'Amelia'

Three stars (Biopic, PG, 111 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12). Hilary Swank is an ideal embodiment of Amelia Earhart, who was strong, brave and true, and looked fabulous in a flight suit. The second person to fly solo across the Atlantic was a born feminist who pioneered aviation for women and wed George Putnam (Richard Gere) after informing him their marriage would have "dual controls." Well directed by Mira Nair with impeccable period details; an admirable film, if lacking in drama because Earhart's life was short and happy.

'Astro Boy'

Three Stars (Animated adventure, PG, 94 minutes, playing at Regal Ninth Street 4). Metro City orbits above an Earth buried in garbage. Its citizens are waited on hand and foot by robots, and things will get even better now that Toby's dad (Nicolas Cage) has invented the unlimited Blue energy. But the warmonger president (Donald Sutherland) snatches the dangerous Red energy, Toby dies in an accident, his memories are transferred by his dad into the little robot Astro Boy, and so on. Bright and peppy, with a nice moral.

'The Box'

One star (Thriller, PG-13, 115 minutes, playing at Regal Ninth Street 4 and Regal Albany 7 Cinemas). Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a terrible moral dilemma in Richard Kelly's "The Box": Press a button on a mysterious container, they'll get $1 million, and someone they don't know will die. What button, on whose box, did Kelly push to get the money to make this awful, preposterous thriller? "The Box" is like a magician's prop: It gives the illusion that it's full of stuff - ideas, portents, clues, meaning - when actually, it's as empty as the heroines' heads in Diaz's "Charlie's Angels'' flicks.

'The Burning Plain'

Two and a half stars (Drama, R, 106 minutes, playing at Darkside Cinema). "The Burning Plain" involves events perhaps 20 years and 1,000 miles apart, with many of the same characters. Told chronologically, it might have accumulated considerable power. Told as a labyrinthine tangle of intercut timelines and locations, it is a frustrating exercise in self-indulgence by writer-director Guillermo Arriaga. Filmed in New Mexico and Oregon. Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron have the key roles and are excellent.

'A Christmas Carol'

Four stars (Animated adventure, PG, 95 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12 and Regal Albany 7). An exhilarating visual experience that proves for the third time Robert Zemeckis is one of the few directors who knows what he's doing with 3-D. The story that Dickens wrote in 1838 remains timeless, and if it's supercharged here with Scrooge swooping the London streets as freely as Superman, well, once you let ghosts into a movie there's room for anything. In motion-capture animation, Jim Carrey does the movements and voice of Ebenezer Scrooge, never thinner, never more stooped, never more bitter. The A-list cast also includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn and Cary Elwes.

'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'

Two and half stars (Animated comedy, PG, 90 minutes, playing at Pix Theatre and Carmike Cinema 12). A 3-D animated comedy about a kid who invents a machine that will turn water into food. It goes wild, floods his island with food, and attacks it with a spaghetti and meatballs tornado. Haven't seen that before.

'Coco Before Chanel'

Three and a half stars (Biography Drama, PG-13, 110 minutes, playing at Darkside Cinema). The story of Gabrielle Chanel, from poor orphan girl to the brink of becoming the most influential figure of 20th-century fashion. Audrey Tautou stars as an independent, strong-willed young woman who from behind the clouds of her cigarettes regards the world with unforgiving realism and stubborn ambition. Director Anne Fontaine avoids any effort to make Coco Chanel nice, or soft, or particularly sympathetic. That has the effect of making her just that much more interesting.

'Couples Retreat'

Two stars (Comedy, PG-13, 107 minutes, playing at Regal Albany 7 Cinemas and Carmike Cinema 12). Four troubled couples make a week's retreat to an island paradise where they hope to be healed, which indeed happens, according to ages-old sitcom formulas. The jolly ending is agonizing in its step-by-step obligatory plotting.

'Departures'

Four stars (Drama, PG-13, 130 minutes, playing at Darkside Cinema). A jobless classical musician takes a job in "encoffinment," the Japanese ritual preparation of the dead. The film is lovely, moving and wise, and the actors embody their roles - the young man, his fond wife, his wise boss and the boss's encouraging, quietly sad assistant. Directed by Yojiro Takita. Winner of the 2009 Oscar for best foreign film.

'The Fourth Kind'

One and half stars (Horror, PG-13, 98 minutes, playing at Regal Ninth Street 4 Cinemas). Nome, Alaska (pop. 9,261), has so many disappearances and/or alien abductions that the FBI has investigated there 20 times more than in Anchorage. So it's claimed by this pseudo-doc that goes to inane lengths to appear factual. Milla Jovovich is good as a psychologist whose clients complain that owls stare at them in the middle of the night.

'The Hurt Locker'

Four stars (War drama, R, 127 minutes, playing at Darkside Cinema). A great film. Jeremy Renner stars as a bomb-defusing specialist who dismantles bombs under fire in Iraq. Not a phony action movie, no false alarms, but almost unbearable suspense in a story that asks: Why does he do it? Why MUST he do it? With Anthony Mackie as the head of his support team, who is driven crazy by what he considers Renner's reckless approach to the job. Director Kathryn Bigelow, a master of intelligent action ("Strange Days," "K-19: The Widowmaker"), superbly creates suspense out of the traditional tools of performance, story, timing and editing. In a movie about bombs, this one doesn't depend for its effect on blowing things up.

'The Informant!'

Four stars (Comedy/thriller, R, 108 minutes, playing at Regal Ninth Street 4). Matt Damon stars as the highest-ranking executive in U.S. history to blow the whistle in a case of corporate fraud. He exposed global price-fixing by Archer Daniels Midland, the Decatur, Ill., agribusiness conglomerate, after wearing an FBI wire for 30 months. Along the way, incidentally, he was embezzling $9 million for his own use, a detail he neglected to share with the FBI. Steven Soderbergh's top-flight thriller, based on facts and shot on the original central Illinois locations, subtly becomes a human comedy.

'Law-Abiding Citizen'

Three stars (Drama, R, 122 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12 and Pix Theatre). A thriller starring Jamie Foxx as a D.A. head-to-head with a serial killer - who commits all but one of his many murders while in prison, and in solitary for most of that time. The story is a classic locked-room mystery: How does he set up such elaborate kills? Securely in solitary, he seems able to kill at a distance by ingenious means and with remarkable resources. With Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Regina Hall and Viola Davis.

'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

Three and a half stars (Comedy, R, 93 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12 and Regal Albany 7). A weirdly funny comedy that seriously claims to be based on an actual U.S. Army interest in using paranormal soldiers as weapons. Ewan McGregor plays a reporter who encounters George Clooney, a "Jedi Warrior" graduate of this secret program; flashbacks show Jeff Bridges as an officer who seems very much like the Big Lebowski. Could they kill goats by staring? Well, if you can bend a spoon with your mind, why not a rifle?

'Paranormal Activity'

Three and half stars (Horror Thriller, R, 96 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12 and Regal Albany 7). An ingenious little horror film, so well made it's truly scary, that arrives claiming it's the real thing. A young couple is bothered by a paranormal presence in their home, so the husband decides to leave a camera running while they sleep. A film that illustrates how silence and waiting can be more entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk special effects.

'Saw VI'

Two stars (Horror, R, 93 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12). "You have seen the errors in your policy,'' Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) hisses in the latest "Saw'' movie. And, kids, he's hissing a pun at Big Insurance when he does, the profiteers who determine "who lives and who dies." You just don't expect that from a "Saw" movie, do you? "But "Saw VI,'' which begins by making two "predatory lenders'' carve off hunks of their flesh, dump it on a scale and see which one can lose the most weight the quickest (the loser dies) has a more lyrical bent, and a more satiric bite, than any of the other "Saw" sequels.

'The Stepfather'

Two stars (Horror/thriller, PG-13, 101 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12). Michael Harding (Penn Badgley) returns home from military school to find his mother, Susan (Sela Ward), happily in love with a man known as David Harris (Dylan Walsh). He seems like the perfect father and husband to everyone - except Michael, who suspects that he is not quite the man he seems to be.

'This Is It'

Four stars (Documentary, PG, 112 minutes, playing at Regal Ninth Street 4 and Regal Albany 7 Cinemas). Not a dying man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, Michael Jackson appears a spirit embodied by music. Directed by Kenny Ortega, the doc provides both a good idea of what the final concert would have looked like, and a portrait of the artist at work. One of the most revealing music documentaries I've seen.

'Trucker'

Four stars (Drama, R, 90 minutes, playing at Darkside Cinema). Michelle Monaghan plays a cold, loner, hard-drinking, promiscuous trucker. Jimmy Bennett plays her 11-year-old son. She left his father (Benjamin Bratt) soon after he was born and wants nothing to do with him. But after Bratt gets sick, she's forced to take in the kid. Both of them are angry and closed-off. James Mottern has written and directed a film that closely observes as their abrasive personalities are forced to coexist. Not sentimental, avoids obvious cliches, doesn't play it safe, comes to strong emotional life. Monaghan deserves an Academy nomination.

'Where the Wild Things Are'

Three stars (Children's Fantasy, PG, 110 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12 and Regal Albany 7). Maurice Sendak's much-loved 1963 children's book becomes a big-budget fantasy, with particularly good realizations of his Wild Things, creatures on an island visited in the imagination of a small boy (Max Records). But the plot is simple stuff, spread fairly thin by director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers.

'Zombieland'

Three stars (Comedy horror, R, 81 minutes, playing at Carmike Cinema 12). Unexpectedly funny. Jesse Eisenberg, named after his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is making his way back home across a zombie-infested America. He encounters another non-zombie survivor, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). The two team up with the sexy Wichita (Emma Stone) and her little sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). It comes down to a road movie threatened by the undead.