D.E.B.S.
Satire of "Charlie's Angels"-type action films and teen movies, in which the high school-age secret agents take on the archcriminal Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster) with a surprising twist: Amy (Sara Foster), one of the leading D.E.B.S. (seniors chosen for an underground academy based on their abilities to lie, cheat and fight), ...
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D.E.B.S. (CNS)
Daddy Day Camp
A few years after the events of "Daddy Day Care," the two entrepreneurial fathers (now played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Paul Rae) buy a run-down summer camp and take up a rivalry with the big, mean bully camp next door. Director Fred Savage, the former child star now making his ...
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Daddy Day Camp (CNS)
Daddy Day Care
Entertaining family comedy about an unemployed ad exec (Eddie Murphy) who tries his hand at professional parenting by operating a day-care business out of his home. Directed by Steve Carr, the contrived fish-out-of-water premise is buoyed by a heartfelt -- albeit heavy-handed -- affirmation of fatherhood, making it easy to applaud ...
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Daddy Day Care (CNS)
Daens
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Daens (SAM)
Daltry Calhoun
Modestly endearing tale set in small-town Tennessee about a reformed good-for-nothing (Johnny Knoxville) who, with his rags-to-riches story facing a reversal of fortune, seeks reconciliation with the daughter he abandoned as an infant -- now a precocious, musically gifted teenager (Sophie Traub) -- when the girl's mother (Elizabeth Banks) shows up ...
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Daltry Calhoun (CNS)
Dance Flick
Flat-footed genre satire with a minimal plot about the unlikely romance between a would-be ballerina (Shoshana Bush) and a street dancer (Damon Wayans, Jr.). Stumbles far outnumber leaps in director and co-writer Damien Dante Wayans' rambling sendup, and a few of the gags are patently vulgar. Much sexual and some scatological ...
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Dance Flick (CNS)
Dancer Upstairs, The
Low-key thriller set in an unnamed Latin American country where a police detective (Javier Bardem), undeterred by the political corruption around him, relentlessly tries to capture the leader of a terrorist organization causing widespread chaos, while at the same time drawn to his daughter's elusive ballet teacher (Laura Morante). Directed with ...
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Dancer Upstairs, The (CNS)
Danny Deckchair
Delightful Australian comedy/fantasy about a cement worker who, bored with his job and disillusioned with his opportunistic -- and unfaithful -- girlfriend, attaches giant helium balloons to a patio chair at a family barbecue and is carried far away, eventually crash-landing in another town where he falls in love and wins ...
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Danny Deckchair (CNS)
Daredevil
Gloomy, comic-book based tale of a blind attorney (Ben Affleck) who seeks to save his new girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) from a vicious killer (Colin Farrell) by using his sharpened remaining senses and gymnastic abilities as a masked, nighttime enforcer of vigilante justice. As written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, superspeed ...
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Daredevil (CNS)
Darjeeling Limited, The
Quirky, bittersweet odyssey about three estranged siblings -- the eldest, controlling brother recovering from a near-fatal injury (Owen Wilson), anxious father-to-be middle son (Adrien Brody), and the youngest, a writer (Jason Schwartzman) -- who set out on a spiritual journey on a train through India after their father's death, including a ...
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Darjeeling Limited, The (CNS)
Dark Blue
Powerful drama set against the backdrop of the 1992 Rodney King-police brutality trial, in which a corrupt LAPD cop (Kurt Russell) and his rookie partner (Scott Speedman) investigate a quadruple homicide unaware their greedy supervisor (Brendan Gleeson) was behind the crime. In stark, even shrill fashion, director Ron Shelton explores levels ...
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Dark Blue (CNS)
The Dark Knight Rises
Paradoxically, sometimes success at the box office can turn out to be a burden for a movie director. Having created one popular picture, Hollywood helmers can find themselves faced with impossible expectations for the sequel.
That problem is especially acute in the case of Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy, of which ...
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The Dark Knight Rises (CNS)
Dark Knight, The
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Dark Knight, The (SAM)
Dark Knight, The
Tumultuous, technically dazzling – if overlong and excessively complex – sequel to "Batman Begins" as the chiropteran crusader (Christian Bale) is challenged by the anarchic Joker (Heath Ledger) to reveal his true identity or else scores will die, while a romantic rival for his ex-girlfriend's (Maggie Gyllenhaal) affections – the upstanding ...
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Dark Knight, The (CNS)
Dark Shadows
Long before "Twilight's" Edward Cullen and other Johnny-come-lately vampires, there was television's Barnabas Collins, played by the recently deceased Jonathan Frid. Time was when legions of teenage baby boomers would rush home from school each weekday afternoon to find out what Barnabas was up to by catching the latest episode of ...
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Dark Shadows (CNS)
Dark Skies
The restrained, but not overly original, thriller "Dark Skies" (Dimension) comes backed by the producers behind the "Paranormal Activity" franchise. And, both for better and worse, it shows.
Thus, writer-director Scott Stewart, like his "Paranormal" counterparts, presents viewers with comparatively little violence; only one passing scene relies, for its effect, on ...
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Dark Skies (CNS)
Dark Water
Smartly crafted and suspenseful psychological thriller about a recently separated single mom (Jennifer Connelly) -- locked in an ugly custody battle with her estranged husband -- struggling to keep hold of her fragile sanity and 5-year-old daughter (Ariel Gade) when they move into a dilapidated apartment with a creepy chronic ceiling ...
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Dark Water (CNS)
The Darkest Hour
In an earlier era, "The Darkest Hour" (Summit)—a weak entry about plucky youngsters running away from invading aliens—would have been marketed as cheap thrills for drive-in moviegoers.
That era having passed, the flick is instead being retailed as a collection of expensive 3-D thrills, a ploy that only serves to highlight its ...
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The Darkest Hour (CNS)
Darkness Falls
Ridiculous horror flick in which a New England town is visited by the murderous ghost of a 19th-century woman wrongly hanged for murder who can now kill at will provided there is total darkness. As directed by Jonathan Liebesman, the fast cuts and dim visuals only underscore an absurd narrative made ...
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Darkness Falls (CNS)
Date Movie
Crudely sophomoric sendup of recent popular romantic comedies barely held together by a perfunctory plot involving the upcoming wedding of a formerly obese waitress (Alyson Hannigan) to the man of her dreams (Adam Campbell), a wedding that the latter's seductive ex-flame (Sophie Monk) threatens to sabotage. Following in the genre-skewering footprints ...
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Date Movie (CNS)
Date Night
Occasionally, amid the frenetic proceedings of the romantic comedy-action blend "Date Night" (Fox), the tale's two protagonists—an ordinary married couple from suburban New Jersey—pause to reflect on their enduring commitment to each other and on the threat posed to the vitality of their union by the exhausting demands of professional life ...
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Date Night (CNS)
Dawn of the Dead
Ultraviolent remake of George A. Romero's splatterfest about a mysterious epidemic that turns most of a Milwaukee suburb's populace into flesh-hungry zombies, leaving only a handful of survivors (including Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames) holed up in an abandoned shopping mall fighting for survival. Director Zack Snyder's re-imagining of the cult ...
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Dawn of the Dead (CNS)
Day After Tomorrow, The
Visually spectacular doomsday drama about a scientist (Dennis Quaid) trying to reunite with his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) during a worldwide environmental catastrophe triggered by global warming which, in addition to unleashing monstrous hurricanes, killer tornadoes and biblical-proportion floods, threatens to rapidly plunge Earth into a new ice age. The film is ...
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Day After Tomorrow, The (CNS)
Day After Tomorrow, The
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Day After Tomorrow, The (SAM)
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Competent but inferior science-fiction remake about an alien (Keanu Reeves) who lands on Earth to warn of the planet's doom, and gains the assistance of a top-flight scientist (Jennifer Connelly), escaping from government custody to continue his mission, despite the initial hostility of the scientist's distrustful young stepson (Jaden Smith). Director ...
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (CNS)
Daybreakers
A scrupulous vampire who eschews human blood for the less satisfying animal alternative? No, it's not Edward Cullen of the "Twilight" franchise; it's undead hematology researcher Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), hero of the potentially intriguing, but excessively violent, "Daybreakers" (Lionsgate).
Set in a futuristic world where a mysterious plague has ...
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Daybreakers (CNS)
Days and Clouds (Giorni e Nuvole)
Mature, generally perceptive drama in which an idealistic middle-age Genoese executive (Antonio Albanese) and his art restorer wife (Margherita Buy) find their relationship strained after he is forced from his job by his business partners, an economic and social crisis they try to conceal from, among others, their 20-year-old daughter (Alba ...
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Days and Clouds (Giorni e Nuvole) (CNS)
Dead Man Walking
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Dead Man Walking (SAM)
Dead Silence
Mechanical, relatively mayhem-free horror movie about a man (Jamie Ashen) who returns to his hometown seeking answers to his wife's murder. Director James Wan teases a bit of mystery out of an ordinary plot concerning the revenge of a female ventriloquist and her collection of dolls, but the film proves long ...
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Dead Silence (CNS)
Dear Frankie
Captivating film set in Scotland about a loving single mother (Emily Mortimer), who pretends to her 9-year-old deaf son, Frankie (Jack McElhone), that his father -- whom the boy has never seen -- is simply away at sea, and forges letters purporting to be from the absent father, then pays a ...
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Dear Frankie (CNS)
Dear God
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Dear God (SAM)
Dear John
Young love finds itself tested by current events in the frequently sentimental drama "Dear John" (Screen Gems).
While the outside strains on the central relationship in director Lasse Hallstrom's adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' best-selling 2006 novel may be all too realistic—including as they do the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ...
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Dear John (CNS)
Dear Wendy
Oddly compelling and offbeat story about lonely teenagers in a small town who become enamored of guns, and though intending never to use them for violent means become swept up in the weapons' mystique and power in spite of themselves. Distinguished Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg's second English-language film features a standout ...
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Dear Wendy (CNS)
Death at a Funeral
"Death at a Funeral" (Screen Gems), director Neil LaBute's Americanization of Frank Oz's 2007 British comedy of the same title, mostly seeks its laughs in the bedroom and bathroom. The results are predictably woeful, with LaBute and screenwriter Dean Craig—who also wrote the original film—largely wasting the gifts of a potentially ...
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Death at a Funeral (CNS)
Death at a Funeral
Chaos reigns in this mordant British comedy as family members -- arrogant famous novelist son (Rupert Graves), insecure second son (Matthew MacFadyen) and his exasperated wife (Keeley Hawes), their cousin (Daisy Donovan) and her fiance (Alan Tudyk) -- gather for a patriarchal funeral and everything goes wildly wrong, including a mysterious ...
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Death at a Funeral (CNS)
Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The
Trenchant Romanian drama that follows the all-night odyssey of a dying old man, Mr. Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), as he is shuttled from one hospital to the next, encountering indifference and insensitivity from the doctors and medical staff, with only a compassionate ambulance driver (Mioara Avram) to plead his case. Deliberately paced, ...
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Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The (CNS)
Death Race
Brooding dystopian futuristic action tale in which, after being framed for the murder of his wife, a factory worker (Jason Statham) is offered freedom by his warden (Joan Allen) if, with the assistance of a female convict navigator (Natalie Martinez) and a skilled pit crew (Ian McShane, Fred Koehler and Jacob ...
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Death Race (CNS)
Death Sentence
Mild-mannered financier (Kevin Bacon) commits capital murder against gang members to avenge the death of his son. For the first hour, director James Wan (best known for "Saw") and screenwriter Ian Jeffers follow the nuances of novelist Brian Garfield's 1975 sequel to "Death Wish" and sprinkle in mordant humor, but the ...
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Death Sentence (CNS)
The Debt
The spy thriller is alive and kicking in "The Debt" (Focus), a stylish—though frequently violent—remake of the 2007 Israeli film of the same name. Directed with flair by John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love"), "The Debt" follows top-rate actors across two time periods in a suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse that will keep ...
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The Debt (CNS)
The Debt
"The Debt" is a U.S. version of the 2007 Israeli film "Ha-Hov." It tells the
story of three young Mossad agents (played by Jessica Chastain as Rachel,
Marton Csokas as Stefan, and Sam Worthington as David and later by Helen
Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds) who are sent to East Berlin to
capture a ...
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The Debt (SRR)
December Boys
Moving Australian coming-of-age drama as four boys from a convent orphanage (Daniel Radcliffe, Christian Byers, Lee Cormie and James Fraser) are sent on holiday to board with an elderly couple (Jack Thompson and Kris McQuade) by the seaside, where they learn that the childless couple nearby (Sullivan Stapleton and Victoria Hill) ...
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December Boys (CNS)
Deception
Dull, sometimes obvious thriller about a lonely accountant (Ewan McGregor) who's befriended by a charismatic corporate lawyer (Hugh Jackman), who introduces him to a sex club offering "intimacy without intricacy" where he falls for one of the other members (Michelle Williams) and soon becomes a blackmail victim. Director Marcel Langenegger's feature ...
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Deception (CNS)
Deck the Halls
Yuletide comedy about an obsessively organized eye doctor (Matthew Broderick) whose regimental holiday zeal alienates his wife (Kristin Davis) and two kids (Alia Shawkat and Dylan Blue), and who meets his match when his new neighbor (Danny DeVito) challenges his reputation as the town's "king of Christmas" by decorating his own ...
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Deck the Halls (CNS)
Dedication
An embittered, highly phobic children's book writer (Billy Crudup) is forced to work with a new illustrator (Mandy Moore) when his former collaborator and only friend (Tom Wilkinson) dies. Director Justin Theroux's unconventional love story begins sordidly in a porn theater and the expletive quotient is high, but the narrative ultimately ...
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Dedication (CNS)
Deep Blue
Visually spectacular nature documentary which explores Earth's final frontier, the ocean, from its wave-tossed surface teeming with myriad marine life to its unfathomable depths, revealing both its sublime beauty and indiscriminate cruelty. Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Andy Byatt and narrated by Pierce Brosnan, this awe-inspiring tour through liquid space, with ...
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Deep Blue (CNS)
Deep End of the Ocean, The
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Deep End of the Ocean, The (SAM)
Defiance
This is a well-acted and too lengthy but ultimately worthy history lesson about the Bielski brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell), Jewish farmers who chose not to be victimized by the Nazis, who sheltered hundreds of Jews, taking them to safety in the forests of Eastern Europe during World ...
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Defiance (CNS)
Definitely, Maybe
Carefully wrought romantic comedy, albeit with some problematic material, in which an advertiser (Ryan Reynolds) on the verge of divorce recounts to his inquiring daughter (Abigail Breslin) how he chose her mother from among the three women (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher) he had once been dating. Writer-director Adam ...
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Definitely, Maybe (CNS)
Deja Vu
Action thriller about a federal agent (Denzel Washington) who, in investigating a deadly explosion on a New Orleans ferry, is recruited into a top-secret project whose members (including Val Kilmer) have found a way to peer into the past to solve crimes, and, while helping them track down the bomber (Jim ...
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Deja Vu (CNS)
Delgo
Well-meaning but only average animated children's parable, set in a mythical land, about a part-human, part-reptile teenager (voice of Freddie Prinze Jr.) who falls for the winged, pixielike princess (voice of Jennifer Love Hewitt) of a rival nation and enlists the help of his bumbling best friend (voice of Chris Kattan) ...
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Delgo (CNS)
Delirious
The unlikely friendship between a lowlife "paparazzo" (Steve Buscemi) and a sympathetic street kid (Michael Pitt) is put to the test when an even more unlikely romance develops between the photographer's recently homeless protege and a world-famous pop-music star (Alison Lohman). The tone of writer-director Tom DiCillo's film veers disconcertingly from ...
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Delirious (CNS)
Deliver Us From Eva
Unconvincing comedy in which three guys pay a ladies man (LL Cool J) to woo the busybody, older sister (Gabrielle Union) of their wives and girlfriend so she will have less time to meddle in their relationships. Director Gary Hardwick has an appealing cast with sassy dialogue to spare, but the ...
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Deliver Us From Eva (CNS)
Deliver Us From Evil
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Deliver Us From Evil (SAM)
De-Lovely
Disappointing musical biography about Broadway composer Cole Porter (Kevin Kline) and his wealthy wife, Linda (Ashley Judd), which traces their loving, but mostly platonic, relationship over the years, as it survives Porter's dalliances with men that strain but don't destroy the relationship. A well-acted, handsomely designed, sometimes affecting, alternately frenetic and ...
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De-Lovely (CNS)
Delta Farce
Stale, flat attempt at a military comedy starring Daniel Whitney in his guise of Larry the Cable Guy, supported by "Blue Collar TV" co-star Bill Engvall and the twitchy D.J. Qualls, playing amiable dumb-guy Army reservists called up to Fallujah, Iraq, but landing instead in a remote Mexican village, where they ...
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Delta Farce (CNS)
Departed, The
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Departed, The (SAM)
Departed, The
Hard-hitting if overlong tale of two rookie cops in South Boston -- one (Matt Damon) an informant for the mob, the other (Leonardo DiCaprio) secretly assigned by senior officers (Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg) to infiltrate the crime ring run by a notorious mob boss (over-the-top Jack Nicholson) -- with both ...
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Departed, The (CNS)
Departures (Okuribito)
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Departures (Okuribito) (SAM)
Derailed
Forgettable thriller about two unhappily married strangers (Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen) whose chance meeting on a commuter train sparks an affair, cut short when their hotel room tryst is intruded on by a vicious thug (Vincent Cassel), who proceeds to blackmail them, entangling them in a spiral of violence and ...
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Derailed (CNS)
The Descendants
"The Descendants" (Fox Searchlight) is sensitive, thoughtful—and spiritually bereft. That's exceedingly sad, especially considering that the key plot point in this adaptation of the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings concerns a wife and mother of two young daughters left brain-dead after a boating accident. The fact that she's made a living ...
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The Descendants (CNS)
The Descendants
Matt King (George Clooney) is a wealthy landowner in Hawaii. He is the sole trustee of a huge piece of land that he and his extended family inherited from their Hawaiian royal ancestors that intermarried with white settlers. His wife, however, is in a coma, actually brain dead, from a jet ...
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The Descendants (SRR)
Descent, The
Chiller about six adventurous female friends (including Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza and Alex Reid) whose thrill-seeking outing turns into a battle for subterranean survival when they become trapped in a maze of caves deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains, where they fall prey to a race of vicious humanoid creatures. What starts ...
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Descent, The (CNS)
Despicable Me
Though he aspires to be the world's most terrible villain, Gru (voice of Steve Carell)—the character at the heart of "Despicable Me" (Universal), an enchanting 3-D animated comedy—is, in reality, only a slightly wicked rogue who ultimately proves to be a softhearted hero.
With an East European accent somewhat reminiscent ...
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Despicable Me (CNS)
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Brainless and disastrously distasteful sequel to the 1999 comedy "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" which finds the doltish fish-tank-cleaner-turned-male prostitute (Rob Schneider) in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he must solve the murders of Europe's top gigolos to clear the name of his friend and former pimp (Eddie Griffin) implicated in the crimes. Directed ...
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Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (CNS)
The Devil Inside
"The Devil Inside" (Paramount), so we're told, is a film the Vatican doesn't want you to see. If so, perhaps there's a "Da Vinci Code"-like conspiracy afoot intended to save you 12 of your hard-earned, economic-downturn dollars.
Those foolhardy enough to insist on wading through this cheap, inept piece of storytelling ...
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The Devil Inside (CNS)
The Devil Inside
In the 1980s an American woman, Maria Rossi, murders two priests and a nun as they carry out an exorcism for her. She is arrested but found non guilty by reason of insanity at her trial. She is sent to an asylum and for some strange reason the Vatican intervenes and ...
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The Devil Inside (SRR)
Devil Wears Prada, The
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Devil Wears Prada, The (Frost)
Devil Wears Prada, The
Entertaining comedy-drama about an aspiring writer (Anne Hathaway) who takes a job as junior assistant to an imperious editor (a delicious Meryl Streep) at a high-powered fashion magazine, while her friends, including her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), chide her for losing sight of her real values as she gets caught up in ...
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Devil Wears Prada, The (CNS)
Devil Wears Prada, The
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Devil Wears Prada, The (SAM)
Devil's Own, The
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Devil's Own, The (SAM)
Devil's Rejects, The
Violently perverse horror sequel to "House of 1000 Corpses" which follows the bloody trail of the homicidal Firefly clan (Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie), as they flee the vigilante justice of a relentless sheriff (William Forsythe) determined to avenge his brother's murder. Laced with visual nods to Arthur ...
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Devil's Rejects, The (CNS)
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Uplifting if at times heavy-handed melodrama set in Atlanta about a grievously wronged woman (Kimberly Elise) who tries to pick up the pieces of her life after her successful but coldhearted husband of 18 years (Steve Harris) demands a divorce, and who struggles to start anew with the support of a ...
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Diary of a Mad Black Woman (CNS)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The social battlefield known as middle school provides the setting for the mostly likeable, though lightweight coming-of-age comedy "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" (Fox). While the proceedings sometimes veer into mildly off-color humor, precluding endorsement for all ages, there are worthwhile lessons on offer here for teen viewers who may sympathize ...
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid (CNS)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
School's out, and the local country club is the focus of fun in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days" (Fox 2000). This second sequel in the comedy franchise that started with 2010's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is based, like its predecessors, on the "novels in cartoons" of Jeff Kinney.
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (CNS)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
Both sibling rivalry and brotherly love put in an appearance in the gently humorous sequel "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" (Fox).
Like its 2010 predecessor—called simply "Diary of a Wimpy Kid"—director David Bowers' comedy is adapted from one of Jeff Kinney's best-selling novels in cartoon format. But this time ...
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (CNS)
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
Surprisingly entertaining comedy about a washed-up former child celeb (David Spade) who, in order to prepare for a role which could reignite his career, hires a suburban family to experience what it is like to grow up normal. Directed by Sam Weisman, the film's otherwise positive, family-values message about the prizing ...
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Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (CNS)
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Not for the first time on screen, blue-state sophisticates discover the joys of red-state down-home living in the pleasant, if largely predictable, romantic comedy "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" (Columbia/Relativity). In this case though, their enforced retreat to the wilds of the High Plains also gives dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers Paul ...
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Did You Hear About the Morgans? (CNS)
Die Another Day
Stripped of his official agent 007 status, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) teams with a strong, smart American agent (Halle Berry) in Iceland to uncover the identity of a traitor and thwart a pair of villains (Toby Stephens and Rick Yune) from provoking a nuclear confrontation. While the characters seem more superhuman ...
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Die Another Day (CNS)
Diggers
Mostly downbeat comedy-drama about the life and loves of Long Island clam diggers (Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, Josh Hamilton and Ron Eldard) played out against the encroachment of a big fishing corporation wreaking havoc on their traditional way of life. Katherine Diekmann directs Marino's script capably, and there are good performances ...
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Diggers (CNS)
Dan in Real Life
Steve Carrell shines as the widowed father of three girls who takes them to a family reunion at his parents' rambling house in Rhode Island, and while there falls in love with an empathetic woman (Juliette Binoche) he meets in a bookstore, only to learn she's the girlfriend of his younger ...
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Dan in Real Life (CNS)
Dan in Real Life
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Dan in Real Life (SAM)
Dinner for Schmucks
Arrogant Wall Street types take a satiric hit in the odd-couple buddy comedy "Dinner for Schmucks" (Paramount). While its underlying message is one of sensitivity and respect, however, director Jay Roach's adaptation of Francis Veber's 1998 French feature "Le Diner de Cons" showcases numerous wayward riffs on topics such as adultery, ...
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Dinner for Schmucks (CNS)
Dirty
Unremittingly ugly police drama set in Los Angeles about a former gang member-turned-cop (Clifton Collins Jr.) torn between conscience and loyalty to his out-of-control partner (Cuba Gooding Jr.) in deciding to come clean about their unit's illegal activities, while reluctantly agreeing to one last score for his crooked bosses on the ...
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Dirty (CNS)
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
Bland coming-of-age melodrama set in Havana on the eve of the Cuban revolution about an American Pollyanna (Romola Garai) dragged to the island by her father's new job, where she meets a seductive busboy (Diego Luna) with all the right moves who transforms her from a fox-trotting bookworm to hot-tamale samba ...
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Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (CNS)
Dirty Pretty Things
Soulful tale set in a small London hotel where a Nigerian overnight desk clerk (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers the manager (Sergei Lopez) is exploiting other illegal immigrants in a passports-for-kidneys black-market operation that threatens to engulf his virginal friend, a desperate Turkish immigrant (Audrey Tautou). Director Stephen Frears skillfully blends suspense with ...
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Dirty Pretty Things (CNS)
Dirty Shame, A
Only fitfully funny sex comedy set in a Baltimore neighborhood where anyone who gets a concussion becomes a sex addict. John ("Hairspray") Waters' latest film features Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair and Chris Isaak who gamely go through the paces. But whatever Waters' satiric intent, the humor inherent in sex ...
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Dirty Shame, A (CNS)
Disaster Movie
Wacky sophomoric spoof of the genre—with takeoffs on every iconic movie character of the past year (e.g., Indiana Jones, Beowulf, Prince Caspian and the Love Guru) thrown in for good measure—as a young man (Matt Lanter) and a motley crew (Gay "G-Thang" Johnson, Nicole Parker, Kim Kardashian and Crista Flanagan) attempt ...
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Disaster Movie (CNS)
Dish, The
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Dish, The (SAM)
Disney's the Kid
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Disney's the Kid (SAM)
District 9
"District 9" (TriStar)
is an exceedingly violent yet powerful science fiction parable about the
dangers of prejudice and societal indifference.
Set in an alternate version of
contemporary South Africa two decades after the arrival in Johannesburg of an
unwelcome race of human-size but insect-shaped aliens, director and co-writer
(with Terri Tatchell) Neill Blomkamp's unflinchingly ...
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District 9 (CNS)
Disturbia
Reasonably suspenseful thriller in the tradition of Hichcock's "Rear Window" about a teen (Shia LaBeouf) -- under house arrest after an emotional outburst stemming from his dad's death -- who begins to spy on the neighbors, eventually suspecting one (David Morse) of being a serial killer. Director D.J. Caruso ("Taking Lives") ...
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Disturbia (CNS)
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Passable adaptation of Rebecca Wells same-titled novel in which a young playwright (Sandra Bullock) living in New York City implies in a magazine interview that her Southern mother (Ellen Burstyn) was not a good parent, causing a terrible rift between the two women that can only be repaired with the intervention ...
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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (CNS)
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
Inspiring if sobering true story of a French magazine editor (Mathieu Amalric) whose massive stroke left him completely paralyzed but who was able to tap into his imagination to take in the world around him, appreciate the important things in his life, and even dictate his memoirs by blinking his eye ...
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Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The (CNS)
DOA: Dead or Alive
Mindless but bloodless action movie, based on a video-game series, pitting four bikini-clad young women (Devon Aoki, Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance and Sarah Carter) and others in an "ultimate fighter" tournament where athletes battle not to the death, but to the "knocked-out," while the master of ceremonies (Eric Roberts) has a ...
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DOA: Dead or Alive (CNS)
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Failed laugher about a bunch of scrappy misfits (led by Vince Vaughn) who form a dodgeball team to compete in a high-stakes tournament in Las Vegas in order to save their rundown neighborhood gym from being taken over by a state-of-the-art competitor (owned by Ben Stiller). As directed by Rawson Marshall ...
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Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (CNS)
Dogma
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Dogma (SAM)
Dogville
Dismal drama in which a young woman (Nicole Kidman) is protected from gangsters by impoverished villagers (including Paul Bettany, Ben Gazzara and Lauren Bacall) in exchange for her servitude in their tiny Depression-era town nestled in the Rockies. But despite hard-won acceptance, the young woman is brutally betrayed and ultimately exacts ...
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Dogville (CNS)
Dolphin Tale
Dolphin Tale, starring Ashley Judd and Harry Connick, Jr.,
is based on the inspiring true story of Winter, a bottlenose dolphin who
lost her tail in a crab trap off the coast of Florida. She was rescued
and fitted with a prosthetic tail at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. It
was not ...
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Dolphin Tale (SRR)
Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist
Subdued yet somewhat involved prequel to the 1973 horror classic set in 1949 British East Africa where lapsed priest Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard), wrestling with a crisis of faith wrought by wartime memories of Nazi atrocities, rediscovers his belief to help a possessed native boy after an ancient evil is unleashed ...
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Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist (CNS)
Domino
Trashy, repellent action-comedy film inspired by British actor Laurence Harvey's daughter Domino's (Keira Knightley) improbable career as a model turned bounty hunter. She and her team members (Mickey Rourke and Edgar Ramirez) get involved in a double-dealing plot to recover a large amount of cash and catch the culprits, while being ...
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Domino (CNS)
Donnie Brasco
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Donnie Brasco (SAM)
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" (FilmDistrict) has so little to commend it—even as a conventional horror film—that it might as well be titled "You Won't Be Afraid of This Movie."
With only one real fright—generated by the initial appearance of a cluster of tiny, angry goblins living in a basement ...
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Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (CNS)
Don't Come Knocking
Unsatisfying story of hard-living actor (Sam Shepard) who, post-meltdown, goes AWOL and abandons his location Western movie set, returns home to his mother (Eva Marie Saint) in Nevada, and learns he has a grown son (Gabriel Mann) by a waitress (Jessica Lange) with whom he was involved years ago, while a ...
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Don't Come Knocking (CNS)
Don't Move
Heavy-breathing potboiler about a doctor (Sergio Castellitto) who's just learned that his daughter's been in a near-fatal motorcycle accident, and reminisces about a time 16 years earlier when his car broke down and he raped the young impoverished woman who let him use her phone (Penelope Cruz in an admirably intense ...
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Don't Move (CNS)
Don't Tempt Me
Curious satire in which a nightclub singer (Victoria Abril) from heaven and a waitress (Penelope Cruz) from hell are dispatched to Earth by their respective bosses (Fanny Ardant and Gael Garcia Bernal) to battle for the soul of a boxer (Demian Bichir) who is suffering from brain damage. Director Agustin Diaz ...
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Don't Tempt Me (CNS)
Doogal
Unobjectionable but bland computer animated story of dog and his unlikely friends -- a rabbit, a snail, a cow and a train -- who set out on an adventurous journey to find three diamonds that will release the pooch's best friend from an icy imprisonment and prevent a villainous wizard from ...
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Doogal (CNS)
Doom
Unremittingly violent sci-fi action adventure set in the future about a team of Marine commandos (led by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) deployed to secure a remote scientific research facility on Mars that is crawling with nasty mutant creatures unwittingly unleashed by the facility's genetic experimentation gone awry. Based on the popular ...
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Doom (CNS)
Doomsday
Blood-soaked futuristic adventure tale in which a tough policewoman (Rhona Mitra) is ordered by the British prime minister (Alexander Siddig) and his scheming security chief (David O'Hara) to lead a team of soldiers into pandemic-ravaged Scotland, where they battle a cannibalistic tribal chieftain (Craig Conway) and the ruler of a medieval ...
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Doomsday (CNS)
Door in the Floor, The
Disquieting drama in which a teenage boy (Jon Foster) with writing aspirations becomes the summer assistant to a famed children's book author (Jeff Bridges) and has an affair with the author's estranged wife (Kim Basinger), who has been emotionally traumatized by the death of her sons. Failing to resonate on an ...
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Door in the Floor, The (CNS)
Dot the I
Convoluted, kinky story set in London about a temperamental flamenco dancer (Natalia Verbeke) who, recovering from an abusive relationship, agrees to marry a gentlemanly Brit (James D'Arcy), but at her bachelorette party encounters a video-camera-wielding Brazilian actor (Gael Garcia Bernal in his first English-speaking role), setting the scene for a romantic ...
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Dot the I (CNS)
Doubt
Engrossing drama set in 1964 at a Bronx parochial grammar school where the nun (Meryl Streep) who serves as principal suspects a popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of impropriety with a 12-year-old black student, and together with a young teacher (Amy Adams), sets out to confront him. Writer-director John Patrick Shanley ...
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Doubt (CNS)
Doubt
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Doubt (SAM)
Down in the Valley
Offbeat but quite interesting story of easygoing South Dakota ranch hand (an impressive Edward Norton) who romances the much-younger, rebellious teenage daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) of a San Fernando Valley police officer (David Morse), and befriends her painfully shy younger brother (Rory Culkin), against the father's wishes. Writer-director David Jacobson's initial ...
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Down in the Valley (CNS)
Down With Love
Retro-stylish romantic comedy about a sassy author (Renee Zellweger) of a best-selling who-needs-men manual charmed into falling in love by a playboy ace journalist (Ewan McGregor), as part of his underhanded scheme to debunk her man-hating manifesto and expose her as a fraud. Borrowing heavily from '60s-era Doris Day-Rock Hudson collaborations ...
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Down With Love (CNS)
Downfall
Vividly authentic recreation of the last days of Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) trapped in his Berlin-based underground hideout with other officials of the Third Reich and their families, as the Russian army closes in for certain victory at the end of World War II in 1945, all seen through the eyes ...
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Downfall (CNS)
Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat
Overwrought live-action version of Theodore Geisel's classic rhyming kid's tale about a brother (Spenser Breslin) and sister (Dakota Fanning) whose home is turned upside down by a mischievous talking cat (Mike Myers) in a red-and-white striped stovepipe hat while their mother (Kelly Preston) is at work. While true to the spirit ...
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Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (CNS)
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who
Enchanting animated adaptation of the classic children's book about a warmhearted elephant (voice of Jim Carrey) who discovers that a speck of dust is home to the microscopic town of Who-ville, led by a slightly eccentric mayor (Steve Carell), and who must find the particle a safe resting place despite the ...
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Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who (CNS)
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
"Unless someone like you cares an awful lot, nothing is going to get better."
That's the urgent moral of a beloved children's book now translated into a 3-D animated feature as "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" (Universal). This action-packed, candy-colored film for the entire family retains the charm of the original 1971 ...
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Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (CNS)
Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who!
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Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who! (SAM)
Drag Me to Hell
Intentionally over-the-top horror tale in which a Los Angeles loan officer (Alison Lohman) is cursed to death and damnation by a woman (Lorna Raver) on whose home her bank is foreclosing and, with the reluctant support of her skeptical boyfriend (Justin Long), enlists the aid of a fortuneteller (Dileep Rao) in ...
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Drag Me to Hell (CNS)
Dragonfly
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Dragonfly (SAM)
Dragonheart
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Dragonheart (SAM)
Dream House
Don't expect a remake of the 1948 comedy classic "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" when you see the current "Dream House" (Universal). While this film does feature a happy family and a real fixer-upper, the comparisons end there.
Director Jim Sheridan ("My Left Foot," "Brothers") offers a traditional Gothic horror ...
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Dream House (CNS)
Dreamcatcher
Grisly horror flick in which four boyhood friends (Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis and Timothy Olyphant) who became telepathically connected after performing a heroic act in their youth, battle an invading alien force that takes over people's bodies. As directed by Lawrence Kasdan, what initially seems like a well-crafted film ...
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Dreamcatcher (CNS)
Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
Warm and winning family film set in rural Kentucky about a dispirited racehorse trainer (Kurt Russell), his young daughter (Dakota Fanning) and estranged father (Kris Kristofferson), who nurse an injured Seabiscuit-like thoroughbred back to form and in the process mend their own broken relationships. Written and directed by John Gatins, the ...
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Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (CNS)
Dreamers, The
Insufferably pretentious and gratuitously explicit film about a quiet American student (Michael Pitt) studying in Paris, whose love of old movies leads to an unwholesome triangular relationship with a brother (Louis Garrel) and sister (Eva Green) left alone to turn their apartment into a sexual playground while their parents are away ...
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Dreamers, The (CNS)
Dreamgirls
Entertaining screen version of 1981 Broadway hit charting the rise of a Motown-like 1960s girl group (Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose and Sharon Leal), and the heavyset lead singer (Jennifer Hudson) they push out of the group when she doesn't match their new svelte image, as well as an R&B singer ...
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Dreamgirls (CNS)
Drillbit Taylor
Droll portrait of the unlikely friendship between a homeless veteran (Owen Wilson) and the three high school misfits (Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile and David Dorfman) who hire him as a bodyguard to protect them from a malevolent bully (Alex Frost) and his thuggish sidekick (Josh Peck). Director Steven Brill's film, produced ...
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Drillbit Taylor (CNS)
Drive
NEW YORK (CNS) -- You'll need a good road map to navigate the plot twists and turns of "Drive" (FilmDistrict), a dark, introspective drama about a self-absorbed loner who lives for the open road but unexpectedly finds his conscience along the way.
Despite stylish direction from Nicolas Winding Refn ("Valhalla Rising"), ...
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Drive (CNS)
Drumline
Rousing tale of a Harlem youth (Nick Cannon) on a college band scholarship who must learn the concept of teamwork the hard way before he's allowed to use his drumming talent in the school band competition. As directed by Charles Stone III, the formulaic story is offset by its underdog appeal ...
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Drumline (CNS)
The Duchess
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The Duchess (SAM)
Duchess, The
Lavishly mounted, compellingly acted but somewhat morally lax costume drama, based on real events, recounting the tangled lives of the late-18th-century Duchess of Devonshire (Keira Knightley), her coldly indifferent husband (Ralph Fiennes), her best friend (Hayley Atwell), who becomes his live-in lover and the statesman (Dominic Cooper) for whom she falls. ...
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Duchess, The (CNS)
Due Date
In director John Hughes' 1987 hit "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," two comic geniuses, Steve Martin and John Candy, played unlikely companions thrown together on a mishap-plagued journey home for Thanksgiving.
Tinged with tenderness, the proceedings eventually saw the two become friends after Martin's character discovered the endearing qualities lurking beneath ...
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Due Date (CNS)
The Dukes
Two cash-strapped cousins (Robert Davi and Chazz Palminteri) who once enjoyed fame as part of the titular doo-wop singing group join their two best friends -- a former stand-up comic (Frank D'Amico) and an out-of-work airline mechanic (Elya Baskin)—in a bungling burglary scheme. Davi, who also directed and co-wrote, creates a ...
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The Dukes (CNS)
Dukes of Hazzard, The
Sleazed-up film version of the popular television series about redneck rascals Luke and Bo Duke (Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott), who with the help of curvaceous cousin Daisy (Jessica Simpson) and moonshine-running Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson) foil the shady land dealings of crooked local politician "Boss" Hogg (Burt Reynolds). Directed ...
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Dukes of Hazzard, The (CNS)
Duma
First-rate coming-of-age adventure set in Africa about a headstrong young boy (Alexander Michaletos) who embarks on a journey of self-discovery when he resolves to trek across hundreds of miles of treacherous terrain in order return his pet cheetah -- which he raised since it was an orphaned cub -- to its ...
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Duma (CNS)
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Mindless prequel to the 1994 no-brainer "Dumb and Dumber," in which the idiot clock is rewound to find the title halfwits (played this time around by Eric Christian Olsen and Harry Richardson) in high school and involved in a scam by the school's crooked principal (Eugene Levy) to abscond with thousands ...
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Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (CNS)
Duplex
A young New York couple (Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore) move into a picture-perfect townhouse, only to discover that it comes equipped with a chronically intrusive elderly tenant, whom they contemplate bumping off in order to prevent their dream home from turning into a nightmare. Though frequently funny, the film, directed ...
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Duplex (CNS)
Duplicity
Sophisticated romantic caper about two intelligence officers (Julia Roberts and Clive Owen) who turn to industrial espionage hoping to exploit the no-holds-barred feud between the CEOs (Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti) of rival pharmaceutical companies. Writer-director Tony Gilroy's tartly clever globe-trotting thriller, which boasts all the complexity of a master chess ...
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Duplicity (CNS)
Duplicity
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Duplicity (SAM)
Dust Factory, The
Life-affirming family fantasy about a young boy (Ryan Kelley) -- mute since witnessing his father's tragic death -- who falls from a bridge into the titular dream realm somewhere between this world and the next, where he must confront his fears of mortality, guided by his grandfather (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and the ...
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Dust Factory, The (CNS)
Da Vinci Code, The
Dan Brown's record-breaking best-seller comes to the screen with most of its spurious historical, artistic and theological misstatements intact. The film follows the book's plot of a Harvard "symbologist" (Tom Hanks) on the run from French police after the murder of a curator from the Louvre museum, with the latter's granddaughter ...
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Da Vinci Code, The (CNS)
Da Vinci Code, The
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Da Vinci Code, The (SAM)
D-War Dragon Wars
Hilariously silly but never dull throwback to the old Godzilla movies, with a Los Angeles reporter (Jason Behr) protecting a young woman (Amanda Brooks) whose life-force is sought by a good giant serpent and a bad giant serpent. Writer-director Hyung-rae Shim gives undiscriminating young teens and tongue-in-cheek genre fans some terrifically ...
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D-War Dragon Wars (CNS)
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
"Dylan Dog: Dead of Night" (Freestyle) may prove that your mother was right when she used to warn you, "Those comic books will rot your brain!" Scenes of mayhem and some language issues, moreover, mark this maladroit screen adaptation of an Italian series of comics as off-limits to its youthful target ...
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Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (CNS)
Dysfunktional Family
Raw and raucous portrait of comedian Eddie Griffin in which director George Gallo weaves live concert footage of Griffin performing stand-up with video interviews of family members in the funnyman's home town of Kansas City, Mo. Unfortunately, Griffin's unremitting foul-mouthed rants and lewd tirades detract from his comic wit. Incessant rough ...
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Dysfunktional Family (CNS)
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