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

OPENING TODAY

Brüno (R, 88 min.) Sacha Baron Cohen follows "Borat" with this button-pushing "documentary" about a flamboyant gay Austrian.

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

Chéri (R, 92 min.)

Ridgeway Four.

I Love You, Beth Cooper (PG-13, 102 min.) The hottest girl in high school (Hayden Panettiere) decides to show a lovestruck nerd (Paul Rust) the best night of his life.

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

Moon (R, 97 min.)

Ridgeway Four.

OPENING WEDNESDAY

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG, 153 min.) The magical teen begins his scary sixth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

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

SPECIAL MOVIES

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.

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.

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.

Visioneers (Not rated, 98 min.) Zach Galifianakis ("The Hangover") stars as a corporate drone named George Washington Winsterhammerman in this indie satire about a near future of exploding humans and "Professional Pals" that could be described as a mix of "Office Space" and "Brazil." Written and directed by the brother team of Jared and Brandon Drake.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Admission: $5, or free for Brooks and Indie Memphis members. Visit brooksmuseum.org or call 544-6208.

Watermelon Man (R, 98 min.) A white racist (Godfrey Cambridge) wakes up to discover himself transformed into a "Negro" in this 1970 social satire -- advertised as "the Uppity Movie" -- from director Melvin Van Peebles. The supporting cast includes Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons; 10-year-old future "Happy Days" star Erin Moran; legendary comic actor Mantan Moreland (popularly known as Charlie Chan's chauffeur); and Three Stooges veteran Emil Sitka.

Doors open at 10:30 p.m. tonight, with food by Bryan Terry, author of "Vegan Soul Kitchen"; the movie starts at midnight at Memphis Power House, 45 G.E. Patterson. Admission: $5. Visit powerhousememphis.org.

NOW SHOWING

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? Tom Hanks -- shorn of his Muck Sticky "Da Vinci" hairdo -- is back as Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon, recruited by the Holy See to trace a sort of Kook's Tour trail of crime through the chapels, obelisks and tombs of ancient Rome. The highfalutin science- vs.-religion philosophizing that occurs is little more than stained-glass window dressing that camouflages what otherwise might be a nice, entertaining murder mystery.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8.

Away We Go (R, 98 min.) A picaresque road movie with many very funny moments nestled within its contrived premise and among its proud, symbolic visual flourishes (a shot of a distant airplane, distorted by thick glass), director Sam Mendes' seemingly least pretentious film stars "Saturday Night Live" cast member Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski of "The Office" as the very pregnant Verona and her longtime live-in boyfriend, Burt, an affectionate couple who embark on an episodic kook's tour of North America to "audition" cities to be their new home. The characters worry that they haven't figured out "the basic stuff" of life, but their solipsism and supposed arrested adolescence seem unnatural, imprinted upon them by their creators, the husband-and-wife writer team of Dave Eggers ("A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") and Vendela Vida, to justify the travelog structure. Precious and self-conscious but also moving, the film is worth seeing for supporting turns by Allison Janey as an obnoxious boozehound and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a trust-fund New Age mother who suckles two children at a time. Unfortunately, almost every time you're about to laugh, a melancholy finger-picked song by Nick Drake wannabe Alexi Murdoch invades the soundtrack to warn you that, hey, this is serious.

>Ridgeway Four.

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

>Majestic, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

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, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Fast & Furious (PG-13, 107 min.) The definite articles are gone but the stars are back as Vin Diesel and Paul Walker reunite, eight years after "The Fast and the Furious."

>Bartlett 10.

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

>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. The talented cast and the mystery structure of the plot keep the film fresh and funny; but as the title suggests, you might regret your good time the next day, as you contemplate the at best ambivalent, at worst hostile relationship to women that motivates the narrative: This is another film in which men's infantile behavior is celebrated as a necessary, sanity-preserving reaction against what's presented as the choking if essential civilizing influence of women.

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

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." Shot in Middle Tennessee, this hit musical diversion for training-bra initiates should do wonders for the Volunteer State's film industry, if not for its reputation for worldliness. Says Billy Ray, after a waiter places a lobster in front of him: "That's a heck of a crawdad, isn't it?"

>Bartlett 10.

The Haunting in Connecticut (PG-13, 92 min.) Never play hide-and-seek in a haunted house, unless you want to discover you're sharing your dumbwaiter hidey-hole with a ghostly charred corpse. That's what happens to one of the unfortunate kids in director Peter Cornwell's lukewarm chiller, perfectly timed for the current housing crisis. Virginia Madsen stars as a mother-I'd-like- to-(haunt) who relocates her family to unfortunately named Goats Woods, Conn., so her teenage son, Matt (Robert Pattinson-lookalike Kyle Gallner), can be closer to the hospital treating his cancer. Mom picks out a rambling old house that is "spacious and affordable... I'm just wondering, what's the catch?" The catch: The house was formerly a funeral home-cum-crematorium where seances were conducted by a boy medium who spit ectoplasm from his orifices like supernatural toothpaste from a squashed tube while also opening a gateway to our world for the disgruntled dead. "Based on the true story," according to the credits -- not a true story, but the true story, as if this post-Amityville boofest has been vetted for authenticity by some sort of paranormal accreditation agency.

>Bartlett 10.

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" foresakes 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, where they encounter a mama T. Rex, carnivorous plants and a scene-stealing, swashbuckling, one-eyed weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg). Directed by Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier.

>Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema (in 3-D), Majestic, Collierville Towne 16 (in 3-D), DeSoto Cinema 16 (in 3-D), Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema (in 3-D), Paradiso (in 3-D), Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, 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; her opening narration is a bit of misdirection, however: Director Karey Kirkpatrick quickly cedes the point of view to the Murphy character, whose parental and career anxieties may bore children and adults in equal measure.

>Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Southaven Cinema.

Knowing (PG-13, 122 min.) A preposterous meld of in-your-screaming-face end-times anxiety, special-effects cataclysm and booga-booga M. Night Shenanigans, this wacked-out, quasi-religious "Donnie Darko" for dummies earns my endorsement not because it's coherent but because it's so over the top that it's engrossing, even when director Alex Proyas (the intriguing "Dark City," the rusty "I, Robot") is focusing on the emoting of Nicolas Cage rather than on a scary plane crash, a shocking subway disaster or (in what may be a movie first) a burning moose. Cage plays a widowed MIT professor whose belief that life is a result of "chemical accidents" with "no grand meaning" is shaken when he discovers that a 50-year-old note contains details about five decades of disasters, including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and several tragedies yet to come. The film exploits fears of ecological and infrastructural collapse while also providing a distressing yet reassuring parable (you know, like the Flood) for an increasingly skeptical nation.

>Bartlett 10.

Land of the Lost (PG-13, 102 min.) Revamping the 1970s Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday-morning cult classic as a family-friendly comedy-adventure would have made sense, but this misbegotten project immediately alienates kid-toting parents with shameless and incessant product plugs, surprisingly foul language and other inappropriate references (the perfect woman, children are told, would have big "boobs" but no head; show tunes are "gay"). Will Ferrell is a goofy "quantum paleontologist" who lands in a timeless alternate dimension, along with an eye-candy colleague (Anna Friel) and a crude self-appointed sidekick (Danny McBride); there, they befriend Jorma Taccone as Chaka, the ape-boy, and are menaced by cool-looking dinosaurs and reptilian alien Sleestaks. Between the tired Matt Lauer cameos that bookend this dud, director Brad Silberling manages three or four funny scenes. My favorite: Ferrell is punctured by a thirsty prehistoric mosquito.

>Palace Cinema.

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. Susan's co-stars include a Black Lagoon refugee, the Missing Link (Will Arnett); a "Fly" guy, Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie); the gargantuan (and inarticulate) Insectosaurus; and -- best of all -- B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a dimwitted blob. Directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon.

>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. Working from Jodi Picoult's provocative weepie of a best-seller, suave director Nick Cassavetes has constructed an artful Sundance-style drama from an outrageous premise that wouldn't be out of place on Lifetime Television. The result is a skillful blend of emotional honesty and narrative hooey, guaranteed to have sympathetic audiences sniffling and even sobbing throughout.

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

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 the help of Napoleon, Al Capone and Ivan the Terrible (who prefers to be called "Ivan the Awesome"). Director Shawn Levy's sequel contains a few cool ideas (the Lincoln Memorial statue comes to life) and a few decent gags involving such Smithsonian artifacts as Archie Bunker's chair, but there's not much here besides noise, chaos and monkey-slapping.

>Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema.

Obsessed (PG-13, 109 min.) Beyoncé gets mad when skank Ali Larter goes after her man.

>Bartlett 10.

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

>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.

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 gangster 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 (images seem captured rather than composed), the violence is intermittent and -- to Mann's credit -- far from cathartic: During the opening jailbreak, when "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) lets a bullet-riddled comrade slip from his grasp, we sense he's still attached to the dead man by some psychic cord that will continue to unravel until the life force of this killer, media darling and folk hero is spent at the end of the movie, beneath the ironic and appropriate glow of a cinema marquee, and we realize Mann's true theme is the inevitability and finality of death. With Marion Cotillard as Billie Frechette, Dillinger's girlfriend, and Christian Bale his other pursuer, "G-Man" Melvin Purvis.

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

Race to Witch Mountain (PG, 99 min.) Director Andy Fickman and wrestler-turned- family-friendly movie star Dwayne Johnson (no longer billing himself as "The Rock") follow their bland collaboration "The Game Plan" with a noisy, action-heavy revamp of "Escape to Witch Mountain," the well-remembered 1975 Disney film about a pair of fugitive children who prove to be paranormally gifted extraterrestrials. (Times change: In the first film, the kids were pursued by Ray Milland in a luxury car; this time, they're on the run from a Predator-like alien assassin in a flying saucer.) AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig are fine as the space siblings, and Johnson is both cut and cute as a heroic cabbie, but this "X Files" for small fry has about as much heft as a bubble of swamp gas.

>Bartlett 10.

17 Again (PG-13, 102 min.) Matthew Perry finds himself transformed into Zac Efron.

>Bartlett 10.

The Soloist (PG-13, 117 min.) Robert Downey Jr. is Los Angeles Times reporter Steven Lopez and Jamie Foxx is homeless, schizophrenic, classically trained street musician Nathaniel Ayers in this based-on-a-true-story inspirational drama -- and American movie debut -- from British director Joe Wright (the ampersand version of "Pride & Prejudice"), who resists tugging at the heartstrings even as Ayers coaxes the melodies of his beloved Beethoven from the catgut of his violin and cello. Emphasizing wry humor and gritty "realism" over in-your-face uplift, Wright has created a sort of mainstream art film; but even in what is essentially a two-man drama, he seems a man born to make epics: The colorfully choreographed, impeccably composed Bedlam of bedbug-infested bedhead insanity found in the homeless shelter depicted here is a rival for the organized chaos of Wright's already famous Dunkirk beach sequence in "Atonement."

>Bartlett 10.

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." Obviously eager to guide his redesigned Enterprise to where no "Star Trek" film has gone before (into the box-office stratosphere, alongside that other space opera, "Star Wars"), Abrams let the phones of most past "Trek" actors remain quiet, but he did recruit king-of-all-media Tyler Perry to play a Starfleet admiral. As Nimoy's Spock (the one oldtimer who does appear here) would say about that decision, if he were a Paramount stockholder: Logical -- not fascinating, but logical.

>Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Collierville Towne 16, 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. Directing, as usual, with a surfeit of flash, Tony Scott allows his big-name stars to meet only as voices over a radio until the climactic confrontation that ends this efficient but nonessential actioner.

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

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?

>Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic.

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. Why would Bay and his collaborators -- with millions and millions of dollars at their disposal, and with what may be the biggest movie audience of the year eager for their film -- go to so much trouble and expense to aim so low? It's appropriate that one of the major action set pieces requires the trashing of a library -- this is postliterate filmmaking that has no use for such fusty traditions as internal logic and narrative coherence. Thankfully, Shia LaBeouf (as the young hero caught in the intergalactic robot war), John Turturro (an ex-secret agent) and Kevin Dunn (a harried father) return to add some much-needed comedy and humanity.

>Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema.

Up (PG, 102 min.) "Up," up and away -- Pixar, with its 10th feature film in 14 years, again demonstrates it has no intention of losing ground to the competition, which at this point includes not just other animation studios but all of Hollywood. If "Up" (in 3-D at some theaters) doesn't quite soar to the heights of some previous Pixar releases, it nonetheless is unfailingly charming, exciting, inventive and moving. It's kind of weird, too -- a vibrantly colored, highly stylized and literally uplifting tale of house-hoisting helium balloons, talking dogs and prehistoric goony birds that owes as much to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum, Frank Capra and even Richard Connell (author of "The Most Dangerous Game") as to Walt Disney. Having already turned a rat and a robot into movie stars, Pixar's artists have no trouble making a surly septuagenarian into an admirable cartoon hero: Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) is a widower and would-be explorer who's as blocky as the old house he refuses to abandon. When he and a chubby boy scout land on a lost plateau in South America, director Pete Docter's story takes on something of the craziness of the classic Donald Duck adventures created by comic-book artist Carl Barks in the 1940s and '50s.

>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), Hollywood 20 Cinema (in 3-D), CinePlanet 16 (in 3-D), Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Whatever Works (PG-13, 92 min.) The 39th (!) theatrical feature film from writer-director Woody Allen in 43 years is unconvincing, stagey (the direction seems to adhere to the journeyman philosophy of the title) and stale in its knee-jerk existentialism (Allen originally wrote the script in the 1970s, for Zero Mostel), but it's also frequently very funny. Allen stand-in Larry David is the narrator and lead kvetcher, a germophobic "genius" physicist named Boris Yellnikoff who cavalierly dismisses most human beings as "microbes" and "inchworms," and declares the universe a place of "pointless black chaos." Enter Evan Rachel Wood as Melody St. Ann Celestine, a sugary young Mississippi beauty queen who, improbably, marries sourpuss Boris; what follows is a "Pygmalion" twist in which New York itself molds all comers -- including Melody's mother, played by the invaluable Patricia Clarkson -- into happy versions of their true selves.

>Ridgeway Four.

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: Among the "freaks" he battles and befriends are Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), John Wraith (Will.i.am), the Blob (Kevin Durand) and his bloodthirsty brother, Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber). As staged by director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi"), the almost nonstop action in this sometimes callous tale of revenge is poised halfway between the ADD whiplash of "Crank" and the more elegant spectacle of "Spider-Man"; as pure pulp entertainment, it works.

>Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

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. As exiled cave pals Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) wander from their primitive village through a series of increasingly advanced and maladjusted "civilizations" (including Sodom and Gomorrah), where they meet the likes of Cain and Abel and Abraham and Isaac, the film becomes not just a satire of such sanctimonious old Hollywood biblical epics as "The Ten Commandments" but an Old Testament corollary to "Monty Python's Life of Brian." If "Year One" dodges the controversy that dogged the Python project, it may be because the movie fits neatly into Jewish intellectual tradition, which encourages the profound questioning of moral and religious issues (not to mention the Jewish tradition of Mel Brooks flatulence jokes). As Zed becomes convinced he is "the Chosen One," Ramis' message becomes clear: Dogma is for troglodytes. "Year One" emerges as the highbrow lowbrow movie of the year.

Stage Cinema, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Southaven Cinema, Summer Drive-in.