OK for all ages
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
(Animated, G, 88 minutes)
The furry singing sensations may have finally run completely aground. Though the franchise has never been what you'd call high art, there was something of an inspired silliness to the live-action/CGI mash-up that began in 2007 with "Alvin and the Chipmunks." But that streak may have peaked with 2009's "The Squeakquel." Giving voice to the critters is some top tier comic talent, including Justin Long, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Christina Applegate and more. But their presence basically goes for naught, with identifying traits or emotional range lost in the helium squeak.
Rating: 1.5 stars
Info for Parents: Rated G
OK for 10 and older
We Bought a Zoo
(Drama, PG, 124 minutes)
This is a holiday movie worth rooting for. Directed by the cinema's last great romantic, Cameron Crowe, it features cute tykes, young romance and a grownup grieving for a lost love, adorable animals and the comically crotchety Thomas Haden Church. Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, widower and father of two who decides to buy a little zoo out in the country. "We Bought a Zoo," with adult themes and dissonant bursts of profanity, kid-friendly romp, and stumbles when it reaches for emotional highs and lows.
Rating: 2.5 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG for language and thematic elements
'The Adventures of Tintin'
Watching "The Adventures of Tintin" gives you the same thrill you felt when you saw "Toy Story" for the first time: Here is a next-gen animated film that builds on everything that has come before to create something new and exciting. In his first foray into animation, director Steven Spielberg uses the technology to achieve something that could be described as cartoonish photo-realism - the images look like impossibly beautiful hand-drawn photographs - and then frees his camera from all earthly constraints. The character of Tintin (played by Jamie Bell), an intrepid reporter who looks like a boy but actually is a man, is a beloved icon around the world but not that well-known in the U.S. The story here is a bit hard to follow, which makes the film feel more than a little frivolous. But there isn't a moment in the movie when you're not staring in wonder.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG for mock violence
Older 13s
Warhorse
(Drama, PG-13, 146 minutes)
Men on opposing sides of war find their shared humanity in their love of animals in "War Horse," Steven Spielberg's sentimental epic about a country thoroughbred who travels from the fields of Devonshire to the trenches of the Somme in World War I. The film is a tale told on a vast canvas, with a wide array of characters - each of whom develops a connection to "Joey," one of the prettiest equines ever to grace the silver screen. But that crowded hodge-podge of characters fritters away the potential poignancy as we're taken away from the story's heart and soul - a boy and his horse. This "War Horse" does well by war and justice to the horse. It's the people who are shortchanged.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG-13 for intense war violence
Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol
(Action, PG-13, 132 minutes)
They've done without the number this time, but anyone who cares knows that "Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol" is really "Mission Impossible 4," the fourth time Tom Cruise's intrepid Ethan Hunt has taken on the evildoers of the world. Brad Bird makes his live-action debut after directing three exceptional animated films: "Ratatouille," "The Incredibles" and "Iron Giant." Bird has done a stylish and involving job here, turning in an entertaining production that's got considerable visual flair, especially in its action-heavy Imax sections. There are only 27 minutes of IMAX footage in the film, but every one of those minutes counts, which is one reason why Paramount chose to open this film in IMAX theaters five days before its general release.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
(Action/Comedy, PG-13, 129 minutes)
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) is about to lose Watson (Jude Law), his perfect foil and bantering partner, to matrimony. But botching the stag party and almost ruining the wedding itself won't be enough of a sendoff. Downey is more Chaplinesque, more whimsical and more English in this sequel, a two-fisted howitzer-barreled blast that manages to be lighter, funnier and yet more violent than the first Downey-Ritchie Holmes film. Ritchie takes his Sam Peckinpah slow-motion violence fetish to artful new extremes and treats us to more scenes in which Holmes' peerless powers of concentration and perception give him an almost supernatural ability to play through the variables in a coming fight in his mind, before actually martial-arts-ing his way past legions of evil henchman. Downey and Law click like a polished comedy team. But Holmes nemesis, Professor Moriarty, played by the unimposing Jared Harris ("Mad Men,"), was more menacing off camera.
Rating: 2.5 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, and some drug material
New Year's Eve
(Comedy, Romance, PG-13, 117 minutes)
This is the second in a remarkably shallow series of holiday-themed, celebrity-stuffed confections, following "Valentine's Day." If there is some kind of world record for schmaltz, this may have set it. Included here are first kisses, midnight rendezvous, dying fathers, newborn babies, husbands at war and trapped strangers. This is paint-by-the-numbers entertainment, sold with a gaggle of stars spread across its movie poster like a telethon lineup.
Rating: 1.5 stars
Info for Parents: PG-13 for language, some sexual references.
Mature high-schoolers
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(Drama, R, 152 minutes)
For the first hour of David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," you cringe at its grave horrors.But then comes the first scene in which Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara appear on the screen together - and all is forgiven. The dynamic between Craig and Mara in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is so spontaneous and sensational, it instantly elevates the movie.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for vulgar language, nudity, explicit sex, rape, violence, gore, adult themes
Young Adult
(Comedy/Drama, R, 94 minutes.)
Gorgeous but damaged, conceited yet self-loathing, Charlize Theron dares you to like her, and the movie itself dares you to stick with an anti-heroine who makes no apologies for her deplorable behavior. Theron's teen-lit writer Mavis Gary is as verbal as Juno MacGuff was, but rather than finding the perfect, clever quip at all times, she usually manages to say the rudest, most inappropriate thing. This trait is on vivid, horrific display when she returns to her Minnesota small town to pry her high-school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) away from his wife (Elizabeth Reaser) and newborn daughter. Patton Oswalt is excellent as Mavis' nerdy former classmate and voice of reason.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for language and some sexual content.
The Sitter
(Comedy, R, 81 minutes)
Jonah Hill, world's worst babysitter. Must have sounded like such movie magic that director David Gordon Green and his team grabbed the first three brats they found on the street, shoved them in a minivan with Hill and started filming. As broad, dumb comedy goes, it's not a bad idea to cast Hill as a chubby slacker roped into a hellish night tending to a high-maintenance brood. Yet other than Hill's admirable work ethic trying to squeeze laughs out of this dismally underdeveloped scenario, the movie has nothing going for it, slogging from one rotten gag to the next. The movie's also a serious racial offender, parading a gang of black actors around as hoods stealing cars, talking jive or looking for a fight. Hill plays an idler minding three annoying siblings (Max Records, Landry Bender and Kevin Hernandez), who tag along with him on a mirthless trek through Manhattan in search of the cocaine he needs to keep his sort-of girlfriend (Ari Graynor) happy. To his credit, Hill tries to make this mess work, without success. Co-starring Sam Rockwell in a wretched role as a psychotic drug dealer.
Rating: 1.5 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for crude and sexual humor, pervasive language, drug material and some violence.
