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by THE INLANDER & r & & r & 10,000 BC & r & & r & The story of some vaguely caveman-like people who get abducted by some vaguely Arab-looking dudes who schlep them all over the place, from what looks like Argentina to what looks like Japan until they finally arrive at the bank of a great river in the middle of a huge desert and are sold as slaves to ... wait for it ... the Egyptian empire. Anachronisms abound. (LB) Rated PG-13





THE BAND'S VISIT


An Egyptian police band, scheduled to perform in a ceremony, gets lost in a remote Israeli town. Israel wanted this film as its Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film, but was denied on grounds that half the dialogue is in English. Which exemplifies the kind of distrusting, bureaucratic narrow-mindedness that keeps Arab-Israeli relations so chilly. (MB) Rated PG-13





THE BANK JOB


A heist caper about a 1971 British safe-deposit box burglary becomes ridiculously entertaining in director Roger Donaldson's retelling, mostly because of the subsequent newspaper gag order and government cover-up. Jason Statham leads a bunch of patsies who think they're clever when they're actually being set up. (MJ) Rated R





COLLEGE ROAD TRIP


Martin Lawrence plays a cop and overprotective father ferrying his daughter (Raven-Symone) around the country to visit colleges. Good old-fashioned family hilarity ensues. Just when things couldn't possibly get any funnier, Donny Osmond shows up as a gratingly cheery WASP dad. (JS) Rated G





THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY


POV is everything in Diving Bell. Director Julian Schnabel wants us to experience what "Locked-In Syndrome" is like, so he adopts the viewpoint of Jean-Dominique Bauby's left eye -- the only part of his still-alert body that's not paralyzed. Schnabel does a miraculous job of making his film feel hemmed-in without seeming claustrophobic. It's relentlessly compelling. (LB) Rated PG-13





DRILLBIT TAYLOR


Three kids hire Owen Wilson as protection (a "Budget Bodyguard") from playground bullies. There's a joke in here about career suicide, but we'll restrain ourselves. However, Seth Rogen (who co-wrote this movie) has failed in restraining himself from indulging in every geeks-punch-meanies-and-get-the-babes gag he could muster. Rated PG-13





FOOL'S GOLD


Fool's Gold finds Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson as divorcing spouses, formerly a team of treasure hunters. Now he's made a new discovery in their longtime search for a lost 18th-century hoard and he needs her help, even though she's just whacked him across the head with a blunt object. Not one single element works. (MJ) Rated PG-13





HORTON HEARS A WHO!


All anyone had to do to get Dr. Seuss on film properly was to use animation instead of live actors in goofy costumes. This mostly computer-animated adaptation tells of a happy-go-lucky elephant (voice of Jim Carrey) who believes he can save a miniscule world inside a speck of dust, and it hits every mark. Cute and frantic and funny for kids; hip, outlandish and funny for adults. And Steve Carell gets to be more crazed than Carrey as the voice of the ditzy Mayor of Whoville. (ES) Rated G





IN BRUGES


Here's the story of two hitmen who have to lay low in the Belgian town of Bruges after a successful killing. Problem is, Bruges is so damn boring, they go stir crazy, causing them to miss a few important phone calls from their employer. Soon, the jumpy target has put a price on their head as well. Colin Farell seems funny here, rather than a complete and utter creep, like in all his other movies. (LB) Rated R





LEATHERHEADS


George Clooney's Leatherheads wants to combine zany comedy with an exploration of what was lost and what was gained when professional football moved from sandlot excitement to the predictability of a commissioner's office overseeing all the players and their agents. Leatherheads, in other words, wants to be a screwball comedy with social significance. While they shoulda stuck with the screwball stuff, the banter between Clooney and Renee Zellweger is the best part of the film. (MB) Rated PG-13





MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY


Frances McDormand, playing an out-of-work nanny, heads to the house of Amy Adams, playing something of a slutty wannabe starlet. Amy needs help with her "boys," who turn out to be not children, but three grown men all vying for her arm. A comedy of errors set in wartime London. Call up Grammy, it's time for a matinee! (LB) Rated PG-13





NIM'S ISLAND


Jodie Foster in a kids' movie! She plays an adventure writer who's afraid of having adventures. At least Gerard Butler (in full 300 machismo mode) and cute little Abigail Breslin (stranded on a remote island) will be able to teach Foster one valuable lesson: Leaving your apartment can be way scarier than dealing with Travis Bickle or Hannibal Lecter. (MB) Rated PG





THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL


Is Natalie Portman the scheming minx while Scarlett Johansson is the adulterous harlot? Or is it the other way around? No matter. A soap opera in Renaissance finery like this one doesn't trouble itself with characterization as long as it can get some of its characters coupled up and doing the four-poster romp. (MB) Rated PG-13





PERSEPOLIS


Based on Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels, the animated Persepolis tells the semi-autobiographical story of a childhood spent in Iran at the dawn of the Islamic revolution, a flight to Austria and an eventual return to the land of her birth. Simply animated, Persepolis looks nonetheless to be a complex portrait of coming of age amid alienation and fear on two separate continents. (LB) Rated PG-13





THE RUINS


Just for kicks, some friends go on an archaeological dig deep, deep in the Mexican jungle. Don't they realize that these ruins continue to be places of human sacrifice? Which can only mean, of course, that creepy-crawly bugs will start slithering inside people's foreheads. Didn't they read the guidebooks' warnings? (MB) Rated R





RUN FAT BOY RUN


David Schwimmer's feature directorial debut misses the mark, but it's not his fault. The story of a nice-guy loser (Simon Pegg) who panics and literally runs away from his pregnant bride-to-be (Thandie Newton) on their wedding day, and years later still pines for her -- even vows to run a marathon to win her back -- has a scattered script by Pegg and Michael Ian Black. The actors give their all, but it's only funny in starts and stops. Schwimmer's direction is competent; he just needs better material. (ES) Rated PG-13





SHINE A LIGHT


Martin Scorsese's promised "definitive" documentary about the Rolling Stones turns out to be a great-looking, great-sounding record of their "Bigger Bang" concert stop at New York's Beacon Theatre. For the most part, it's a terrific concert, with Mick Jagger proving again what a great front man he is. But the insertion of a few old interview segments does not a "definitive" documentary make. (ES) Rated PG-13





SHUTTER


Shutter is about newlyweds who move to Japan where the husband works as a photographer while his wife hangs out in Tokyo. Why, that's the plot of Lost in Translation! Except that Shutter works it without Bill Murray. If we were to rank movies based on how much Bill Murray they contain, The Man Who Knew Too Little would get a rating of five Bill Murrays, the highest ranking possible. Shutter would score zero Bill Murrays. In all of film history, there is nothing lower than zero Bill Murrays.(BK) Rated PG-13





SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES


The bestselling book series crosses to the screen, with the fatherless Grace family moving in to the creepy Spiderwick mansion and finding lots of dark secrets. Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) plays the twins Jared and Simon, and puts on a pretty darn good American accent. There's plenty of fantasy to go around, but also some frightening bits that might freak out viewers under 7, as well as a believable human element. (ES) Rated PG





STOP-LOSS


Director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) taps Americans' collective angst about the war in Iraq by depicting troops (Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt) whose position is untenable in Iraq (especially when they're compelled to return for a second, involuntary tour of duty), untenable back in the States, untenable even in their own minds. (MAJ) Rated R





VANTAGE POINT


Eight different perspectives from an attempted assassination of the U.S. president twist and turn this action thriller in all directions. Dennis Quaid stars as a Secret Service agent uncovering a massive plot against America. Forest Whitaker and Sigourney Weaver co-star as witnesses and possibly plotters in this political whodunit. (TLM) Rated PG-13





SUPERHERO MOVIE


Like Scary Movie and Date Movie, but with, you know, superheroes. Tracy Morgan better have got paid a stupid amount of money for this... (LB) Rated PG-13





21


A based-on-fact, Hollywoodized story about the fellow (Kevin Spacey) who masterminded, along with a group of sharp MIT students, a plan to take Vegas for large sums of money. They succeed, they get caught, things go awry, then turn bad. Fresh from his lead role in Across the Universe, Jim Sturgess -- playing the leader of the group -- puts on a solid American accent and acts convincingly frightened when casino heavy Laurence Fishburne turns tough on him. (ES) Rated PG-13