LITTLE ROCK — At area theaters

85

ARBITRAGE, R Richard Gere plays a billionaire hedge fund magnate, the very portrait of success in American business, who, on the eve of his 60th birthday, finds himself desperately trying to sell his trading empire to a major bank before the extent of his fraud is discovered. (100 minutes)

89

THE AVENGERS, PG-13 Nick Fury, director of the international peacekeeping agency SHIELD, pulls together the title superheroes of all those preceding Marvel-based, big-screen comic book adventures, including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America: The First Avenger (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), to battle the unexpected enemy threatening global safety and security. (142 minutes)

72

THE BOURNE LEGACY, PG-13 Jeremy Renner plays another estranged assassin, put through the same super-secret government genetic modification program that produced Jason Bourne, and who, like Bourne, has been marked for elimination. (135 minutes)

84

BRAVE, PG A courageous young Scottish princess (voice of Kelly Macdonald) inadvertently unleashes chaos in the kingdom while battling tradition, destiny and the fiercest of beasts and finding the meaning of true bravery. Animated. (100 minutes)

75

THE CAMPAIGN, R When a long term North Carolina congressman (Will Ferrell) commits a major public gaffe before an election, a pair of ultra-wealthy CEOs plot to put up an unlikely rival candidate (Zach Galifianakis) to gain influence over their district. (97 minutes)

72

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, PG-13 Christian Bale returns as the Caped Crusader, converted from hero to fugitive after he takes the blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent, this time pitted against the deadly masked terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy) and cunning cat burglar Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman (Anne Hathaway). (164 minutes)

72

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS, PG The latest film in a series based on books by author/cartoonist Jeff Kinney, in which pre-teen hero Greg is still having his worst summer ever. (94 minutes)

77

DREDD 3D, R Karl Urban plays the comic book character Sylvester Stallone first brought to the screen, the fearsome urban cop/ judge/jury/executioner, the only semblance of order in a chaotic, irradiated wasteland that used to be the East Coast, whose new challenge is to rid the city of a dangerous drug. (95 minutes)

88

END OF WATCH, R Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play young cops patrolling the meanest streets of south-central Los Angeles. (109 minutes)

78

THE EXPENDABLES 2, R The reunited Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews), with a couple of new members (Liam Hemsworth, Yu Nan) aboard, take on what appears at first to be a simple job - until things go wrong, whereupon they are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are, of course, stacked against them. (102 minutes)

90

FINDING NEMO 3D, G Disney adds an extra dimension to the tale of animated and overly protective clownfish Marlin (voice of Albert Brooks) and fuzzy-minded fish Dory (voice of Ellen Degeneres), on a quest to rescue Marlin’s short-finned son Nemo (voice of Alexander Gould) after a fishing boat separates them in the Great Barrier Reef. (104 minutes)

75

FRANKENWEENIE, PG Director Tim Burton expands upon his early (1984) stop-motion animated short film to create a full-length, stop-motion-animated, black-and-white, 3-D feature about a boy named Victor with a bent for science and his dead dog, Sparky, whom he brings back to life - with just a few minor adjustments. With voices of Burton alumni Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Landau, as well as Martin Short, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Robert Capron, Conchata Ferrell. (87 minutes)

86

HOPE SPRINGS, PG-13 Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a devoted couple with a lot of years of married life under their belts.Looking to spice things up, she hauls him to a week of marriage therapy with a renowned couples specialist (Steve Carell), who tries to help them shed their bedroom hang-ups and re-ignite the spark that caused them to fall for each other in the first place. (100 minutes)

80

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, PG Dracula opens a lavish five-stake resort - where monsters and their families can live it up in safety and comfort, free from meddling from the human world - as a way of controlling the adventurous spirit of his teenage daughter, who’s in grave peril of falling for an ordinary human. Animated. (91 minutes)

74

HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET, PG-13 A recent divorcee (Elisabeth Shue) seeking a fresh start and her daughter (Jennifer Lawrence) find the small-town house of their dreams, which, of course, also houses a chilling secret. (101 minutes)

70

ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT, PG Squirrelly Scrat’s nutty, timeworn pursuit of the accursed acorn triggers a continental cataclysm, in the midst of which Manny, Diego and Sid encounter a ragtag menagerie of characters determined to stop them from returning home. Animated. (94 minutes)

82

KILLER JOE, NC-17 Emile Hirsch plays a drug dealer who turns to a hired killer (Matthew McConaughey) to dispatch his mother, whose life insurance would pay off the debt to his supplier. With Thomas Haden Church, Juno Temple; directed by William Friedkin. (102 minutes)

88

LOOPER, R In the not-too-distant future, time travel is real but illegal and only available on the black market, and the mob uses it to get rid of folks they don’t like by sending them 30 years into the past, where hired gun Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is waiting. Then the mob decides to close the loop and sends back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis). (118 minutes)

89

MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED, PG Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe, still fighting to get home to their beloved Big Apple, find the perfect cover for a transit of Europe: a traveling circus. Animated. (93 minutes)

79

MADEA’S WITNESS PROTECTION, PG-13 The gentle chief financial officer of a Wall Street investment bank (Eugene Levy) with growing family problems escapes into the witness protection program - hiding out, natch, with Madea (writer-director Tyler Perry) - when it turns out his firm has been operating a mob-backed Ponzi scheme and that he has been set up as the fall guy. (114 minutes)

90

THE MASTER, R A young drifter (Joaquin Phoenix), picked up by the charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of a fringe religion, begins to doubt the faith - and his mentor. (137 minutes)

78

THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN, PG A happily married couple (Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton), dreaming about what their someday-child will be like, find a youngster (C.J. Adams) on their doorstep, bearing some unexpected gifts. (125 minutes)

81

PITCH PERFECT, PG-13 Anna Kendrick plays a college kid who finds herself in the midst of an unpopular group of misfit girls with one thing in common: how well they sing together. So of course they set forth to conquer the cutthroat world of college a cappella groups. (112 minutes)

68

THE POSSESSION, PG-13 After their youngest daughter becomes oddly obsessed with an antique wooden box she bought at a yard sale, a couple (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick) discover the presence of a malevolent force: The box was built to contain a dibbuk, a dislocated spirit that inhabits and ultimately devours its human host. (91 minutes)

83

PREMIUM RUSH, PG-13 Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the best of New York’s agile and aggressive bicycle messengers, is about to put his life even closer to the edge than he’s used to when the day’s last envelope, a “premium rush” run, turns into a life-or-death chase. (91 minutes)

67

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION, R In this fifth installment in a continuing franchise, a deadly virus continues to transform humanity into legions of the flesh-eating undead, and globe-trotting Milla Jovovich remains humanity’s last hope. (97 minutes)

72

TAKEN 2, PG-13 The retired CIA agent (Liam Neeson) who in the first movie stopped at nothing to save his daughter from Albanian kidnappers now has been taken hostage with his wife during a family vacation in Istanbul by the vengeful father of one of the original kidnappers, and it’s up to the daughter to help them escape, get the family to safety and systematically take out the kidnappers - one by nasty one. With Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Rade Sherbedgia, Luke Grimes; directed by Olivier Megaton. (92 minutes)

74

TOTAL RECALL, PG-13 A remake of the Paul Verhoeven/Arnold Schwarzenegger 1990 sci-fi trailblazer (based on Philip K. Dick’s short story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”), this time with Colin Farrell as a factory worker haunted by dreams of a previous life that turn out to be actual suppressed memories. (118 minutes)

86

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, PG-13 Clint Eastwood plays an ace baseball scout with whom age is starting to catch up, but he refuses to be benched for what maybe the final innings of his career. The one person who might be able to help is also the one person he’d never ask: his high-powered lawyer daughter (Amy Adams). (111 minutes)

77

2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA, PG In this film, author and conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, whose writings about President Obama have created controversy, covers four continents “to find answers to Obama’s past” and speculates where America will be in 2016. (89 minutes)

70

WON’T BACK DOWN, PG Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis play mothers from different backgrounds, one a postal worker and one a reporter, who join forces to take on a failing public school system and create a charter school for neighborhood children, including their own. (121 minutes)

Movie-rating point system Movies are rated on a scale from 50 to 100. Guidelines for moviegoers:

96-100 Transcendent

90-95

Exceptional

80-89

Better than most to remarkable

70-79

Average

60-69

Awful to mediocre

50-59

Irredeemable

MovieStyle, Pages 33 on 10/12/2012