After the Sunset **
Set on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, with lots of sea and sand, this is a celluloid travel brochure: Entertainment is provided by an extended gay-panic joke between Pierce Brosnan as a grizzled jewel thief and Woody Harrelson as an FBI agent who's chasing him. When tired of that merriment, guests get frequent views of the semi-dressed Salma Hayek, who plays Brosnan's partner in love and crime. PG (Nov. 12) -- L.L.
Alexander **
Call it Alexander the Grate because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves. What in name of Zeus was Oliver Stone thinking? Having trekked back from recent to ancient history, Stone seems to have undergone his own regression, losing his thematic focus along with his trademark style. The result is meant to be a Dionysian romp through Alexander's life and conquering times, yet the revels are curiously tame. As for Colin Farrell as our Macedonian hero, his hair has turned blond but his eyebrows remain dark and his accent stays Irish -- somehow, the future king looks suspiciously like a drag queen in a Dublin pub. 14A (Nov. 24) -- R.G.
Being Julia **½
Director Istvan Szabo looks to get in touch with his lighter side in this adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel, but he doesn't quite find it. On the London stage of the late thirties, our title heroine is the familiar stuff of Bette Davis legend -- the fading diva on the far side of middle age. Rejuvenation arrives in the sexy form of a brash young Yank, but a tepid Shaun Evans is badly miscast in the role, and Annette Bening's idea of drinking from the fountain of youth is to relapse repeatedly into girlish giggles. Happily, in the last act, both Bening and the picture settle beautifully into the "all the world's a stage" theme -- the extended climax is a mini-gem of sustained comedy. 14A (Oct. 15) -- R.G.
Bridget Jones:
The Edge of Reason **
Bridget's bits aren't the only thing wobbling in this sequel. Renée Zellweger's character, a self-deprecating blend of accidental insight and unapologetic girlish emotion, has gone from idiosyncratic to flat-out idiotic. The Bridget we knew and loved from the original has been abducted and replaced by a stumpy-legged comic buffoon. While Hugh Grant and Colin Firth offer moments of comic brilliance, director Beeban Kidron has transformed London's best known singleton into a realization of our worst social fears. Before we were laughing with her, and now we're laughing at her. 14A (Nov. 12) -- L.M.
Christmas with the Kranks *
Based on a John Grisham alleged novel (no lawyers), the pic has our Kranky couple (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) deciding to X out Xmas this year, and, for reasons that entirely elude me, the decision irks the hell out of their annoying neighbours. En route, many things get knocked down and fall hard -- people, trees, ladders, store displays, more people, not to mention any remote hope that surviving this debacle would prove easier than surviving Surviving Christmas. (Nov. 26) -- R.G.
Finding Neverland ***
A making-of-the-myth movie, this is a fictionalized look at how J.M. Barrie (an eerily calm Johnny Depp) came to create Peter Pan. Many of the biographical details have been altered to allow for a freer flow of the sentimental sap, but the film is just doing to the writer what he did to his own raw material, although not nearly as memorably. Instead, it's content to be a sweet little tear-jerker -- but a well-crafted, superbly acted tear-jerker. PG (Nov. 19) -- R.G.
The Incredibles ***
Written and directed by Brad Bird, this animated film from the makers of Finding Nemo is another fun-for-the-whole-family feature. The smart script has a cosmically gifted family living in a world in which superheroes have become a persecuted minority. Thankful for all their good works in the past, the government takes pity on the Incredibles and protects them as part of the "superhero relocation program" -- at least until evil comes knocking. PG (Nov. 5) -- L.M.
Kinsey ***
Kinsey the movie does what Alfred Kinsey the sexologist would never have done: It not only documents the subject's behaviour, but goes on to place that behaviour in a distinctly emotional and even moral context. A good thing too, because the result is a mature biopic as entertaining as it is timely. In the title role, Liam Neeson is himself a force of nature as the ultimate rationalist devoted to the gospel of science. He portrays a Kinsey whose heroism lies in taking the secrecy out of sex, while leaving in the mystery. His enemies, of yesterday and today and tomorrow, would do just the reverse. 14A (Nov. 19) -- R.G.
National Treasure **
Nicolas Cage stars in his fourth Jerry Bruckheimer action film in this preposterous conspiracy adventure, in which an historian, named Benjamin Franklin Gates, is determined to find a treasure hidden by Freemason members of the American Founding Fathers, who conveniently put a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Sean Bean plays his evil rival, who spends most of the movie chasing Benjamin through various historic sites.
The film's cast also includes Justin Bartha ( Gigli) Diane Kruger ( Troy), Christopher Plummer, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel. (Nov. 19) -- L.L.
The Polar Express ***½
A classic Christmas story (the Chris Van Allsburg book) brushes up against a new cinematic technology (a device called Performance Capture) and, for once, both are the better for it.
Director Robert Zemeckis, along with the many voices of Tom Hanks, have managed to flesh out the book's few words without losing its thematic integrity or its slightly dark visual undercurrent. So the movie retains the reminder, albeit a gentle reminder, that the capacity for childlike belief cuts two ways. If you believe in Santa, you might also have to believe in ghosts. Sweet dreams are indeed the close cousin of scary nightmares. G (Nov. 10) -- R.G.
Sideways ***
From director Alexander Payne, Sideways is just that, an oblique take on a couple of well-worn genres -- the buddy flick and the road movie.
The two have been paired many times before, but the difference here, the sideways lurch, lies in the nature of the characters. The buddies (Paul Giamatti's sad-sack and Thomas Haden Church's dim-bulb) are both really pathetic guys, middle-age failures whose anxieties form the emotional backdrop, comic and poignant, for the picaresque road show. Buckle up, Payne invites us, because there's fun to be had in watching these losers drift without a compass. 18A (Oct. 29) -- R.G.
The SpongeBob
SquarePants Movie **½
The titular hero of a popular television series, SpongeBob is a household sponge who works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab restaurant, deep under the sea. This film adaptation is not just sweet but also extremely clever, as it throws out absurdist non-sequiturs and odd bits of comic timing, in smart parables about vanity and self-delusion. A road-trip for SpongeBob and sidekick Patrick does bog the story down. It's not helped by a generic Clint Eastwood-like hit man named Dennis (Alec Baldwin) and too many life lessons learned along the way. Fortunately, the show's off-hand irreverent humour reasserts itself in the final act. The rescue may come a little too late to save the movie, though fans will undoubtedly be forgiving. Sponges are famously good at bouncing back. G (Nov. 19) -- L.L.
Team America: World Police **½
Sure, it's funny - yet how could a marionette version of a Jerry Bruckheimer jingoistic action movie be funny? -- but ultimately the latest from South Park creator's Matthew Stone and Trey Parker is just too nasty and reactionary. Contrary to advertising, the hit list is not evenly balanced, but is limited to anyone or anything that can be considered gay, foreign or antiwar. The Team America action heroes live in George Washington's mouth on Mount Rushmore and fly around the world killing terrorists, and accidentally destroying cities -- but damn it, at least they're on the side of right. 18A (Oct. 15) -- L.L.
Vera Drake ***½
No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh. Here, in the postwar London of 1950, he introduces us to a pleasingly plump woman with a heart of gold. In the eyes of her adoring husband and children and neighbours, Vera Drake (the superb Imelda Staunton) is a veritable saint. But, unknown to all of them, Vera Drake is also a backroom abortionist. She is as good as gold and she is as guilty as sin, and she begs to be judged on both counts. That's the wonder of this gripping film: It insists that we do judge her, but all of her -- evenly, firmly, mercifully. 14A (Oct. 22) -- R.G.
Liam Lacey