OPENING TODAY

Changeling (R, 142 min.) See review on Page 23.

Stage Cinema, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley (PG-13, 86 min.) A new kid in school (Haley Bennett) must cope with the supernatural as well as with high-school cliques and a crush-worthy hunk (Chace Crawford, of "Gossip Girl").

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

RocknRolla (R, 114 min.) See review on Page 19.

DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (R, 102 min.) See review on Page 24.

Forest Hill 8, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

SPECIAL MOVIES

Hurricane on the Bayou: Learn everything you can about hurricanes and their destructive powers in this IMAX feature, narrated by Meryl Streep. Shows 2 p.m. daily, through Nov. 14. Tickets $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times.

Crew Training International IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations.

The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D (PG, 76 min.) Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion Halloween/Yuletide mash-up returns to the big screen in the "Disney Digital 3-D" process. (Yes, glasses are required.)

CinePlanet 16.

L'Origine de la Tendresse/ The Origin of Tenderness (Not rated, 32 min.) Written and directed by Alain-Paul Mallard, this experimental short 1999 film focuses on a quiet woman museum attendant who learns that "in a life in which nothing happens, no moment is devoid of meaning." The screening marks the end of the Tournées French Film Festival at the University of Memphis.

1:30 p.m. today, Psychology Building Auditorium, University of Memphis. Admission: free.

Queen + Paul Rodgers: Let the Cosmos Rock (Not rated, 120 min.) The former Bad Company vocalist joins with the surviving members of Queen for this concert documentary, shot Sept. 12 during a Ukraine stadium performance.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, Paradiso. Tickets: $15. Order in advance at malco.com.

Roving Mars: The in-depth IMAX adventure follows the "careers" of Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's robotic Exploration Rovers, from their development to their manufacture to their six-month flight through cold space to their landing on the surface of Mars. Runs through Nov. 14. Tickets are $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times.

IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations.

Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure: Narrated by Liev Schreiber, National Geographic's film takes audiences on a journey into the relatively unexplored world of the "other dinosaurs," those reptiles that lived beneath the water. The film plays through March 6, 2009. Tickets: $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times.

IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 763-IMAX for general information or 320-6362 for reservations.

NOW SHOWING

An American Carol (PG-13, 83 min.) David Zucker ("Airplane!") directs this Dickens-inspired comedy about a Michael Moore-esque filmmaker (Kevin Farley) who wants to abolish the Fourth of July.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12.

Appaloosa (R, 116 min.) Ed Harris' second directorial effort (after "Pollock") might be described as a routine Western, except that in the film-going culture of 2008, there's nothing routine about the pleasures of a well-made and entertaining movie about gunfighters, an evil rancher, a piano-playing saloon girl and hostile Apaches in the Old West. Harris (who also co-scripted, from a novel by Robert B. Parker) stars as honorable gunman Virgil Cole, whose longtime, semi-comic "bromance" with faithful sidekick Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) is this character-driven movie's central relationship; the lawmen spend much more screen time shootin' the breeze than shootin' up bad guys. Renée Zellwegger is the love interest whose situational morality frustrates Virgil; Jeremy Irons is the villain whose re-invention as a well-connected "respectable" citizen gives the film a subtle political edge.

Ridgeway Four, Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua (PG, 97 min.) If celebrity purebred Tinkerbell sees this live-action Disney release, there could be a putsch in Paris Hilton's purse: This isn't the heel-biting reboot of "Clueless" one might expect but an almost epic canine consciousness-raising comedy-adventure in which a pampered pooch sheds her designer doggiewear and recovers her ethnic identity -- and her ancient bark -- after a dognapping plot leaves her stranded in Mexico. ("I'm an heiress," she pouts, from her cage; "A hairless?" a fellow prisoner asks.) Drew Barrymore provides the voice of Chloe, the title dog, who learns chihuahuas are "tiny but mighty" -- a theme kids in the audience will embrace. Other animal voices are provided by George Lopez, Andy Garcia and Cheech Marin; Piper Perabo, Jamie Lee Curtis and Manolo Cardona are the lead humans. Raja Gosnell directed.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Body of Lies (R, 128 min.) Leonardo DiCaprio bleeds and curses and emotes all over the hot Middle Eastern desert, but the movie he inhabits is a cold, clockwork mechanism, constructed with typical efficiency and confidence by director Ridley Scott ("Alien," "Gladiator") and screenwriter William Monahan (whose Oscar-validated "The Departed" tells a similar tale of forged identities and deceptions within a morally ambiguous culture of law-vs.-order professionals). DiCaprio is a tough C.I.A. agent; Russell Crowe is his Washington handler, a plump hardliner who issues lethal War on Terror orders over a cell phone while dropping his kids at soccer practice. The epigraph from W.H. Auden makes the movie that follows redundant: "Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return."

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso.

City of Ember (PG, 95 min.) Walden Media continues its string of quality adaptations of books for children and young adults with this adventure film-with-ideas about a pair of brave teenagers (Saoirse Ronan, from "Atonement," and Harry Treadaway) struggling to solve the mystery of their crumbling futuristic underground city (the production design is part Charles Dickens, part Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"). Walden is probably best known for its C.S. Lewis adaptations, but "Ember," taken from a novel by Jeanne Duprau, has less in common with "The Chronicles of Narnia" than with "THX-1138" and other environmentally conscious science-fiction films that end with inspiring images of the Earth's giver of life, the sun. The adult cast includes Bill Murray and Tim Robbins; the director is Gil Kenan (the CGI "Monster House").

Stage Cinema.

Disaster Movie (PG-13, 90 min.) "Juno," Amy Winehouse, Indiana Jones and "Hancock" are among the targets in the latest quickie spoof from the creators of "Date Movie," "Epic Movie" and "Meet the Spartans."

Majestic.

The Duchess (PG-13, 110 min.) Keira Knightley is Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire and great-great-great-great aunt of Princess Diana, in this tale of Whigs and especially wigs set in the stately manor homes of 18th-century England. Viewers are expected to note the parallels between the Duchess and the late Diana: Like her future niece, the frequently miserable Georgiana apparently was a renowned beauty, an "empress of fashion" and an independent thinker trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience to an ultra-important and ultra-rich stick in the mud (Ralph Fiennes) who preferred another woman (Hayley Atwell). Unfortunately, the tightly corseted title noblewoman in director Saul Gibb's story is less interesting than the tightly wound aristocrats who bedevil her.

Ridgeway Four, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Eagle Eye (PG-13, 118 min.) Programming the Star-Spangled Banner to be a trigger for violent "regime change" in the U.S. is a diabolically intriguing notion. Unfortunately, by the time "Eagle Eye" and Francis Scott Key's anthem reach their climax, viewers will have lost interest in this paranoid, Steven Spielberg-produced action-drama, which smothers its promising Big Brother-Is-Watching-You premise beneath blankets of narrative implausibility and incoherent shaky-camera action. Reuniting with his "Disturbia" director, D.J. Caruso, Shia LaBeouf stars as an innocent young copy-center clerk recruited for a crime wave by a mysterious voice that seems to have God-like control of the nation's technology. This cautionary tale about the perils of high-tech interconnectivity might seem more sincere if the movie ever stopped trying to indoctrinate us into being good consumers with its incessant product placement.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

The Express (PG, 130 min.) Rob Brown is Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy.

Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

The Family That Preys (PG-13, 111 min.) The fourth feature from writer-director Tyler Perry.

Majestic, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Fireproof (PG, 122 min.) Kirk Cameron is a troubled firefighter in this Christian-themed film.

Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Hancock (PG-13, 93 min.) Will Smith is the reluctant title "superhero," a surly and seemingly homeless drunken amnesiac whose destructive heroics make him a pariah until an eager public relations professional (Jason Bateman) tries to rehab his image. Ambitious, clever and peculiar, the film is compromised by low comedy, a pandering soundtrack and the timidity of a studio unwilling to transform the most bankable star in movies into a morally bankrupt character; further sabotaging the story's potential is Peter Berg's annoying shaky-camera, faux-documentary direction.

Bartlett 10.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (G, 112 min.) Zac Efron and his fellow Wildcats stage a musical, and Disney execs light a victory cigar: this low-budget sequel -- the first in the series to get a theatrical release -- earned $42 million its opening weekend.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema 12, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

The House Bunny (PG-13, 98 min.) Anna Faris is a fired Playboy bunny who helps a group of misfit sorority girls find their inner Wonder Woman, or at least their outer Wonderbra.

Bartlett 10.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (PG, 93 min.) As a traditional "flat" film, this Jules Verne-inspired spelunkfest is an implausible, amusing and somewhat old-fashioned Saturday matinee-style, kid-friendly adventure. But in 3D, even a sink drain's point-of-view shot of Brendan Fraser brushing his teeth is a knockout. Fraser plays a volcanologist who -- accompanied by his teen nephew (Josh Hutcherson) and a pretty mountain guide (Anita Briem) -- discovers that Verne's 1864 novel isn't science fiction but a fact-based guide to a subterranean world-within-a-world of carnivorous plants, prehistoric monsters, bioluminescent birds, and giant mushrooms and other objects that look cool when they're made to appear 3-D onscreen.

Bartlett 10.

Kung Fu Panda (PG, 88 min.) From its stylized opening dream sequence to its beautifully rendered if more familiar-looking CGI animal characters, this parable about a dream-chasing panda named Po (voiced by Jack Black) is the most visually stunning cartoon yet from DreamWorks Animation (home of the "Shrek" franchise). It's also the studio's most consistently entertaining release, functioning as an affectionate homage to classic Hong Kong martial-arts cinema as well as a fuzzy-wuzzy comedy-with-uplift for small fry. The Zoo's Who supporting cast of warriors includes a snow leopard named Tai Lung (Ian McShane), who may be the scariest cartoon villain since the George Sanders-voiced Shere Khan in Disney's "The Jungle Book."

Bartlett 10.

Lakeview Terrace (PG-13, 111 min.) Former "art film" specialist Neil LaBute apparently wanted to get back on the commercial horse after his disastrous remake of "The Wicker Man"; the result is this efficient, button-pushing thriller in which disturbed cop Samuel L. Jackson rolls out the unwelcome wagon for his new neighbors, a mixed-marriage couple played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington. A polished, self-conscious heir to such unapologetic grindhouse race-baiters as 1977's "Fight for Your Life," the movie asks viewers to examine their own attitudes about racial issues while they're also steeling their nerves for the next shock.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

The Longshots (PG, 86 min.) Keke Palmer is an 11-year-old girl on a peewee football team.

Bartlett 10, Palace Cinema.

Mamma Mia! (PG-13, 109 min.) Director Phyllida Lloyd's frenetic adaptation of the ABBA-inspired stage musical was shot on location in Greece, but the way Meryl Streep tears through the scenery, you'd think she was in a giant reptile suit on the back lot at Toho Studios. Pulling wacky faces to match her oh-so-adorable overalls, Streep plays air guitar, bounces on a bed, jumps cannonball-style off a dock and otherwise acts like a person yet to recover from a juvenile head injury; at least she can sing, which is more than can be said for male co-stars Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgrd and Pierce Brosnan (whose croaked crooning might as well be emanating from the throat of Christian Bale's Batman). As Streep's ingenue daughter, Amanda Seyfried is easy on the eyes; Christine Baranski steals the show with the only number worthy of a pre-1970 musical ("Does Your Mother Know?"); the love/marriage/old-flames plot is slight but agreeable; and the ABBA songs remain insidiously catchy.

Bartlett 10.

Max Payne (PG-13, 100 min.) Mark Wahlberg is a DEA agent and Mila Kunis is a vengeful assassin in this videogame adaptation.

Stage Cinema, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Mirrors (R, 112 min.) Thanks to talented director Alexandre Aja ("High Tension"; the 2006 "The Hills Have Eyes"), this supernatural mystery about an ex-cop (Kiefer Sutherland) threatened by sinister forces that travel through the looking glass is more stylish and spooky than it has any right to be. (It's yet another remake of an Asian horror movie -- in this case, 2003's "Into the Mirror," from Korea.) Instead of a typical haunted house, the ground zero for ghosts here is a burned-out luxury New York department store, making this yet another thriller with post-9/11 associations.

Bartlett 10, Majestic.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (PG-13, 90 min.) Hip high school kids Michael Cera and Kat Dennings share a wild Manhattan night.

Stage Cinema 12, CinePlanet 16.

Nights in Rodanthe (PG-13, 97 min.) Richard Gere and Diane Lane in a romantic drama.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Collierville Towne 16, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Pride and Glory (R, 125 min.) This efficient if overwrought addition to the evergreen movie tradition of boys in blue behaving very, very badly casts Edward Norton as a brainy detective who discovers his brother-in-law (Colin Farrell) is the head of a rogue corps of corrupt cops. The violence is often brutal, and the F-bombs fall like snowflakes; unfortunately, director Gavin O'Connor (who co-wrote the script, with Joe "Narc" Carnahan) seems to think this adult content requires dark and murky "realistic" photography, in which almost every shot is leached of color except for that cold, movie-familiar shade of dead-skin blue.

Forest Hill 8, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Prom Night (PG-13, 88 min.) This in-name-only remake of the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis slasher "classic" casts Brittany Snow (Amber Von Tussle in "Hairspray") as a high school senior whose night of tiara, er, terror enables young moviegoers to displace their prom-date/end-of-high school/beginning-of-"adulthood" anxiety onto the dispatchable person of an escaped knife-wielding maniac. Unfortunately, this "Prom Night," directed by Nelson McCormick, proves to be all tease: It's un-bloody and so un-scary that its teen interplay is actually more entertaining than its stalk-'n-slash. The movie does update the formula in one interesting way, however: If early slasher films, as their critics claimed, punished teens for having sex, the new "Prom Night" punishes teens for their conspicuous consumption.

Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Quarantine (R, 90 min.) The latest faux-documentary "trembly-cam" (thanks, New York Times) horror movie chronicles the increasingly desperate fight for survival of a TV reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) trapped in an apartment building where the rabies-infected residents are turning into homicidal maniacs. Despite the Cronenbergian themes, director John Erick Dowdle's film (a remake of a 2007 Spanish thriller called "[Rec]") is relentless and singleminded: It just wants to scare you, and it succeeds.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Rachel Getting Married (R, 114 min.) It's no coincidence that Anne Hathaway's character, a former junkie and fashion model, arrives at her pregnant sister's wedding "nine months clean," a gestation period that has given birth to -- what? "I'm Shiva the Destroyer, and your harbinger of doom for this evening," she announces, before launching into an awkward and self-centered buzzkill of an alleged "toast" at the wedding rehearsal dinner (which drags on so long it seems to unfold in real time). For director Jonathan Demme (working from a script by Jenny Lumet), this ensemble effort, set over a single weekend in a large family home in dysfunction junction, Connecticut, is a return to the serious drama, dark comedy and emotional chaos of his earlier films ("Something Wild," "Married to the Mob"); it's also something of a reunion, as Demme recruits such past collaborators as Roger Corman, Sister Carol and Robyn Hitchcock. The wedding weekend itself is presented, with a blend of sincerity and irony, as a generous, even aggressive ideal of multicultural hipness (the bridesmaids wear saris, and the wedding march is played on electric guitar); "This is how it is in heaven," announces the groom's mother. Maybe, but Demme shoots in a handheld shaky-cam style that gives the film a voyeuristic vibe of a hellish home movie.

Studio on the Square.

Religulous (R, 101 min.) In this documentary, Bill Maher and director Larry Charles ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") take a skeptical look at the world's religions.

Ridgeway Four, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Saw V (R, 95 min.) Hey, Jigsaw, good to see you again -- oops, sorry, you're just a guy wearing a mask made from the skin of Jigsaw's face. My mistake.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

The Secret Life of Bees (PG-13, 110 min.) Director Gina Prince-Bythewood's 1960s tale of forgiveness, sisterly solidarity and a child's need for love is set in the South. Boy, is it ever: When widower Paul Bettany wants to punish his 14-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning), he makes her kneel on a pile of hard, uncooked grits, poured straight from the box. No wonder the girl and her housekeeper (Jennifer Hudson) seek refuge in the almost magically life-affirming household of three cultured and eccentric sisters, played by Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Keys and symbolic queen bee Queen Latifah, who dispenses honeyed words along with the apian nectar produced in her hives. Some will find the honey served here too thick and cloying, but many moviegoers will find solace in the story's redemptive themes, adapted from Sue Monk Kidd's best-seller.

Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Sex Drive (R, 109 min.) Director Sean Anders returns raunchy teen comedy to the no-expectations pre-Apatow era, as a virgin (Josh Zuckerman), an unlikely stud (Clark Duke, who resembles a half man-half baby) and the hero's pretty "best friend" (Amanda Crew) experience a series of bizarre and often gross adventures during a road trip from Chicago to Knoxville. Uneven, but it works, thanks in part to great supporting perfs by James Marsden as a psycho big brother and Seth Green as a sarcastic Amish auto mechanic.

Palace Cinema.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (PG, 98 min.) Not for the unconverted, this computer-animated film, directed by Dave Filoni, drops viewers smack dab into not just another wearyingly epic battle but into the buzzing hive of the inbred Lucasverse itself, where rigorous adherence to increasingly byzantine "Star Wars" dogma seems to clash with the old idea that intuitive improvisation is what enables a Jedi Knight to transform disaster into triumph. Considering that most of the impressive imagery in the three most recent live-action "Star Wars" movies was not live but literally unreal, George Lucas' failure to deliver a visually stunning animated feature is a shocker; the graphics here are as unattractive as those in a video game, as wooden characters interact within dull and surprisingly dim CG environments that, perversely, seem just a few mouse clicks away from full "Revenge of the Sith" realization.

Bartlett 10.

Transsiberian (R, 111 min.) Vacationing Americans Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer hop a train bound for terror, or at least mystery and suspense.

Ridgeway Four.

Tropic Thunder (R, 107 min.) To peg "Tropic Thunder" as a satire of moviemaking is to limit its anarchic, outlandish appeal; it's like saying "South Park" is about elementary school. This is a comedy about pampered actors (played by Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., among others) making a Vietnam War movie on location in what proves to be an actual combat zone. But it's also about clueless Americans blowing stuff up, then being celebrated back home for their "triumph." It's a movie that ends with the devil -- in the person of a bald, fat, Wookiee-hairy Tom Cruise -- in command, dancing to Ludacris atop, in essence, the graves of the dead and piles of filthy lucre. (Cruise plays a studio executive, but he could be any warmonger, energy magnate or political opportunist.) Fast and witty and almost as gargantuan as some of the movies it spoofs (including "Apocalypse Now"), "Tropic Thunder" benefits from a brilliant ensemble cast (Downey, in blackface, is a "method" actor who remains in character as an African-American soldier even off camera) and director Stiller's carpet-bomb approach to comedy, which hits more targets than it misses.

Bartlett 10.

W. (PG-13, 129 min.) "Saturday Night Live" impersonation, Greek tragedy, Freudian father-son psychoanalysis and stranger-than-Strangelove reality form the basis of Oliver Stone's surprisingly entertaining but weirdly timed biopic about the surprise rise to power of the once ne'er-do-well "junior" Bush (Josh Brolin), a born-again "devil in a white hat" (in the words of future wife Laura, played by Elizabeth Banks) who squints and smirks his way to the White House. More humorous and less grandiose and experimental than Stone's previous presidential assaults, "JFK" and "Nixon," the film alternately treats the unknowable Bush with sympathy and scorn as Stone struggles to understand how he and his subject -- and how a president and his country -- could be so close and yet so distant. (Stone and Bush were born less than three months apart in 1946, and both entered Yale in 1964.) The impressive cast includes Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove and Jeffrey as the compromised would-be voice of reason, Colin Powell.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

WALL-E (G, 103 min.) WALL-E the robot may be battered and obsolete, but "WALL-E" the movie is a marvel of state-of-the-art technology -- perhaps the most brilliantly designed, beautifully executed and technically accomplished feature yet from Pixar Animation Studios. The company's boldness has advanced with its achievements in special effects: Director Andrew Stanton's film asks viewers to find enjoyment in a story that spends its first half hour on an all but dead and silent future Earth that apparently is inhabited only by a cockroach and the lonely 700-year-old title robot, who continues to perform programmed duties that are futile and pointless. The first act of "WALL-E" is as melancholy as a Ray Bradbury short story or an eco-disaster science-fiction film from the 1970s; although the robot's Chaplinesque pantomime continues, the noisier second half of the film is a more traditional Pixar action-comedy, as WALL-E returns with a "female" space probe robot, EVE, to a mothership of blobby, consumption-obsessed Earth refugees in need of inspiration.

Bartlett 10.

The Women (PG-13, 114 min.) In director George Cukor's 1939 adaptation of the Clare Boothe Luce play, gold digger Joan Crawford luxuriates in a tub that appears to have been designed by Aphrodite and Poseidon during ancient Greece's Art Deco phase; in this remake, Eva Mendes bathes in a rectangle that might have been installed by Home Depot. Writer-director Diane English's update lacks wit as well as style; you'll think "TV" rather than "MGM." The game, no-males-allowed all-star cast includes Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergen and Meg Ryan, who asks: "What do you think this is, some kind of 1930s movie?" If only.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8.