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

OPENING TODAY

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.

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.

Funny People (R, 146 min.)

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

The Hurt Locker (R, 131 min.)

Ridgeway Four.

SPECIAL MOVIES

Funny Girl (G, 155 min.) Barbra Streisand won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of comedienne Fanny Brice in this 1968 musical biopic from legendary director William Wyler ("Wuthering Heights," "Ben-Hur").

7:15 p.m. Thursday 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.

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.

In a Dream (Not rated, 80 min.) Jeremiah Zagar's 2008 documentary chronicles the work and tumultuous home life of eccentric Isaiah Zagar (the director's father), who has covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia with stunning mosaic murals -- an obsession that creates chaos as well as art.

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

Lonely Street (R, 93 min.) An Albuquerque private eye named Bubba Mabry (Jay Mohr) discovers his latest client is the 75-year-old Elvis Presley (Robert Patrick). A story about this movie will appear in the M section Saturday.

Free promotional screening 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Paradiso. Tickets are limited; E-mail rsvplsp@hotmail.com.

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.

Tsotsi (R, 94 min.) The Power House concludes its summer "Midnight Matinee" series with this South African production about a Johannesburg gang leader (Presley Chweneyagae) who becomes an accidental kidnapper when he steals a car with a baby on board. The movie won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film; this year, director Gavin Hood hit the big time with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Doors open at 11:15 tonight; movie starts at midnight at Power House Memphis, 45 G.E. Patterson. Admission: $5. Visit powerhousememphis.org.

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

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.

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. This feast for fans of period decor and costumes is unfailingly entertaining but also quite moving, especially during its unforgiving final shot of Pfeiffer's famously attractive but no longer youthful face, accompanied on the soundtrack by the muffled but ruthless ticking of a clock.

Ridgeway Four.

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

Bartlett 10, 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, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Food, Inc. (PG, 94 min.) Director Robert Kenner's alarming documentary peels back the shrinkwrap, product labels and cheery "pastoral fantasy" farmland logos that dress up our supermarket products to reveal a corporate-controlled, government-subsidized factory system where both "the animals and the workers are being abused," at the cost of cheap but unhealthy -- even dangerous -- food. A successor to the proud muckraking tradition of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," the 1906 novel that helped clean up the meat-packing industry, the movie will help you understand how our food industry got so twisted that a fast-food cheeseburger has become less expensive than a head of broccoli.

Ridgeway Four.

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 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, 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." 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.

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. (Is any character in recent movie history as much fun to watch as Alan Rickman's sinister Severus Snape?)

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.

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.

Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

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, 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), 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; 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.

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. 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.

Moon (R, 97 min.) Sam Rockwell -- indie cinema's go-to guy when you need a likable yet damaged oddball -- stars as a contract astronaut nearing the end of a three-year solo job on the desolate dark side of moon in this throwback to the thoughtful, adult-oriented science-fiction films that briefly were in vogue in the late 1960s and 1970s. Writer-director Duncan Jones is the former "Zowie Bowie," the son of "space rocker" David Bowie, and "Moon" evokes something of the lonely desperation of Bowie's signature hit, "Space Oddity," with the Rockwell character -- whose isolation is interrupted by the arrival of his own clone -- a spiritual cousin to Bowie's Major Tom.

Ridgeway Four.

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.

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

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 is silly; would somebody who decides not to adopt because of "Orphan" really have been a fit parent?

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, 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 (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; it's then that 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.

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

Majestic, Cordova Cinema, 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, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8.

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.

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, 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: 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.

Bartlett 10, Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8.

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.

Bartlett 10, CinePlanet 16.