks include loving animals (meat eaters are "cannibals" in his eyes) and casual anti-Semetism (a trait that's presented as comical rather than threatening). Based on Berri's own childhood, The Two of Us owes much of its charm to its lead actors; despite a 60-year age difference, the friendship between their characters comes across as carefree without ever being cloying. The Two of Us screens with Berri's whimsical Oscar-winning short "Le Poulet," about another sweet-faced troublemaker – this time, a boy who rescues a rooster from slaughter by pretending it can lay eggs. (1:26) Balboa. (Eddy)

Undead See "Vitamin Z." (1:40)

Ongoing

À Tout de Suite Director Benoît Jacquot seems comfortable slipping into the on-the-run subgenre of art cinema (think Pierrot le Fou or Morvern Callar) in his well-regarded if not entirely exceptional À Tout de Suite. The title translates to "right now," but like any existential French gangster picture worth its salt, this is a movie that knows how to take its time: It's more prone to hushed moments of character study than to explosive action. Jacquot's camera and story are unrelentingly committed to Lili (dynamically played by Isild Le Besco), a spacey, sometimes rash bourgeois who falls hard for Bada (Ouassini Embarek), a Moroccan-born gangster. Lili discovers Bada's occupation when he's stealing away from his last score; he asks if she wants to run away with him, and she – in the great tradition of so many pliable new wave heroes – packs her bags. The French new wave was formative for Jacquot (he even apprenticed with celebrated director Jacques Rivette), and he wears this influence on his sleeve, both in terms of À Tout de Suite's style and narrative. Good thing, then, that Jacquot is an assured enough director to shape these influences into a stand-alone work. (1:35) (Goldberg)

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D Robert Rodriguez must have felt pretty good about 2003's Spy Kids: 3-D since he decided to dust off those red and blue glasses once again for a new kids' flick (following up his cheery Sin City). Blond fourth-grader Max is the protagonist here, dreaming up escapist fantasies (those are the 3-D parts) where he doesn't have to endure the constant 10-year-old realities of parents fighting and bullies at school. George Lopez is fun to watch as the disgruntled teacher-evil overlord, and the movie shows promise with a children-of-the-Matrix concept in which the Planet Drool can function only by harnessing the energy generated by constant roller coaster rides. The plot thins appreciably from there, and Rodriguez ties up all the loose ends with yawnable neatness. On some level, though, the movie plays as pro-dream manifesto for Rodriguez, which might explain the source for some of the weirder stuff he's put on-screen in the past few years. (1:34) (Odes)

Après Vous Racing to make a date with his très belle girlfriend, Après Vous's protagonist, Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), happens into a disheveled gent attempting to hang himself in the park. Antoine awkwardly cuts the jumper down and takes him home. From this point forward, the comedy hinges on Antoine's unending dedication to the stranger, Louis (José Garcia) – he keeps Louis out of trouble; he lands Louis a job at a chic restaurant; he refurbishes Louis's love affair with his ex-girlfriend, Blanche. All of these tasks provide for endless pratfalls to the point that it seems like Antoine must enjoy being put through the ringer. But alas, this isn't a realm of reality or even common sense; rather, director Pierre Salvadori places us in a storybook world of fancy restaurants, cutesy apartments, and, against all better cliché-judgment, a luminescent flower shop. Perhaps because of the bourgeoisie sets or the firmly formulaic plot, Après Vous feels more like shopping than film – a consumptive excursion wherein love is something one acquires rather than feels. (1:50) (Goldberg)

*Batman Begins Batman Begins boasts plenty of talent behind the camera, with Christopher Nolan (Memento) directing from a script he cowrote with avowed comic-book fiend David S. Goyer (Blade, Dark City). Nolan's approach is way less fantasyland than Tim Burton's; his Gotham is seedier, and his Batman (Christian Bale, who heads an superb cast) is younger and way more pissed-off. The first half of the film is given over to the hero's origin story; the real action kicks in once the man in black decides to clean up his city on his own terms. "People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy," he explains to his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine). Among the film's multiple villains is psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Crane (28 Days Later's Cillian Murphy), who himself has an alter ego – let's just say he puts the "scare" in "Scarecrow." Batman Begins may have little in common with any of the Caped Crusader's previous films, but it does resemble other recent superhero flicks, particularly Spider-Man 2, with its more existential approach to dual-identity crisis. The way Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman character is handled here adds appreciable depth to a film that's also rife with enough essential coolness – gadgets, the Batmobile – to thrill Bat-fans of all stripes. (2:10) (Eddy)

Bewitched The vault of old television shows is robbed yet again for Bewitched, the latest from frequent Hanks-Ryan purveyor Nora Ephron, who applies a semi-postmodern twist to Darren and Samantha's story. She also taps her own Sleepless in Seattle formula, slathering a generous coating of puppy love on a romance between grown-ups. The movie opens as honest-to-goodness witch Isabel (Nicole Kidman) touches down in Los Angeles, determined to give up her spell-casting ways. Elsewhere in Tinseltown, self-obsessed actor Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) decides to jump-start his career by starring in a new version of Bewitched. How Isabel comes to be cast as Samantha to Jack's Darren has everything to do with her nose, which she's able to twitch in exact imitation of Elizabeth Montgomery. She agrees to be on the TV show because she's attracted to Jack – for a witch, she sure is naive, interpreting his show-biz schmooze as genuine affection. Kidman and Ferrell – the unlikeliest couple since Emily Watson fell for Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love – actually make an OK pair here, but Bewitched, which is packed with Hollywood in-jokes, ultimately fails to transcend its sitcom-style superficiality. (1:45) (Eddy)

*Caterina in the Big City In Italian director Paolo Virzì's Caterina in the Big City, newcomer Alice Teghil plays Caterina, a small-town girl who moves to Rome with her misanthropic father and hapless mother. When she gets to school, she has to navigate the dicey terrain of teenage cliques and attempt to get in with the "right" crowd to help Dad climb the social ladder. Instead of limiting the story to the girl's predictable identity crisis, Virzì is willing to bring the class and political debates in contemporary Italy to the surface and posit them as a fundamental component of her family's troubles in their new hometown. Caterina's father, Giancarlo (Sergio Castellitto), represents the experience of the aspiring bourgeoisie, frequently running into the impenetrable wall of old money that surrounds the city's institutions. This frustration ultimately turns the movie inward, focusing on the emotional fallout that results from Giancarlo's failure to achieve the professional success he's so convinced he deserves. Caterina grows in the process of all of this, of course, but the movie's resolution is much more satisfying than many other loosely comparable films. (1:30) Smith Rafael. (Odes)

Cinderella Man Ron Howard's Cinderella Man has more in common with Seabiscuit than with any other recent movie – and that includes the similarly boxing-themed Million Dollar Baby. Based on the real-life rise, fall, and rise again of Depression-era heavyweight Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe, solid as always), Cinderella Man aims to show how Braddock became a hard-times hero to a nation that was really, really holdin' out for one. After we taste Braddock's initial success, circa 1928, we zoom ahead to 1933, where life sucks. The family (including wife Mae, played by Renée Zellweger) is now poverty-stricken, and Braddock has unjustly had his boxing license revoked. When he finally gets a second chance, the comeback trail leads him to Max Baer (Craig Bierko), notorious for killing two opponents in the ring. As their big bout approaches, the angle of Braddock as "an inspiration" to downtrodden Americans is suddenly tossed into the mix. It feels a little like screenwriters Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman (who also penned Howard's A Beautiful Mind) belatedly realized they needed more context, lest their script just be about a really nice guy who managed to become a champion again after a couple of rough years. (2:18) (Eddy)

Crash Being promoted as the most critically acclaimed film of the year (so far), Paul Haggis's first directorial feature provides a fine opportunity to note which critics you need never take seriously again. Namely, any caught clapping their heads off at this crap-a-palooza, a steaming pile of horseshit spray-painted Oscar gold – though, in fact, Crash takes itself so seriously, it might settle for nothing less than the Nobel Peace Prize. Hewing way too close to the Magnolia model, it throws together umpteen marquee names (including Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon, and Don Cheadle) as two-dimensional characters who intersect during a fateful 36 hours in that Hollywood veteran's perennial notion of Everytown, LA One dimension is that they're all racist – and aren't we all, the movie sorrowfully chides – and the other is that they're still "human," meaning they love their kids or have sick parents or such. With every scene a blunt confrontation, the movie is a Rube Goldberg contraption in which one overamped event sets off another, each obvious irony and tragic misunderstanding highlighted in boldface throughout. (1:40) (Harvey)

The Deal This thriller-by-numbers is made vaguely more interesting by two factors: First, it's set in a fairly plausible parallel universe where a war between the US and the "Confederation of Arab States" has caused gas prices to hover around six bucks a gallon. Second, somehow Christian Slater got cast as the lead. Last seen howling for his innocence while being tucked into an NYPD squad car, the alleged ass-grabber hasn't been in many quality films lately. In The Deal, he plays a Wall Street banker whose career slump is revived when he's tapped to handle a billion-dollar deal involving an American oil company's bid to buy out a Russian competitor. Of course, in the film's Grisham-lite universe, sinister forces are at work behind the scenes. Though slickly produced, director Harvey Kahn's film has a straight-to-video vibe; also, its zero-chemistry romance between Slater and costar Selma Blair exists only to provide conflict, and proves somewhat embarrassing to watch. (1:47) (Eddy)

*Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room When the Enron scandal hit, it grabbed enough headlines to outrage even non-Wall Street types. But if the reasons behind the company's spectacular collapse still seem kinda enigmatic – err, something about the stock market, and, like, shady accounting practices? – Alex Gibney's excellent doc Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room offers clear, damning explanations. With a clever pop soundtrack keeping the pace, Gibney charts Enron's rise by delving into the psyches of charismatic company heads Ken Lay and especially Jeff Skilling; he also expounds on Enron's shady business tactics, which included banking on projected (and ultimately "imaginary") profits, firing analysts who disagreed with Enron brass, stashing debts in offshore companies, masterminding the California energy crisis (and therefore contributing to the election of the Governator), etc. Among the film's many engaging interviewees is Fortune magazine reporter and author Bethany McLean, who dared – during the boom years – to ask how exactly Enron made its billions. The answer – a mixture of hope, misguided faith, and sinister financial magic – turns out to be just as compelling as how exactly Enron lost its billions. (1:49) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

*5x2 Of the five backward glances at a man and a woman's relationship in François Ozon's 5x2, two moments stand out, almost as bookends: In the first, Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) close their clinical but exceedingly civilized divorce proceedings with an afternoon hook-up in a Spartan hotel room. But what starts out as both tender and tentative, between two good, modern bourgeois, soon goes completely wrong, with whatever remained of the ruptured relationship in tatters. The other instance comes late in 5x2's game – and early on in Marion and Gilles's coupledom, as the movie's scenes from a marriage unreel backward, following time's arrow from split to sweetheart status, in a rewound-chronology gesture that subtly brings the expressway-to-yr.-skull narrative violation of Irreversible to mind rather than the playful scramble of Pulp Fiction. Marion and Gilles have just been married, amid much merriment, dancing, and gold light. Drunken revelry, however, turns into a damsel's reverie, as the groom passes out in the gilt-and-satin baroque nuptial chamber and the bride is left alone. With 5x2 Ozon seems to query: What happens when bad love happens to a good woman? In straight-faced marriage counselor mode, the director seems less interested in blame or play (despite his striking use of pop and Italian love songs) than in peeling back the opaque truths that made up a relationship. (1:27) (Chun)

*George A. Romero's Land of the Dead It's been a long time and a lot of sub-par (and some surprisingly good) zombie flicks since George A. Romero – who basically invented the genre with 1968's Night of the Living Dead – released a good movie. The wait is over with Land of the Dead, a pointedly political sorta-sequel to 1985's Day of the Dead. Zombies, or "stenches," now have free run of the planet, with the exception of at least one heavily guarded human enclave. And there are barriers within the city as well, with rich folks living in oblivious style (thanks to a sleazy overlord played by Dennis Hopper), and poor folks existing with Dickens-esque pluck on the streets. The balance is upset by a chain reaction of events, set in motion when a disgruntled mercenary (John Leguizamo) steals a zombie-proof assault vehicle and aims its weapons at the city (Hopper's character responds, "We don't negotiate with terrorists!"). Also, as it turns out, zombies aren't as stupid as we've always believed – seems they can communicate, organize, and relearn long-forgotten motor skills (including how to fire guns). Human heroes emerge (Simon Baker and Asia Argento among them), but Land of the Dead belongs to Romero's gold-star zombies, who perpetrate enough sweet, sweet gore to electrify even the most discriminating horror fanatics. (1:48) (Eddy)

Happily Ever After Totally innocuous and pleasantly fizzy, Happily Ever After is an odd mélange of Cassavetes and whimsy. The film's subject is ostensibly that of marital discord, but writer-director-star (gulp) Yvan Attal (My Wife is an Actress) isn't interested in getting mucked up in the messy emotionalism that comes with such relationships. Rather, his characters dance around one another, crying one moment only to forget what they were so upset about a few scenes later. The film starts by focusing on a set of three male friends (two married, one flashily single), though it soon becomes clear that our stars are Attal's Vincent and Charlotte Gainsbourg's Gabrielle. Attal never really clarifies Vincent's conflicted feelings for his wife – he's friskily playful with her in one scene and cheating on her in the next – though it must be said that nowhere does he purport to understand love. Happily Ever After has a habit of losing track of itself, making for a sugary, if not entirely memorable, ride. Taken with Gainsbourg's sharp looks and a thoroughly silly cameo by Johnny Depp, though, it's a very pretty picture indeed. (1:40) (Goldberg)

*Heights Trashing two humiliated Julliard students' passive interpretation of a Shakespearean scene, Broadway diva Diana (Glenn Close) laments today's overall dearth of passion: "We are tepid voyeurs, we are tap water!" she cries. But perhaps it's her own lost youth she's lamenting, given her open marriage, which seems increasingly open for one spouse only; a husband whose latest mistress is, embarrassingly, her own youthful understudy; and a photographer daughter, Isabel (Elizabeth Banks), whose forthcoming marriage – to dullish lawyer Jonathan (James Marsden) – her mom not-so-subtly disapproves of. But Isabel is just seeking the stability that her parents and childhood never afforded her. As it turns out, Jonathan has a past that suddenly comes back to haunt him, and a present more complex than he lets on. During the eventful 24 hours of Amy Fox's concise screenplay (adapted from her stage play), mother and daughter both suffer some rude awakenings about their relationships – including their own – and emerge at dawn with destinies redirected. This witty but nicely weighted Manhattan seriocomedy is like an extralong New Yorker story, modest in tenor yet precise in observation, easing us into a world that looks "glittering" on the surface but proves riddled by some very standard human flaws underneath. The excellent cast also includes, in small but sharp appearances, Isabella Rossellini, Rufus Wainwright, Eric Bogosian, George Segal, and Michael Murphy. (1:33) (Harvey)

Herbie: Fully Loaded The first Herbie film (1968's The Love Bug) starred Dean Jones, who, as human lead in That Darn Cat, The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, and other classics, was the quintessential picture of Disney wholesomeness. Disney cultural elitism aside, Jones was talented at letting his assorted animal and inanimate costars hog the spotlight, a skill diva-ette Lindsay Lohan lacks. Instead she saunters (and sometimes screeches) through Herbie: Fully Loaded with no regard for building onscreen chemistry with her cute 1963 Volkswagen bug-with-a-soul. Herbie, a junkyard graduation gift, causes mischief right away, and speed demon Maggie finds herself breaking promises to Dad (Michael Keaton) as the bug brings her back to the racetrack. In male disguise at first, she eventually must defend her racing family's dynasty against smarmy NASCAR champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dylan). Director Angela Robinson, the first African American lesbian Disney has trusted with such a project, nearly churns out an amiable family comedy, but Lohan's lackluster acting and a weak script keeps Herbie stuck in first gear. (1:35) (Koh)

The Honeymooners Bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) and his best friend Ed (Mike Epps) need to raise a lot of money fast in this inane comedy, a remake of the classic postwar sitcom starring a dumb, fat, loud guy and his inexplicably out-of-his-league wife. The spitfire spouse in this version (Gabrielle Union) wants to buy a house with their savings – only Ralph and Ed have secretly blown it all on stupid investments ("Damn, maybe we need to pimp some midgets"). So the next logical steps: Find a stray dog in a dumpster, train it for two days, and race it for a $20,000 prize. John Leguizamo steals the show as their guerilla-style dog trainer, while Cedric seems chained at the ankles to his drab, mostly expository lines. Wasting any potential that a reinvention of fifties Americana could have, this one placates, slings gags like the cayenne pepper in a chicken bit, and fails to rehash Jackie Gleason's wife-beating intentions. (1:29) (Kim)

*Howl's Moving Castle Don't miss this latest fantastic fantasy from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away), an early and deserving contender for next year's Best Animated Feature Oscar. Howl's Moving Castle has already grossed a kajillion dollars overseas, and should add to its haul with Pixar and Disney overseeing the English-language release. In a quaint village surrounded by vast fields ("Nothing out there but witches and wizards," a character remarks matter-of-factly), a young hatmaker named Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer) is turned into an elderly woman (Jean Simmons) at the whim of a vain witch (Lauren Bacall). To break the spell, Sophie befriends Howl (Christian Bale) – an alluring wizard with problems of his own – and ends up moving into his titular home, a rattling contraption that strides about on spindly legs and is powered by Howl's friendly fire demon (Billy Crystal). A love story, an enchanted scarecrow, a potent antiwar message, and the immortal line "I see no point in living if I can't be beautiful!" – this gorgeous movie's got it all, and then some. (1:40) (Eddy)

The Interpreter The political thriller is a delicate game; for it to work, the filmmaker must deftly maneuver between the personal (hence the thrills) and the political without seeming too preachy. The Interpreter is a Democrat's movie (hence Sean Penn), but its party line doesn't keep it from succeeding where last summer's Manchurian Candidate remake fell short. Nicole Kidman plays Silvia Broome, a United Nations interpreter who becomes embroiled in an assassination plot when she overhears threats made on a genocidal African leader's life. As investigator Tobin Keller (Penn) quickly finds out, though, the facts of the case are murky and misleading. While Kidman's flattened chemistry with Penn doesn't afford the film an emotional core, The Interpreter gets enough meat from metaphorical substance (the UN, diplomacy, etc.) and director Sydney Pollack's taut suspense sequences to mostly plug its holes. And, yes, it's hard not to find an ambiguous popcorn movie refreshing in a time when tunnel vision so dominates political discourse: That our allegiances to characters and narrative aren't so clearly demarcated as in a state-of-the-union address seems a good thing indeed. (2:08) (Goldberg)

*Kung Fu Hustle After all the Miramaxian kerfuffle surrounding Shaolin Soccer (release-date false alarms, dubbing-vs.-subtitling controversy, etc.), Stephen Chow is finally getting proper stateside respect thanks to a new distributor – Sony Pictures Classics – and an aggressive ad campaign talking up Kung Fu Hustle's flashy virtues. Here's hoping American audiences give Chow (sometimes called "the Jim Carrey of Asia," though I don't see Carrey writing and directing his films) a chance; subtitles are involved, but Hustle ain't really the kind of movie built on dialogue. The skimpy plot exists only to provide reason for Hustle's many adrenalized, cartoonish fights, which involve nattily dressed gangsters, secretly skilled residents of "Pig Sty Alley," two elderly assassins who slaughter with sound waves, a crabby landlady whose scream is literally a deadly weapon, a greasy convict who proudly claims the title "world's greatest killer," and Chow himself, as a wannabe bad guy who realizes his own kung fu superpowers. The result is highly ridiculous, and highly, highly enjoyable. (1:39) (Eddy)

Ladies in Lavender While he's appeared in more than his fair share of Merchant Ivory-type costume pieces, British actor Charles Dance has usually brought them a certain degree of Continental "edge," even villainy. So it's dismaying that this, his first directorial effort, is such a conventional, non-boat-rocking exercise in Masterpiece Theatre-style tea-cozy drama. Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith play elderly spinster sisters living on the Cornwall coast just before World War II. One day something washes into their English Channel cove: nearly dead Andrea (Daniel Brühl), a Polish-speaking sailor. This injection of cute youthful blood into their staid, sexless existence is an excitement that Dench's Ursula, especially, rather OD's on. She turns possessive, trying unsuccessfully to hide Andrea from the attentions of visiting painter Olga (Natascha McElhone), whose curiosity is piqued by overhearing the comely lad's skill as a violinist. The resulting tempest in a teapot – complete with scones and jam (or is that crones in a jam?) – is, of course, acted with old-pro assurance. But Dance overindulges every moment as if it were a precious keepsake (enough with the slo-mo already), and the story's predictability is never challenged. It's inoffensive matinee material for your inner Grandma – or your real one, if she's up for a movie date. (1:43) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Layer Cake I suppose Matthew Vaughn has earned the right to direct his first feature – yet another Guy Ritchie-style British gangster ensemble thingie – because he actually produced those Ritchie movies everyone has been imitating since. To Vaughn's credit, he goes out of his way not to duplicate his colleague's hyperkinetic camera and editing gambits – Layer Cake is just as flashy, albeit in a controlled, weighted mode that will strike Ritchie-phobes as less annoying. Still, the script is cut from exactly the same cloth, emphasizing Tarantino-goes-Cockney character riffs, violent flourishes, and general tough-guy coolness over any emotional involvement or organic tension. I've already forgotten the plot – as if that mattered – except that basically several different factions of underworld society are chasing after a very large quantity of missing ecstasy. This good-looking caper, entertaining enough (if a bit "so what?" in the end), could have used more humor, though it does have one brilliant line. Explaining why a badder-than-bad hetero wise guy like him would spend so much time buggering male flunkies under less-than-consensual circumstances, a flashback figure says with a shrug, "Fuckin' birds is fer poofs." (1:44) (Harvey)

The Longest Yard It's an Adam Sandler movie – which means its built-in audience doesn't give a crap about what any critic thinks. For what it's worth, this remake of the 1974 flick about an unlikely football game between a team of prison guards (boo!) and a team of inmates (yay!) isn't exactly overloaded with guffaws, though costar Chris Rock is good for at least a handful. And don't look for a repeat of The Waterboy – Sandler is way more mellow (some might say "sleepwalking") under the helmet this time around. The Longest Yard plays for the most part like a music video; the climactic game is underscored by what appears to be the largest assemblage of clichéd rock, pop, and hip-hop tunes in soundtrack history. Fortunately, there are some fun moments when Sandler, Rock, and Burt Reynolds (star of the original film, he appears here as the grizzled old coach) scour the jail for potential players – including rapper Nelly – and entice them to join the team, if only for a chance to wail on the guards, played by a beefy mix of pro wrestlers and former NFL stars. (1:47) (Eddy)

*Look at Me Look at Me's generic-sounding title crystallizes an unvoiced and unanswered wish 20-year-old Lolita (Marilou Berry) has obsessed over her whole life: that her famous author-publisher father, Étienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), might actually notice, approve of, and love her. Fat, uh, chance. Plump and insecure (she looks a lot like a pre-aerobicized Ricki Lake), the cruelly named Lolita is a timorous misfit in Dad's glittering world of power, prestige, and much younger women attracted by the same. What's worse, Cassard treats Lolita, an awkward reminder of his failed first marriage, as just that. Searching for approval and a parental substitute, Lolita fixes on her classical voice teacher, Sylvia (Look at Me's writer-director Agnès Jaoui), who doesn't need the burden – but changes her attitude upon discovering the girl's lofty paternal connection. Jaoui (cowriter of Alain Resnais's 1997 Same Old Song) has crafted a drama whose brilliant wit, pathos, and insight all rise organically out of characters and relationships that couldn't be more credible or intriguing. The rest of 2005 will have to spring some mighty big surprises for Look at Me to get elbowed off year-end best lists – or mine, at least. (1:50) (Harvey)

Mad Hot Ballroom Amid the cheers of classmates, 11-year-old Dominican immigrant Wilson leads a rumba so effortlessly smooth it stuns a dance judge into howls of disbelief. Framed as Spellbound-meets-ballroom dancing, director Marylin Agrelo's documentary Mad Hot Ballroom tracks the mandatory ballroom programs at three New York City schools as the classes prep for competition. The film is highly entertaining when it spotlights the contrast between the elegant art form and the age of the kids, who are still squirmy when faced with touching the opposite sex. But no matter how clumsily they spin each other around, by performing a grown-up dance, these children visually embody their elders' inflated hopes that they will become "young ladies and gentlemen," à la a different era. The sentiment is catching for the audience too, in part because the kids are soooo damned adorable. Ballroom captures a range of children's perspectives instead of individual stories – a strategy that weakens the film a bit. But Mad Hot Ballroom is exuberant, fun, and worth it for anyone who loves to dance. (1:50) (Koh)

Madagascar DreamWorks Animation must realize by now that it's no Pixar. Shrek has legions of fans (Shrek 2, fewer), but Shark Tale, while a financial success, had about as much originality and soul as a tin of sardines. Now comes Madagascar, cast with A-level voice talent (Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith) that doesn't do much to liven up the largely uninspired story. Central Park Zoo critters Alex the lion (Stiller), Marty the zebra (Rock), Gloria the hippo (Pinkett Smith), and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) lead a charmed life in the heart of New York City – until Marty decides he'd like to experience life in the wild. A series of snafus that pass for plot lead the quartet to the shores of Madagascar, where they stumble upon a jolly colony of lemurs presided over by the self-proclaimed King Julian (Da Ali G Show's Sacha Baron Cohen). Conflict arises when a hungry Alex's predatory instincts start creeping in – with no zookeepers around to feed him steaks at every meal, the lion begins to see Marty's striped rump as a tempting entrée. Kids will dig the animal high jinks, but grown-ups have little to work with here; Madagascar's idea of in-jokes for parents include tired Starbucks references and slow-mo sprinting to the Chariots of Fire theme. Suffice it to say, Madagascar fails to achieve anything resembling Finding Nemo-style heights. (1:26) (Eddy)

*March of the Penguins Pity the emperor penguin. His name is glorious, but his lot in life – as incredulously documented by Luc Jacquet and narrated with morbid amusement by Morgan Freeman – is one of unrelenting duty and sacrifice. If social Darwinists love the traditional top-of-the-food-chain tale, only a true evolutionary thinker can really appreciate this one. Or a working parent. March of the Penguins has less in common with French adventures into animal kingdoms – Microcosmos, Winged Migration – than it does with the more moralizing cultural work of, say, Robert Flaherty. But it's still got to be the most beautifully filmed animal story of the year, in one of the landscapes most endangered by rapacious humanity: gorgeous mile after mile of frozen earth, with pastel skyscapes, brutal storms, and line after line of amazing, tuxedoed birds, devotedly marching in formation. (1:20) Smith Rafael. (Gerhard)

*Me and You and Everyone We Know With numerous grants, a few Whitney Biennials, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, and one Cannes Film Festival Camera D'Or prize, Miranda July might just be the crossover figure of the moment, and I can't say I'm surprised. What is surprising is how much of her "crazy, fantastic" (to quote from her short video The Amateurist) worldview she's managed to maintain in a more mainstream context, successfully juggling crowd-pleasing vignettes with nervier ones to create a winning film. To be sure, the thudding weight of Sundance groupthink sometimes drags at the edges of Me and You and Everyone We Know, threatening to turn the movie's oddballs into a sub-Solondz peanut gallery. But her levity prevails, even if at times other people in the movie seem to be echoing the amazement philosophies of July's character, Christine Jesperson. Christine falls for shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes), though Richard's still burned – quite literally, in fact – from a recent separation. When Richard lashes out, it's at Christine's tendency to embellish the details of everyday existence, a near-ritualistic practice that permeates the movie itself. On their own, July suggests, life's everyday signposts aren't enough; they need to be messed with, scrawled on, and reimagined. (1:30) (Huston)

*Mr. and Mrs. Smith The rumored real-life love connection between Mr. and Mrs. Smith's stars, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, adds an extra layer of intrigue to Mr. and Mrs. Smith – potentially luring audiences who might otherwise brush off the film as True Lies redux. Which it is, essentially, sexing up the spies-in-suburbia angle with jazzy direction by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Swingers). The movie opens with the Smiths in marriage counseling, where he can't even remember how long they've been hitched ("five or six years"). The dull routine of daily life disappears once it's revealed that both Smiths are actually top-secret assassins. Inevitably, these ruthless executioners must battle each other, symbolically wreck their tasteful abode, and realize, with sudden clarity, they really do love each other. At last, they can finally be a fully functioning couple – just in time to face off with their angry, armed-to-the-teeth employers. Though the film's explosion-heavy final third runs a little long, Mr. and Mrs. Smith puts both Pitt and Jolie to ideal use, mixing action-hero antics with slinky dance numbers. US Weekly, Star, and all the other tabloids ain't lying – Brangelina's got chemistry to spare. (2:20) (Eddy)

*My Summer of Love It's looking more like a summer of hate for 16-year-old Mona (Nathalie Press). With one parent dead from cancer and another long since vanished, she's stuck living in the pub they once ran with elder brother Phil (Paddy Considine), who wants to turn it into a "spiritual center" – and who was "a lot more fun" when his violent streak kept him in and out of jail. But escaping his usual cadre of praying born-agains one day, Mona makes the acquaintance of Tamsin (Emily Blunt), who needs a companion for her own semiexile. (Seems she's been thrown out of boarding school for offenses she's rather vague about.) Hardly your average Yorkshire village girl, Tamsin is impulsive, worldly, sophisticated, and confiding, with her own past family tragedy to share. She lives in a country manse that Mona soon more or less moves into; Tamsin's own parents are absent or indifferent to the point of nonexistence. So the two girls do the typical things teens do when they're sure they won't get caught: drink, smoke, get high, play with a Ouija board, and play pranks of varying degrees of cruelty on people who've pissed them off. They also experiment sexually, and make vows of undying devotion that sound doomed even as they're being said. It's all quite idyllic, apart from Phil's worries that Mona needs "saving," and apart from the flashes of abrupt maliciousness that sometimes make Tamsin seem like an unstable chemical that might blow up in one's face any moment. Writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort) has crafted a hypnotic parable whose humid, overripe, infinitely ominous atmosphere recalls early Peter Weir (especially Picnic at Hanging Rock). Scratch beneath the fascinating surface here and you might detect some reactionary concepts – female sexuality as a corrupting, Kali-like force, and lesbianism as something one is "seduced into." And the big, shocking twist toward the end may not surprise you at all. Still, My Summer's textural richness, unpredictable narrative details, and overall ambiguity make it one of the few films so far this year that can qualify as a must-see. (1:24) (Harvey)

*Mysterious Skin I outright hated Gregg Araki's early films – those spectacles of phony rebellion populated by poseurs about one-tenth as clever as they thought they were. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say I practically wished death on the whiny, HIV-positive renegades of The Living End, simply for being so entitled, victim-y, and annoying. And I never expected Gregg Araki to create an excellent film – which makes Mysterious Skin, easily one of this year's best, a genuine surprise. The endless snarkfests characteristic of typical past Araki screenplays have been replaced by sincerity, sweetness, and most important, actual material. The film's source, Scott Heim's 1995 novel that explores the post-traumatic stories of two boys victimized by a pedophile, allows the director to drape his trademark glossy sheen over a story of substance, and Araki's visual sense – always his strongpoint – proves ideal for adaptation-style embellishment. Better still, Mysterious Skin's sexual politics, particularly during this conservative era, are so dedicated to logic and truth that they're quietly radical. (1:39) (Huston)

The Perfect Man Two pressing facts gleaned from The Perfect Man: One, Hilary Duff looks good in anything; and two, rich guys make waaay better boyfriends than poor guys. Even if we had been spared the synchronized dancing scene, which reminded us that, yes, all single moms embarrass their teenage daughters – a point which, by the way, all such single-mom movies since Mermaids seem to make clear – there still wouldn't be much here to work with. Heather Locklear plays Duff's oft-dumped mother, uprooting the family each time she tires of the local crop of potential mates. The blondes finally arrive in New York City, where an all-knowing bachelor (Chris Noth) sops up the female family cynicism and gives Holly (Duff) hope for Mom's future. The online high jinks central to plot development get stale pretty fast, but if you wait until the very end, you might get a glimpse of Duff's one highly unfortunate hairdo – something you don't get to see every day. (1:51) (Odes)

Rebound Martin Lawrence lends appreciable charm to this wholesome sports flick that is something like Dodgeball with hoops, albeit lacking the villainous virtues of Ben Stiller. After wrecking a lucrative career coaching college ball with one too many courtside temper tantrums, Coach Roy McCormick (Lawrence) accepts a gig at his old middle school to prop up lackluster public relations. The adolescent Smelters, as it turns out, don't give the flashy endorsement mogul much to work with, and thus are compelled to undergo Coach's basketball boot camp, hoping to chalk up a few wins. Roy becomes a father figure to the group of misfits, and manages to woo an attractive single mom (Wendy R. Robinson) proving, once again, that cheesy lines are only cheesy if you take no for an answer. Lawrence – along with Horatio Sanz and a few clever dialogue bits – generates some comic moments, resulting in a not unpleasant hour and a half. (1:27) (Odes)

*Rize Photographer and MTV video director-turned-documentarian David LaChapelle's Rize privileges Watts over Hollywood. Or, to borrow a linguistic fusion used by someone in the movie, it brings the two together to form Hollywatts. An exploration of new urban dance styles, Rize has greater kinetic energy and visual splendor than you're likely to find in this season's big-budget blockbusters. LaChapelle's framework is simple: He moves back and forth between personal story lines and adrenaline-pumping performance sequences, building toward a climactic stadium showdown between the House of Clown, led by pioneering dancer and neighborhood activist Tommy the Clown, and the newer wave of dancers – Krumpers – that have emerged from his influence. The dancers – in particular, a powerhouse named Miss Prissy – are amazing, from 300-pound-plus Big X to a little girl, all of four years old, throwing her coat on the floor with fierce concentration before wilding out. If a whiff of suspect ethnography lingers, it's because Rize's closest corollary would have to be Jennie Livingston's study of vogueing, Paris Is Burning, which drew accusations of exploitation during its media moment. Livingston's 1989 movie possesses a thoroughness that LaChapelle's, glossing over sexual ambiguity, lacks. But Rize still presents the closest thing to a hero you're likely to find in the multiplex this year – and not just one, but two, three, four, or more of them. (1:25) (Huston)

Saving Face Can a comely, workaholic medical resident (Michelle Krusiec) survive the frantic matchmaking of her haranguing mother (Joan Chen) and find love with a gorgeous dancer (Lynn Chen)? And what happens when the tables turn and a mother ends up knocked up and on her own daughter's doorstep? Director Alice Wu goes fishing for Wedding Banquet-style madcap comedy, with mixed results. The narrative arc is all too predictable in this Will "Hitch" Smith-coproduced venture, as enjoyable as it is to see a wide-screen beauty like Joan Chen play against type as a dowdy, fussy dowager, and as charming a pair as Krusiec and Chen make. (1:36) (Chun)

Sin City Rebel auteur Robert Rodriguez (Once upon a Time in Mexico) carbon-copies Sin City from codirector Frank Miller's graphic novels, bringing the author's stylized vision to life using everything-digital-but-the-actors technology. Visually, Sin City is everything last year's similarly engineered Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was not: bold and memorable, with effects that enhance rather than overpower the narrative. "Special guest director" Quentin Tarantino's influence is felt not just in Sin City's enthusiastic bloodshed but also in its Pulp Fiction-style structure, which creates twisted continuity from multiple Miller yarns. But despite an outstanding cast (Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, and Mickey Rourke are standouts), lovingly rendered violence, and marvelous attention to comic-book detail, Sin City regrettably falls short of perfection. Though most of the characters are clearly, deliberately despicable, some are nearly too loyal to Miller's two-dimensional creations – in particular, Sin City's women are a depressingly unoriginal lot, posing in positions of power (hookers with guns!) but remaining absent from the movie's near constant voice-overs. (2:06) (Eddy)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Quickly now, just hold your nose and swallow the concept of magic pants. Let it go and move on because the remaining story is entertaining and has surprising depth, for teen fluff. Four best friends pledge to share for the summer a pair of thrift-store jeans that inexplicably fits them all perfectly. Modest, shy artist Lena (Alexis Bledel) takes them first to a Greek island and lets her hair down for a hunky fisherman. Meanwhile, boy-crazy Bridget (Blake Lively) sets her lasers on a soccer camp coach; wannabe documentary filmmaker Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) deals with a precocious 12-year-old assistant; and Carmen (America Ferrera), whose scenes are the film's strongest, negotiates her place in absentee Dad's new Stepfordlike family. Director Ken Kwapis never reveals the divine secret of the ya-ya pants' origins (in my fantasy, they're the sidewalk pair that Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson repeatedly catch sight of in Ghost World), but at least they operate in subtle ways. However, besides faithfulness to the Ann Brashares novel, why pants at all? Why not an iPod hoodie, or better yet four narratives that stand on their own? (2:00) (Koh)

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith Rest assured, Revenge of the Sith makes for a better time at the movies than 1999's Phantom Menace and 2002's Attack of the Clones. Partially, that's because things could not get any worse, but it's also because, after two movies of setting up meaningless characters and subplots, there's nothing left to do but finally get to the meat of the story. Yet the dark side of George Lucas's digital-era filmmaking still looms large throughout; like its kin, Sith unfolds in video game-ready action sequences married to abominable dialogue, with every frame filled with as many childish and distracting CGI creatures as possible. But by the time the much-anticipated lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and bad seed Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), a.k.a. Darth Vader, erupts, Sith has managed to conjure up an air of credible space opera (albeit one totally lacking any suspense). By the time we see the revealed emperor and his new apprentice gazing out into space, simultaneously peering into the past and future of the Star Wars chronology, it's tempting to imagine that their evil Empire will mirror Lucas's own: the rise of the soulless blockbuster, the digital actor, and the move to turn cinema into a home theater demo. (2:19) (Macias)

*Twist of Faith This crisply edited, painfully honest doc from director Kirby Dick (Derrida) views the Catholic church's wide-ranging molestation scandal through the eyes of one victim: blue-collar family guy Tony Comes of Toledo, Ohio. (We're also privy to the feelings of his wife and other family members, including his children, thanks to Dick's preferred method of having some of his film shot by its subjects.) After being abused as a teenager by a trusted local priest – a teacher at Comes's Catholic high school who organized weekend gatherings at his lakeside cabin for favored male students – Comes suffered in silence for years. When he finally speaks up, seeking not a quick payout but an apology first and foremost, the injustices continue, including the horrifying realization that the Comes family has inadvertantly moved onto the same street as the alleged pedophile. As it turns out, the local diocese has done a bang-up job protecting accused priests over the years, a terrible fact that – more than the abuse itself – causes Comes to question his faith for the first time. (1:27) Roxie. (Eddy)

*War of the Worlds Semi-deadbeat dad and dockworker Ray (a Tom Cruise so manly-man at first that he seems to be performing in a beer commercial, not playing a character) is forced to mind his two kids for the weekend while his ex-wife and her much-improved new husband visit relatives in Boston. Teenage Robbie (Justin Chatwin) is angry; 10-year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) is a peacemaker. Thank god something soon happens to shut their argumentative yaps: alien invasion. Faithful to H.G. Wells in essence, if not in narrative specifics, Steven Spielberg's film – from a script by David Koepp – is one long, panicked, every-man-for-himself flight from near-inescapable catastrophe, as the terrifyingly well-equipped space visitors prove eager and able to wipe out human life worldwide. The angry criticisms that have been directed at this movie are a little surprising, because its lean, mean through-line cuts through most of the stupidity and flab that have made nearly every other summer fantasy-action "blockbuster" of late a numbing experience. Not that there aren't problems: Screamin' Dakota has become such a precocious little actress that I'm not sure she can pass as a normal child anymore; and as usual, Spielberg can't resist caving in to schmaltz at the end, though mercifully this time it's just a puddle-of, not an ocean (à la A.I., Schindler's List, and so on). And let's face it – Tom Cruise's Everyman credibility is at a low, low ebb right now. But by current popcorn standards, War is admirably crisp, harrowing, and in firm control of (rather than overwhelmed by) its spectacular FX. (1:57) (Harvey)

*The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill Having moved to San Francisco at the end of the hippie era to become a professional musician, Mark Bittner never realized that goal. Instead, he belatedly found an alternate raison d'être, feeding and studying the colorful tropical parrots – originally abandoned or escaped pets who proved adaptable to this cooler climate – which often roosted on his doorstep in his North Beach neighborhood. Distinguishing all 40-odd birds by markings or behavior, he gave them each a name and ingratiated himself enough to be able to hand-feed them. When the landlords who've allowed him to live rent-free decide to remodel their property, he must move on. This is no small crisis, since Bittner has never held a "real" job, nor does he have any contingency plans. Veteran local filmmaker Judy Irving's beautifully shot documentary balances surprisingly engrossing aviary insights with rather poignant human ones, arriving at a charming portrait of the kind of mild dropout eccentricity that the world (and even San Francisco) barely tolerates anymore. (1:13) Balboa, Red Vic, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Yes A lot of people have been disappointed or bewildered by Sally Potter's paltry output since 1992's Orlando. They've wondered if that film's imaginative expansiveness was a fluke; if her more recent features aren't just glorified romance novels; if their storylines – suggesting it's never too late for a complicated woman to find a tall, dark, and handsome foreigner who will in turn find her G-spot – aren't too personal in a kinda-to-hella embarrassing way. (Do we really need an arthouse How Stella Got Her Groove Back?) These conclusions are all quite possibly true, allowing for personal taste. Nothing could induce me to witness The Tango Lesson, wherein Potter played herself, getting jollies off the titular quasi-erotic sessions she essentially blackmailed out of actual tango master Pablo Veron in exchange for his getting a film role. Sometimes art reflects life that thinks it's Art, and someone should be shot. However, Yes manages to pull off nearly an equal degree of thinly veiled self-indulgence. This extravagantly mannered tale of a molecular biologist (Joan Allen) who has an affair with a Lebanese doctor-turned-refugee (Simon Abkarian) while her marriage to an English politician (Sam Neill) rots, is visually striking, structurally inventive, filigreed with musings on colonialism, religion, race politics, and existential philosophy. Did I mention the dialogue is in rhymed verse? Potter goes out on several limbs here – though it's best to keep looking skyward (as she does), otherwise you might notice these branches are really just a couple feet from rather banal ground. (1:35) (Harvey)

Rep picks

*'San Francisco Silent Film Festival' See "Welcome Back." Castro.

*'Streetside Productions Youth Documentary Showcase' To anyone who laments the fact that the proliferation of video equipment has the capacity to make anybody with a point of view the next Michael Moore, consider this collection of short docs from Oakland youth. By taking Spencer Nakasako's highly acclaimed "let them have video cameras" practice and bringing it to the East Bay, young members of poor and underrepresented communities gain the ability to tell their own stories. Investigating cultural phenomena like dreadlocks and the "RIP t-shirt," the filmmakers talk to their peers and strangers on the street to put together a slice of insight into their daily lives. Funding by the Alameda County Probation Department betrays the dearth of creative opportunities provided by school districts – letting a lot of young men and women with potential fall through the cracks. Hopefully, with exposure some of these kids will be able to use their frequently untapped resources instead of being forced into other, less productive pursuits. Parkway. (Odes)

'Unleashed: Classic and Cult Canine Films' See 8 Days a Week. Smith Rafael.