What's happening at cinemas in the Richmond area? This listing was prepared by Daniel Neman from reviews that have appeared in The Times-Dispatch. Reviews were written by Neman unless otherwise noted. Stars are awarded on a 1-4 basis, with 4 being the highest.

CAPOTE ( ) -- The best movie of the year (so far) also features the best performance of the year (so far). Philip Seymour Hoffman simply is Truman Capote, the writer whose overweening desire to write the great "In Cold Blood" eventually led to his own destruction. The closer he gets to his ambition, the more of his humanity he loses. It's a stunning performance in a powerful film made with admirable restraint by director Bennett Miller, making his first narrative film. With Catherine Keener as his initially faithful friend Harper Lee, whose "To Kill a Mockingbird" comes out during the time of this picture. 1:52. Rated R (violent images and brief strong language). Westhampton.

DOOM () -- It's already the worst movie of the year before it gets even worse. Of all the special effects, the biggest and least believable is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who proves that his earlier acceptable performances were just a fluke. Here he actually tries to emote, which is scary, but not in a good way. He stars as Sarge, who leads a bunch of Marines in a fight against a bunch of underlighted beasties on Mars. It's terrible as it is, and then someone gets the idea to shoot part of it like the first-person shooter in the video game. And then it gets even worse than that: The Rock and some other guy duke it out with ludicrously fake pro-wrestling moves, enhanced by special effects. 1:35. Rated R (violence, gore, language). Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center.

DREAMER: INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY ( ) -- Honestly, it seems much more inspired by "National Velvet" than anything else, but this love story between a girl and her once-injured horse somehow gives you a lump in the throat. Dakota Fanning stars as the girl, with Kurt Russell as her father and Kris Kristofferson as the crotchety old grandfather who is softened by his granddaughter and the heart of the horse she loves. Though directed with a surplus of gloppiness, eventually we don't mind the honeyed vistas and the tinkling piano music. It's a family film that can truly be enjoyed by everyone in the family. Including the dog. 1:33. Rated PG. Carmike, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center.

ELIZABETHTOWN ( ) -- There is a great movie to be made from the bones of "Elizabethtown," but "Elizabethtown" isn't it. What should be a simple story about the eternal balance between life and death -- a man finds unexpected love at his father's funeral -- goes off on so many tangents that we stop caring about any of them. Orlando Bloom stars as the man who cares more about his dead career than his dead dad, and his life is turned around by Kirsten Dunst, as an annoyingly perky flight attendant. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, which means the last 15 minutes has something to do with music and finding America, and nothing to do with the rest of the movie. 2:00. Rated PG-13 (language, sexual references). Carmike, Commonwealth, Short Pump.

FLIGHTPLAN ( ) -- In her desperate, panicked search for her missing daughter, Jodie Foster manages to alienate the audience. The daughter disappears from a jetliner, and either Foster is the victim of a huge conspiracy that anticipates everything she and her daughter are going to do, or she is crazy. Most of the movie is spent watching the characters looking through an airplane, an activity that is considerably less interesting than the filmmakers seem to think. It's a sloppily made thriller that hopes its tension will glide us past the many flaws in its logic, only it doesn't have enough tension. 1:35. Rated PG-13 (violence, intense plot). Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center.

THE FOG ( ) -- The year 2005 has been officially recognized as The Year of the Unnecessary Remake, and "The Fog" fits right in. A fog that is less menacing than its director intends threatens a quaint Oregon/Canada island, and the ghostly figures inside it kill residents for reasons that are readily apparent from the beginning but are supposed to be revealed at the end. One major problem is that the director has a surprisingly limited number of horror-movie tricks at his disposal, and their resultant overuse becomes tiresomely repetitive. Tom Welling stars, so naturally he is sometimes seen without a shirt. 1:35. Rated PG-13 (violence, disturbing images, brief sexuality, lots of underwear). Chester, Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center.

G ( ½) -- The idea works, even if the movie doesn't: This is a hip-hop version of "The Great Gatsby," the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about class, money and social striving. Richard T. Jones plays Summer G, the hip-hop impresario with the bling, the babes and the Bentleys to prove that he has it made -- a status he hopes will attract the woman who left him back in college because he was too poor. That woman is now married to a lawyer played by Blair Underwood, who is the best thing in the movie, capturing all of the physical menace and arrogance of great wealth. The film was shot on the cheap, and you should never make a movie about boundless, conspicuous wealth on an indie budget. (Reviewed by The Orlando Sentinal.) 1:37. Rated R (language, sexuality, violence). Chester, Chesterfield, Southpark, Virginia Center.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK ( ½) -- Writer-director George Clooney's heroic treatment of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow is that rarest of things, a movie for adults. David Strathairn is outstanding as the fearless and direct Murrow, who pushed aside journalism's traditional neutrality to expose what he thought was a danger to the nation, the Communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Clooney obviously sees parallels between McCarthy's tactics (depriving those he accuses of due process under the law and trying to smear anyone who criticizes him) and today's politics. Filmed in glorious black and white. 1:26. Rated PG. Commonwealth, Westhampton.

THE GOSPEL ( ) -- Full of the Spirit, but movies need to be more full of talent. VCU's Boris Kodjoe stars as a popular singer of sinful songs who visits his ailing preacher father and is moved to start singing gospel again. Surprisingly, though much of it is good, the film's gospel music is not great -- the most notable exception being Yolanda Adams' rousing "Victory." The familiar story of the prodigal son is told with much feeling, but it is made at the highest level of obviousness, is ineptly edited and moves so slowly it seems too long. 1:40. Rated PG. Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Southpark, Virginia Center.

THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED ( ½) -- Fans of golf are more likely to be interested in this true story than those who don't play and have never heard of the three players who went head to head to head at the 1913 U.S. Open. Shia LaBeouf is underdeveloped as Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur (and former caddy at that very course) who took on his idol, the greatest golfer in the world at the time, an Englishman named Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane). Though the match at the time was seen as between America and England, or between a professional and an amateur, the filmmakers take the position that it was a class struggle between the poor (Ouimet and Vardon) and the wealthy (everyone else). Rated PG. Carmike.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE ( ) Too little money and too little script doom this deadpan story of ordinary small-town guy Viggo Mortensen who proves narily adept at killing the vicious criminals who come into his diner. The film is on life support except for the occasional outbursts of violence and sex, so it is easy to see what interests director David Cronenberg. Though it is barely an hour and a half long, the story is underdeveloped and is told too slowly. It gets so you can predict every scene, except the ending, because it goes against what we have learned throughout the rest of the film. 1:33. Rated R (much violence, much gore, much sex, nudity). Carmike.

IN HER SHOES ( ) -- This flawed comic-dramatic story of the conflict between sisterly love and sibling rivalry is mostly enjoyable, somewhat. Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette play sisters who are completely unlike each other in every way. They endure a schism that must be overcome before either can be happy again, and the person to help them to that end is Shirley MacLaine as the grandmother neither knew they had. The senior citizens in this picture all talk like they are in a sitcom, but the other characters are mostly witty. With a picture like this, a good feel-good ending goes a long way. 2:07. Rated PG-13. Carmike, Commonwealth, Short Pump, West Tower.

KIDS IN AMERICA ( ½) -- Strangled by its own good intentions, this is a manifesto arguing for more freedom for high school students from overbearing school administrations. It's disguised in the robes of a comedy, but it's almost never funny and it's hard to be much interested in anything if the climax consists of a bunch of kids calling people at random out of the phone book. A good guess is that the filmmakers are still upset at their high school principals, and rather than getting over it, like the rest of us did, they decided to make a movie about it. 1:31. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, themes, language). Carmike.

THE LEGEND OF ZORRO ( ) -- With its tongue entrenched firmly in its cheek, this swashbuckling film never fails to wink appealingly at the audience. Antonio Banderas plays the masked righter of wrongs whose wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, wants him to retire while he still can. But he is called to end an enormous and frankly nonsensical criminal conspiracy involving the vote for California statehood, nitroglycerin, a secret order of knights and the Confederate Army of 1850. 1850? It's a lot of fun, but it's a good half-hour too long, eventually making the many sword fights repetitive. 2:04. Rated PG. Chester, Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Crossings, Short Pump, Southpark, Virginia Center, West Tower.

NORTH COUNTRY ( ) -- As we watch "North Country," we wonder why we don't care about the people in it, and then we realize it is because it overstates every simple point it wants to make. Charlize Theron stars in a fictionalized version of a true story of a woman who sued the iron ore mine where she worked for sexual harassment, and it became a class action suit. Frances McDormand plays her only friend and Sissy Spacek plays her mother, making three Academy Award-winning actresses on the screen with little to show for it. For untold reasons, the movie strays into the irrelevant question of who fathered the main character's oldest child. 1:50. Rated R (scenes of sexual harassment). Carmike, Chester, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Southpark, Virginia Center, West Tower.

PRIME ( ½) -- The radiant and newly divorced Uma Thurman finds love with the younger Bryan Greenburg, and tells therapist Meryl Streep all about it. Eventually, a surprise is revealed, although it is already known to anyone who has seen the preview or even the poster. Where the movie works, though, is in the first hour, before the surprise is unveiled, with Streep and Thurman wonderfully playing off each other. The material never quite rises to the actresses' talents, but you can take solace in the last moment, when Thurman looks into the camera and soulfully conveys three acts' worth of emotion in just one look. It's priceless. (Reviewed by the Los Angeles Daily News.) 1:46. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, including language). Carmike, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center, West Tower.

PROOF ( ) -- The smartest film of the year so far. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the daughter of brilliant-but-insane mathematician Anthony Hopkins, and there is reason to think she may have inherited his affliction as well as his intelligence. The movie version almost retains the power of the staggering moment that ends the play's Act I, and it's worth seeing just for that. The script is a bit talky, but the talk is brilliant, fascinating and acidly funny. Hope Davis is wonderful as Paltrow's more together sister who is the opposite of the terrific person she thinks she is. Note: Large portions of this film are filled with people talking about mathematics. 1:34. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, language). West Tower.

ROLL BOUNCE ( ) -- There is more stuff going on in this 1970s roller boogie comedy-drama-romance than there are mirrored panels on a disco ball. Crammed with enough real-life traumas and feel-good turnarounds to fill a couple of after-school specials, it's wildly uneven. The likable Bow Wow stars as a young man whose favorite skating rink has closed and so he has to go to the snootier rink uptown; his mother died and he has conflicts with his father. All of the plot lines converge -- you guessed it -- at the Big Skate-Off, against his arch-rivals at the snooty rink. (Reviewed by the Associated Press.) 1:52. Rated PG-13 (language, crude humor). Virginia Center.

SAW II ( ½) -- This time, the ordeal is less grueling than simply distasteful. Plans for this sequel were announced before there was a script or story, and the finished product is a logical outcome from such a creative impulse. The clockwork sadist with a God complex returns with an even more elaborate, if less inspired, "test" for a group of "guilty" victims. The script is more concerned with being clever than intelligent. The twists and spring-loaded traps feel strung together arbitrarily, and the filmmakers resort to ADD editing to create the illusion of something happening. (Reviewed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.) 1:33. Rated R (violence, gore, terror, language, drugs). Chester, Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Southpark, Virginia Center.

SEPARATE LIES ( ½) -- As grown-up as a movie can get, with a fine cast in a strongly crafted tale about the calamities that can wreck a relationship and the love that can redeem it. Tom Wilkinson is married to Emily Watson, but their calm is shattered when their housekeeper's husband is killed while on his bike. Some evidence points to neighbor Rupert Everett, who seems too friendly to Watson's character. Coverups, recriminations and lustful complications follow. First-time director Julian Fellowes needs help working with actors, but as a writer he retains the exquisite craftsmanship he showed in "Gosford Park." (Reviewed by the Houston Chronicle.) 1:25. Rated R (language, adult themes). West Tower.

SKY HIGH ( ½) -- High school is tough, even when you have superpowers. In this delightful family frolic, a magnet school for kids with superabilities turns out to be just like any other high school, with unrequited love, bullies in the lunchroom and cliques. The difference is that they can run like The Flash or set things on fire like The Human Torch -- and the cliques are divided into heroes and sidekicks. The jokes are consistently funny, and the filmmakers show they try hard by giving even the minor characters distinct personalities. With Kurt Russell as the lead character's father. In his youth, he would have played the lead character. 1:34. Rated PG. Byrd.

STAY ( ½) -- Don't go. It's one of those pretentious and irritating films in which reality is skewed and nothing makes sense until the ending -- but in this case, the more you think about it, it doesn't make sense then, either. A passionless Ewan McGregor plays a psychiatrist who tries to stop his new patient from committing suicide, but starts to become increasingly disconnected from reality. When the not unexpected explanation is revealed, we can only wonder why the story wasn't told from someone else's perspective. 1:25. Rated R (language, disturbing images). Carmike.

TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE ( ) -- Just who exactly is this movie for? Too childish for adults but too adult for children, it tells a simple fairy tale of a man who finds himself accidentally married to a remarkably animate corpse, but who still loves the living woman to whom he is engaged. The stop-motion animation is extraordinarily smooth and the cast of voices couldn't be better, but the jokes that they speak are too easy and not funny (a skeleton says he likes a woman with meat on her bones, etc.). Danny Elfman contributes four powerfully dull songs that very much need to be cut. 1:14. Rated PG (much animated gross stuff). Commonwealth.

TWO FOR THE MONEY ( ) Sleazeball Al Pacino turns Matthew McConaughey into a sleazeball, and they have an unconvincing sleazeball surrogate father-son relationship and why, exactly, are we supposed to care about either one? Pacino's character lures McConaughey's into the high-priced, fast-paced world of sports betting, where they exploit the vulnerable. Sleazeballs. We root for nobody, and in a movie that is at least peripherally about sports, someone should be rooting for something. As Pacino's wife, Rene Russo is not exactly interesting, but she is less uninteresting than the others. 1:55. Rated R (pervasive language, sexuality). Carmike.

WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT ( ) Alas, the brilliant Wallace and Gromit movies, which are so spectacularly funny when they are just 30 minutes long, can't support the length of a feature film. Though the stop-motion animation is better and more expressive than ever, the movie soon turns into a parody of various horror films and a compendium of other unrelated references. Although the idea of a giant were-rabbit threatening a town's vegetables is slightly amusing and certain individual scenes are wonderfully droll, there is not enough cracking material to fill out the film. It would probably be better if it were just a half-hour. 1:21. Rated G. Chester, Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center, West Tower.

THE WEATHER MAN ( ) Cold, gray and forbidding, and this is a comedy? Well, sort of. The perfectly cast Nicolas Cage stars as a Chicago weatherman whose life is falling apart. He still loves the wife (Hope Davis) from whom he is separated, his children are emotionally distant, his father (Michael Caine) has never shown him love or respect and he is beginning to question the usefulness of his profession -- not to mention its accuracy. It may be a little aimless, and its point may be minimal, but it impressively maintains an air of bitter, depressive humor emphasized by the lowering clouds of a Chicago winter. 1:35. Rated R (language, including sexual content). Chesterfield, Commonwealth, Short Pump, Virginia Center, West Tower.

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