Selected mini-reviews, rated on a system of 0 to 4 stars, by Rick Groen, Liam Lacey, Stephen Cole and Jennie Punter. Full reviews appeared on the dates indicated.
Alvin and the Chipmunks
**
Surprise, surprise, the first half of the big-screen update of the 1950s-80s TV cartoon franchise is adult-friendly fun - probably because the producers hired ace Simpsons writer Jon Vitti to do the storytelling. The set-up works: Singing Chipmunks are rescued from a fresh-cut Christmas tree by a struggling songwriter (Jason Lee). When the Chipmunks go on tour with a churning funk band, however, a nicely silly film becomes ludicrous. Even kids will have trouble getting down with scenes of regulation-height dancers and musicians backing a singing group the size of kids' mittens. G (Dec. 14) S.C.
Atonement
***
A faithful, pensive adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel. Opening on a hot British summer in the mid-thirties, the plot traces the ripple-effect of a single childhood act, a tragic misconception whose consequences resonate through peacetime's complexities into the greater tragedies of war. Led by a brooding James McAvoy and a surprisingly sultry Keira Knightley, the cast is strong; Christopher Hampton's screenplay finds (with one exception) a clean path through the multilayered novel; and Joe Wright's direction is evocative, especially in a dazzling tracking shot over the surreal landscape of a shattered Dunkirk. The misstep comes relatively late, but the film rebounds admirably at the end - atonement is made. 14A (Dec. 7) R.G.
August Rush
*
No need to visit the candy counter if you're planning to catch this sappy, highly predictable family drama. Evan (Freddie Highmore) plays an Oliver Twist-type kid, with prodigious but undiscovered musical gifts, who escapes to New York to search for his parents, classical cellist Lyla (Keri Russell) and Irish singer-songwriter Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who are both unaware he exists. More like a prolonged music video than the fairy tale it wants to be - not to mention that the tunes are pretty lame. PG (Nov. 21) J.P.
Bee Movie
**
Oh, buzz off. It's not that Jerry Seinfeld's animated flick - about a Bee named Barry who ventures into the human world beyond the hive - is annoying. The thing is far too innocuous for that, and there are even sporadic moments of visual charm. However, trying to reproduce the split-level approach to comedy that works so well in The Simpsons or the Shrek series (upper floor of wordplay for the adults, lower one of shtick for the kiddies), Seinfeld misses on both counts and builds little more than a bungalow of blandness. Pay up, if the children insist, but prepare to get stung. G (Nov. 2) R.G.
Breakfast With Scot
***
The status-quo relationship of Eric (Tom Cavanagh), a former Maple Leaf turned sports broadcaster, and Sam (Ben Shenkman) is turned upside-down - and festooned with feather boas and glitter - when they agree to take care of Sam's unabashedly flamboyant young nephew Scot (an ab-fab performance by Noah Bernett). Concerned Scot will suffer teasing at school, Eric attempts to toughen him up. Subtle explorations of homophobia and social attitudes, wonderful casting, snappy, funny script and good old-fashioned Christmas magic make Lynd's latest a thoroughly enjoyable, new-style family feature. PG (Nov. 16) J.P.
Dan in Real Life
**½
The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Steve Carell stars as a lonely widower who falls in love with his brother's girlfriend (Juliette Binoche) at a family reunion in this comedy from Peter Hedges ( Pieces of April). With an uneven blend of brittle humour and sentimentality, the script employs stock elements of a French bedroom comedy. As long as Carell plays a man making an ass of himself in front of his parents and children, the movie is lively. Too often, though, Hedges settles for sitcom shtick and the sort of family montages you see in life-insurance ads. PG (Oct. 26) L.L.
The Darjeeling Limited
***
Once again pushing familial weirdness up to the realistic breaking point but never quite beyond, director Wes Anderson takes another of his dysfunctional clans for an episodic ride - a train ride, in this exotic case, with three mismatched brothers rolling through contemporary India, a country with its own flair for bizarre realism. When Anderson gets the balance right, the comedy mingles with surprising pockets of pathos, where the siblings we're laughing at suddenly look touchingly, troublingly familiar. When he doesn't, your patience is tried and you may be tempted to join the legions of Anderson-haters. Resist because, ultimately, these deceived and deceiving brothers will draw you into their tangled web. 14A (Oct. 5) R.G.
Eastern Promises
***
David Cronenberg takes his keen nose for violence to London, where the Russian mob is running amok - slit throats, drugged prostitutes, heroin imported from Kabul, not to mention the taciturn Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a man of few words but many scary talents. Sure, it's just a crime thriller, yet a genre flick by Cronenberg is always a different sort of beast and, courtesy of his strong casting and measured pacing, this one roars. Yes, it also has that celebrated fight scene, the punch-up in a bathhouse where towels are shed along with the blood. What it doesn't have is the thematic resonance of A History of Violence, a film that exploited the genre even while transcending its limitations. Eastern Promises delivers, but not on that scale. 18A (Sept. 14) R.G.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
**
This is a sequel to Shekhar Kapur's multi-Oscar-nominated 1998 hit Elizabeth, which cast the Virgin Queen as The Godfather by way of Bollywood. The new film, which picks up the monarch's career a decade later, is decidedly tarnished. The reliably magnetic Cate Blanchett returns to the throne, and the movie is eventful enough - with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), a romantic intrigue with a twinkling Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) and the attack of the Spanish Armada (in not-so-glorious computer-generated imagery) - but it all unfolds like an overblown pageant with chick-lit dialogue. "Why must I always be in control?" laments Liz. 'Cause you're the Queen, silly. PG (Oct. 12) L.L.
Enchanted
***
A naive fairy princess is banished by a wicked stepmother to New York - a city crowded with eight million candidates to play Grumpy. The movie's big kick, what makes Enchanted live up to its title, is that the further Giselle progresses in New York, the more we feel like we've tumbled into Disney Neverland. When Giselle sings, squirrels and pigeons come calling. Poison apples, magic mirrors and lost slippers all find their way into the film, which is enhanced by the comically assured performances of leads Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey. The film begins in classic 2-D animation, then turns to live action, 12 minutes in, when the princess lands in a New York sewer. G (Nov. 21)
S.C.
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
***½
It's Romania, in the twilight of the Communist regime, when abortion is illegal but hardly unpracticed, the custom merely having shifted to the usual butchers in the back alleys. This is an unflinching and impeccably observed tale of one such terminated pregnancy. And while the tense story at the centre is gripping, it's really just a hub for an equally intriguing chronicle at the periphery. There, we get a prolonged look at the twisted norms of life in a totalitarian state, where grey is the dominant mood and lies are a daily necessity. 14A (Nov. 2)
R.G.
The Golden Compass
***
This year's big Christmas movie may not be as charming as Harry Potter or as grand as The Lord of the Rings, but it does have something going for it beyond the computer-generated spectacle -- some real ideas behind its frosty surface. Inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost, this is an epic reworking of the myth of the Fall of Adam and Eve with a perspective more friendly to feminism and sexuality and antagonistic to traditional Christianity. Chris Weitz directs competently, though he rushes through introducing a lot of characters and concepts. Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as the 13-year-old heroine, Lyra, who follows her adventurer uncle (Daniel Craig) to the north. She has encounters with the beautiful Mrs. Coulter (a shimmering Nicole Kidman), a cowboy airship pilot (Sam Elliott) and the displaced king of the polar bears (voiced by Ian McKellen), and saves children from violent experiments performed by agents of the church. PG (Dec. 7) L.L.
I'm Not There
***
In director Todd Haynes's fractured biopic of Bob Dylan, the singer-songwriter is played by six actors, including an 11-year-old black kid who calls himself Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), Australian actress Cate Blanchett and actors Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Ben Wishaw and Heath Ledger. Blending mockumentary, sixties art cinema and dramatic invention, the film is uneven but often exhilarating (Blanchett's portrayal of the horrible-adorable Dylan of the mid-sixties), and sometimes (in the Richard Gere western sequence), ponderous. Dylan archivists will have a ball, tracing the sources of quotes, clothing and images, and enjoying the 36 songs, performed by Dylan and a who's who of indie rockers. The only doubt is, is Dylan really all that complicated or just a simple genius? 14A (Nov. 30) L.L.
The Kite Runner
***
A ripping good yarn spanning the last three decades in Afghanistan's troubled history, this is a safe adaptation of the popular Khaled Hosseini novel, one that lifts from the book the sturdy bones of the plot, fleshes them out with a strong international cast, then mounts the whole tale on the screen with workmanlike aplomb. The result is easy to like and even, on occasion, to thoroughly enjoy. What it's hard to be is moved, emotionally affected. The movie faithfully transposes the well-oiled, melodramatic machinery of the novel but, in so doing, exposes it too - and machines inspire more admiration than love. 14A (Dec. 14) R.G.
Lars and the Real Girl
***
Don't be put off - okay, don't be too put off - by the fact that the girl in Lars and the Real Girl is a life-sized, anatomically correct, silicone sex toy. Conversely, for those with opposing expectations, don't be disappointed that sex is not had with said toy. Far from it. Turns out this is a sweet little fable about how a delusional man-child (Ryan Gosling in another sterling performance) is helped by the loving ministrations of his family and community. In short, it's the kind of throw-back film where human nature is seen as inherently good - a notion so quaint that, these days, it feels damn near buoyant. PG (Nov. 2) R.G.
Love in the Time of Cholera
**
Fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1988 novel will be heartbroken to see how dull translators have drained the magic from his worldly romance. The film knits together the novel's crucial plot turns, without ever accessing its soul. And the film speeds its lovers through 50 years with far too much haste and make up. Actors Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Benjamin Bratt never disappear into character. How can they when we're startled every other scene by the sprouting of a prosthetic chin and adhesive mustache? The result is time-lapse photography instead of a movie. 14A (Nov. 16) S.C.
Margot at the Wedding
**
Writer-director Noah Baumbach takes another fixed look at the occluded arteries of a dysfunctional family. In the past, culminating in the superb The Squid and the Whale, he's proven himself a keen diagnostician of domestic woes, depicting the ills of specific characters so honestly that they resonate beyond the particular and speak their uncomfortable truths to the rest of us. Yet this time, despite the presence of Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh as warring sisters, something crucial goes missing. The honesty is still there, but the resonance is gone. These characters don't seem illuminating at all - just annoying and, ultimately, dead boring. 14A (Nov. 23) R.G.
The Mist
**
In Frank Darabont's adaptations of the Stephen King oeuvre, a scary trend is starting to emerge. His first, The Shawshank Redemption, was splendid; the second, The Green Mile wasn't; and now The Mist - where the monsters reside not in the storm but in the calm after - continues the slide. I wouldn't say this is laugh-out-loud risible, but there are definitely moments. Still, you might want to sit through it just to get to the ending, because few Hollywood flicks have ever brandished such an un-Hollywood finale - you may love it, you may hate it, but forget it you won't. 14A (Nov. 23) R.G.
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
**½
Oh, it's semi-wonderful at best, and the hyphen in that verdict can be traced directly to another in the credits - to writer-director Zach Helm. As he proved in Stranger Than Fiction, and confirms here, he knows his way around a screenplay - this one a kid's tale set in a toy store owned by the very aged but still mortal soul (Dustin Hoffman) who puts the magic in the emporium. Yes, Helm can write. But directing is a whole other kettle of talent, and in his debut, he seems to be going mano a mano against himself, one hand undoing the good of the other. The result is a potentially rich story that keeps getting undermined by the storyteller. G (Nov. 16) R.G.
No Country for Old Men
****
Fate's impassive coin toss, evil's relentless pursuit, the unwise bravado of youth, the sad inadequacy of wisdom - novelist Cormac McCarthy invested all of his classic themes in No Country for Old Men, but with a difference. Written almost exclusively in taut dialogue, the book already reads like a screenplay, and the Coen brothers have taken full advantage. This is an impeccable adaptation, as cinematically sparse and suspenseful as McCarthy's prose. Opening in the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone bad, the picture is essentially an extended chase flick, where a semi-innocent bystander finds a suitcase full of cash and tries to outrun the consequences of keeping it. Those consequences come in the blunt shape of a terrifyingly rational psychopath. Enter Javier Bardem to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance of harrowing aplomb, searching evil's mind and finding there something infinitely more frightening than evil itself - brutal, unblinking logic. 14A (Nov. 9) R.G.
Liam Lacey