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By The Inlander & r & & r & 28 WEEKS LATER & r & & r & Seven months have passed since the last Rage Virus victim died of starvation in London. The U.S. Army controls the empty city's quarantined district where adolescent siblings Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) are reunited with their father Don (Robert Carlyle) after his narrow escape from a marauding band of diseased zombies that ostensibly took the life of the children's mother Alice (Catherine McCormack). Enormous plot holes, indistinct swipes at social satire and a wayward emphasis on feeble child characters contribute to the film's tedious clinicism. (CS) Rated R





BLADES OF GLORY


Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) play figure skating rivals who get in a fistfight, earn lifetime bans, then must team up as the world's first all-male pair to continue skating. A movie about freakish effeminacy and close proximity between male testicles and male faces, Blades of Glory succeeds because it relies on situational discomfort, not homophobia, and because it doesn't take up too much of our time. (LB) Rated PG-13





DELTA FARCE


Larry the Cable Guy, DJ Qualls (the creepy skinny kid from Road Trip) and Bill Engvall are surprised to hear that their incompetent National Guard detachment is headed for Fallujah. The plane heads off course, though, and the crew believe they've landed in insurgent-controlled territory. Turns out they're in Mexico. Har-har. (LB) Rated PG-13





DISTURBIA


Kale (Shia LeBeouf), under house arrest, without his broadband Xbox connection and totally iTunes-less, finds alternate ways of spending his summer. Like spying on his neighbors, one of whom seems to be a serial murderer. An initially clever, intriguing remake of Hitchcock's Rear Window for teen audiences becomes a listless slasher flick. (LB) Rated PG-13





THE EX


Wow, battle of the former television stars! Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) plays Chip, a horny, wheelchair-bound sociopath who wants nothing more than to steal a former fling (Amanda Peet of Studio 60) from amoral slacker Tom (Zach Braff, only ever good in Scrubs, seasons 1-3). There's very little to like about this film. (LB) Rated PG-13.





FRACTURE


Poor big-screen courtroom thrillers: Law and Order has eaten up every conceivable murder angle, cat-and-mouse game and cross-examination conceit. Fracture gets by on pure ego. Anthony Hopkins plays a genius aircraft designer who shoots his wife in the face. Ryan Gosling is the cocky DA who has one foot in the private sector. He's drawn into Hopkins' case when the old fart goads him at the arraignment. What should have been a clock-punching exercise totally unravels Gosling's life. This is an excellent, tense clash of personas. (LB) Rated R





GEORGIA RULE


Garry Marshall, who hasn't made a solid movie since the woefully underrated Nothing in Common, directs a script by Mark Andrus (As Good as It Gets) about three generations of women: feisty grandma (Jane Fonda), exasperated mom (Felicity Huffman) and wild, rebellious, drunken daughter (Lindsay Lohan), who are brought together to straighten out the youngest among them. Hmm, sounds like Lohan has had plenty of life experience for the part already. (ES) Rated R





HOME OF THE BRAVE


Spokane's own North by Northwest's production of the back-from-Iraq war story has had plenty of drama behind it. After a December release in New York and L.A., a national-run was scrubbed. Despite the rocky start, however, the film has top-notch credentials -- Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, Christina Ricci and 50 Cent are the stars, while Hollywood veteran Irwin Winkler directs. Heck, even Sheryl Crow sings the theme song. For locals, it will be fun to watch actors famous to us, like Nike Imoru, Wes Deitrick, Jhon Goodwin and Joyce Cameron chew up some Spokane scenery at the Spokane Valley Mall, Deaconess, Anthony's restaurant and the Dutch Bros. coffee shop on Second Avenue. The story is topical, too, as post-traumatic stress disorder related to the war in Iraq is just getting recognized in the mainstream media. (TSM) Rated R





HOT FUZZ


The boys who gave us Shaun of the Dead are back in town, this time hilariously spoofing cop-buddy films. Simon Pegg plays a London cop who's so good at the job, he's sent away to a small village so other city cops won't look bad. When villagers start getting knocked off -- and authorities are convinced they're all accidents -- our hero, and his well-meaning oaf of a partner (Nick Frost) literally leap into action. As violent as it is funny. (ES) Rated R





HURRICANE ON THE BAYOU


Katrina can be discussed in human, social and political terms in forums ranging from political roundtables to Spike Lee films. But Hurricane on the Bayou examines the hurricane as an ecological issue. Beginning as a documentary about the Mississippi Delta, the filmmakers end up turning their IMAX cameras on Katrina as an example of a worst-case scenario. The human and economic costs of ecological mismanagement are laid bare in 45 minutes. (MD) Not Rated; no deaths are depicted





THE INVISIBLE


A high school loner -- the artsy type, not the murderous type -- runs afoul of some fellow students and ends up way dead. Or, at least, mostly dead. His ghost leaves his body, returns to school and, amidst recontextualizing the world and attempting to communicate with his girlfriend (a la Patrick Swayze), realizes that he can totally still save his own life. (LB) Rated PG-13





MEET THE ROBINSONS


Lewis is an orphan who wants to be an inventor. A shadowy figure lurking at his science fair, though, sends Lewis hurtling forward in time to confront his future. A cute, incoherent story about perseverance, Meet The Robinsons will convince you that, no matter how big a loser you've been, you can achieve anything. Something the filmmakers will want to remember as they go looking for their next project. (LB) Rated G





ROVING MARS


The sound alone is deafening, and juxtaposed with Phillip Glass' crystalline musical score, the roar of a rocket pushing the rovers into space is impressive, as are the sights and sounds of the parachute test in a giant wind hangar. But this short IMAX film loses focus -- is it trying to recreate the surface of Mars with the help of CGI animation, or is it examining the space program? (MD) Rated G





SHREK THE THIRD


Shrek's deconstruction of fairy tales managed to be both deliciously subversive and heartwarmingly traditional. Shrek 2 stunned me in that it was even smarter and slyer and more seditious than the first. We've been primed for the tweaking of fairy tales and the post-ironic spin on myths and mythmaking. We've seen it. We've been around the park twice, bought the T-shirt and the Shrek ears, sent a postcard home. Now we're bored. Shrek the Third is... fine. But I wanted a lot more than "fine." I expected much, much more than "fine." (MJ) Rated PG





SPIDER-MAN 3


The first film was pretty good, the second was great, this one ups the action and the angst (and the budget) and is the best of the series. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) have everything going for them, till a black blob of goo drops from the sky, just about the same time a bunch of different people turn into monsters -- with Spidey in their sights. Multi-leveled storytelling zips along at a frantic pace, but director Sam Raimi, despite leaving questions about the power of the goo, maintains masterful control. Dark, but lots of fun. (ES) Rated PG-13





WILD HOGS


Four middle-aged friends, sick of their jobs, bored with their lives and generally having nothing to look forward to, take a cross-country motorcycle trip. Four essentially backboneless suburbanite dudes frequenting biker bars? You can be sure there'll be a little love and a whole lot uh learnin'. (LB) Rated PG-13