At The Movies

Opening

Shrek the Third
Everybody's favorite green ogre is back, this time embarking on a quest to find a suitable replacement king (besides himself) to rule the land of Far, Far Away. Feature and review on Pages 4 and 26. (PG)

Now Playing

G

Meet the Robinsons 1/2
In this Disney animated movie, a boy genius creates a machine to recover the past and embarks on an amazing adventure with his future family. While the script is strictly two-dimensional, the digital 3-D effects are pretty spectacular.

PG

Bridge to Terabithia
An 11-year-old boy has his life changed forever when he befriends the tomboy class outsider. Together, they create an imaginary kingdom filled with ghosts, trolls and other magical beings. This is a perfect family-friendly movie and even a bit of a tear-jerker.

The Last Mimzy
Two siblings exhibit remarkably high intelligence and abilities when they discover a mysterious box filled with sophisticated toys from the future.

Pride 1/2
Hollywood's latest inspirational sports flick -- based on a true story of how a group of troubled teens turned into Philadelphia's first African-American swim team in 1973 -- has enough buoyancy to remain afloat. Without the vigor of Terrence Howard and the charm of Bernie Mac, the movie would likely sink in its own sea of clichés.

TMNT 1/2
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back on the big screen, this time in CGI animation. The team reunites when tech-industrialist Max Winters amasses an army of ancient monsters to apparently take over the world.

PG-13

Blades of Glory
Will Ferrell and Jon Heder star as rival figure skaters, banned and disgraced from competition, who, in an attempt to make their return years later, team up to perform as the first male-male pair in the sport.

Delta Farce 1/2
Three hapless guys are mistaken for Army Reservists, loaded onto a plane to Iraq, and accidentally ejected somewhere over Mexico, where they save a rural village and become local heroes. It's dopey Army comedy in the tradition of "Stripes," just with the sights aimed lower and blissfully unaware of its own monumental tastelessness.

Disturbia 1/2
In a contemporary variation on Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window," a young man (Shia LaBoeuf) under house arrest becomes a voyeur from his window and suspects that one of his neighbors is a serial killer.

The Ex
Tom, an underachiever (Zach Braff), must take a job when his pregnant wife Sofia (Amanda Peet) quits her high-pressure, big-salary career. Tom, unfortunately, clashes with one of his work colleagues, the wheelchair-bound Chip (Jason Bateman), who still carries a torch for Sofia from their high school days. The actors flounder to hit the right comedic notes due to a script that aims low for shock effect rather than offering character-driven humor.

The Invisible 1/2
Attacked and left for dead, a young man's spirit finds himself trapped in limbo -- not quite dead but invisible to the living. His spirit can only watch as his mother and the police search frantically for him, unaware that he is only hours away from truly perishing.

Kickin' It Old Skool
In 1986, a 12-year-old boy ends up in a coma after a breakdancing accident at a school talent contest. But he wakes up 20 years later as a man-child, played by Jamie Kennedy. This movie is more amusing than it has a right to be, thanks to the surprising subtlety of Kennedy's performance and the script itself.

Lucky You
Eric Bana stars as a high-stakes card player who sets out to win both the World Series of Poker and the affections of a Vegas lounge singer (Drew Barrymore). The romantic drama crackles with life here and there, but it's a curiously ordinary and uninvolving tale.

The Namesake
A middle-class Indian family moves from Calcutta to New York in the late 1970s to start a new life, but it's a lifelong balancing act to meld into a new world without forgetting the old, as the college-age son particularly finds out.

Next 1/2
Nicolas Cage stars as a man who can see into the future, which makes him a target of the FBI, who wants him to help stop America's enemies before they strike.

Norbit 1/2
After seeing his strong and nuanced acting in "Dreamgirls," Eddie Murphy regresses to "Nutty Professor" latex, slathering himself in makeup to play a nebbish, his morbidly obese bride and a cartoonish Chinese man.

Premonition
Starring Sandra Bullock as a woman whose husband is killed in a car wreck one day but turns up alive and well the next, the movie plays out too tranquilly in the early going to build much suspense. It teases viewers with the promise of great twists or revelations, making the unsatisfying conclusion and epilogue all the more annoying. It's a shame, because Bullock breathes far more soul into the role than her superficially written character merits.

Spider-Man 3
In this latest installment of the hugely successful franchise, the result is a bloated, uneven behemoth of a flick, with more villains, more supporting characters and more plot lines.

Not only does Peter Parker/Spider-Man battle human foes and their supervillainous alter egos, but he also goes to the dark side when a black goop from outer space attaches to him and juggles two love interests as well. As people and threats come and go, the movie's narrative feels scattered.

Stomp the Yard
A troubled street dancer from Los Angeles attends an historic black university in Atlanta where he joins a struggling fraternity and learns the true meaning of brotherhood when he tries to help the school's step team win the national championship.

Year of the Dog
A single fortysomething woman embarks of a journey of personal transformation after the unexpected death of her beloved pet dog. What could've been a predictable romantic comedy is instead refreshing, thanks to writer-director Mike White's complex character study and Molly Shannon's delicate and poignant lead performance.

R

28 Weeks Later 1/2
In this woeful sequel to the zombie hit "28 Days Later," it's now six months after the rage virus wiped out the British Isles. Even though the reconstruction of the country is beginning, the virus is still alive and, with no outward symptoms, deadlier than ever. It's a strained story with an empty message, stiff and shallow characters, and overflowing with a barrage of turgid action sequences that look like inferior outtakes from the first movie.

Black Book 1/2
Set in the fall of 1944, a thriller about the Dutch underground based on true events that span nearly a year around Rachel Stein, a young, pretty German Jewish woman who falls for a high-ranking Gestapo officer while seeking revenge for her family's murders. Director Paul Verhoeven is as brazen as his heroine, played by a feisty Carice van Houten. He's made an insanely entertaining World War II melodrama, filled with his particular mix of mockery, cynicism and sadism.

The Condemned 1/2
A group of death row inmates compete in a deadly game on an abandoned island, where the surviving winner will avoid execution. Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones star in this disheartening, headache-inducing barrage of a movie.

Fracture
Ryan Gosling plays a hotshot assistant district attorney prosecuting a man (Anthony Hopkins) who readily admits to murdering his wife in this suspenseful and darkly stylish movie.

Georgia Rule
A rebellious teenager is taken to her mother's Idaho farm, where she meets the formidable matriarch of the family. Lindsay Lohan, Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda star in a movie full of dysfunctional family clichés, a hodgepodge of histrionics that veer between high physical comedy and dark family drama that's painful to endure.

The Hoax
Richard Gere is ideally cast as the writer Clifford Irving, who nearly pulled off one of the most audacious media scams in history when his bogus autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes was published in 1972.

Hot Fuzz
The guys from "Shaun of the Dead" -- Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost -- do for buddy-cop action tales what they did for zombie flicks on "Shaun of the Dead." The movie packs a lot of hearty laughs and few real guffaws as a hotshot London cop (Pegg) adjusts to life in a seemingly tranquil country town.

Journey From the Fall
Writer-director Ham Tran achieves the impossible with this sprawling tearjerker about a war-splintered South Vietnamese family trying to survive the aftermath of the American withdrawal and then seeking a new life in Southern California.

The Lives of Others
Winner of the best foreign film Oscar, the German film takes place five years before the fall of the East German government. A surveillance agent, in hopes of boosting his career, finds his own life changing when he takes on a job collecting evidence against a playwright and his actress girlfriend.

The Reaping 1/2
Hilary Swank stars as a debunker of religious phenomena who investigates what looks like Biblical plagues befalling a small Louisiana town. Even though Swank does a solid job, the movie doesn't have a prayer, due to hackneyed and sloppy writing.

Reign Over Me 1/2
Two former college teammates rekindle their friendship after one of them loses his family in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack. Adam Sandler has his meatiest -- and most maudlin -- screen role to date, and Don Cheadle brings his typical intelligence and nuance to what might have been a dry, straight-man role.

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)

Shakespeare Behind Bars
Review on Page 27. (PG-13) At 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Monday; 1 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; and 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival
Brief on Page 23.

Movie Museum

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

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

Becket
At 12:15, 3, 5:45 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

Le Petit Lieutenant
Hawaii premiere. At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Sunday.

Pan's Labyrinth
At 12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Monday.

The Little World of Don Camillo
At 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m. May 24.