MOVIE STARS
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs The third installment in the “Ice Age’’ series offer up a stale and sketchy premise: a lost world that plays out far beneath the frozen tundra, where tropical jungles somehow thrive, Jurassic beasts roar, and the most menacing creatures are total softies once you get to know them. In 3-D. (94 min., PG) (Janice Page)
2 Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight Wendy Keys’s documentary about the graphic designer responsible for “I [HEART] NY,’’ as well as numerous other instantly recognizable logos and images, is a lovefest and goes on too long. But Glaser’s so articulate, and his designs so charming, the excess is understandable. (73 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
Public Enemies A disappointment from director Michael Mann, who tells the story of Depression-era bankrobber John Dillinger without bothering to explain why. The fault’s not Johnny Depp’s - at this point, the actor is the definition of star-power - but misguided video camerawork and the lack of a storyline. (143 min., R) (Ty Burr)
Women of Faith Rebecca M. Alvin’s documentary attempts to tell a history of New England nuns. It settles on listening to various nuns discuss their relationship to God, the Catholic Church, and their sexuality. As useful and enlightening as some of the film is, it feels like a work in progress. (60 min., Unrated) (Wesley Morris)
Angels & Demons There’s every reason to lament the creaky contraption Ron Howard has made from another Dan Brown bestseller. A droopy Tom Hanks, as Robert Langdon, has been brought to the Vatican to stop cataclysmic destruction. (125 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
Away We Go A young couple (Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski) traverse North America looking for the perfect place to raise their unborn baby. It’s great to have a serious movie about people in their 30s, but does it have to be so smug? Directed by Sam Mendes. (90 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
The Brothers Bloom A con game about con games, this fable about brotherly scam artists (Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody) is manic fun until you realize the entire movie is going to be pitched at the same pace. It’s like being trapped in a hall of mirrors with a performing poodle that doesn’t know how to stop. (109 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
Cheri Michelle Pfeiffer plays a Belle Epoque courtesan emotionally entangled with a young Parisian (Rupert Friend). What at first seems a waxwork parody of Merchant Ivory-style filmmaking becomes a surprisingly sharp meditation on beauty and age, both in 19th-century France and the modern film industry. (92 min., R) (Ty Burr)
Departures A young man (Masahiro Motoki) apprentices as a ritual preparer of dead bodies. It’s easy to see why this won the foreign language Oscar over better, tougher movies. It’s the kind of sentimental drama that pats its audience on the back for confronting social taboos. In Japanese, with subtitles (131 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
Food, Inc. Rob Kenner’s documentary is about the extent to which industrial food production has replaced farming in America. Like certain forms of explanatory journalism, the movie intends to assert and shame. It’s part activism, part schoolteacher lecture. (94 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)
The Hangover Three bachelor-party pals wake up in Vegas with a missing groom and no memory of the night before. The latest in the wave of post-Apatow Bad Lad comedies is rowdy, scurrilous, and for about three-quarters of its running time, a lot funnier than it has any right to be. (100 min., R) (Ty Burr)
Monsters vs. Aliens Digitally animated mega-entertainment from DreamWorks is amusing and over-familiar, made special by its use of 3-D; see it with the glasses or not at all. Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, and Seth Rogen provide the voices for this tale of monsters enlisted to stop an alien invasion. (94 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
Moon Will there ever be more of Sam Rockwell in one movie than there is here? He plays an astronaut on a space station who discovers he’s not alone - his companions are clones of him. Written and directed by Duncan Jones, the movie’s initially welcome modesty becomes a limitation. (88 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)
My Life in Ruins Nia Vardalos stars in another cute, shoddy-looking “Greek’’ movie. This time she’s an American tour guide with a busload of stereotypes instead of a houseful. Richard Dreyfuss plays one of the people in her group, and he pushes her toward the handsome bus driver. (98 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris) My Sister’s Keeper A shapeless, hankie-wringing reworking of the Jodi Picoult bestseller about a terminally ill teenage girl and her frayed family. Cameron Diaz is OK as the controlling mom, but Sofia Vassilieva anchors the film as the cancer victim, rebellious, serene, and life-size. With Abigail Breslin and Alec Baldwin. (109 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
Mystic India In this ultra-romanticized vision of India, set in the 18th century, 100-plus architectural and geological locations are the backdrop for a hokey, but true, story of a real boy yogi who left his village in 1792 on a solo, seven-year, 8,000-mile, barefoot pilgrimage. (44 min., G) (Ethan Gilsdorf)
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian The follow-up to the surprise 2006 hit movie reeks of No. 2: It’s bigger, noisier, shinier, and dumber, and it has no earthly reason to exist. The kids will scarf it down like junk food and move on. Ben Stiller returns; Amy Adams and Christopher Guest are wasted. (105 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
The Proposal Casting in romantic comedy is like eating: Just because you like sardines and cheese doesn’t mean you like them together. Sardines and cheese together is gross. So is Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. She’s his boss, and they fake an engagement to keep her from being deported. (107 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
Star Trek Almost ridiculously satisfying, J.J. Abrams’s franchise reboot approaches the late Gene Roddenberry’s original science-fiction world not on bended knee but with fresh eyes, a spring in its step, and the understanding that we know these characters better than they know themselves. (126 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
The Stoning of Soraya M. This movie, about a young Iranian woman accused by her hus band of adultery, is truth in titling: Soraya M. gets stoned - and not in a Harold and Kumar way. It’s a little bit of parable, a whole lot of politics, and nary a scrap of real drama or finesse. (116 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
Sugar A quiet, beautifully observed drama about a young Dominican baseball prospect (Algenis Perez Soto) on a Corn Belt minor-league team, coming to terms with America and his own hopes. Written and directed with unhurried narrative confidence by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. (118 min., R) (Ty Burr)
Summer Hours Three adult siblings - Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier, and Juliette Binoche - agree to sell their family’s sprawling country house. How nice to see Olivier Assayas working again in the warmer, earth tones of his younger self, the man of “Late August, Early September.’’ In French, with subtitles. (110 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 This remake of a 1974 drama about a hijacked subway train and the dispatcher (Denzel Washington) who tries to stop it is good, solid suspense as long as it stays in the tunnel. Once up top, director Tony Scott turns it into just another summer action film. (106 min., R) (Ty Burr)
Tetro Francis Ford Coppola’s mildly involving melodrama about the reunion of two estranged American brothers in Buenos Aires becomes an occasion for Coppola to rediscover the voluptuous filmmaking that used to come so naturally to him. Shot in crisp, expressionistic black and white. (88 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Giant robots smash each other to rivets, the pyramids are reduced to rubble, fighter jets scream across the sky, and Megan Fox’s measurements are draped across the screen for maximum effect. Michael Bay directs; Shia LeBeouf stars. (150 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
Up The new
Valentino: The Last Emperor Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary immerses us in a year of fashion designer Valentino’s life. What begins as frothy observation expands into a lament for a man who has no further place in a universe he helped create. In English and in French and Italian, with subtitles. (96 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)
Whatever Works Minor Woody Allen, based on a 30-year-old script about a Manhattan sourpuss (Larry David, channeling the director) and the Southern-fried youngster (Evan Rachel Wood) he marries. As Wood’s mama, Patricia Clarkson is a regally smutty joy, but the film’s thin and divorced from any reality. (92 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Hugh Jackman muscles his way through this prequel, all $10 gazillion and 107 minutes of it. We’re presented with the early years of the X-Men’s most volatile mutant. If only the moviemaking were as steroidal as some of the bodies. (107 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
Year One Jack Black and Michael Cera are dopey cavemen who travel through various ancient civilizations. The movie’s like a Hope-Crosby road movie written by potty-obsessed 12-year-old boys. Hank Azaria and Christopher Mintz-Plasse get some laughs as the biblical Abraham and Isaac. (97 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
An archive of movie reviews may be found at www.boston.com/movies.
Theaters are subject to change. 