Reviewer key (BF) = Bill Forman (GD) = Geoffrey Dunn (GG) = Gretchen Giles (JMA) = Jeffrey M. Anderson (MSG) = Michael S. Gant (RvB) = Richard von Busack (SJP) = Sarah Jane Phelan (SP) = Steve Palopoli (TI) = Todd Inoue Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG; 90 min.) Ray Romano finally loses his shit when he learns that not everybody loves Raymond. Wait, that's not right. Actually, the "meltdown" here is the global-warming kind, with all the kiddie-friendly creatures voiced by Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo returning to deal with the glacial run-off. (Capsule preview by SP) Show times. Inside Man (R; 129 min.) Finally, a Spike Lee movie to get excited about. Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster star in this thriller about a bank-robbery-turned-hostage situation that is more complex than it first appears. By the way, has anyone else noticed that Washington's choice of roles has rebounded nicely after hitting rock bottom in the late '90s and early '00s? (Training Day excepted, of course). Is there some kind of class he can teach on this? I have already signed up Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. (Capsule preview by SP) Show times. Joyeux Noël Full text review. (R; 116 min.) Christian Carion's version of the legend of the Christmas Truce of 1914. Without too much stretching, Clarion adds a "duty vs. beauty" subplot with opera diva Anna Sörensen (Diane Kruger) and her former partner Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Fürmann). In the opening titles, Clarion revisits Impressionist landscapes to sum up the world before the divide of the Great War, but he also makes the Flanders battlefields look as spacious as a Breughel landscape. Carion includes a war sermon given by a purple-garbed bishop (Ian Richardson). When we hear him preaching about "this crusade, the holy war against those who hide behind women and children," it seems Carion also wants to point this film's barb at the current demagogues, who persuade soldiers to fight new wars for all the old reasons. (RvB) Show times. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (PG-13; 89 min.) If you're like, "Who's Larry the Cable Guy?," it's because you live in Santa Cruz, where many of us enjoy the freedom of not having to listen to assholes like him. Larry is the alias of comedian Dan Whitney, who uses the character to come up with racist, homophobic and mostly humor-free material like "There'll be a new show out next week called Black Eye on the Queer Guy." Really, that is one of his jokes. Apologists call it satire along the lines of Jeff Foxworthy, but of course it isn't. It's clear from his right-wing radio show that Whitney's views are basically the same as Larry's, and they're mostly aimed at beating up gays and pushing white supremacy. What, you don't think that's hilarious? Anyway, now both Dan and Larry have their own movie. If you liked Andrew Dice Clay, you'll love this even more. (Capsule preview by SP) Show times. Lonesome Jim (R; 91 min.) Steve Buscemi directs Casey Affleck in a story about a man who returns home to his country roots only to discover that his mother (Mary Kay Place) is a pain, his father (Seymour Cassel) is aloof and his brother (Kevin Corrigan) is troubled. Love turns up in the form of Liv Tyler (only in the movies). Show times. Madea's Family Reunion (PG-13; 107 min.) Tyler Perry doesn't care that you don't want to see his movies, whitey. His plays featuring this character have grossed nearly $100 million, and his first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, made back 10 times its budget. And yet the only place you see him interviewed is on BET. Let's put it this way: he's not kidding when he says he is making movies for a particular African American audience the studios don't understand. This time granny Madea (played once again by Perry) has to deal with more crazy drama while planning the family reunion. (Capsule preview by SP) Show times. Match Point Full text review. (R; 124 min.) Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays Chris, a striving Irish émigré. Chris is a tennis pro turned country-club instructor. Chris has an easy climb up—or rather, aboard—his student Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Soon, he marries into her wealthy family, but he is tempted beyond resistance by Nola (Scarlett Johansson), the fiancee of Chloe's brother, Tom. With her pillowy mouth and flat, weary diction, Johansson is a good physical match for Rhys-Meyers, a male ingénue with the widest-set eyes in the movies. This is an engrossing, rather than great, melodrama; in the end, it must be the locations that have earned Match Point so much praise. Allen's vision of Thameside condos and modern-art galleries shows how crabbed and ugly Mike Nichols' Closer was. And the richer London districts look realistically like elegance without fuss. What American doesn't feel inadequate in the face of the accents, those homes? In this aura of social discrimination, Allen is rediscovering the Jewish unease that made him world-famous. (RvB) Show times. Mrs. Henderson Presents Full text review. (R; 103 min.) Stephen Frears' newest film follows the true-life creation of the Windmill Theater, a London "revuedeville" burlesque house. It arose during the interwar years, persisted through the blitz and survived until 1964. Judi Dench plays the proprietress, Mrs. Henderson, as filthy rich a widow as ever ported around a dyspeptic dachshund. Her real foil is a theatrical man who rejoices in the name Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins). The "but seriously, folks" aspect kicks in when Hitler begins his assault. As the Windmill Theater shivers from bombardment, so are we inclined to shiver when Judi Dench speaks up for the noble, patriotic tendencies of the skin show. Both Dench and her leading man Bob Hoskins carry on with enough restraint to sell this well-meaning bunk. (RvB) Show times. Neil Young: Heart of Gold Full text review. (PG; 103 min.) Jonathan Demme's new concert movie is a show of occasional but profound beauty, though it's neither as all-out magnificent as Stop Making Sense nor as infused with the lively street-singer lunacy of Demme's neglected 1996 Storefront Hitchcock. The new songs here are about fields of wheat, little boys fishing, trains taking passengers across the prairie and the wind bearing it all away. Young's long look back is honestly earned; the set of songs came after a near-fatal brain aneurysm. Still, the nostalgia is so saturated that there's an edge of schmaltz to it. The film doesn't really bliss out until the second half, when Young revisits his song catalog, from "I Am a Child" to "Old Man." And the concert gains male-female tension when backup vocalist Emmylou Harris moves from backstage to the forefront. If the music is uneven, Demme's camera is always in the right place to observe the contrast of steadiness and fallibility that's essential to Young's music: that falsetto that gets more beautiful the more it crumbles. (RvB) Show times. The New World Full text review. (PG-13; 150 min.) A symphonic view of the meeting of two worlds in the persons of Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell, never better) and the Algonquin princess Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher). F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby: "For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." That about sums it up; Terrence Malick constructs a rapt, slightly stoned but always wondrous view of this historic encounter. In this lavish yet never cheaply decorative epic, Malick offers a vision of simplicity and harmony that may yet overturn the absolutism of the power-mad. (RvB) Show times. The Pink Panther (2006) (PG; 92 min.) What can you say about the idea of remaking the already terribly overrated Pink Panther movies with Steve Martin? Dumb dumb, dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb ... (Capsule preview by SP) Show times. [ Movies Central | Metroactive Central ]