At The Movies

Opening

Action star Jason Statham plays a hitman who wakes up one morning and finds himself juiced with a poison that'll stop his heart unless he can keep his adrenaline extremely high. (R)

Two friends with different goals in life team up to compete in a high-stakes underground street basketball game. Anthony Mackie, Shelli Boone and Wayne Brady star. Review on Page 14. (PG-13)

The arrival of an adopted deaf goddaughter delivers a blow to a popular cheerleader's idyllic social life and triggers the unraveling of her family's darkest secrets. Stars Elisha Cuthbert, Edie Falco, Camilla Belle, Shawn Ashmore and Martin Donovan. Review on Page 18. (R)

Indie fave director Neil LaBute presents his take on the 1970s horror movie about a cop who investigates the disappearance of a girl on a remote island inhabited by a dangerous cult. Nicolas Cage and Ellen Burstyn star. (PG-13)

Now Playing

G | General audiences

Director John Lasseter and his Pixar animation team's latest feature is about a hotshot rookie race car (voiced by Owen Wilson) who learns about life in the slow lane when he finds himself unexpectedly detoured to the sleepy town of Radiator Springs. Kids will find the movie fast and colorful, but adults may find it quite facile.

PG | Parental guidance recommended

A CGI-animated movie about a free-wheeling cow named Otis and his misfit farm animals who live the high life when humans aren't looking. When a pack of coyotes attack, sending the entire farm into fear and turmoil, Otis must reluctantly step up to the grown-up role he's been avoiding his whole life. This movie actually has a clever concept and handles birth and death with unexpected grace.

Based on the popular children's book about a new kid who bets the school bully that he can eat 10 worms in a day. It's a fine family movie with a message of tolerance and understanding and a good dose of humor -- plus gross worms!

A documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's touring multimedia talk about the moral challenge of global warming. The film's not so much about Gore but mainly on his presentation on the alarming effect of carbon-dioxide emissions on the world's climate, a talk he's given many times over the last few years. For that, it's a necessary film.

Mark Wahlberg takes on the inspiring role of real-life zero-to-hero Vince Papale, a 30-year-old substitute teacher and part-time bartender who was plucked out of obscurity at an open tryout for the Philadelphia Eagles and won a spot on the team in 1976 as a wide receiver. The period detail is uncanny and the performances are solid all around. Greg Kinnear and Elizabeth Banks also star.

When three popular girls from different cliques discover they've all been dating the school stud, they band together to seek revenge with the help of a new girl. While the movie has a dose of the cutes, it's still a cut above the typical adolescent farce.

A mystical water nymph lives under the swimming pool of a drab apartment complex. It's an intriguing premise, yet the mythology director M. Night Shyamalan builds around his main characters is forced, pretentious and outright silly at times. Strong performances by Paul Giamatti as the complex's melancholy manager, Bryce Dallas Howard as the nymph and a plucky supporting cast of amiable weirdos makes the fantasy occasionally palatable -- but just barely.

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in this remake of a Korean film about a doctor who trades love letters with one of her home's previous owners -- and discover that they are living two years apart of each other. You either surrender to this sort of conceit from the beginning, or you don't. But if you enjoy being swept up by romance, the film should at least have the fundamental decency to make sense.

Hilary and Haylie Duff play heiress sisters whose family cosmetics company folds after a scandal and leaves them penniless. It's a shrill comedy where the fashion comes off more appealing than the lead characters.

A group of kids suspect a creepy old house is really alive and dangerous. Can they save their neighborhood in time? This movie -- being shown in Digital 3D -- features the same blend of motion-capture and CG animation previously used in co-producer Robert Zemeckis' "The Polar Express," and has lots of fun to deliver. It makes for a great, scary film for youngsters.

Jack Black plays a Mexican cook who moonlights on the masked Lucha Libre wrestling circuit to funnel his prize money to needy orphans. Black cultivates an exaggerated accent that helps establish the character as an awkward fit in a life that was foisted upon him. But his wild persona cannot be contained, and director Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") doesn't seem to have been able to control his star. It's an interesting failure in a film that's a mix of Fellini-esque imagery and flatulence gags.

Based on the newspaper comic strip, a group of woodland animals visit the strange new world of suburbia with the prompting of an opportunistic raccoon. A mildly amusing, if hackneyed movie, strictly for the kids.

A rebel in trouble with the law becomes the dance partner of a beautiful ballet student at a prestigious performing arts school in Baltimore. It's a thoroughly formulaic but mildly enjoyable dance movie.

This documentary may not have the answer, but it makes for a lively, informative whodunit about General Motors' energy-efficient EV1 that debuted with fanfare and went out with a whimper. It's an infuriating examination of corporate and public indifference to consumer desire.

PG-13 | May be inappropriate for 13 & under

Justin Long plays a guy rejected from every college he's applied to, so he and his friends start their own fake and functioning university. The movie has a certain subversive élan that keeps it light on its feet -- until the very end when it turns self-righteous and takes itself way too seriously.

Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn play a couple who call it quits but refuse to move out of their jointly owned condo. This anti-romantic comedy is pretty much a watered-down remake of "The War of the Roses." Supporting performances from Vincent D'Onofrio, Judy Davis and Jon Favreau enliven the movie a bit.

Adam Sandler's latest comedy overflows with the juvenile hijinks that initially made him a star and ventures into the serious adult territory of his later, more thoughtful films. He stars as a harried architect who stumbles upon a universal remote that allows him to perform TiVo-like functions on his life. The first hour is often so tiresomely sub-moronic that it's surprising that Sandler and director Frank Coraci are able to pull out a movie that shows real heart at the end.

Based on the best-selling novel, the murder of a curator at the Louvre reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected since the days of Christ. Tom Hanks stars as the symbologist out to solve the murder and co-stars Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellan and Paul Bettany. Ron Howard's adaptation, while handsomely produced and decorated with a few good supporting performances from McKellan and Bettany, just comes off as wordy and slow. The movie devolves into a series of speeches, separated alternately by bouts of cryptology and bits of masochism.

A hapless young woman (Anne Hathaway) becomes the assistant to a demanding editor (Meryl Streep) who oversees the fashion bible of New York. Like the hottest new fashion trend, the movie is initially irresistible -- fun, flirty, spirited and sexy. But then it drags the audience down through a love triangle plotline that gets too complicated and heavy.

A young American street racer, living in Japan, gets caught up in the underworld arena of drift racing. Trouble ensues when he falls for the girlfriend of the Drift King, a local champ with Yakuza ties. This is the perfect movie for adolescent boys. The thin story and thinner characters are just setups for the race sequences.

A highly entertaining, not-so-kosher comedy about a high-powered, if dysfunctional, Jewish family in Hollywood and a boy who ends up using his bar mitzvah for the unlikely purpose of actually becoming a man and reconciling his elders.

Veteran comedy director Ivan Reitman is back with a tale of an architect (Luke Wilson) who breaks up with his clingy girlfriend (Uma Thurman), only to find out she's a superhero out for payback. It's a silly film with so-so CGI effects. The main selling point is the delightful self-effacing quality of Thurman's performance, making her character appealing no matter how erratic and destructive her behavior.

Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom reprise their roles in the swashbuckling sequel to the immensely popular 2003 movie. This time, Capt. Jack Sparrow discovers he owes a bloody debt to the legendary Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) of the ghostly Flying Dutchman. It's a darker tale than the first, but director Gore Verbinski has spun a rollicking and well-paced yarn nevertheless.

Woody Allen's latest film is a mirror image of his more successful "Match Point" from last year, and a stale rehash of a couple of his earlier films. The performances are uniformly one-note, but leads Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman are so perky and pretty together that they make the film pass amiably enough.

The "Anchorman" duo of Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay return with the tale of a NASCAR driver who must face his own demons and fight to retain his place at the top when he is challenged by the arrival of a flamboyant French Formula One star. Like the sport it spoofs, the movie has its thrilling moments but mostly feels repetitive.

Oliver Stone retells the harrowing true story of the last two first-responders to be rescued after the 9/11 attack, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña). For a lightning rod like Stone, this movie stays grounded in facts, not opinions or paranoia, and fights to remain even-handed. It stays smartly rooted in the day-to-day, going between the trapped men and the women at home (powerfully played by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello).

R | Restricted; 17 & under requires parent/guardian

The comedy troupe Broken Lizard's latest movie is about a couple of American buddies who stumble upon a secret centuries-old beer-drinking championship in Germany. When they assemble a team of top drinkers to try to win the title the following year, the training takes a toll on all of them. It's all the fun you want without the hangover.

OutKast's Antwan "Big Boi" Patton and André "André 3000" Benjamin play childhood friends who run a Southern speakeasy in this Prohibition-era musical. Some patches of the movie are invigorating and fresh -- especially the musical numbers and vibrant choreography -- while the rest is predictable and dull.

A hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the film follows an oddball clan as they race across three states to get their 7-year-old daughter to a beauty pageant.

Samuel L. Jackson cusses up a storm as an FBI agent trying to protect a mob murder witness from hundreds of nasty serpents (real and CGI-generated) while trapped in an airliner hurtling across the Pacific 30,000 feet in the air.

Art House | Revival

The Doris Duke Theatre,
Honolulu Academy Of Arts

900 S. Beretania St.; $7 general; $6 seniors, students and military; $5 Academy members. (532-8768)

Review on Page 16. (NR) At 1 p.m. Friday, and 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Review on Page 17. (R) With local short "Dreams of a Pagan Tattooed Savage." At 4 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and 1 p.m. Sept. 5.

Movie Museum

3566 Harding Ave.; $5, $4 members; reservations recommended due to limited seating (735-8771):

At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Friday.

At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday.

At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Sunday.

At 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m. Sept. 4.

At 12:30 p.m. Sept. 7.

At 5 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 7.