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Selected mini-reviews, rated on a system of 0 to 4 stars, by, Liam Lacey, Kate Taylor and Stephen Cole. Full reviews appeared on the dates indicated.

Away We Go

***

Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road) goes light and mobile in this indie-style comedy about a newly pregnant couple, Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (a very good Maya Rudolph), who go on a road trip to find the best place to live and raise their coming child. The quest has a kind of mock Homeric episodic style - the couple escape from a series of monstrously self-centred people (Catherine O'Hara, Allison Janney, Maggie Gyllenhaal) but also some kind, if wounded, people. Detractors have called the movie misanthropic, but even in that, it gets marks for originality. 14A (June 12)

L.L.

Drag Me to Hell

***

Sam (Spider-Man) Raimi's return to his horror roots is a satisfying retro mixture of scares and gross-out slapstick in a story about a young loan officer, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), who offends a scary old woman who then lays claim to her soul. Unless Christine can pass the curse on to someone else in three days, she's headed straight for the fiery pit. 14A (May 29)

L.L.

Food, Inc.

***

Robert Kenner's well-crafted film presents an alarming picture of how factory farming and the consolidation of the food industry is dangerous and unsustainable. Readers who have followed the books of food activists Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser will be familiar with the arguments and examples, but Kenner's film is an excellent piece of cinematic rhetoric, initially disarming but progressively more alarming as it proceeds. PG (June 19)

L.L.

The Hangover

**

From Todd Phillips (Old School) comes another story of men behaving badly. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and stand-up comedian Zach Galifianakis star as three groom's men who lose the groom on a pre-wedding Las Vegas blow-out. The script works quickly to pile up absurdities - a baby in a trashed hotel room, a tiger, Mike Tyson - but the wind-up's much more fun than the resolution. 14A (June 5)

L.L.

Ice Age: Dawn

of the Dinosaurs

*

There's been a serious case of devolution going on since the first Ice Age movie. The current one is all frantic action and fanciful nonsense, as Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) descend into an underground world inhabited by dinosaurs and are led about by an antic weasel (Simon Pegg). Jokes seem to be aimed at some juvenile void between adult and childhood worlds. PG (July 1)

L.L.

Imagine That

**

There are moments of real sweetness between Eddie Murphy as a workaholic dad and the cute and convincing child actor Yara Shahidi, who plays his daughter, but that's about as far as Imagine That goes. When the little girl seems able to predict the stock market with her blanket and imaginary friends (a weird update of D.H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner), Dad takes a whole new interest in her. Less compelling are the boardroom scenes where Murphy falls back on his mugging, or a dubious subplot with Thomas Haden-Church as a faux native-American financial guru. G (June 12)

L.L.

The Land of the Lost

*

Like Evan Almighty, this is a sketch comedy idea bloated into a fantasy epic aimed at 10-year-old perverts. Based on an early seventies children's series, the movie stars Will Ferrell as scientist Rick Marshall, who falls into a time warp to an era of chimp people, dinosaurs and lizard men. His fellow travellers include a skimpily dressed graduate student (Anna Friel) and Danny McBride as a hick amusement-park employee. PG (June 5)

L.L.

Moon

***

A fascinating, disturbing space oddity from British filmmaker Duncan Jones, son of Major Tom himself - David Bowie. Sam Rockwell is Sam, a spaceman sent to the moon on a mission to harvest helium-3. Outside his station, he finds a wounded astronaut in a mangled space tractor. Opening the dying man's visor, Sam finds his dying self. A thoughtful sci-fi probe in the tradition of Silent Running and Solaris. Rockwell has never been better. 14A (July 3)

S.C.

***

John Dillinger, whose brief bank-robbing career paralleled the heyday of the Hollywood 1930s gangster film, should have been a natural fit for Michael Mann, a poet of shoot 'em up mayhem. But his latest movie has no more dramatic momentum than a coffee-table book. The scrambled script attempts to blend docudrama, social history and fanciful romance. The best parts are the re-enactments of legendary shoot-outs. But the social history of the founding of the FBI (Billy Crudup as a young J. Edgar Hoover and Christian Bale as dogged agent Melvyn Perkins) feels hasty and superficial. And the central romance, between Depp's inscrutable, princely bank robber and Marion Cotillard, is never really convincing. 14A (July 1)

L.L.

Star Trek

***

Star Trek gets its mojo back in J. J. Abrams's swinging reboot of the franchise. Smart and youthful, with a well-balanced package of humour, romance, crisp action and drama, the new movie side-steps the franchise's overwrought history, focusing on the beginnings of the relationship between the cocky Earthling Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and the logical half-human, half-Vulcan Spock (Zachary Quinto, of television's Heroes). PG (May 7)

L.L.

Up

***

The three-act structure and emotional arc follow the usual formula, but sheer whimsy carries this inventive 3-D animated feature high above the crowd. Old man Carl (warmly voiced by Ed Asner) fulfills his late wife's long-held fantasy of visiting the magical Paradise Falls in Venezuela by tying helium-filled balloons to his house. Off he floats with Russell, the eager boy scout who happened to be standing on his doorstep, as an unwitting stowaway. Landing in the jungle, they discover an exotic bird stalked by talking dogs and the long-lost explorer who was Carl's childhood idol. The effects are visually impressive but parents beware: The dogs prove vicious, the explorer murderous and, in the long Disney tradition, the scary bits are gruesomely animated. PG (May 29)

K.T.