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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. Then there's a battle and stuff. Anachronisms abound. (LB) 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. They may be the villains, but they're proper British villains -- and fun to root for. (MJ) Rated R





THE BUCKET LIST


Two strangers who are complete opposites (Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman) meet in a hospital, where both have been told they have a year left. They decide to join in a series of adventures they've scrawled on a "to do" list to be finished before they, you know, kick the bucket. (ES) Rated PG-13





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, as dad scares away boys and wrecks the family SUV. Just when things couldn't possibly get any funnier, Donny Osmond shows up as a gratingly cheery WASP dad. It's like Bad Boys meets Big Momma (but with Donny Osmond). (JS) Rated G





DOOMSDAY


In Doomsday, plague-ridden Scotland has been walled in and quarantined by Britain, leaving everyone inside to die. Turns out that Glasgow in 2035 looks a lot like New York in Escape From New York, only populated by the bad guys from Mad Max. The best thing about this pastiche film by Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) may be Rhona Mitra in the role of the Bad-Ass Chick. (BK) Rated R





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





FUNNY GAMES


Two psychotic yuppie youths take a milquetoast couple and their son hostage, then torment the hell out of them to the loping melody of Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of The Mountain King." Shades of Clockwork Orange. (LB) Rated R





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





JUMPER


In the world of Jumper, there are people who have the same superpower as Nightcrawler from X-Men. It stars Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: The Crappy Ones), whose career is the result of George Lucas's tragic senility. Critics pick on Christensen because he's boring, but they should pick on his girlfriend Rachel Bilson instead. I'm informed she's from TV. Jumper isn't worth even 90 minutes of your life. It may not even be worth the 90 seconds you'll spend reading this review. Seriously. (BK) Rated PG-13





JUNO


Offbeat and surprising, Jason Reitman's second film is about perky, outspoken, wisecracking Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), a 16-year-old with the kind of curiosity that leads her to have sex with her best pal Paulie (Michael Cera). That leads to a pregnancy test, the results, breaking the news to Paulie, a confession to her parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) and a trip to the abortion clinic. But something happens, and that's only the beginning of this sweet, funny, heartfelt film. (ES) 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





NEVER BACK DOWN


Director Jeff Wadlow's camera angles may not be predictable, but everything else about this message-heavy martial arts movie is. Sean Faris plays an uprooted teen who's getting beaten up by everybody until he seeks out a reclusive life-and-boxing coach (Djimon Hounsou). (ES) 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 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. With Eric Bana playing Henry VIII as a playboy tyrant, at least we get a sense of what absolute rule and arranged marriages were like. (MB) Rated PG-13





SEMI-PRO


Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell) is the owner-coach-player of a pro basketball team that's going down the tubes. He tries his best to keep crowds from dwindling by setting up whacked-out promotional stunts -- from outrageous costumes for his team to wrestling bears. There are good comic bits -- some physical, some verbal -- but everyone involved seems to be trying too hard to make this funny, and it comes off as tired. (ES) Rated R





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





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





THE VIOLIN


A traveling musician and his son -- who also happen to be minor gun and ammunition runners for mountain rebels -- return to their hometown to find it occupied by the Mexican army. (LB) NR