Capsule reviews

Capsule reviews of continuing films follow. (Reviews of new movies appear first in expanded format, then as capsules until the movie closes locally.)

ARE WE DONE YET? -- In this home-repair comedy, Ice Cube occupies a shoddy, slapped-together structure that collapses around him in every scene. I am speaking of the film itself. Mediocre from foundation to roof, this sequel to 2005’s tepid road-trip farce “Are We There Yet?” is the movie equivalent of a tear-down. Cube and Nia Long reprise their roles as squabbling newlyweds Nick Persons and Suzanne Kingston. With his new bride and scrappy stepchildren Lindsey and Kevin (Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden) overcrowding his apartment, Cube moves the clan to a quaint dream home in the country. The place proves to be a Pandora’s box of dry rot, substandard wiring and corroded plumbing. PG for innuendo and brief language.

BLADES OF GLORY — Will Ferrell and Jon Heder’s figure-skating comedy offers a few prime gags but a flimsy premise that loses its novelty quickly. The idea sounds like a great little “Saturday Night Live” sketch: Ferrell’s an arrogant rebel of a men’s champ, Heder’s his fastidious rival, and the two end up teaming as the first men’s pair after they’re barred for life from solo competition. And there’s about enough funny material for a great little “Saturday Night Live” sketch. The trouble is, there’s an extra 80 minutes or so of down time. PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image and some drug references. 94 minutes.

DISTURBIA — The filmmakers are quick to acknowledge “Rear Window” as a forerunner for the voyeurism of this thriller about a housebound teenager convinced his neighbor’s a serial killer. What they don’t have to say is that “Disturbia” is no “Rear Window,” because you already knew that. The latter is Hitchcock. The former is not. Yet it’s a decent-enough thriller that’s far smarter than most big studio flicks with teen protagonists. The movie’s completely predictable, but Shia LaBeouf delivers one of his most assured performances as a teen under house arrest who becomes a Peeping Tom, while director D.J. Caruso crafts some mildly clever moments of suspense. PG-13 for sequences of terror and violence, and some sensuality. 104 minutes.

FRACTURE — We know you’re thinking it. We were, too. So we may as well just acknowledge it, get it out of the way and move on as a group: Yes, Anthony Hopkins is indeed doing a version of patented Hannibal Lecter shtick. So yes, you have seen him do this before. But he does it so well and it’s still so much fun to watch, you may as well just give in. Hopkins stars as a Los Angeles executive accused of shooting his much younger wife (Embeth Davidtz) after he catches her having an affair. And he’s admitted he committed the crime. Then Ryan Gosling, as a hotshot prosecutor on his way to a high-paying corporate gig, gets assigned the case — and nothing turns out to be as easy as it initially seemed. Hopkins and Gosling needle each other, spar with each other and generally enjoy a fantastically smart, zippy banter. “Fracture” is stylish, suspenseful and unexpectedly funny — actually a lot funnier and a lot less stiff and self-serious than such a thriller might look. R for language and some violent content. 113 minutes.

HOT FUZZ — Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg do for buddy-cop action tales what they did for zombie flicks with “Shaun of the Dead”: Present a nice homage while tweaking the conventions and making jolly good fun of the genre’s cliches. Though longer than it needs to be and a bit draggy early on, the film packs a lot of hearty laughs and a few real guffaws as a hotshot London cop adjusts to life in a seemingly tranquil country town. Director Wright and his co-writer and star Pegg again make great use of the latter’s on-screen chemistry with “Shaun of the Dead” co-star Nick Frost. Pegg’s the able London cop, exiled to a sleepy town where he partners with an action-movie fanatic (Frost) to uncover the truth behind a series of bizarre, gruesome deaths. R for violent content including some graphic images, and language. 121 minutes.

IN THE LAND OF WOMEN — Adam Brody graduates from “The O.C” and proves he can carry a film, or at least struggle to carry a film with his dignity intact, even when it descends into sudsy melodrama. Brody stars as Carter Webb, a lovelorn L.A. writer (is there any other kind?) who flees for the safety and comfort of suburban Michigan after his Penelope Cruz-style, model-actress girlfriend dumps him (at a hipster coffee shop where fans ask her for autographs, naturally). He moves in with his aging, ailing grandmother (Olympia Dukakis, cantankerous again) but ends up spending more time with the women across the street: intriguing housewife Sarah (Meg Ryan) and her teenage daughter, Lucy (Kristen Stewart). With his feature debut, writer-director Jonathan Kasdan spells everything out about how the characters feel and how we should feel about them. He bangs us over the head with sentimental platitudes about love and loyalty and leaves nothing open for the audience’s interpretation. PG-13 for sexual content, thematic elements and language. 98 minutes.

THE INVISIBLE – Meet “Ghost” for teenagers. It has those “rules” that movies featuring those in the afterlife always have — you can’t move anything physically, nobody can hear you. Of course those rules are bent by the third act. It’s about a kid, a wealthy, smart, literary “golden boy” at a Seattle high school who is beaten to death by a girl thug and her gang of loan sharks just days before graduation. Disney’s Hollywood Pictures released the movie without previews or much fanfare, almost understandable, given several risible moments in the third act that involve the ghost of Nick (Justin Chatwin) screaming at his mother (Marcia Gay Harden), Annie, his killer (Margarita Levieva), cops and others who might be able to solve this crime by finding his body. The moments are semi-intentionally funny because they can’t see or hear him. Nick’s spirit follows Annie around, hoping for revenge, trying to help the police or his mom or friends put the pieces together. Then he gets to know her. She’s his mirror image. His life worked out; hers didn’t. It’s not that he excuses her actions. But the movie finds ways to give Annie wriggle room for both Nick’s sympathy, and ours. PG-13 for violence, criminality, sensuality and language, all involving teens. 96 minutes.

LUCKY YOU — Eric Bana has a decent poker face, and he uses it to excess in this romantic drama in which he blandly rambles through the world of competitive card-playing while trying to convince object of desire Drew Barrymore he’s more than just a compulsive gambler. The film from director Curtis Hanson crackles with life here and there from the occasional pleasant interchange between Bana and Barrymore and a few energetic moments from Robert Duvall. But it’s a curiously ordinary and uninvolving tale from the filmmaker behind such insightful character pieces as “Wonder Boys” and “L.A. Confidential.” Bana’s a Vegas poker master incessantly undone by rash emotion, who’s angling to compete in the World Series of Poker, whose players include his estranged dad (Duvall), a two-time champ quick to point out his progeny’s shortcomings. Barrymore’s an angelic innocent new to Vegas whose unlikely opposites-attract romance with Bana never rings true. PG-13 for some language and sexual humor. 123 minutes.

MEET THE ROBINSONS — There’s been such an onslaught of animated movies over the past year or so, it only seems like they’re coming at you in 3-D. This one actually does, and it’s one of the more tolerable of the genre in recent memory. Thankfully, it doesn’t consist of smart-alecky talking animals spewing one-liners and pop-culture references. And the three-dimensional effects are pretty spectacular. A lot of times with this technology, it’s too easy to zing and fling things at the audience, simply because you can. It’s gratuitous; the most recent “Spy Kids” movie is a prime example. Here, the effects spring organically from the story. You feel like you’re immersed, the way the ground slopes toward you or objects seem to come from behind you and enter the screen. The story itself, however, is strictly two-dimensional. Young Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen) is left at an orphanage as an infant. Being the science geek that he is, he invents a memory scanner to go back and find his mom. Instead, he winds up in the future, where a family of weirdos takes him in. G. 93 minutes.

NEXT — Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel and director Lee Tamahori muck up a fine Philip K. Dick story with this dumb thriller that offers a few unintentional laughs for its lousy dialogue and silly plot twists. Cage stars as a man able to see a couple of minutes into his future, a talent an FBI agent (Moore) needs to help stop a gang of terrorists from setting off a stolen nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. Biel co-stars as the woman of Cage’s dreams; she becomes bait for the feds and villains trying to get at the guy with the second sight. In transplanting the story “The Golden Man” from the future to the present day, the three screenwriters take only the basic clairvoyance notion and leave behind all the nuance, cunning and weirdness that make Dick’s tales so attractive in the first place. PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action and some language. 98 minutes.

SPIDER-MAN 3 — Forgiveness is on the minds of many characters this time. They ponder if they’re capable of offering it, worthy of receiving it, and whether it will ultimately prove divine. In that spirit, audiences may want to forgive director and co-writer Sam Raimi for creating a bloated, uneven behemoth with his third installment in the hugely successful comic-book franchise. (The film is so feverishly anticipated, however, and the entire series is so revered, that any critic’s opinion is irrelevant at the box office. Nevertheless, let’s press on.) Spidey the Third seems like an even greater letdown after Spidey Part Deux, which was the rare sequel that surpassed the original and, in retrospect, is looking better all the time. “Spider-Man 2” was driven by a strong story and compelling character development and didn’t just feel the need to dazzle us with elaborate effects sequences. Here, Raimi overloads us with more — more villains, more supporting characters and more plot lines, spread out across more time. PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence. 140 minutes.

VACANCY — This is the kind of movie that leaves you feeling icky all over afterward — grimy and sickened and desperately in need of a shower. Yes, it is a horror flick and so of course it’s supposed to be violent. But the way in which it gets off on the violence is especially distasteful and, frankly, misogynistic. The premise of the movie is just downright ridiculous — a paranoid amalgamation of small-town stereotypes and urban legends. Bickering husband and wife David and Amy Fox (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) take a short cut during an all-night road trip and wind up at a middle-of-nowhere motel, where the only other person around is the creepy night manager (Frank Whaley). In no time they realize the videos left on top of the TV are graphic snuff films that were shot right in their run-down room — and that if they don’t figure out a way to work together and escape, they’ll be the next victims. R for brutal violence and terror, brief nudity and language. 97 minutes.

WILD HOGS — Biker buddies Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy are not all that wild, and more important, not all that funny. The road romp from director Walt Becker is like his “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” on Maalox, the humor and hijinks tame and tranquil as though it were a middle-age epilogue to that raunchy campus comedy. The filmmakers simply fashion an excuse to send their weekend motorcyclists onto a cross-country road trip, then string together uninspired encounters with some fellow travelers and a hardcore biker gang headed by Ray Liotta, whose enthusiastic bad-boy performance is wasted in a woefully underwritten role. Marisa Tomei, Jill Hennessy and Tichina Arnold barely register as wives or lovers of our heroes. PG-13 for crude and sexual content and some violence. 99 minutes.

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