"Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" Another Dr. Seuss movie, but Hollywood has literally gone back to the drawing board this time, forgoing idiot live-action stars and creating a dreamy computer-animated wonderland for the good doctor's critters to galumph through. Jim Carrey provides the voice of Horton, Steve Carell's the Mayor of Whoville, and despite some pandering overkill, the movie's perfectly acceptable for the tyke crowd - Seuss commercialized but not prostituted. (88 min., G) (Ty Burr)
"Doomsday" It's 2035, and London is beset by people keeling over with bubbling chins. The government dispatches a crew of special agents to find a cure in quarantined Scotland. The movie is a violent, witty flying circus from the agile mind of Neil Marshall, who brings schlock as close to art as he can get it - failing that, it's infectiously kicky pop. With Rhona Mitra, Craig Conway, Adrian Lester, Bob Hoskins, and Malcolm McDowell (105 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
"Drillbit Taylor" Owen Wilson is a homeless guy who takes a job playing bodyguard to three nerdy high school freshmen. But we're well beyond wedgies here. We're in horror-movie territory, and there's nothing Wilson can do about it. This movie has a disturbing sadistic side. The filmmakers (Seth Rogen co-wrote; Judd Apatow produced) aren't so much interested in a movie about the tyranny of bullies as they are completely turned on by the violence they inflict. (102 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
"Flawless" A heist flick, set in London in 1960, that's assured and neatly crafted - the time zips by while you're watching it. Demi Moore does late-period Joan Crawford as a diamond executive who cooks up a theft of her own company with a shabby night janitor (Michael Caine). Lambert Wilson channels Paul Henreid as a metrosexual insurance investigator. In director Michael Radford's hands it's eminently watchable tosh. (108 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"The Grand" A defective poker mockumentary where the poker is a lot more interesting than the people playing it. But the players are all played by people of interest. If Woody Harrelson, Cheryl Hines, Dennis Farina, Richard Kind, David Cross, and Chris Parnell were having a cafeteria lunch together, you'd want a seat at that table. When they're sitting around the tables in this movie, it's a different story. As comedy the movie is flat. As documentary it's unfocused. As mockumentary it's passé. (R min., 104) (Wesley Morris)
"Leatherheads" From George Clooney, a romantic comedy about the birth of professional football in 1925. The dialogue in Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly's script doesn't pop or zing out of the actors' mouths. The pace keeps going slack. It doesn't matter that it's not as good. Clooney doesn't put a fire under any of the scenes. This is an unmade bed of a movie. With John Krasinski and Renée Zellweger as Clooney love interest and verbal sparring partner. (114 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
"Nim's Island" An engaging if overcooked fantasy about a castaway-island girl (Abigail Breslin) and the agoraphobic San Francisco novelist (Jodie Foster) who comes to her rescue. Foster lets her hair down in a rare comedy role, and the island critters (heavily abetted by CGI) are cute; kids will enjoy it wholeheartedly. With Gerard Butler as both Breslin's marine biologist dad and the fictional adventure hero of Foster's books. (95 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
"Planet B-Boy" Forget diplomacy. We can solve the world's wars through dance battles. The ones in Benson Lee's documentary are exceptional. The movie's not bad, either. With profiles of the dance form's top crews - from Japan, the US, South Korea, and France - it ships us off to Braunschweig, Germany for 2005's Battle of the Year competition. In English, and Korean, French, and Japanese with subtitles. (104 min., Unrated) (Wesley Morris)
"The Ruins" Four American tourists vs. one sea of man-eating Mexican vines. Smart, suspenseful, well acted, gross. (91 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
"Run Fat Boy Run" If the words "from director David Schwimmer" sound terrifying, the comedy won't make you change your mind. A slothful Londoner (Simon Pegg) enters a marathon to win back the fiancée (Thandie Newton) he ran out on. What can you say about a movie that features both Newton's blinding loveliness and the sight of a man soaked in the contents of a giant foot blister? Stay home. (100 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
"Shine a Light" A documentary record of the Rolling Stones' two-night stand in New York in the fall of 2006, the film marks a collision between two instinctive creative forces, director Martin Scorsese and Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The surprise is that the movie reclaims the notion of a Stones concert, building slowly yet inexorably until it seems as if the entire theater is vibrating with excitement. With guest appearances by Buddy Guy, Jack White, and Christina Aguilera. (122 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"Shutter" Photographs preserve a trace of your identity, and if you're lucky, it's a good moment. If you're unlucky, you're Megumi Tanaka (Megumi Okina), wan specter who menaces a newlywed couple in "Shutter." The first of many mistakes the lovebirds make is deciding to honeymoon in Japan. Another is accidentally running over a nubile hitchhiker (Okina), who starts showing up as a milky smudge in their photographs. Moody, artsy violence follows, and while the basic elements are familiar, they combine in novel and not uninteresting ways. (85 min., PG-13) (Michael Harding)
"Stop-Loss" The latest drama to examine the effects of the Iraq War on the US soldiers who are fighting it is earnest, outraged, and confused. Ryan Phillippe plays a veteran going AWOL after the army forcibly re-enlists him (the "stop-loss" policy of the title). Director Kimberly Peirce piles on the dysfunction while forcing her story into the unconvincing confines of a road movie. With Channing Tatum and Abbie Cornish. (113 min., R) (Ty Burr)
"Superhero Movie" Splattery business as usual from the folks who gave us the "Scary Movie" franchise. Like its forebears, this parody of "Spider-Man," "The X-Men," and other spandex action movies delivers generic-brand Mad Magazine yuks, the broader and smuttier the better. You don't mind much until the movie's comic powers wear off halfway through. Starring Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald, and Leslie Nielsen. (85 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"21" A depressingly shallow morality tale about the rise and fall of a MIT undergrad (Jim Sturgess of "Across the Universe," manfully tripping over a generic American accent) so desperate to come up with Harvard Med tuition that he joins a secret blackjack club led by professor Kevin Spacey and card-counts his way to Vegas riches. Bowdlerized from the non-fiction bestseller "Bringing Down the House." (123 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" Tyler Perry is inching closer to the sweet spot in his quest to make perfect emotional porn for African-American church ladies. Angela Bassett (in fine form) plays a Chicago single mother traveling south to meet the cousins she didn't know she had. Perry throws in the whole Oprah agenda, broad character comedy, and a dreamboat suitor (Rick Fox) for Bassett. (100 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna)" A heart-ripping audience pleaser about a 9-year-old Mexican boy (Adrian Alonso) crossing the border to find his illegal immigrant mother (Kate del Castillo) in LA, Patricia Riggen's movie courts shameless sentimentality, but her cast plays with dry eyes until the very end, when it knows we're about to cave in too. The result is genuinely cathartic. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. (106 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
"The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" There's a great movie to be made about life during Brazil's vast political unrest in the late 1960s, '70s, and '80s - the chaos, the ideology, the dictatorship. Cao Hamburger's drama is set in 1970, and most of it is seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old (Michel Joelsas) who winds up him living with grandfather's neighbor. The point of view is limited; the story is egregiously short on historical specifics, and long on rabid enthusiasm for that year's World Cup. Hamburger is only slightly more inquisitive than his little protagonist. In Portuguese, with subtitles. (104 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
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