Movie Capsules: Now showing

Capsule descriptions and starred mini-reviews by The Commercial Appeal movie writer John Beifuss.

OPENING TODAY

(500) Days of Summer (PG-13, 95 min.)

Ridgeway Four, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (PG-13, 120 min.) The cartoon inspired by the Hasbro "action figures" inspires this summer's final live-action blockbuster.

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, Southaven Cinema.

Julie & Julia (PG-13, 124 min.)

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Lonely Street (R, 88 min.)

Hollywood 20 Cinema.

O'Horten (PG-13, 90 min.)

Ridgeway Four.

A Perfect Getaway (R, 97 min.) Psychos on a tropical island stalk Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich and other tourists.

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

SPECIAL MOVIES

At the Gates (Not rated, 70 min.) A new documentary focusing on the spiritual side of Elvis gets its world premiere. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Presley friends Larry Geller and George Klein, plus filmmakers Walter James Procek and Keith Evans; Elvis tribute artist Dean Z will perform. Some of the proceeds will benefit the Alzheimer's Association.

5-8 p.m. Wednesday, Playhouse on the Square, 51 S. Cooper. Tickets: $35. Visit echohouseentertainment.com.

Blue Hawaii (PG, 102 min.) Elvis sings "Rock-a-Hula Baby," "Slicin' Sand" and the immortal "Ito Eats" as the Orpheum salutes Elvis Week. Angela Lansbury and Roland Winters (the third movie Charlie Chan) co-star.

6 p.m. Sunday at the Orpheum, 203 S. Main. Admission: $6 per adult, $5 per senior or child (12 and younger). Visit orpheum-memphis.com or call 525-3000.

Eldorado (Not rated, 80 min.) Dedicated to international cinema, the library's "Wider Angle Film Series" continues with this wry 2008 Belgian film from writer-director Bouli Tanners about a man who befriends the burglar he discovers inside his house.

7 p.m. Wednesday, Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar. Admission is free; children under 17 admitted with parent or guardian. Visit filmmovement.com or call 415-2726.

Elvis Film Fest 6: Four fit-for-a-King feature films will be showcased on two screens: "Jailhouse Rock" (1957), at 10 a.m. and 4:10 p.m.; "Roustabout" (1964), at 10:15 a.m. and 2 p.m.; "Fun in Acapulco" (1963), at noon and 3 p.m.; and "King Creole" (1958), at 12:30 p.m. Proceeds benefit the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation.

Tuesday, Studio on the Square. Tickets: $5 per show. Visit malco.com.

Fresh (Not rated, 75 min.) "Food, Inc." left town today, but here comes this documentary about the farmers, thinkers, activists and business people who want to reinvent America's food system. Presented in partnership with Edible Memphis, the film will be followed by a "locally sourced" dinner in the Brushmark Restaurant and a discussion about area resources for "sustainable foods."

6:30 p.m. Thursday, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Film only: $7, or $5 for members. Film plus meal: $50, or $40 for members (includes gratuity).

Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk: The latest IMAX documentary follows two environmentalists on a daring rafting ride down the Colorado River. Narrated by Robert Redford; music by Dave Matthews Band. Runs through Nov. 13. 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 320-6362 for tickets and reservations.

Indie Memphis Micro Cinema Club #54: This month's salute to short films focuses on "The Best of the 35th Northwest Film & Video Festival" -- a dozen works by artists from Montana, Oregon, Washington and Canada.

7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Power House Memphis, 45 G.E. Patterson. Admission is free; popcorn and beverages are available.

Mamma Mia! (PG-13, 109 min.) Meryl Streep dons adorable overalls, plays air guitar and sings Swedish pop tunes as the "Chick Flicks" series continues. An ABBA karaoke contest precedes the screening.

7:15 p.m. today at the Orpheum, 203 S. Main. Admission: $6 per adult, $5 per senior or child (12 and younger). Visit orpheum-memphis.com or call 525-3000.

Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs: Follow researchers and explorers as they piece together archaeological and genetic clues of Egyptian mummies. The IMAX film plays through Nov. 13. 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 320-6362 for reservations and tickets.

Night: Memphis director Brian D. Elkins premieres his 18-minute, locally produced horror thriller. The short will be accompanied by trailers for local indie productions, and followed by remarks from the filmmakers.

7 p.m. Monday, Paradiso. Admission: free.

Tupelo Underground Film Festival: The feature lineup for this inaugural event includes "In a Trice" (5 p.m.), by North Mississippi filmmakers Glenn and Derek Payne; the Orwellian satire "Visioneers" (7:30 p.m.); and Memphis filmmaker John Michael McCarthy's "Teenage Tupelo" (9:30 p.m.). McCarthy is scheduled to attend. Shorts and music videos also will be screened.

Saturday, Good Time Charlie's, 2901 Eason Blvd., Tupelo, Miss. Admission: $5. Visit myspace.com/tupelounderground.

Under the Sea: This new IMAX adventure transports you to some of the most exotic and isolated undersea locations on Earth, including South Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle islands of Papua, New Guinea, and Indonesia. Runs through March 5, 2010. 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 320-6362 for reservations and tickets.

NOW SHOWING

Aliens in the Attic (PG, 86 min.) Kids protect their home from funny-looking outer-space invaders.

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, Southaven Cinema.

Angels & Demons (PG-13, 139 min.) Menacing clerics, skull-lined catacombs, branding irons, the ancient cult of the Illuminati and the gimmicky serial murder of four Roman Catholic cardinals -- these elements promise a good, goofy time at the movies, yet director Ron Howard's bloated followup to "The Da Vinci Code" is even more burdened than its dull predecessor with a desire to avoid risibility. But how unsilly can a movie be when it's about a conspiracy to blow up the Vatican with an antimatter time bomb?

Bartlett 10.

Chéri (R, 92 min.) Set during la Belle Époque, the era of French upper-class ease and abundance that ended with World War I, Stephen Frears' voluptuously mounted film chronicles the surprisingly deep but inevitably doomed love affair that develops between an aging courtesan (upper-crust prostitute), played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and a vain and spoiled peacock of a youth, nicknamed Chéri, played by sharp-cheeked Rupert Friend (an actor so fey he makes Johnny Depp look like John Wayne). Christopher Hampton's script retains many of the witty veiled insults found in Colette's 1920 novel, delivered with relish by a wonderful cast that includes Memphis' Kathy Bates as Chéri's courtesan mother.

Ridgeway Four.

The Collector (R, 85 min.) The writer of "Saw IV," "Saw V" and the upcoming "Saw VI" makes his horror directing debut.

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

Dance Flick (PG-13, 83 min.) Another movie-genre spoof, this time from the Wayans Brothers.

Majestic.

Drag Me to Hell (PG-13, 99 min.) "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi returns to his "Evil Dead" roots -- while borrowing liberally from "Night of the Demon" and EC Comics (the story here barely justifies its feature length) -- for a scary, wacky, gooey and timely tale of a young bank officer (Alison Lohman) cursed by the gypsy (Lorna Raver) whose housing loan she denies. The sleeve inside the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed advised: THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD. Prints of this film must be stamped with a similar order: Much of the tension is created by ear-smashing NOISE, which isn't a cheat but a characteristically Raimiesque attempt to create a feeling of hell-on-Earth temporary insanity within the rattled viewer.

Majestic, Raleigh Springs Cinema.

Funny People (R, 146 min.) Sex, conception, death: Writer-director Judd Apatow follows "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" with this messy, self-indulgent and apparently highly personal project (he casts his wife, Leslie Mann, and children in large supporting roles) about a wealthy but lonely comedian turned Hollywood superstar (Adam Sandler) who begins to reassess his life after he is diagnosed with cancer. The prickly narcissism of Sandler's character is intriguing (is the man-child of "Happy Gilmore" -- Apatow's former roommate -- really this unlikable?), but the movie only really comes alive when it abandons its capital-S Serious theme to focus on the competitive "friendship" of the struggling actor-roommates played by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

G-Force (PG, 88 min.) Have you ever wondered what a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced talking-animal movie would be like? Me, neither. But here's the answer: The Disney/Bruckheimer collaboration "G-Force," in which the car chases, explosions, transforming robot battles and "Mission: Impossible" suspense sequences are as intense as in an "adult" movie, except instead of Tom Cruise and Will Smith, the heroes are members of an elite squad of commando guinea pigs and insects, plus one star-nosed mole (nerdily voiced by Nicolas Cage). I would have been happier if the "black" guinea pig (Tracy Morgan) didn't get all the stereotypical comic-relief lines ("Pimp my ride," "That was off the huh-zook"), and if the female guinea pig (Penélope Cruz) wasn't obsessed with romantic mind games.; even so, longtime special effects supervisor-turned- debuting director Hoyt Yeatman has delivered a fairly amusing spoof of James Bond/comic-book superteam conventions. With Memphis' Chris Ellis as "the director of the FBI" and a clever cameo appearance by Loudon Wainwright III, best known for his novelty hit, "Dead Skunk."

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema (in 3-D), Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16 (in 3-D), Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema (in 3-D), Paradiso (in 3-D), Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema (in 3-D), CinePlanet 16 (in 3-D), Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (PG-13, 100 min.) Arrogant womanizer Matthew McConaughey learns a supernatural lesson.

Bartlett 10.

The Hangover (R, 100 min.) Or: Dude, Where's My Bachelor? Sometimes tasteless, frequently hilarious, this "Superbad" with grown-ups (the dentist played by Ed Helms even resembles an adult "McLovin") chronicles several hours of irresponsible, occasionally criminal male conduct, as three best buds (Helms, Bradley Cooper and Justin Bartha) and a tagalong demented future brother-in-law (Zach Galifianakis) road-trip to Vegas for an overnight bachelor party; director Todd Phillips ("Old School") cuts from the pals' Jägermeister toast to the painful morning after in a destroyed hotel suite, where the evidence of debauchery includes a live chicken, a missing tooth, loss of memory, an Elvis jumpsuit, Mike Tyson's Bengal tiger, an unidentified baby and the absence of the bachelor himself.

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

Hannah Montana: The Movie (G, 102 min.) Drawing from the traditions of Cinderella (the scullery maid who is really a princess) and Superman (the superbeing who pretends to be a "normal" person), the push-and-pull tension of the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana dichotomy provides the premise for this feature-length expansion of the hit TV show about a teen girl (Miley Cyrus) who enjoys the "Best of Both Worlds" through her secret life as a pop sensation. Deciding that his increasingly spoiled daughter needs a time-out for "Hannah detox," Miley's onscreen and real-life daddy, Billy Ray Cyrus, takes "the most popular teenager in the world" back to the family farm, where Miley regains her appreciation for Minnie Pearl collector's plates while also introducing the locals to a new "hip-hop" dance craze, "The Hoedown Throwdown."

Bartlett 10.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG, 153 min.) As the apparently physically mature "boy wizard" (Daniel Radcliffe) begins his sixth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, there's not a house elf nor comical ghost in sight, and the most impressive magical creature onscreen, a giant spider, is dead. Voldemort's at the gates, so the palette is grim and the mood is somber; but Harry and his best friends, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), remain stalwart and true -- to each other, to the vision of author J.K. Rowling, and to fans' expectations for what has been a truly remarkable movie series. Director David Yates (returning from "The Order of the Phoenix") fumbles what should be the emotionally devastating death of a major character, but he does wonderful work with the cast, including the teenagers (now as interested in "snogging" as Quidditch); Jim Broadbent, as the new potions professor, Horace Slughorn; and the many other British character actors, who intone their lines with the sincere and intense glee of cats sucking a songbird's bones.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

The Hurt Locker (R, 131 min.) Wired like a ticking time bomb, director Kathryn Bigelow's stunner focuses on three soldiers in an Army bomb-disposal unit as they try to survive the final 38 days of their field rotation in the forbidding, alien environment of Iraq. A thoughtful nail-biter, the film inspires us to appreciate the precariousness and relative brevity of existence, as the soldiers' encounters with IEDs and wired-to-explode Iraqis become extreme representations of the tug between life and death that challenges each of us every day, however mundane and seemingly safe our environment. The movie is not without political content (a soldier's apology to a doomed Iraqi seems addressed to the entire country), but mostly it expresses genuine admiration for the professionalism -- the heroism, if you will -- of the soldiers. "Good job," one says to another, after a particularly intense situation has been resolved; as in a Howard Hawks movie, that is the highest praise possible.

Ridgeway Four.

I Love You, Beth Cooper (PG-13, 102 min.) Hot girl (Hayden Panettiere) meets lovestruck nerd (Paul Rust).

Majestic.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (PG, 94 min.) Sid the Sloth (slurringly voiced by John Leguizamo) and the fanged rat-squirrel known as Scrat (the unluckiest cartoon character since Wile E. Coyote) are as amusing as ever, but this third computer-generated "Ice Age" forsakes action for ancient sitcom-style platitudes about the importance of "the herd" (family) until the characters finally break into a lost world of prehistoric reptiles.

Stage Cinema (in 3-D), Majestic, Collierville Towne 16 (in 3-D), DeSoto Cinema 16 (in 3-D), Cordova Cinema (in 3-D), Paradiso (in 3-D), CinePlanet 16 (in 3-D), Southaven Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Imagine That (PG, 107 min.) Hey, kids! Nickelodeon, one of your favorite companies, has produced a movie with Eddie Murphy as a career-obsessed financial analyst, so you'll get to hear a lot of grownups in suits in grim offices talking about "specs" and "yields" and "pension funds" and "magnesium futures" and -- hey, kids! Wake up! As Murphy's 7-year-old daughter, who is able to forecast stock market trends when her security blanket becomes a magical "securities" blanket (a pun that seems to have inspired the entire project), Yara Shahidi is utterly charming.

Bartlett 10, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic.

Monsters vs. Aliens (PG, 94 min.) Like all DreamWorks Animation features, this colorful homage to the science-fiction B-movies of the 1950s relies overmuch on nonsequitur pop-culture jokes, worn-out comedy crutches (TV weathermen sure are vapid!) and celebrity voices. But the central "monster" and heroine, Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), who's hit by a meteorite on her wedding day and grows to be a friendly update of Allison Hayes in 1958's "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," is a character with real, um, weight. The action set pieces -- especially a battle with a giant egg-like alien robot on the Golden Gate Bridge -- are spectacular.

Bartlett 10.

My Sister's Keeper (PG-13, 109 min.) Abigail Breslin stars as a young girl who sues her parents (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) for "medical emancipation" so they will stop using her blood, marrow and other body parts as donor material for her older sister (beautifully played by Oscar-worthy Sofia Vassilieva), an angelic, even wise teenager whose life has been a constant struggle with leukemia.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (PG, 105 min.) As Amelia Earhart, Amy Adams adds plenty of welcome "moxie" (and a tight pair of aviator's britches) to an extraordinarily busy but simple-minded scenario that finds security guard-turned- infomercial magnate Ben Stiller traveling to Washington when his New York living-exhibit pals (Owen Wilson as a cowboy, Steve Coogan as a centurion, etc.) are relocated to the Smithsonian, where an evil pharaoh (Hank Azaria) with a Karloffian lisp plans to take over the world

Bartlett 10.

Obsessed (PG-13, 109 min.) Director Steve Shill's race-baiting "Fatal Attraction" revamp isn't the nonstop camp hoot one would hope for, but it's good, trashy fun: Almost 100 minutes of exploitation foreplay that builds to a cathartic catfight in which McMansion-dwelling wife/ mother Beyoncé teaches a psycho "skinny-ass" white skank (Ali Larter) not to steal another fine black man (in this case, the Beyoncé character's husband, business executive Idris Elba). Another movie that demonstrates it's bad feng shui to place a glass coffee table beneath a chandelier beneath an attic that can't even support the weight of a blond wearing little more than the whipped-cream bikini she sported in "Varsity Blues."

Bartlett 10.

Orphan (R, 116 min.) Didn't Vera Farmiga learn her lesson in her previous kid-from-hell horror flick, "Joshua"? This time, the woman who may be the world's finest actress plays a melancholic classical pianist who introduces a 9-year-old adopted Russian orphan into her privileged household; the results are alternately predictable and outrageous, as the preternaturally possessed but spooky Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman, in a tour-de-force performance) demonstrates a need for a straitjacket as well as for eyebrow tweezers. Stylishly directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (the weird 2005 "House of Wax"), the film is distinguished by a loony plot twist and by its sympathetic treatment of characters, especially children. Unsurprisingly, adoption agencies have been up in arms over the movie, but the controversy seems silly; would somebody who decides not to adopt because of "Orphan" really have been a fit parent?

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

The Proposal (PG-13, 108 min.) A romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

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

Public Enemies (R, 143 min.) More a reverie of romantic banditry and paean to movie love than rat-a-tat-tat gangster yarn, director Michael Mann's dreamlike crime film -- condensed from Bryan Burrough's definitive nonfiction history -- imagines the Depression-era "Golden Age of Bank Robbers" as the final, sputtering flame of American lone-wolf integrity and contrariness, extinguished by a lethal squall of FBI bullets and the windstorm profit margins of modern organized crime. Shot in crisp but sometimes jarring hi-def the violence is intermittent and -- to Mann's credit -- far from cathartic.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Star Trek (PG-13, 127 min.) Director J.J. Abrams' megabudget reboot of the beloved science-fiction franchise rushes along at warp factor 12, crowding its story with an impressive amount of characterization and action as it introduces new actors (Chris Pine is Kirk, Zachary Pinto is Spock) in youthful Starfleet-recruit versions of the roles made famous by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and others in the 1966-69 TV series. The result is fun and ingenious (a time-travel subplot enables this new "Trek" series to exist alongside the "alternate history" of the original program), but like most of the 10 previous movies, it doesn't approach the quality of the best television episodes of "Star Trek" or "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (R, 106 min.) According to reports, the cast and crew of this remake of a 1974 thriller about a hijacked subway car were required to attend New York Transportation Authority safety classes before production started, because much of the shooting was to take place on location, on active train tracks. But why bother with such realism when a couple of minutes into your movie you're going to reveal that your bad guy is John Travolta, looking "street" in a wool cap, a leather jacket, a pistol neck tattoo, a diamond ear stud and a Village People mustache? Travolta is a stock broker turned jailbird turned criminal mastermind who demands $10 million in cash in exchange for a carload of terrified hostage commuters; Denzel Washington is his symbolic double ("You're just like me," taunts the villain), a subway dispatcher accused of bribery who is forced into the role of chief negotiator.

Majestic, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Terminator Salvation (PG-13, 115 min.) It's crabby human freedom fighters vs. even crankier Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots of all models and makes (hey, fanboys, dig those literally electric eels!) in this appropriately mechanical fourth film in the series, programmed for maximum blockbuster efficiency by the director who calls himself McG. Essentially, this is a grim and gritty war movie, airlifted and updated from 1940s Europe to America in 2018, complete with ambushes in bombed-out city streets, ego clashes among resistance fighters, Holocaust references of dubious tastefulness (the robots shuffle their human prisoners into what we presume to be death camps) and a final-act secret infiltration of the enemy's headquarters. Christian Bale -- whose infamous leaked-from-the-set tirade is longer and more passionate than any monologue in the movie -- stars as rebel soldier John Connor, the prophesied hope of mankind, but the true lead is Sam Worthington as a convicted killer from 2003 who wakes up from a medically induced coma to find himself in the nightmare world of the "Terminator" franchise. In its own blunt-force-trauma way, the film's man-vs.-machines theme confronts viewers with the same key question that is at the center of such less-hardware-heavy fantasy masterpieces as "Frankenstein," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Planet of the Apes" and, yes, "Pinocchio" -- a question that that never loses relevance: What makes us human?

Bartlett 10.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PG-13, 151 min.) Director Michael Bay's instant megahit sequel to 2007's "Transformers" is tinnitus with pictures. It's like sticking your face inside an electric can opener and your finger in a wall socket -- and those are the good parts. The state-of-the-art rock-'em, sock-'em giant robot mayhem is, as expected, impressive; what's not impressive is the racial stereotyping ("Skids" and "Mudflap" are illiterate Autobots with gold teeth who speak in African-American slang) and the warmongering (with its desert climax, this apologia for the Iraq War -- one evil Decepticon shouts "Jihad!" -- suggests Barack Obama is an appeaser and a coward). The disconnect between the scary hyper-realism of the in-your-face effects and the juvenile, even infantile and cartoonish content of the story and gags (a robot farts out a parachute) is unnerving.

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

The Ugly Truth (R, 96 min.) If romantic comedies -- or "chick flicks," as they're now rather revealingly labeled -- are aimed at women, why do they always seem to let men off the hook? Director Robert Luketic's predictable if potty-mouthed opposites-attract sitcom of a romcom is yet another film that exploits the particularly heinous fantasy that a woman who puts her faith in a rotten man will be rewarded when she exhumes the heart of gold beneath the lumpen clay of his golem exterior, while the happy-go-lucky male is under no obligation to alter his crude and insulting behavior; without even trying, he's sure to attract a beautiful and smart professional woman like "control freak" TV producer Katherine Heigl to be his rescuer, especially if he's as ruggedly charming as "über-moron misogynist" talk-show host Gerard Butler. As Butler tries to mold the romantically hapless Heigl into a man-magnet, the plot borrows from both "Pgymalion" and "Cyrano de Bergerac"; the result is rarely funny, but it's a mother lode of content for any film theory major writing a thesis on sexual attitudes and stereotypes in 21st century comedy.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (PG-13, 109 min.) It's no surprise the pirated, incomplete version leaked to the Internet didn't dent this Marvel Comics adaptation's muscular box office: "Wolverine" without special effects is like "King Kong" without the ape. Reprising his scene-stealing (scene-slashing?) role from three previous films, Hugh Jackman is the title mutton-chopped mutant, a surly Canadian with retractable adamantium claws and an intractable personality who -- even in his pre-"X-Men" days -- attracts trouble the way Magneto attracts metal. As pure pulp entertainment, it works.

Bartlett 10.

Year One (PG-13, 97 min.) This may not be as revolutionary as the invention of fire or the wheel, but neither is it the knuckle-dragging shaggy caveman comedy it appears to be from ad art that emphasizes the silly appeal of Jack Black and Michael Cera in Flintstones drag. Yes, director Harold Ramis delivers jokes about bear scat, chest hair and the invention of French kissing, but the obligatory gross-out moments function as camouflage for what proves to be a surprisingly trenchant critique of the human penchant for violence, greed, deceit, hubris and, especially, religious superstition and intolerance."Year One" emerges as the highbrow lowbrow movie of the year.

Bartlett 10.

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