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Movies opening this weekend, still in theaters
Jim Carrey stars in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone."
Updated: April 15, 2013 6:19AM
OPENING THIS WEEK
BEYOND THE HILLS
Rated
No MPAA rating
Stars
Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta
The friendship between two young women who grew up in the same orphanage is tested when one tries to convince the other to leave her convent and move to Germany with her.
THE CALL
Rated
R for violence, disturbing content and some language
Stars
Halle Berry, Michael Eklund, Abigail Breslin
A veteran 911 operator is haunted by the memory of her phone encounter with a serial killer, until another woman calls after being kidnapped by him.
THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE
Rated
PG-13 for sexual content, dangerous stunts, a drug-related incident and language
Stars
Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Alda
The career of a flamboyant Las Vegas stage magician (Carell) hits the skids after he’s consistently shown up by the stunts of a street magician (Carrey).
UPSIDE DOWN
★★★ Rated
PG-13 for some violence
Stars
Kirsten Dunst, Jim Sturgess, Timothy Spall
Romeo and Juliet had it easy compared to the star-crossed, gravitationally challenged lovers in this wildly implausible but visually dazzling sci-fi fantasy romance. Sturgess and Dunst star as Adam and Eden, who meet as kids while climbing a mountain on each of their opposing twinned planets, which somehow exist face to face and separated by a few hundred yards. Contact between residents of the two worlds, however, is punishable by death, leading to a violent separation when they’re teens. Grown-up Adam eventually risks his life by searching for Eden on her planet. The long, confusing opening prologue should clue you in that what’s to follow isn’t going to make much sense. If you have enough of amorous inclination, though, you might find that the ardent mood and romantic imagery of “Upside Down” makes sense in a way that works just fine without logic.
STILL PLAYING
DEAD MAN DOWN
Rated
R for violence, language throughout and a scene of sexuality
Stars
Colin Ferrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard
The right-hand man (Ferrell) of a New York City crime lord is seduced by one of his boss’s victims (Rapace), who’s seeking revenge.
EMPEROR
Rated
PG-13 for violent content, brief strong language and smoking
Stars
Tommy Lee Jones, Matthew Fox
Despite the presence of Jones as Supreme Commander Douglas Mac-Arthur, this unconvincing and ineffective story about the early days of America’s occupation of Japan never rings true. Perhaps because a large part of it is fictional: the tragic lost-love story of General Bonner Fellers (Fox), revisited in flashback, as he investigates whether or not to put Emperor Hirohito on trial as a war criminal. There’s abundant raw material for a first-class historical drama about the Occupation but, unfortunately, this isn’t it.
NO
★★★ ½ Rated
R for language
Stars
Gael Garcia Bernal, Antonia Zegers, Genaro Arriagada
During the 1988 plebiscite in which the Chilean people will vote Yes or No about continuing under the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet, an advertising whiz-kid (Bernal) is hired to supervise a No campaign during the daily 15 minutes of TV time allotted to Pinochet’s left-wing opponents.
OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
Rated
PG for sequences of action and scary images and brief mild language
Stars
James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis
Credit director Sam Raimi for “da noive,” as the Cowardly Lion might put it, to skip down the same Yellow Brick Road as one of the most beloved and iconic of all Hollywood movies. His heart is in the right place, in this consistently entertaining and visually eye-popping prequel, despite a bit too much hipster attitude from the star and an over-emphasis on wise-cracking dialogue. Franco is fine as the selfish, obnoxious Professor Oz, transported from his cheesy carnival-magician gig in Kansas to the Land of Oz. He becomes involved in a power struggle between three witch-sisters, who believe he is the fulfillment of a prophecy. There are dramatic lags, here and there, but one thing never flags: the visual dazzle Raimi has always been famous for.
21 AND OVER
Rated
R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, some graphic nudity, drugs and drinking
Stars
Miles Teller, Justin Chon, Skylar Astin, Sarah Wright
On the night before his med school exam, a promising student (Chon) is convinced by two friends to go out and party hard — with disastrous results. Screenwriters Scott Moore and Jon Lucas (“The Hangover”) make their directorial debut with the comedy.
JACK THE GIANT SLAYER
★★★ ½ Rated
PG-13 for intense scenes of fantasy action violence, some frightening images and brief language
Stars
Ben Cross, Jamie Atkins, Jane March
When a giant beanstalk conveys young Jack (Atkins) to a land of cloud-dwelling giants, it’s up to him to prevent their invasion of the world down below. Cinematographer turned director Mark Atkins makes his feature debut with the fairy tale adventure.
THE LAST EXORCISM PART II
Rated
PG-13 for disturbing violent content and terror, some sexual references and thematic material
Stars
Ashley Bell, Julia Garner, Spencer Treat Clark
After surviving her possession in 2010’s surprise hit “The Last Exorcism,” young Nell (Bell) gets the treatment again after being repossessed. Ed Gass-Donnelly (“Small Town Murder Songs”) directed the horror.
PHANTOM
Rated
R for violence and language throughout and some sexual content
Stars
Ed Harris, David Duchovny, Lance Henriksen
On the eve of his retirement, a guilt-plagued Soviet submarine commander (Harris) becomes involved in a covert mission that could lead to nuclear apocalypse. Todd Robinson (“Lonely Hearts”) wrote and directed the action drama.
THE SWEENEY
Rated
R for violence and language throughout and some sexual content
Stars
Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell
A hardened detective (Winstone) in charge of London’s Metropolitan Police Flying Squad, is forced to redeem his reputation after disobeying orders leads to a deadly shootout. Nick Love (“The Firm”) directed the crime drama based on a ’70s UK TV series.
BLESS ME, ULTIMA
Rated
PG-13 for some violence and sexual references
Stars
Luke Ganalon, Miriam Colon, Benito Martinez
An elderly medicine woman (Colon) helps a Latino boy (Ganalon) come of age in his WWII-era village. Carl Franklin (“Devil in a Blue Dress”) directed the drama.
DARK SKIES
Rated
PG-13 for violence, terror throughout, sexual material, drug content and language — all involving teens
Stars
Brendan Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Alba, Ricky Gervais
Astronaut Scorch Supernova (Fraser) finds himself trapped after responding to an SOS on a dangerous planet. Cal Brunker makes his feature directorial debut with the animated comedy.
SNITCH
Rated
R for some violence
Stars
Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Jon Bernthal
Hardcore action junkies might feel this is tame stuff compared to the off-the-charts wanton destruction dished out in “Die Hard 5,” or any of its ilk, but “Snitch” does offer compensation for its relatively restrained carnage quotient. Namely, a surprising emphasis on acting over adrenaline that makes it easier to buy into the far-fetched plot. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays a successful businessman determined to get his son out of the 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence he drew for making one stupid mistake: agreeing to hold onto a friend’s large stash of ecstacy for a few days. Johnson cuts a deal with dragon-lady federal prosecutor to go undercover and deliver a local drug lord in exchange for a reduced sentence, but he doesn’t go about it like The Rock. Though he manages to survive a couple of impressive gun battles, Johnson plays action dad as a clueless civilian in way over his head and terrified that he and the rest of his family are going to wind up dead. Never mind the muscles. This time around, The Rock sheds manly tears.
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES
★★½
Rated
PG-13 for violence, scary images and some sexual material
Stars
Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson
This so-so supernatural teen romance is sort of like “Twilight,” basically, except it’s about witches instead of vampires and the perpetually menaced mortal is a boy. Young aspiring writer Ethan (Ehrenreich) takes notice when Lena Duchannes (Englert), niece of the richest guy in town (semi-evil warlock Irons), shows up for high school just in time to turn 16 and be claimed as a particularly powerful good or bad witch, with potential repercussions for the fate of mankind. There are plenty of magical sub-plots to keep things needlessly complicated and just enough spell-casting action to keep the scenario from becoming lethargic. Yet, as in “Twilight,” the only thing that really matters is whether or not it all ends in love’s sweet, somewhat freaky, song.
ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH
Rated
PG for action and some mild rude humor
Stars
Brendan Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Alba, Ricky Gervais
Astronaut Scorch Supernova (Fraser) finds himself trapped after responding to an SOS on a dangerous planet. Cal Brunker makes his feature directorial debut with the animated comedy.
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD
Rated
R for violence and language
Stars
Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch
Chaotic, overblown and utterly preposterous, the fifth installment in the “Die Hard” franchise proves that a non-stop action/adventure orgy can be a colossal bore. In past installments, terrorist-thwarting Detective John McClane (Willis, phoning in the role that made him a star 25 years ago) earned audience sympathy by being a bit of an underdog — doing his best with the adds against him. This time around, though, he’s obnoxiously macho a la Stallone or Schwarzenneger while showing up his previously non-existent, estranged CIA-agent son (Coutney), who’s involved in some terrorist-thwarting of his own in Moscow. For fans of insane, mega-budgeted, off-the-charts destruction only.
SAFE HAVEN
Rated
PG-13 for thematic material involving threatening behavior, and for violence and sexuality
Stars
Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel
A young woman with a mysterious past (Hough) forms a bond with a widower (Duhamel) that forces her to confront a dark secret. Lasse Hallstrom (“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”) directed the romance, based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks.
IDENTITY THIEF
★★ ½ Rated
R for sexual content and language
Stars
Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy
If you can get past the fact that the plot is preposterous and one of the characters is a violent, amoral lunatic and all you’re expecting is a few decent laughs, “Identity Thief” isn’t bad, really. It’s better than a throat punch from McCarthy, in any case, who doles them out frequently as loveable sociopath con-artist Diana, who steals the identity of mild-mannered businessman Sandy (Bateman). To save his credit rating, his reputation and his job, Sandy decides to track Diana down personally, leading to all manner of action-comedy craziness involving a long road trip from Florida to Chicago, with homicidal drug dealers and a bad-guy bounty hunter in hot pursuit. Nothing about it makes sense, but the comedy does deliver on the humorous side, thanks to nice comic chemistry between wild-woman McCarthy and straight-man-par-excellence Bateman. It’s just a shame the script doesn’t give them much to work with.
SIDE EFFECTS
★★★
Rated
R for sexuality, nudity, violence and language
Stars
Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum
It’s possible that the cool, cerebral “Side Effects” might be too clever for its own good, but how long has it been — in this era of generic, formulaic fare — since you last saw a movie that kept you guessing? Apparently the final theatrical feature by director Steven Soderbergh (“Magic Mike”) before switching to TV, “Side Effects” is a narrative chameleon that shifts through four or five different genres, beginning as a domestic/medical drama. When her husband (Tatum), comes home from prison, loyal wife Emily (Mara) slips into a suicidal depression. Then she winds up in the care of nice-guy psychiatrist Dr. Banks (Law), who prescribes a drug that ultimately leads Emily to commit a shocking act that sends her to prison. Or so it seems.
BULLET TO THE HEAD
Rated
R for strong violence, bloody images, language, some nudity and brief drug use
Stars
Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Christian Slater, Sarah Shahi, Jason Momoa
When the partners of a New Orleans hit man (Stallone) and a Washington, D.C. detective (Sung Chang) are both killed by the same bad guy (Momoa), they form an alliance to bring him down.
STAND UP GUYS
★★½
Rated
R for language, sexual content, violence and brief drug use
Stars
Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin, Al Pacino, Julianna Marguilies
The best thing about “Stand Up Guys” is Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin (together for the first time) as retirement-age tough guys out for one last hurrah. Doc (Walken) is living a quiet life of painting sunsets until his best friend Val (Pacino) is released from prison — where he’s spent 28 years because he refused to implicate anyone in an armed-robbery shootout. Doc treats Val to an evening of hookers and hardcore partying, but there’s a problem. A vengeful mob boss has ordered Doc to kill his friend or die with him. The three Oscar winners make it all work fine, though, despite the extremely improbable places the script takes them, lending far more substance to their characters than this otherwise ho-hum tragic-comic crime drama deserves.
WARM BODIES
★★★
Rated
PG-13 for zombie violence and some language
Stars
Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, John Malkovich
Falling in love can be complicated, even if you’re not dead. Fortunately, though, in writer/director Jonathan Levine’s horror-comedy romance “Warm Bodies,” angst-ridden young zombie R (Hoult) isn’t going to let a little thing like lifelessness stop him. And the result is the first unexpected charmer of the new year. As charming as a brain-eating zombie movie can be, that is. R falls for Julie (Palmer) after eating the brain of her boyfriend, as his awakened heart slowly restores his humanity in general — along with the rest of the zombie community. That’s a game changer for the post-apocalyptic world, where the surviving humans are losing their battle with the zombies and the bonies, a faster, meaner, nastier breed of the living dead. There’s still a fair amount of horror to placate zombie purists, even though the emphasis is on smart, subtle comedy and awkward young love. In fact, it’s hard to imagine young love getting more awkward than this.
QUARTET
★★★½
Rated
PG-13 for brief strong language and suggestive humor
Stars
Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins
“Quartet” is a light piece of work, but it’s meant to be that way, with just enough melancholy mixed in to keep the story from turning to treacle. Dustin Hoffman, in his directorial debut, along with an ideal cast, make that delicately balanced formula work to perfection. The film is set in an unbelievably posh, charity retirement home for retired opera performers and classical musicians, where the residents put on a benefit concert each year to help make ends meet. When their resident superstar becomes ill, it looks like the show is over, until the equally celebrated diva (Maggie Smith) reluctantly moves in — much to the dismay of the three singers who used to sing with her in a famed quartet. Smith refuses to sing again, however, and sparks fly with her ex-husband, who she jettisoned to advance her career. The featured performers are spot-on perfect (as you might expect) and Hoffman is savvy enough to make that the focus of his film.
BROKEN CITY
Rated
R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence
Stars
Russell Crowe, Mark Wahlberg, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Dramatically ho hum, morally abysmal and ridiculously complicated, “Broken City” is the kind of movie where nothing is as it appears, there’s a double-twist to just about every character and unrelentingly noir is the name of the game. New York City mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) hires Billy Taggart (Wahlberg), a disgraced former detective turned sleazy private eye, to find out who’s having an affair with his wife (Zeta-Jones). Or so it seems for about 10 minutes before the surface plot unravels with one nasty complication after another, until the plot threads are so snarled it takes Taggart upwards of an hour to sort things out — and even when he does, things still don’t make a lot of sense. Though the the deep-noir mood established by director Allen Hughes is some compensation. If “Broken City” were as credible as it is moody and atmospheric, it might be more worthwhile. Unfortunately, it’s about as convincing as the mayor’s orange tan.
THE LAST STAND
★★½
Rated
R for strong bloody violence throughout, and language
Stars
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eduardo Noriega, Johnny Knoxville, Forest Whitaker
It’s hard to tell if he really is as slow and creaky as he’s playing it in this surprisingly low-key action extravaganza, but one thing’s for sure — he’s still the same old Ah-nold. Just a little old and a little tired. In his first starring role in 10 years, Schwarzenegger plays a former LA detective who got tired of the mean streets and took the job of sheriff in a sleepy New Mexico border town. After escaping from the FBI, a vicious (yet handsome) Mexican drug lord heads for the border in a souped-up Corvette. The only thing standing in between him and freedom is Sheriff Ray and his ragtag group of deputies. To its credit, “The Last Stand” doesn’t ask us to take any of this seriously. Despite the mounting body count, the overall mood is light and mildly humorous, with a touch of poignancy as the sheriff takes his tough-guy moves out of mothballs and attempts to lay down the law one last time.
MAMA
★★★
Rated
PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements
Stars
Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse
This old-school-creepy ode to demented mother love is a better than average shocker despite its predictable and slow-moving plot. It relies more on suspense and atmosphere than splattery gore, plus it features a memorably freaky spectral boogey-woman who’s liable to linger as a nasty memory whether you want her to or not. After rescuing his two long-lost nieces from the cabin in the woods where they were abandoned five years ago by his brother, uncle Lucas (Coster-Waldau) brings the feral children home to live with his rocker girlfriend (Chastain) — unaware that they’ve been adopted by a psychotic ghost with baby issues from beyond the grave.
AMOUR
★★★½
Rated
PG-13 for mature thematic material including a disturbing act and for brief language
Stars
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert
Michael Haneke’s films tend to contemplate human behavior at its worst. They do their best to make us reevaluate whatever comforting notions we may have about life and about our ability to order the world into a benign place. The same holds true for the much-celebrated, Cannes Festival-winning “Amour,” a film that forces us to confront the very thing we like least to consider — the end of our lives — but with one new ingredient: tenderness and devotion. The Cannes Festival Palme d’Or-winning “Amour” is the story of Georges and Anne (Trintignant and Riva) a couple of retired, octogenarian Parisian piano teachers, whose quiet, content life is devastated when Anne is suddenly afflicted with a series of strokes that leave her partially paralyzed, then suicidal, then entirely helpless. Anne exacts a promise from her husband not to send her back to the hospital no matter what happens. A promise that Georges does his best to fulfill.
GANGSTER SQUAD
★★
Rated
R for strong violence and language
Stars
Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone
Action-comedy director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) is no stranger to mayhem and crime, but taking on this ersatz, film noir-style, and almost entirely humorless, hard-boiled cops and robbers saga still seems a bizarre choice. “Gangster Squad” works within a just barely true-to-life framework to re-imagine the downfall of the post-World War II-era Los Angeles gangster kingpin Mickey Cohen — courtesy of a crew of maverick cops organized to attack him outside the law. Brolin is suitably square-jawed as the gangster squad honcho and Gosling is a plus as his enigmatic, world-weary right-hand man, but the mannered tough-guy dialogue is as over the top as the bullet-riddled final showdown in the heart of downtown LA.
ZERO DARK THIRTY
★★★★
Rated
R for strong violence including brutal, disturbing images, and for language
Stars
Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, James Gandolfini
This harrowing, morally complicated drama by the creative team behind the Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker” is every bit as realistic, suspenseful and emotionally intense. The closely based on fact “Zero Dark Thirty” opens with the introduction of a fictional, composite character — Chastain as an obsessively dedicated young CIA officer named Maya. After working for years to track down Osama bin Laden, Maya is convinced the Al Qaeda leader is in Pakistan. Of course, we know she is right and we know what happens when she ultimately locates him, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of this gripping, fast-moving dramatization, in which countless false starts and blind alleys only serve to heighten the feeling that the story could jump in any direction at any moment.
