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By The Inlander & r & & r & 28 WEEKS LATER


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





BUG


Where Bug succeeds, it does so by inducing in you the ordinary distress of modern living Agnes (Ashley Judd) lives with on a daily basis. She drinks too much. She does drugs. She has, at best, one friend. She is harassed via telephone by her ex-husband. And she's got other ghosts haunting her, too. There aren't armies of creepy-crawlies all over the screen here -- the creepy-crawlies get into your mind. And yet, the more Bug embraces its ethos of nervous paranoia and conspiracy-spiked secrecy, the less satisfying it becomes, as if putting a concrete name to the madness somehow makes it less mad. (MJ) Rated R





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





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





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





PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END


Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley return to argue, do battle, and (this time) star in a film with a story that makes little sense -- something about "nine pirate lords" and hints of them going up against Lord Beckett, who wants to "rule the seas." Visual effects are great, but add nothing to the story; the soundtrack is ear-splittingly bombastic; Keith Richards pops by for five minutes to give "advice" to his son (Depp) and plunk a tune on a pirate guitar. Arrrgh! (ES) Rated PG-13





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





WAITRESS


At the center of this marvel of a movie is a near-perfect performance by Keri Russell as Jenna, the waitress who finds strength enough to get out of a bad, loveless, exploitive marriage and the good sense not to go hopping right into another one. Adrienne Shelly's deceptively sharp script remains steadfast, keeping expectations low then making all the right counterintuitive choices. It's the best, most satisfying film about personal growth I've seen this year. (LB) 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