Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema.
Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag: IMAX film offers an insider's view into aerial combat. Limited showings through March 3. Tickets: $8; $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children (age 3-12); group rates available.
Vikings: Journey to New Worlds: IMAX documentary from Sky High Entertainment explores the impact and achievements of the Norsemen. Through March 3. Tickets $8; $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 kids ages 3-12.
Bank of America "IMAX Film Festival": The best of past IMAX films, including "Dolphins," "The Living Sea" and "Everest," will be screened regularly, through Feb. 20.
The indigo Evolution (Not rated, 80 min.) A documentary about the supposed phenomenon of "Indigo Children" -- "metagifted" prodigies who may represent a leap in evolution, according to some theorists. 6 p.m. Saturday and 12:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $10.
Capote (R, 98 min.) The four years of Truman Capote's life that were consumed by researching and writing the "nonfiction novel" "In Cold Blood" are the focus of this film, which is not so much a biopic as a bioepisode: a dramatization of a short span of time that director Bennett Miller and writer Dan Futterman suggest changed and ultimately defined their protagonist. A favorite for the Best Actor Oscar, Philip Seymour Hoffman sinks into the role of the fey, mannered Capote as if it were a small, soft chair; but the film's true subject is the way a writer or journalist -- or any artist -- uses his sources for purposes that ultimately are more selfish than altruistic: a complex parasitism that also can be found in romantic and family relationships. The film becomes increasingly unsatisfactory as it emphasizes the cooling of Capote's initial infatuation with his primary interview subject, soulful-eyed murderer Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.); the movie suggests rather moralistically that the author's self-centered behavior contributed to his artistic and physical decline. With a desexualized Catherine Keener as Capote's friend, "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (PG, 140 min.) Centaurs, a witch queen (Tilda Swinton) and talking beavers are among the characters encountered by four World War II-era British children who travel through a coat closet into the enchanted world of Narnia, ruled by Aslan, the lion king (voiced by Liam Neeson), whose sacrificial death and resurrection are key to the Christian message C.S. Lewis incorporated into the seven "Narnia" novels he penned in the 1950s. Lewis' intentions are as hard to miss as the spiral horn on a unicorn's head, but director Andrew Adamson ("Shrek") has crafted a family-friendly film that most viewers will be able to enjoy as a pure fantasy adventure, especially during the climactic battle of zoological and mythological creatures (think "Doctor Dolittle" as reimagined by Robert E. Howard).
Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema.
Derailed (R, 107 min.) Yet another post-"Fatal Attraction" demonstration of the dangers of infidelity. This time, Clive Owen is the restless husband whose adulterous intentions (toward Jennifer Aniston) prove tragic (a hotel room tryst is interrupted by a brutal French blackmailer, played by Vincent Cassel). Swedish director Mikael Hafstroem's pedestrian staging fails to generate tension, as do most of the story's predictable "surprise" jolts.
Dirty (R, 97 min.) Cuba Gooding Jr. sheds the family-friendly skin he donned in such recent films as "Snow Dogs" and "Boat Trip" to play a corrupt, profane cop in this dark, downbeat, low-budget indie from director Chris Fisher, whose chaotic shaky-camera visuals move past gritty to annoying. Not entirely successful, but it's as twisted as a James Ellroy novel, and it may please genre fans who don't require that spilled blood be transubstantiated into the holy water of redemption.
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Peabody Place 22, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Flightplan (PG-13, 98 min.) We've heard of airlines losing luggage, but kids? Jodie Foster, the real-life mother of two young sons, follows "Panic Room" with another thriller that allows her to physicalize her maternal instincts into action-movie heroics. (Does her experience as a child actor help explain her protective instincts?) Extremely well directed by Germany's Robert Schwentke (in his English-language feature debut), this ingenious in-flight update of "The Lady Vanishes" finds the always intense Foster as a grieving widow whose young daughter disappears during a crowded flight over the Atlantic. Only during the final act do the characters begin to behave like movie constructs instead of recognizable people.
Fun with Dick and Jane (PG-13, 91 min.) Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni star as a bank-robbing married couple in this remake of the 1977 comedy with Jane Fonda and George Segal.
Peabody Place 22, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema.
Get Rich or Die Tryin' (R, 134 min.) In videos and album cover photographs, the rapper 50 Cent -- arguably the most successful artist in current pop music -- appears to be a glistening, tattooed Hercules, made to order for movie stardom. Unfortunately, the figure billed as Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson in this autobiographical rags-to-rap saga is uncharismatic and uninteresting, and he inhabits a visually drab drama so cliched (especially after the far superior "Hustle & Flow" and "8 Mile") it could have been imagined by a lifelong resident of suburban Des Moines. Director Jim Sheridan seems to be trying to link 50 Cent (and his nine bullet wounds) to the embattled Irish-Catholic martyrs of his previous films, including "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father," but the events here aren't so much predestined as predictable. Perhaps the film's hidden, despairing message is that the tired narratives of gangsta rap and gangster movies are now so ingrained in the DNA of underprivileged inner-city males that they follow these patterns unawares, like Monarch butterflies migrating to Mexico. Only in the movie's final scene does Jackson shed his shirt -- and the script -- like a chrysalis, to emerge as the iconic 50 Cent the audience wants to see.
Glory Road (PG, 118 min.) This may be the first film to open with its own tag line: "Based on the true story of a team that changed everything" declare the words that appear onscreen at the start of this by-the-numbers "Remember the Titans"-type dramatization of the incredible 1966 NCAA basketball championship in which Texas Western coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) led the first African-American starting five in tournament history to victory over heavily favored Kentucky. Memphian Red West steals the show as the team's "trainer and spiritual adviser"; Evan Jones appears as bespectacled nerd Moe Iba, the Texas Western assistant who later spent four seasons as coach of the Memphis State University Tigers. Interviews with the real Haskins and the surviving players during the closing credits suggest the story of this team will be better told in a future documentary.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (PG-13, 157 min.) Many critics have proclaimed this the best of the four "Potter" films to date; I found it disappointingly conventional, especially in comparison to director Alfonso Cuaron's imaginative previous entry in the series. Like Chris Columbus, who first brought Harry to the screen, Mike Newell offers what is essentially an illustrated condensation of J.K. Rowling's novel; the film derives its power from our established attachments to the now teenage Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the other characters rather than from Newell's staging. Nevertheless, the movie connects when it links the confusion of adolescence to the trauma represented by the rebirth of Voldemort (portrayed by Ralph Fiennes, unrecognizable in skull-like makeup). "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" asks Hermione (Emma Watson), and the question fills us with sadness because it's not so much about supernatural evil as about growing up.
Hoodwinked (PG, 83 min.) The story of Little Red Riding Hood is re-told, "Rashomon" style, by such eyewitnesses as Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway), the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) and Granny (Glenn Close) in this sometimes funny but annoyingly self-conscious and opportunistic attempt to expand on the "hip," anachronistic fairy-tale humor that energized the "Shrek" franchise. The digital animation -- created by a new company, Kanbar Animation Studio -- is cheap and unattractive (or "iconoclastic, independent," in the words of the film's press kit).
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema.
Hostel (R, 95 min.) Director Eli Roth ("Cabin Fever") expands the xenophobia of the backwoods terror genre to Eastern Europe as a pair of obnoxious American backpackers on the hunt for hot Eurobabes are lured into a torture-and-murder plot. The first half of the film seems relentlessly sexist; the second half is characterized by gruesome violence that should have earned an NC-17. Is the film pandering to or critiquing the frat-boy mentality of its "heroes" and its target audience? Intimations of Abu Ghraib and allusions to "The Wicker Man" suggest Roth's intentions are honorable, even if they are obscured by waves of blood and bare breasts. The film isn't escapist; like "Straw Dogs" and "A Clockwork Orange," it demands that viewers respond to its violence.
Peabody Place 22, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Jarhead (R, 123 min.) Buffed-up Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Marine sniper Anthony Swofford, whose 2003 memoir about the first Gulf War provides the basis for this worthwhile if sadly inconsequential war-film-without-combat from director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty"). Explicitly alluding to such conflicted predecessors as "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deer Hunter," "Jarhead" wants to celebrate its bored, frustrated, maddened warriors (including Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx) while reminding us that war is hell (almost literally, in the film's surreal depiction of burning desert oil fields). One suspects that post-production compromises may have diluted the movie's impact; a few scenes are sabotaged by tired rock songs that add a gung-ho vibe to action that might otherwise seem absurd.
King Kong (PG-13, 187 min.) Post-"Lord of the Rings," Peter Jackson is cinema's new 800-pound gorilla -- a box-office alpha male who can bump chests with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Fulfilling a lifelong dream, Jackson has remade the 1933 fantasy classic that inspired him to become a filmmaker in the first place; the $207 million result is entertaining and often exciting but ultimately unnecessary, replacing the surrealism and metaphorical richness of the sex- and race-charged original with overcomplicated and overpopulated special effects sequences that awe to the point of exhaustion. Jack Black is miscast as Carl Denham, the reckless moviemaker who carries Kong from his dinosaur-plagued island to Depression-era New York; Naomi Watts takes the Fay Wray role of Ann Darrow; Adrien Brody is Ann's non-Kong love interest, transformed from the tough mug sailor of 1933 to a sensitive playwright. Digitally modeled on the pantomime of actor Andy Serkis, Kong himself is a remarkable and sympathetic creation, but his very realism -- his anthropoidal stance, his Animal Planet expressions -- reduces his impact. He seems a creature captured from nature rather than from a nightmare -- more Mighty Joe Young than rampaging id. Still, the doomed Kong atop the Empire State Building remains a potent symbol of the way man isolates and exterminates "competing" species.
Last Holiday (PG-13, 112 min.) Perhaps the most likable Everywoman in the movies, Queen Latifah elevates this inspirational comedy about a coupon-clipping pre-Katrina New Orleans sales clerk who spends her life's savings on a dream vacation at a European resort after she is diagnosed with a fatal illness. As Latifah proves herself at least the equal of the politicos and business moguls who frequent the resort, the movie -- directed by Wayne Wang -- offers audiences both a fantasy of wealth and the reassurance that money isn't what really matters.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (PG-13, 98 min.) Albert Brooks' seventh film as writer-director- star since 1979 is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but ultimately disappointing, hamstrung by drab cinematography and listless pacing that seems linked to the star's unhurried biorhythms. The premise is inspired, as the State Department asks Brooks (as himself) to go to India and Pakistan to "tell us what makes the Muslims laugh" because the usual tactics -- "spying and fighting" -- aren't helping the U.S. win the War on Terror. As Brooks tries to take the pulse of "the Muslim world" with absurdist comedy routines that have no more than cult appeal even in his own culture, the movie becomes more a timeless satire of U.S. government inefficiency than a commentary on the post-9/11 era.
Memoirs of a Geisha (PG-13, 145 min.) Occasionally, the camp classic struggling to free itself from the constricting kimonos and white pancake makeup of "Geisha" claws its way to the surface ("I shall destroy you!" snarls Gong Li during an exquisitely photographed catfight). But most of Rob Marshall's lushly rendered period romance is not only too simple to satisfy readers of Arthur Golden's meticulously researched best-selling novel but too dull to interest all but diehard fans of Li, Zang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh, the Chinese actresses cast (to the consternation of cultural gatekeepers) as Hollywoodized Japanese geishas.
Munich (R, 164 min.) "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," explains Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) as she gives her blessing to a patriotic hit man (Eric Bana) charged with killing the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the "Black September"massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. With this diplomatic and levelheaded but needlessly pokey film, Steven Spielberg eschews the complicated set pieces and emotional hectoring that characterize his less "mature" commercial movies; but he doesn't find an equivalent strategy to draw us into his story. The result is easier to admire than to endorse or enjoy.
The New World (PG-13, 135 min.) New Line Cinema has abandoned "The New World": Even though director Terrence Malick cut 16 minutes from the 150-minute version of the film released earlier in a few big cities, audience indifference and lack of awards recognition has caused the studio to lose interest in what was supposed to be its prestige release of the year. Thus, Malick's fourth feature in 33 years (after "Badlands," "Days of Heaven" and "The Thin Red Line") arrived in Memphis with no advance screening for critics and no fanfare. Tedious, mesmerizing and ultimately quite moving, the movie explores what might be called the psychic consequences of the conquest of a virgin land by re-telling the 17th Century story of Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and the American Indian maiden usually known as Pocahontas (played by a preternaturally poised 14-year-old named Q'orianka Kilcher). The romantic first-person narration is banal but the shots of nature and the "civilized" Pocahontas encountering her own New World, London, are eloquent.
Pride & Prejudice (PG, 128 min.) Jane Austen purists may blanch at certain omissions and embellishments (the climactic clinch is more "Sixteen Candles" than Georgian England), but director Joe Wright's take on the 1813 masterpiece is quite "agreeable," as the comically fatuous Mr. Collins would say. Keira Knightley is somewhat underwhelming as English literature's most beloved heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, but the supporting cast -- which showcases such stalwarts as Judi Dench, Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn -- never fails to entertain. Even so, there's something disturbing about a Jane Austen adaptation that uses an ampersand as an official part of its title.
The Ringer (PG-13, 95 min.) Johnny Knoxville tries to rig the Special Olympics by posing as a contestant. Unsurprisingly, the film was produced by the champions of disability comedy, the Farrelly Brothers; the director is Barry W. Blaustein, who chose Memphis for the 2000 premiere of his lackluster professional wrestling documentary, "Beyond the Mat."
Roll Bounce (PG-13, 108 min.) Allusions to the Cosby Kids and 'What's Happening!!' are played for laughs, but they're apt: This is family-friendly youth fare, set in the 1970s, about affable teen roller-skaters from Chicago's South Side who challenge the snooty superiority of a pimped-out roller-rink kingpin named Sweetness (Wesley Jonathan). Director Malcolm D. Lee's crowd-pleaser could use more "Roller Boogie" routines and fewer heart-tugging heart-to-hearts between the young hero (Bow Wow) and his hardworking widowed father (Chi McBride), but a soundtrack heavy on Chic, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson and Kool & the Gang makes up for the mawkishness.
Saw II (R, 91 min.) Veni vidi vomit. That's Latin for: I came, I saw, I saw "Saw II." In this quickly assembled sequel to last year's surprise hit, pretentious mastermind Jigsaw (played with dignity by Tobin Bell) again places a number of people within elaborately lethal booby traps in order to "test the fabric of human nature." Like its predecessor, the film squanders a nail-biting setup for Nine Inch Nails music video-style sadomasochism, demonstrating yet again that there's nothing more tired in current cinema than hyperactively edited shock images accompanied by abrasive sound design. "Saw II" offers the sort of mass-market transgression that's depressing not because of its violence but because of its cynical trust in the gullibility of its target audience.
Syriana (R, 126 min.) Stephen Gaghan, the Oscar-winning scripter of "Traffic," wrote and directed this similarly complex ensemble drama that places moviegoers eyeball to eyeball with a globetrotting collection of oil barons, corporate lawyers, Middle East emirs, CIA spooks, and corrupt politicians, most of whom want to ensure that "the petroleum security of the United States" remains indistinguishable from the country's national security. Gaghan is uninterested in leading viewers by the hand through his dense geopolitical maze; instead, he asks us to piece together the story from the evidence onscreen, making the film almost an exercise in participatory investigative journalism. The cast includes George Clooney, Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright.
Peabody Place 22, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.
Walk the Line (PG-13, 136 min.) A sort of stealth musical that tells its story of heartache, longing, passion and fated love more effectively through song than script, "Walk the Line" for much of its length is "steady as a train, sharp as a razor," to quote Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, describing the sound Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) developed at Sun Studio in 1955. Overlong at 136 minutes, the Orange Blossom Special momentum of the movie's first two-thirds hits a speed bump when Johnny hits the skids and the music dies; scenes of Cash battling his drug addictions are well done but familiar, and remove us from the reason there's a movie about Johnny and June: their artistry. Still, James Mangold's film -- shot mostly in Memphis and the Mid-South -- contains two of the year's most entertaining performances, made especially compelling by the fact that Phoenix and Witherspoon handle their own vocals rather than lip-syncing to old recordings. The cast includes Memphis actress Ginnifer Goodwin as Cash's unfortunate first wife, who yearns for normalcy even as her husband carouses with such abnormal characters as Elvis (Tyler Hilton) and Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne).
Wolf Creek (R, 99 min.) The darkest lump of coal ever dropped down a moviegoer's throat on Christmas Day, writer-director Greg McLean's punishing tale of outback murder and mutilation was inspired by the true story of Australia's "backpack killings." This low-budget torture-porn has earned some admiring reviews for its steadfast grimness and its unrelenting nihilism, but the film is devoid of the visual invention and savage social commentary that elevated such slaughter-on-the-backroads milestones as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "The Hills Have Eyes." The Weinstein Brothers paid $3.5 million at Sundance Film Festival for rights to this holiday release; next time, could we get a gift certificate, instead?
Zathura: A Space Adventure (PG, 102 min.) What hath "Jumanji" wrought? Another special effects-loaded live-action family flick with an improbable title, adapted from a children's book by Chris Van Allsburg.
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