New this week:
"The Vow"
(Drama, PG-13, 104 minutes)
Paige and Leo (Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum) are a happy newlywed couple whose lives are changed by a car accident that puts Paige in a coma. Waking up with severe memory loss, Paige has no memory of Leo, a confusing relationship with her parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), and an ex-fiance (Scott Speedman) she may still have feelings for. Despite these complications, Leo endeavors to win her heart again and rebuild their marriage.
Rating: Not yet rated
Info for parents: Rated PG-13 for an accident scene, sexual content, partial nudity and some language
"Safe House"
(Action, Thriller, R, 115 minutes)
Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star in the action-thriller "Safe House." Washington plays the most dangerous renegade from the CIA, who comes back onto the grid after a decade on the run. When the South African safe house he's remanded to is attacked by mercenaries, a rookie operative (Reynolds) escapes with him. Now, the unlikely allies must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead. For the past year, Matt Weston has been frustrated by his inactive, backwater post in Cape Town. A "housekeeper" who aspires to be a full-fledged agent, the loyal company man has been waiting for an opportunity to prove himself. When the first and only occupant he's had proves to be the most dangerous man he's ever met, Weston readies for duty. Tobin Frost has eluded capture for almost a decade. One of the best ops men that the CIA's known, the ex-intelligence officer has given up assets and sold military intel to anyone with cash since he turned. From trading secrets to North Korea to aiding splinter cells, the damage he's done to the U.S. is immeasurable. And he's now back on the reservation with a secret. As soon as Frost is brought in for debriefing, mercenaries come and tear apart Weston's safe house. Barely escaping, the unlikely partners must discover if their attackers have been sent by terrorists or someone on the inside who will kill anyone standing in the way. Now it's up to Weston to figure out who he can trust before they're both eliminated from the game.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for parents: Rated R for strong violence throughout and some language
"Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D"
(Action, Sci-Fi, PG, 133 minutes)
Set against the thrilling and exotic backdrop of a "galaxy far, far away," "Star Wars" is perfectly suited to the immersive 3D theatrical experience, and "Episode I" delivers some of the Saga's most stunning and spectacular sequences - from the Naboo invasion to the Tatooine Podraces to the climactic lightsaber battle between Darth Maul and the Jedi. Supervised by Industrial Light & Magic, the meticulous conversion is being done with utmost respect for the source material, and with a keen eye for both technological considerations and artistic intentions. Naboo, a peaceful planet governed by the young, elusive, but wise Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), is being threatened by the corrupt Trade Federation, puppets of an evil Sith lord and his terrifying apprentice, Darth Maul (Ray Park). The seemingly benevolent Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is chief advisor to the queen, although there are suspicions surrounding him. Jedi knights Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are called on to intervene in the trade disputes. Along the way, they acquire an apprentice of their own in the form of young prodigal Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). They also encounter Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), a goofy, lizardlike creature who has been banished from his underwater world for his clumsiness. When the Trade Federation launches an attack on Naboo, the queen and her allies must battle hordes of robot troopers while Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan face off against the sinister Darth Maul.
Rating: Not yet rated
Info for parents: Rated PG for sci-fi action/violence
Also playing this week:
OK for all ages
"Beauty and the Beast 3D"
(Animated/Family, G, 84 minutes)
That "tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme" returns to the screen, now in 3-D. But "Beauty and the Beast," the greatest animated film ever made and one of the screen's great musicals, hardly needs this sort of sprucing up. But there's marvelous new depth of field to the images - flowers or rain or snow in the foreground - in many scenes. Details from the background pop out more and 3-D gives Gaston's riotous bar brawl an in-your-face quality.
Rating: 4 stars
Info for Parents: Rated G
OK for 10 and older
"Big Miracle"
(Adventure, Family, PG, 107 minutes)
A small town news reporter (John Krasinski) and a Greenpeace volunteer (Drew Barrymore) are joined by rival world superpowers to save a family of majestic gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. Adam Carlson (Krasinski) can't wait to escape the northern tip of Alaska for a bigger market. But just when the story of his career breaks, the world comes chasing it, too. With an oil tycoon, heads of state and hungry journalists descending upon the frigid outpost, the one who worries Adam the most is Rachel Kramer (Barrymore).
Rating: 3 stars
Info for parents: Rated PG for language
"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 1/2 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG for language and thematic elements
"The Adventures of Tintin"
(Animated, PG, 107 minutes)
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. And the 3-D! Spielberg is the third big-name director (after Wim Wenders and Martin Scorsese) to give the gimmick a try this year, and the results are so extraordinary, they make you wonder if 3-D is a good idea, after all. 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 at the screen in wonder. "The Adventures of Tintin" will seem frenetic and exhausting to some viewers, but the movie's relentless pace is a big part of its charm.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG for mock violence
Older 13s
"Chronicle"
(Drama, Sci-Fi, PG-13, 83 minutes)
Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading them to develop uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities, and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for parents: Rated PG-13 for intense action and violence, thematic material, some language, sexual content and teen drinking
"Woman in Black"
(Horror, PG-13, 95 minutes)
A young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), has to travel to a remote village and sort out a recently deceased client's papers. As he works alone in the client's house, Kipps begins to uncover tragic secrets, his unease growing when he glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black. Receiving only silence from the locals, Kipps is forced to uncover the true identity of the woman on his own, leading to a desperate race against time when he discovers her true intent.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for parents: Rated PG-13 for thematic material and violence/disturbing images
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"
(Drama, PG-13, 129 minutes)
Adapted from the acclaimed bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is a story that unfolds from inside the young mind of Oskar Schell, an inventive eleven year-old New Yorker whose discovery of a key in his deceased father's belongings sets him off on an urgent search across the city for the lock it will open. A year after his father died in the World Trade Center on what Oskar calls "The Worst Day," he is determined to keep his vital connection to the man who playfully cajoled him into confronting his wildest fears. Now, as Oskar crosses the five New York boroughs in quest of the missing lock - encountering an eclectic assortment of people who are each survivors in their own way - he begins to uncover unseen links to the father he misses, to the mother who seems so far away from him and to the whole noisy, dangerous, discombobulating world around him.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for parents: Rated PG-13 for emotional thematic material, some disturbing images, and language
"Red Tails"
(Action/Adventure, PG-13, 125 minutes)
The famed Tuskegee Airmen get the John Wayne-style heroic rendering they very much deserve, but also a hackneyed and weirdly context-less story that does them a disservice. George Lucas' pet project has the laudable goal of proving all-black movies can be a success, but "Red Tails" reduces a historical story of deep cultural significance to merely a flyboy flick. The film, directed by TV veteran Anthony Hemingway, superimposes the tale of the black World War II pilots on a dated, white genre of 1940s patriotic propaganda. "Red Tails" is blatantly old-fashioned, just with a change in color. It focuses entirely on aerial combat in Europe, skipping all that pesky backstory of black men braving the segregation of Jim Crowe America and, against the odds, rising up at the Tuskegee Institute. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard play higher-ups, but the film is centered on a band of pilots, particularly the brash, talented Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo) and his alcoholic captain Marty "Easy" Julian (Nate Parker). The script, by John Ridley and Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder is swaggering but hopelessly corny and curiously avoids really fleshing out the Tuskegee Airmen's other battle front: racism at home. The dogfights, though, are elegant and clearly staged, set against a majestic European landscape.
Rating: 2 stars
Info for Parents: Rated PG-13 for some sequences of war violence
"Joyful Noise"
(Comedy, Musical, PG-13, 118 minutes)
"Joyful Noise" is a funny and inspirational story of music, hope, love and renewal. The small town of Pacashau, Georgia, has fallen on hard times, but the people are counting on the Divinity Church Choir to lift their spirits by winning the National Joyful Noise Competition. The choir has always known how to sing in harmony, but the discord between its two leading ladies now threatens to tear them apart. Their newly appointed director, Vi Rose Hill (Queen Latifah), stubbornly wants to stick with their tried-and-true traditional style, while the fiery G.G. Sparrow (Parton) thinks tried-and-true translates to tired-and-old. Shaking things up even more is the arrival of G.G.'s rebellious grandson, Randy (Jeremy Jordan). Randy has an ear for music, but he also has an eye for Vi Rose's beautiful and talented daughter, Olivia (Keke Palmer), and the sparks between the two teenagers are causing even more friction between G.G. and Vi Rose. If these two strong-willed women can put aside their differences for the good of the people in their town, they and their choir may make the most joyful noise of all.
Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Info for parents: PG-13 for some language including a sexual reference
"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 sequences of 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 sequences of intense action and violence
Mature high-schoolers
"My Week with Marilyn"
(Biography, Drama, R, 96 minutes)
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of "The Prince and the Showgirl." The film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Aurthur Miller (Dougray Scott). Nearly 40 years on, his diary account "The Prince, the Showgirl and Me" was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as "My Week with Marilyn" - this is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Info for parents: Rated R for some language
"The Grey"
(Thriller, R, 117 minutes)
After the thrillers "Taken" and "Unknown," Liam Neeson is back in his new genre of choice, looking quite at home punching a wolf. As the grizzled, morose sniper John Ottway, he's among a roughneck band of Alaskan oil refinery workers who, while being shuttled by plane to Anchorage for vacation, crash violently in a storm, stranding them in the snowy tundra. Ottway, the alpha dog, takes charge among the seven survivors (among them Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts and, most memorably, Frank Grillo) whose predicament severely worsens when a pack of wolves announce themselves by their eerie, glowing eyes on the dark fringes of their campfire. Director Joe Carnahan ("The A-Team," "Narc"), adapting a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, sends their dwindling numbers on a survivalist adventure that grows increasingly bleak and existential. In manly, fireside chats, they parse out philosophical ideas, talking God in a wintery void, faced with the cruel brutality of nature.
Rating: 2 stars
Info for parents: Rated R for violence/disturbing content including bloody images, and for pervasive language'Underworld: Awakening'
"Underworld: Awakening"
(Action/Horror, R, 89 minutes)
After sitting out the last one, Kate Beckinsdale returns to the werewolf-vs-vampire franchise she helped make famous, this time joining forces with her lycanthrope pals to bag the most dangerous game of all: humans.
Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for strong violence, gore and some language
"Haywire"
(Action, R, 93 minutes)
A straight-up action picture may sound unusual coming from Steven Soderbergh, but as he's repeatedly demonstrated throughout his career, he's keen to experiment with every genre imaginable. And if you look closely here, you'll find it reveals glimmers of some of his greatest hits, including "The Limey," "Traffic" and the "Ocean's" movies. By comparison, it feels like minor Soderbergh: zippy, hugely entertaining and well-crafted as always (since he once again serves as his own cinematographer and editor), but not one of his more important films. It does, however, mark the auspicious film debut of MMA superstar Gina Carano as special-ops bad-ass Mallory Kane. Carano had never acted before, and not only did she do all her own stunts, she had to do them in a way that she wouldn't injure her male co-stars, including Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender and Channing Tatum. Her dialogue delivery may seem a bit stiff - and she has acknowledged that Soderbergh made some tweaks to her voice in post-production - but she has tremendous presence: an intriguing mix of muscular power and eye-catching femininity. Mallory must figure out who double-crossed her, and why, after a mission in Barcelona. Soderbergh wisely emphasizes Carano's strengths. He lets the elaborate fight scenes play out - lets us see every kick, punch and body slam - without a lot of needless edits and even without any music. You may feel as if you've been worked over as well. But in a good way.
Rating: 3 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for some violence
"Contraband"
(Remake/Action, R, 110 minutes)
Mark Wahlberg, with Popeye biceps and broody stares, stars as an ex-smuggler forced to go back and do one last job in order to stop a twitchy, tattooed thug from menacing his family. Kate Beckinsale is the wife, Giovanni Ribisi the baddie, and Ben Foster the old partner with the fancy loft apartment. Gritty, pulpy, predictable.
Rating: 2 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for violence, profanity, drugs and adult themes
"The Devil Inside"
(Horror, R, 147 minutes)
The things young Isabella Rossi sees on her fateful trip to Rome! She sees bodies contort into pretzels and climb walls and fling themselves across rooms, breaking restraints as they do. She sees blood and hears all manner of blood-curdling cursing in languages familiar and foreign. The un-emotive Fernanda Andrade plays a young woman whose mother killed three members of the Catholic clergy 20 years before in an American exorcism. She visits Mom (Suzan Crowley, very creepy) alone, in her hospital room. And Mom, switching accents, rolling her eyes, showing off her collection of cross-cuts on her arms and lips, rattles Isabella (not that Andrade lets us see this). It's a profoundly foolish script filmed with a shaky cam, a movie that goes to great pains to explain how many cameras there are and where they're placed in a room, only to drop that conceit and show us unexplained subjective shots.
Rating: 1 star
Info for Parents: Rated R for sexual references, disturbing violent content, language and grisly images
"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 and wonder why, exactly, Fincher bothered to make it.But then comes the first scene in which Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara appear on the screen together - and just like that, 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 1/2 stars
Info for Parents: Rated R for vulgar language, nudity, explicit sex, rape, violence, gore, adult themes
